Hong Kong: 429 COVID-19 cases detected

The Centre for Health Protection today said it is investigating 429 additional COVID-19 cases, of which 221 were detected by nucleic acid tests and 208 were identified via rapid antigen tests.

Among the new cases, 19 are imported while the rest are locally infected.

A total of 1,189,229 people have contracted the virus since the onset of the fifth wave of the epidemic, involving 9,036 deaths.

Meanwhile, the Government made a restriction-testing declaration to cover Lok Chuen House of Shui Chuen O Estate in Sha Tin, requiring people in the restricted area to undergo compulsory testing before the specified deadline.

Given that there were positive sewage test results with relatively high viral loads in several areas of Eastern, Tsuen Wan and Sha Tin districts, the respective district offices will distribute COVID-19 rapid test kits to relevant residents as well as cleaning workers and property management staff working in those areas.

For information and health advice on COVID-19, visit the Government's dedicated webpage.

This story has been published on: 2022-04-24. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Somalia, UN vow to ramp up immunization for children

Xinhua) 08:21, April 24, 2022

MOGADISHU, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Somalia and the United Nations agencies on Saturday jointly urged humanitarian partners, local private agencies and donors to help boost children immunization efforts and outreach across the country.

The ministry of health, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said Somalia has an estimated 639, 000 children aged under one year, but many are not able to access their regular childhood vaccinations.

"It's vital that parents and caregivers take control of their children's health by making sure every child gets their routine vaccinations," UNICEF Representative in Somalia Angela Kearney said in a joint statement issued to mark the World Immunization Week.

"Vaccines ensure protection against preventable diseases and a healthier life. Vaccines are free and it's the right thing to do," she added.

World Immunization Week 2022 which runs from April 24-30 aims to spur greater engagement around immunization globally, to reiterate the importance of vaccination and improve the health and well-being of everyone, everywhere.

According to the UN, some 510,951 children received the third dose of penta vaccines last year to protect them from pertussis, diphtheria, hepatitis B, tetanus and Haemophilus influenzae type b, while around 80 percent of all measles cases confirmed in 2021 were children aged under 5.

The UN said some of the challenges Somalia faces in ensuring all communities have access to vaccinations include a fragile health system, further impeded by conflict and natural disasters, including the ongoing drought, limited access to cold chain facilities in remote areas and among hard-to-reach populations, and difficulty in reaching people living in insecure and inaccessible locations.

Fawziya Abikar Nur, Minister of Health and Human Services, said only 9 percent of Somalis have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Nur said in developing countries, such as Somalia, the majority of the population still remains to be vaccinated.

"They are still at risk, and we cannot emphasize enough - we must reach everyone, wherever they live, to stop diseases such as COVID-19 from mutating and circulating," she said.

Mamunur Rahman Malik, WHO Somalia Representative, said vaccines are one of the greatest success stories of public health.

"And yet, with all the knowledge and tools we have, Somali children are still contracting vaccine-preventable diseases, and adults are still being infected with diseases such as COVID-19," said Malik.

He described how the advent of smallpox vaccines showed the world that it is possible to eradicate diseases if governments and all stakeholders join forces.

"It is our moral imperative to ensure every Somali has equitable access to vaccinations and a life free of disease and disabilities. We must all join forces to reach more people with life-saving vaccines," Malik said.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Hongyu)
You are here: China

Medical workers prepare medicine at the emergency room of Minhang Hospital affiliated to Fudan University in Shanghai, east China, April 20, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Chinese mainland on Saturday reported 1,566 locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases, of which 1,401 were in Shanghai, according to the National Health Commission's report Sunday.

Apart from Shanghai, 16 other provincial-level regions on the mainland saw new local COVID-19 cases, including 60 in Jilin, 26 in Heilongjiang, and 22 in Beijing.

Shanghai also reported 19,657 locally transmitted asymptomatic infections of the novel coronavirus Saturday, out of a total of 20,230 local asymptomatic carriers newly identified on the mainland.

Following the recovery of 2,672 COVID-19 patients on Saturday, there were 29,531 confirmed COVID-19 cases undergoing treatment in hospitals across the country.

Saturday saw 39 deaths from COVID-19, all in Shanghai, bringing the mainland's total COVID-19 deaths to 4,725.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. The National Popular Front Party of the House of Representatives of the Republic of Cyprus has issued a statement on the occasion of the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, ARMENPRESS reports the statement was published by the Armenian Embassy in Greece.

In its statement, the National Popular Front Party presents the monstrous plan of extermination of the Armenian people carried out by the Ottoman Empire.

"Ruthless massacres took place regardless of age, gender, as well as rapes, sexual assaults on men and women. An indicator of Ottoman brutality was that during the 1918 Trabzon trials, Ottoman army officer Hasan Maruf said that Turkish prisoners went mad when they saw Armenians burned alive, while Russians were told that the smell of burnt human body will remain in the air for many days. Ethan Belkid, who was also an officer, confessed that he saw 5,000 Armenians being burnt alive," reads the statement.

The National Popular Front Party says that the total number of victims of the Turkish atrocity a century later is still unknown, but there are estimates of 800,000 to 1.5 million victims.

"Together with the people, the Armenian civilization also fell victim to Turkish atrocities, as it is estimated that 464 of the 913 historical buildings of Armenians in Turkey were completely destroyed, 252 were in ruins, and 197 were in urgent need of repair, reads the statement.

The statement of the "National Popular Front" Party states that the Turkish government still denies that it committed the Genocide. "They claim that the Armenians were a hostile force, that their massacre was a result of the war situation. In fact, Turkey not only rejects, but has a very provocative position on this issue.

We must all understand that the Armenian Genocide is not only April 24, we must not remember it only on that day. It is a practical proof of the barbarity of the Turks, which still exists today. The Turkish regime continues to pursue a similar tactic today.

They make it clear to us with their attitude that their hatred of any Christian element is eternal, and especially we, the Greeks in Cyprus, half of whose homeland is under Turkish occupation, should not forget that, knowing who we are coping with, the National Popular Front said.
Singh said that the eastern boundary of the country was currently experiencing more peace and stability compared to the western frontier

Guwahati: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday asserted that India would not hesitate to act against terrorists who target the country from across the border.

Speaking at a programme, where Assam-based veterans of 1971 India-Pakistan War were felicitated, Singh said the government was working to wipe out terrorism from the country.

"India has been successful in giving out the message that terrorism will be strongly dealt with. We will not hesitate to cross borders if the country is targeted from outside," he maintained.

Praising the valour displayed by Indian soldiers in the recent standoffs with China, he said, "I am of the firm belief that no power in the world can do anything to bow down the head of Bharat Mata' (Mother India)."

Taking a dig at a section of opposition leaders who had questioned the Army's role in the matter, Singh said such criticism demoralised soldiers and hurt the sentiments of people.

"I am regularly in contact with chiefs of our armed forces. I told them what I had to and they did what they had to. They have kept Bharat Mata's head held high," he added.

Singh also said that the eastern boundary of the country was currently experiencing more peace and stability compared to the western frontier, with Bangladesh being a friendly neighbour.

"The tension that India experiences on western frontier does not exist along eastern boundary as Bangladesh is a friendly country," he noted.

"The problem of infiltration has almost ended. There is peace and stability at the border (in the eastern frontier) now," the minister said. The defence minister praised the Border Road Organisation (BRO) for its efforts in building strong boundary infrastructure, needed for defence preparedness.

"We have stronger border infrastructure now, but more has to be done and we are working on it, he stated.

On the recent withdrawal of Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) from different parts of northeast, the defence minister stated that the government did so whenever the situation in a place improved.

He said, "When I was the Union home minister, AFSPA was lifted from Arunachal Pradesh (most parts) and Meghalaya. Now under Amit Shah, it has been withdrawn from 23 districts of Assam and areas under 15 police stations each in Manipur and Nagaland.

"Durable peace and stability has ensured that AFSPA gets withdrawn from the northeast and the role of chief ministers in the region has also been commendable, with Assam's Himanta Biswa Sarma taking the leading," he noted.

Maintaining that there was a "public misconception" that the Army always wanted AFSPA to remain in force, Singh contended the Army's job is not to look after internal security but to guard the borders.

On continued imposition of AFSPA in Jammu and Kashmir, the minister said, The situation is responsible for it, not the Army.

Lauding the role of serving soldiers and veterans in protecting the country, the defence minister said, The soldiers are our strength and the veterans and veer naris' (widows of martyrs) our inspiration.

"Even when a soldier retires and becomes a veteran, the warrior inside him lives on and it can be seen in his 'tevar' (attitude), body language," he added.

He also called on the general people to ensure that brotherhood is maintained within the country while the soldiers keep peace on the borders.

"We don't notice religion when a person dons the uniform and becomes a soldier for the country.

"People of different religions had worked together in the 1971 War this social harmony of Assam, India should not be broken," he said, felicitating war widows, families of martyrs, prisoners of war and former personnel who had suffered injuries in the 1971 battle.

He also inaugurated an exhibition by Directorate of Sainik Welfare, showcasing the valour and supreme sacrifice of armed forces in the liberation war.

Later in a tweet, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that nine war widows were honoured with Rs 10 lakh each, eight personnel who had suffered injuries with Rs 5 lakh each and two ex-prisoners of War with Rs 2.5 lakh each.

An amount of Rs 2 lakh each was also given to 86 other veterans of the liberation war, he added.
The sale proceeds were utilised by the Gandhi family for the medical treatment of Congress president Sonia Gandhi in New York

Mumbai: Yes Bank co-founder Rana Kapoor has told the Enforcement Directorate that he was "forced" to buy an M F Husain painting from Congress' Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and the sale proceeds were utilised by the Gandhi family for the medical treatment of Congress president Sonia Gandhi in New York, as per the chargesheet filed by the federal anti-money laundering agency in a special court here.

Kapoor also told the ED that he was told by the then petroleum minister Murli Deora that the refusal to buy the M F Husain painting will not only prevent him from building a relationship with the Gandhi family but also prevent him from getting the 'Padma Bhushan' award.

The statements of Rana Kapoor are part of the second supplementary chargesheet (overall third) filed in the special court here recently against the Yes Bank co-founder, his family, Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL) promoters Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan, and others in a money laundering case.

Stating that he had paid a cheque of Rs 2 crore, Kapoor claimed that "Milind Deora (son of the late Murli Deora and former Congress MP) later conveyed to him confidentially that the sale proceeds were utilised by the Gandhi family for the medical treatment of Sonia Gandhi in New York".

Kapoor also told the ED that Ahmed Patel, a close confidante of Sonia Gandhi, had told him that by supporting the Gandhi family at an opportune time for medical treatment of Sonia Gandhi, I (Kapoor) had performed a good deed for the family and it would be duly considered for the 'Padma Bhushan' award.

Murli Deora had tried to convince Rana Kapoor that the refusal to purchase the painting will also not permit him ever to build a relationship with the Gandhi family. It will also prevent him from getting the 'Padma Bhushan award, as per the chargesheet.

The late Deora had told Kapoor at dinner that the failure to purchase the painting could have "adverse repercussions" on him and Yes Bank, Kapoor has claimed in his statement to the ED.

The banker is currently in judicial custody following his arrest in the case in March 2020.

"First of all I wish to state that it was a forced sale for which I was never ready", the chargesheet said about the painting Kapoor allegedly purchased from Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

Milind Deora had made several visits to his (Rana Kapoor's) house and office to persuade him for purchasing an MF Husain painting from Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

"He had even made me several calls and messages also in this regard from multiple mobile numbers. In fact, I was very much reluctant to go for this deal and I had tried also to avoid this deal several times by ignoring his calls/messages and personal meetings," Kapoor told the ED, as per the chargesheet.

"Despite my best efforts to avoid this deal they were exceptionally persistent to finalise the deal rapidly," Kapoor claimed.

He further stated that later, in the year 2010, Murli Deora forced him to meet him for a vegetarian dinner (Marwari dinner) at his Lodhi Estate Bungalow in New Delhi.

He was Petroleum Minister at that time and had been allotted this bungalow in that capacity, Kapoor said, as per the chargesheet.

"During the meeting, the late Murli Deora told me in no uncertain terms that any further delay in purchasing the above-said painting could have adverse repercussions on me and my Yes Bank and it could jeopardise my relationship with the Deora family," Kapoor said.

"Simultaneously, he had tried to convince me that it will also not permit me ever to build me a relationship with the Gandhi family," the banker added.

Further, in the statement, Kapoor claimed, "He (Murli Deora) had also told me that any deviation on my part for the lack of closure of the deal will definitely prevent me from getting awarded the 'Padma Bhushan' for which, according to him, I was highly deserving at that time".

"Under this threat and against my family's wishes, since we are not high-value Art Collectors, I could not afford to invite any form of enmity with the two powerful families involved and thus I had to hesitatingly proceed given the looming and overhanging threat involved," Kapoor told ED, as per the chargesheet.

Kapoor told the ED that formalities for closing the deal were held at Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's office.

"Milind Deora had actively coordinated this final closing meeting. I wish to state that for this deal, I had made a payment of Rs 2 crore through a cheque of my personal account in HSBC Bank," he added.

Kapoor said a few weeks after the deal, Milind Deora conveyed to him confidentially that the sale proceeds were utilized by the Gandhi family for the medical treatment of Sonia Gandhi in New York.

"After a few months, while I (Kapoor) was visiting the residence of (late) Ahmed Patel, a close confidante of Sonia Gandhi, I was informed independently by him that by supporting the Gandhi family at an opportune time for medical treatment of Sonia Gandhi I had performed a good deed for the family and it would be duly considered for the 'Padma Bhushan' to me," the chargesheet said.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has alleged that Rana Kapoor and Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL) promoters Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan had siphoned off funds worth Rs 5,050 crore through suspicious transactions.

The ED had started its investigation after recording ECIR on March 3, 2020, and after the probe began, Rana Kapoor aggressively tried to dispose of his overseas properties to save them from being attachment by the ED under PMLA, the charge sheet said.

The POC involved in this case is Rs 5,050 crore. While Rana Kapoor is the founder of the said company namely DUVPL, his three daughters are 100 per cent shareholders therein.

Rana Kapoor is currently in judicial custody following his arrest in the case in March 2020. The Wadhwans too are in jail custody after their arrest in another case.
It will be the first official visit by US government officials since the February 24 invasion

KYIV: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Kyiv Sunday, the day the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its third month, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

"Tomorrow, the American officials are coming to visit us; I will meet the Defense Secretary (Lloyd Austin) and Antony Blinken," he told reporters Saturday.

It will be the first official visit by US government officials since the February 24 invasion.
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In its first year on the market, the El Camino managed to sell nearly 22,250 units, therefore beating Fords model by a large margin (just a little over 14,000 Rancheros ended up finding an owner in 1959).Just like the Bel Air, the El Camino could be ordered with either six-cylinder units or V8s, and the base configuration was the 235 (3.9-liter). The two V8s available in 1959 were the 283 (4.7-liter) and the 348 (5.7-liter), both also offered on the Bel Air and the Impala.This 1959 El Camino no longer has an engine or a transmission, but this isnt necessarily a problem. Most people who attempt to restore an El Camino end up going for another and more powerful unit anyway, so the original powertrain missing isnt necessarily something to make you walk away.As for the reason why the engine and the transmission are gone now, eBay seller beaufordmay doesnt provide any information on this front. However, what we do know is the El Camino spent decades in a barn in Kentucky, so it probably served as a donor for another project.However, were being told the pickup is still very complete, which means that aside from the engine and the transmission, nothing big should be missing.But on the other hand, this isnt necessarily good news anyway. This El Camino requires major work in every single regard, including in terms of metal, so its without a doubt an ambitious project.The good news is that an El Camino in such a challenging condition cant be too expensive. And this one really isnt, with the top bid currently at $1,500. However, a reserve is also in place.
First, what is a G? Simply put, that would be the gravitational force that causes the perception of mass. Even simpler, it's the weight a person feels pressing down on them during acceleration. Because airplanes operate in three dimensions, in their case were not talking about linear one only, as pilots experience negative, right and left, positive, and transverse acceleration as well.We humans can comfortably withstand a meager 1 G (9.8 meter/second squared), which is the standard gravitational force at the surface of the planet we call home. Even here on the ground though, certain environments, like say fast-moving cars, can produce more than that  Formula 1 pilots, for instance, are known to experience up to 6 Gs when cornering at high speeds.Up in the air, the force is almost always (as in during each maneuver) higher than 1. A well-trained and properly equipped pilot can withstand, and still be able to function, as much as nine Gs.As far as aircraft are concerned, nobody really knows whats the limit. Its generally agreed some of these flying metal birds can pull up to 15 Gs and dont break apart, but given how literally no one reached that, its hard to say whats the limit.The F-22 you see in the main photo of this piece is performing a banking right turn, while apparently climbing, that more than surely puts a lot of pressure on both the machine and the human in control of it. Despite this, it manages to look like this is something it regularly does (and for all intents and purposes, thats true), and doesnt lose its head over it.The plane , going straight in our Photo of the Day section, is deployed with the 3rd Wing and is seen here over Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, while taking part in the Polar Force 22-4 exercise at the end of March.
We know you boys and girls love Honda s classic CB750s just as much as we do, so youre probably going to fall for this mint-condition 1969 model in an instance. Aside from being one of the early-production Sandcast variants that only a select few will ever be able to afford, the bike in question is special for yet another very intriguing reason.Believe it or not, this CB750 Four K0 used to be the property of Steve McQueens L.A.-based filmmaking enterprise, Solar Productions. As such, it wouldnt be unreasonable to assume that it mightve, at least once, been ridden by the King of Cool himself! In 1971, the Japanese treasure left McQueens production studio to meet its second owner, with whom it would stay for a whopping 45 years.After it had finally changed hands back in 2016, this sexy thing was subjected to an extensive restoration procedure, receiving fresh paintwork, modern engine internals and a pair of IRC Grand High Speed GS-11 tires. Furthermore, the creatures front brake caliper, forks and gauges have all been overhauled during the refurbishment.Clearly, this vintage two-wheeled diamond is more of a showpiece rather than something youd ride on a regular basis, so well refrain from discussing its technical specifications. If you happen to be in possession of more cash than you know what to do with, then youll be stoked to learn that Hondas unsullied relic is currently searching for a new home on Bring a Trailer Less than 24 hours separate us from the auctioning deadline (April 24), and the highest bid is placed at a heart-stopping $55,000. More often than not, spending almost sixty grand for a 53-year-old motorcycle would be nothing short of pure insanity, but this is one instance when it is, in fact, perfectly reasonable. Well, who the hell needs both kidneys, anyway?
AMG

Its world premiere was in September 1993, during the IAA, the Frankfurt International Auto Show. It marked the beginning of a beautiful friendship.Well, that is an understatement, as the Stuttgart brand eventually acquired the Affalterbach specialist, and AMG has been a part of Mercedes-Benz for a few years now.However, the C 36 comes from a time when the two companies were different entities, and they had to work together on something for it to become reality.Before the C 36, the performance variant of the C-Class's predecessor, the W201 or 190 series , had a Cosworth motor under its hood . While the latter is worth big bucks today, the former was equally special, as it came with more power, a 1.1-liter increase in displacement, and two extra cylinders.The biggest difference was the fact that the AMG company and Mercedes-Benz had co-developed a performance version, and we dare write that it has aged nicely.It has yet to reach incredible values, such as its predecessor had already achieved through scarcity, but it might happen once the world realizes it runs a bit low on W202 C 36 AMGs.It may be a matter of time, but there is a risk it might never catch on, as its period-correct rival, the BMW M3 E36, also encounters in today's market. The same process happened to other models just before they were popular, though, so you may never know. So do not spend anything you cannot afford to lose on one of these.Neither the E36 nor the W202 car got the love, respect, or resale values as its predecessor, despite being safer, with more creature comforts, and more power.That does not mean these cars come cheap but getting one as an investment should only be done if you can afford to keep it in a pristine condition while enjoying it for years and years and being able to afford all that without hoping for a huge payout.With all that behind us, watch what is the world's highest-mileage Mercedes-Benz C 36 get dry ice cleaned. It has 500,000 miles on the odometer, which means 806,281 kilometers, so roughly to the Moon and back, and with plenty of mileage to spare.As you can observe, the vehicle is in quite a good condition overall, but dirt and grime do not forgive. Fortunately, the dirt goes away to leave a clean body behind.
China's first Sri Lankan tea shop opened in Beijing's Chaoyang district on April 20.



Ambassador of Sri Lanka to China Palitha Kohona and President of the China-Sri Lanka Association for Trade and Economic Cooperation Chiranjaya Udumullage inaugurated the tea shop.

At the opening ceremony, Ambassador Kohona introduced the South Asian country's signature Ceylon tea, which mainly refers to its black tea. "The Ceylon tea seeds came from southeast China's Fujian province. After 150 years of evolvement, Ceylon tea has developed its own features thanks to the unique soil, sunlight and weather in Sri Lanka."

Kohona also emphasized that the Ceylon tea produced in different regions and altitudes in Sri Lanka varies by color, aroma and flavor, according to which sugar and milk can be added to enhance the taste and mouthfeel.

"This is the first Ceylon tea shop opened in China, which offers opportunities for customers to taste and purchase the genuine Sri Lankan Ceylon tea," Kohona told China.org.cn.

The tea shop shares its premises with the Sri Lankan Cultural Center, which opened on the same day, allowing visitors to appreciate Sri Lankan culture while savoring the unique tea. "At the cultural center, we have Sri Lankan artifacts, paintings, clothing and local specialties. Of course, we also serve tea," Kohona said.



During the ceremony, second secretary of tea promotion from the Sri Lankan embassy in Beijing Sampath Perera demonstrated how to brew Ceylon tea, including the proper water temperature and length of time the tea leaves should be infused in water.
In the case of iPhones, some users also decide to stick with Apple Maps, but on the other hand, Google Maps is also dominating the mobile navigation app space on iOS as well.In other words, Google is by far the top name on this particular side of the software market, and while the navigation category comes with plenty of other choices (including from companies with a long experience in this world (such as TomTom and Sygic), the Mountain View-based search giant was, is, and will probably continue to be the undisputed leader here.There are two tech giants, however, that could and should come up with their very own rivals against Google Maps and Waze. One of them is already working on this front, while the other doesnt seem to be interested at all in exploring such an opportunity.As said earlier, a number of iPhone users decided to stick with Apple Maps because its the native choice, and relying on Apple services exclusively makes sense from a direct integration perspective.But on the other hand, Apple Maps can hardly be considered a rival to Google Maps. And certainly not outside the United States, that is.Apple is very focused on improving the experience with Apple Maps, but its no secret the companys main focus has been mostly on the United States. While the new-gen experience it announced a long time ago is gradually becoming available in other countries across the world, Apple Maps doesnt stand a chance against Google Maps when it comes to things like maps coverage, navigation, and offline map support in smaller states, such as those in Eastern Europe.The good news is Apple is actively working on making Apple Maps better. And at first glance, the Cupertino-based tech giant wants to go after both Google Maps and Waze , as its solution has recently been updated with incident reporting capabilities as well.Again, itll probably take years until this feature becomes available for everybody, but at least, Apple is working on this front already.Apple is therefore one of the tech giants that could and should build a Google Maps and Waze rival, not only because it has the resources to do it but also because it already has a competing product that could get substantially better with the right improvements.It may sound like a surprise for those people who know Microsoft only for the Windows operating system, but the software giant has become increasingly committed to expanding in mobile as well lately.So right now, Microsoft not only has plenty of apps on iPhone and Android , but it also launched mobile devices running Googles mobile operating. Theyre called Surface Duo and are currently at their second generation.But in addition to its mobile commitment, Microsoft also has something that could pave the way for a Google Maps competitor. Its Bing Maps, a web-based service that offers everything from satellite maps to navigation, transit, and so on.The main shortcoming of Bing Maps is that it lacks the proper mobile support, as Android and iPhone apps are not available. Microsoft surprisingly doesnt seem to be interested in expanding in this direction, even though back in 2009 it actually launched Bing Maps on the iPhone.The company is currently sticking with offering the Bing Maps SDK to mobile developers, which means its mapping service can power the mapping experience in other apps.Unfortunately, the company that brought us the worlds number one desktop operating system has no plan to invest in a Google Maps rival, even though it could and should do it. Just like Apple, it has the resources to do it, including a service whose absence from the mobile space is quite a surprise.
kW

AMG

However, this particular example faced some tough competition from an older Mercedes E-Class, at the Petrolhead Spring Event hosted in Europe. Mind you, its not your run-of-the-mill W212 E-Class, but a full-blown AMG , in the 63 configuration, because back then, the company was not interested yet in giving lesser models the Affalterbach brands badging.Packing a twin-turbocharged 5.5-liter V8 engine, making 518 hp (525 ps / 386) in the normal E 63, 549 hp (557 ps / 410 kW) in the Performance Pack, and facelifted iteration, and 577 hp (585 ps / 430 kW) in the E 63 AMG S variant, it was a force to be reckoned with last decade. Depending on the configuration, the 0 to 62 mph (0-100 kph) sprint was dealt with in 4.5 seconds in the normal E 63 AMG, and 3.6 seconds in the S model.Having that much oomph on tap gave the owner of this silver example enough confidence to take on the said Lamborghini Huracan Performante . With 631 hp (640 ps / 470 kW) bouncing off the walls of the naturally aspirated 5.2-liter V10, the Italian supercar is far from being a slouch. It can deal with the 0-62 mph (0-100 kph) acceleration in 2.9 seconds, and can hit over 201 mph (325 kph).But which of the two was faster on that day? The answer lies one mouse-click away, with the action starting at the 2:13 mark. Still, if you dont want to jump in the middle of it, wed recommend watching the entire video, which is almost 4 minutes long and shows the Huracan take on other fast machines.
The annual daylong procession began with an official wreath-laying ceremony at the hilltop memorial led by Pashinian and President Vahagn Khachaturian.

The countrys political leaders were again not joined by Catholicos Garegin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church at odds with Pashinians government. Garegin and other high-ranking clergymen visited Tsitsernakabert separately to hold a traditional prayer service by its eternal fire.

The genocide began with mass arrests on April 24, 1915 of Armenian intellectuals and activists in Constantinople. An estimated 1.5 million Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire were massacred or starved to death in the following months and years.

The goal of Ottoman Turkey was to exterminate our ancestors, Pashinian said in a statement released on the occasion.

He called for a greater international recognition of the genocide. He stressed that Armenia will strive for it not to increase regional tensions but, on the contrary, to defuse the region.

In that regard, Pashinian again touted his governments commitment to opening an era of peaceful development in the region after the devastating 2020 war with Azerbaijan, saying that it will strengthen Armenias independence and security.

This is also a reason why we are holding talks aimed at normalizing relations between Armenia and Turkey. We hope that the aspirations of the Turkish side are sincere and that we will be able to move forward in this direction, added his statement.

Special envoys named by the Turkish and Armenian governments held two rounds of negotiations earlier this year. They are expected to meet again in the coming weeks and months.

Armenian opposition leaders claim that Pashinian is ready to make sweeping concessions to Ankara, including on the genocide issue, in return for the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border and establishment of diplomatic relations between the two nations. Pashinians government and political allies maintain that Yerevan stands for an unconditional normalization of Turkish-Armenian ties.

Turkey continues to deny a premeditated government effort to exterminate Ottoman Turkeys Armenian population. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has alleged that Armenians themselves massacred Muslim civilians and that their mass deportations to a Syrian desert was the most reasonable action that could be taken by the Ottoman government.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu underscored Ankaras stance on Saturday when he publicly made a hand gesture associated with the Turkish ultranationalist group Gray Wolves during a visit to Uruguay. Cavusoglu gestured to members of the South American countrys Armenian community demonstrating outside the Turkish Embassy in the capital Montevideo.

Uruguay is the first country to have officially recognized the Armenian genocide in 1965. Thirty other nations, including Russia, France, Germany and the United States, have followed suit since then.

Pope Francis and his predecessor John Paul II prayed at the Tsitsernakabert memorial when they visited Armenia in 2016 and 2001 respectively. They both described the mass killings as genocide.

The vehement Turkish denials of the genocide are dismissed by most scholars outside Turkey. The historical record on the Armenian Genocide is unambiguous and documented by overwhelming evidence, the International Association of Genocide Scholars said in 2007.
Today, we remember the one and a half million Armenians who were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination, and mourn the tragic loss of so many lives, Biden said in a statement issued on the 107th anniversary of what he also called one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century.

As we reflect on the Armenian genocide, we renew our pledge to remain vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms, he said. We recommit ourselves to speaking out and stopping atrocities that leave lasting scars on the world.

Biden again paid tribute to Armenian survivors of the genocide and their descendants.

This is also a moment to reflect on the strength and resiliency of the Armenian people, he said. After enduring a genocide, the Armenian people were determined to rebuild their community and their culture, so often in new homes and new lands, including the United States. Armenian Americans are a vital part of the fabric of the United States.

Biden issued a similar statement in April 2021, breaking with his predecessors policy of not using the word genocide for fear of antagonizing Turkey. His decision to reaffirm the genocide recognition prompted strong criticism from Ankara.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry said such declarations distort historical facts with political motives.

Turkey respectfully commemorates the sufferings of all the Ottoman population, including the Armenians, it said in a statement.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan alleged in 2019 that Armenians themselves massacred Muslim civilians and that their mass deportations to the Syrian desert was the most reasonable action that could be taken by the Ottoman government.

Armenias government did not immediately react to Bidens statement.

The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate unanimously passed genocide resolutions in 2019 after decades of lobbying by Armenian-American advocacy groups. One of them, the Armenian Assembly of America, was quick to hail Bidens latest declaration.

Todays statement reinforces that the Armenian Genocide is an institutional part of the American record and history, the Assembly co-chairs, Anthony Barsamian and Van Krikorian, said in a joint statement.

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) was less impressed by Bidens move, saying that Washington should also counter grave security threats to Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh emanating from Turkey and Azerbaijan.

President Bidens record, sadly, reflects the letter but not the true spirit of genocide recognition, said Aram Hamparian, the ANCAs executive director. No sustained pressure on Turkey to reckon with its present-day responsibilities, no confrontation of Azerbaijans genocidal violence against Artsakh (Karabakh), no forceful challenge to Ankaras ongoing denial of this crime, no active support for U.S. educational programs. He can and must do better.
U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. William T. Cooley, Air Force Research Laboratory commander, delivers remarks during a press conference inside the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, on April 18, 2019. Cooley, has been convicted, Saturday, April 23, 2022, by a military judge of one of three specifications of abusive sexual contact in the first-ever military trial of an Air Force general.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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Attorneys for actor Amber Heard sought to undermine Johnny Depps libel lawsuit against her Thursday by spending hours in court focused on the actor's drinking, drug use and texts he sent to friends  including one about wanting to kill and defile his then-wife.

Heard's lawyers referenced Depps history of trashing hotel rooms and his smashing of a bathroom sconce during an argument with Heard. Depp is also facing a lawsuit filed by a member of a film crew who alleges he was assaulted in 2018.

Depps lawsuit against Heard alleges that she falsely portrayed him as a domestic abuser and ruined his lucrative acting career. But Heard's attorneys argue that Depp did indeed abuse Heard, both physically and sexually, and claim he cant deny it because he was often drunk and high to the point of blacking out.

Depp's text messages only bolster his ex-wife's defense, her lawyers said.

I, of course, pounded and displayed ugly colors to Amber on a recent journey," Depp said in a text message to a friend, the actor Paul Bettany, in July 2013, which was shown to jurors.

I am an insane person and not so fair headed after too much of the drink, Depp continued.

Heard lawyer J. Benjamin Rottenborn focused on another exchange that year between Depp and Bettany in which Depp wrote: Lets burn Amber!!!

Bettany responded: Having thought it through I dont think we should burn Amber.

Depp texted: Lets drown her before we burn her!!! I will (expletive) her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure shes dead.

Depp has previously apologized to the jury for the vulgar language in the texts and said that "in the heat of the pain I was feeling, I went to dark places. He made the same apology Thursday.

Rottenborn also showed the jury one of Depps texts to Bettany in 2014 in which he referenced whiskey, pills and cocaine.

The texts were written during a period in which Depp said he had stopped drinking. And they were sent around the time of a private flight from Boston to Los Angeles, during which Heard said Depp assaulted her while he was blackout drunk.

Rottenborn presented texts that Depp sent to Bettany that said he drank all night before I picked Amber up to fly to LA this past Sunday  Ugly, mate  No food for days  Powders  Half a bottle of Whiskey, a thousand red bull and vodkas, pills, 2 bottles of Champers on plane 

Depp had previously testified that he took two oxycodone pills  an opiate to which he admits he was addicted at the time  and locked himself in the plane bathroom and fell asleep to avoid her badgering. He also disputes that he was drunk on the flight, saying he drank only a glass of Champagne as he boarded the plane.

But Rottenborn also showed the jury Depps expressions of contrition following the flight.

Once again I find myself in a place of shame and regret, Depp wrote to Heard. Of course, I am sorry. I really dont know why, or what happened. But I will never do it again  My illness somehow crept up and grabbed me  I must get better. And I will. For us both. Starting today. I love you. Again, I am so sorry. So sorry.

The jury also saw a written apology from Depp to Heard's father in which the actor said he (messed) up and went too far in a fight with Heard. But Depp noted on the stand that the message did not say the fight was a physical.

Multiple audio recordings of the couple's conversations were played in court. In one, Heard told Depp he vomited in his sleep. In another discussion, it sounds as if Depp said he had head-butted Heard.

I was using the words that Ms. Heard was using, Depp countered. But there was not an intentional head-butt. And if you want to have a peaceful conversation with Ms. Heard, you might have to placate just a little bit.

Depp has been on the stand in Fairfax County Circuit Court since Tuesday afternoon. He previously called the accusations of drug addiction grossly embellished, though he acknowledged taking many drugs.

The actor also spent much of his previous testimony describing the couple's volatile relationship and denying that he ever abused Heard. Depp said that Heard abused drugs and often violently attacked him.

Depp has argued that his movie career suffered after she wrote a 2018 op-ed piece in The Washington Post, which prompted his libel lawsuit against Heard.

Heard never mentioned Depp by name in the article, but Depps lawyers said it was a clear reference to accusations Heard made when she sought a 2016 restraining order against him.

Depp said the accusations and the article contributed to an unfairly ruined reputation that made him a Hollywood outcast and cost him his role in the lucrative Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise.

When cross-examination began Wednesday, Rottenborn pointed to evidence that Disney made that decision months before the articles publication. Her attorneys have said that Depps damaged reputation was due to his own bad behavior.

Rottenborn's cross-examination of Depp lasted all of Thursday and is scheduled to continue Monday.
WFO DALLAS / FT. WORTH Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Sunday, April 24, 2022

_____

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING

The National Weather Service in Fort Worth has issued a

* Severe Thunderstorm Warning for...

Young County in north central Texas...

Southwestern Jack County in north central Texas...

* Until 1015 AM CDT.

* At 925 AM CDT, a cluster of severe thunderstorms were located west

and southwest of Graham, moving northeast at 40 mph.

HAZARD...Half dollar size hail.

SOURCE...Radar indicated.

IMPACT...Damage to vehicles is possible.

* Locations impacted include...

Graham, Olney, Bryson, Elbert and Newcastle.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

For your protection get inside a sturdy structure and stay away from

windows.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
If you'd like to leave a comment (or a tip or a question) about this story with the editors, please email us

We also welcome letters to the editor for publication; you can do that by filling out our letters form and submitting it to the newsroom.
Ed Baker is a retired licensed alcohol/drug counselor of 30 years, resides in Burlington and has been in recovery from addiction for more than 37 years. Jay Diaz is general counsel for the ACLU of Vermont and lives in Williston. The opinions expressed by columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of Vermont News & Media.
STOCKBRIDGE  Lynnette Pisano traveled more than 800 miles to the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy to keep a promise.

The Crown Point, Ind., woman attended the Mercy Sunday celebration to honor her late husband who died the day after Mercy Sunday last year.

Because of the pandemic, the usual format for Divine Mercy weekend was streamlined, which included the Shrine church being closed. That didn't keep Pisano from experiencing the true meaning of being on the grounds of Eden Hill.

"I could never feel disappointed being here because Divine Mercy is everywhere. The shrine is a building, the Holy Spirit is everywhere," she said.

Pisano was among the 5,000 people who attended the Sunday session of the weekend-long event that typically draws 15,000 to 20,000 pilgrims each year.

Divine Mercy Sunday is an international Catholic feast day after Easter Sunday promoting Jesus' message that he's merciful to everyone and that people should trust in his mercy and lead a compassionate life.

A modified public celebration returned this year to the shrine after the pandemic forced cancellations in 2020 and 2021. Known for its weather extremes in past years, Mercy Sunday 2022 in Stockbridge was under fair skies, seasonable temperatures and a light breeze  a far cry from 2016's wind-swept cold and snow or the searing heat of a few years ago.

Since the coronavirus remains prevalent, attendance was limited to 5,000 people each day. Visitors were required to pre-register online; no walk-ins were allowed on either Saturday or Sunday.

All buildings, including the Shrine church and excluding the gift shop, were closed to the general public over the weekend, and the three scheduled liturgical services were held outside. Unlike previous years, the activities were not televised or livestreamed.

Missing from previous years were buses of faithful and a guest celebrant for the Sunday Mass. In fact, two masses were held on Sunday: One in the morning and one in the afternoon, to make the crowd more manageable, organizers said.

While the scaled-back celebration gave a more subdued feeling to the event, it was important to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the shrine's first public Mercy Sunday gathering, according to the Rev. Anthony Gramlich, MIC, rector of the National Shrine.

"We needed to show people we still care about them and wanted to meet their spiritual needs," he said. "There [is] still some fear about large events but we wanted to show we could do a big event without being a [super] spreader."

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Coordinator of information for the weekend, Mary Kay Volpone said the people seemed upbeat about the celebration.

"I'm very impressed by the people, some who've come a great distance. Some of their stories are very moving," she said.

Several stories told of how praying for Divine Mercy had a profound impact on their lives.

Joe Bamond of Charleston, S.C., said his wife Denise, and their friends and family prayed a lot during his battle with a potentially deadly disease.

"I had a serious illness. I should be dead, they tell me. It was a miracle I'm alive," he said.

For Nancy Kerney, she has been praying for 50 years for spiritual healing and last year her prayer was answered.

"It simply was [that] God did it for me. Miraculous, remarkable," said the Clifton, N.J., woman.

George and Beatrice Guerra says Divine Mercy has been key to their 27 years of marriage. Their first date was at the National Shrine and they have been coming to Mercy Sunday every year since.

"Being here makes me relaxed, peaceful. It's a blessing to come here," said Beatrice.

While there was more elbow room than in previous years, George Guerra says he gets the same feeling he's gotten in previous Mercy Sunday celebrations.

"There is a feeling of faith and closeness; the Divine Mercy is the same," he said.

The message of Divine Mercy goes back more than 100 years.

In 1917, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to three children in Fatima, Portugal, emphasizing prayer, reparation and devotion to the Eucharist.

Divine Mercy also stems from a holy vision, that of Jesus appearing to Saint Faustina Kowalska in 1938, promoting a message to the Polish nun that Jesus is merciful and that people should trust in his mercy and lead a compassionate life.
LEWISTON - The Lewis-Clark State College Arboretum Committee and Psychology Club will plant a commemorative tree on Arbor Day to celebrate the 34 years of service to the college by retired professor Rhett Diessner.

The Arbor Day Celebration will take place on April 29 at 10 a.m. near Meriwether Lewis Hall and the gazebo in the center of campus. The event is sponsored by the LC State Arboretum Committee and the city of Lewiston.

Diessner, who retired last spring, taught a variety of classes at LC State, including psychology. He won several honors through the years, including being the first professor at LC State to be honored as the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teachings Idaho Professor of the Year in 2005. He received the colleges Foundation Award in 2020 for excellence in teaching and scholarly activities. He received the Presidents Award for Excellence in Diversity and Cross-Cultural Understanding and was honored by both professional and student organizations for excellence in teaching. In 2016, he received the Warrior Service Award for his outstanding service and dedication to the college.

The LC State campus has more than 1,000 trees with 100 different species and cultivars. LC State Arboretum is recognized as a Tree Campus Higher Education with the Arbor Day Foundation, and it is an accredited Arboretum with ArbNet and the Morton Register.
Plus, Bill's Message of the Day, don't know much about history.

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British special forces were training Ukrainian troops in Kyiv since early this month, Ukrainian commanders told The Times in mid-April. Captain Yuriy Myronenko, whose battalion is stationed in Obolon on the northern outskirts of Kyiv, told the news outlet that military trainers had come to instruct new and returning military recruits to use NLAWs, British-supplied anti-tank missiles that were delivered in February as the invasion was beginning.

Former British soldiers, marines and special forces commandos are also in Ukraine working as training contractors and volunteers, but the Ukrainian officers were adamant that their training this month was carried out by serving British soldiers.

The elite SAS special forces units [a British army special forces unit] have been present in Ukraine since the start of the war, as have the American Deltas [a US special forces unit], Georges Malbrunot, a reporter for French Le Figaro newspaper, citing a French intelligence source, tweeted on April 9. The reporter spilled the secret the same day when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made his surprise visit to Kyiv. The British leader was reportedly surrounded by guards from the elite SAS force.

The veteran French journalist who returned from Ukraine after arriving with volunteer fighters told broadcaster CNews that Americans were directly in charge of the war on the ground. I had the surprise, and so did they, to discover that to be able to enter the Ukrainian army, well its the Americans who are in charge, said Malbrunot.

Adding that he and the volunteers almost got arrested by the Americans, who asserted they were in charge, the journalist then revealed that they were forced to sign a contract until the end of the war. And who is in charge? Its the Americans, I saw it with my own eyes, said the French reporter, adding, I thought I was with the international brigades, and I found myself facing the Pentagon.

In addition to British SAS units and United States special forces and covert CIA operatives, approximately 6,824 foreign mercenaries from 63 countries came to Ukraine to fight for the Zelensky government, the Russian Defense Ministry revealed last week. Of these, 1,035 have been eliminated, while several thousand remain. Four hundred foreign fighters are holed up in Mariupol, where ultra-nationalist forces, including the neo-Nazi fighters, have refused to surrender.

The most numerous group of foreign fighters, numbering 1,717, arrived from Poland, while around 1,500 came from the US, Canada and Romania. Up to 300 people each came from the UK and Georgia, while 193 arrived from the Turkish-controlled areas of Syria.

These figures were announced on April 17 by Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov. According to the general, 1,035 foreign mercenaries had been killed by Russian forces and 912 fled Ukraine, leaving 4,877 active in the cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Nikolaev and Mariupol.

The largest undercover force the world has ever known is the one created by the Pentagon over the past decade. Some 60,000 people now belong to this secret army, many working under masked identities and in low profile, all part of a broad program called signature reduction, and a substantial number of these defense contractors have been assisting Ukraines security forces and allied neo-Nazi militias for over eight years in the proxy war against Russia since the Maidan coup toppling Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

The force, more than ten times the size of the clandestine elements of the CIA, carries out domestic and foreign assignments, both in military uniforms and under civilian cover, the Newsweek reported last May.

The unprecedented shift has placed an ever greater number of soldiers, civilians, and contractors working under false identities, partly as a natural result in the growth of secret special forces but also as an intentional response to the challenges of traveling and operating in an increasingly transparent world.

The covert warfare operations mounted by the Pentagons secret army in conflict zones across the world is not just a little-known sector of the American military, but also a completely unregulated practice. No one knows the programs total size, and the explosion of signature reduction has never been examined for its impact on military policies and culture. Congress has never held a hearing on the subject. And yet the military developing this gigantic clandestine force challenges US laws, the Geneva Conventions, the code of military conduct and basic accountability.

The signature reduction effort engages some 130 private companies to administer the new clandestine world. Dozens of little known and secret government organizations support the program, doling out classified contracts and overseeing publicly unacknowledged operations. Altogether the companies pull in over $900 million annually to service the clandestine force.

Special operations forces constitute over half the entire signature reduction force, the shadow warriors who pursue terrorists in war zones from Pakistan to West Africa but also increasingly work in unacknowledged hot spots, including behind enemy lines in places like North Korea, Ukraine and Iran. Military intelligence specialistscollectors, counter-intelligence agents, even linguistsmake up the second largest element: thousands deployed at any one time with some degree of "cover" to protect their true identities.

Since the harrowing Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad in 2007, the Blackwater private military contractor, renamed as Academi in 2011 and becoming a subsidiary of Constellis Group following a merger with Triple Canopy in 2014, has built quite a business empire for itself. In 2013, Academi subsidiary International Development Solutions received an approximately $92 million contract for State Department security guards.

After selling Blackwater to a group of investors in 2010, Erik Prince, a former US Navy Seals officer and the swashbuckling founder of Blackwater, has founded another security company Frontier Services Group, registered at Hong Kong Stock Exchange, that advises and provides aviation and logistical solutions to Chinese oligarchs for the security of their lucrative business projects in Africa.

Furthermore, besides advising and assisting the UAEs petro-monarchy in strengthening the police state, Erik Prince also reportedly provided weapons and modified aircraft to eastern Libyas warlord and former CIA asset Khalifa Haftar, backed by Egypt and UAE, in his thwarted military campaign against the Tripoli government lasting from April 2019 to June 2020.

Using the good offices of his sister Betsy Devos, who worked as Trumps secretary of education, Erik Prince even made an offer to Trump for outsourcing of the Afghanistan war to private military contractors advising and assisting Afghan security forces following the withdrawal of US troops. But Trump reached a peace agreement with the Taliban in Feb. 2020 and then lost the re-election bid before he could consider the bizarre proposal.

Although the Pentagons military contractors have known to be training and advising several brigades of neo-Nazis backed by Ukraines security forces in the Donbas region since 2014, Erik Prince, alongside top executives of leading private security firms providing military contractors to the US Department of Defense, personally visited Kyiv in early February following the Russian troop build-up and met with security officials of the Zelensky government, according to informed sources.

Before embarking on the clandestine Kyiv visit, Erik Prince consulted with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Director National Intelligence Avril Haines, with whom his relationship goes a long way back to early nineties after she purchased a bar in Fell's Point, Baltimore, which had been seized in a drug raid. She turned the location into an exotic bookstore and cafe, offering erotica readings, among other licentious pastimes.

In his meetings with the high-ups in the US national security agencies, Erik Prince reportedly obtained a gentlemans promise, though without any documentary assurances due to secretive nature of the Faustian pact, that he and his associates would not be held legally liable for the dirty work they do in Ukraines proxy war.

In fact, private military contractors in close co-ordination and consultation with covert operators from the CIA, special forces and Western intelligence agencies are not only training Ukraines largely conscript security forces and allied neo-Nazi militias in the use of over 60,000 anti-tank weapons and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons collectively provided as military assistance to Ukraine by NATO countries but are also directing the whole defense strategy of Ukraine by taking active part in combat operations in some of the most hard fought battles against Russias security forces at Mariupol, Kharkiv and Donbas region in east Ukraine.

In a bombshell scoop, The Times reported on March 4 that defense contractors were recruiting former military veterans for covert operations in Ukraine for a whopping $2,000 a day: The job is not without risk but, at almost $60,000 a month, the pay is good. Applicants must have at least five years of military experience in Eastern Europe, be skilled in reconnaissance, be able to conduct rescue operations with little to no support and know their way around Soviet-era weaponry.

Russian media alleged last month that the United States security agencies had launched a large-scale recruitment program to send private military contractors to Ukraine, including professionally trained mercenaries of Academi, formerly Blackwater, Cubic and Dyn Corporation.

Russias Defense Ministrys spokesman Igor Konashenkov warned that foreign mercenaries in Ukraine would not be considered prisoners of war if detained in line with international humanitarian law, rather they could expect criminal prosecution at best.

Speaking to CNNs Dana Bash on April 3, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO allies have supported Ukraine for many, many years, adding that military aid has been stepped up over the last weeks since the invasion. The official clarified that NATO allies like the United States, but also the United Kingdom and Canada and some others, have trained Ukrainian troops for years.

According to Stoltenbergs estimates, tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops had received such training, and were now at the front fighting against invading Russian forces. The secretary general went on to credit the Brussels-based alliance with the fact that the Ukrainian armed forces are much bigger, much better equipped, much better trained and much better led now than ever before.

In addition to a longstanding CIA program aimed at cultivating an anti-Russian insurgency in Ukraine, Canadas Department of National Defense revealed on January 26, two days following Russias invasion of Ukraine, that the Canadian Armed Forces trained nearly 33,000 Ukrainian military and security personnel in a range of tactical and advanced military skills. While The United Kingdom, via Operation Orbital, trained 22,000 Ukrainian fighters, as noted by NATOs informed secretary general.

In an explosive scoop, Zach Dorfman reported for the Yahoo News on March 16: As part of the Ukraine-based training program, CIA paramilitaries taught their Ukrainian counterparts sniper techniques; how to operate U.S.-supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles and other equipment; how to evade digital tracking the Russians used to pinpoint the location of Ukrainian troops, which had left them vulnerable to attacks by artillery; how to use covert communications tools; and how to remain undetected in the war zone while also drawing out Russian and insurgent forces from their positions, among other skills, according to former officials.

When CIA paramilitaries first traveled to eastern Ukraine in the aftermath of Russias initial 2014 incursion, their brief was twofold. First, they were ordered to determine how the agency could best help train Ukrainian special operations personnel fight the Russian military forces, and their separatist allies, waging a grinding war against Ukrainian troops in the Donbas region. But the second part of the mission was to test the mettle of the Ukrainians themselves, according to former officials.

Besides the CIAs clandestine program for training Ukraines largely conscript military and allied neo-Nazi militias in east Ukraine and the US Special Forces program for training Ukraines security forces at Yavoriv Combat Training Center in the western part of the country bordering Poland that was hit by a barrage of 30 cruise missiles killing at least 35 militants on March 13, Dorfman claims in a separate January report that the CIA also ran a covert program for training Ukraines special forces at an undisclosed facility in the southern United States.

The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials.

While the covert program, run by paramilitaries working for the CIAs Ground Branch  now officially known as Ground Department  was established by the Obama administration after Russias invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and expanded under the Trump administration, the Biden administration has further augmented it.

By 2015, as part of this expanded anti-Russia effort, CIA Ground Branch paramilitaries also started traveling to the front in eastern Ukraine to advise and assist Ukraines security forces and allied neo-Nazi militias there. The multiweek, US-based CIA program included training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, tactics like cover and move, intelligence and other areas.

One person familiar with the program put it more bluntly. The United States is training an insurgency, said a former CIA official, adding that the program has taught the Ukrainians how to kill Russians. Going back decades, the CIA had provided limited training to Ukrainian intelligence units to try and shore up a US-allied Kyiv and undermine Russian influence, but cooperation ramped up after Russias annexation of Crimea in 2014 following the Maidan coup toppling Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a former CIA executive confided to Dorfman.

About the author:

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Middle East and Eurasia regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to alternative news media.
"But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

-W.B. Yeats, "He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven"

The true firsthand tales of suffering and heartbreak below reflect the broader reality that we have all witnessed from afar in horror  when they hit home, though, their visceral cruelty becomes more palpable, more relatable, and all the more heartbreaking.

Such is the inherent value of personalizing the trauma inflicted upon all of us  to one degree or another  so that the real-world human costs of the medical establishment's crimes become real.

Decency (and the Divine, if you are spiritually inclined) requires us to humanize the real-world costs of the shocking treatment (or lack thereof) in hospitals and clinics across the world.

The highly coordinated, transnational COVID "public health" response has normalized and codified the most callous, inhumane approaches to medical care since the medieval dark ages.

----------------

Health authorities have used the COVID pandemic to postpone much-needed surgeries and treatments for non-COVID health concerns. Routine medical treatment is now considered a privilege (often reserved for the vaccinated and/or PCR negative), not a right.

In a document titled COVID-19 testing processes and patient protections for resumption of elective surgery, the Elsevier Public Health Emergency Collection lays out the procedures for undertaking elective surgery in clinical settings.

Here is the gist of it:

"Testing of pre-surgical patients, both emergent and elective, has quickly become common practice due to fear of exposure, the desire to reassure patients that areas of the hospital are 'COVID-free', and competitive pressures within markets. Several organizations, including the American College of Surgeons, have recommended that testing via PCR/nucleic acid amplification be conducted or considered prior to surgery"

We see time and again that this carefully crafted language is ostensibly designed to "protect" us and "reassure" us and for "safety." In reality, it is a slow-burning form of eugenics to deter medical treatment for patients deemed "non-essential," and to reorient health services in the name of combatting COVID.

Are all human lives not essential?

Despite these precautions theoretically designed to protect patient safety, the NIH goes on to note that testing requirements don't actually confer the intended protections:

"There is little published evidence that testing patients who are not considered persons of interest (PUI) or not exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19 infection increases the safety of the hospital environment."

----------------------

It's easy to frame these concerns as academic, but what about the cost to actual human lives?

Let's humanize this nightmare with separate tales from two lives, so you may deduce how far we have fallen as a society under the auspices of Public Health.

May Denied Chance to Say Goodbye to Her Grandfather

When May visited her dying grandfather, Taweesilp, in a special Bangkok hospital ward, it was filled with terminally ill and hospice patients.

In rooms equipped with two-way microphones, dying patients and their families communicated through Plexiglas. The nurses begrudgingly permitted the family members of patients to see their loved ones and share final words of comfort in this intensely personal yet depersonalized fashion.

The cycle of life and death is inevitable for all who walk this earth. Yet never before has it been managed with such stone-cold military precision, devoid of empathy and compassion.

As May scanned the ward, she noticed a young boy no more than 6 years old weeping uncontrollably, his arms outstretched flailing around against the prison partition Plexiglas safety screen.

The boy was calling out to this sickly mother. Silently screaming and yearning to hold her offspring, she could only gesture and raise a weak smile behind bloodshot tear-streamed eyes, choking out whatever words of reassurance and comfort she could muster up through the microphone. The prison-guard nurse facilitated their communication.

Choking back tears herself from witnessing this firsthand, May realized that her own goodbyes to her Grandfather, along with her other immediate family members, would mirror that of the little boy and his mother.

The nurses took the details and identification from May and her family, then casually enquired for affirmation that they were all fully vaccinated. Upon being told that May was in fact vaccine-free, she was denied access to enter the two-way visitation room to say farewell to her grandfather.

In Thailand, grandparents often have a very special bond with their grandchildren, much more so than is common in the Western world. Grandparents are rarely sent off to nursing homes to fester and descend into catatonic madness. Instead, deeply respected elderly Thais are welcomed into their adult children's homes and well cared for.

As such, they play a critical role in the development and upbringing of the grandchildren. May was no exception. She was as close to her grandfather as to her father. She cannot and will not ever forgive the inhumane treatment she and her grandfather were forced to endure on that dark day -- all by hospital staff just "following The Science."

Doctors Refused to Perform Surgery on PCR-Positive Expat

Following a collision with a pick-up truck whilst riding his motorcycle in the Eastern Seaboard area of Thailand, Travis sustained multiple injuries upon impact with the ground.

After prompt delivery to the nearest hospital, it was apparent he had broken his right collarbone, his tibia in three places, and the femur close to the hip joint (potentially serious, as the broken bone could have possibly cut a vein or an artery), along with sustaining heavy damage to his right wrist and hand.

Although in agony, Travis was relieved to have been admitted to hospital; little did he know what was in store for him

Travis was whisked away to the emergency room, where a team of doctors and nurses were present (all wearing masks and face shields, per COVID "public health" protocol). They hooked him up to IVs, attached sensors, cut his clothing off, administered painkillers and then ascertained the extent of the aforementioned injuries  obviously requiring immediate surgery.

This diagnostic work was swiftly followed by a nurse shoving a Q-tip up his nose, wheeling him out of the emergency room, all the while ignoring Travis' questions over where they were going and what was going on. Shortly after, the nurse told him 'now you have COVID' and she promptly walked out of the room without another word.

Travis had no COVID-19 symptoms.

Not knowing what was happening and in unbearable pain, Travis described the feeling of "being in purgatory" as he was left in limbo for a couple of hours. No water had been given at this point  salt in the wound, exacerbating the torturous wait. Yet Travis believe surgery was imminent.

Finally, another nurse entered the room, asking "are you ok? Are you hurt?", to which Travis clearly articulated that he was badly hurt and in dire need of surgery! The nurse stood up and left the room, leaving him to ponder if he had hallucinated the encounter

After much pleading with the doctors, they agreed to perform surgery (donning significant layers of PPE gear) on the broken femur  with payment upfront, per Thai private hospitals' unofficial motto: "cash before care." Travis' wife was required to put down a 300,000 THB deposit (pprox.. $8,900 USD). Strangely, instead of using general anesthesia, the surgeon(s) elected to use a spinal block. Meaning that Travis was able to consciously experience the entire operation (without pain) with sensations of pushing and pulling and pressure throughout the body.

The next day, another female doctor explained that in order to perform surgery on the broken tibia and collarbone, the surgical team would once again need to wear an extra layer of PPE clothing, which would be an "inconvenience." She casually suggested that the patient should perhaps "go home for 10-14 days until COVID is done with, then come back." Travis expressed his utter disbelief at the audacity and callousness of such a proposal given by a medical professional  who swore to first do no harm  made to a patient in her care who literally could not move and was in excruciating pain, notwithstanding the serious potential complications arising from withheld surgery, which can result in something called nonunion  the non-healing of broken bones.

Alas, Travis persisted in his request for a second PCR test, despite strong resistance from the hospital to agree, as they claimed that no more tests were needed.

Bear in mind Travis that had no symptoms of COVID, at any point in this ordeal, whatsoever.

Eventually, the medical staff relented and gave him another PCR test, for which the results were not immediately disclosed (first test results given within 30 minutes). Later that evening a nurse let slip that the second test had been negative; a third test was then given at the insistence of the hospital the following day, also a negative result.

Mercifully, the final round of surgeries was eventually carried out. Travis is now healing up, using crutches to get around. He will never forget or forgive the unwarranted, unorthodox and unnecessary trauma he went through; a direct result of the global medical-industrial complex's capture by COVID hysteria. Nor will he forgive or forget the numerous health professionals who "followed the Science"  devoid of empathy and absent of humanity toward a fellow human in dire need of help.

In a sick inversion of their stated function, US hospitals have become death traps.

Care is restricted to the compliant members of society who jump through the right hoops.

Financial carrots incentivize emergency room wards to haphazardly toss COVID patients onto ventilators. This issue has even been covered extensively, and even reluctantly acknowledged by our overseer "fact-checker" Snopes. (Check out episode #1757 of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast with Dr. Robert Malone for more extensive info on the ventilator hustle.)

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In the abstract, the lockdowns are inhumane on their face. But up close and personal, when a young father-of-three's life hangs in the balance  the inhumanity becomes unforgivable.

"DJ Ferguson, 31, is in dire need of a new heart, but Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston took him off their list, said his father, David.

He said the Covid vaccine goes against his son's 'basic principles, he doesn't believe in it'.

The hospital said it was following policy."

"Just following orders" didn't work for the culpable Nazis  no matter how low their rank  in the Nuremberg trials. Now is the time for Nuremberg Part Deux  no quarter, no leniency:

"Violating the Nuremberg Code on a mass scale against a captive civilian population is a war crime."

Ben Bartee is a Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via his blog, Armageddon Prose, Substack, Patreon, Gab, and Twitter.Bitcoin public address: 14gU3aHBXkNq8bDqmibfnubV7kSJqfx5LX

Nicholas Creed is a Bangkok-based journalistic infidel impervious to propaganda.

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The demonstrations pave the way for power beaming on Earth, in space, and from space to Earth using power densities within safety limits set by international standards bodies.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) believes wireless beaming of energy from space will be vital for zapping fuel supplies to battlefield troops. Scientists are also touting it as the ultimate green technology, with a constant year-round supply available as opposed to other sporadic green energy sources.

The achievement, by a team at the U.S. Army Research Field in Blossom Point, Maryland, is reportedly the most significant power beaming demonstration in nearly 50 years. Microwave power beaming is the efficient, point-to-point transfer of electrical energy across free space by a directive microwave beam.

WASHINGTON  Could soldiers in the future receive the power for their equipment from space? A team of researchers from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have demonstrated the feasibility of terrestrial microwave power beaming by transmitting 1.6 kilowatts of power over one kilometer (km).

As engineers, we develop systems that will not exceed those safety limits, says Paul Jaffe Ph.D., Power Beaming and Space Solar Lead, in a media release. That means its safe for birds, animals, and people.

Within 12 months, NRL established the practicality of terrestrial microwave power beaming and beamed one kilowatt (kW) of electrical power over a distance of one kilometer (0.62 miles) using a 10 gigahertz (GHz) microwave beam.

The beams even cut through bad weather

Safe and Continuous Power Beaming  Microwave (SCOPE-M) demonstrated power beaming at two locations, one at the U.S. Army Research Field at Blossom Point and the other at The Haystack Ultrawideband Satellite Imaging Radar (HUSIR) transmitter at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The reason for setting those targets is to push this technology farther than has been demonstrated before, Jaffe says.

You dont want to use too high a frequency as it can start losing power to the atmosphere, adds project principal investigator, Christopher Rodenbeck, Ph.D., Head of the Advanced Concepts Group, NRL. 10 GHz is a great choice because the component technology out there is cheap and mature. Even in heavy rainfall, loss of power is less than five percent.

In Maryland, the team exceeded their target by 60 percent by beaming 1.6 kW just over one kilometer. At the Massachusetts site, the team did not have the same peak power, but the average power was much higher, thereby delivering more energy.

Jaffe notes that during past experiments with laser power beaming using much higher power densities, the engineers were able to successfully implement interlock systems so if something approached the beam it would turn off.

We did not have to do that with SCOPE-M because the power density was sufficiently low that it was intrinsically safe, Jaffe says.

Something no other form of clean energy can do

Brian Tierney, Ph.D., SCOPE-M electronics engineer, says the DOD is interested in wireless power beaming, particularly wireless power beaming from space, and that a similar rectenna (rectifying antenna) array as used for SCOPE-M could be used in space. A rectenna is a special type of receiving antenna for converting electromagnetic energy into direct current electricity in wireless power transmission systems.
WASHINGTON, D.C.  In a 6-3 ruling in Thompson v. Clark, the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed that individuals have a Fourth Amendment right to hold police accountable for maliciously instituting charges and arrests without probable cause. The courts ruling allows a lawsuit to proceed against police officers who, after arriving at Larry Thompsons home late one night and being refused entry without a warrant, forced their way into the home and claimed that Thompson had resisted arrest, leading Thompson to be jailed and charged with two crimes. Although the charges were later dropped, Thompsons attempts to challenge the officers malicious actions were stymied by a so-called innocence rule that gives prosecutors the power to insulate police from accountability for constitutional violations simply by dropping unfounded charges before they go to trial. The Rutherford Institute joined with the ACLU, NYCLU, and Cato Institute in an amicus brief challenging the innocence rule loophole that serves to shield police from being held liable for misconduct.

At a time when the courts routinely shield police from accountability for misconduct, this ruling is at least an encouraging glimmer in the gloom, said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. For too long, Americans have been treated as if they have no rights at all when it comes to encounters with police. This is an overdue reminder that freedom is not secondary to security, and the rights of the citizenry are no less important than the authority of the government.

In January 2014, four police officers and two EMTs arrived at Larry Thompsons home in Brooklyn, New York, and demanded entry, allegedly in response to a 911 call accusing Thompson of abusing his one-week-old daughter. When Thompson refused to allow the police to enter his home without a warrant, police forced their way into the home, handcuffed Thompson, and charged him with obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest. The EMTs took the newborn child to the hospital for an examination where medical professionals found no signs of abuse. Thompson remained in custody for two days. Prior to trial, the prosecutor moved to dismiss the charges without any explanation, and the case against Thompson was dismissed. Thompson, in turn, sued the police for malicious prosecution pursuant to Title 42, Section 1983 of the United States Code, which allows a person to seek redress when the government deprives him of his constitutional rights. Thompson claimed that the police officers subjected him to unlawful detention without probable cause in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. However, because the prosecutor had dismissed the charges without explanation, both the trial court and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Thompsons criminal case did not affirmatively indicate his innocence, therefore his malicious prosecution claim against the police officers could not proceed. On appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the lower court in a 6-3 ruling, finding that Thompson only needed to show that the criminal charges ended without a conviction, thus allowing his claim against the police officers for malicious prosecution to proceed. The Court stated that an individuals ability to seek redress for a wrongful prosecution cannot reasonably turn on the fortuity of whether the prosecutor or court happened to explain why the charges were dismissed.

Marisa C. Maleck, Joshua N. Mitchell, and Edward A. Benoit of King & Spaulding LLP helped to advance the arguments in Thompson v. Clark.

The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated, and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.
Ukraine as Russia: What some Russians think

25. 4. 2022 / Andrej Rogacevskij

cas cteni 5 minut

In his July 2021 article On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians President Putin made a claim that raised quite a few brows. He said: Ukrainians and Russians are one and the same nation and it is precisely its partnership with Russia that makes Ukraines genuine sovereignty possible. The world has witnessed how he has moved from words to action in February 2022 and what has happened in Ukraine since. It was as if Denmark would assert that Danes and Norwegians were the same, and invaded Norway under this pretext. Yet how novel is Putins statement and where does it originate from? I shall attempt a very brief historical overview of the concept that twins Russia and Ukraine, from a distinctly Russian perspective.

Before 1917, parts of todays Ukraine were for centuries referred to in Russia officially as Malorossiya, or Lesser Russia. This reflected the patronizing Russian attitude to Ukrainians as smaller family relatives, whose language and culture were close to Russian but somewhat inferior by comparison. After the 1917 Russian revolution, the declared equality of all the peoples in the former Russian empire has led to the name change for Lesser Russians, from now on referred to as Ukrainians. From the etymological viewpoint, the patronizing attitude has persisted, as the word Ukraine stems from the Russian root for margin. Lesser Russians have been turned into marginals, all 44 million of them (according to the 1989 census).

In 1991, the fast-approaching collapse of the USSR has resulted in the marginals desire to become their own bosses and break away from Larger Russians (who formed the imperial and Soviet core), in order to develop Ukrainian identity and statehood independently. By the same token, many Russians in the Russian Federation (the most important part of the Soviet Union at the time) were apprehensive of losing substantial parts of the Union and clung to the hope of keeping at least what they thought of as their nearest and dearest. Ukrainians topped their wish list.

A corresponding collective view was expressed by the author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel Prize winner and a moral authority. In his treatise Rebuilding Russia (1990) he chastised the temptation of an all-Ukrainian separatism [] to chop Ukraine off [from Russia proper] including the territories which had never belonged to Old Ukraine, such as [] Novorossiya, Crimea and Donbass. He appealed to Ukrainians: Brothers, dont go for such a cruel partition!

Still, in December 1991, a 90% of Ukrainians (or almost 29 million people) voted in favour of the Act of Ukrainian Independence within the borders that did include the above-mentioned territories, where the majority for self-government ranged from 54% in the Crimea and 57% in Sebastopol (this city held its own vote count) to almost 84% in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Another Russia-born Nobel Prize winning author, Joseph Brodsky, summed up the resulting Russian popular mood in a poem which warned its readers: time will tell [that Ukrainian separation from Russia was a grave mistake] by bringing on ruins and bones of posthumous joy with a Ukrainian aftertaste.

Fast-forward to 2020, when Putins influential assistant and long-term special envoy in Ukraine Vladislav Surkov gave an interview to formulate, among other things, the outcome of Ukraines thirty years of freedom, encumbered by the corrupt and inefficient authorities. In this interview, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Russia also suffered from corruption and inefficiency (and for the past five years has been below Ukraine in the Corruption Perceptions Index), Surkov claimed: There is no Ukraine. What exists is Ukrainianness, i.e. a specific mental disorder which takes dabbling in ethnography to extremes. [] Theres borsht, bandura [Ukraines national musical instrument] and Bandera [a notorious nationalist politician from Western Ukraine, who collaborated with the Nazis]  but no nation. In the same interview, Surkov suggested a solution to Ukrainian problems, namely, the countrys return to Russias fold  against Ukraines will if necessary: Coercion to brotherly relations is the only method that has historically proven its efficiency in [Russias] dealings with Ukraine.

On 3 April 2022, when the brotherly coercion in the form of the so-called special military operation was in full swing, Timofei Sergeitsev, an electoral campaign manager from Russia whose customers included the pro-Russian Ukrainian President Yanukovich, issued a kind of manifesto entitled What Russia Should Do with Ukraine (that is, if and when the military operation succeeds). The manifesto appeared on the website of the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti and therefore likely represents much more than merely Sergeitsevs personal opinion. In the manifesto, Sergeitsev equals Ukrainianess with neo-Nazism, partly because of Bandera (Ukrainian nationalists are often referred to as Banderites), and partly, one may surmise, in accordance with Godwins Law, which posits that if a debate goes on for a long time, an opponents likening to Nazis is to be expected.

In case of Russias military victory over Ukraine (which he does not doubt), Sergeitsev anticipates a reincorporation of much of Ukraines territory into the Russian Federation after what he calls a necessary de-Nazification process: A de-Nazified country cannot retain sovereignty. In Sergeitsevs view, even the word Ukraine cannot be preserved [] in the designation of any fully de-Nazified state-like entity on the territory freed from the Nazi regime. [] The de-Nazification process would inevitably involve de-Ukrainisation. [] History has shown that Ukraine is unworkable as a nation-state.

Assuming that at the end of its military campaign against Ukraine Russia does retain control of at least some of Ukrainian land (in addition to Crimea absorbed by Russia in 2014), will things really happen the way Sergeitsev describes? The answer to a significant degree depends on President Putin. After all, Brodsky and Solzhenitsyn (whom Putin met on several occasions) are mere opinion reflectors if not opinion formers. As for Surkov and Sergeitsev, by the nature of their occupation they are opinion decoders and opinion manipulators. Only Putin is the ultimate opinion enforcer, no matter how wrong his opinion may be.





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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on Friday signed a Country Programming Framework (CPF) with Cameroon, which will help improve agriculture, food security, nutrition and natural resources management in the Central African nation over the next five years.

The signing event was held in the capital Yaounde between the FAO Country Representative Athman Mravili and Cameroon's Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Gabriel Mbairobe.

"This document has four main axis. The first is to ameliorate condition of production in order to create wealth in our country, the second action is to fight against climate change, the third action is to strengthen the policy of governance of public affairs in our country and the last action is to strengthen the Sustainable Development Goals that aim to eradicate poverty and fight against hunger in our country," Mbairobe told reporters after the CPF which will run from 2022 to 2026 was signed.

CPF will be implemented by the government of Cameroon and FAO with support from the wider spectrum of stakeholders within the private sector, semi government institutions and civil society.

Agriculture is the mainstay of Cameroon's economy and a major source of employment for more than 70 percent of the population. However, the sector has been impacted by the incidence of weather-induced crop failures, pests and diseases and limited access by especially smallholder farmers to financing instruments and technology, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Price hikes slated to hit regional newspapers on July 1 from Australias sole remaining newsprint plant are worse than the industry has feared, with some publishers reporting price jumps of 80 per cent over previous rates and orders going only half filled.

Regional media representatives have asked the federal government for rapid help, fearing the cost rises could result in newsroom closures.

Norwegian paper giant Norske Skog has closed its New Zealand and Albury mills in recent years because of a long-term decline in demand for newsprint, leaving only its Boyer facility in northern Tasmania making that type of paper in the region.

The costs of printing newspapers are rising sharply, but unevenly. Credit:Getty Images / iStockphoto

But demand for paper is now outstripping limited supply as Australia recovers from the pandemic.
The most thought-provoking contribution Ive heard so far in this utterly dumbed-down election campaign is from barrister Gray Connolly, saying the big issue we should be debating is housing and intergenerational wealth.

Connolly was speaking as a self-proclaimed Red Tory, on ABC Radio Nationals Religion and Ethics Report. Red Tories, he says, are people on the political Right who have a more traditional view of what were trying to achieve. They are true conservatives, trying to conserve the institutions and practices that have given us the way of life we value.

We risk stripping away the Australian way of life if we create a society where young people cant afford housing. Credit:Wolter Peeters

Red Tories believe in communitarianism  much more about we than me. They highlight the virtues of home and family. They emphasise the boring virtues, like duty, perseverance and loyalty, not just peoples rights.

That so few Australians under 40 have any form of home ownership or wealth of any kind is a ticking timebomb socially, Connolly says. Its this that could split the country demographically.
Hundreds of thousands of Australians are estimated to quit their jobs this year for more meaningful work or a better life balance, creating a talent loss for some employers and opening up opportunities for others.

Its no secret that what we thought were temporary changes to how we work during lockdowns have made us rethink what we want our work lives to look like, and how we can continue to prioritise our personal needs.

Working from home can contribute to better health and wellbeing for employees. Credit:Istock

Business leaders also need to move away from the idea that flexibility is just about working from home, either permanently or in a hybrid fashion.

However, employers shouldnt consider flexibility a gimmick to lure new talent or get their teams back to the CBD office.
The guns from both sides fall silent as a Boer emissary comes forth with a note from the Boer commander General Jacobus Koos de la Rey  the Lion of the West  to the English commander of the Australians, Colonel Charles Hore: I wish your Honour to earnestly consider that the time has come to have no further bloodshed. Your resistance, which has kept up so bravely, must now come to an end. If Hore surrenders, handing over all arms and munitions, De La Rey will grant safe passage to him and his men to the nearest British force. They will at least escape with their lives. Please be so kind as to give me your reply as soon as possible. The emissary also gives a verbal warning from General de la Rey. If they dont give up by the following day, they would face a 94-pounder gun, a Creusot Long Tom, capable of blowing them off the face of the earth.

In the end, in the face of the united opposition to his proposal, Colonel Hore really has no choice and carefully composes his written response to General de la Rey declining to surrender, offering a few words of explanation. Even if I wished to surrender to you, he says, and I dont, I am commanding Australians who would cut my throat if I accepted your terms.

So be it. The Boer emissary returns to General de la Rey with the note hed been given by the English officer, together with a scrawled note some of the Australian soldiers had given him to pass on to his Boer mates: If de la Rey wants our camp, why does he not come and take it? We will be pleased to meet him and his men, and promise them a great reception at the end of a toasting fork. Australians will never surrender. Australia forever! Against all odds, the Australians survive and their feats become legendary. Two other inspirational moments spring to mind. Before the battle of Villers-Bretonneux in 1918, an Australian lieutenant by the name of F.P. Bethune, a clergyman at home, gave his men written orders before the Germans attacked with overwhelming force. This position will be held, and the section will remain here until relieved. The enemy cannot be allowed to interfere with the program. If the section cannot remain here alive, it will remain here dead, but in any case it will remain here. Should any man through shellshock or other cause attempt to surrender, he will remain here dead. Should all guns be blown out, the section will use Mills grenades and other novelties. Finally, the position, as stated, will be held.

Loading They held it. And, finally, I leave you with the story of 18-year-old Australian sailor Teddy Sheean  recently posthumously honoured with the VC for what he did during the World War II bombing of Darwin. When his ship HMAS Armidale was under attack by no fewer than 13 Japanese planes, Sheean strapped himself in behind his Oerlikon 20mm cannon, and  as would become legend  was still firing even as his ship sank beneath the waves. And yes, yes, I know. All these stories are no doubt guilty of a few isms, starting with trumpeting Australian exceptionalism. I dont care. They move me anyway. Lest we forget. And all hail the mighty Ukrainians.
The umbrellas were four deep along Martin Place next to the Cenotaph in Sydney. The drizzle sparkling in the spotlights started just after 4am but it wasnt about to deter this crowd.

The Anzac Day dawn service, liberated at last from COVID-19, was always going to be well attended given last years ticket-only event for 100 and its cancellation in 2020.

Members of the Australian military lay wreaths during the ANZAC Day dawn service at the Cenotaph in Martin Place. Credit:Kate Geraghty

Free transparent ponchos were distributed so you could still see the uniforms and medals underneath. Premier Dominic Perrottet arrived with a brolly escort from RSL President Ray James.

But then, as chaplain Captain Tim St Quintin sat down after giving the Prayers of Response, the rain, possibly by divine intervention, at 4.26 miraculously stopped.
More than three decades after it was recommended by the landmark Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the NSW Coroners Court has introduced a protocol for dealing with inquiries into the deaths of First Nations people.

Under the First Nations protocol, the court will ensure the families of those who have died will be regularly updated with information about the inquiry, recognise complex family structures and kinship systems and consider holding hearings on Country.

Nicolle Lowe and Brittannie Miles are the new Aboriginal coronial information and support officers at the Coroners Court. Credit:Rhett Wyman.

The court has also hired two new Aboriginal coronial information and support program officers to liaise with families and provide culturally appropriate support as they undergo the process.

Brittannie Miles, one of the officers, said a key part of her role was ensuring proceedings were as transparent as possible for those grieving the loss of a loved one.
Defence force members who served in Afghanistan are being encouraged to lead the Anzac Day march this year, in an attempt to avoid the stigma that plagued veterans after the Vietnam War.

About 10,000 people are expected to cram into Sydney's CBD on Monday in the first full Anzac Day march in three years after commemorations were cancelled in 2020 and numbers were restricted last year.

Muted Anzac Day commemorations last year. Credit:Edwina Pickles

RSL president Ray James said he was looking forward to getting "back to near-normal" after two interrupted years, and invited Afghanistan veterans to take centre stage.

This is the first Anzac Day since the withdrawal of ADF troops from the Middle East area, so Im encouraging those guys and girls to join me at the head of the march, he said.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Rudi Pruckner wearied of his long years as a prisoner of war at Murchison, Victoria. He had taken a long look at the Australian countryside around the prison camp, and had taken to talking with the Australians charged with keeping him imprisoned. He decided he didnt want to return to the country that had sent him to war. His Australian military guards sympathised. And so began one of the strangest prison breaks in Australias history  one a magistrate later decided was a demonstration that the Australian sense of the fair go could be extended even to enemies of war. Pruckner himself, while on the run, built a deep love of the remote stone country around Lake Condah in south-west Victoria  a place now known as the Budj Bim World Heritage site  that would stay with him for the rest of his life. Budj Bim cultural landscape in south-west Victoria. Credit:Photo: Rodney Dekker The Australians who helped him escape and arranged for him to hide out in an old bush hut were to remain lifelong friends, too. Pruckner was a young Viennese, drafted into the German Werhmachts 2nd Panzer Division in the early days of World War II. He was captured during the short-lived Battle for Greece of April, 1941, when an overwhelming force of Germans invaded and took just 27 days to drive out of Greece the Commonwealth forces of Australia, New Zealand and Britain.

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But as they withdrew south through the cold mountains towards the Peloponnese peninsula, Australian and New Zealand soldiers fought several fierce rearguard actions. Rudi Pruckners unit was reduced, he would tell his family decades later, from about 600 troops to just 150 in a single battle. He was taken prisoner. As allied troops escaped Greece and many found themselves under new attack in the chaotic hell of Crete, Pruckner and other German POWs were transported to makeshift prison camps in the Middle East  the start of a long journey that ended across the other side of the Earth, in Australia. On August 25, 1941, Rudolph Pruckner marched into Number 13 Prisoner of War Camp, Murchison. It was his 21st birthday. The Murchison POW camp in the Goulburn Valley, about 35 kilometres south of Shepparton, was the largest in Australia. It held about 2000 captured Italians, 1300 Germans and at one point, 185 Japanese. The prisoner of war camp in Murchison. Credit:Paul Harris While bitter war raged across Europe, the Middle East and spread through Asia and into the Pacific and Indian oceans and Oceania, taking millions of lives, most of the prisoners at Murchison led a pretty peaceful existence. Rudi Pruckner took to working in the kitchen alongside Australian cooks. He decided to teach himself English, allotting himself 10 new words a day. One of the guards, a young Australian named Donald McDonald, helped out on the understanding that in return, Rudi would teach him German.

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Among other friends he made was a cook from far south-west Victoria named Norman Vaughan. Vaughan was from a large farming family, and one of his brothers, Roy, was a military guard at Camp 13. The war was finally over when Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945. But Rudi Pruckner and thousands of others remained officially Prisoners of War in Australia clear through 1946 and into 1947. Pruckner began to grow increasingly apprehensive about being repatriated to Austria. Australia had, in a way, become his home, and he wanted to experience it beyond the barbed wire. His guards hatched a plan. McDonald dressed his enemy-friend in his Australian military uniform and together they walked out the front gate where a taxi had been arranged to take them to the Seymour train station. They travelled to Melbourne and Pruckner found himself treated to a night at the grand Federal Hotel, since demolished. Others, it would later become obvious, were in on the plot. A former guard named Haig linked up with McDonald and Pruckner in Melbourne, and another named Andrew Thompson fitted into the scheme. Norman Vaughan, Pruckners fellow cook, and his brother Roy, the former guard, became crucial to ensuring Pruckner got away. The Vaughan family owned land in an area known as Breakaway Creek, alongside the old Aboriginal mission at Lake Condah. Arrangements were made to send Pruckner by train from Melbourne to the railway siding at little Condah, about halfway between Hamilton and Portland. In a stroke of immense fortune, the young Austrian  without a clue where he was  stopped a man driving a horse and cart soon after alighting from the train. He asked if the man knew Mr Vaughan.

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Which Mr Vaughan would that be? said the horseman. Theres a lot of us. Im Charlie Vaughan. And so, the escaped prisoner of war was given shelter in a bush hut known as Murphys on Roy Vaughans family property, on country that had been home to Australias First People for many thousands of years. Rudi Pruckner did not know it, but a soldier who would become Australias first Aboriginal military officer, Reg Saunders, was raised at the mission on Lake Condah, a few hundred metres from Murphys Hut. Saunders, who fought with the 2/7th infantry battalion, was one of those soldiers fighting rearguard actions against German units during the withdrawal from Greece in April 1941. Murphys Hut, Lake Condah before it was demolished. While Pruckner was taken prisoner and sailed away from Greece to Egypt, Reg Saunders was one of about 3000 Australians who became stranded on Crete. He evaded capture by the Germans for 12 months with the assistance of Cretan citizens who risked and often lost their lives in granting shelter to those on the island. And so, we might ponder on a new Anzac Day, the strange, often terrible and sometimes benevolent fortunes of war. Pruckner, with the assistance of the family of his former prison guards and re-named by Roy Vaughan as John Thomas, lived in Murphys hut for six carefree weeks, helping milk the familys cows, hunting rabbits and absorbing the landscape.

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One night, he and his hosts grew too bold. He attended a dance in a nearby town, and Roy Vaughans claim that he was a Dutch soldier on leave didnt wash with a suspicious local. John Thomas was awakened at Murphys Hut the next morning by troopers. He was carted off to the lock-up at nearby Macarthur, where the policemans wife cooked him a hot meal he remembered forever. Back at Murchison, Pruckner was given 21 days solitary confinement. You, as Australians, have the inherent virtue of sympathy. Pruckner has impressed me with being a good type of man and would probably make a good citizen. Magistrate G.S. Catlow Donald Henry McDonald and Andrew John Thompson, each aged 19, and Norman Stanley Vaughan 25, were charged with aiding the escape of a prisoner of war under the National Security regulations. The story was laid out in evidence before the magistrate, G.S. Catlow, sitting in Shepparton. J.R. OKeefe, a lawyer for two of the men, essentially argued his clients had done an honourable act. There is that thing in the Australian bloodline that would assist a man when he is down rather than put the boot in, he told the magistrate, as recorded in the Shepparton Advertiser on December 6, 1946. The magistrate agreed, placed the men on two-year good behaviour bonds and all but gave them  and Pruckner  fine character references. You three have committed what I consider a very serious offence, he began. However, you, as Australians, have the inherent virtue of sympathy. Pruckner has impressed me with being a good type of man and would probably make a good citizen.

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The Ministry for Refugees and Repatriation Affairs distributed China-donated humanitarian assistance to 1,500 destitute people on Saturday.



"Today we distributed the humanitarian assistance to 1,500 needy people and would continue to help needy families next week," Minister for Refugees and Repatriation Affairs Khalil-ur-Rahman Haqqani told reporters.

In the meantime, Spokesman for the ministry Abdul Mutalib Haqqani told Xinhua that each needy person received a 50 kg sack of rice donated by China in humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan.

"We are thankful to China for providing assistance to the people of Afghanistan at this critical stage," Haqqani told Xinhua.

The war-torn Afghanistan has been facing extreme economic problem since the defeat of the U.S.-led forces and their evacuation from Afghanistan last August. Washington has frozen more than $9.5 billion of Afghanistan's asserts in U.S. banks that further worsened the country's fragile economy.

"I am grateful to China and other countries including the neighboring states for providing humanitarian assistance to us and hope such a cooperation will continue," an aid recipient Farid Ahmad, 35, who is also the head of a 10-member family, told Xinhua.

Welcoming the assistance, an aged widow only identified as Halima, 60, said, "I received a bag of rice and have to cook it without cooking oil to feed her three-member family."

The Chinese government announced last September that it has decided to provide food, winter supplies, COVID-19 vaccines, and medicines worth 200 million yuan (about $31.4 million) in emergency humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.

China has provided a total of 6,220 tons of food aid to Afghanistan.
For two years, Australias Anzac Day traditions were derailed by the coronavirus pandemic, but on Monday those rituals were restored when crowds gathered en masse to pay respect to the nations service men and women.

At the Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance, an estimated crowd of 50,000 huddled in solemn silence before day break, breathing thick fog, free of most social gathering restrictions.

There were no caps on the number of people allowed to attend, and no security fences barricading the memorial on the 107th anniversary of the landing of Australian troops at Gallipoli.

Tens of thousands of Victorians gathered at the Shrine of Remembrance to commemorate the 107th anniversary of Anzac Day. Credit:Getty Images

The crowd sprawled across the courtyard of the shrine and up the path towards the city. Large numbers of people were also gathered at the side of the shrine near St Kilda Road under a bright moonlit sky as journalist Peter Meehan, OAM, delivered the preamble, occasionally brought to tears as he recalled the past sacrifices of veterans who fought in the two world wars.
Young voters who fear they will see the climate apocalypse in their lifetimes say Australias major political parties are ignoring climate change in the federal election as experts warn the world must take action immediately.

The doomers  people who believe the world is doomed due to humanitys lack of action on climate change  say theyre struggling to live their lives knowing no one in power appears to care enough to fix the crisis.

Anna Ho and Hannah Horton say Australias major political parties are ignoring climate change in this election. Credit:Steven Siewert

The climate is really affecting me at the moment. I cant commit to anything, I cant figure out the correct way of doing things, I try to focus on other areas of my life but I cant, Hannah Horton, 21, says.

Im not happy with any of the players in the federal election  I dont think that theres any room for actual climate policy within a democratic system thats funded by oil and gas.
State insurer icare for six years knowingly underpaid NSW workers who had deadly dust diseases and faces an outstanding liability of more than $93 million to rectify past and future claims.

An audit by the NSW Auditor-General of icares financial statements shows more than 1300 workers with diseases such as mesothelioma and silicosis have been underpaid $39.3 million because of decades-old payment errors.

Asbestos particles and silica dust are common in construction and on building sites. Credit:Justin McManus

More than 75 per cent of the affected workers, or 1040, have already died.

The underpayment is almost three times the figure projected in leaked icare briefing documents revealed by the Herald last year, which suggested almost $15 million in compensation had not been paid to dead or dying workers.
Paris: Emmanuel Macron has promised to unify a bitterly divided France after decisively defeating far-right rival Marine Le Pen in the presidential election, heading off a potential political earthquake which threatened to send shockwaves through Europe.

Cheers erupted when the result appeared on a giant screen at the Champ de Mars park, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where more than 3000 supporters danced to Daft Punks One More Time while waving French and European Union flags under the famous Paris landmark.

French President Emmanuel Macron thumbs up after reports of his re-election. Credit:AP

Macron arrived to Beethovens Ode To Joy, the official anthem of the European Union, about 90 minutes after the polls projected victory. He thanked voters for placing their trust in him to pilot the republic for the next five years.

Le Pen conceded within moments of the release of an exit poll at 4am AEST. With 97 per cent of votes counted, Macron was on course for a solid 57.4 per cent of the vote, interior ministry figures reported by Reuters showed.
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa is fighting an uphill battle in elections on Sunday that may rid the European Union of a leader who has challenged its democratic values.

Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, and as fellow EU member France votes over whether to give President Emmanuel Macron a new term or replace him with right-wing standard bearer Marine Le Pen, opinion polls tip Slovenias upstart Freedom Movement party to oust Jansas party from power.

While the Freedom Movement, led by former state-owned utility chief Robert Golob, is running neck and neck with Jansas Slovenian Democratic Party, it has a strong chance of forming a coalition with left-leaning and centrist parties even if it doesnt win the most votes.

Fighting to survive: Janez Jansa, right-wing Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) leader. Credit:AP

But the Euro-area and NATO member nation has a history of elections fraught with post-ballot wrangling. And as Jansa tries to bolster support in a campaign focused on his backing Ukraine, it may take weeks of maneuvering for either party to muster the majority needed to rule.
Hundreds of people around the world are applying for a coveted job to run the worlds most remote post office. The position is in Antarctica and one of the key specifications is the ability to count penguins.

Four candidates will be chosen to fill the five-month role at Port Lockroy  affectionately dubbed the Penguin Post Office. The nearly-80-year-old building is on British-owned Goudier Island, which is about the size of a football field and is populated by hundreds of penguins.

The post office doubles as a museum and is managed by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust. Each year, the British charity hires four postmasters to live on the island from November to March.

Long walk to the cinema: The post office at Port Lockroy, Goudier Island, Antarctic. Credit:UK Antarctic Heritage Trust

Although employees each have unique roles, they are collectively responsible for maintaining the historic site and catering to the thousands of tourists who come by boat. The staff are also in charge of wildlife monitoring, which includes tallying penguins, and environmental data collection.
Ola Electric is recalling 1,441 units of its electric two-wheelers in the wake of incidents of vehicles catching fire, according to a company statement.

The company said its investigation into the fire incident on March 26, in Pune, is ongoing and preliminary assessment found that it was an isolated one.

However, it said, "As a pre-emptive measure we will be conducting a detailed diagnostic and health check of the scooters in that specific batch and therefore are issuing a voluntary recall of 1,441 vehicles."



Ola Electric further said, "These scooters will be inspected by our service engineers and will go through a thorough diagnostics across all battery systems, thermal systems as well as the safety systems."



Ola Electric said its battery systems already complies with and is tested for AIS 156, the latest proposed standard for India, in addition to being compliant with the European standard ECE 136.

Recently, there have been widespread incidents of electric two-wheelers catching fire in various parts of the country forcing manufacturers to recall their vehicles.

Okinawa Autotech had recalled over 3,000 units, while PureEV did a similar exercise for around 2,000 units.

The fire incidents had prompted the government to form a panel to examine and had warned companies of penalties if they were found to be negligent.

(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.)
Loss-making could shake up senior management as new Chairman Axel Lehmann seeks to put the embattled back on stable ground, Swiss Sunday newspaper NZZ am Sonntag reported. Citing unnamed sources, the paper said Chief Legal Officer Romeo Cerutti, finance chief David Mathers, and Asia-Pacific regional boss Helman Sitohang were set to step down. These three were the longest-serving members of the banks 12-member executive board. Asked about the report, a spokesperson said the bank had been implementing a new strategy and organisational structure announced last November that sharpened its focus on wealth management and scaled back investment banking.

As part of this work, senior management under the leadership of the group CEO together with the board of directors is regularly discussing succession plans and is reviewing senior appointments for certain positions, including for certain legal entities, regions and the executive board, she added.

The bank said last week it expected to report a first-quarter loss after increasing legal provisions, seeing business activity slow and taking a hit from the fallout of Russias invasion. That stepped up pressure on Chief Executive Thomas Gottstein, who had told a financial conference in March that business had been relatively solid in the first two months of the year. The bank is still reeling from losses in 2021, which prompted a top management shake-up.
 Flash

The Lebanese army on Saturday rescued 30 out of 60 people who were on board a boat that sank in the waters off Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli, a Lebanese security source told Xinhua.



The army also recovered the bodies of a woman and a child, the source added.

The Lebanese army and the Lebanese Red Cross are still searching for the rest of the people who were on board the boat.

Tripoli Port Director Ahmad Tamer was quoted by the Elnashra news website as saying that people on the boat were attempting to illegally escape from Lebanon to Cyprus.

Lebanon has been suffering from an unprecedented financial crisis, forcing Lebanese nationals and Syrian refugees residing in Lebanon to look for ways to escape the dire living conditions in the country.
Eight of the top-10 most valued firms together lost Rs 2,21,555.61 crore from their market valuation last week in-line with the weak trend in the broader market, with and suffering the biggest hit.

The 30-share benchmark index, Sensex, lost 1,141.78 points or 1.95 per cent last week.

From the top-10 pack, only Reliance Industries and Adani Green Energy emerged as the gainers.

The market valuation of tumbled Rs 68,548.8 crore to Rs 6,67,062.55 crore.

The market capitalisation (mcap) of dived Rs 60,536.97 crore to reach Rs 7,51,801.60 crore.

Bharti Airtel's valuation tanked Rs 30,127.49 crore to Rs 4,05,723.51 crore and that of Tata Consultancy Services plummeted by Rs 18,094.01 crore to Rs 13,21,594.47 crore.

The valuation of State Bank of India declined by Rs 15,261.09 crore to Rs 4,46,587.56 crore and that of Bajaj Finance went lower by Rs 13,264.96 crore to Rs 4,30,420.83 crore.

The of ICICI Bank dipped Rs 10,376.97 crore to Rs 5,19,362.62 crore and that of Hindustan Unilever Limited slumped Rs 5,345.32 crore to Rs 5,00,392.45 crore.

In contrast, the market valuation of Reliance Industries zoomed Rs 1,39,357.52 crore to reach Rs 18,66,071.57 crore.

The market capitalisation of Adani Green went higher by Rs 3,698.89 crore to Rs 4,51,749.88 crore.

Meanwhile, housing finance company HDFC has been knocked out of the country's 10 most-valued in terms of market capitalisation following a significant decline in its share price.

During the week ended April 22, shares of the company tumbled 7.19 per cent.

On April 4, HDFC announced that it will merge operations with . Once the deal is effective, HDFC Bank will be wholly owned by public shareholders, and existing shareholders of HDFC will own 41 per cent of the bank.

The shares of HDFC have tumbled nearly 18 per cent since the merger announcement.

In the ranking of top-10 firms, Reliance Industries was leading the chart, followed by TCS, HDFC Bank, Infosys, ICICI Bank, Hindustan Unilever, Adani Green Energy, State Bank of India, Bajaj Finance and Bharti Airtel.

(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.)
Electric became the latest among electric scooter (e-scooter) makers to have started the exercise of recalling a specific batch of its model after a rap on the knuckles by the government. The Union Minister of Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari on Thursday advised electric vehicle (EV) to act responsibly by identifying and recalling defective batches without waiting for orders or guidelines from the ministry.

The Bengaluru-based start-up is conducting pre-emptive diagnostics and health check on 1,441 scooters, it said in a statement on Sunday. The Bhavish Aggarwal-run firm is recalling the S1 Pro amid multiple issues facing its maiden model, including a fire incident on March 26.

Electric is the third e-scooter manufacturer to recall its model after several fire incidents were reported across the country on lithium-ion-(Li-ion)-powered EVs.

Earlier this month, Gurugram-based Okinawa Autotech and Hyderabased-Power Using Renewable Energy (PURE) EV recalled 3,215 and 2,000 units of their Praise Pro, and ETrance Plus and EPluto 7G, respectively.

Most of the issues seen are when batteries are being charged, as a fully charged battery like a gas tank, is a powerhouse of energy. By having the swapping stations that are removed from the home, garages and parking, reduces 90 per cent of the risk, says Chetan Maini, co-founder and chairman at SUN Mobility. "Having said that the onus is pretty much on the battery and EV manufacturer as such incidents can still occur if the design, quality or manufacturing of the battery pack or charging system is compromised," he said.

Kumar had started charging the battery around 10 pm before going to sleep on Friday. The explosion took place at his home in Gulabi Thota around 3.30 am Saturday when the Boom Corbett 14 e-bikes battery was charging. His family is in an intensive care unit. We have registered a case under Section 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure for death due to battery blast, N V Suryanarayana, station house officer of Suryaraopet police station in Vijayawada, told Business Standard.

A statement from Coimbatore-based Boom Motors is awaited.

Earlier, 80-year-old B Ramaswamy died after the battery of his sons PURE EV e-scooter exploded in their living room in the early hours on Wednesday. The Nizamabad police registered a case against the vehicle manufacturer and the dealer who sold it.

Booms Corbett 14 is the first incident involving a manufacturer offering removable batteries. It stokes further concerns on Li-ion-powered EVs. The incident came to light a few days after the government think tank NITI Aayog released a draft policy on battery swapping.

The policy proposes setting up swapping stations for batteries to reduce the upfront cost of electric two- and three-wheelers. Amid raging fire incidents, it proposes to enhance safety by assigning a unique identification number to swappable batteries at the manufacturing stage to help track and monitor them.

Most of the issues seen are when batteries are being charged, as a fully charged battery like a gas tank, is a powerhouse of energy. By having the swapping stations that are removed from the home, garages and parking, reduces 90 per cent of the risk, says Chetan Maini, co-founder and Chairman at SUN Mobility. Having said that the onus is pretty much on the battery and EV manufacturer as such incidents can still occur if the design, quality or manufacturing of the battery pack or charging system is compromised, he said.





According to Balraj Bhanot, former chairman, Central Motor Vehicle Regulations, the battery should be treated as an independent, important component of a vehicle and be brought under the mandatory marking scheme of the Bureau of Indian Standards, and strict evaluation norms be made applicable.

For this purpose, one has to quickly issue a quality control order. The government should also introduce a mandatory recall system with radio frequency identification coding to track the lot. If a fire accident takes place in a particular lot, the entire lot should be recalled with due compensation, suggests Bhanot.

The government should rethink its policy of everybody becoming a battery manufacturer without requisite infrastructure (infra) just to take advantage of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of hybrid and Electric vehicles (or FAME) incentive. I doubt if there is any mechanism to check the infra set-up of a company for making batteries or if there is any minimum list of items/equipment prescribed for qualifications, says Bhanot.

Meanwhile, Electric, in a statement, said it is recalling some units of the S1 Pro, even as the companys internal investigation into the March 26 vehicle fire incident in Pune is ongoing and the preliminary assessment reveals that the thermal incident was likely an isolated one.

As a pre-emptive measure, it would be conducting a detailed diagnostics and health check of the e-scooters in that specific batch and therefore, issuing a voluntary recall of 1,441 vehicles, it said.

These scooters will be inspected by Ola Electrics service engineers and go through diagnostics across all battery, thermal, as well as safety systems, it said in a statement.

We strongly support adopting a world-class EV safety policy and standards architecture in India to ensure high quality products which enhance customer confidence in furtherance of our commitment towards our customers safety and grow the nascent EV industry, said Ola Electric.
will no longer enjoy a priority in allocation of international traffic rights. This follows its takeover by Tata Sons in January.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has dropped a clause which gave an advantage over other private airlines in the amended rules issued on April 19.

The rules deal with eligibility criteria of airlines for application of traffic rights, procedure for allocation, utilisation and penalties for nonuse.

The earlier rule said that due consideration shall be given to operational plans submitted by before allocation of the traffic rights to other eligible applicants.

This clause has now been removed following the privatization of Air India. All the airlines will now be on an equal footing. This is a positive step, remarked an executive of a private airline.

Governments negotiate bilateral air service agreements with each other. These determine the number of flights and destinations that airlines can operate between two countries. These entitlements which are in the form of number seats or flights per week are exchanged on a reciprocal basis. In India the entitlements are held by the government and granted to an airline upon request.

India has signed air service agreements with 121 countries. The civil aviation ministry has signed separate agreements with Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Ras Al-Khaimah though they are part of the United Arab Emirates.

Before the pandemic India was connected with non stop flights with around 55 countries. That number has dropped further in the summer schedule which came into effect from March end.

Air India and Air India Express have secured approvals to operate 361 and 340 international departures per week in the summer schedule. These include flights within Asia and to Australia, Europe and North America. Flights to Russia were suspended recently over issues related to aircraft insurance.

Air India was only partially utilizing the seats allocated to it on routes to Malaysia, Singapore and West Asia, according to the bid document released in January 2020.

Air India did not respond to an email query on the issue.

The rule was especially beneficial when demand for seats was higher than available entitlement. On such occasions Air India would be granted the number of seats it wished and other private airlines would be asked to moderate their requirements, a source said.
Amid speculation about Prashant Kishor joining the Congress, the election strategist held talks with ruling TRS president and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao here over two days.

There has been no official word from TRS on Kishor's discussions with Rao but party sources said Kishor, who met Rao on Saturday, continued the talks on Sunday as well.

While the contemporary political situation in the country was discussed in the talks, Kishor is understood to have submitted the details of



the surveys done by his team in Telangana.

Kishor's meeting with Rao assumes significance in view of the speculation over the political strategist joining the .

Rao, who is popularly known as KCR, said in March that Kishor is working with him on bringing a 'parivartan' (change) in the entire country. Both were working together in Telangana also.

Rao had described Kishor as his best friend for the last seven-eight years and praised the latter for his commitment to a cause.

Rao has been working to bring together various non-BJP parties together against the saffron party's alleged anti-people policies and to usher in a "qualitative change" in the country.

Describing Kishor as a brand with proven credentials, general secretary Tariq Anwar on Thursday last said the poll strategist is willing to join the party without any preconditions and his induction would certainly help the party.

president Sonia Gandhi, Anwar had said, wants to take senior leaders into confidence and seek their opinion on whether Kishor's entry into the party will be beneficial or not and then take a decision on the much speculated matter.

Kishor, who has planned the electoral strategies of various parties, including the Trinamool Congress, AAP and DMK, wants to come into the Congress and help it, Anwar had said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Another (AIMIM) leader and Hubli unit president Dadapeer Betgeri was arrested on Sunday in connection with the incident that took place at Old Hubli Police Station on April 16.

Earlier, the husband of AIMIM Corporator Dadapeer Betgeri, Irfan Nalvatwad was arrested in connection with the incident.

More than 100 people have been arrested by the state police.

The incident took place at Old Hubli Police Station on April 16 in which several policemen, including one inspector injured. The mob which gathered outside the police station suddenly turned violent and started pelting stones at the police station and police vehicles.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai has assured action against the perpetrators of the incident.

"Police will not hesitate to take stringent action against those who take the law into their hands. We will act against those who instigated it too. Let us not give political colours to it," Bommai said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chief Judicial Magistrate Court in Assam's Kokrajhar rejected MLA Jignesh Mevani's bail petition and sent him to 10-day police remand.

Earlier on Thursday, the Chief Judicial Magistrate's court in Assams Kokrajhar district rejected the bail petition of Independent Gujarat MLA and Dalit activist and sent him to three-day police custody.

Earlier on Wednesday, Mevani was arrested by an Assam police team from Palanpur town in Gujarat over a couple of his tweets.

An FIR was filed against him after a complaint was filed by an Assam BJP leader, Arup Kumar Dey.

A case was lodged against Mevani under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), section 153(A) (promoting enmity between two communities), 295(A), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), and sections of the IT Act.

A couple of tweets on Mevani's Twitter handle are not visible on his feed with a message displaying that the tweets have been withheld in India based on a "legal demand".

In the controversial tweet, Mevani had reportedly requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure communal harmony during his recent visit to Gujarat.

Mevani claimed that he was arrested out of a political vendetta against him.

The Assam state unit, had protested the arrest of the Gujarat legislator.

Elected as an independent MLA, Mevani had extended his support to in September 2019.

(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.)
The on Sunday hit out at the BJP-led government, saying the decision to ban the sale of residue, which is used as cattle fodder, outside the state is a "dictatorial" decision.

"The BJP-JJP government is bent on punishing farmers for its failures. Every day the government is harassing farmers by taking anti-farmer decisions," said state president Kumari Selja.

"Banning the sale of tudi' ( residue) outside the state was a dictatorial decision. This decision should be withdrawn immediately," she said in a statement here.

She said the government had issued orders that it will be ensured that no farmer sell his residue outside the state and if anyone disobeys the order, legal action will be taken against him.

" The dictatorial decision of the government is not tolerable," she added.

Selja said due to early arrival of summer and heatwave conditions prevailing over past few weeks, the wheat production had decreased this time.

Farmers first suffered a lot due to rain and hailstorm earlier and now due to the sudden increase in temperature in March and April, their crop yield had decreased, she said.

"But the government did not provide any relief to them. Now, if farmer was selling the wheat residue so that he could get some income, in that too he is facing hurdles. Instead of giving relief to farmers, the government is harassing them by taking such decisions," she said.

In a separate statement, former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda also criticised the move.

Hooda said tractor-trailers of farmers are being stopped forcibly by the government officials everywhere and added the farmer should have the freedom to sell his cattle fodder anywhere.

"The BJP-JJP government, which talks about one country-one market, is now objecting to selling fodder to others. The government should take back this dictatorial decision taken against the farmers, otherwise, the opposition will oppose it at every level," said Hooda.

Hooda said farmers have already suffered huge losses in the wheat season due to unseasonal rains and early arrival of summer.

"The entire crop of the farmer was ruined in some places and some farmers are compensating for their loss by selling fodder in such a situation but the government is also snatching this right from the farmers," he said.

"On the other hand, the government is neither lifting wheat in the mandis nor is the coalition government paying farmers on time for the crop procured," Hooda, who is the Leader of Opposition, alleged.

(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.)
With as many as 60 people testing positive for Covid-19 at IIT Madras, the state government is on high alert already asking the health system to be on stand-by mode and taking steps to increase the pace of vaccination in a vaccine hesitant state.

On Sunday, five more cases were reported at the campus, taking the total number of people affected to 60. During the past 24 hours, the state added 53 fresh cases, taking the total active cases numbers to 310. Covid situation under control at  Cases have declined to five positive out of 591 tested on Saturday, from 22 out of 729 tested a day before, said a Tweet by . So far a total of 2,013 tests were conducted in the campus.

After the spike in cases at IIT cluster, the state government had made masks mandatory in public places and also asked hospitals to be ready, in case of a fresh wave. The state will also be organising a mass vaccination drive across 100,000 centres on May 8. The drive will target 4.3 million people who are yet to take the first dose and 13 million who have not taken the second.

According to the state health department only around 46 per cent of frontline workers and 64 per cent of health sector workers have taken both the doses. In addition to this, only around 58 per cent of the people above 60 years have taken both the doses. The state also increased the number of tests from 18,000 to around 25,000 after the cases.
Union Home Minister on Sunday said culture was the common thread binding the citizens of the country across different regions and once India is started to be seen as a "geocultural" country, all the problems will be solved automatically.

In his address at the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Sri Aurobindo in this union territory, Shah heaped praises on the latter for his contributions to the nation and said to understand India, one has to read or listen to him.

"From to Kanyakumari to Dwaraka to Bengal, there is one culture that binds--Constitution is important...country should run on this. But if there is a bonding, it is the culture. The culture is its soul. This will be understood as soon as you read Sri Aurobindo," he said.

Shah further said most countries came into existence due to a coalition or alliance and were therefore geopolitical in nature.

"There is one country in the world that is geocultural that is based on culture which has no boundaries and that is our India...and if one starts to look at India as a geocultural country, then all the problems will be automatcially solved," he claimed.

There is no concept of border in our culture and in the Vedas, Upanishads and literature there is no mention of a country. "We work for the welfare of all, the world," he said.

Paying rich tributes to Sri Aurobindo, Shah also recalled his role in the country's freedom struggle, including his incarceration in the Alipore bomb case and hailed his vision for the country.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to celebrate the 75th year of independence as "Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav" was driven by the consideration to honour even the unknown freedom fighters and take all those involved in the freedom struggle to the younger masses and reinvigorate a sense patriotism among them.

It is also an effort to inspiring people to strive towards making India a top country in all aspects between the 75th and 100th years of independence, Shah added.

"We may have been born after independence and may not be part of the army and while we could not sacrifice ourself for the country, none can stop us from living for the country. Today during 75th year of independence and 150th birth anniversary of Sri Aurobindo we all should resolve towards achieving this," he said.

Shah also recalled Aurobindo's close association with his native state Gujarat.

Shah further hailed the role of Bal Gangadhar Tilak in the freedom movement thru the Ganesh Chathurthi festival.

The minister earlier visited the Aurobindo Ashram and paid homage at the memorials of Aurobindo and his spiritual collaborator, The Mother.

"Sri Aurobindo was a great intellectual and spiritual giant. He made lasting contributions to India's freedom struggle. Sri Aurobindo's works and thoughts remain relevant for all and he continues to be our guiding light," he said in a tweet.

Shah also visited the Mahakavi Bharathiyar Memorial Museum here and the hailed poet and freedom fighter as the "epitome" of patriotism.

"Subramania Bharathi is the epitome of patriotism, unity & social reforms. His patriotic songs motivated countless people to join the Indian freedom movement. His ideas continue to motivate us all," Shah said in a tweet.

He paid floral tributes at a portrait of Bharathi at the memorial.

(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.)
Finance Minister has urged the to become partners in growth of the country during the next 25 years as it attains 100 years of independence.

Addressing the Indian community in the Silicon Valley, San Francisco Bay Area, she highlighted the contributions of the country people in innovation and research.

"FM Smt. @nsitharaman highlighted the stellar contribution of in US, esp. their role in innovation & research. FM also spoke about structural reforms undertaken by GoI & exhorted the community to become partners in the growth of during the Amrit Kaal," a finance ministry tweet on Sunday said.

The journey of to attain 100 years of independence from its 75th year of independence has been termed Amrit Kaal. The Finance Minister is visiting the US to attend IMF-WB Spring Meetings 2022.

(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.)
India has suspended tourist visas issued to Chinese nationals, global airlines body told its member carriers on April 20.

India has been raising with China the plight of approximately 22,000 Indian students enrolled in Chinese universities who are unable to go back for physical classes. However, the neighbouring country has till date refused to let them enter.

These students had to leave their studies in China and come to India when the COVID-19 pandemic began in the beginning of 2020.

In a circular issued on April 20 regarding India, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said, "Tourist visas issued to nationals of China (People's Republic) are no longer valid."



It said the following passengers are allowed to enter India: nationals of Bhutan, India, Maldives and Nepal; passengers with a residence permit issued by India; passengers with or an e- issued by India; passengers with an overseas citizen of India (OCI) card or booklet; passengers with a persons of Indian origin (PIO) card; and passengers with a diplomatic passport.

The also said that tourist visas with a validity of 10 years are no longer valid.

The is a global airlines body with around 290 members that comprise more than 80 per cent of global air traffic.

India has urged Beijing to adopt a "congenial stance" in the matter as the continuation of the strict restrictions is putting the academic careers of thousands of Indian students in jeopardy, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had said on March 17.

Bagchi said a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson had stated on February 8 that China was looking into the matter in a coordinated manner and that arrangements for allowing foreign students to return to China were being examined.

"But let me clarify that till date, the Chinese side has not given any categorical response about the return of Indian students. We will continue to urge the Chinese side to adopt a congenial stance in the interest of our students and that they facilitate an early return to China so that our students can pursue their studies," Bagchi said.

He said the issue was also taken up with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar during a meeting in Dushanbe in September last year. The two foreign ministers had held talks in the Tajik capital city on the sidelines of a conclave of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

(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.)
External Affairs Minister on Sunday held "productive" talks with his visiting Argentine counterpart Santiago Cafiero, focusing on bilateral cooperation in areas like defence and atomic energy.

Cafiero is on a visit to India primarily to participate in the three-day Raisina Dialogue, India's premier foreign policy and geo-economics conference. The dialogue begins on Monday.

"A productive meeting with FM @SantiagoCafiero of on his first visit to India," Jaishankar said on Twitter.

"Discussed expanding our bilateral trade and cooperating in agriculture, pharmaceuticals, electronics, e-mobility, defence & atomic energy. Will work closely in G20 and multilateral forums," he said.

Separately, the external affairs minister also held talks with Teddy Locsin Jr, the Foreign Affairs Secretary of the Philippines.

"Warmly welcomed Secretary Foreign Affairs of Philippines @teddyboylocsin. Appreciated his insights and perspectives on Indo-Pacific, Europe, Myanmar, and Multilateralism," Jaishankar tweeted.

"Reviewed the progress in bilateral ties since our last meeting in February," he added.

(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.)
Prime Minister on Sunday said is presenting a new example of " and determination" as numerous development initiatives were undertaken in the last two to three years.

Visiting for the first time since the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, he also said that Rs 38,000 crore of private investment has come to the union territory (UT) in the last two years, besides it witnessing a heavy flow of tourists.

Modi was speaking in Palli village in Samba district, around 17 km from Jammu, on the occasion of Panchayati Raj Day. The speech was relayed to all gram panchayats across the country.

The prime minister also inaugurated and laid foundation stones for multiple development initiatives worth Rs 20,000 crore for .

Modi said that his government has implemented as many as 175 central laws and the Panchayati Raj system for the UT's people who were "deprived" of these benefits when Jammu and Kashmir had special status under Article 370.

Jammu and Kashmir is presenting a new example of and determination as numerous development initiatives were undertaken in the last two to three years, he said.

Modi also expressed happiness that it was for the first time that elections for the three-tier Panchayati Raj system were conducted peacefully sometime back in Jammu and Kashmir.

The last two to three years have seen a lot of development initiatives being undertaken in Jammu and Kashmir and about 175 central laws were implemented here that gave due rights to the people of the UT, he said.

"The Panchayati Raj system being a good scheme..it was tom-tommed, people felt proud about it, which was not wrong. But people of Jammu and Kashmir were deprived from the benefits of this system...until our government came to power in Delhi," Modi said.

The prime minister said he was happy that when has reached the grassroots in Jammu and Kashmir, he was talking to gram panchayats across the country from here.

The Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has directly provided funds worth Rs 22,000 crore to panchayats of the union territory for "strengthening grassroots democracy" as compared to the Rs 5,000 crore allocation made under this head earlier, he said.

The central government's policies and schemes are being "implemented rapidly" and this is benefiting the UT's villages, Modi said and listed schemes like those that provided cooking gas connection, electricity, water and toilets.

"The private investment in Jammu and Kashmir for the last seven decades has been about Rs 17,000 crore but in the last two years, it is Rs 38,000 crore...private companies and investors are coming here now," he said.

The prime minister said that Jammu and Kashmir will write a new chapter of success in the next 25 years which is the 'Amrit Kaal' period of Indian independence. The youth of the region will get employment with the rapid pace of development, he said.

Modi assured the youth of Jammu and Kashmir that his government will make sure that they do not face problems related to basic amenities that their parents or grandparents encountered.

He said Jammu and Kashmir's residents, who were not getting the benefits of reservation till Article 370 was operational, are now getting it.

We are making attempts that all areas of Jammu and Kashmir remain connected for 12 months of the year...we are also ensuring the same for border villages under the 'vibrant village scheme' that was announced in the recent Union Budget, he said.

Border states and UTs like Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab will benefit from this border villages development scheme, Modi said.

He also urged farmers to move towards natural farming as the current system of using chemical fertilisers was destroying and contaminating the soil and the underground water.

Modi asked citizens to undertake segregation of dry and wet garbage and sought the cooperation of everyone to achieve a "carbon neutral" ecosystem.

The prime minister also talked about the importance of using solar pumps in agriculture, and also discussed about the usage of LED bulbs and solar cookers while interacting with panchayat representatives of Jammu and Kashmir.

(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.)
Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Sunday called the that erupted in the city over an alleged social media post, a 'big conspiracy' and said his government has taken the incident seriously.

He was responding to reporters' query on the action taken against those involved in arson and here recently after an objectionable post surfaced on the social media on April 16. If a police station was attacked in an organised manner by a mob then it is a serious matter. We are investigating the role of various organisations. Already our police have recorded their statements. In the next few days we will expose those who were behind it, the CM said. Asked whether the government would initiate bull-dozer kind of action, Bommai said there are various ways of taking action.

We had adopted strong measures in the wake of DJ-Halli and KG Halli in Bengaluru. "It will be a model," he added. Amid a rise in COVID cases in parts of the country, Bommai said, The Centre has issued directions to be cautious with regard to COVID. For the past eight to 10 days, cases are on the rise here and there, especially in Kerala and Maharashtra.

Hence, the Prime Minister himself will address the chief ministers through video conference on the COVID situation in the country and the measures to be taken. Taking lessons from the three COVID-19 waves in the past, experts have stressed on the need to be careful, the Chief Minister said.

He added that a COVID-19 protocol will be prepared to tackle the disease. Reacting to another question on the alleged bomb threats received by some schools in the city about a fortnight ago, Bommai said every aspect of it is being investigated. He said officials have been directed to probe it thoroughly to ascertain where the email originated from and who sent it. We have taken it very seriously. We will go to the bottom of the case, the chief Minister said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is likely to announce 100 days annual leave for every personnel of all Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), sources in the government said.

They said that the MHA has been mulling all contours of a policy that will provide 100 days leave to each personnel of the CAPFs to spend at least 100 days with their families in a year.

The policy was announced in October 2019 by Union Home Minister Amit Shah with the aim to reduce work-related stress and enhance the happiness level of about 10 lakh jawans who are deployed on arduous duties in some of the most challenging areas and at remote places.

As of now, CAPF personnel on an average get nearly 75 days' leave every year which may be increased or reduced as per the operational requirements of the Force.

A senior official in the Ministry said that to ensure fast and smooth implementation of the leave policy, several rounds of meetings were held in the MHA and the latest was held early this month.

He said that the Ministry has taken suggestions from all CAPFs with their opinions and it is expected to take a final call on this policy soon. It may be announced by the next month or so.

The officials said that the CAPFs' Director Generals have submitted their recommendations after taking feedback from the field formations.

The Central Reserve Police Force, one of the largest CAPF, had suggested to the Ministry that the casual leave of the personnel may be increased to 30 days from the present 15 days, the officials said, adding that the rest of the Forces also gave their opinions.

In December 2021, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while addressing Border Force (BSF) jawans in Jaisalmer, said that the jawans are deployed for the security of the country in 50-degree heat and minus temperatures in the cold seasons. "The Central government is making efforts so that every soldier who gives his golden time to the country can spend about 100 days in a year with his family. This is a big responsibility of the government, which will be fulfilled soon," Shah had said.

Once this policy is effectively implemented in the BSF, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Central Industrial Security Force and the Sashastra Seema Bal, it will also be implemented in other CAPFs like the Assam Rifles, National Security Guard and the National Disaster Response Force.

The officials in the Ministry said that once this policy is implemented it would be reviewed periodically and could prove to be a 'game-changer' in respect of the welfare of the CAPF personnel.

The senior security personnel deployed in the field formations have also admitted that after the implementation of 100 days annual leave policy, the cases of suicides and fratricide will be reduced to a great extent. This will also reduce the number of VRS (voluntary retirement scheme) cases in the CAPFs, they added.

According to a rough estimate over 80,000 security personnel have taken VRS in the last one decade and this is also the main reason for the overstretched duty hours of the force personnel.

The officials said that the Centre has taken many steps to raise the satisfaction level of the 10 lakh force personnel recently. In this connection, around 35 lakh 'Ayushman' health cards have been given to CAPF personnel and their families and they can now avail 'cashless treatment' at 24,000 empanelled hospitals under Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY across the country.

Under these cards, there is no limit on the expenditure incurred on the treatment of the CAPF personnel and their family members. This scheme is a joint initiative of the Home Ministry, Health Ministry and the National Health Authority.

The government is also trying to improve housing infrastructure for CAPF personnel and more and more family accommodations are being provided to the security personnel in the field formations where they can keep their families, the officials said, adding that this will also reduce the need for leave for the jawans.

--IANS

ams/bg

(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.)
Amid the row over Delhi's Jahangirpuri violence, (NCP) chief slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Centre saying "there is instability in the country."

Notably, violent clashes broke out in Delhi's Jahangirpuri on April 16 between two groups during a Hanuman Jayanti procession that left nine people injured, including eight police personnel and a civilian.

Referring to the arrest of Maharashtra Minister Nawab Malik and former Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, the NCP chief said they have been falsely framed by and the Centre is misusing the central agencies.

"Nawab Malik and Anil Deshmukh have been falsely framed. Power should not be misused. Pressure is being created via ED, CBI, and other agencies," Pawar said.

He further took a potshot against the Centre over British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's recent visit to Gujarat during his two-day India tour.

"I saw the tenure of Indira (Gandhi), Rajiv (Gandhi), Narasimha Rao, Manmohan (Singh). When leaders from other countries visited India (then), they would go to Delhi, Hyderabad, and Kolkata. But the situation has changed now. Though they (leaders) come to India but visit Gujarat," Pawar said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister will inaugurate seven new cancer hospitals in Assam's Dibrugarh on April 28. He will also lay the foundation stone of seven new cancer hospitals in the state.

In view of PM Modi's visit, Chief Minister Himanta Vishwa Sharma reached Dibrugarh on Sunday to take stock of the preparations for the programme.

In a tweet, the CM shared a picture of the meeting and said, "We are all set to welcome our PM ji to on April 28. Held a meeting at Manohari Tea Retreat, Dibrugarh, to discuss the plans for the inauguration of Dibrugarh Cancer Centre by the Hon'ble Prime Minister."

While taking a stock of the venue, Sharma instructed the BJP leaders and officials to pay special attention to drainage in view of the possibility of rain along, with other arrangements.

The Chief Minister has informed that PM will visit Assam's Diphu on April 28, where he will first participate in a party meeting.

"PM Narendra Modi will visit on April 28. His first programme will be in Diphu and after that, he will inaugurate seven new cancer hospitals in Dibrugarh. This is a huge investment of Rs 4,000 crore with the joint collaboration of the Government of Assam and Tata Trusts," he said.

"Along with this, the foundation stone of other seven new cancer hospitals will be laid," he added.

Talking about Bharatiya Janata Party's victory in the Guwahati municipal corporation elections, Sarma said that the people of Assam are very happy with what PM Modi is doing for the northeastern states.

"So far, no party has got such a big victory in the Guwahati municipal corporation elections. BJP and AGP have got 58 out of 60 seats. The people of Assam are very happy with what PM Narendra Modi is doing for the Northeast states," he said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The AAP-led dispensation in on Sunday ordered an inquiry against 720 for allegedly raising fee despite government's directions.

The move comes after complaints from parents who claimed these schools disregarded the government directions.

The order for inquiry against schools was shared by Education Minister Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer on his Twitter handle.

Inquiry has been ordered against 720 against whom parents lodged complaints. Strict action will be taken if found guilty, said Hayer in his tweet.

Last month, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had directed all in the state against increasing fee or compelling children to buy books, uniforms or stationery items from select shops.

Addressing the media here on Sunday, Aam Aadmi Party's unit spokesperson Malwinder Singh Kang said that the Mann-led government was committed to ensure quality and affordable basic education in the state.

He further said that the education minister had ordered an inquiry after parents claimed that these private schools were not following the government's directions regarding fee and purchase of books and uniforms.

Kang said if any school is found guilty during inquiry, strict action will be taken against it.

(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.)
Top commanders of the will carry out a comprehensive review of the country's maritime security, including the situation in the Indian Ocean region and the possible implications of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, at a four-day conclave beginning Monday.

The Navy said the conference will be addressed by Defence Minister and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who will also interact with the commanders.

It is perhaps the first time in many years that the external affairs minister will also address the naval commanders' conference that serves as a platform to discuss important maritime matters at the military-strategic level.

The commanders are expected to have specific deliberations on the Chinese Navy's increasing forays into the Indian Ocean as well as its increasing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific.

"The conference would also dwell upon dynamics of the geostrategic situation in the backdrop of security scenario in the neighbourhood as well as changes emerging due to ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict," Navy spokesperson Commander Vivek Madhwal said.

He said Army Chief Gen MM Naravane and Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari will also interact with the naval commanders on issues like ensuring convergence among the three services vis--vis a common operational environment with an aim to augment tri-services synergy and readiness.

"During the conference, Defence Minister and External Affairs Minister will address and interact with the naval commanders on matters pertaining to the national security," Commander Madhwal said.

The spokesperson said Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral R Hari Kumar and other naval commanders will review major operational, material, logistics, human resource development, training and administrative activities undertaken by the in the last six months.

He said they will further deliberate upon plans for important activities and initiatives.

"The is focused on being a combat-ready, credible and cohesive force with a future-ready outlook and continues to assiduously execute its mandate," Commander Madhwal said.

"The Navy has witnessed a significant growth in its operational tasking over the years in consonance with India's growing maritime interests. Indian Navy's standing as the 'Preferred Security Partner' has also grown concomitantly in recent times," he said.

In 2020-21, Indian Navy ships have undertaken multiple COVID-19 related outreach missions to provide food and medical aid to Indian Ocean Region littoral nations and beyond as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of SAGAR (Security And Growth for All in Region), Commander Madhwal added.

(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.)
The is scheduled to hear on Monday a plea seeking an interim stay on the proposed demolition of around 200 'jhuggis' at Sarojini Nagar here and rehabilitation and relocation of homes of slum dwellers as per government policy.

A bench of justices K M Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy will hear the plea filed by a minor, Vaishali, a jhuggi resident whose 10th board examinations are starting on April 26, that homes in the area not be demolished for the time being.

On Friday, a bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana had taken note of the submissions of senior advocate Vikas Singh and lawyer Aman Panwar that the plea needed urgent hearing in view of the imminent threat of demolition of 'jhuggis' (shanties).

The apex court, however, had refused to extend the stay without hearing from authorities on last Friday.

The interim stay on demolition, granted by the High Court earlier, is ending on Monday.

This matter pertains to jhuggis' at Sarojini Nagar and the protection (against demolition) is only till Monday. I do not want the same thing as happened in Jahangirpuri to happen here. Please grant the status quo, Vikas Singh had argued.

During last week, the top court had come to the rescue of residents of the riot-hit Jahangirpuri area of the national capital by asking authorities to stall their anti-encroachment drive.

The plea, filed through Vaishali, said that the slum dwellers have been living there since 1980 and they do not want to stall any government project at the site.

However, the residents, besides deferment of a proposed demolition for the time being, wanted rehabilitation and relocation of their 'jhuggis' as per the provisions of the Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) Act.

The DUSIB Act casts an obligation on government authorities to frame a scheme for rehabilitation and relocation of 'jhuggis' before any action of eviction is undertaken.

The union ministry of urban development on April 4 issued eviction/demolition notices to all residents of the 'jhuggis' within one week.

The government had taken a plea before the that the jhuggis' in question was not notified under the DUSIB Act and hence, the residents were not eligible for rehabilitation.

The single judge and the division benches of the high court had relied upon the submissions of the DUSIB and dismissed the plea of residents.

The appeal, filed in the apex court, referred to a response received under the Right to Information Act and said that the city government and its authorities have not notified any Jhuggi in Delhi under the DUSIB Act and have only prepared a list of 675 jhuggis.

(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.)
China's northernmost province sees robust trade growth

Xinhua) 08:24, April 24, 2022

HARBIN, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Heilongjiang, China's northernmost province, saw its foreign trade in goods grow by 29.5 percent year on year to 55.2 billion yuan (about 8.5 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter of this year, customs data showed.

From January to March, Heilongjiang's imports saw a 33.7 percent increase to 45.1 billion yuan, while its exports grew by 13.5 percent to 10.1 billion yuan, according to the Harbin customs in the provincial capital.

Its trade with countries along the Belt and Road hit 43.7 billion yuan, accounting for 79.2 percent of the province's total foreign trade. Trade with members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership rose 49.2 percent.

The province saw robust growth in the exports of labor-intensive products and agricultural products, while imports of meat and iron ore surged in the same period.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Hongyu)
The (EU) plans to relaunch trade talks with India in an attempt to give the South Asian nation a viable alternative to diversify away from Russia, according to a senior official familiar with the plans.

President Ursula von der Leyen is on a two-day visit to India.

In addition to trade, the EU will pursue a technology council with India that could include discussions on the general data protection regulation, social media and broader digitalization efforts, said the official, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

Before embarking on the visit to India, the President on Saturday said both India and the 27-nation EU want to take the relationship to the next level. Leyen will hold extensive talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on further ramping up two-way engagement in areas of trade, connectivity, energy, climate change and security.

Russias war against Ukraine as well as India-EU cooperation in the Indo-Pacific are also expected to figure in the discussions.

"I'm off to New Delhi as we celebrate 60 years of EU-India relations. 60 years during which we built a solid friendship. And a cooperation that we now both want to take to the next level. Looking forward to my discussions with @narendramodi, Leyen tweeted.

The EU is Indias third-largest trading partner and accounts for 62.8 billion euros ($67.8 billion) worth of trade in goods.

The EU and US both are trying to establish closer ties with India, which is the worlds top buyer of Russian weapons, which it says it uses to deter aggression from neighbors Pakistan and China.

On the first day of her two-day visit to India, Leyen took part in an interaction at The Energy and Resources Institute campus called TERI Gram, where she asserted the need to work together towards a green, sustainable and equitable future.

The EU president said youngsters were the advocates to fight climate change, save the planet and develop solutions.

Climate change and biodiversity loss are at the top of the political agenda of the (EU) and India. Observing that the young should raise their voice for climate action, Leyen said, Youth are the advocates to fight climate change as well as to fight for the planet. But they are also the ones who develop solutions. The event  Youth for a Greener Future  was organised by TERI, in collaboration with the EU.
The is considering giving a loan to a Maldivian bank, according to ADB Vice-President for Private Sector Operations and Public-Private Partnerships .

Speaking to PTI at the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) Global Summit in Manila over the weekend, Lavasa said, through that bank, we will be reaching the micro, small and medium enterprises.

"Sixty per cent of the loan will go to the micro and small enterprises, and 10 per cent to women," he said, without revealing the name of the bank.

"What the ADB is trying to do is to incorporate elements of sustainability in tourism infrastructure," he said.

The ADB is supporting both the government as well as the private sector. We support the governments by and large in promoting infrastructure and supporting tourism. For the private sector, ADB supports through direct enterprise, Lavasa said.

For example, we gave a loan to the Fiji Airways, he said, referring to the ADB inking a USD 65 million COVID-19 Liquidity Support Facility for Fiji's Air Pacific Limited last year.

During the pandemic, they suffered a lot, so they needed liquidity, he said.

Asked about the quantum of the ADB aid, Lavasa said, We don't have a definite target for tourism (industry), but for climate change, the ADB has a target of USD 100 million, up to 2030, which will also include mitigation.

Asked if a major portion of the amount will go to India, Lavasa said, India is a major borrower of ADB, but this is meant for all the developing member countries.

(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.)
CEO earned the nickname Teflon Elon by successfully fighting off multiple legal challenges. But a recent court ruling suggests his run of personal victories may be endangered. Last week, it was revealed that a San Francisco judge had determined that one of Musks 2018 tweets about taking his firm private was a lie. Its one of at least a dozen high-profile cases that or Musk are involved in years after he posted the infamous funding secured tweet, sending shares soaring and inviting the wrath of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. As Musk ramps up his battle to buy Twitter, the lingering ramifications of his prior use of the social media platform may come back to haunt him. The judges decision tips the scales heavily in favour of investors who are suing Musk and Tesla for as much as $12 billion in trading losses they blame on the go-private tweets. That case is set for a jury trial in January. The decision poses a threat to Musks effort to unleash himself from oversight by the SEC  a quest so personal that he became visibly emotional while lambasting the agency at a TED talk in Canada last week.

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China's capital has gone on high alert as the situation turned grim following the emergence of clusters of COVID-19, while the country's financial hub reported 39 more deaths due to the virus, the highest in a day so far during the current outbreak since last month.

The Chinese mainland on Saturday reported 21,796 cases, including 1,566 positive cases and the rest asymptomatic cases mostly in Shanghai, China's National Health Commission reported on Sunday.

Beijing, the seat of China's top leadership, went on high COVID-19 alert as the city braced to test some sections of the population after the city recorded 22 new community cases on Saturday.

The city went on high alert after 10 middle school students tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday following which city officials suspended classes in the school for a week.

Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said undetected local transmissions started in the city about a week ago, and involved schools, tour groups and families.

There were hidden transmissions for a week and the infected people came from different backgrounds and a wide range of activities, Pang was quoted as saying by the Hong Kong-based South Morning Post.

Mass testing will be conducted on senior citizens who had been on tour groups, construction workers and the people working at the school where the cluster was identified, Pang said.

On Friday, Communist Party boss Cai Qi, mayor Chen Jining and other city leaders met twice to organise control efforts.

The meeting pointed out that our city [Beijing] had suddenly recorded some cases and many transmission chains were involved. The risk of further hidden transmission is high. The situation is urgent and grim, state-run Beijing Daily reported.

Following the emergence of new clusters, Beijing has taken swift and strict measures, including organising nucleic acid tests in key groups, and taking partial closed-off management and suspending classes in the areas and a school that spotted the cases, Global Times reported.

Wang Yuedan, a professor of the Department of Immunology at Peking University, said given the one-week-long transmission period, unknown origins of some confirmed cases and people's activities in the past period, the risk of wider infections is still high.

But the epidemic situation may not become as severe as Shanghai, he told the daily.

He noted the upcoming May Day holidays, during which millions of Chinese may travel to avail one week holiday may pose a big challenge in preventing the virus as many people have made travel plan, which may increase the transmission risk.

continued to be the epicentre of the Omicron variant of the virus.

Apart from Shanghai, 16 other provincial-level regions on the mainland saw new local COVID-19 cases, including 60 in Jilin, 26 in Heilongjiang, and 22 in Beijing, the report said.

Also, 29,531 people were undergoing treatment for the across the country, the report said.

On Saturday, reported 23,370 new cases, taking the city's total to about 466,000 since March 1.

The city of 26 million people on Saturday reported 39 deaths from COVID-19, bringing the death toll to 87 so far in the city since it went into lockdown at the end of last month following the emergence of the Omicron virus.

With this, China's overall death toll due to coronavirus, ever since it first emerged in Wuhan in 2019 December, rose to 4,725.

(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.)
Sri Lanka could be given temporary classification as a lower-income country  from the current middle-income status  to help it restructure its debt. And, it should also be given emergency funding similar to the one granted to Ukraine.

These were the recommendations made by finance minister to the Monetary Fund (IMF) and last week, according to sources. This comes as Indias southern neighbour deals with its worst-ever economic crisis.

Sitharaman had actively engaged with various representatives of the multilateral institutions, including president David Malpass and managing director Kristalina Georgieva in support of Sri Lanka. This was done in order to alleviate the countrys ongoing financial predicament and help it better navigate the maze of financing rules and criteria, sources aware of the discussions said. The ministers interventions have been on several fronts, including the classification of Sri Lanka as a low-income country, and the treatment of Sri Lanka on par with other countries facing dire emergencies, such as Ukraine. She also made use of her position on the board of governors of the to put forward Sri Lankas case, said an official.

Accoding to sources, one of the key interventions made by Sitharaman was to argue that, although Sri Lanka was classified as a middle-income country at the start of the pandemic, the nature of its economy, its dependence on income from the tourism sector, and the resultant dip in national revenues due to the pandemic, has meant that the country might possibly be categorised as a lower-income country, and should be treated accordingly.

Classification as a lower-income country would ease the process of restructuring Sri Lankas debt, said one of the sources.

The official clarified that the process of reclassification by the and is a time-consuming one, and hence, this could be done on a temporary basis to help Lanka come out of its current crisis.

The reclassification into a lower-income country will help Sri Lanka restructure its debt under the Common Framework for debt treatment beyond DSSI. DSSI is Debt Service Suspension Initiative that was set up by the IMF and World Bank after the pandemic and expired in December 2021.

In November 2021, IMF and World Bank had set up the common framework. The countries eligible for these initiatives are low-income nations with unsustainable debt.

Sitharaman is said to have argued that due to Sri Lankas dependence on the tourism sector, the shock to the country's was largely exogenous in nature and caused by the pandemic.

On March 9, 2022, the IMF executive board greenlit $1.4 billion in additional financing for Ukraine under an emergency support programme known as the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI).

Sitharaman is believed to have argued that Sri Lanka could be given assistance under this provision as well.

RFI opens up quick access to financial assistance to countries that urgently need to eliminate mismatches in their balance of payments, particularly those arising due to war and is designed for cases where it is impossible to launch a full-fledged programme of economic reforms.

Sources said that the IMF and World Bank brass have assured the finance minister that her proposals for Sri Lanka are being examined in detail.

So far, aid from India has been in the form of a line of credit worth $1 billion to help Lanka procure food, medicines and essential items. There was another LoC worth $500 million to help it purchase petroleum products. Also, Indian state-owned oil companies released large quantities of diesel to help Sri Lanka fight its ongoing power shortage.
UN Secretary-General will be kicking off his mediation mission to end the Moscow-Kiev conflict with a visit to Turkey's President on Monday ahead of his meetings with Presidents of and Volodymyr of .

In a brief note to correspondents on Saturday evening, the UN chief's spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said that Guterres will be "received" by Erdogan in Ankara.

has been the hub of diplomacy for and and consulting with Erdogan could help Guterres prepare for his meetings with Putin on Tuesday and with Zelensky on Thursday.

Because of Erdogan's good relations with Ukrainian and Russian leaders as well as his country's membership in the Western military alliance NATO, Ankara has taken the lead in mediation efforts and the representatives of the two countries have met in .

Before Guterres begins his round of diplomacy, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin are to visit Kiev on Sunday in a show of solidarity with Ukraine, Zelensky announced at a press conference on Saturday.

But as of Saturday night, the US was silent on their visit.

The renewed brutal attacks by on Ukraine, where it has been facing stiff resistance, have added urgency to UN diplomacy and Guterres cancelled his scheduled trip to Nigeria next week to take up the issue.

Guterres's call for an Easter ceasefire this weekend was rejected by Moscow. Some of the Orthodox Christian churches celebrate Easter on Sunday as they follow a separate calendar from the Western churches which observed the feast last Sunday.

Under-Secretary-General Martin Griffiths, who is charged by Guterres to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict, was scheduled to have travelled to last week but cancelled it after he tested positive for Covid.

Griffiths had earlier visited Moscow and Kiev.

In a separate announcement on Friday, Dujarric said that Guterres will "be received by" Putin and Zelensky in their countries and will have working meetings with their Foreign Ministers, Sergei Lavrov of Russia and Dmytro Kuleba of Ukraine.

The announcement did not say where the meetings with Zelensky and Kuleba will take place.

Guterres's personal diplomacy to end the conflict comes as the UN, powerless to act against the Russian invasion of Ukraine because of Moscow's veto right in the Security Council, faces a grave crisis of confidence.

The invasion is also a personal betrayal for Guterres and a misjudgement because he had said that a war was not likely till the conflict began on February 24.

About his agenda, Guterres's Associate Spokesperson Eri Kaneko told reporters on Friday: "He wants to discuss with the leadership, what steps can be taken right now in order to silence the guns in order to help the people and in order to allow the people who need to get out to get out and have safe passage."

The General Assembly has condemned the Russian invasion and demanded that Moscow end the conflict, but UN Charter does not allow it to enforce its decisions as the Security Council can.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed @arulouis)

--IANS

al/ksk/

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Latest news live updates: On the occasion of National Panchayati Raj Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Jammu and Kashmir today and address gram sabhas across the country. He will inaugurate and lay the foundation stone of multiple development initiatives worth over Rs 20,000 crore. The Prime Minister will visit Palli Panchayat in Samba district.

The sound of outgoing artillery and air raid sirens were heard Saturday in Sloviansk, a town in northern Donbas that had come under Russian attack the day before. Two servicemen were brought to a hospital from a nearby town, but one of them was mortally wounded and could not be saved. The Russian strike early Friday had damaged several buildings, including a school.



The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Africa reached 11,403,955, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said. The specialised healthcare agency of the African Union (AU) added that the death toll across the continent stands at 252,048 and some 10,781,861 patients have recovered from the disease so far as of Saturday evening, Xinhua news agency reported. South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya are among the countries with the most Covid-19 cases on the continent, said Africa CDC.
Papua New Guinea (PNG) will urge the to reduce the on coffee, which is 110 per cent, High Commissioner of the country to India, Paulias Korni, said on Sunday.

Papua New Guinea, an island nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, is known for producing one of the best quality coffees in the world.

"We will be requesting the to reduce the of PNG and sincerely hope double taxation (avoidance) agreement between the two countries is completed soon," the high commissioner said.

The two countries are working on a double taxation avoidance agreement.

Claiming that India is deprived of the flavour of PNG coffee, NRI businessman Sujoy Maitra said he wants to set up 300 exclusive outlets of the beverage in the country but the high is a hindrance.

I want to introduce Papua New Guinea in India in a big way. Import duty is now 110 per cent for which is a stumbling block. However, the country is working on this with India," Maitra said.

Reduction in duty will help 20 lakh farmers of Papua New Guinea, he said.

Though some channels sell PNG coffee in India, due to lack of experience zones, awareness about this is minimal among Indians, he said.

"I will set up at least 3-4 exclusive PNG coffee shops in Kolkata before expanding to 300 outlets gradually across the country in order to popularise the coffee in India. We are working on the brand of the coffee shop," said Maitra, who is also associated with the PNG government in framing the double taxation avoidance agreement with New Delhi.

The NRI entrepreneur said he also wants to establish a processing unit in West Bengal or Odisha to minimise the impact of the 110 per cent impact duty.

"As both green and roasted beans attract the same duty, we will be able to save a lot if we process the beans in India, Maitra said.

The price of green coffee beans is almost half of roasted beans, he said.

PNG coffee in this country will cost around Rs 3000-4000 per kg at the retail level, Maitra estimated once it rolls out from the proposed Indian processing unit.

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will ask US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin for more powerful weapons during an expected visit by the officials to Kyiv on Sunday, seeking to build the country's defences against the Russian invasion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country would overcome dark times, in an emotional address at Kyivs 1,000-year-old Saint Sophia Cathedral to mark Orthodox Easter as fighting in the east overshadowed the religious celebrations.

The trip by Blinken and Austin, announced earlier by Zelenskyy, would be the highest-level visit to by US officials since Russian President ordered the invasion of the country two months ago.





The White House has not confirmed any visit by Blinken and Austin. The State Department and Pentagon declined to comment.

We are inspired by the resilience of Orthodox Christians in in the face of President Putins brutal war of aggression, Blinken said on Twitter. We are continuing to support them and, today, we wish them and all celebrating Easter hope and a swift return to peace. After Ukrainian defence forced a Russian retreat from around Kyiv, Moscows assault is now focused on the eastern Donbas region and the south of the country. With a semblance of normal life returning to the capital, several countries have reopened embassies in recent days and some residents who fled the fighting returned for Easter.Pope Francis called for an Easter truce: Stop the attacks in order to help the exhausted population. Stop, he said.

Ukrainian refugees filled churches across central Europe.



More equipment

Ukrainian officials plan to tell Blinken and Austin of the immediate need for more weapons, including anti-missile systems, anti-aircraft systems, armoured vehicles and tanks, Zelenskyy aide Igor Zhovkva told NBC News on Sunday.

The and Nato allies have shown growing readiness to supply heavier equipment and more advanced weapons systems. Britain has promised to send military vehicles and is considering supplying British tanks to Poland to free up Warsaws Russian-designed T-72s for Ukraine.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said after talks by phone with Zelenskyy that Ankara was ready to assist in negotiations with Russia. Zelenskyy said he discussed with Erdogan the need for the immediate evacuation of civilians from the southern city of Mariupol, the site of biggest battle of the conflict.

Kyiv downbeat on UN chiefs meet with Putin

Igor Zhovkva, a senior aide to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said it was not a good idea for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to meet with Russias leader on Tuesday. Guterres will travel to Kyiv after the Putin meeting. On Saturday, Zelenskyy said Guterres should visit our towns where people were tortured and killed, and only after that find time for those esteemed in Moscow.

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Russia's forces have destroyed a terminal at a military airfield near Ukraine's Odessa, where foreign weapons were stored, said the Russian Defence Ministry.

"This afternoon, high-precision, long-range air-based missiles fired by the Russian Aerospace Forces disabled a terminal at a military airfield near Odessa, where a large batch of foreign weapons received from the US and European countries were stored," said Russian Defence Ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov on Saturday.

However, is continuing its special military operation in Ukraine, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Russian military has destroyed 141 aircraft and 110 helicopters, 264 anti-aircraft missile systems, 541 unmanned aerial vehicles, 2,479 tanks and other armoured combat vehicles, 278 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,081 field artillery and mortars, and 2,321 special military vehicles.

--IANS

int/khz/

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Several have received pending payments for shipments made to before February 24



-- the day Russia-Ukraine conflict began -- and Department of Financial Services is working with banks to facilitate clearance of remaining dues, a government official said.

Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) had shared with the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) in March that Indian have payments of about USD 400-500 million pending in .

DGFT had shared that information with Department of Financial Services (DFS). About 60 per cent of the have received their payments from Russian buyers and for the remaining, DFS is working to facilitate the payments, the official said.

Mumbai-based exporter and Chairman of Technocraft Industries, Sharda Kumar Saraf said some exporters have received their stuck payments but now it has stopped.

The government should immediately start rupee-rouble trade with to push exports, Saraf said.

Ludhiana-based Hand Tools Association President S C Ralhan too said that several exporters have received their dues as all banks are not under sanctions.

The government should take some decision on the matter immediately as it could hamper our exports and they should allow rupee-rouble trade, Ralhan said.

FIEO Vice President Khalid Khan said payments are coming in sectors including pharma, and food.

However, still exporters are struggling to get money from Russia. The RBI should give clear directions to the banks to accept payments from all the sectors, Khan said.

FIEO Director General Ajay Sahai said that while exporters are concerned about pending payments , they are not unduly worried about defaults happening as some mechanism will be found to receive back exports proceeds.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the West has slapped a slew of sanctions on Russia and has also isolated the country from the payment systems, which is impacting settling trade payments.

Major export items from India to Russia include pharmaceutical products, tea, electrical machinery and equipment, organic chemicals and vehicles.

In the past too, India had devised a mechanism to pay for imports from Iran, when sanctions were imposed on the Persian Gulf nation.

India's exports to Russia stood at USD 3.2 billion in 2021-22 as against USD 2.7 billion in 2020-21. Imports were at USD 8.7 billion last fiscal year as against USD 7 billion in 2020-21.

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Pakistan's new Prime Minister and Russian President have quietly exchanged letters to strengthen bilateral relations, a media report said on Sunday, amidst allegations by Imran Khan that his maiden visit to Moscow, much against Washington's wishes, led to his ouster.

The letters were exchanged after the election of Shehbaz as prime minister but both the sides kept development away from the media glare in what seemed to be a move aimed at avoiding any public attention, The Express Tribune newspaper reported.

A senior foreign office official confirmed to the newspaper that President Putin wrote a letter to the prime minister, congratulating him on his election.

The official, who requested not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Putin expressed his desire to deepen cooperation between the two countries.

A day after his appointment as Prime Minister, President Putin sent a congratulatory message to Sharif which was made public by the Kremlin Press Office.

Our countries share friendly and constructive relations. I hope that as Prime Minister you will seek to further promote closer multifaceted cooperation between and Pakistan, as well as partnership in the Afghan settlement and countering terrorism, it quoted Putin as saying on April 12.

Shehbaz wrote back to Putin thanking him for his felicitation message and expressed similar sentiments on bilateral ties between the two countries as well as cooperation on Afghanistan, The Express Tribune reported.

The exchange of letters took place as the former prime minister Khan is adamant he was ousted from power through an alleged US-backed vote of no-confidence since Americans did not like his visit to Moscow to meet President Putin on February 24, the day the Russian president ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

Khan has repeatedly said that the US did not want him to visit and the National Security Advisor of President Joe Biden called his National Security Advisor Moeed Yusuf, urging him to call of the prime minister's visit to Moscow.

On Saturday, Khan again alleged that Pakistan's former ambassador to the US Asad Majeed Khan held a meeting with senior American diplomat Donald Lu, where the latter used undiplomatic language.

"I will go a step forward and say that he (Donald Lu) was arrogant the Joe Biden administration official told our ambassador that Imran Khan will have to be removed through a no-confidence motion," he said, adding that the meeting took place before the no-trust motion was filed by the Opposition parties.

The Chairman of the Tehreek-e-Insaf party said that the US official told Pakistan's ambassador that everything would be forgiven if he was removed from office.

The US Department of State has repeatedly dismissed Khan's allegations that Washington plotted a regime change in Islamabad with the help of Pakistan's Opposition parties.

On Friday, US State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Jalina Porter said the US has been saying all along that there is "absolutely no truth to those rumours" as alleged by Khan. She also welcomed a statement from Pakistan's National Security on Friday which rejected Khan's claim about a "foreign conspiracy" to oust him.

Meanwhile, The Express Tribune report noted that the felicitation message by President Putin to Prime Minister Sharif suggested that the process of building a relationship between Pakistan and would continue under the new political dispensation.

Pakistan Foreign office officials said resetting ties with Russia was a decision taken by the state a long time back keeping in view the changing regional and alignments.

That process, officials said, would continue but without much fanfare for some time given the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

The Russian Embassy in Islamabad, using its Twitter handle, congratulated Shehbaz on April 12 and expressed the hope that ties between the two countries would grow under his government.

Unlike the previous Imran Khan's government, the new government will push for resetting ties with the West, particularly with the United States. Sources said that Pakistan's relationship with the West and the US was damaged because of the former prime minister's rhetorical statements, the report said.

Sharif would avoid such an approach rather work quietly to advance the country's foreign policy interests. The focus would also be on reaching out to the European Union, a major trading partner of Pakistan.

Pakistan's ties with Russia have moved past the bitter Cold War hostilities in recent years and the chill in the relations between Pakistan and the US has further pushed the country towards Russia and China.

The two countries are not just exploring options to deepen economic ties, but Russia is also keen to sell arms to Pakistan, something it avoided in the past because of India's opposition.

Pakistan and Russia have already been holding regular joint military exercises since 2016 in another sign of deepening ties between Moscow and Islamabad. They also share the same view on key regional and issues, including Afghanistan.

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Spanish authorities are pledging full transparency as they launch inquiries into allegations that the phones of dozens of supporters of Catalan independence were hacked with powerful and controversial spyware only sold to government agencies.

An internal probe by the country's intelligence agency, a special parliamentary commission to share its results, and a separate investigation by Spain's ombudsman will be arranged to show that central authorities in Madrid have nothing to hide," the minister for presidency and relations with parliament, Flix Bolaos, announced Sunday.

Bolaos also said the government remained committed to negotiations with separatists on the future of the restive northeastern region of Catalonia.

We want to recover trust by resorting to dialogue and to transparency, the minister said in Barcelona, following a meeting with the regional chief of the Catalan presidency, Laura Vilagr.

The government has a clean conscience and we have nothing to hide," Bolaos added.

Pere Aragons, a pro-independence left-wing politician leading Catalonia's government, said last week that it was putting on hold relations with Spain's national authorities after cybersecurity experts in Canada revealed massive political espionage.

Aragons accused Spain's intelligence agency, known as CNI in Spanish, of the alleged hacking.

Citizen Lab, an experts group linked to the University of Toronto, said traces of Pegasus and other spyware by two Israeli companies, Group and Candiru, were identified in devices of 65 people, including elected officials, activists, lawyers, European lawmakers and .

Most infiltration took place between 2017, when a banned referendum on Catalan independence caused a deep political crisis in Spain, and ended in mid-2020, when Citizen Lab revealed the first cases of the alleged espionage.

The Spanish government has not denied nor confirmed whether it uses Pegasus or other hard-to-detect spyware, saying that any surveillance is conducted under the supervision of judges.

Rounds of talks between the central government in Madrid and Catalan regional authorities have yielded some progress in solving some of the separatists' long-term grievances, but have not resolved the fundamental issues of Catalonia's status within .

Polling and recent elections show that the share of Catalans supporting independence grew since last decade's financial crisis, but have since 2017 remained divided, with majorities fluctuating recently between those in favor or against breaking away from .

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will appoint advisors to help with its debt restructuring in the next 20 days, Finance Minister Ali Sabry has said.

The Minister told local media that restructuring the country's unsustainable external debt is a major condition to obtain financial assistance from the Monetary Fund (IMF), reports Xinhua news agency.

Sabry said that the discussions he started with officials in Washington would end on Sunday, and that there are a lot more discussions to be held ahead.

Meanwhile, IMF's mission chief for Masahiro Nozaki welcomed the planned negotiations with creditors.

"The team welcomed the authorities' plan to engage in a collaborative dialogue with their creditors," he said.

--IANS

ksk/

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Thousands of Sri Lankan university students mobbed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa's home on Sunday demanding his resignation over the island nation's worsening . Thousands of Inter University Students Federation students were seen sloganeering outside the Prime Ministers Residence in Wijerama Mawatha. Dozens were demonstrating from the parapet and boundary walls of the official residence - in images similar to that of a seize. The agitators demanded both President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and resign. Facing off against rows of police holding riot shields, protesters tried to pull down the barricades preventing them from entering the residence. Some defaced the boundary walls with graffiti reading Go home, Rajapaksa! Thousands of demonstrators have hit the streets since April 9, as the government ran out of money for vital imports; prices of essential commodities have skyrocketed and there are acute shortages in fuel, medicines and electricity supply.

At least 10 of 26 people from sunken Japan tour boat dead

Rescuers said that 10 people who were retrieved on Sunday from the frigid sea and the rocky coast of a northern Japanese national park had died, a day after a tour boat with 26 aboard apparently sank in rough waters, triggering questions why it was allowed to sail. The search for the is still ongoing after the boat sent a distress call on Saturday afternoon saying it was sinking. The location, near the Kashuni Waterfall, is known as a difficult place to maneuver boats because of its rocky coastline and strong tide. There were two crew and 24 passengers on board. AP

Restructuring complete after 2 years: HNA Group

Bloomberg

HNA Group, the conglomerate that collapsed with billions of dollars of debt, has completed its restructuring work after a joint working group was set up more than two years ago to handle the task. All four restructuring plans related to HNA Group have been completed with court approvals, the conglomerate said on its official WeChat account. HNA was effectively seized in February 2020 by the provincial government of Hainan, after piling up one of Chinas biggest corporate leverage loads. The firm reached agreement with creditors in October on a debt-restructuring plan.

Hunt on for Nigeria refinery owner after blasts kill 100
Turkey's top diplomat says Ankara has closed the Turkish airspace to Russian civilian and military between Russia and Syria.

Mevlut Cavusoglu told a group of Turkish journalists during a visit to Uruguay that Russia had permission to use the Turkish airspace for to Syria until April.

But Haberturk television reported that Cavusoglu said Saturday that he asked Moscow to stop using the airspace during a visit there in March, and that Moscow agreed to the Turkish request.

Cavusoglu did not elaborate and it was not clear if the move aimed to prevent the possible transfer of Syrian fighters to Ukraine.

NATO-member has been trying to balance its close relations with Moscow and Kyiv and has positioned itself as a mediator between the two. It has not joined sanctions against Russia but has closed the straits at the entrance of the Black Sea to some Russian warships.

The country has hosted a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers as well as talks between the two countries' negotiating teams.

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The UK government will send more military aid in the form of much-needed defence equipment to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, Prime Minister told Ukrainian President .

In one of many regular phone calls between the two leaders on Saturday, Johnson said Britain would provide more mobility vehicles, drones and anti-tank weapons as he condemned ongoing attacks by Russian forces against civilian targets, including in Mariupol, Odessa and Lviv.

He also updated Zelensky on new UK sanctions imposed against members of the Russian military and confirmed that the UK would be reopening its embassy in Kyiv next week as a show of support and solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

The Prime Minister confirmed that the UK is providing more defensive military aid, including protected mobility vehicles, drones and anti-tank weapons. President Zelenskyy thanked the Prime Minister for the training of Ukrainian military personnel currently taking place in the UK, a spokesperson for 10 Downing Street said in a readout of the call.

The Prime Minister said that Russia would be held to account for its actions and that the UK government was helping collect evidence of war crimes. He also updated the President on new UK sanctions designations against members of the Russian military and confirmed that the UK would be reopening its embassy in Kyiv next week, demonstrating our support and solidarity with the Ukrainian people, the spokesperson said.

President Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin are both due to meet United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the coming week.

Ahead of planned meetings, Johnson and Zelensky agreed on the importance of establishing a ceasefire and humanitarian corridor to allow civilians to leave Mariupol.

The Prime Minister said that Russia would be held to account for its actions and that the UK government was helping collect evidence of war crimes, Downing Street said.

Both leaders discussed how the UK will work with partners to develop a long-term security solution for Ukraine and the Prime Minister noted the discussions taking place with partners to provide further financial support, including at the G7 Finance Ministers' meeting last Wednesday, the statement added.

Zelensky updated Johnson on the situation in the Donbas, where Russia is now seen concentrating its military efforts in a conflict that broke out in February.

In a press conference in a Kyiv metro station later on Saturday, Zelensky said he was "satisfied" with the level of military support coming from the UK.

"We want more than we're being given, but we're satisfied," he told reporters.

"We cannot refuse or reject anything during the war from the biggest military aid, which is coming from the United States and the United Kingdom. There are many other friends in Europe, but I'm talking about volumes of help and I'm grateful for it," he said.

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In a phone conversation with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, UK Prime Minister said that his country is set to provide the war-torn nation with more military equipment.

In a statement, the Downing Street said that during the conversation between the two leaders on Saturday, Johnson told Zelensky more armoured vehicles, drones and anti-tank weapons would be sent to Ukraine, reports the BBC.

The Prime Minister also confirmed that the UK will reopen its embassy in Kive next week, a move first announced on Friday.

According to a Downing Street, this was a demonstration of "our support and solidarity with the Ukrainian people".

Zelenksy also apprised Johnson on the situation in the Donbas, where Russia has been concentrating its military efforts in recent days, while b leaders condemned ongoing attacks by Russian forces against civilian targets, including in Mariupol, Odessa and Lviv.

The Downing Street said Johnson told Zelensky that Russia would be held to account for its actions and that the UK government was helping to collect evidence of war crimes.

He also updated the President on new UK sanctions against members of the Russian military.

Zelensky also thanked the Prime Minister for the training of more than 20 Ukrainian troops who arrived in the UK last week, the BBC reported.

According to the British government, the Ukrainian soldiers receiving training in the UK are being instructed on how to use 120 armoured vehicles that will be supplied to the resistance effort against Moscow.

--IANS

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Russian forces in tried to storm a steel plant housing soldiers and civilians in the southern city of Mariupol on Saturday in an attempt to crush the last pocket of resistance in a place of deep symbolic and strategic value to Moscow, Ukrainian officials said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, announced he would meet Sunday in his nation's capital with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin. The White House declined to comment.

Speaking at a news conference, Zelenskyy gave little detail about logistics of the encounter but said he expected concrete results not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons.

It would be the first high-level US trip to Kyiv since the war began February 24. While visiting Poland in March, Blinken stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil to meet with the country's foreign minister.

Zelenskyy's last face-to-face meeting with a US leader was February 19 with Vice President Kamala Harris.

In attacks on the eve of Orthodox Easter, Russian forces pounded cities and towns in southern and eastern .

A 3-month-old baby was among eight people killed when fired cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa, officials said. Zelenskyy said 18 more were wounded.

The war started when this baby was one month old. Can you imagine what is happening? Zelenskyy said. They are just bastards. ... I don't have any other words for it, just bastards.

The Ukrainian military said Saturday it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.

The command post was hit on Friday, killing two generals and critically wounding another, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said in a statement. The Russian military did not comment on the claim, which could not be confirmed.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a Zelenskyy adviser, said in an online interview that 50 senior Russian officers were in the command center when it was attacked.

The fate of the Ukrainians in the sprawling and besieged seaside steel mill in Mariupol, where says its forces have taken the rest of the city, wasn't immediately clear.

Earlier Saturday, a Ukrainian military unit released a video reportedly taken two days earlier in which women and children holed up underground, some for as long as two months, said they longed to see the sun.

We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe in fresh air, one woman in the video said.

You have simply no idea what it means for us to simply eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, it is already happiness.

said it took control of several villages elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region and destroyed 11 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including three artillery warehouses. Russian attacks also struck populated areas.

Associated Press journalists observed shelling in residential areas of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city; regional Gov. Oleh Sinehubov said three people were killed. In the Luhansk area of the Donbas, Gov. Serhiy Haidai said six people died during the shelling of a village, Gorskoi.

In Sloviansk, a town in northern Donbas, the AP witnessed two soldiers arriving at a hospital, one of them mortally wounded.

Sitting in a wheelchair outside her damaged Sloviansk apartment, Anna Direnskaya, 70, said, I want peace."



One of many native Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, Direnskaya said she wishes Russians would understand that Ukrainians are not bad people and that there should be no enmity between them.

"Why is this happening?" she said. I don't know.

While British officials said Russian forces had not gained significant new ground, Ukrainian officials announced a nationwide curfew ahead of Easter Sunday, a sign of the war's disruption and threat to the entire country.

Mariupol has been a key Russian objective and has taken on outsize importance in the war.

Completing its capture would give Russia its biggest victory yet, after a nearly two-month siege reduced much of the city to a smoking ruin.

It would deprive Ukrainian of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere and establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014. Russia-backed separatists control parts of the Donbas.

An adviser to Ukraine's presidential office, Oleksiy Arestovych, said Russian forces resumed airstrikes on the Azovstal plant and were also trying to storm it, in an apparent reversal of tactics. Two days earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had given an order not to send troops in but instead to blockade the plant.

Ukrainian officials have estimated that about 2,000 of their troops are inside the plant along with civilians sheltering in its underground tunnels.

Earlier Saturday, the Azov Regiment of Ukraine's National Guard, which has members holed up in the plant, released the video of about two dozen women and children.

Its contents could not be independently verified. But if authentic, it would be the first video testimony of what life has been like for civilians trapped underground there.

The video shows soldiers giving sweets to children who respond with fist-bumps. One young girl says she and her relatives haven't seen neither the sky nor the sun since they left home February 27.

The regiment's deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, told the AP the video was shot Thursday. The Azov Regiment has its roots in the Azov Battalion, which was formed by far-right activists in 2014 at the start of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine and has elicited criticism for some of its tactics.

More than 100,000 people down from a prewar population of about 430,000 are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate that over 20,000 civilians have been killed in the city.

Yet another attempt to evacuate women, children and older adults from Mariupol failed Saturday. Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol's mayor, said Russian forces did not allow Ukrainian-organized buses to take residents to Zaporizhzhia, a city 227 kilometers (141 miles) to the northwest.

At 11 o'clock, at least 200 Mariupol residents gathered near the Port City shopping center, waiting for evacuation, Andryushchenko posted on the Telegram messaging app. The Russian military drove up to the Mariupol residents and ordered them to disperse, because now there will be shelling.

At the same time, he said, Russian buses assembled about 200 meters (yards) away. Residents who boarded those were told they were being taken to separatist-occupied territory and not allowed to disembark, Andryushchenko said. His account could not be independently verified.

In the attack on Odesa, Russian troops fired at least six missiles, according to Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister.

Residents of the city heard explosions in different areas, Gerashchenko said via Telegram. Residential buildings were hit. It is already known about one victim. He burned in his car in a courtyard of one of the buildings.

Zelenskyy's news conference was held in a Kyiv subway station, where he paused at one point as a train noisily passed through. The subway system, which includes the world's deepest station, attracted widespread attention early in the war when hordes of people took shelter there.

Regarding the expected visit Sunday by US officials, Zelenskyy said: I believe that we will be able to get agreements from the United States or part of that package on arming Ukraine which we agreed on earlier. Besides, we have strategic questions about security guarantees, which it is time to discuss in detail, because the United States will be one of those leaders of security countries for our state.

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United Nations Secretary-General will pay a visit to on Monday before having talks in Moscow and Kiev as part of efforts to resolve the conflict between and .

The secretary-general will have a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the capital Ankara, Turkey's Foreign Ministry said on Sunday.

Guterres will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on April 26 and 28 respectively, a UN spokesman said Friday.

Guterres will visit Moscow on April 26 and have "a working meeting and lunch" with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for Guterres.

During his trip to Ukraine, Guterres will also have a working meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and meet with staff of UN agencies to discuss the scaling up of humanitarian assistance to Ukrainian people, Dujarric said.

has been playing a mediator role to end the conflict between and as Ankara has close ties with both countries. In March, hosted foreign ministers of and Russia, as well as a meeting between the negotiation teams of the two countries.

(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.)
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has expressed concerns over the series of attacks that led to the deaths of over 50 boys and girls, calling it a "grave rights violations" in .

"In one week alone, more than 50 girls and boys have lost their lives in a series of heinous grave rights violations in Afghanistan," Paloma Escudero, Director for Global Communication and Advocacy, was quoted by Tolo News as saying.

The UN agency also highlighted the delay in reopening of schools for girl students in saying, "It's been one month since Afghanistan's de facto authorities barred teenage girls from returning to school."

The regime in had barred girls from attending school over grade six after issuing a decree last month.

"It is our right to go back to school. We cannot take this pain anymore," quoted Mariya a 16-year-old as saying.

"We are doing all we can to support education #ForEveryChild in #Afghanistan. @UNICEFis providing: 2 months emergency cash support for teachers School bags & supplies for 1st graders Millions of textbooks But more is needed. We won't give up on the children who need us," informed in a tweet.

Meanwhile, the Taliban's Ministry of Education said that the schools for girls in grades 7-12 will be reopened in the near future.

"UNICEF promised to help the Ministry of Education in providing salaries for teachers. Also, the money will flow into accounts which will prevent the existence of fake teachers," Aziz Ahmad Riyan, a spokesperson was quoted as saying.

"Depriving girls from education and closing their schools have affected the government as well because it has been working on how to reopen the schools, but they are yet to find a solution. We ask the Islamic Emirate to reopen the schools for girls as soon as possible," Omarzada, a teacher said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The work of the Russian Embassy in is being blocked by US authorities, according to Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov on Sunday.

"In fact, the embassy is facing a blockade from US government organizations, Bank of America closed the accounts of two our consulates general in Houston and New York. We received threats by phone and mail ... Even the exit from the embassy was blocked for some time," Antonov said, reported Sputnik News Agency.

The US, along with the G7 nations and (EU) has imposed severe and immediate economic sanctions on for its actions in .

Earlier on Thursday, US Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh said that the US is currently not in discussions with about the prospect of lifting Western sanctions imposed on Moscow.

"We have channels of communication that are still open, but we're not at the point at which we're talking about sanctions relief," Singh said during a virtual panel discussion with the Bretton Woods Committee, as per Sputnik.

Singh said Western sanctions will have profound impact on Russia's supply chains and its productive capacity over time, including its military-industrial complex.

Moreover, US State Department is contemplating at designating as a state sponsor of terrorism, State Department spokesperson Ned Price had said.

"We're taking a close look at the facts. We're taking a close look at the law," Price said on Monday in response to a question about potentially designating Russia. "Whether it is this authority, whether it's any other authority available to us under the law, we will apply it if it's effective and appropriate."

Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged US President Joe Biden to impose the designation on Russia that would impose some of the most significant sanctions at the Biden administration's disposal, Sputnik News Agency said citing media reports.

Notably, US President Joe Biden has no plans to visit Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as per White House.

(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.)
The demand for varieties like Sharbati and Kathia grown in has shot up in the international market amid short supply from Russia and Ukraine due to the ongoing war, an official said.

State Agricultural Marketing Board's (MPSAMB) Managing Director Vikas Narwal said that the government procurement of dipped by 30 per cent due to a sharp rise in prices in the open market.

"There is a steep rise in export due to Russia-Ukraine crisis and mandis were seeing huge influx of this foodgrain," he said.

Narwal said that 1.76 lakh tonnes of wheat was exported from the state during the last marketing season, whereas about 2.5 lakh tonnes of wheat has been exported in the last one month of this marketing season alone. Two more months are still left for this marketing season to end, he added.

He said that traders were buying Sharbati and Kathia (durum) wheat from farmers and mainly exporting to Bangladesh, Vietnam, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

"This time around, the importers from Africa are also evincing keen interest in MP's wheat. In the coming days, wheat from might be exported to Egypt, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Tanzania also," he added.

He said that wheat was sown on 95.51 lakh hectares area in the state during 2021-22 Rabi season adding that its production is expected to reach 346.70 lakh tonnes.

The Rabi crops are sown around mid-November, preferably after the monsoon rains are over, and harvesting begins in April and May.

"This time around, the traders are knocking at the doors of farmers in pursuit of good quality wheat. They are striking deals instantly with the farmers by purchasing Sharbati wheat at a price of Rs 2,200 to Rs 2,500 per quintal, Banesingh Chouhan, a farmer of Lohari Bujgar village in Dhar district, told PTI on Sunday.

I have not seen such a race among the traders to procure wheat earlier, he added.

Meanwhile, good-quality wheat is being bought far above Rs 2,015 quintal minimum support price in MP bringing good tidings for the farmers.

Russia and Ukraine figure in the list of top exporters of wheat but supplies were hit after the former attacked the latter. As a result of this, many countries are looking at India and other countries for the supply of wheat.

The sanction of the west on Russia too has lessened its exports.

(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.)
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Senior leader on Sunday said they will complain to Union home secretary against the Mumbai police's "failure" to protect former party MP Kirit Somaiya, who enjoys 'Z' category security.

On Saturday night, some Shiv Sena supporters allegedly hurled footwear and water bottles at Somaiya's SUV when he was leaving Khar police station in Mumbai.

Somaiya had gone to the police station to meet arrested independent MP Navneet Rana and her MLA husband Ravi Rana, whose earlier call for chanting Hanuman Chalisa outside Chief Minister and Sena president Uddhav Thackeray's residence 'Matoshree' had angered the Sena cadres.

The leader had tweeted that he was injured in the attack by "Shiv Sena goons".

Talking to reporters on Sunday, Fadnavis said, We will take up with the Union home secretary the issue of Mumbai police's failure to protect Somaiya, who enjoys 'Z' category security cover. Either the indirectly supported the act (of attack on Somaiya's car) or they have become inefficient to take any step against the attackers.

The current performance of is highly embarrassing, the leader of opposition in the state Assembly claimed.

It is gross misconduct on part of police as Somaiya had informed the police that he may come under attack at Khar police station. Surprisingly, the police have not registered any FIR in this case, Fadnavis said.

Let me make it very clear that we are not afraid of such attacks. We are capable of tit for tat, the former state chief minister said.

Fadnavis also said he was surprised the way MLA Ravi Rana and his MP wife Navneet Rana were treated.

"She (Navneet Rana) was kept in a lock-up at night (after arrest)...looks like the government is afraid of a woman, the leader said.

Union minister Raosaheb Danve also hit out at the Shiv Sena-led government, claiming there was no law and order in the state.

Talking to reporters in Aurangabad, the BJP leader said, "Earlier, people used to give the example of Maharashtra police on maintenance of law and order. But, today, there is no law and order left here. is being done by keeping police at the forefront. Residents of the state will take revenge for this."



"Our leaders are being attacked in the state. Offences are being registered against those who are attacked, but no action is being taken against the attackers," Danve claimed.

Raising the issue of Shiv Sena's protest outside the Mumbai-based home of MP Navneet Rana and her husband, Danve said they do not support agitation at anyone's residence.

The state government should have sent its representative to talk to Ranas, but the latter were arrested (by Mumbai police) on Saturday, he said.

"The police department is earning a bad name and they should understand this," the BJP leader said.

Danve also said they would not demand presidential rule in Maharashtra.

The state government should take steps to improve law and order, he added.

(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.)
Dried-out sections of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal are being refilled, meaning the entire waterway is connected for the first time in a century. The Grand Canal, which is more than 1,700 kilometers long, runs through six provincial-level regions and serves as an important transportation artery. With a history of more than 2,500 years, it has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2014

May 09, 2022 07:10 PM
Tatiana was born and raised in a family of teachers in Kherson, Ukraine where her father taught Fine Art. Raised in the special light of this port city, she has a passion for seascapes. As a young adult, she left to study art in St. Petersburg, where she learned watercolour, oil and engraving techniques. Back in her native country, she completed her university education at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Odessa. In 1993, she was awarded the title of professor of art education and higher education. She exhibited for the first time in Kiev in 1994. After the fall of the Soviet Union, she went to live in Argentina. She moved to Buenos Aires in 1995 and earned the title of artist at the San Telmo Art Fair, organized by the Museo de la Ciudad. She continued her graduate studies at the Ernesto Carcova School of Fine Arts, under the direction of Julio Raccioppi. A professional painter, she now lives and works in the Catalan city of Manresa, Spain.

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Photo: The Canadian Press Howard Breen, of Nanaimo, shown in this undated handout image, says he has been on a hunger strike for 23 days and won't stop protesting against old-growth logging until B.C.'s forests minister agrees to a public meeting. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Save Old Growth

A 68-year-old activist says "death-watch monitors" were ensuring his safety on the 23rd day of a hunger strike over old-growth logging practices in British Columbia.

Howard Breen said Saturday that he stopped drinking liquids two days earlier in a bid to pressure the province to stop all old-growth logging due to the climate crisis and that he won't end his protest until the forests minister agrees to a public meeting.

Breen says Katrine Conroy called him and a fellow hunger striker on Friday, but refused to meet with them and other members of a group called Save Old Growth.

"It was very clear that she had no interest in a public, recordable meeting on Zoom with her chief forester, deputy minister or whoever else she wanted to bring to it. And, of course, we would have brought our climate and forests experts," Breen said from his home in Nanaimo.

"I hung up on the minister because she was just giving me this typical line," he said. "With the urgency that the moment requires there was no time, really, to be wasted further discussing something that was prepared to meet us halfway on."

Breen said his two daughters are nurses and checking in on him while he maintains contact with a family doctor in Burnaby.

"Our death-watch monitors watch me while I'm sleeping and monitor me during the day if I go into unconsciousness or have a seizure or begin to hallucinate. They will alert the medical team that's watching me."

Conroy said she had "meaningful conversations" with Breen and fellow hunger striker Brent Eichler.

"I conveyed my distress for their well-being while listening directly to their concerns. I urged them to protect their health as we continue the important work to protect old-growth forests," she said in an emailed statement from the Forests Ministry.

Breen called the conversation "polite," but said other action taken by Save Old Growth, including recent blockades of bridges and major roads, points to the seriousness of the "climate emergency" linked to logging.

However, he denied some commuters were angry about the group's tactics, saying there is widespread support for those participating in various forms of protest while risking arrest. Two people were taken into custody last week after allegedly chaining themselves to a 227-kilogram barrel placed in the middle of the Trans-Canada Highway on Vancouver Island.

They want the B.C. government to stop all old-growth logging in the province.

Members of Save Old Growth are among the more than 1,000 people who have been arrested in the Ferry Creek watershed northwest of Victoria for allegedly violating an injunction against blockades.

B.C. Supreme Court has heard about 400 of them were charged with criminal contempt.

Breen said the RCMP arrested him elsewhere for other protests and that he is currently facing 12 charges, including for three times when he glued his hands to logs.

The province appointed an independent, two-person panel in 2019 to review old-growth policies and is also consulting with the public.

Conroy announced earlier this month that B.C. was working with First Nations to defer logging across more than a million hectares of old-growth forests at risk of permanent loss, an area greater than 4,100 Stanley Parks.
Photo: Citizen file photo CrossRoads Brewing co-owners Daryl Leiski, left, and Bjorn Butow stand in front of their downtown restaurant/brew pub at 505 George St.

The owner of a Prince George restaurant/brew pub says he will continue to require his customers to show proof of vaccination against the coronavirus or be denied entry to the downtown establishment.

CrossRoads Brewing co-owner Daryl Leiski, a medical doctor who also owns the Salveo Medical Clinic, decided to continue enforcing the passport requirement after provincial health restrictions were lifted April 8 to offer another layer of protection for his customers at his restaurant and support his health care colleagues and patients at the hospital.

For me its all about medicine and Ive got my other hat on because Im a doc, and the first thing we have to do is protect the hospital and the population, said Leiski, who worked 25 years as an emergency room doctor at UHNBC.

People with COVID, people who are vaccinated, still pass it around but lets say Im triple-vaccinated, if I get COVID theres little likelihood Im going to end up in the hospital. But if someone is unvaccinated and gets COVID theyre likely to end up in the hospital, and then what happens is this trickle-down thing and the hospitals full of unvaccinated patients. Then when it comes time for you or me or mom and dad who needs ICU with a car crash or heart attack and the hospital is jammed full of unvaccinated COVID (patients), it just affects the whole community. Thats kind of why we still have the passport.

The revised order dropped the requirement for people visiting restaurants, bars and other indoor spaces to show proof of vaccination and wear a mask.

Leiski said his customers at the restaurant fully support the stand CrossRoads is taking to keep the vaccine passport policy in place. A notice about a protest rally planned for Friday evening was posted Tuesday on social media channels, but the rally fizzled when only four vehicles joined a vehicle parade which passed by CrossRoads on the way from the rally staging area at the Treasure Cove Casino parking lot.

Weve had our busiest week because people who saw the negative comments and also support CrossRoads, theyve been coming out, he said. Theres a lot of people that are happy that they still have a safe place to go. There are some immunocompromised people out there that still dont feel comfortable going out and knowing that everyone in the restaurant, including my staff, are all vaccinated gives another layer of safety to some people in the community that want to continue with vaccine passports.

As the owner of a private business, Leiski says its well within his right to refuse to serve anybody who is not vaccinated without being discriminatory, much like the commonly accepted no shoes, no shirt, no service, policy. The day the passport order was rescinded, a sign was posted at CrossRoads to inform patrons the previous order would remain in effect indefinitely.

Every business can decide or limit who has access to their business in a non-discriminatory way. I think the anti-vaccers or rally people are feeling that its discrimination and choice, said Leiski. I am happy there are people passionate enough to go out and rally and support choice, but on the other hand they have to respect everybodys choice. So you cant pick and choose freedom of choice, and if those people dont make the same choice you make, it doesnt make your choice less important.

I respect their right to protest and I respect our right to restrict access, he said.

Despite rescinding of heath orders across Canada, Leiski says coronavirus remains a threat to public health and he said the number of infections in B.C. is rising.

Provincewide were up 34 per cent over last week and thats hospitalizations, thats not reporting (the number of cases), he said. We never did report self-tests so we dont really know what the prevalence is in the population right now but you can only work backwards from hospitalizations.

There are a few people who are vaccinated who end up in the hospital but thats a rarity. If youre unvaccinated youre nine times more likely to end up in hospital than you are if youre vaccinated against COVID and youre 16 times more likely to end up in ICU or dying once youre in the hospital. Its not an insignificant number.

Leiski and his colleagues at the walk-in clinic are noticing an uptick in COVID cases.

Ive never had more COVID-positive patients in the clinic in the entire two years than Ive had in this last two weeks, Leiski said. Were seeing four or five a day that are positive and we saw four or five a week at the worst part of the pandemic. Theyre mostly vaccinated, but youre still sick and you still miss work and its a toll on the economy, but theyre not as sick.

We havent decided how long were going to keep that passport requirement, its going to be a week-to-week thing, watching the hospital and watching the numbers and just making sure our ICU isnt filling up with COVID patients again.

From CrossRoads, the rally protesters had planned to go to Lambda Cabaret at 1177 Third Ave., to show their support for the clubs Freedom Night and raise money for Lambda owner Linda Wolf and her court battle with the province. On March 15 a B.C. Supreme Court judge issued a court injunction closure to Lambda for violating provincial health orders related to the pandemic. That order remained in place until April 8, when B.C. lifted the health order requiring proof of vaccination and mandatory mask-wearing.

Lambda opened in February, in defiance of the provinces requirement for liquor-primary establishments to remain closed, citing that its right to non-enforcement of the order was protected legislation that led to the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act. On Feb. 16 the province eased its restriction on bars to allow them to open, provided they obtain proof of vaccination from patrons and require them to wear masks. Lambda was served with a closure order from health authorities on Feb. 9 which was rescinded eight days later when the new health orders took effect, but another was issued two days later when Northern Health inspectors observed the downtown bar admitting patrons without requesting proof of vaccination. The inspectors also noted Lambda failed to post signs to show customers that vaccine proof and masks were required.

Lambda re-opened on April 8.
Photo: The Canadian Press B.C. Liberal Party Leader Kevin Falcon during a press conference at legislature in Victoria, Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022.

A byelection that could put new British Columbia Liberal leader Kevin Falcon back in the province's legislature is a race about the past and future, say both the candidates and political experts.

Voters in the upscale Vancouver-Quilchena riding, previously held by two former BC Liberal leaders, will choose a new member on April 30.

Falcon, 59, is a former cabinet minister who was elected party leader in February after more than a decade away from B.C. politics.

He said he aimed to lead an Opposition that would hold the New Democrat government to account for failures on affordability, housing, and the overdose crisis.

His main rival is first-time NDP candidate Jeanette Ashe, a political scientist who is married to Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart.

She said her campaign focused on reminding voters about Falcon's past as a minister in governments that slashed social programs.

NDP cabinet ministers, including Finance Minister Selina Robinson, have campaigned with Ashe to tell voters that Falcon presided over cuts to programs for women and families and he should be denied a return to the legislature.

The question for voters is whether they define Falcon as a politician carrying yesterday's baggage, or as a new leader who can turn things around for the Opposition in the 2024 provincial election, after two consecutive defeats, said Prof. Stewart Prest, a Simon Fraser University political scientist.

"He has a very long track record, and we know the NDP is losing no time trying to pick at it," said Prest, who said he considers Falcon the front-runner.

"This is a time to try and define him a little bit and to try and find the kinds of attacks that may work well," he said in an interview.

"We may think of this as something of a dress rehearsal for what the NDP will say and do and what Mr. Falcon may say and do in the election down the road."

Vancouver-Quilchena has been a safe seat for the BC Liberals. It was previously held by former party leaders Andrew Wilkinson and Gordon Campbell.

Wilkinson, who quit as party leader after the Oct. 2020 provincial election, was re-elected in the riding with 56 per cent of the vote. He announced his retirement as an MLA last February, paving the way for Falcon to run in Vancouver-Quilchena.

The three other candidates in the byelection are Wendy Hayko of the B.C. Green Party; Dallas Brodie, Conservative; and Sandra Filosof-Schipper, Libertarian.

Hayko, an emergency management expert and driving instructor, said she was concerned about housing for young people and government inaction on climate change.

Brodie, a lawyer and former broadcaster, said she lived in the riding and was looking to open a clothing boutique business.

Filosof-Schipper, who ran as the Libertarian candidate in Vancouver-Fairview in 2020, said she would advocate for affordable housing, health care and forestry initiatives.

Falcon said the NDP was campaigning on personal attacks to deflect attention from a failed record on housing affordability and the overdose crisis.

"I care a lot about people, but I also care a lot about results," he said in an interview.

"The fact they want to pivot away from their own record is no surprise to me. I will keep focused on their record and their failures as a government to achieve any positive results in any metric you want to use."

Falcon, who held a seat in Surrey for three terms before deciding not to run in the 2013 election, said he left politics to spend more time with his young family. He also worked in the private sector with a Vancouver investment and property development firm.

He held a number of portfolios after first being elected in 2001, including transportation, health, finance and was the deputy premier. Falcon finished second in the 2011 leadership contest to Christy Clark, who served as premier until the party lost power.

Vancouver-Quilchena is one of the most well-off constituencies in the province, but Falcon said its voters told him that unaffordability, especially for home prices and rent, was a major concern.

He said most people in the riding want their children and grandchild to one day be able to afford to live in the city.

"That's not happening under NDP policies."

Ashe, who chairs the political science department at Douglas College, said she decided to enter the byelection at the urging of her students, as well as her husband, Mayor Stewart.

Falcon's election as Liberal leader also convinced her to run, she said.

"I really love this city and I love this province, and when I heard Kevin Falcon was elected by the B.C. Liberals as the next leader, I was actually really aghast," she said in an interview.

"I couldn't believe they chose him. He was part of a government that made such deep, devastating cuts that affected our province and still has this lingering effect."

Ashe said she wanted to stress to voters that Falcon had not changed.

"It's up to them who they vote for," she said. "I hope they vote for me, but I want them to look back to the years and remember who Kevin Falcon was and what he was in it for, for himself and (real estate) speculators."

Former Liberal cabinet minister Mary Polak said Falcon's presence would be felt by the NDP and his own party caucus if he won the byelection.

"He will be focused," she said. "There will be tasks to complete. and he will expect them completed. He's no slouch when it comes to putting in front of his caucus the goals they need to reach."

The dynamic in the legislature between the B.C. Liberals and the NDP and Falcon and Premier John Horgan would heat up if Falcon returned, said Polak.

"If they want to fight Kevin Falcon successfully, they are going to have to do better than trying to dredge up the past," she said. "They are going to have to look at what he's got on his platform for the future."
A man on Shallowford Road told police he wanted to report his vehicle stolen. He said the vehicle was taken by a woman he named. The man said she took the day before around 4 p.m. The man had tried to report the same thing approximately one year ago and officers did not report the vehicle as stolen because the woman is his wife. The man told police that it turns out his wife had been married to another man prior to marrying him, and she had not properly divorced that man, invalidating their marriage. He said she had no permission to drive the vehicle. However, when police ran the vehicle information, the wife showed up as the registered owner. Police informed him they could not report the car as stolen. The man was very concerned about having liability if his wife was in an accident because he said her license is revoked for DUI and he said he believes she is driving the vehicle drunk. He said he believes that she has the vehicle in the Atlanta area.

* * *

An officer was flagged down by a woman at S. Willow Street/McCallie Avenue who said she needed help. When asked what she needed help with, she said she had just gotten out of the hospital and her ankle hurt. She then said she needed shoes and a ride to the shelter. The officer told her that he did not have any shoes to give her, but that he could give her a ride to the shelter on E. 11th Street. The woman accepted the ride and was dropped off outside the shelter without incident.

* * *

A Walden security guard at EPB, 1350 E. 8th St., told police that at 5:36 a.m. a silver car drove into the lot. He said at 5:40 a.m. a white van drove into the lot. He said then someone walked to an EPB van, then walked back to the white van and drove off. No tags were obtained and security doesn't know if anything was taken.

* * *

A man on Vine Street told police that around 8:15 a.m. his wife discovered that his vehicle had been entered and a door and the trunk lid were open, but there was no damage. He said he last saw it there around 6 p.m. the night before and it was possibly left unlocked, but he's not sure. Also, he's not sure if there are cameras around there.

* * *



Police spoke with a couple in a single-car accident on Wilcox Boulevard. The man said he was driving and going west on Wilcox Boulevard when his tire came off. He said he didn't hit anything and he had called a tow truck.

* * *



Police were on scene of a motor vehicle crash at 2900 Wilcox Boulevard when a man asked for a ride to get gas. Police identified the man, ran him through NCIC and found he had no active

warrants. Police gave the man a ride to his sister's house on Roanoke Avenue to get a gas can. He was then given a ride to the Fast Stop, 2285 Wilcox Blvd., and then back to his vehicle at 2900 Wilcox Blvd. The man was able to get his vehicle running and left without further assistance.

* * *

A man on Bailey Avenue contacted police about a letter that was sent to him by an unknown sender who used a candidate's name and address as the return address. The letter stated a request/opinion from a concerned voter and nothing more. The man wanted to know if this could be identity theft, which the officer explained it was not. The man did consult a sergeant to make sure the officer's findings were correct.

* * *

A woman told police that while her car was parked in the parking lot of Walmart, 490 Greenway View Dr., someone entered her unlocked Chrysler Town & Country and stole the following: $23 cash and a cellular phone (valued at $100). No suspect information is available.

* * *

A manager at the Walgreens, 110 N. Market St., told police marijuana was found on the store floor. Police collected the marijuana and transported it to Property Division for disposal.

* * *



Police observed a black Nissan traveling south on Chestnut St. The Nissan then turned into Southside Social, 1818 Chestnut St. Police attempted to make a traffic stop in the

parking lot, but the vehicle fled at a high rate of speed heading north on Chestnut Street. Police were unable to identify the driver due to the tint being so dark.

* * *

A woman on Hamill Road told police her son-in-law was continuing to bother her. When I asked what he was doing, she said he had dug a hole and filled it back up.

* * *

Police were called by the alarm company for Dollar General, 4211 Rossville Blvd., who said a man was banging on the front doors. Police were informed there was one woman employee in the store. Police found the man walking in the parking lot, away from the store. They identified him and he told police he believed the store was open and he must have the incorrect time on his watch. Police told him to leave the property until the store opens. The man did so without incident.
Duggar family followers still await sentencing following Josh Duggars guilty verdict. In the meantime, all eyes remain on Josh Duggars wife, Anna Duggar. Anna and Josh have seven children together, and the Duggars choose to homeschool their kids. Unfortunately for Anna, she might have trouble homeschooling after Josh returns from prison.

How many children do Josh Duggar and Anna Duggar have?

Anna Duggar and Josh Duggar | Kris Connor/Getty Images

Josh Duggar and Anna Duggar have seven children, with the most recent born before Joshs trial. Like Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, the couple believes in having as many children as God calls them to have, meaning they forego birth control. Jim Bob and Michelle also believed this, which resulted in the 19 Duggar children. It seemed like Anna and Josh headed toward this same path.

Meet little Madyson Lily Duggar! Anna captioned the post her seventh newborn on Nov. 16, 2021.

Josh and Annas kids have names starting with the letter M. Mackynzie is the oldest, followed by Michael, Marcus, Meredith, Mason, and Maryella. Before the trial, Anna posted photos of her kids to Instagram frequently, but shes been noticeably absent from social media since the guilty verdict.

Josh Duggars children cant receive homeschooling in their home if Josh lives there in the future

Anna Duggar resurfaces on social media after Josh's child pornography verdict https://t.co/JGsUu8hsGt  The Sun Showbiz (@TheSunShowbiz) January 25, 2022

Like most of the Duggar family, Josh and Anna Duggar chose to homeschool their children. But it looks like this might not be possible in Arkansas following Joshs prison time. According to the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, Arkansas is one of two states where the law prohibits homeschooling in households that include registered sex offenders. Joshs crimes make him a convicted sex offender, though he currently doesnt live in the household with the kids. Hes in jail awaiting sentencing.

Will Anna be able to continue homeschooling once Josh is released from prison? a Reddit user asked. Only two states in the USA prohibit people with criminal convictions against children from homeschooling, and one of them is Arkansas!

OK, lets say he gets out 10 years from now because thats very plausible, one Reddit user posited. His youngest will be 10. Their others, I think, 12, 14, 16, 18, etc. They could easily send them to the big house or [Jessas] home and argue that the kids are not being schooled at home.

If they dont allow it, one of two things will happen  the kids go to public school, or they go to another family member, BUT that means the county/state will most likely be required to monitor the quality of education since its now being reported, another Duggar family follower noted.

When is Josh Duggars sentencing?

Less than three weeks before he is set to be sentenced for his 2021 child pornography conviction, Josh Duggar requested a delay in that sentencing date.https://t.co/BhDPkpUuhz  WRBL News 3 (@wrblnews3) March 28, 2022

Josh Duggars sentencing wont happen until May 2022. He was initially found guilty of two child sexual abuse material charges in December 2021. While sentencing was originally set for April 5, 2022, the new date sentencing date stands for May 25, 2022, according to KNWA Fox24.

Josh currently resides in Washington County Detention Center until sentencing. He potentially faces up to 20 years in prison and $500,000 in fines total ($250,000 for each count). Anna hasnt made any public comments regarding the upcoming sentencing. But she left a clue on her Instagram regarding where she stands. On Feb. 3, 2022, she posted a link and the caption, Theres more to the story. Given this post, it appears she believes in Joshs innocence.

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RELATED: Josh Duggar Will Be Separated From Other Inmates in Prison For His Own Protection, Attorney Says
The Beatles had a complicated relationship with the leader of the Transcendental Meditation movement, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The guru had his quirks and didnt know much about the modern world. According to the groups former associate, Peter Brown, Maharishi might not have realized he shouldnt have taken some liberties regarding his new famous friends.

However, The Beatles put him straight.

The Beatles and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi | Keystone Features/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The Beatles first heard Maharishi Mahesh Yogi speak at an event in London in 1967

As if by fate, The Beatles relationship with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi started with a newspaper article. According to Rolling Stone, in February 1967, George Harrisons wife Pattie Boyd came across a newspaper advertisement for Transcendental Meditation classes.

She signed up to be a part of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement. George and the rest of The Beatles joined. In August, they attended Maharishis lecture in London.

Maharishi was every bit as impressive as I thought he would be, and we were spellbound, Boyd wrote in her 2007 memoir Wonderful Tonight.

By that time, The Beatles were searching for the next big thing. Theyd experienced many things being famous but wanted the answers to the universe. Wed been the Beatles, which was marvelous, Paul McCartney recalled in The Beatles Anthology.

Wed tried for it not to go to our heads and we were doing quite well  we werent getting too spaced out or big-headed  but I think generally there was a feeling of: Yeah, well, its great to be famous, its great to be rich  but what its all for?'

Maharishis teachings seemed to be the answer. Later, The Beatles, Mick Jagger, and actor Marianne Faithfull attended Maharishis 10-day conference of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement in Bangor, Wales. It was extremely enlightening. During the conference, the band announced they were quitting drugs.

It was an experience we went through, Paul said in Philip Normans book Shout! Now its over and we dont need it any more. However, their stay at the conference was cut short due to the unexpected death of their manager, Brian Epstein.

Thats when Maharishi invited The Beatles to his annual retreat for Westerners at his ashram in Rishikesh, India. Although, the guru did something unexpected before their arrival.

RELATED: George Harrison Said Chanting to Krishna Saved Him From a Plane Crash

The Beatles confronted Maharishi Mahesh Yogi about using them for his business purposes

The way Rolling Stone tells it, the guru might have naively expected his new famous friends to help spread the word of the movement faster in the West than he could. He was wrong.

The Maharishi turned out to be more business- and media-savvy than his followers might have initially guessed, Rolling Stone wrote.

Former Beatles associate Peter Brown wrote about Maharishis misconception in his book, The Love You Make. He noted that before The Beatles trip to India, Maharishi tried negotiating with ABCs lawyers for a TV special that would include an appearance by the group.

Brown warned Maharishi that the arrangement was impossible. Still, Maharishi continued to tell ABCs lawyers that he could make The Beatles appearance happen.

So, The Beatles had to set him straight. Brown, George, and Paul visited the guru in Sweden. They told him not to use The Beatles for his own business purposes. Maharishi agreed and giggled.

On the plane ride back, Brown wrote that George defended the guru. George said, Hes not a modern man. He just doesnt understand these things.

Meanwhile, in With the Beatles, Lewis Lapham recalled that Maharishi often cast himself as the director on a movie set.

RELATED: George Harrisons Wife Said She Was the Shelter From the Storm in Georges Life

John Lennon fled India after hearing a rumor about Maharishi Mahesh Yogis impropriety

Fast forward to The Beatles stay in India. John cut his stay short after hearing rumors about Maharishis inappropriate behavior toward certain females in the ashram. He felt the guru had tried to fool them and began to think he only wanted fame and money.

John Lennons wife, Cynthia, recalled it in her book John (per Beatles Bible). She wrote, It was only when John and I talked later that he told me he had begun to feel disenchanted with the Maharishis behavior. He felt that, for a spiritual man, the Maharishi had too much interest in public recognition, celebrities and money.

John confronted the guru. He told Rolling Stone (per Beatles Bible), I was the spokesman  as usual, when the dirty work came, I actually had to be leader, whatever the scene was, when it came to the nitty gritty I had to do the speaking. And I said, Were leaving.

Why? Hee-hee, all that s***. And I said, Well if youre so cosmic, youll know why. He was always intimating, and there were all his right hand men intimating that he did miracles. He said, I dont know why, you must tell me.

And I just kept saying, You know why  and he gave me a look like, Ill kill you, bastard, he gave me such a look, and I knew then when he looked at me, because Id called his bluff. And I was a bit rough to him.

After that, John promptly fled India. He wrote Maharishi, which he renamed Sexy Sadie at Georges advisement. There was never proof of Maharishis impropriety. However, The Beatles left India with a bad taste in their mouths. Their views of the guru and their time in India changed years later. The Beatles reflected fondly on Maharishi, if only for what he thought them.

RELATED: The Beatles in India: Some Funky Things Happened to John Lennon While He Meditated for Five Days Straight
Cobra Kai fans are waiting patiently for season 5 and accepting any hints we can get. We dont want any spoilers, but were all excited to see whats next for Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), and all the new Karate kids. The creators of the series are good about hyping up the new season without revealing too much.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for the first four seasons of Cobra Kai.]

L-R: Ralph Macchio andYuji Okumoto | Curtis Bonds Baker/Netflix

John Kreese actor Martin Kove interviewed Cobra Kai creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg for his podcast Kicking It With the Koves on April 13. At the end, Koves son Jesse asked the guys about season 5. Without plot specifics, Heald revealed how Cobra Kai Season 5 would still be different.

Why is Cobra Kai Season 5 the most untraditional season?

Cobra Kai Season 5 wrapped filming before season 4 even premiered on Netflix. While Netflix has not set a premiere date, Cobra Kai Season 4 left a number of cliffhangers for Kreese, Daniel, Johnny, Miguel (Xolo Mariduena), Tory (Peyton List), and more. Heald teased that those arent going to pay off the way you think.

Everyone you see here will be at Cobra Kai: Live & Badass and trust us, youll want to be there, too! Get your tickets now at https://t.co/SJpDSWAOJQ pic.twitter.com/rtF5NXsZ22  Cobra Kai (@CobraKaiSeries) April 22, 2022

RELATED: Cobra Kai Season 5 Will Show Sillier Side of John Kreese, Martin Kove Says

Its probably our most untraditional season yet in terms of what weve set up vs. what were paying off, Heald said on Kicking It with the Koves. Its explosive as usual and its a season were really proud of.

Your Cobra Kai Season 5 theories are wrong

So, Daniel called in Chozen (Yuji Okumoto) from Okinawa to help beat Cobra Kai. Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) had Kreese arrested. Miguel went to Mexico to look for his father. Tory found out Silver bribed the All-Valley Karate Tournament judges. But whatever you think is going to happen is probably not what season 5 is actually about.

Season 5 is going to surprise a lot of people, Ill just say that, Heald said. In terms of theories and what could happen, there are some obvious things that weve laid out at the end of season 4 that can start connecting some dots and saying I think this then this. But Ill be shocked if people really put the full picture together of what we did with season 5.

William Zabka backs Josh Heald up

At PaleyFest on April 8, the Cobra Kai Kompanion podcast caught up with Ralph Macchio and William Zabka. Asked about Cobra Kai Season 5 there, Zabka talked about the new season in ways that are compatible with Healds description.

Ill tell you this, Zabka told the Cobra Kai Kompanion podcast. Every season of Cobra Kai is its own version of Cobra Kai. This is a brand new version of Cobra Kai, Season 5 and its just as engaging. It happens all over again. Its bigger, deeper, wider, funnier and it just keeps going.

RELATED: Cobra Kai: William Zabka Calls I Love You Too, Robby Moment Painful
It looks like Emily will be stepping out of Paris once again. This time, the American expat could hop on a train to London. In a recent interview, Emily in Paris star William Abadie shared an update on season 3 filming plans for the Netflix series, revealing that he thinks the schedule will include some time in the capital of England. If thats true, it could mean our protagonist will pay a visit to her long-distance boyfriend, Alfie.

William Abadie as Antoine Lambert in Emily in Paris Season 2. | Stephanie Branchu/Netflix

Alfie actor Lucien Laviscount became a series regular for Emily in Paris Season 3

At the end of Emily in Paris Season 2, Emily (Lily Collins) finds herself at a romantic crossroads once again. Her new boyfriend, Alfie (Lucien Laviscount), has to move back home to London to continue his work as a banker. She could try long-distance with him, whether that means a quick train ride from Paris to London or a long flight from America. On the other hand, Emily could also have the chance to try again with her neighbor, Gabriel (Lucas Bravo), whom shes had a budding romance with since she moved to Paris.

Whatever Emily chooses to do, many fans have worried that Alfies move back to London means Lucien Laviscount will no longer appear on the show. Thankfully, thats not the case at all.

As Variety reported, Emily in Paris creator Darren Star announced at PaleyFest LA 2022 earlier this month that Laviscount would become a series regular. Its unclear what Laviscounts role will look like in the new season, but this certainly opens the door for more Emily/Alfie adventures.

William Abadie teased Emily in Paris Season 3 filming in June, possibly in London

Good morning to Alfie from Emily in Paris and only Alfie. pic.twitter.com/FojShlOdt0  Netflix Canada (@Netflix_CA) January 6, 2022

Emily in Paris spends much of its time filming in the City of Lights. However, season 3 could also include some shots of London, as Antoine Lambert actor William Abadie revealed. While attending the New York Academy of Arts Tribeca Ball, Abadie told Us Weekly that Emily in Paris Season 3 filming is set to begin in June 2021.

Were fully in pre-production, and I think were supposed to head to Paris early in June, so Im foreseeing a little bit of that soon to come, he explained before adding that the cast might spend a little time in London, too.

Abadie added that the production schedule hasnt been finalized yet, so its not confirmed if they will film in London. However, with Laviscount on board for season 3, it certainly makes sense.

Star also predicted at PaleyFest that filming would begin in June. Unfortunately, theres no word yet on the production length, but it will likely take most of the summer to complete. Netflix has not yet announced a release window for season 3.

Darren Star said season 3 will also showcase other areas of France

Last season, fans received a look outside of Paris as Emily traveled to Saint-Tropez for vacation. Star has a similar plan for season 3.

Were always thinking about how we can show Paris, he said at PaleyFest, per Variety. Its not hard to make Paris look amazing, because it is, from wherever you look or wherever you point the camera. We will always want the story to drive locations. but we have some really beautiful locations lined up for season 3 in France, not just in Paris.

Emily in Paris Seasons 1 and 2 are now streaming on Netflix. Stay tuned to Showbiz Cheat Sheet for updates on season 3.

RELATED: Emily in Paris: Even Lucas Bravo is Team Alfie  Heres Why
Everything Everywhere All At Once is destined to be one of the most distinctive movies of 2022. The movie  directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert aka Daniels  has earned rave reviews for its offbeat, heartfelt multiversal story. But Everything Everywhere All At Once might not be the right movie for everyone, especially those unfamiliar with Daniels first movie. Newcomers might even wonder whether 2016s Swiss Army Man is streaming.

Swiss Army Man stars Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano | D Dipasupil/FilmMagic

Everything Everywhere All At Once is directed by Daniels

Daniels second directorial effort, Everything Everywhere All At Once, hit theaters in 2022. The movie stars Michelle Yeoh as a laundromat owner who is confronted with the multiverse just as her personal and professional lives are in crisis. With a novel approach to alternate dimensions, the movie has a blast exploring increasingly wild realities.

Everything Everywhere All At Once has also earned heaps of critical praise. Yeoh in particular is getting raves for her performance, but the movies absurdist sense of humor, an abundance of heart, and bold tackling of heady themes are also among its strongest points. All three equally apply to Daniels first directorial feature, Swiss Army Man.

RELATED: Everything Everywhere All at Once: Was Originally Jackie Chan With Michelle Yeoh

The filmmaking duo previously made Swiss Army Man

Swiss Army Man follows a lost man (Paul Dano) who befriends a corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) that just so happens to come to life. And the story gets only stranger from that point on. Nevertheless, the movie earned strong reviews upon its initial release, despite its offbeat premise. And fans of Everything Everywhere All At Once eager to see Daniels first movie have plenty of options.

According to JustWatch.com, Swiss Army Man is indeed available to stream. While it is not available on any of the major streaming services at the moment, the movie is available to subscribers of fuboTV, Showtime, Kanopy, DirecTV, and Spectrum. Much like Yeohs performance in Everything Everywhere All At Once, Dano and Radcliffe earned praise for their work in Swiss Army Man.

Daniel Radcliffe nearly appeared in Everything Everywhere All At Once

In fact, Radcliffe had such a positive experience working on Swiss Army Man that he was eager to work with Daniels again. As the actor told Empire, the directors had initially reached out to him for a role. But Radcliffe was working on a play and therefore unable to join Yeoh and company in Everything Everywhere All At Once.

At this point, theres no telling which role the Harry Potter star might have accepted. But most likely, Radcliffe was eyed to play the character of Chad. That role ultimately went to Harry Shum Jr. Perhaps on Daniels next film, Radcliffe can come along for the ride.

RELATED: Everything Everywhere All at Once Cast Used Sex Toys as Weapons: Were Not Afraid to Get Weird
The Starz networks new series Gaslit tackles the topic of President Richard Nixons Watergate scandal, but this time folks will see it from someone elses perspective. The limited series focuses on Martha Mitchell (portrayed by Julia Roberts), the woman who first blew the whistle on the Nixon administrations wrongdoing. The show covers Mitchells point of view along with that of her husband, John Mitchell (Sean Penn), and various other people close to the administration. Heres what you need to know about Martha before diving into the series.

Julia Roberts as Martha Mitchell

Gaslit characters refer to Martha Mitchell as the Mouth of the South

Mitchell, born in Arkansas, was the wife of Nixons Attorney General John Dixon. She often got both herself and her husband into predicaments by being known as a gossip. Mitchell befriended several reporters and subtly tipped them off regarding critical political matters. Her outspokenness on Republican issues earned her the nickname The Mouth of the South, but people also called her Martha the Mouth. Gaslit mentions Mitchells nickname at least once in the series.

Martha Mitchell was the first whistleblower of the Watergate scandal

Most people know Deep Throat as the official whistleblower of the Nixon administrations crimes, now known as Watergate. All the Presidents Men, a movie starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, tells how the journalists uncovered Watergate. However, it was Mitchell who first alerted people to the wrongdoings. Gaslit focuses mainly on Martha Mitchell instead.

Julia Roberts and Sean Penn star in the official trailer for #Gaslit  premiering April 24 on STARZ. pic.twitter.com/4cQF7P7RAy  Rotten Tomatoes (@RottenTomatoes) March 16, 2022

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John Mitchell hired a former FBI agent to keep his wife from alerting the press about Watergate

John Mitchell worked closely with President Nixon and eventually left his position as attorney general to head up the Committee to Reelect the President, also mockingly known as CREEP. Five men broke into the Democratic National Committee offices when the Mitchells visited California and destroyed necessary paperwork. James McCord, a former bodyguard of the Mitchells and someone Martha developed a friendship, was one of the men.

John Mitchell feared his wifes reaction to the news. He hired former FBI agent Steve King to come to their hotel and prevent her from talking to the press. Mitchell later told reporters that King tied her to the bed, kicked her, and a psychiatrist forcibly injected her with a sedative to keep her quiet.

John and Martha Mitchell | Bettmann/Getty Images

Mitchell was shunned after her claims and died completely alone

Unfortunately, Nixons aides and even her husband worked to discredit her claims. The press barely covered Martha Mitchells story. She was often brushed off as an alcoholic who didnt know what she was talking about.

The press didnt take Mitchells accusations seriously, despite her saying the Watergate scandal went all the way to the Oval Office. Most of the time, if the press covered Mitchells story at all, it was reported from a celebrity gossip angle. Accounts from Nixons aides often implied Mitchell was an alcoholic and seeking attention. Deep Throat entirely overshadows her part as a whistleblower in Watergate.

Estranged from her daughter and divorced from her husband, Mitchell died destitute and alone, according to the Eugene Register-Guard. Neither her ex-husband nor her 14-year-old daughter Marty was by her side when she died.

Gaslits version of Martha Mitchell hopes to bring attention back to the woman nobody believed and her unfair treatment from those with power. The limited original series premieres exclusively on Starz on April 24, 2022.

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Out of all The Beatles, John Lennon and George Harrison were the most spiritual. They were the most dedicated to meditation when the group traveled to Maharishi Mahesh Yogis retreat at his ashram in Rishikesh, India.

Then, George started reading about Hinduism, the Hare Krishna movement, and learning about mantras and chanting. He showed John, and he became interested too. They loved it so much that they once sailed through the Greek Islands chanting until their jaws ached.

John Lennon and George Harrison | Keystone Features/Getty Images

John Lennon and George Harrison sailed through the Greek Islands, chanting to Krishna for hours

In 1982, George told a leader in the Hare Krishna movement, Mukunda Goswami (per the Guardian), that his spirituality started once he saw what was over the wall hed hit at the time. He started reading about meditation, mantras, chanting, and Hinduism.

He showed John much of his findings. Then, they sailed through the Greek Islands, chanting to Krishna for hours. In the end, they both felt exalted.

Before meeting Prabhupada [the founder of the Kare Krishna movement] and all of you, I had bought that album Prabhupada did in New York, and John and I listened to it, George told Goswami. I remember we sang it for days, John and I, with ukulele banjos, sailing through the Greek islands chanting Hare Krishna.

Like six hours we sang, because we couldnt stop once we got going. As soon as we stopped, it was like the lights went out. It went on to the point where our jaws were aching, singing the mantra over and over and over and over and over. We felt exalted; it was a very happy time for us.

RELATED: Eric Clapton Said George Harrison Wouldnt Have Wanted Concert for George, but Clapton Wouldnt Have Cared

John and Georges chanting session wasnt the only time George chanted for hours

John and George loved chanting through the Greek Islands. It changed them. After that, George never stopped and did it on another long journey. When Goswami asked him how he felt after chanting for a long time, George replied that he felt invincible after chanting for 23 hours straight during a trip from France to Portugal.

I find that I sometimes have opportunities when I can really get going at it, and the more I do it, I find the harder it is to stop, and I dont want to lose the feeling it gives me, George replied. For example, once I chanted the Hare Krishna mantra all the way from France to Portugal, nonstop.

I drove for about 23 hours and chanted all the way. It gets you feeling a bit invincible. The funny thing was that I didnt even know where I was going. I mean I had bought a map, and I knew basically which way I was aiming, but I couldnt speak French, Spanish, or Portuguese.

But none of that seemed to matter. You know, once you get chanting, then things start to happen transcendentally.

RELATED: Paul McCartney Said George Harrison Scolded Him for Writing Too Many Songs During The Beatles Trip to India

He chanted to Krishna during a scary plane ride

Chanting isnt only great for getting through long journeys. Goswami asked George if hed experienced an incident where he felt Gods presence strongly through chanting. George replied that he felt Krishna was with him the strongest during a pretty scary moment on a plane around 1971. Chanting helped him through it. George believed that it saved his life.

Once I was on an aeroplane that was in an electric storm, George explained. It was hit by lightning three times, and a Boeing 707 went over the top of us, missing by inches.

I thought the back end of the plane had blown off. I was on my way from Los Angeles to New York to organise the Bangladesh concert. As soon as the plane began bouncing around, I started chanting Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.

The whole thing went on for about an hour and a half or two hours, the plane dropping hundreds of feet and bouncing all over in the storm, all the lights out and all these explosions, and everybody terrified.

I ended up with my feet pressed against the seat in front, my seat belt as tight as it could be, gripping on the thing, and yelling Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare at the top of my voice. I know for me, the difference between making it and not making it was actually chanting the mantra. Peter Sellers also swore that chanting Hare Krishna saved him from a plane crash once.

John and Georges experiences with chanting were different, but it brought them together for a short time. It made them feel great, and thats why George continued to chant until he died in 2001.

RELATED: John Lennon Took a Helicopter Ride With Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Because He Thought the Guru Would Slip Him the Answer
Lindsay Lohan grew up in front of a camera. Many fans know her from her breakthrough movie debut in the 1998 Disney remake, The Parent Trap. While she portrayed both identical twins in the film, the actor made a particular request to distinguish between the two characters. Looking back, she regrets this choice.

Lindsay Lohan insisted on one difference for The Parent Trap

In a 2022 Vogue interview, Lohan talks about her time on the set of The Parent Trap. The movie follows two girls who go to summer camp and find they are each others long-lost twin. Their parents separated when they were babies, and each took one of them. They never talked about each other or the fact that the girls had a twin sister. The girls had completely different upbringings.

Hallie Parker was raised in Napa, California on a vineyard with her father, Nick (Dennis Quaid), while Annie James was raised by her mother, Elizabeth James (the late Natasha Richardson), in London, England. Hallie is kind of a tomboy, while Annie is more proper. Upon finding one another, the girls decide to switch places to meet their other parent.

Through it all, Lohan plays both Annie and Hallie. When talking about which character she liked more, Lohan says, Annie had a classier twist to her that I really loved. Hallie was too American for me cause I was too used to that, but Annie was my favorite. I always wanted to be Annie.

However, their differences are what made the movie great. During filming, Lohan insisted Hallie wear blue Hard Candy nail polish. She says she regretted it later because it was a nightmare for everyone when switching between them.

She repeated the same mistake in a later film. In Freaky Friday, her character takes on a different persona when she swaps bodies with her mother, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. In the end, it was worth it because it became a thing, she says.

Lohans fashion shines through

As the Life in Pictures interview continues, Lohan talks about the clothing she wore both on sets and off them. Some are more like Halloween costumes to her, like her Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen looks. Other are items she has kept throughout the years since wearing them, like her Louis Vuitton sunglasses.

One of Lohans favorite of her films is Freaky Friday. In fact, she says it was the most fun she has had on a movie set. Why? Because her co-star, Curtis, has the best energy about her. It was so fun to see her become young again, said Lohan. Naturally, she also commented on the wardrobe. Lohan said she loved it because she was going through a phase where she wanted to wear baggy pants and be a rocker chick.

Whats ahead for Lohan?

Actress Lindsay Lohan attends a private dinner for the Lifetime premier of Liz & Dick at Beverly Hills Hotel on November 20, 2012 in Beverly Hills, California. | Charley Gallay/Getty Images for A&E Networks

Today, Lohans style is more casual when out of the spotlight and relaxing at her home in Dubai. Overall, though, she appreciated the interviews trip down the dos and donts of her fashion timeline and is looking forward to a future trip down the red carpet.

This may come sooner rather than later with her upcoming Netflix movie, Falling for Christmas, which completed filming in just five weeks. This is something that impressed Lohan, who reminisces about how The Parent Trap took eight months, three weeks, and two days.

RELATED: Is Lindsay Lohan Married? Find Out the Mean Girls Actress Relationship Status
Reba McEntire had a few reasons to divorce her first husband, Charlie Battles, not least of which was the distaste some of her family members had for him. The country star comes from a close-knit brood. And there were things that her brother Pake McEntire didnt like about their relationship. Keep reading to discover why he didnt think she should have married Battles and why she eventually agreed he was right.

Reba McEntire | David Livingston/Getty Images

Reba McEntire married for the first time when she was 21

In Reba: My Story, McEntire shared Battles grew on her following his first divorce. Though she had reservations at first, she eventually fell in love with him despite their ten-year age gap. He was becoming my whole world, she shared. So, she said no one was really surprised when they announced their plans to marry.

The betrothed couple chose the first day of summer as their wedding date, June 21, 1976, when she was 21. We married at the Stringtown Baptist Church in Stringtown, Oklahoma, she wrote. We had a tough time finding anyone to marry us since Charlie had been married before.

According to McEntire, about all of her family attended, but one important person was missing  Pake.

Reba McEntires brother didnt think she should marry a man with two kids, so he skipped her first wedding

Reba McEntire | Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

McEntire shared in her autobiography that she personally asked Pake to come to the wedding, but he refused. He didnt think I should be marrying a man with two kids, she wrote, and time proved him right about that.

When she asked him to come, and he told her he wouldnt, she said she didnt say anything else. I didnt beg but I was terribly hurt, she shared.

But she also noted that she felt Pake might have been jealous of her relationship with Battles, noting theyd always been best friends. Her husband would get priority in her life, and she thought her brother had a hard time with that.

Still, Pake wasnt wrong to be concerned about the impact of the union on his sister in the end. I was insecure and just plain immature when I got married, she confessed.

How time proved Reba McEntires brother right about her first marriage

When you think its the end of road, its just cause you dont know where the roads leading to. https://t.co/U0xP5skCxb pic.twitter.com/C6Jl0QhGxP  Reba McEntire (@reba) April 30, 2021

McEntires two stepchildren with Battles played a little part in the unhappy unraveling of their marriage, she noted in Reba: My Story. She recalled buying a shaving kit which she lovingly wrapped with care to give to him for Christmas.

Without noticing the effort shed put into the presentation, Battles allowed the children to rip through the pretty packaging instead of taking the time to open it himself. She emphasized she wasnt upset at her stepchildren but was hurt that Battles didnt seem to care.

That shaving kit was a symbol of all that was unhappy to me about our marriage, she concluded. They divorced in 1987.

RELATED: Reba McEntire Said Fans Might Have Been More Upset Than She Was About Her Divorce
ARMYs share their appreciation for RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook with birthday celebrations. When BTS appeared at the Permission to Dance on Stage concerts, RM had to ask attendees not to throw their stuff on the K-pop group.

BTS V gifted an ARMY an ARMY Bomb at 1 Permission to Dance on Stage concert

RM and Jungkook of BTS perform during the 64th Annual GRAMMY Awards | Rich Fury/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

During one Permission to Dance on Stage  Seoul concert, Jungkook walked down to the pit level, only a few feet away from fans. One ARMY held out a flower for the vocalist, as seen in a now-viral video. When Jungkook saw the gift, he asked the ARMY to throw it. The idol caught his flower and ran back on stage.

This wouldnt be the only close encounter between BTS and their fans. In another Permission to Dance on Stage concert, V noted an ARMY toward the front without an ARMY Bomb. He handed them a lightstick, asking them not to tell anyone that he did it.

Even before the Permission to Dance on Stage concerts BTS was surprising fans with small gifts to show appreciation. While in New York, J-Hope gifted one ARMY his bag after noting the Mang BT21 headband.

Unfortunately, not every personal interaction with BTS has gone well. In the past, Jungkook noted an ARMY in a wheelchair and jumped over the barricade and into the audience to say hello. He was immediately swarmed by other attendees.

RM asked ARMYs to stop throwing stuff at the BTS members

After the video surfaced of Jungkook accepting a flower, several fans brought bouquets for BTS Permission to Dance on Stage  Las Vegas concerts. Other attendees took the opportunity to give gifts, even if that meant throwing objects at BTS as they got closer.

Jin appeared to dodge a flying headband in one video. According to News 18, a flower was seen hitting Sugas back while he was performing. A video also shows Jimin being hit by a bouquet.

As a result, RM asked the audience not to throw gifts at the stage or the members. As seen in one Twitter video, RM said, please dont throw your stuff on us, ok?

Can you give BTS gifts? Why the K-pop group stopped accepting presents

BTS no longer accepts gifts from fans, although they became the recipients of some lavish presents. As the K-pop groups Golden Maknae, Jungkook was once gifted a gold bar for his birthday.

After a long and thorough discussion with BTS members about the gifts you send them with sincere hearts, we decided not to receive any more gifts except for letters, a statement from BigHit reads.

Now, ARMYs get creative when celebrating the BTS members and their birthdays. Fans erected a Seredipity-inspired bubble in South Korea for Jimin, also creating a Spotify ad in honor of Jungkooks birthday. ARMYs also donate to specific nonprofit organizations inspired by the idols.

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Spy x Family spent its first few episodes setting Operation Strix in motion, and the anime will determine if Twilights mission takes off during its next installment. Now that the sleuth has found a wife, will he be able to secure Anya a place at Eden Academy? That depends on her admissions interview, which will take place in Spy x Family Episode 4.

[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for Spy x Family Episode 3, Prepare for the Interview.]

The Forgers go on a family outing in Spy x Family Episode 3

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Spy x Family Episode 3 saw Yor moving in with Loid and Anya, and she fits right in with the rest of the Forger family. But while their hilarious dynamic makes them the perfect match, it also puts them at a disadvantage. After all, the entire point of their facade is to get Anya into Eden Academy. And the trio needs to come off as cultured during the admissions interview if they hope to achieve that. For Yor and Anya, thats easier said than done.

After several frustrating practice questions, Twilight is nearly ready to abandon his mission. He decides they should take a family outing instead, hoping trips to the theater and museum will give them something to discuss during the interview. However, its not those activities that offer hope for Operation Strix. Its a robbery that takes place at the end of Prepare for the Interview.

When an elderly woman has her purse snatched, the Forgers jump into action to apprehend the thief and get it back. Considering their secret abilities, they make an impressive team. In fact, the woman comments on what a great family they are. And if she can see them in such a light, perhaps the school administrators will, too, when Spy x Family Episode 4 arrives.

The Forger family in Spy x Family |  Tatsuya Endo/Shueisha, SPY x FAMILY Project

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The Forgers proved how well they work together in Spy x Family Episode 3, but can they carry that energy into Anyas interview in episode 4? Theyre likely to face more obstacles when they enter the gates of Eden Academy. Knowing Twilight, hell have a plan to make Loid and his family look good. Fans will have to tune in to see what it is.

So, when can viewers expect the next episode of Spy x Family? Its currently slated to arrive on Saturday, April 30. New chapters are broadcast in Japan around 11 p.m., and they arrive on Crunchyroll and Hulu not long after. Heres when the anime drops on streaming platforms in the following time zones:

PST: 8:30 a.m.

CST: 10:30 a.m.

EST: 11:30 a.m.

GMT: 3:30 p.m.

CEST: 5:30 p.m.

AEST: 1:30 a.m.

With the admissions interview finally happening, the fourth installment is sure to feature plenty more hijinks  and perhaps higher stakes than the previous episode.

Catch Anyas interview when the third chapter drops on Crunchyroll

Those hoping to watch Spy x Family Episode 4 when it comes out will need a subscription to either Crunchyroll or Hulu to do so. Although the first three installments were available as part of Crunchyrolls seasonal sampler, the fourth wont stream free with ads. It will only be accessible with a premium Crunchyroll subscription, which begins at $7.99 per month.

Those with Hulu can also watch the anime as part of their subscription plan. Plans start at $6.99 per month with ads and $12.99 without. The streamer offers annual memberships as well, giving viewers plenty of options. Theyll want to take advantage of one of them if theyre invested in Operation Strix.

Spy x Family Episode 4 arrives on April 30, 2022.

RELATED: Spy x Family Predictions: The Anime Will Pit Yor Against Twilight
Fans now have another chance to try and get tickets for Stray Kids MANIAC tour. Tickets for the North American leg of Stray Kids 2nd World Tour MANIAC originally went on sale on April 22 and quickly sold out. Due to popular demand, two dates were added to the K-pop groups tour in the U.S. Here is how fans of Stray Kids can try and get tickets for the two new concert dates.

Stray Kids | The Sports Seoul via Getty Images

After tickets for Stray Kids 2nd World Tour MANIAC sold out on April 22, the band announced two dates were added to the North American leg of the tour.

The first additional date will be held at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. at 7:30 p.m. EDT on June 28. Meanwhile, the second added concert will take place at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles at 7:30 p.m. PDT on July 10.

Tickets for the new show dates will go on sale on April 25 at 3 p.m. local time. The sale for both new concert dates will take place on Ticketmaster.

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Stray Kids tour will be held in seven different cities

Bang Chan, Lee Know, Changbin, Hyunjin, Han, Felix, Seungmin, and I.N. will kick off Stray Kids 2nd World Tour MANIAC with three concerts in Seoul on April 29, April 30, and May 1. The band will then perform the tour in Japan on June 11, June 12, June 18, and June 19.

The North American leg of the tour will begin on June 28 with the newly-added concert at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. It will conclude on July 14 in Seattle, Wash. at Climate Pledge Arena.

Stray Kids 2nd World Tour MANIAC North American tour dates:

June 28: Newark, N.J. at the Prudential Center (New Date)

June 29: Newark, N.J. at the Prudential Center

July 1: Chicago, Illinois at the United Center

July 3: Atlanta, Ga. at the State Farm Arena

July 6: Fort Worth, Texas at Dickies Arena

July 9: Los Angeles, Calif. at the Kia Forum

July 10: Los Angeles, Calif. at the Kia Forum (New Date)

July 12: Oakland, Calif. at the Oakland Arena

July 14: Seattle, Wash. at Climate Pledge Arena

RELATED: TWICE Become First Female K-pop Group to Headline and Sell Out US Stadium

It is important to note the initial sale for Stray Kids 2nd World Tour MANIAC that took place on April 22 incorporated dynamic pricing. With this, ticket prices fluctuate based on demand.

Because of Stray Kids growing popularity and limited concert dates, ticket prices on April 22 were listed above face value on Ticketmaster as the sale went on.

Dynamic pricing is done through Ticketmaster with the approval of labels and organizers, meaning there is a chance dynamic pricing will once again be in effect during the sale on April 25.

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Kyle Abbott (Michael Mealor) is a legacy character on The Young and the Restless. As the son of Jack Abbott (Peter Bergman), Kyle has been featured in many huge storylines. Hell find himself in more drama when he makes his much-anticipated return to Genoa City.

Michael Mealor, I Rodin Eckenroth/FilmMagic

The Young and the Restless star Michael Mealor is excited about returning as Kyle Abbott

The Young and the Restless fans agree Mealor is the best actor to play Kyle. Mealors performance as Kyle ran from March 2018 to August 2021. After failed contract negotiations with producers, Mealor and his co-star, Hunter King, left the series.

Kyle and Summer Newman (King) moved to Italy after she got a new job. Although that was the end of the couple, they made several guest appearances. Now fans will be seeing more of Kyle when he makes his full-time return on April 25th. Viewers are ecstatic to see Mealor back on the CBS soap opera, and the actor is happy to be coming home.

In true Chanccomm fashion, Uncle Billy broke the news first..my time as we know it on The Young and the Restless is coming to a close. The last three and a half years has been a truly humbling and life changing experience. I wouldnt have been here this long without your love! pic.twitter.com/FY3xZBllGl  Michael Mealor (@Michael_Mealor) July 13, 2021

RELATED: The Young and the Restless: Hunter King and Michael Mealor Return, but for How Long?

In an interview with ET Canada, Mealor discussed the circumstances leading to his return. When they called me up and told me about the storyline, I got chills. I was so excited. If theres ever a storyline for Kyle to move back from Italy and me to return to the show, then this is it.

Kyle Abbott comes face-to-face with his mother, Diane Jenkins

Kyles return promises to be an explosive one on The Young and the Restless. His presumed dead mother, Diane Jenkins (Susan Walters), returned after a long absence. Diane wants to reconnect with Kyle and asks Jack to help her.

When Kyle arrives in Genoa City, hell be in for a shock when he sees his mother. However, the reunion may not be happy. As Mealor pointed out, his character has changed, and he calls Kyle a papa bear figure who is really protective of his son.

Kyles protectiveness over Harrison Locke (Kellen Enriquez) may be why hes reluctant to let Diane into his life. However, Kyle cant shut her out completely. At the end of the day, hes a little boy who lost his mom, and I think everyone can relate to that. I think Kyle is wrestling with joy that his mom is alive but also the fact that she chose not to be here for 20 years.

The mother and son reunion gets off to a dramatic start

Kyle and Dianes reunion wont go smoothly on The Young and the Restless. Of course, Kyle will be struggling with his feelings over the situation. Although hes angry, Kyle will make an effort to forgive his mother and bond with her.

Here's a closer view of the photo Diane has in her new house! Remember this #YR moment? pic.twitter.com/zUMxdYXrUv  Young and Restless (@YandR_CBS) April 7, 2022

Yet, their reunion will be met with disapproval from Jack and Phyllis Summers (Michelle Stafford). While Jack wants to support Kyles decision, he worries that his son is headed toward heartache. Meanwhile, Phyllis will remain skeptical of Diane and seek to run her out of town again.

The situation will become more complicated when Kyles wife, Summer, arrives in town. She and Kyle had finally settled into their new life together; now, its disrupted by Dianes return. Odds are Summer wont so be welcoming toward her mother-in-law.

RELATED: The Young and the Restless: Show Recasting the Role of Summer Newman
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Throughout the course of the pandemic, no industry was more negatively impacted by COVID-19-related restrictions than food services.

Restaurants in particular were forced to close at the onset of the crisis, and then had to adapt to an ever-changing landscape that inhibited their ability to provide meals and service in a profitable manner. Many restaurants did not survive the turmoil.

One that has is Viron Rondo Osteria, the popular Italian restaurant located in the north end of Cheshire. Since moving into the location in 2014, owner Viron Rondos has turned the establishment into a destination spot, not only for hungry Cheshire patrons, but also customers from all over the state.

Over the last two years, Rondos restaurant was impacted like all other establishments, but he was able to stay afloat during the worst of the pandemic and then adapt to the new normal over time. It allowed him to not only remain a thriving restaurant but also retain the majority of his staff and give back to the community.

All of it earned Rondos a very special recognition.

On Monday, April 11, local and state officials turned out on a sunny afternoon to present Rondos with the Small Business Administration (SBA) award for Connecticut Small Business Owner of the Year. The SBA-sponsored honor is presented to 50 winners per year  one per state  as a recognition of their hard work and ability to keep local and state economies moving, even through the most challenging of circumstances.

The SBA Connecticut 2022 Small Business Week Award winners are great examples of businesses that are helping to build a better America through entrepreneurship, said Mike Vlacich, SBA New England Regional Administrator. These business owners demonstrate the resiliency and tenacity of entrepreneurs across Connecticut and our nation. They have proven their staying power, they create jobs, have shown response to adversity during unimaginable setbacks and they give back to their communities through their businesses and on their own time.

At the ceremony on April 11, held outside of Rondos restaurant, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), along with Cheshire Town Council Chairman Tim Slocum and other officials, joined Rondos and his family for the award presentation, as diners taking advantage of a spring day outdoors looked on.

I am so very grateful for this award, said Rondos. It has been a couple of very challenging years and I am so very proud of my family, my staff, and the entire community. I am also very proud of the restaurant community.

In choosing Viron Rondo Osteria, the SBA was acknowledging the local restaurant industry in general, Rondos believes, and he spoke about how grateful he remains that his establishment has been able to survive and thrive after such unprecedented challenges.

We were one of the lucky ones, he said, crediting the restaurants outdoor dining experience for helping during the pandemic. A lot of places that couldnt (offer outdoor seating) really struggled. Some of them went out of business.

When the pandemic first hit in 2020, Rondos had just finished a massive construction project  a multi-million-dollar addition that included a Mediterranean-inspired patio and veranda, a vintage-chandelier-capped New York City-style bar, a second kitchen, a wine room and additional dining space. When all restaurants were forced to close for indoor dining and, in the first 90 days of the pandemic offer only take-out meals, Rondos admits to being concerned about how his business would survive.

It was really the immediate community that kept us going those first three months, said Rondos. Their support  we wouldnt be here without them.

As the crisis continued, Rondos and his staff basically had to be different every day, he said. The most difficult part was that the rules and regulations were changing constantly, he continued. Something you were supposed to be doing this week, the next week it was changed.

The loyalty of his customers allowed Rondos to not only keep the majority of his staff on payroll, but also offer aid during a trying time.

We did a lot (offering meals) to the hospitals, he said. We helped the (Cheshire Food Pantry), gave what we could to the (Cheshires Lights of Hope). It was such a bad time for so many people, we just wanted to help the community anyway we could  as a way of saying Thank you for keeping us alive (as a business).

As the state and country moves past the pandemic and most of the restrictions it caused, Viron Rondo Osteria remains one of the most popular eateries in all of Connecticut, routinely being named to Best of lists. Rondos continues to be grateful for the support and believes its because his establishment is committed to offering the best locally-sourced ingredients, top-notch service, and an atmosphere where one way or another, youre going to leave happy.

I think we have been able to bring New York, the Mediterranean, and New England together here, said Rondos, with a laugh. After 30 years in this industry, I have learned what to do and what not to do. We are very authentic in what we are. We are not pretending to be something we are not.

Viron Rondo Osteria is located at 1721 Highland Ave. For more information on the restaurant, menu items, or hours of operation, visit their website at www.vironrondoosteria.com.
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The pandemic killed us': Church running since 1848 to hold final service Sunday

After declining for years, the First Presbyterian Church of Des Moines in Iowa, which has been in operation since 1848, will gather for its final collective hallelujah on Sunday, unable to rebound after the COVID-19 pandemic.

We were declining and the pandemic killed us, Kathy Smith, who has been a member of the church since 1984, told the Des Moines Register.

Already, the nearly 170-year-old church is offering up things for sale such as hymnals, Bibles, communion sets, sanctuary furniture, choir music, tables, chairs, dishes, kitchen supplies that will be available at the end of Sundays service, according to a notice published by the church. Some items will be available for pick up earlier. The church property is also expected to be sold to another church, business or commercial developer according to KCCI.

It's really, really hard. As you can see, this is a beautiful place, the churchs pastor, the Rev. Doug Basler, told KCCI.

He explained that the church only has 40 members. And the last service they had amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, only 15 people showed up.

It was just hard for us to rebound and gain any momentum after the COVID year, Basler told KCCI.

The Christian Post called the church on Friday for comment but did not receive a response by press time.

The First Presbyterian Church, according to the Des Moines Register, was founded by John Stewart Dean in a log building next to the Des Moines River, where the Simon Estes Amphitheater now sits. When the congregation got too large for that space the church held services in the Supreme Court Room in Iowa's "Brick State House" which served as Iowa's Capitol Building from 1856 to 1882. In the early 1900s, it moved to a building at East 12th and Maple in the city.

Mary Lou Aspengren, 94, who is believed to be the churchs longest-serving member, told KCCI she attended her first Sunday school session at the church in 1938 at the East 12th and Maple location. In 1950, according to the Des Moines Register, a fire destroyed the interior of the church and it was rebuilt. The building of a freeway eventually forced the church to move to 31000 Easton Blvd., where they have been since July 1962.

Pastor Basler only joined the First Presbyterian Church of Des Moines a year ago. He had moved from Washington state to take care of his elderly father and had high hopes that the church would flourish again as it did in the past.

"This is where people on any given Sunday might meet God in a very particular way," he told the Des Moines Register.

"The hope was once we started gathering together again we'd reconnect with some of the people who scattered during the COVID year," Basler added. "We just found that didn't happen."

A Gallup poll released earlier this year suggested that just under half of American respondents (49%) have formal church membership, marking an 80-year low. In 1937, 70% of Americans had a formal church membership.

Data from the National Public Opinion Reference Survey conducted by the Pew Research Center from May 29 to Aug. 25, 2021, found that fewer than half (45%) of adults in the United States say they pray daily, a decrease of 13 percentage points from 2007. In 2014, 55% said they prayed daily.

Even though self-identified Christians are still the largest religious demographic in the U.S., they make up a collective 63% of the adult population. When the Pew Research Center began measuring religious identity in 2007, self-identified Christians outnumbered nones 78% to 16%.

The study noted the decline in Christians nationwide was mostly concentrated among respondents who identified as Protestant. Their numbers declined by 10% in the last decade and 4% in the last five years.

Last December, the 221-year-old First Presbyterian Church in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, permanently closed its doors on Christmas Eve due to declining membership and attendance.

The Potters House of Denver also announced plans in December to sell its $12.2 million megachurch in Arapahoe County, Colorado, and go completely virtual amid declining donations amid the pandemic.
Disney and its not so family-friendly agenda

The latest battleground in the parental rights movement is Disney's overt attempt to encourage the LGBTQ lifestyle through its programming and theme park policies. Executive Producer Latoya Raveneau declares she will add "queerness" to children's programming as much as possible because "no one was trying to stop me."

As a parent of gender dysphoric children, Karey Burke also vowed to increase LGBT representation in Disney programming. Staffers complain that they are no longer to address the children as "boys and girls," and bathroom signs denoting gender have been replaced with stick figures. CEO Chapek vows to increase its funding of LGBT advocacy substantially.



The battle to uphold Biblical truths can be the most difficult when fought at home. As I have written previously, my daughter suffers from clinical depression and, during the COVID lockdowns, was struck with rapid onset gender dysphoria. Though she attended a prestigious Christian school, social isolation, indoctrination by social media, and a poor choice of friends convinced her she was born the "wrong gender." During a very quarrelsome meeting to discuss her sudden condition, the therapist wanted me to accept "her truth," but I refused. I explained to both of them that I knew God wanted a better life for her and that living a life of sin would never bring healing and restoration.



My daughter cried throughout the whole meeting, but she knew she could never change my mind. Since that time, I have gently and repeatedly explained that being a woman did not mean she could not have what society says are "male" qualities. She was God's daughter  strong, outspoken, resilient, and beautiful  just as He intended. I affirmed my unconditional love for her and my duty as a parent to proclaim these eternal principles  regardless of whether society said they were outdated or backward. We had many painful nights, filled with tears and feelings of hopelessness for both of us. Slowly, I saw her childhood joy return. I cannot guarantee it will last forever, but she no longer claims to be the "wrong gender" and steadily appreciates how God has made her. I share this heart-wrenching struggle because I experienced the blessings of standing on God's word. I would never give up on my daughter, and we cannot give up on this country. She is just one of the thousands of kids being torn apart by the demonic forces at work in their lives.

Though much of Disney's LGBTQ advocacy has come to light with their public opposition to the Florida parental rights bill, Disney's transformation has been going on for a long time. For years, Christian parents have been navigating the corrupt and collapsed culture of a one-time family-friendly brand. The movies consistently elevate central female characters who dare to reject tradition and exert their independence from conventional society. The programming blatantly rejects a Christian worldview of the family and God's view of human sexuality.

Fortunately, the parental rights movement sweeping the country refuses to stay silent about it any longer. CP contributor Jerry Bower said it best, "outrage is not enough. It's time for Christians to stop merely talking about Disneyand start talking to them." There are several ways we do that.

One of the most impactful ways is withdrawing our financial support for the Disney brand. That includes canceling Disney+ subscriptions, annual theme park passes, and divesting from Disney stock. We also need to publicly express our disapproval with rallies, protests, and social media campaigns. Several Southern California churches and worship leaders are leading the charge. Pastor Rob McCoy teamed up with prominent Christian activist Sean Feucht calling on the church to be bold and outspoken in defense of our children. The first rally was outside of Disney headquarters in Burbank, and this week it will take place at the theme park in Anaheim, Calif. Christian social media influencers have also taken to Instagram and Facebook to encourage the public disappointment with Disney's stance.

Absent a sudden worldwide revival, we may never turn back the tide of an increasingly debased culture. However, we defend Biblical values because that is what we are called to do as Christians, regardless of the personal consequences. Even the threat of death could not deter Peter and John from preaching what they knew. "Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him? We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:19-20). We also appreciate suffering because "suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character" (Romans 5:3-4). Being a Christian today takes courage because everyone seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

So the next time you pass your child on the couch watching a Disney show about same-sex parents and homosexual teenage romance, remember those messages will be imprinted in their minds and later reinforced by their peers. We must do everything in our power to challenge their narrative because every child matters. The longer we stay silent, the worse it will get.
Canadas first national indigenous Anglican archbishop resigns over sexual misconduct

Mark MacDonald, Canadas first national indigenous Anglican archbishop, resigned from his post over acknowledged sexual misconduct, the church announced Wednesday.

In a statement providing few details of the misconduct committed by MacDonald, the Anglican Church of Canada said the 68-year-old married father of three, who assumed the post of bishop in 2007 before he was promoted to archbishop in 2019, formally relinquished the exercise of the ordained ministry pursuant to Canon XIX, effective April 20, 2022.

Archbishop Mark MacDonald has resigned as National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop and has relinquished the exercise of ministry due to acknowledged sexual misconduct, The Most Rev. Linda Nicholls, archbishop and primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, wrote in an open letter.

This is devastating news. The sense of betrayal is deep and profound when leaders fail to live up to the standards we expect and the boundaries we set. Our hearts hold compassion for human frailty and space for repentance while we also ache with the pain that such betrayal causes first to the complainant; then to so many others and to the life of our Church, she added.

MacDonald, who served as bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church of Alaska for 10 years, also served for a period as assistant bishop for the Navajo Reservation, covering parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, The National Post reported.

In her letter about MacDonalds admission, Nicholls urged prayers for him as well as the individual who revealed his sexual misconduct.

First and most importantly our prayers must be for the complainant whose life has been affected by Marks actions. The betrayal of trust by someone in such a prominent role of leadership will require a long road of healing and our constant prayers, she said.

Also remember Mark and his family in prayer as they face the consequences of his actions that will affect every member, she asked. The ripple effects of this misconduct will be felt throughout the Church both in Canada and internationally, but most especially within the Sacred Circle and Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples. We mourn with them.

Hundreds of people gather every two to three years to participate in Sacred Circles, which are national gatherings of Indigenous Anglicans for prayer, worship, discernment, and decision-making. The last one was held in November.

According to The Vancouver Sun, MacDonalds sudden resignation comes while the Anglican Church of Canada is under fire for its handling of unrelated allegations of sexual misconduct.

He had also been slated to play a crucial role in the visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury to Canada next week, where the churchs desire to reconcile with Canadas Indigenous people is expected to be highlighted.
Jesus mural unscathed by fires at historic Chicago church may not survive demolition

A mural depicting Christs resurrection was left relatively unscathed by a series of fires at a 128-year-old Chicago church that the city determined to be unsalvageable. The church's pastor sees the murals survival as a comforting sign from God of better things to come.

The mural shows Jesus ascending to Heaven with angels around Him and the Bible verse Luke 24:51 that says, "While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven."

Antioch church. Heavy fire. Roof is in. Loss will be extensive pic.twitter.com/tXyOgs1k7G  Chicago Fire Media (@CFDMedia) April 15, 2022

A fire broke out at Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Englewood shortly after a Good Friday service led by Pastor Gerald Dew, NBC's Chicago affiliate WMAQ reported, adding that the fire was accidentally caused by a worker using a propane torch to repair the church's roof.

Chicago Fire Department crews returned to the church over several days as they worked to put out the fire that continued to reignite.

Despite the heartache of seeing the church engulfed in flames, Dew said he found hope in the murals survival.

"I don't want to say dawn on me, but I'm beginning to really process, that's a better word, process the magnitude of the loss, the pastor told local news outlet WLS Tuesday as fire crews twice returned to the church that day to extinguish flames that reignited amid the rubble as crews knocked bricks done inside the church.

"He (Jesus) promised He would return. And so, just as He is risen, and has ascended, we believe we will rise from this.

"If we get the word that these walls that you see standing can be saved that would be an incredible blessing to us," Dew added, hopeful that part of the church could be salvaged and rebuilt.

However, Chicago's building department decided that the walls sustained too much damage to be saved. CBS Chicago reported that plans are underway to tear down the north, east, and south walls but leave the west wall, which holds a school. It is estimated that the demolition process will take at least a week or two.

Ward Miller, executive director of Preservation Chicago, had also hoped the historic church could be saved.

"Antioch Church, in my opinion, was a landmark quality building  and unfortunately, the procedure never happened where it was taken into landmarks and reviewed," Miller said.

"Antioch could be rebuilt within its historic shell and it doesn't have to necessarily be rebuilt exactly like it was," Miller added. "I think that a reconstruction would bring about much more interest to the greater community than just the church itself."

The Jesus mural is now peeling off, and the city doesn't know if it can be saved amid the demolition.

"I'm going to miss that mural," said Antioch Missionary Baptist church trustee Darren Garrett to CBS Chicago. "Hopefully we can save part of it, but if not, I want to thank the Hicks brothers  because we had it retouched up maybe like 15 years ago. And that mural, everybody loved that mural.

The trustee not only worked at the church, but his familys connection to it extends back to his great-grandmother. Garrett said his family had been at the church all [their] lives ever since his great-grandmother left a different Antioch church to attend services at the one that recently burned. The church was built in 1894.

"All our members are hurt by it, but we're going to be here and rebuild and we're going to be even closer behind this, Garrett added. "I was still hoping and praying that we would be able to keep the walls  some parts of it  but God knows what's best.

"Our faith tells us that joy comes in the morning," Dew told CBS Chicago. "We did weep on Friday, and we wept last night. But joy came this morning. Hopes were dashed on that Friday. These are the emotions that we are so familiar with because we just experienced an awful Friday."

The Chicago Department of Buildings said in a statement that it "is committed to continuing to work closely with the leadership of the Antioch Missionary Baptist as they deal with the loss of this historic community pillar."

When the Antioch congregation started in 1925, worship services were initially held in Bronzeville and later Washington Park. The church relocated to Englewood in 1958, spending $200,000 to purchase the building and another $75,000 to remodel it. The building that housed the church was constructed in 1894.
Possible mass grave with up to 9,000 bodies discovered near Mariupol, Ukraine

Satellite imagery has revealed what looks like a mass grave outside the port city of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine, which might be 20 times larger than another mass grave that was discovered earlier this month in Bucha and could contain as many as 9,000 bodies, according to officials from Mariupol, which has witnessed the worst fighting since Russias invasion.

The Mariupol City Council has posted satellite images on Telegram that point on the mass gravesite located just 12 miles west of Mariupol, which is now largely controlled by Russian troops along the northwestern edge of Manhush and is believed to contain as many as 9,000 bodies, NPR reported.

"The biggest war crime of the 21st century was committed in Mariupol. This is the new Babyn Yar. Then Hitler killed Jews, Roma and Slavs. And now Putin is destroying Ukrainians. He has already killed tens of thousands of civilians in Mariupol. And this requires a strong reaction from the entire civilized world. Anything needs to stop the genocide," said Mayor Vadym Boychenko on Telegram.

Russian troops collected corpses from the streets of Mariupol, transported them to the nearby village of Manhush on trucks and secretly threw them into the mass grave in a field next to the settlements old cemetery, Boichenko added, according to The Guardian.

The invaders are concealing evidence of their crimes. The cemetery is located near a petrol station to the left side of a circular road. The Russians have dug huge trenches 30 meters wide. They chuck people in, he continued.

The images, which appeared to match the site, were released by a U.S. satellite imagery company, Maxar Technologies.

In a statement, Maxar Technologies said the images were taken from mid-March through mid-April. They show that over 200 new graves started appearing toward the end of March and expanded in April, according to NBC News.

The graves are aligned in four sections of linear rows, each about 280 feet long, the company said.

Ukraines Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Saturday that the country will continue to try to evacuate civilians from Mariupol.

"Today we will again try to evacuate women, children and the elderly," Vereshchuk said on Telegram, Agence France-Presse reported. "If everything happens as planned, we will start the evacuation around noon.

Evacuation attempts have failed due to a lack of agreement from the Russian side.

Earlier this month, some 280 bodies were found in mass graves in Bucha, a town northwest of Kyiv, according to NPR.

While Russia has denied targeting civilians, its estimated that at least 2,435 civilians have been killed and 2,946 have been injured since Russia began its invasion on Feb. 24. Among those killed were 184 children, according to the United Nations.

Most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes, the U.N. said, adding that the actual number of casualties is likely to be considerably higher.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently urged President Joe Biden to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, which would allow the U.S. to adopt the most aggressive sanctions.

Sources told The Times (U.K.) that Biden was keeping the move under consideration, and observers believe Russias history under President Putin might fulfill the criteria for the designation.

In an interview with CNN last week, Zelensky warned that Putin could use nuclear or chemical weapons against Ukraine.

Not only me  all of the world, all of the countries have to be worried because it can be not real information, but it can be truth, Zelensky told CNN. Chemical weapons  they could do it, for them the life of the people [is] nothing.  We should think not be afraid, not be afraid but be ready. But that is not a question for Ukraine, not only for Ukraine but for all the world, I think.

More than 280 priests and deacons of the Russian Orthodox Church and over 400 ministers of Evangelical churches in Russia have called for reconciliation and an immediate end to Russias ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Steve Harvey tells 'Family Feud' audience God has given every living soul a gift

Internationally recognized comedian Steven Harvey used his time between Family Feud segments to speak to the audience about their god-given gifts.

The key is to locate your gift, he said. Its not your talent. Your talent has nothing to do with it. Be very careful with what you're talented in and passionate about. They sound like the same thing. What you are gifted at is your quest.

The 65-year-old TV personality advised the younger audience members to identify their respective gifts because therein lies your greatest chance for success, adding: Every living soul God created at birth, He gave all of you a gift. All of you in this room are gifted. All of you are gifted. Listen to me. All of you are gifted individuals.

Teaching is a gift, he said. Networking is a gift. Working with your hands is a gift. Being a caregiver is a gift. Babysitting is a gift; some people are just really good at it. All of this turns into something.

To make his point  and to show the difference between a talent and a gift  Harvey told the crowd about one of his childhood friends, whom he called Clipper.

Clipper, Harvey recalled, spent all his spare time cutting grass. Nowadays, Harveys 62-year-old friend owns an incredibly successful landscaping business in Cleveland, Ohio, bringing in $4 million a year.

You know what Clipper do? Harvey is heard saying in a clip posted on his YouTube page. Clipper cut grass. He dont do nothin but cut grass. He found his gift and he was gifted at it. His gift has made room for him.

In the video, titled Motivated Steve Harvey, the comedian advised those in the Family Feud audience to copy the Clipper who has found their gift.

Your gift might be frying chicken, Harvey continued. Some of yall bake pie. Some of yall do hair. Some of yall fix cars. Some of yall paint. Go do that. Do your gift. Dont worry about which one of them talents. The reason youre struggling with that talent is because that aint what you was built to do. You were built to do your gift.

Discover your gift, change your life, Harvey instructed. Thats the secret.

Harvey regularly uses his platforms to speak about God and Jesus, including on his new show, "Judge Steve Harvey." However, Harvey stunned many of his Christian fans last year after he revealed that he believes there's more than one way to Heaven.

Last year, Harvey posted a video on his official YouTube channel titled How Steve Harvey Prays that shows him at Abu Dhabis Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in the United Arab Emirates. The UAE is a majority Muslim Persian Gulf nation where Islam is the official religion. While Christian expatriates in the UAE are allowed to worship in private, they are prohibited by law from praying in public or evangelizing.

"There's no one way to Heaven, no one way to paradise, Harvey declared. It's like television, now there's over 800 channels on cable, and they're all pretty entertaining. So I'm pretty sure that to get to Heaven, there's got to be more than one route. Because somebody watching another channel or taking another channel than you, they're still getting entertained, and they probably still getting to Heaven.

In the Bible, however, Jesus clearly states that He is the only way.

I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me, Jesus said in John 14:6. And in John 8:24 Jesus said: For unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins.

The Apostle Peter echoed the words of Christ in Acts 4:12, saying, Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

Harvey captioned the video by writing, Theres many ways to serve GOD and keep your faith. My trip to The Emirates always reminds me how we can live in harmony and in the much-needed peace we all crave globally."

In the nearly five-minute video, Harvey also shows viewers the exterior of the Mary Mother of Jesus Mosque, which is located near St. Andrews Anglican church. The mosque was renamed in 2017 by the order of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahyan to consolidate bonds of humanity between followers of different religions, Al Arabiya reported at the time.

"Can you imagine a mosque with the name Jesus on it? Yeah, the world could use a little bit more of that, Harvey said while standing outside the mosque that was renamed Mariam Umm Eisa (Mary Mother of Jesus Mosque).
Texas National Guard soldier feared drowned trying to save illegal migrants smuggling drugs

A Texas National Guard soldier remains missing two days after he attempted to save a pair of migrants who appeared to be drowning as they illegally crossed the river from Mexico to the United States to smuggle drugs into the country. Many believe he drowned during the rescue mission.

The search for the soldier, who went missing Friday after entering a river in Eagle Pass to save the two migrants, carries on, the Texas Military Department said Saturday in a statement.

The soldier, whose identity has not been released, was assigned to Operation Lone Star, Texas Gov. Greg Abbotts effort to combat the illegal immigration crisis at the southern border.

The service member selflessly attempted to help two migrants who appeared to be drowning as they illegally crossed the river from Mexico to the United States.

The two migrants were involved in illegal drug trafficking and are in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol, the department said.

Brave National Guardsman removed his armor before jumping in dangerous waters to save a human life. Please pray for the families of all those impacted, wrote Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, on Twitter.

Brave National Guardsman removed his armor before jumping in dangerous waters to save a human life. Please pray for the families of all those impacted. ???? pic.twitter.com/yo9CwHcw44  Tony Gonzales (@TonyGonzales4TX) April 22, 2022

Dive teams searched the water Friday, but the strength of the rivers current forced the search and rescue teams to cease dive operations, which resumed Saturday, Fox News reported.

The soldier is believed to have drowned in the Rio Grande, The New York Times said.

Its very dangerous, this river, the Rio Grande  its very tricky, Sheriff Schmerber, a former U.S. Border Patrol officer, was quoted as saying.

The Texas Military Department said the search for the missing soldier will continue "until we have exhausted all available resources," adding: The Texas Military Department is thankful to all interagency partners for their continued support in this operation to locate our missing soldier. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the family of the soldier.

Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Texas Rangers and Border Patrol are also supporting the search efforts.

Drownings are not uncommon in the river, the sheriff said, adding that the drowning of a law enforcement officer is considerably more rare. When I was in the Border Patrol, we advised never to jump after anybody, he said.
Christians rally against California abortion legislation: Never seen a bill like this

A bill that critics argue could decriminalize infanticide in California drew hundreds of people to the state's capitol Tuesday as the legislation continues to move forward in Sacramento.

Demonstrators  including Pastor Jack Hibbs and other pastors and churchgoers  descended on the state capitol to lobby legislators ahead of a committee vote on Assembly Bill 2223.

The day of advocacy was led by Capitol Resource Institute, California Family Council and Real Impact.

According to Hibbs, the pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills and head of the advocacy group Real Impact, close to 3,000 people attended. However, news reports have estimated around 1,500 participants.

Opponents say the new bill would protect mothers and their accomplices who kill or let die breathing newborns from criminal prosecution. But supporters of the bill, which passed the Assembly Health Committee on an 11-3 vote Tuesday, say it would prevent women from being prosecuted for any actions or omissions related to pregnancy, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death. Proponents have also pushed back on claims that the bill would decriminalize infanticide.

While definitions of perinatal death vary, many refer to the demise of newborns up to seven days old. But under California code, the perinatal period is defined as "the period from the establishment of pregnancy to one month following delivery.

Amid critics' concern with the bill's inclusion of "perinatal death," Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, who authored AB 2223, recently modified the bills language to narrow the definition of perinatal death to include due to a pregnancy-related cause.

But the California Family Council contends that since pregnancy-related cause is not defined in the bill, a mother who takes the life of her newborn could potentially cite postpartum depression as such a pregnancy-related cause.

AB 2223 also states: People also need to end pregnancies by abortion, including self-managed abortion, which means ending ones own pregnancy outside of the medical system." The bill cites what it describes as out-of-date provisions that allow healthcare providers and others to report pregnancy losses to law enforcement.

The bill describes mothers as pregnant people and says the threat of facing civil or criminal penalties for adverse pregnancy outcomes is the result of systemic racial inequities.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Hibbs called the proposed legislation literally unbelievable."

How can this possibly be justified by anyones worldview, no matter what? Hibbs asked. By what means, by what logic have you come to this conclusion that a baby can be murdered up to 30 days after birth, and therell be no accountability. Its literally unbelievable."

According to the California Family Council, the bill "also removes the duty of a coroner to determine how a newborn died if the death is known or suspected to be the result of a self-induced or criminal abortion."

"If a coroner decides to investigate a newborns death under these circumstances, the reason for the newborns death cant be used to prosecute anyone involved with the death," the Calfornia Family Council warned in a statement. "This law would leave babies born alive after a failed abortion vulnerable to murder or death by neglect."

"The bill also gives a mother the right to sue any law enforcement agency for investigating or threatening to investigate her 'pregnancy outcome' including the perinatal death of her child," the statement adds. "So if someone finds a dead newborn in a dumpster, law enforcement is expected to ask no questions or look further into the matter if they suspect the child died after a failed abortion or from any pregnancy-related cause.

The legislation comes as two California women were charged with "fetal murder" for causing the stillbirths of their fetuses, one of which is serving an 11-year prison sentence after drug use was found to have contributed to the death of her baby.

Earlier this year, California Attorney General Rob Bonta advised district attorneys, police chiefs and sheriffs across the state Thursday not to prosecute pregnant women whose actions lead to the miscarriage or stillbirth of a fetus.

Hibbs told CP that based on what he's heard from legal counsel, "the United States has never seen a bill like this in its history.

Hibbs cited the words of Ben Franklin, who, when asked what kind of government he had helped shape, famously responded, A republic, if you can keep it.

We have not been busy about keeping our republic, which is why we have sunken to the level that we have in crime, in lawlessness, in racism, Hibbs said. All these things, notice, have surfaced as America departs from God.

Look whats filling the void, absolute lawlessness is filling that void when Gods removed.

Hibbs called on every concerned voter to make an effort to vote for a biblical worldview, and then you need to make sure that the person you voted for hears from you from time to time.

In an editorial for The Christian Post earlier this week, Hibbs referred to California as the Gangrene State and urged believers to become more involved. He quoted the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:13: You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

It just simply means that if you know whats right as a believer, let alone a human, then you should do the right thing. But if you know whats right and dont do the right thing, now you are complicit to the problem, he said. Thats what people need to do. People need to take their country back. Frankly, as a pastor, I can say this, pastors need to take their pulpit back from the 'woke-ism' that has softened the church."

Hibbs argues that the Church "has almost lost its voice in the nation."

"However, in California, the voice of the Church is very strong, and yeah, so to speak, its bloody," he said.

And as for believers in the rest of the country who may think such legislation wont pop up in other states, Hibbs had a dire prediction.

Ten years ago I was the only guy standing up here, and I was mocked and ridiculed," he said. "Today, we had 2,700 people show up and 35 pastors up and down the state show up. Californias the place to come and fight for whats right because if we dont stop it in California, ... what happens here winds up in your state within three years.
City rejects atheist group's demand to remove crosses from mountain

A city embroiled in a church-state battle with a national atheist group over a display of three crosses has rejected demands to remove them.

The city attorney for Elizabethton, Tennessee, Roger Day, issued a statement last week saying that the crosses on nearby Lynn Mountain do not violate the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on establishing a religion, despite the atheist group's assertions.

The Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) had previously called for the city to remove the crosses that have been in place since the 1950s when neighborhood boys created them as an Easter project.

Day cited the 2019 U.S. Supreme Court decision, American Legion v. American Humanist Association, in which the high court ruled 7-2 that a 40-foot-tall cross on public property in Maryland did not violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

I agree with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in American Legion which held that long standing monuments, symbols, and practices with religious associations have a presumption of constitutionality,' he wrote.

Day said that, according to the ruling, a religious symbol on government property doesn't violate the Establishment Clause if it has taken on a secular meaning.

As such, it is my opinion as City Attorney of the city of Elizabethton that the three crosses can remain on Lynn Mountain on city-owned property, he continued.

Days statement is the first public remark made by a city official on the debate over the Lynn Mountain crosses since the issue was first raised in 2018, according to local media outlet WJHL.

FFRF, an atheist organization that often files legal complaints against perceived violations of the separation of church and state, claimed that the crosses were unconstitutional.

The organization sent a letter of complaint to the city in 2018 on behalf of two residents, with the atheist group suspecting that the crosses are being funded by the city because, at times, they have been renovated, as well as lit up at night.

I dont know the facts of the funding and everything, but we did in 2018 look at land surveys to confirm that [the crosses] are on city property, and that certainly has not been argued, said FFRF legal fellow Karen Heineman in an interview with The Christian Post earlier this month.

Our concern is we have these three Latin crosses, which are ... defined as being religiously associated with Christianity. And we suspect at least some city funds are going to maintain them, lighting them up. And thats our concern. We feel the Constitution says otherwise, that thats not OK.

While FFRF opposes the crosses, the First Liberty Institute, a conservative law firm that engages in religious liberty-centered litigation, supports the display.

Roger Byron, a senior counsel for First Liberty, told CP that the religious symbols are not unconstitutional because of their location on public property.

When you have an established display or established monument like the three cross display there in Elizabethton, Tennessee, it is presumed to be constitutional, Byron said. Its strongly presented as constitutional; unless it can be proven otherwise. And to prove it unconstitutional is a very difficult thing to do.

If a Latin cross as a central component of the county seal is constitutional, then certainly the cross display in Elizabethton, Tennessee, is constitutional, he added.
Dede Robertson, wife of televangelist Pat Robertson, dies at age 94

The wife of televangelist Pat Robertson, who with her husband was involved in the leadership of the Christian Broadcasting Network and Regent University, has died at the age of 94.

Adelia Dede Robertson, who married Pat Robertson in 1954, died at her home in Virginia Beach, Virginia, on Tuesday, according to an obituary posted by Regent University in Virginia.

In addition to her husband of nearly 70 years, Dede is survived by four children  Timothy Robertson, Elizabeth Robinson, Gordon Robertson and Ann LeBlanc  14 grandchildren and 23 great-grandchildren.

My mom was a rock, said Ann LeBlanc in a statement. She was a rock throughout our childhood. Dad had to travel a lot, but Mom was always there for us kids.  That gives great security to children.

Gordon Robertson, who recently took over lead anchor duties for the long-running CBN program The 700 Club, said his mother was essential for both the Robertson family and their parachurch efforts.

Mom was the glue that held the Robertson family together. She was always working behind the scenes. If it werent for Mom, there wouldnt be a CBN, Gordon Robertson said.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1927, Dede Elmer attended Ohio State University and Yale University School of Nursing, where she received a master of nursing and met her future husband, Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson.

While not a notable on-screen figure like her husband, Dede Robertson was a board member for CBN, Regent University and Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation.

A prominent Christian media organization, CBN has studios that operate in Virginia, Washington, D.C. and Jerusalem, with broadcasts that reportedly reach people in over 170 countries and territories.

She also authored two books during the 1980s, titled My God Will SupplyandThe New You. She also wrote a monthly column for Christian Life Magazine.

In 1982, she was appointed the principal U.S. delegate to the Inter-American Commission of Women, working to elevate the status of women in Latin America. According to her obituary, Dede Robertson was selected Christian Woman of the Year in 1986.

Dede Robertson also actively campaigned for her husband during his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, visiting over 52 cities from 1987 to 1988.

Dedes passing comes months after her husband stepped down as the host of The 700 Club after leading the conservative Christian program for 60 years.

Last October, Pat Robertson announced he would no longer be the show's regular host, handing that responsibility over to his son Gordon Robertson, who served as co-anchor for more than 20 years.

During his time hosting the series, Robertson interviewed many prominent faith and political leaders. He also garnered controversy at times for some things he and or his guests had said.
JERUSALEM (AP)  President Joe Biden has accepted an invitation to visit Israel in the coming months, the two countries announced on Sunday.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke to Biden on Sunday afternoon, discussing recent Israeli-Palestinian unrest in Jerusalem as well as their shared concerns about Iran, both of their offices said.
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SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP)  El Salvadors congress voted Sunday to grant a request by President Nayib Bukele to extend an anti-gang emergency decree for another 30 days.

The measure was approved with 67 votes in the 84-seat congress, where Bukele's party holds a majority.

Bukele has used emergency powers to round up about 16,000 suspected gang members following a spate of killings in March.

Rights groups have criticized the measures, saying arrests are often arbitrary, based on a persons appearance or where they live.

The original 30-day state of emergency approved in late March restricts the right to gather, to be informed of rights and have access to a lawyer. It extends to 15 days the time that someone can be held without charges.

It came after a spate of homicides in late March, when gangs were blamed for 62 killings in a single weekend, a level of violence the country of 6.5 million people has not seen in years.

Bukele has also established a raft of other measures. Among other things, they lengthened sentences, reduced the age of criminal responsibility to 12.

El Salvadors congress has authorized prison sentences of 10 to 15 years for news media that reproduce or disseminate messages from the gangs, alarming press freedom groups.

Gang members held at Salvadoran prisons have been put on reduced food rations, denied mattresses and frog-marched around.

Rights groups have expressed concerns that innocent people are being caught up in sweeps targeting the notorious violent street gangs.

Gangs control swaths of territory through brutality and fear. They have driven thousands to emigrate to save their own lives or the lives of their children who are forcibly recruited.

The gangs' power is strongest in El Salvadors poorest neighborhoods, where the state has long been absent. They are a drain on the economy, extorting money from even the lowest earners and forcing businesses that cant or wont pay to close.
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BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP)  Far from home and unsure when or even if they will ever get back, Ukrainians displaced by war gathered at churches across Eastern Europe on Sunday to celebrate the Orthodox Easter holiday in safety and to pray for an end to the fighting with Russia.

Hundreds of believers crowded into the Church of Saint Michael in Hungary's capital of Budapest to take part in a liturgy delivered by a Ukrainian priest, a sermon that focused on the cohesion of the Ukrainian people and prayer for those left behind.

As Ukraine celebrates this holiday, for us Ukrainian Christians, it is also a celebration that gives us hope that with the resurrection will also come victory in Ukraine, and that good will prevail over evil, said priest Damien Habory after the one-hour service.

The Easter holiday, observed by Orthodox followers according to the Julian calendar, comes as nearly 5.2 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee the violence unleashed on their country by Russia's invasion.

Most have entered countries on Ukraine's western border: nearly 2.9 million Ukrainians have fled to Poland, while 775,000 others have fled to Romania and 490,000 have crossed into Hungary since the war began two months ago.

In Bucharest, the Romanian capital, dozens of Ukrainian refugees as well as Romanian faithful came to the Brancusi Parish Church for the Easter liturgy, and to hear a choir sing religious songs in Ukrainian. A priest chanted Christ is Risen!" to the worshippers, to which they responded, Indeed he is risen!

Following the service in Budapest, worshippers lined the street in front of the church with Easter baskets packed with offerings of hand-dyed eggs, candles and pasca  a traditional Easter sweet bread. Habory greeted the worshippers and blessing their Easter baskets with holy water flicked from a liturgical brush used for blessings.

Yaroslava Hortyanyi, chairwoman of the Hungarian Ukrainian Cultural Association, said that bringing Ukrainians together for the Easter holiday was an opportunity for them to pray for themselves and for those they left behind.

We are all happy for the resurrection of Christ, but we don't have happiness in our hearts because at the same moment Ukrainian children, Ukrainian soldiers and Ukrainian people are dying," Hortyanyi said. People who believe in God believe that this is a way for God to test them ... They believe that their prayers will help their husbands and parents that they left at home.

Kate Gladka, 31, who came to Hungary from Ukraine's capital of Kyiv a month ago, said she had struggled to hold back her tears during the Easter service, which for her is usually a time for celebration.

"We have new meaning this year because we may be the most alive nation in the world now, and we understand what it means to arise all the time, she said.

___

Follow all AP stories on Russia's war against Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.
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ABUJA, Nigeria (AP)  At least 100 people may have died in an explosion at an illegal oil refinery in southeast Nigeria, a local oil official said Sunday as the search intensified for bodies at the site and for two people suspected of being involved in the blast.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, in a statement, called the explosion a catastrophe and a national disaster.

The explosion Friday night at the facility in Ohaji-Egbema local government area in Imo state was triggered by a fire at two fuel storage areas where more than 100 people worked, state officials told The Associated Press.

Dozens of workers were caught up in the explosion while many others attempted to escape the blaze by running into wooded areas.

Those who died in the disaster are estimated to be within the range of 100, said Goodluck Opiah, the Imo commissioner for petroleum resources. A lot of them ran into the bush with the burns and they died there.

Buhari has directed the nations security forces to intensify the clampdown" on such facilities being operated illegally in many parts of southern Nigeria, a spokesperson said in a statement.

Although Nigeria is Africas largest producer of crude oil, for many years its oil production capacity has been limited by a chronic challenge of oil storage and the operation of illegal refineries.

Nigeria lost at least $3 billion worth of crude oil to theft between January 2021 and February 2022, with shady business operators often avoiding regulators by setting up refineries in remote areas such as the one that exploded in Imo, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) said in March.

There are no arrests yet but the two culprits are on the run with the police now looking for them, said Declan Emelumba, the Imo State commissioner for information. Officials did not reveal the identities of the suspects.

A mass burial is being planned for those killed in the explosion, many of who were burnt beyond recognition, said Emelumba. Environmental officials have started to fumigate the area.

Such disasters are a regular occurrence in Africas most populous country, where poverty and unemployment  at 33% according to the latest government estimates  have forced millions of young people into criminal activities.

Operating illegal refineries is not as popular in Imo state as it is in the oil-rich Niger Delta region, where militants have gained notoriety for blowing up oil pipelines and kidnapping workers from petroleum companies.

As many as 30 illegal oil refineries were busted in the Niger Delta region in just two weeks, Nigerias Defense Department said earlier this month when it announced a task force to curb crude oil theft.

In the aftermath of the explosion in Imo state, the Nigerian ministry of petroleum told The AP there is a renewed action to tackle illegal activities in the oil sector.

The government and the military are stepping up actions to minimize the criminalities along the oil production lines, said Horatius Egua, a senior official at the petroleum ministry.

But many of the culprits are not deterred including in Imo state, one of the few places producing oil in Nigerias southeast. The problem of illegal refineries has never been this bad and remains difficult to end, said Opiah, the Imo petroleum commissioner.

It is like asking why kidnapping or armed robbery has not stopped, he said. Even with this incident, not many people will be deterred. I am sure more illegal refineries will be cropping up in other places.
NEW MILFORD  Students in some schools in town now have access to professional behavioral and mental health services  at no cost to them.

Last month, student-based health centers opened in New Milford High School and Schaghticoke Middle School.

A behavioral health provider is on-site at both of those schools one day a week. The services are available to any student thats in that particular school building.

The goal is to remove barriers to access to care, such as lack of an available provider in the community, or lack of transportation, or a finance concern, said Melanie Bonjour, the school-based health center program manager for Connecticut Institute For Communities, Inc., or CIFC, which is partnering with the school to provide the service.

The school-based health centers work in collaboration and partnership with school nurses. The nurses may identify a child who will need a higher level of care, New Milford School Superintendent Alisha DiCorpo said.

They would then refer the child to the SBHC provider.

If the parent has provided permission, the student can be seen at the clinic. Its not just physical; it is also behavioral health, DiCorpo said. School-based health centers provide a broader level of care.

Behavioral health services are individual, group and family counseling that cover a range of disorders  anything that youd see in a higher level of care in the community that youd seek private clinicians office. It could be evaluation for anxiety disorders, depression, challenges academically, social isolation, concerns about suicidal ideation, risk taking behaviors. It could be substance abuse concerns and challenges academically, Bonjour said.

The district will also soon be providing in-school medical services as well.

During the summer, the district will be looking at the facilities, the building and carrying out the necessary renovations to create exam rooms, Bonjour said. Exam rooms require a hand washing sink and a little bit more like facility requirements at a behavioral health office. The district will be working to make the necessary renovations so that we are compliant with public health code and hopefully were able to add medical to the range of services in the new school year.

Medical services the schools will offer are similar to those provided at a private doctors office.

We do acute chronic care, Bonjour said. So, it could be anything from diagnosis to illnesses for strep throat, colds, fevers, aches and pains, stomach disorders to chronic illnesses.

Additionally, she said physicals are a big part of what they do, to be sure students are compliant with the schools required physicals.

The new services are all paid through ESSR (Elementary & Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund) grant money.

ESSER grant funding supported our ability to pay for the costs associated with the work needed to address the physical space needs as well as start-up costs for equipment for the medical clinics. The partnering organizations use existing funding sources and bill insurance (such as Husky and private insurance). There are no co-pay costs to families, DiCorpo said.

The need, goals

The need for the services relate to the increase in youth anxiety and social isolation due to being remote during the pandemic, Bonjour said.

As students returned to in-person learning, we recognized the need to support our students mental health and well-being, she said.

The clinics have been nearly a year in the making.

Connecticuts Institute for Communities (CIFC) has been working in New Milford for a good nine months on expanding, bringing behavioral school based services into the district, Bonjour said.

Bonjour has secured funding to establish school-based health centers in Danbury and Newtown.

The clinics are open one day a week. As more staff is hired, its hours will be increased.

Our goal is, starting the next school year, to have behavioral health services and to expand to add medical services in all five of the districts schools, Bonjour said.

Spreading the word

The clinics are starting to see students and are slowly gaining a presence in the district.

Bonjour said its typical for a behavioral health clinician to see about seven to eight visits per day once the clinics get established. If need warrants it, group sessions are often held to accommodate more patients.

The current focus is on spreading the word about the new services offered.

Right now, the focus is on outreach to school faculty and the community about the service delivery model and the importance of collaboration, DiCorpo said. While there are students who are currently receiving services, the goal is to provide understanding of whats offered to the school community and to develop an understanding of how students will be serviced.

Towards their outreach efforts, there have been community parent meetings and meet and greets with guidance counselors and social workers.

Thats our phase over the next month, Bonjour said. We slowly build that referral system and identify students that are in need.

Behavioral Visits are based on the individual need of that patient.

We try to get the kids in as soon as possible Because the goal is not to have them stay out of school because of lack of care, Bonjour said.

Additionally, to support academic achievement, every effort is made not to remove students from their academic classes, she said.

We look at their classroom schedules and we try to pull those students from the classroom schedules that are least academic focused and so if they have a study hall, a lunch period, a special, said Bonjour, adding exceptions are always made if students are in crisis.

Bonjour said she hopes to get state funding to help expand services. and is reaching out to area legislative leaders to hear their position on mental services in the state. She referenced Substitute Bill No. 1 of the Connecticut General Assembly, An Act Concerning Childhood Mental And Physical Health Services In Schools.

Our long-term goal is to increase timely access to health care so the students are healthy and ready to learn, Di Corpo said.
Pterosaurs ruled the skies during the age of the dinosaurs, but scientists have long debated if they actually had feathers.

Now we know. Not only did these flying reptiles have feathers, but they could actually control the color of those feathers on a cellular level to create multicolor plumage in a way similar to modern birds, new research has revealed.

These color patterns, determined by melanin pigments, may have been used as a way for pterosaur species to communicate with each other. A study detailing these findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Researchers analyzed the fossilized headcrest of Tupandactylus imperator, a pterosaur that lived 115 million years ago in Brazil. Upon closer inspection, the paleontologists realized that the bottom of this huge headcrest was rimmed with two kinds of feathers: short, wiry ones that were more similar to hair, as well as fluffier ones that branch like bird feathers.

We didnt expect to see this at all, said lead study author Aude Cincotta, a paleontologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University College Cork in Ireland, in a statement.

For decades, paleontologists have argued about whether pterosaurs had feathers, Cincotta said. The feathers in our specimen close off that debate for good as they are very clearly branched all the way along their length, just like birds today.

The research team studied the feathers with electron microscopes and were surprised to find preserved melanosomes, or granules of melanin. These granules had different shapes, depending on the types of feathers they were associated with on the pterosaur fossil. Patchy color was also found in the preserved soft tissue.

In birds today, feather colour is strongly linked to melanosome shape, said study coauthor Maria McNamara, professor of paleontology in the University College Corks School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, in a statement.

Since the pterosaur feather types had different melanosome shapes, these animals must have had the genetic machinery to control the colours of their feathers. This feature is essential for colour patterning and shows that coloration was a critical feature of even the very earliest feathers.

Previously, scientists understood that pterosaurs had some kind of whisker-like fluffy covering to help keep them insulated. The new research confirms that this fuzz was actually made from different types of feathers. These feathers and the surrounding skin had different colors, like black, brown, ginger, gray and other tones associated with the different melanin granules.

This strongly suggests that the pterosaur feathers had different colours, McNamara said. The presence of this feature in both dinosaurs (including birds) and pterosaurs indicates shared ancestry, where this feature derives from a common ancestor that lived in the Early Triassic (250 million years ago). Colouration was therefore probably an important driving force in the evolution of feathers even in the earliest days of their evolutionary history.

Some of these colors helped the pterosaurs to share visual signals with one another, but the team isnt quite sure what those signals would have meant.

We would need to know the precise hue and pattern to work this out, McNamara said. Unfortunately, we cant do either at the moment, with current data. We need to look at melanosomes in feathers across the body to work out whether they were patterned, and we need to figure out whether traces of non-melanin pigments can be detected.

Tupandactylus was an odd-looking creature, with a wingspan of 16 feet (5 meters) and a huge (albeit lightweight) head with toothless jaws. Its giant crest had irregular blooms of color.

Perhaps they were used in pre-mating rituals, just as certain birds use colourful tail fans, wings and head crests to attract mates, wrote Michael Benton, a professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Bristols School of Earth Sciences, in a News and Views article that published with the study. Benton was not involved in the research.

Modern birds are renowned for the diversity and complexity of their colourful displays, and for the role of these aspects of sexual selection in bird evolution, and the same might be true for a wide array of extinct animals, including dinosaurs and pterosaurs, Benton wrote.

The discovery could allow for a better understanding of pterosaurs, which first appeared about 230 million years ago and went extinct along with the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

This finding opens up opportunities to explore new aspects of pterosaur behaviour, and to revisit previously described specimens for further insights into feather structure and functional evolution, McNamara said.

The fossil, originally recovered from northeastern Brazil, has been repatriated to its home country thanks to efforts by the scientists and a private donor.

It is so important that scientifically important fossils such as this are returned to their countries of origin and safely conserved for posterity said study coauthor Pascal Godefroit, paleontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, in a statement. These fossils can then be made available to scientists for further study and can inspire future generations of scientists through public exhibitions that celebrate our natural heritage.
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PARIS (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macron comfortably won a second term Sunday, triggering relief among allies that the nuclear-armed power won't abruptly shift course in the midst of the war in Ukraine from European Union and NATO efforts to punish and contain Russia's military expansionism.

The second five-year term for the 44-year-old centrist spared France and Europe from the seismic upheaval of having firebrand populist Marine Le Pen at the helm, Macron's presidential runoff challenger who quickly conceded defeat but still scored her best-ever electoral showing.

Acknowledging that numerous voters cast ballots for him simply to keep out the fiercely nationalist far-right Le Pen, Macron pledged to reunite the country that is filled with so many doubts, so many divisions and work to assuage the anger of French voters that fed Le Pen's campaign.

No one will be left by the side of the road," Macron said in a victory speech against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower and a projection of the blue-white-and-red tricolor French flag. He was cheered by several hundred supporters who happily waved French and EU flags.

We have a lot to do and the war in Ukraine reminds us that we are going through tragic times where France must make its voice heard," Macron said.

During her campaign, Le Pen pledged to dilute French ties with the 27-nation EU, NATO and Germany, moves that would have shaken Europes security architecture as the continent deals with its worst conflict since World War II. Le Pen also spoke against EU sanctions on Russian energy supplies and faced scrutiny during the campaign over her previous friendliness with the Kremlin.

A chorus of European leaders hailed Macron's victory, since France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and is supplying weapons to Ukraine.

Democracy wins, Europe wins," said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

Together we will make France and Europe advance," tweeted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi called Macron's victory splendid news for all of Europe and a boost to the EU "being a protagonist in the greatest challenges of our times, starting with the war in Ukraine.

Macron won with 58.5% of the vote to Le Pen's 41.5%  significantly closer than when they first faced off in 2017.

Macron is the first French president in 20 years to win reelection, since incumbent Jacques Chirac trounced Le Pens father in 2002.

Le Pen called her result a shining victory, saying that in this defeat, I can't help but feel a form of hope.

Breaking through the threshold of 40% of the vote is unprecedented for the French far-right. Le Pen was beaten 66% to 34% by Macron in 2017 and her father got less than 20% against Chirac.

She and hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, one of 10 candidates eliminated in the first round on April 10, both quickly pitched forward Sunday night to France's legislative election in June, urging voters to give them a parliamentary majority to hamstring Macron.

Le Pens score this time rewarded her years-long efforts to make her far-right politics more palatable to voters. Campaigning hard on cost-of-living issues, she made deep inroads among blue-collar voters in disaffected rural communities and in former industrial centers.

Le Pen voter Jean-Marie Cornic, 78, said he cast his ballot for her because he wanted a president who would prioritize our daily lives  salaries, taxes, pensions.

The drop in support for Macron compared to five years ago points to a tough battle ahead for the president to rally people behind him in his second term. Many French voters found the 2022 presidential rematch less compelling than in 2017, when Macron was an unknown factor.

Leftist voters  unable to identify with either the centrist president or Le Pen  agonized with Sunday's choice. Some trooped reluctantly to polling stations solely to stop Le Pen, casting joyless votes for Macron.

It was the least worst choice, said Stephanie David, a transport logistics worker who backed a communist candidate in round one.

It was an impossible choice for retiree Jean-Pierre Roux. Having also voted communist in round one, he dropped an empty envelope into the ballot box on Sunday, repelled both by Le Pens politics and what he saw as Macrons arrogance.

I am not against his ideas but I cannot stand the person, Roux said.

In contrast, Marian Arbre, voting in Paris, cast his ballot for Macron to avoid a government that finds itself with fascists, racists.

Theres a real risk, the 29-year-old fretted.

Macron went into the vote as the firm favorite but faced a fractured, anxious and tired electorate. The war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic battered Macrons first term, as did months of violent protests against his economic policies.

In celebrating victory, Macron acknowledged a debt to voters who helped get him over the line, not to support the ideas I hold, but to block those of the extreme right.

I want to thank them and tell them that I am aware that their vote obliges me for the years to come, he said. "I am the custodian of their sense of duty, of their attachment to the Republic.

___

Associated Press journalists Sylvie Corbet, Elaine Ganley, Angela Charlton and Thomas Adamson in Paris, Sam Petrequin in Brussels Michel Spingler in Henin-Beaumont, and Alex Turnbull in Le Touquet, contributed.

___

Follow APs coverage of the French election at https://apnews.com/hub/french-election-2022
NORWALK  With COVID case rates already trending up in the city and statewide, local health officials are preparing to see an even bigger jump as families return from spring break this week.

Health officials prepare for more cases any time of year when travel and social activities are more common, including spring break, because these activities increase the risk of COVID transmission, said Theresa Argondezzi, assistant director of the Norwalk Health Department.

Norwalk Public Schools reported a total of 17 to 57 positive cases of COVID among students and teachers for the week prior to April 13, according to state data. If a school reports one to five cases, its reported as less than six. The district didnt report numbers on its dashboard for the week prior to break.

Before the break, the school district recommended families ask their children to pick up a home COVID-19 testing kit from the school nurse and test prior to returning to school. Testing is not required before returning to school on Monday.

The health department urged families to continue following COVID-19 precautions through the break, including sticking to outdoor and well-ventilated areas whenever possible, wearing well-fitting masks in crowded indoor settings, and staying home and away from others and getting tested as soon as possible if feeling sick.

Health officials also encouraged everyone to stay up to date on the COVID-19 vaccines. Nearly 87.5 percent of Norwalk residents 12 to 17 years old have been fully vaccinated, according to the mayors report on April 15. The younger residents, ages 5 to 11, still trail behind with almost 40 percent fully vaccinated.

This is due, in part, to the fact that vaccines for the older age group became available sooner, and we typically see vaccination rates increase over time, Argondezzi said. Still, we continue to reach out to community members to explain the benefits of vaccination.

The test positive rate in the city jumped almost 3 percentage points between its reporting on April 1 and April 15, and cases per 100,000 people also increased from 5.5 to 13.5 over the same period. Like much of the state, Norwalk saw 15 or more cases per 100,000 people between April 3 and April 16, according to state data.

Norwalk schools saw cases start to creep up in mid-March, about a week after it lifted its mask mandate. The cases dipped at the end of the month, but have since started crawling back up. School officials have not said whether they would consider reinstating the mask mandate, and the city is also holding off on taking such action.

emily.morgan@hearstmediact.com
WASHINGTON (AP)  A former White House official told the House committee investigating the Capitol riot that President Donald Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had been advised of intelligence reports showing the potential for violence, according to just-released transcripts.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a special assistant in the Trump White House, told the committee there were concerns brought forward to Meadows before the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but it was unclear what Meadows did with that information.

I just remember Mr. Ornato coming in and saying that we had intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th, Hutchinson said, presumably referencing Anthony Ornato, a senior Secret Service official. And Mr. Meadows said: All right. Lets talk about it.

The exact nature of what Meadows was told is not clear from Hutchinson's testimony. Though law enforcement had been bracing for potential violence on Jan. 6, officials had not properly accounted for the prospect that a violent mob would attack the Capitol.

The filing late Friday is the latest in a long legal fight over the extent to which Meadows, whose proximity to Trump has made him a key target of House Democrats, can be forced to cooperate with the committee's investigation. Meadows has handed over thousands of text messages, but he has refused to sit for an interview, has argued that he is immune from having to testify by virtue of his White House position, and has sued the committee.

The filing seeks a court ruling in the committee's favor that Meadows has no valid basis to refuse to testify. It says the committee has refined the scope of its request to focus on seven specific topics, including testimony about communication with Congress before Jan. 6, 2021; White House plans to replace the leadership of Justice Department so the department could pursue Trump's bogus claims of election fraud; and efforts to create alternate, or fake, slates of state electors who could change the outcome of the vote of the 2020 election that Democrat Joe Biden won.

The committee released excerpts of testimony from multiple witnesses it has interviewed, including Hutchinson. Besides describing warnings of potential violence provided to Meadows, Hutchinson revealed how the White House counsel's office cautioned against plans to enlist fake electors in states, including in meetings involving Meadows and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

The filing also includes new text messages that Meadows turned over, including several from House Republicans who were pushing the former North Carolina congressman to act. Meadows close friend, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, suggests in a late text on Jan. 5, 2021  the day before Congress was due to certify Biden's victory  that Vice President Mike Pence should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.

Meadows texted back in the early hours of Jan. 6: I have pushed for this. Not sure it is going to happen. Pence ultimately resisted the overwhelming pressure from Trump and his allies and did not attempt to object to Biden's certification.

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., was texting Meadows as early as Dec. 26, 2020: Mark, just checking in as time continues to count down. 11 days to 1/6 and 25 days to inauguration. We gotta get going!

In the texts released by the committee, Perry encouraged Meadows to talk to Jeffrey Clark, an assistant attorney general who was sympathetic to Trumps bogus claims of election fraud. A week later, on Jan. 3, Clark attended a meeting at the White House with Trump, where the prospect of elevating Clark to the role of acting attorney general was discussed  but adamantly resisted by Justice Department officials, who threatened to resign, and White House lawyers. Trump ultimately backed down.

Hutchinson said Meadows talked frequently to Clark, and Hutchinson recalled Clark's presence at the White House and his frequent outreach and communications.

In another interview released by the committee Friday, former Justice Department official Steven Engel, then the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, said Clark had suggested that the department provide a legal opinion to Pence regarding the vice president's authority to object to the certification of the presidential election. Engel said he told Clark that was absurd and reminded him that Pences role was a ceremonial one as president of the Senate.

The testimony released Friday also reinforced how certain Republicans in Congress were deeply involved in White House discussions about overturning the election in the months leading to the deadly insurrection.

Hutchinson, for instance, described several calls involving Meadows and members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus in late November and early December in which participants discussed what Pences role could be on Jan. 6, besides the ceremonial role he was required to play.

On those calls, according to Hutchinson, were representatives from Trump's legal team, including Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell, as well as Jordan and Perry.

Meadows' lawsuit asked a judge to invalidate two subpoenas that he received from the committee, alleging they were overly broad and unduly burdensome. The suit accused the committee of overreaching by subpoenaing Verizon for his cellphone records.

After the complaint was filed, the House committee sent a contempt of Congress charge against Meadows to the full House, where it passed on a near-party-line vote. It was the first time the chamber had voted to hold a former member in contempt since the 1830s.

While an earlier contempt referral against former Trump adviser Steve Bannon resulted in an indictment, the Justice Department has been slower to decide whether to prosecute Meadows.

Any criminal case against Meadows would be more complex than that presented against Bannon, in part because Meadows was a White House chief of staff and because he had begun to cooperate with the committee, even providing documents to the nine-member panel.

Meadows' attorney, George Terwilliger, has previously defended his client by noting that due to Meadows' willingness to turn over records, he should not be compelled to appear for an interview. Terwilliger did not immediately return an email seeking comment about the latest disclosures.
Multiple agencies are still searching for a Texas Army National Guard soldier who went missing along the river in Eagle Pass Friday during a mission-related incident, according to the Texas Military Department (TMD). The multi-agency search includes the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Texas Rangers and Border Patrol.

The missing soldier was identified Sunday as 22-year-old Bishop E. Evans, a Texas Army National Guard specialist. Evans went missing after allegedly trying to rescue two migrants who appeared to be drowning while crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico into the U.S., according to the TMD. Evans's family was notified Friday evening, the agency said.

Dive teams were forced to halt rescue operations Saturday evening due to the river's strong, fast current, according to the TMD. Rescue efforts resumed Sunday morning with the addition of three airboats from the Texas DPS.

"The search for the missing TMD soldier will continue until we have exhausted all available resources," the TMD wrote in a statement Saturday. "The Texas Military Department is thankful to all interagency partners for their continued support in this operation to locate our missing soldier. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the family of the soldier."

Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin on Sunday posted photos on Twitter of Evans, courtesy of his family. Evans, a field artilleryman from Arlington, is assigned to A Battery, 4-133 Field Artillery Regiment in New Braunfels and joined the Texas Army National Guard in May 2019. He joined Operation Spartan Shield in Kuwait in the fall of 2020, according to the TMD.

"During this mobilization, his dedication, talents, and tactical prowess led his leadership to regularly assign him to operations in Iraq in support of Special Operations Forces for short periods of time, while then rotating back into Kuwait," the statement said.

Though initial reports on Friday indicated that Evans had drowned, the TMD later released a statement that day saying that a body recovered was likely that of a migrant and that the soldier had still not been found.

On Friday, Texas DPS Lt. Christopher Olivarez told the Washington Post that Evans was carried away by a swift current while attempting to rescue a migrant in the water. Powerful river currents have resulted in at least 10 drownings this week alone, Olivarez added.

Evans was assigned to Gov. Greg Abbott's controversial Operation Lone Star. The now multi-billion-dollar border security program was launched by the Republican leader in March 2021 to try to stop the flow of drugs and undocumented immigrants into Texas through Mexico.

Abbott released a statement saying his office continues to work with the Texas National Guard and other law enforcement agencies to search for Evans and would provide updates as more details become available.

"Texas National Guard Specialist Bishop Evans is a hero who risked his life in service to Texas & America," Abbott posted Sunday on Twitter along with a photo of Evans. "Law enforcement & rescue teams continue a relentless search for him. Join us in prayer for a successful recovery."

The incident comes as the state grapples with migrants crossing the border. Customs and Border Protection recorded 221,303 migrant encounters in March, according to a monthly report. In addition, U.S. border authorities arrested 210,000 migrants in March, the highest monthly total in two decades. This number marks a 24-percent increase from the same month in 2021 when 169,000 migrants were arrested at the border.
WFO AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Monday, April 25, 2022

_____

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH

WATCH COUNTY NOTIFICATION FOR WATCH 154

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO TX

551 PM CDT SUN APR 24 2022

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ISSUED SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH

154 IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT CDT TONIGHT FOR THE FOLLOWING AREAS

IN TEXAS THIS WATCH INCLUDES 2 COUNTIES

IN SOUTH CENTRAL TEXAS

EDWARDS VAL VERDE

THIS INCLUDES THE CITIES OF DEL RIO AND ROCKSPRINGS.

...A strong thunderstorm will impact portions of northern Irion

County through 615 PM CDT...

At 550 PM CDT, Doppler radar was tracking a second strong

thunderstorm 15 miles north of Barnhart, moving northeast at 30 mph.

This one is separate from the severe storm farther south closer to

Barnhart.

HAZARD...Wind gusts up to 50 mph and nickel size hail.

SOURCE...Radar indicated.

IMPACT...Gusty winds could knock down tree limbs and blow around

unsecured objects. Minor damage to outdoor objects is

possible.

This storm will remain over mainly rural areas of northern Irion

County.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

If outdoors, consider seeking shelter inside a building.

A Severe Thunderstorm Watch remains in effect until midnight CDT for

west central Texas.

LAT...LON 3127 10113 3134 10123 3153 10109 3152 10071

TIME...MOT...LOC 2250Z 226DEG 25KT 3135 10114

MAX HAIL SIZE...0.88 IN

MAX WIND GUST...50 MPH

IN TEXAS THIS WATCH INCLUDES 7 COUNTIES

IN WEST CENTRAL TEXAS

CROCKETT IRION KIMBLE

MENARD SCHLEICHER SUTTON

TOM GREEN

THIS INCLUDES THE CITIES OF ARDEN, BARNHART, CARLSBAD, CLEO,

ELDORADO, ERNA, FORT MCKAVETT, HEXT, JUNCTION, LONDON, MENARD,

MERTZON, OZONA, ROOSEVELT, SAN ANGELO, SEGOVIA, SHERWOOD, SONORA,

TELEGRAPH, AND WALL.

The National Weather Service in Austin San Antonio has issued a

* Severe Thunderstorm Warning for...

Northwestern Val Verde County in south central Texas...

* Until 645 PM CDT.

* At 554 PM CDT, a severe thunderstorm was located 10 miles southwest

of Langtry, moving northeast at 40 mph.

HAZARD...60 mph wind gusts and quarter size hail.

SOURCE...Radar indicated.

IMPACT...Hail damage to vehicles is expected. Expect wind damage

to roofs, siding, and trees.

* Locations impacted include...

Langtry, Pumpville and Shumla.

For your protection move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a

building.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
WFO DALLAS / FT. WORTH Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Sunday, April 24, 2022

_____

SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT

Special Weather Statement

National Weather Service Fort Worth TX

308 PM CDT Sun Apr 24 2022

...A strong thunderstorm will impact portions of central Wise County

through 345 PM CDT...

At 308 PM CDT, Doppler radar was tracking a strong thunderstorm near

Cottondale, or 9 miles southeast of Bridgeport, moving northeast at

40 mph.

HAZARD...Penny size hail.

SOURCE...Radar indicated.

IMPACT...Minor damage to outdoor objects is possible.

Locations impacted include...

Decatur, Bridgeport, Briar, Pecan Acres, New Fairview, Aurora, Boyd,

Paradise, Cottondale, Rhome and Newark.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

If outdoors, consider seeking shelter inside a building.

Frequent cloud to ground lightning is occurring with this storm.

Lightning can strike 10 miles away from a thunderstorm. Seek a safe

shelter inside a building or vehicle.

This storm may intensify, so be certain to monitor local radio

stations and available television stations for additional information

and possible warnings from the National Weather Service.

A Severe Thunderstorm Watch remains in effect until 600 PM CDT for

north central Texas.

LAT...LON 3299 9740 3300 9780 3324 9780 3340 9738

TIME...MOT...LOC 2008Z 239DEG 34KT 3310 9765

MAX HAIL SIZE...0.75 IN

MAX WIND GUST...<30 MPH

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
WESTPORT  The public will have the chance to hear about disparities within the district and how school officials might address them at a meeting on Monday.

School officials will go over the results of the recent equity report at 7 p.m. during the school board meeting at the Staples Cafe. The equity survey is being done in partnership with New York University as part of a larger effort to examine any disparities within the district, including by race, gender, sexual orientation, language and religion.

The report examines both student achievement and the student experience.

The student experience, namely the social aspects of belonging and affiliation, is foundational to the overall academic, psychological, and social development for all students, and is a critically necessary component of public education, Superintendent Thomas Scarice said in a letter to the school board that he also shared with the community. This crucial component of public schooling includes a moral imperative to ensure that the identities of all students are seen, heard, and valued.

The board approved the study in February 2021, selecting NYU from 10 applicants and awarding it the $50,000 contract. Some members questioned the need for the study and the resulting action plan, saying they werent sure there was a problem in the district, while other members applauded the effort.

Under the study, a committee of educators and community members looked at a variety of factors, including benchmark assessments, enrollment in AP and honors courses, disciplinary referrals and outcomes, as well as special education and gifted identifications. They also used surveys and student and family focus groups.

The results will now be used to determine the districts next steps.

The report highlights recommended focus areas, including developing welcoming school communities, increasing access to educational programming for all students, investing in ongoing professional development and overhauling how data is collected, analyzed and used.

Westport decided to do the study because there had been a number of compelling narratives from students and families that Scarice said warranted our attention. Students feeling safe from verbal abuse, teasing and exclusion was also the area of greatest concern identified for the district in another survey of the school community in the 2018-19 school year, according to Scarices letter.

It is critical to continually assess the extent to which students feel a deep sense of belonging, affiliation, and access to opportunities in our schools, Scarice said.

There is also a national conversation about diversity, equity and inclusion that is happening on the state and local levels, too.

Westport is not alone in this pursuit, Scarice said. On February 3, 2021, the Connecticut State Board of Education adopted a revised position statement on the promotion of a culturally responsive education to all students to close achievement gaps.

The resolution reinforced the states commitment to equity and providing welcoming school environments for students, which had been shared a few months earlier by the state Department of Education, the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, and the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, he said.

The idea of helping students achieve and ensuring all students are able to get a high-quality education goes even further back, according to a historical summary included in Scarices letter.

Over the past century, public schools have demonstrated a commitment to identifying students across various subgroups and compared performance levels in an effort to ensure equitable access to a high quality education, while marshaling resources in pursuit of equitable student performance outcomes, he said.
ZZ Top pulled into the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium Wednesday evening for a rocking performance. The band has been together for over five decades and sold over 30 million records across 15 studio albums. The loss of long-time bassist Dusty Hill in 2021 did not stop the band as his spot o
Here is a look at Canada's provincial immigration draws for the week of April 18.

Manitoba, BC and PEI release immigration draw results Here is a look at Canada's provincial immigration draws for the week of April 18.

Manitoba, BC and PEI release immigration draw results Here is a look at Canada's provincial immigration draws for the week of April 18.

Manitoba, BC and PEI release immigration draw results Here is a look at Canada's provincial immigration draws for the week of April 18. Alexandra Miekus Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

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This past week, three Canadian provinces released their Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) draw results.

Most Canadian provinces and territories (with the exception of Quebec and Nunavut) operate their own PNPs. Through these programs, interested candidates may be invited to apply for a provincial nomination. Although provincial nomination is not in itself the same as a permanent residence, it can significantly increase the chances of obtaining permanent resident status. For instance, PNP candidates with Express Entry profiles who receive a nomination get 600 points added to their score. They also become eligible to be invited to apply for a PNP-specific round of invitations.

In 1998, when it was launched, the PNP welcomed only 400 immigrants, but due to its success, it now welcomes more than 80,000 per year. The increase in the number of PNP admissions in Canada is due to the fact that the federal and provincial governments consider it an effective tool to promote the economic development of the country.

PNPs have been the focus of Express Entry draws since September 2021 as Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) seeks to support the economy of the provinces. Express Entry draws are held every two weeks, with the last one on April 13 and another expected on Wednesday, April 27. On Friday, IRCC announced that Express Entry draws for the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP), Canadian Experience Class (CEC), and Federal Skilled Trades Program (FSTP) will resume at the beginning of July.

Discover if You Are Eligible for Canadian Immigration

In the past week, Manitoba, British Columbia, and Prince Edward Island are among the Canadian provinces that have issued invitations to immigration candidates as part of their PNPs. Here are the details of these new draws.

BC

The British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program (BC PNP) held its weekly round of invitations on April 19. More than 174 BC immigration candidates received invitations to apply for a provincial nomination.

A total of 147 of these candidates were invited through a general draw. Candidates who received invitations in this draw were from the Skilled Worker, International Graduate, and Entry Level and Semi-Skilled subcategories and needed a minimum provincial score between 77 and 125.

The province also held three separate draws for candidates in targeted occupations. Twenty early childhood educators who may qualify for the Skilled Worker and International Graduate sub-categories were invited. BC also invited seven healthcare professionals who may be eligible for the Skilled Worker, International Graduate, or the Entry Level and Semi-Skilled sub-categories. In both of these draws, candidates needed a minimum provincial score of 70.

In addition, less than five veterinarians and animal health technologists, and veterinary technicians were invited to apply for Skilled Worker and International Graduate sub-category. These candidates also needed scores of at least 70 in order to be invited.

Manitoba

The Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program (MPNP) invited 303 candidates to apply on April 21. The invitations were divided across three immigration streams:

Skilled Workers in Manitoba  201 invitations with a minimum score of 707;

Skilled Workers Overseas  61 invitations with a minimum score of 708; and

International Education Stream  41 invitations with no score requirement.

Out of all who were invited to apply, 46 had profiles in the Express Entry system.

Those who want a nomination from Manitoba, need to register an Expression of Interest with the MPNP. Once that step is completed, they will be in a position to receive an LAA through the Skilled Workers in Manitoba and Skilled Workers Overseas streams.

Manitoba then ranks candidate profiles out of 1,000 points taking into account their human capital factors, as well as their connections to the province. The MPNP then issues invitations to eligible candidates who will be able to submit an application for a provincial nomination.

PEI

The Prince Edward Island Provincial Nominee Program (PEI PNP) invited a total of 141 immigration candidates on April 21.

Express Entry and Labour Impact candidates received the most invitations, with a combined total of 130. The remaining 11 invitations went to Business Impact candidates who had provincial scores of at least 62 points.

PEI holds about one draw per month and releases its schedule for the year in advance.

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Wyoming Valley Childrens Association held the 30th Annual Do it For the Kids Walk-A-Thon on Saturday. The Do it For the Kids Walk-A-Thon is an annual fundraiser for the Wyoming Valley Childrens Association. Each year, the event raises thousands of critical operating dollars for the school and its students.

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Interview: Europe bears brunt of Russia-Ukraine conflict rooted in NATO expansion, says economist

Xinhua) 09:01, April 24, 2022

ROME, April 23 (Xinhua) -- The eastward expansion of the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) toward Russia is a major root cause of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which could take a heavy toll on the European economy, an Italian economist has said.

NATO EXPANSION RED LINE FOR RUSSIA

Michele Geraci, former undersecretary of state at the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview that the military alliance's moves have created two main problems for Russia.

"From the Russian point of view, NATO's expansion into eastern Europe is a breach of a promise" made in the 1990s, Geraci said.

"Second, Russia considers this expansion a threat to its territorial integrity and national security, so President (Vladimir) Putin for the last ten years has been saying that this is not acceptable, and that NATO has crossed a red line."

"Every country has its own red lines. For Russia, the red line was having NATO at its borders," he said.

NATO has gone through five rounds of enlargement to the east since 1999, increasing the number of its members from 16 to 30 and reaching the Russian border.

EUROPEANS PAYING HIGH PRICE INSTEAD OF U.S.

The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict is in a way "a proxy war between Russia and the United States ... which is fought in Europe," he said.

"Now the cost for the United States is minimal. The sanctions are hurting the Europeans ... The incentive for the United States to finish (the conflict) quickly is not really there, because they (the Europeans) are paying the highest price," Geraci noted.

Amid the escalating conflict, the United States has been stoking tensions in the region, shipping weapons into Ukraine and pushing its allies to impose sweeping sanctions against Russia.

"The European Union (EU) has not a red line and a foreign policy -- this puts us in a very weak position," he said.

"Our concerns and interests are in conflict, because we are allies of the U.S., but the economic interests and even the foreign policy of the EU are not always those of the U.S."

EUROPE TO BE WEAKER CUTTING OFF TRADE WITH RUSSIA

The Russia-Ukraine conflict could lead to "a weaker Europe because the economy there could take a serious hit."

In the medium and long term, if Europe loses Russia as a trading partner, and they reconcile after the conflict ends, Europe will suffer, he said.

"We are imposing sanctions on energy products thinking that these would hurt the Russian economy. However, they would hurt the EU's economy more," he said, noting that Italy, Germany and a number of smaller countries in eastern Europe will be stranded.

By way of example, he cited EU's ban on the export of luxury goods to Russia, which would "hurt brands like Gucci and Prada."

"We are doing everything wrong," he warned. "We are imposing export bans, which would only hurt us."

In 2021, Russia was the EU's fifth-largest export and third largest import destination, according to Eurostat, the EU's statistical office.

Trade in goods between the EU and Russia totaled 257.5 billion euros (279.4 billion U.S. dollars) in 2021.

"Sanctions never work," Geraci said. "To solve this issue, we have to use diplomacy with Russia. We don't just need to go to Kiev. We need to go to Moscow."

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Hongyu)
An airport staff walks to the Sanaa International Airport in Sanaa, Yemen, April 24, 2022. (Photo by Mohammed Mohammed/Xinhua)

SANAA, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The first commercial flight scheduled to depart Yemen's Houthi-held capital airport in six years has been delayed indefinitely amid accusations between the country's warring sides.

A plane of the national carrier Yemenia Airways planned to take off from the Sanaa International Airport on Sunday morning, to transport passengers in need of medical treatment to Jordan's capital Amman, as an essential step in a two-month truce.

Just hours before the flight, the airline said it had not received permits and had to postpone the flight indefinitely, expressing "deep regret to the travelers."

Raaid Jabal, deputy of the Houthi-controlled aviation authority in Sanaa, blamed the Yemeni government for refusing to issue permits for the flight.

"This is considered a violation of the truce that was announced by the UN envoy for Yemen," the Houthi official was quoted by the Houthi-run al-Masirah TV as saying.

Meanwhile, the internationally recognized Yemeni government's Minister of Information Moammar al-Eryani said in a tweet that the government refused to greenlight the flight because some of the passengers do not possess "passports issued by the legitimate government."

The Yemeni government agreed to allow 104 passengers to board the plane, while the Houthi group insists on adding another 60 passengers with "unreliable passports," said the minister, urging the UN to exert pressure on the Houthi group to "expedite the flight."

The Houthi-controlled Sanaa International Airport has been closed to commercial flights since August 2016. The Houthi group captured the ground area of the airport, and the Saudi-led coalition controlled the airspace over the Houthi-held city and its airport.

Only UN aid planes have been allowed to land and take off from the Sanaa airport.

Also on Sunday, UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg expressed his concern over the postponement of the flight.

"I urge the parties to work constructively with me and my office to find a solution that allows the flights to resume as planned," Grundberg said in a tweet.

Yemen's warring sides agreed to implement from April 2 a UN-brokered cease-fire that was meant to last two months.

The truce includes the halt of all ground, aerial and naval military offensive operations. It also include allowing the entry of 18 fuel ships into the Houthi-held port of Hodeidah and two commercial flights a week to and from the Sanaa airport, as well as lifting the siege to allow humanitarian aid access to the government-held Taiz city.

Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014 when the Iran-backed Houthi militia seized control of several northern provinces and forced the Saudi-backed Yemeni government out of Sanaa. 

Security officers stand outside the Sanaa International Airport in Sanaa, Yemen, April 24, 2022. (Photo by Mohammed Mohammed/Xinhua)
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KABUL, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Acting Deputy Prime Minister of the Afghan caretaker government Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar chaired a meeting on Saturday to review issues related to the private sector amid continued increase in poverty and unemployment, Baradar's office said on Sunday.

The Economic Commission headed by Baradar, "after a detailed discussion on all issues in which the private sector is ready to invest, prioritized power generation," it wrote on the social media platform Twitter.

The office said the commission has instructed related departments to start work on assessing renovation of coal-fueled power generation in the capital Kabul and big cities in a bid to ensure power supply for the private sector.

The meeting required a comprehensive plan to be made on coal-fueled electricity generation in industrial parks or large cities.

War-torn Afghanistan has been suffering power shortages. The Central Asian country has imported electricity from neighboring countries including Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. 
An ambulance comes out of the port of Tripoli, Lebanon, on April 24, 2022. The Lebanese army on Sunday rescued 45 people and recovered eight bodies after a migrant boat sunk in the waters off the northern city of Tripoli. The Lebanese army said at a press conference that high waves submerged the overloaded boat, which carried more than 50 people. (Photo by Khaled Habashiti/Xinhua)

BEIRUT, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The Lebanese army on Sunday rescued 45 people and recovered eight bodies after a migrant boat sunk in the waters off the northern city of Tripoli.

The Lebanese army said at a press conference that high waves submerged the overloaded boat, which carried more than 50 people.

Some of the rescued people were treated on the ground, while others were transferred to nearby hospitals to receive emergency medical care.

Search operations began Saturday night shortly after the boat leaving the coastal town of Qalamoun drowned in the sea.

The Lebanese army, security forces and the Red Cross were deployed at Tripoli's port to join the rescue process.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun on Sunday asked the judicial and military authorities to start an investigation into the incident. 

Lebanese military ship and helicopter search for bodies at sea in Tripoli, Lebanon, on April 24, 2022. The Lebanese army on Sunday rescued 45 people and recovered eight bodies after a migrant boat sunk in the waters off the northern city of Tripoli. The Lebanese army said at a press conference that high waves submerged the overloaded boat, which carried more than 50 people. (Photo by Khaled Habashiti/Xinhua)

Ships of the Lebanese army search for bodies at sea in Tripoli, Lebanon, on April 24, 2022. The Lebanese army on Sunday rescued 45 people and recovered eight bodies after a migrant boat sunk in the waters off the northern city of Tripoli. The Lebanese army said at a press conference that high waves submerged the overloaded boat, which carried more than 50 people. (Photo by Khaled Habashiti/Xinhua)

A Lebanese military helicopter searches for bodies at sea in Tripoli, Lebanon, on April 24, 2022. The Lebanese army on Sunday rescued 45 people and recovered eight bodies after a migrant boat sunk in the waters off the northern city of Tripoli. The Lebanese army said at a press conference that high waves submerged the overloaded boat, which carried more than 50 people. (Photo by Khaled Habashiti/Xinhua)
THE WEST

Emergency response weighed as drought worsens

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz Federal officials say it may be necessary to reduce water deliveries to users on the Colorado River to prevent the shutdown of a huge dam that supplies hydropower to some 5 million customers across the U.S. West.

Officials had hoped snowmelt would buoy Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border to ensure its dam could continue to supply power. But snow is already melting, and hotter-than-normal temperatures and prolonged drought are further shrinking the lake.

The Interior Department has proposed holding back water in the lake to maintain Glen Canyon Dam's ability to generate electricity amid what it said were the driest conditions in the region in more than 1,200 years.

"The best available science indicates that the effects of climate change will continue to adversely impact the basin," Tanya Trujillo, the Interior's assistant secretary for water and science wrote on April 7 to seven states in the basin  Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado.

Trujillo asked for feedback on the proposal to keep 480,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Powell  enough water to serve about 1 million U.S. households. She stressed that operating the dam below 3,490 feet, considered its minimum power pool, is uncharted territory.

In the Colorado River basin, Glen Canyon Dam is the mammoth of power production, delivering electricity to about 5 million customers in seven states  Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. As Lake Powell falls, the dam becomes less efficient. At 3,490 feet, it can't produce power.

Lake Powell fell below 3,525 feet for the first time ever last month, a level that concerned worried water managers. Federal data shows it will dip even further, in the most probable scenario, before rebounding above the level next spring.

NEW MEXICO

State adopts stiffer pollution rules for oil and gas

ALBUQUERQUE  New Mexico regulators have approved more rules aimed at cracking down on pollution from the oil and natural gas industry amid the national debate over domestic production and concerns about global energy market instability.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's administration on April 14 praised the rules, calling them among the toughest in the nation.

The Democrat has pushed for more regulations throughout her first term and the rules approved this week by the state Environmental Improvement Board mark the second part of her plan for tackling pollution blamed for exacerbating climate change.

High fuel prices are hurting household finances as the New Mexico state government benefits from a financial windfall linked to record-setting oil production in the Permian Basin. New Mexico last year surpassed North Dakota to become the No. 2 oil producing U.S. state behind Texas.

State oil and gas regulators adopted separate rules earlier this year to limit venting and flaring at petroleum production sites to reduce methane pollution.

This latest effort, led by the state Environment Department, focuses on oilfield equipment that emits smog-causing pollution, specifically volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides.

It includes minimum requirements for oil and natural gas producers to calculate their emissions and have them certificated by engineers and to find and fix leaks on a regular basis.

The New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, which represents producers, expects the new rules will reduce emissions. But industry officials said New Mexico oil and gas production is responsible for only a small amount of the state's ozone pollution.

The Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico criticized the rules, saying the state opted to remove a more flexible regulatory framework for low-volume producers after being pressured by environmental groups. The industry group said on April 15 that the rules will lead to premature plugging of still-productive wells.

State supreme court swears in new chief justice

SANTA FE  The New Mexico Supreme Court has a new chief justice who will oversee the administration of the judiciary and act as an advocate for state courts at the legislature on budgetary and other matters.

Shannon Bacon was sworn in on April 13 to a two-year term as chief justice, a post that also involves coordination with the State Bar that sets professional standards for attorneys.

Bacon was appointed by Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in 2019 and won statewide election in 2020. She previously served nine years as a state district judge in the Albuquerque-based 2nd Judicial District.

Bacon already leads several high-court initiatives including a review of issues related to race and bias in the state's justice system and efforts to promote diversity among judges and judicial employees. And she is active in efforts to improve eviction and foreclosure programs and reform the state's guardianship and conservatorship.

Bacon's years on the Supreme Court have been marked by webcast proceedings amid the COVID-19 pandemic, support for the governor's authority to impose sanctions under emergency health orders and an opinion upholding the Legislature's spending authority over federal pandemic aid.

The justice was a dissenting voice in a Supreme Court decision allowing the Legislature to convene without in-person public access to the Capitol building in 2021.

NAVAJO NATION

Ex-VP hopeful announces he'll seek presidential post

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz.  A former Navajo Nation vice presidential candidate announced on April 4 that he is seeking the tribal president's post.

Buu Van Nygren, 35, is the first to publicly announce his candidacy.

The primary election is Aug. 2. The top two vote-getters move on to the November general election.

More than a dozen people typically run for president of the Navajo Nation, which has the largest land mass of any Native American tribe in the U.S. and is second in population with about 400,000 tribal members.

Current Navajo President Jonathan Nez has not said whether he'll seek reelection.

Nygren and his wife, Arizona state Rep. Jasmine Blackwater-Nygren, rode on horseback into Window Rock where he told a small crowd about his plans to improve the Navajo Nation.

Nygren's first language is Navajo, and he's from the Utah portion of the reservation. His father was Vietnamese.

Nygren recently resigned as the chief commercial officer at the Navajo Engineering and Construction Authority to run for tribal president.

Nygren was former Navajo President Joe Shirley's running mate in the 2018 election. The two lost to Nez and current Vice President Myron Lizer, who now is seeking the Republican nomination for Arizona's 2nd Congressional District.

ARIZONA

Hungry javelina gets stuck in car, goes for ride

CORNVILLE  A hungry javelina in Arizona ended up going for a drive when it became trapped inside an empty car and bumped it into neutral.

Deputies in Yavapai County responded to a call last week in Cornville, a community 10 miles south of Sedona, about a javelina stuck in a Subaru station wagon. Javelinas are pig-like animals that are native to desert environments.

After speaking with the car's owner and other residents, they determined the car's hatch back had been left open overnight.

The javelina jumped in to get to a bag of Cheetos. The hatch then closed, trapping the animal inside.

Authorities say the javelina ripped off a portion of the dashboard and the inside of a door in an attempt to escape.

The animal then managed to knock the car into neutral, causing it to roll down the driveway and across the street. The Subaru came to a rest, and the javelina was not injured.

A deputy opened the hatch, and the javelina was able to run back into the wilderness.
TUNIS, April 24 (Xinhua) -- At least 12 migrants have lost their lives and another 10 went missing after four boats carrying 120 migrants sank off Tunisia's eastern coast, Tunisia's private radio station Mosaique FM reported Sunday.

According to the radio station, 98 migrants onboard the boats have been rescued off the coast of Sfax city, and search is still underway for the missing migrants.

The migrants were trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Italy, according to the report.

Thousands of illegal immigrants attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea every year, and Tunisia is one of the main points of access to Europe through irregular channels. 
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NZ public cloud spending set to jump by 26%

Spending on public cloud services in New Zealand is expected to increase by 26.3% this year,reaching $2.6 billion, according to the latest forecast from Gartner.

The fastest growing segments of the cloud market in 2022 are expected to be platform as a service (PaaS) followed by infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

Gartner said its 2022 CIO survey found 44% of CIOs in New Zealand had earmarked cloud platforms for new or additional funding this year, ranked fourth behind cybersecurity, data and analytics, and integration technologies such as APIs.

Meanwhile, cloud providers continue to increase their presence in the region, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) announcing new local zones in Perth, Brisbane, and Auckland, and Microsofts Azure data centre development in New Zealand underway, adding to three currently operating in Australia.

Gartner expects the acceleration in cloud spending seen during the pandemic to continue, as organisations respond to a new business dynamic.

RealMe outage highlights cybersecurity concerns

A temporary outage of the New Zealand governments digital identity system in early April 2022 created concerns by some that a Russian cyberattack was underway, said NZTech CEO Graeme Muller.

RealMe is used to log into various New Zealand government services like Inland Revenue and My Covid Record.

The Department of Internal Affairs, which runs RealMe, confirmed the issues werent related to a cyberattack. However, Muller said concerns continue to escalate over the ever-growing cybersecurity issues that New Zealand businesses face. While the threat of Russian cyberattacks could be a possibility, the reality is most cybersecurity issues faced by Kiwis stem from a lack of understanding of how to operate safely online, said Muller.

Citing figures from CERT NZ, Muller said there was a 1,000% increase in reported issues with malware in the last quarter of 2021, while 138 businesses reported they had been victim to phishing or credential harvesting attacks in the final quarter of last year. The implications of not investing in training and educating your staff is the loss of real money, with CERT NZ reporting that in the last quarter of 2021 more than $6 million was lost by Kiwis to cyberattackers.

To improve cybersecurity, all businesses should have processes in place to help staff manage and update passwords, automatically deploy software updates, back up their systems daily, and use two-factor authentication when logging in, he said.

Auckland council organisations join forces on Microsoft licenses

Auckland Council and two of its council controlled organisations  Auckland Transport and Watercare  are set to go to market as one to renew Microsoft licenses, Reseller News reports.

Although Auckland Council has been a signatory to the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs all-of-government Microsoft licensing framework agreements since 2012, it, Auckland Transport, and Watercare have each had their own supplier arrangements up to now.

This comes after Auckland Council formalised a group procurement policy for it and the organisations it controls in June 2021. The policy aims to ensure the group maximises value and reduces duplication of effort in procuring activity, Auckland Council said in a statement to Reseller News.

With millions of dollars of spending on the line, the group could secure big savings by negotiating together.

According to Reseller News, Auckland Council disclosures show it spent $7.1 million with its incumbent Microsoft license supplier, Insight Enterprises, in the year ended June 2020 and $5.5 million in 2021. How much of that is related to Microsoft licenses is not known.

Meanwhile, Auckland Transport reported it had signed two Microsoft license contracts totalling $8.5 million with Spark so far this financial year. Watercare reportedly spent $4.1 million with NTT between April 2021 and March 2022 but did not specify the goods or services provided.

All six members of the New Zealand all-of-government Microsoft cloud, software, and service agreement (MCSSA) panel will be able to bid for the new licenses. This includes three respective incumbent suppliers, as well as Cyclone Computer, Datacom, and Fujitsu.

New Zealand issues cyber warning over Russia-Ukraine war

New Zealand and the other Five Eyes nationsAustralia, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdomhave issued a cybersecurity advisory warning organisations that Russias invasion of Ukraine could expose organisations both within and beyond the region to increased malicious cyber activity.

The group believes Russia could retaliate against sanctions imposed by the Five Eyes nations.

Five Eyes have urged critical infrastructure network providers to prepare for and mitigate potential cyberthreatsincluding destructive malware, ransomware, DDoS attacks, and cyberespionageby hardening their cyber defences and performing due diligence in identifying indicators of malicious activity.
BEIJING, April 24 (Xinhua) -- China has authorized more than 2.53 million invention patents over the past five years, with an average annual growth rate of 13.4 percent, according to the country's top intellectual property regulator Sunday.

More than 27.7 million trademarks were registered in the same period, an average annual increase of 29 percent, Shen Changyu, head of the China National Intellectual Property Administration said at a press conference.

In 2021, the country authorized 696,000 invention patents, with the average ownership of high-value invention patents reaching 7.5 per 10,000 people, nearly twice that at the end of 2017, Shen said.

He added that China also witnessed significant improvements in the efficiency of the use of intellectual property rights (IPR). The added value of patent-intensive industries reached 12.13 trillion yuan (about 1.88 trillion U.S. dollars), up 5.8 percent year on year, accounting for 11.97 percent of the country's GDP.

According to China's 15-year plan (2021-2035) for IPR development, a clear target has been set: the added value of patent-intensive industries should account for 13 percent of GDP by 2025.

China has been committed to promoting the orderly development of international IPR cooperation and competition. In 2021, Chinese companies filed 8,596 patent applications in countries along the Belt and Road, a year-on-year increase of 29.4 percent, while these countries in turn applied for 25,000 invention patents in China, Shen said. 
Australia to spend $18.7 billion on public cloud services in 2022

Spending on public cloud services in Australia is expected to be $18.7 billion in 2022, according to Gartners latest forecast. This would represent a 31.8% growth compared to 2021s $14.2 billion

Software as a service (SaaS) accounts for close to half of the total cloud market in Australia, but the fastest-growing segments in 2022 are expected to be platform as a service (PaaS) followed by infrastructure as a service (IaaS), according to the research firm.

In January 2022, research firm GlobalData forecast that spending on cloud computing would surpass $20 billion only by 2025; this includes public cloud services which make up 50% of the cloud computing market as per GlobalDatas methodology. Despite their differences in spending pace, both firms agree that PaaS will be the fastest-growing public cloud service.

CSIRO launches tech graduate programs

Australias national science agency has launched the first round of two graduate programs: one focused on emerging technologies and the other on AI.

CSIROs Next Generation Emerging Technologies program received $6.2 million, and the Artificial Intelligence program received $4.2 million. The programs will cofund student scholarships with each programs industry and university partners.

The program provides scholarships to Australian citizens and permanent residents. CSIRO expects intakes to open in May 2022.

The emerging tech program will focus on empowering people within the metaverse, trusted automation for IoT, building national cybersecurity capabilities in manufacturing, and digital engineering.

The AI program will focus on AI in mental health, manufacturing, data-efficient machine learning models for IoT, analytics, and automation.

Victoria small businesses get $1,200 tech rebates

A new round of the Small Business Digital Adaptation Program has opened with $5 million set for rebates. The program allows for eligible small businesses in Victoria to adopt digital services from 14 providers.

The suppliers cover areas including upgrading a website, improving cash flow with financial management software, online marketing, projects and jobs management, and keeping track of stock.

Eligible businesses can choose to purchase a product or upgrade an existing one and then apply to a $1,200 rebate from the state government. The program was launched in late 2020 and has benefited more than 10,000 local businesses, according to the Victoria government. The current round of rebates will close on 18 July.

Australia issues cybersecurity warning over Russia-Ukraine war

Australia and the other Five Eyes nationsNew Zealand, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdomhave issued a cybersecurity advisory warning organisations that Russias invasion of Ukraine could expose organisations both within and beyond the region to increased malicious cyber activity. The group believes Russia could retaliate against sanctions imposed by the Five Eyes nations.

Five Eyes have urged critical infrastructure network providers to prepare for and mitigate potential cyberthreatsincluding destructive malware, ransomware, DDoS attacks, and cyber espionageby hardening their cyber defences and performing due diligence in identifying indicators of malicious activity.
Public cloud spending to grow 29.3% in 2022

End-user spending on the public cloud in India is expected to reach a total of $7.5 billion in 2022, up from $5.6 billion in 2021, according to a report by analyst firm Gartner. It expects spending to reach $9.8 billion in 2023.

In Indias public cloud services market segment, infrastructure-as-a-solution (IaaS) is forecast to see the highest growth in 2022, at 39.4%, followed by service-as-a-solution at 21.7%. They are further expected to grow by 26.9% and 22.8% respectively in 2023.

India follows the global trend when it comes to IaaS. Globally, IaaS is forecast to experience the highest end-user spending growth in 2022, at 30.6%, followed by desktop-as-a-service at 26.6% and platform-as-a-service at 26.1%. However, SaaS remains the largest market segment globally, expected to reach $176.6 billion in end-user spending in 2022.

In Gartners report, research vice president Sid Nag said cloud-native capabilities such as containerization, database platform-as-a-service, and AI/ML contain richer features than commoditized compute such as IaaS or network-as-a-service, and are generally more expensive, thus fuelling the spending growth.

IT leaders who view the cloud as an enabler rather than an end state will be most successful in their digital transformational journeys, said Nag in the report. The organizations combining cloud with other adjacent, emerging technologies will fare even better.

Karnataka approves new data centre policy

Karnatakas cabinet has unveiled its new data centre policy, budgeting 100 crore for incentives and subsidies that it hopes will attract investment of 10,000 crores into data centres in the state by 2025.

Data centre investment will get a one-time capital subsidy of 7% on the value of fixed assets, excluding land and building, along with 10 crore in capital subsidy over the policy period of five years for the investor. The government will also provide land subsidy at 10% of the cost or 3 crore, whichever is less, on the purchase or lease of land. Special incentives will be given for projects of strategic importance where investments exceed 4,000 crore.

The policy incentives and concessions are available to existing and proposed data centres. Those related to land are available only to investments made outside the Bengaluru urban area, whereas other concessions on electricity duty, concessional power tariff, and green power tariff reimbursement will be for all.

The policy offers eight types of incentives and concessions such as exemption of stamp duty, land conversion fee, electricity duty, concessional registration charges, concessional power tariff, and green power tariff reimbursement.

Bangalore is currently home to data centres operated by Reliance, Sify, NTT, Next Gen, Trimax, Airtel, STT, and ESDS, among others.

Cybersecurity training for government staff

National Security Adviser Ajit Doval inaugurated the national cyber security incident response exercise, a 10-day hybrid exercise to train government personnel. With the large number of digital services launched by the government, the need to safeguard cyberspace and build awareness of cybersecurity among staff has increased.

Senior management and technical personnel of government organizations are amongst the 140 officials that will undergo the training on contemporary cyber threats and handling cyber incidents. They will be trained in areas such as intrusion detection techniques and malware information.

The program is conducted by the National Security Council Secretariat with the Data Security Council of India, and the platform for training is provided by CyberExer Technologies, an Estonian cybersecurity company.

Military officials breached cybersecurity

Emphasising the need for cybersecurity training, intelligence agencies found cybersecurity breaches by military officials related to certain WhatsApp groups, in what is suspected to be espionage-related activities by a neighbouring country.

A high-level probe has been launched, but details on the breach are not being made public for fear of it interfering with the investigation, according to the Deccan Chronicle. It said there have been reports that Pakistani and Chinese intelligence operatives have been attempting to engage with military personnel on social media platforms to gain sensitive information.

From time to time, India has been subjected to such attacks. Recently, threat intelligence firm Recorded Future released a report that reveals the ongoing targeting of Indian power grid organizations by China-linked adversaries. The national emergency response system and the Indian subsidiary of a multinational logistics company were also compromised by the same threat activity group.
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Bart straight-up calls them an evil corporation.

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And there are loads more examples we just dont have time to go into. Even more ruthless was Family Guy, who routinely tore into Disney, sometimes with predictably over-the-top Mickey Mouse parodies 

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And in other, more uniquely bizarre ways. For instance, Disney is now the proud owner of the episode in which former Disney CEO Michael Eisner gets violently ripped to shreds by crocodiles at Disney World.

20th Century Studios

20th Century Studios

And those are the more tasteful examples. Even Star Wars took pot-shots at Disney in the past; the non-canonical comic book series Star Wars Tales includes a story in which the Imperial logo is the Death Star with Mickey ears.

Dark Horse

Maybe we should just be glad that Disney chose not to censor these derogatory jokes, and has instead focused their editorial attention on babysitter meltdowns and mermaid butts.

You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter!

Top Image: 20th Century Television
FAIRFIELD  Sacred Heart Universitys doctor of education in educational leadership program has been accepted into the Holmes Scholars Program  which aims to support students of color.

David Title, the program director of Sacred Hearts educational doctorate program, said that means students of color in the program will get access to the resources of successful academics in the field for mentorship, support and professional learning. He noted the Holmes Scholars Program is a component of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

This is a national organization that has a lot of alumni who are practicing, successful professionals of color, he said. We know that our doctoral students of color do experience some challenges in completing their degree that students who are not of color dont. This is another support that we can put in place for our students.

Sacred Hearts doctoral of education in educational leadership program was started in 2019, with the first degrees being issued this May, Title said. About 25 percent of the 56 students in the program are people of color.

Title said SHU started a doctorate students of color affinity group this school year, where students could gather, support each other and get additional mentoring. He said getting accepted into the Holmes Scholars Program is another part of that effort.

Not every doctorate student of color will become a Holmes scholar, he said. Theres an application process. Theres commitments, so its going to be a subset of our affinity group.

According to a statement from SHU, the Holmes Scholars Program has existed since 1991, when it was started by the Holmes Group  later called the Holmes Partnership  a consortium of universities working to address the underrepresentation of minorities among Americas educators.

Title said only doctoral programs were accepted into the Holmes program, adding it requires the university to provide resources to support it. Being accepted into the program, which starts in the fall, he said, was very exciting.

Title said Holmes scholars go to a national conference every year put on by AACTE, where a full day is dedicated to the program. He said students will meet with other Holmes scholars as well as with successful professional of color in the field for mentoring and support.

They also, both at this conference and before this, start to make connections with their peer group and these other resources, which they can draw upon for support as they continue their doctoral studies, he said. They will have access to mentors.

Thats something that can be challenging to provide at the university, Title said, because they want these mentors to be professionals of color. He said the university does not have enough professionals of color to do that without putting all students with the few it has.

It broadens the opportunities for mentorship and support, he said. They will have access to training sessions on how to do research or how to overcome typical problems in your doctoral program that they have experienced. The overall goal is they will learn from successful professionals of color as they go through their doctoral program.

Title said the scholars program will also act as a network for graduates as they look for jobs. He noted the program also has a Washington week, where Holmes scholars go to Washington, D.C. to meet with members of Congress and learn about advocating for education-based issues.

It gives an opportunity for elected officials to hear directly from professionals of color who are their constituents, he said. Its an opportunity to take the first steps in advocacy and the politics of educational advocacy, which are intricate and challenging for everybody.

Title said there is a lot to the program, and he is excited to take it on. He said he thinks it will help SHU recruit potential candidates of color to its educational doctorate program, and aid with its retention and success rate.

We want to get more candidates of color with (educational doctorates) out to serve as role models for future candidates of color, he said.

The will help achieve diversification of educational leadership in schools and school district, Title said, adding doctorates open the door to higher-level leadership roles. He said it will also help in creating more diversity in universities, which almost unilaterally require doctorates.

Its part of a bigger initiative on diversity and equity in schooling generally, he said.

joshua.labella@hearstmediact.com
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SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  Utah Democrats pulling hard to defeat Republican Sen. Mike Lee took the unusual step Saturday of spurning a party hopeful to instead get behind an independent, former presidential candidate Evan McMullin.

Democrats were swayed by calls from prominent members who said McMullin, a conservative who captured a significant share of the vote in Utah in 2016, was the best chance to beat Lee in the deeply conservative state that hasn't elected a Democratic U.S. senator for more than 50 years.

I want to represent you. Im committed to that. I will maintain my independence, McMullin told Democratic delegates.

Lee also faced two GOP challengers at his party's nominating conventions. He handily won in front of the right-leaning crowd with over 70% of the vote. But those candidates will still appear on the primary ballot because they used the state's other path to the primary ballot and gathered signatures.

Former state lawmaker Becky Edwards garnered about 12% of the vote Saturday. Former gubernatorial deputy chief of staff Ally Isom came in third.

Lee's relationship with former president Donald Trump has been front and center since CNN reported on text messages showing that the senator was involved in early efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, though Lee later pivoted and voted to confirm the election results after no widespread fraud emerged.

I did my job, Lee said about the messages. I did my job the way that Ive always promised I would go about doing my job.

McMullin is a former CIA officer ran for president in 2016 and made inroads in the deeply conservative state where where many GOP voters had reservations about then-candidate Trump. Lee himself cast a protest vote for McMullin, though he later became as staunch Trump ally, and the former president has endorsed him.

A Democrat ran for the nomination, Kael Weston, but the pro-McMullin camp ultimately convinced party delegates to nominate no one, clearing the path for the independent as much as possible. His supporters included prominent Democrats like former Congressman Ben McAdams.

I know Evan. I trust Evan," McAdams told delegates during the contentious debate, framing McMullin as the best possible chance to unseat Lee in a state where Republicans outnumber Democrats 4-to-1.

Republican Party Chair Carson Jorgensen took aim at the Democrats' decision, arguing it showed a weakness in the other party's platform. We as Republicans, nows our time to shine, he said. I dont know if everyone quite understands the gravity of this.

Also Saturday, moderate Republican Congressman John Curtis was forced into a primary, coming in second in a crowded field that included a challenger who brought in longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone. The effort didn't carry candidate Jason Preston beyond the first round of voting, however.
BEIJING, April 24 (Xinhua) -- In the 1970s, a small village on the Loess Plateau in Shaanxi Province, northwest China, had not yet been connected to electricity. When darkness fell, the whole village sank into slumber.

But one of the simple cave homes would radiate a dim glow. Inside, a young man would be reading books under the dull light of a kerosene lamp.

The avid reader was Xi Jinping, who became Chinese president in 2013.

The homemade lamp, a repurposed ink bottle filled with oil and a wick, was as modest as its light. Wang Xianping, a villager who met Xi in Liangjiahe, recalled that Xi "had to read so close to the glimmer of light that the kerosene smoke often blackened his face and nose."

Xi arrived in Liangjiahe in 1969, not yet 16 years old, hauling a heavy suitcase full of books. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), he was just one of the millions of urban educated youth who were sent to the country's rural areas to "learn from the peasants."

Over the seven years he lived and worked on the Loess Plateau, Xi spent almost every minute of his spare time with his -- often sooty -- nose in a book. He would return to the tomes, which villagers remarked were "as thick as bricks," over and over again. By the time he entered college in 1975, he had read "Das Kapital" three times, filling 18 notebooks with his reflections.

Under the same kerosene lamp, Xi would read to the villagers, periodically lending them his books. Wu Hui, now 68 years old, recalled how he borrowed "Records of the Three Kingdoms" from Xi. "Sometimes it (classical Chinese) was hard for me to understand, and Xi was always patient with my every question," Wu said.

Wu later became a middle school teacher. Today, he attributes his interactions with Xi to widening his worldview and helping him identify his goals. "My life would not be the same without Xi's influence."

"Reading is my biggest hobby," Xi once said and, recollecting his time in Liangjiahe, said he did the most reading during his time in the village. Reading, however, was not the only passion ignited under the light of that kerosene lamp.

Inspired by Shakespeare, Xi often pondered the question of "to be or not to be," ultimately making up his mind to serve the motherland and the people.

Xi's passion for reading has remained a constant, from his time as an "educated youth" in the 1970s right the way up to the country's top leadership. He immerses himself in reading regardless of his workload.

"The only hobby I have kept is reading," he once shared in an interview. He has also encouraged officials to read more, from works on Marxism to books on classic literature.

Quoting an ancient Chinese proverb, Xi said, "One's life is limited, but knowledge is limitless." 
DALLAS (AP)  The retrial of a man charged with killing 18 older women in the Dallas area over a two-year span is set to begin Monday, after the first jury to hear a case against him deadlocked.

Billy Chemirmir, 49, faces life in prison without parole if he's convicted of capital murder in the smothering of 81-year-old Lu Thi Harris. Prosecutors have said he followed the widow home from Walmart, killed her, and stole her jewelry and cash.

Chemirmir faces capital murder charges in all 18 of the women's deaths  13 in Dallas County and five in nearby Collin County. However, he's currently only scheduled to stand trial in the death of Harris. Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot, who isn't seeking the death penalty for Harris' killing, has said he plans to try Chemirmir for at least one more death, though he hasn't said whose.

Chemirmir has maintained that he's innocent.

Loren Adair Smith, whose 91-year-old mother, Phyllis Payne, is among those Chemirmir is charged with killing, said she was shocked by the mistrial in November and plans to attend the retrial.

We want justice and we want closure, and we want him to not be able to hurt anyone again, Smith said.

Chemirmir was arrested in March 2018 after 91-year-old Mary Annis Bartel said a man forced his way into her apartment at an independent living community for older people and held a pillow over her face. Bartel, who survived the attack, later discovered she was missing jewelry.

According to police, when officers tracked Chemirmir to his nearby apartment following that attack, he was holding jewelry and cash. Documents in a large red jewelry box that police say he had just thrown away led them to a home, where Harris was dead in her bedroom, lipstick smeared on her pillow.

The number of people Chemirmir was accused of killing grew after his arrest, with most of the families of his alleged victims only learning months or years after their loved ones death that authorities believed they had been killed.

Most of the people Chemirmir is accused of killing were found dead in their apartments at independent living communities for older people, where he allegedly forced his way in or posed as a handyman. Hes also accused of killing women in private homes, including the widow of a man he had cared for in his job as an at-home caregiver.

Though Chemirmir was only tried in November for Harris' death, jurors were also told about the attack on Bartel and the killing of 87-year-old Mary Brooks, who was found dead in her home about six weeks before Chemirmir's arrest.

Chemirmir told police in a video-recorded interview that was played at his trial that he made money by buying and selling jewelry and had also worked as an at-home caregiver and as a security guard.

Chemirmirs attorneys rested their case without calling any witnesses or presenting evidence. They dismissed the evidence against their client as quantity over quality and asserted that prosecutors hadn't proved Chemirmirs guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Prosecutor Glen Fitzmartin disputed that assertion. He said he proved that Chemirmir and Harris were at a Walmart at the same time, that two-and-a-half hours later he was in possession of her property and that she had been smothered.

Creuzot told The Dallas Morning News: Circumstantial evidence can sometimes be stronger than eye-witness testimony. So, in a case like this, its very important that the jury and every individual juror understands that."

Toby Shook, a former Dallas County prosecutor who now works as a defense attorney, said he expects that during the retrial, prosecutors might "change up their preparation or presentation of some of their witnesses in order to make their case clearer to the jury.

It was surprising that a hung jury resulted in that the state had the advantage of putting on several offenses for the jury to consider and thats a powerful weapon the state has in a case like this, said Shook, who isn't involved in the case.

Smith said her family assumed that her mother's death six years ago in her apartment in an independent living center was from natural causes, though it came as a shock because she was still so active. She said that while packing up her mother's things, they discovered missing jewelry and filed a police report but assumed the items had been taken by someone after her death.

Smith said a police detective called two years later to say investigators believed her mother had been killed. She said that after so many years, a conviction would bring closure and a great feeling that justice has prevailed.
NEW LONDON  As the City Hall employee tasked with preparing for the arrival of the first cruise ship to dock in this historic whaling port in four years, Steven Fields said he has learned at least one thing: People get very excited about cruises.

I learned that people get happy, jumping up and down, when they hear these people are coming, Fields, a former state police lieutenant colonel and the citys chief administrative officer, said a few days before the first of two ships docked at New Londons City Pier.

As the cruise industry grows back after pandemic setbacks, the Nutmeg State may not occur to cruise directors as an obvious spot to add to their itineraries.

Connecticut has three deep water ports that can accommodate large ships: New London, New Haven and Bridgeport. But only New London has been even an occasional destination for nautical tourists, officials say.

Before this week, it had been four years since any cruise ship stopped in New London, and the last international cruise before that had come four years earlier.

But a cruise industry changed by COVID-19 could be choosing Connecticut more often if smaller, domestic trips with fewer pandemic restrictions stay popular with U.S. tourists, industry experts said.

New London officials had learned about a year earlier that American Queen Voyages  the result of a recent merger of the river cruise company American Queen Steamboat Company and Victory Cruise Lines  had chosen the city as a stop on its new cruise of historic sights and lobster rolls along the east coast of New England and Canada.

The Ocean Navigator and Ocean Voyager would each bring about 90 passengers and 75 crew members to New London, the maiden voyages of a nine-stop cruise leaving from Savannah, Georgia, and stopping in nine cities including Plymouth and Boston, Mass., Portland and Bar Harbor, Maine, and Halifax, Nova Scotia.

On Tuesday and Thursday in New London, the ships passengers stayed close to City Pier, defying locals expectations that they would be bused to buzzier Mystic or the regions two casinos.

Martha Shanahan/Hearst Connecticut Media

Signs with personalized welcome messages dotted local businesses. Some restaurants offered special deals for cruise passengers. Neff handed out handmade gift bags. Passero and the ships captain exchanged plaques.

A tour guide with New London Landmarks brought the passengers on a driving tour of the city, with stops at a downtown museum, the site of a former homestead and a historic mansion that doubled as the site of Connecticuts naval offices during the Revolutionary War.

Passengers on the Ocean Navigator stayed an extra night in New London Monday after bad weather delayed their plan to move on to Newport, R.I. In October and November, both ships will bring passengers to New London again on their way back south.

New London Mayor Michael Passero's announcement about last weeks cruises came with a reminder that as recently as 2008, nine cruise ships stopped in New London  a high point.

The Grande Mariner, a small domestic cruise ship run by a Rhode Island company, once stopped there on a near-annual basis, according to a 2019 Port Authority report. The nonprofit Connecticut Cruise Ship Task Force, which once worked to expand the cruise industry in Connecticut, was disbanded in 2014.

Passero said he sees American Queen Voyages decision to include the city in its newest cruise route as a vote of confidence after those numbers had dropped off.

Its encouraging that with the industry just really trying to make a comeback, they picked New London, he said.

The passengers on the Ocean Navigator came from all over the U.S., American Queen Voyages spokesperson Michael Hicks said.

Even a small city like New London, not often thought of as a tourist destination, has potential to thrill people who have not spent time on the East Coast, Neff said.

The planners who set up these cruises, their goal is to give the passengers an experience, she said. If theyre not accustomed to New England, thats an exciting stop.

The current stage of the pandemic  somewhere between lockdown and "back-to-normal"  has been a popular time for cruises that keep American tourists close to home, said Chris Gray Faust, the managing editor of the Trip Advisor-owned consumer review site Cruise Critic.

In previous years people may have thought, Oh, Im going to go to Europe for the summer,' Gray Faust said.

But testing requirements, concerns about COVID-19 risks and travel restrictions may still be scaring them off, she said.

Hicks said his company has grown thanks to customers following that trend to smaller trips up the East Coast, or perhaps up the Ohio River.

They may have been to Venice, but they've never been to Kentucky, he said.

Now that Canada has opened its ports to cruises for the first time in two years, Gray Faust said, North American cruises with stops in places like New London could see a resurgence.

There has been a pivot toward more domestic cruises, she said. [And] some of these ports are ones that you dont think of as cruise ports, necessarily.

Cruises like American Queen Voyages offerings tend to be on the small side, but longer and more expensive, and attract older customers interested in exploring unexpected places.

Thats a huge difference from a Carnival ship that has a couple thousand people, she said. They like these small ships because they bring them places they might not have thought of.

The industry is still in a state of flux, though, Gray Faust said.

We're still kind of in it, she said. It all depends on how this all plays out. When things relax, are they going to want to go out back to Europe and go further afield?

Connecticut is considering ways to keep the cruise ships coming back.

Andrew Lavigne, a spokesperson for the Connecticut Port Authority, said the quasi-public agency is working with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to study whether a pier at New Londons Fort Trumbull, closer to the mouth of the Thames River and the Long Island Sound, could be renovated to accommodate large vessels like cruise ships and take advantage of its potential as a port of call for cruises.

Its a longer-term initiative, but it would allow us to host larger vessels and those that wouldnt call at City Pier, he said. New London is clearly on the radar of the people who are booking these excursions.

In the meantime, cities like New London dont have much control over how often cruise ships stop there: Its up to the companies planning the cruises, Passero said.

We are trying to sell New London to the cruise companies, but Im not really sure how effective were being, he said. It seems, from my perspective, that mostly they reach out to us when it works with their itineraries.

Other cruise companies have done just that, he said.

Weve been getting feelers, he said. Were anticipating that were going to get more scheduled.
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TOKYO  Japan welcomed the reelection of French President Emmanuel Macron as key to the unity of Group of Seven at a time when its members need to work together to end Russias invasion of Ukraine as soon as possible.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida congratulated Macron in his Twitter messages in both Japanese and French, saying, I hope to closely work with President Macron in a wide range of issues, including Russias invasion of Ukraine and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihiko Isozaki on Monday extended heartfelt congratulations to Macron on his reelection.

As we face a critical moment to end Russias outrageous aggression and defend the peaceful world order, the G-7 unity is required more than ever, and we plan to continue working closely with France led by President Macron, Isozaki said.

Japan, worried about the impact of Russian invasion of Ukraine in the East Asia where China is increasingly taking assertive military actions, has tried to play a greater role as part of G-7 and has joined in sanctions against Moscow and provided support for Ukraine in line with other members.

Isozaki called France an important, special partner for Japan that shares universal values including freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. He said Tokyo intends to strengthen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

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CANBERRA, Australia  Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is welcoming President Emmanuel Macrons reelection to a second term in France as a great expression of liberal democracy.

Macron was scathing of Morrison after Australias conservative government canceled a 90 billion Australian dollar ($66 billion) submarine contract in September.

Macron accused Morrison of lying to him about the state of the French contract before a deal was announced for the United States and Britain to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. Morrison denied misleading Macron, who refused to take the Australian leaders phone calls.

On Monday, Morrison tweeted: Congratulations Emmanuel Macron on your reelection as President. Another great expression of liberal democracy in action in uncertain times.

We wish you & France every success, in particular your leadership in Europe and as an important partner to Australia in the Indo-Pacific, Morrison added.

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KYIV, Ukraine  Ukraines leader has congratulated Emmanuel Macron on winning a second term as president of France  and beating a far-right rival seen as close to Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelenskyy called Macron a true friend of Ukraineon Sunday and expressed appreciation for his support.

Tweeting in French, Zelenskyy said: Im convinced that we will advance together toward new joint victories. Toward a strong and united Europe!

Macron has sought a diplomatic solution to Russias war in Ukraine. France has also sent significant weapons to Ukraine and Macron is planning more.

In a TV debate ahead of Sundays runoff, Macron assailed challenger Marine Le Pens past ties to Russia, notably a loan her party got from a Russian-Czech bank in 2014.

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PARIS  Watching Frances presidential election results was especially stressful for Yasmina Aksas.

The 19-year-old law student could have been forced to remove her headscarf if far-right leader Marine Le Pen had won instead of incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

Speaking to AP as the first projections came in showing Macron in the lead, Aksas was visible relieved  but far from overjoyed.

Its still 40% of people voting for Le Pen. Its reassuring that its Macron but its not a victory, said Aksas, who is active in feminist and social justice organizations. It reflects nothing of what I think and what I identify with.

She expressed concern about extremist language and ideas that used to be limited to militant far-right groups but have now entered the mainstream.

Under Macrons presidency, she described encroaching limits on Muslims in the name of fighting extremism. They made it a problem for everyone while remaining vague about who the menace is.

So if you feel concerned about what theyre doing, like closing mosques, associations, when they say theyre targeting jihadists, you shouldnt feel targeted, otherwise you are suspected of not being part of the republic.

___

MORE STORIES:

 Macron vs Le Pen: France votes in tense presidential runoff

 Frances presidential rivals: Key moments, private lives

 EXPLAINER: How Frances old-school voting system works

 Follow all AP stories on France's 2022 presidential election at https://apnews.com/hub/france-election-2022

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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

LONDON  A European economist says that if exit polls hold true and Emmanuel Macron wins the election against his right-wing challenger Marine Le Pen, France will most likely remain an engine of growth and progress in Europe for the next five years.

Economist Holger Schmieding says France has outperformed Germany for the past five years. He says France under Macron would likely remain on track for a sustained period of faster gains in employment and per-capita GDP. He says a dynamic France next to a still somewhat strong Germany is a major positive for Europe.

The economist says Macron has strengthened the French economy by more than any of his predecessors since Charles de Gaulle.

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BERLIN  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was the first foreign leader to call President Emmanuel Macron and congratulate him on his reelection, Scholz office said.

The Federal Chancellor and the President confirmed their intention to continue the close and trusting relationship between Germany and France, not least in view of the current challenges such as the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, Scholz office said in a statement.

It also said the result signified a clear commitment to Europe and the European unification process, adding that Scholz and Macron agreed to meet as soon as possible.

The Czech prime minister also sent his congratulations to Macron.

France is our vital partner, we are keen on developing our great relationship further, Petr Fiala tweeted.

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PARIS  Rights groups have breathed a sigh of relief at Marine Le Pens failure to become French president, but warned against complacency and urged the victor, Emmanuel Macron, to fight racial profiling and discrimination against Muslims, and better protect migrants.

Cecile Coudriou, head of Amnesty International France, cited egregious human rights failings under Macrons presidency including Frances treatment of refugees and asylum at its borders, systemic discrimination in the form of ethnic profiling by police, disproportionate and dangerously vague counter-terror laws, curbs to the right to protest, intrusive surveillance that impacts the right to privacy, failing to uphold climate commitments and selling arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Antiracism group SOS Racisme said : This victory, which might look large in a cursory analysis, is not so much a victory as a relief. The reality is that Marine Le Pen ... has progressed by about eight points in five years.

It criticized Macrons law against so-called separatism by radical Muslims and government ministers criticism of wokeism or Islamo-leftism. It blamed Macrons arrogance, (economic) liberalism, brutalization of the social movement and nods to the far right for worsening tensions in France. It is definitely not neutral to help trivialize the far right by choosing it as its opposition and winking at it, it said.

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PARIS  President Emmanuel Macron said a simple Thank you! after winning reelection, and praised the majority who gave him five more years at the helm of France.

Macron also thanked people who voted for him not because they embrace his ideas but because they wanted to reject far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

Im not the candidate of one camp anymore, but the president of all of us, he said.

Macron comfortably won reelection to a second term Sunday, according to polling agencies projections.

He arrived on the plaza where his supporters gathered, beneath the Eiffel Tower, to the sound of the Ode to Joy, the European Unions anthem, hand in hand with his wife, Brigitte.

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PARIS  Supporters of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen gathered at her election-night even in Paris Bois de Boulogne booed loudly as provisional results were announced.

But they quickly looked ahead to June legislative elections  as did Le Pen in her concession speech.

Francois Denormand, a retired dentist planning to run for a seat as a lawmaker for Le Pens National Rally party in Junes legislative elections said that what he called the third round starts tomorrow.

We must continue to fight, he said. We can lose the battle but not the war.

Nineteen-year-old Paul Renkert, waving a French flag, admitted that Im sad.

Renkert, who had traveled from the eastern Alsace region, said he had invested time in Le Pens campaign because I believe in the future of France.

He is looking ahead to the legislative elections and five years in the future when a new president is elected. Le Pen has not made known her intentions, but I dont think shell abandon us, he said.

Guests from abroad were among those invited to the soiree. Among them was Tom Lamont, with Belgiums far-right Vlaams Belang party, an ally of Le Pens National Rally. He, too, sent out a message of hope. Its a disappointment she lost but we see the right-wing movements is growing in France  and maybe in five years we will have a right-wing president here, he said.

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MADRID  Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says that with the victory of Emmanuel Macron as projected by polling agencies, Democracy wins, Europe wins.

Citizens have chosen a France committed to a free, strong and fair EU, Sanchez, who is also leader of Spains Socialist Party, wrote, referring to the 27-nation European Union.

Sanchez, Portugals Antonio Costa and Germanys Olaf Scholz had published a joint open letter ahead of Sundays election presenting the vote as a choice between Macron, a defender of democracy in a strong European Union, and Marine Le Pen, an extreme-right candidate who openly sides with those who attack our freedom and democracy, values based on the French ideas of Enlightenment.

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PARIS  French far-right figure Eric Zemmour, who failed to reach the runoff in the presidential election, has called for a nationalist coalition to be created in France's parliament.

Zemmour spoke after polling agencies projected that far-right leader Marine Le Pen, head of the National Rally party, had lost the presidential election to centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

Zemmour, who created his own party, Reconquest, in recent months, said the national bloc must get united.

He suggested such a coalition ahead of Junes parliamentary elections, with the aim to fight both Macrons party and the left.

Zemmour received 7% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election on April 10.

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European leaders have been quick to congratulate French President Emmanuel Macron on his re-election.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has often sparred with Macron over Brexit and other issues, swiftly congratulated the re-elected president.

Calling France one of our closest and most important allies, Johnson said he looked forward to continuing to work together on the issues which matter most to our two countries and to the world.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi said that Macrons victory is splendid news for all of Europe.

He said France and Italy are working side by side, along with the other European partners, to construct a stronger, more cohesive, more just European Union, capable of being a protagonist in the greatest challenges of our times, starting with the war in Ukraine.

Portugals Prime Minister Antonio Costa says that, by voting for Emmanuel Macron, French people have demonstrated once again their commitment to the European project.

Costa, a socialist who was re-elected earlier this year in a landslide victory, wrote Sunday in a tweet that he was enthusiastic about working together with the centrist politician during the next four years.

The Portuguese prime minister made a case for voting to elect Macron in an open letter also signed by his Spanish and German counterparts, Pedro Sanchez and Olaf Scholz.

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PARIS  Leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said Sunday that Marine Le Pens defeat in the French election is very good news for the unity of our people, and vowed to lead the fight against Emmanuel Macrons party in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Melenchon, who failed to reach the second round by a few hundred thousand votes and had urged his supporters not to vote for Le Pen, said Macrons presidential monarchy survives by default and under the constraint of a biased choice.

In his address, Melenchon exhorted Macrons opponents to vote in Junes parliamentary elections to choose a different path and elect a majority of leftist lawmakers. Melenchon said he would be prepared to lead an opposition government.

Courage, action, determination, always refusing fatality and resignation, Melenchon said.

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BRUSSELS  Several European leaders and politicians have swiftly congratulated French President Emmanuel Macron for his reelection, as his far-right rival Marine Le Pen conceded defeat in Sundays presidential election.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted in French, together we will make France and Europe advance.

The Dutch prime minister also tweeted in French his hope to continue our extensive and constructive cooperation in EU and NATO.

In Germany, politicians around the political spectrum offered support, including from the pro-business Free Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and conservative Christian Social Union.

Many in Europe had worried Le Pen would undermine European unity and its post-war order.

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PARIS  French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has conceded defeat in the presidential runoff, handing victory to incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

She said her unprecedented score in a presidential election represents a shining victory in itself.

The ideas we represent are reaching summits, she said.

French polling agencies are projecting that centrist Macron has won the runoff against Le Pen that took place Sunday.

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PARIS  French polling agencies are projecting that centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron will win Frances presidential runoff Sunday, beating far right rival Marine Le Pen in a tight race that was clouded by the Ukraine war and saw a surge in support for extremist ideas.

If the projections are borne out by official results, Macron would be the first French president in a generation to win a second term, since Jacques Chirac in 2002. But he would face a divided nation and a battle to keep his parliamentary majority in legislative elections in June.

Five years ago, Macron won a sweeping victory over Le Pen to become the youngest French president. The margin is expected to be way smaller this time: Polling agencies Opinionway, Harris and Ifop-Fiducial projected that Macron would win between 57% and 58.5% of the vote, with Le Pen getting between 41.5% and 43%.

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PARIS  Voter turnout is lower than usual in Frances presidential runoff Sunday, apparently reflecting voter frustration with both candidates, centrist President Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen.

Turnout at 5 p.m. Paris time (1500 GMT) stood at 63%, the Interior Ministry said. That was below the 65% at the same time in the last presidential runoff in 2017, when Macron overwhelmingly beat Le Pen, and the 72% in when Socialist Francois Hollande won the presidency in 2012.

Polls before Sundays election gave Macron a solid lead over Le Pen, but to keep it he needs the support of many left-wing voters who shunned both him and Le Pen in the first-round election on April 10. Many of those voters may choose to stay home this time instead.

Polling agency projections and early official results are expected after final voting stations close in France at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT).

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LE TOUQUET, France  The two candidates for Frances presidential runoff have cast their ballots  and basked in adoring crowds outside their polling stations.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen went first, cheerily greeting election workers in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, in Frances struggling former industrial heartland. She emerged from the ballot booth beaming to drop it in a transparent box. Outside, she took selfies with supporters.

Then came incumbent Emmanuel Macron, who shook dozens of hands  and was handed a small child to hold up  on his journey from his family home in the resort town of Le Touquet on the English Channel to his voting station.

Inside, he greeted yet more people, posed for photographs with his wife Brigitte, and cast his ballot with a wink for the cameras. The voting booths were shielded by curtains in the red-white-and-blue of the French flag.

About 48.8 million voters are eligible to take part in the runoff, which is being watched around Europe. Early results are expected Sunday night.

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PARIS  France began voting in a presidential runoff election Sunday with repercussions for Europes future.

Centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron is the front-runner, but he's fighting a tough challenge from far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

The centrist Macron is asking voters to trust him for a second five-year term despite a presidency troubled by protests, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. A Macron victory in this vote would make him the first French president in 20 years to win a second term.

The result of voting in France, a nuclear-armed nation with one of the worlds biggest economies, could also impact the conflict in Ukraine, as France has played a key role in diplomatic efforts and support for sanctions against Russia.
NEW MILFORD  A growing group of parents in the community has been very vocal in their insistence on the termination or resignation of School Superintendent Alisha DiCorpo.

A petition posted Friday afternoon to one of New Milfords Facebook pages, created by resident Brenden Farinha on Change.org called Calling for the resignation or termination of superintendent DiCorpo, had garnered 1,550 signatures as of Saturday.

The petition states that within the 18-month period since DiCorpo was hired in Feburary 2021, 10 members of the New Milford School District have left. The who have left include Director of Facilities Kevin Munrett, Information Technology Director Brandon Rush, Human Resouces Director Catherine Gabianelli, New Milford High School Principal Greg Shugrue and Schaghticoke Middle School Principal Chris Longo.

The latest staff member to resign is New Milford High School Principal Raymond Manka, who announced his news Friday, to go into effect June 30. Manka started his position in 2021.

In response to Mankas announcement, students at New Milford High School are planning a possible walkout Monday around 9 a.m.

New Milford senior Taylor Balzi, 17, said students will be walking to the front of the school parking lot, on Route 7.

We are going to be staying in the front parking lot and making signs to support Mr. Manka and everything thats going on, she said, adding that a group of students planned to meet *aturday evening to create posters to show their support of Manka.

Taylor, who has known Manka for 10 years, said he has put so much into the school and students like him very much.

He has become like a parental figure in my life and I was so excited when he became principal of our school. When I found out that he was resigning, I just got so upset thinking of all the underclassmen coming up to the high school in the next couple of years are going to be missing out, Taylor said. He has constantly supported his students and made it a comforting and welcoming environment for them. And he honestly has changed all of our lives.

She said Manka is someone students can go to if they just need to smile.

He is just such an amazing person. Everyone loves him, she added. I know a lot of people are going to be walking out in supporting him.

She said students will most likely wear green and white, the schools colors.

Additionally, another group of students are organizing the sale of clothing that say Bring Manka Back!

The clothing page, which says, help support principal Manka during these troubling times, also links to the petition.

The start and end dates of former staff members in the district are stated within the Board of Education meeting minutes, which can be found on newmilfordps.org.

Manka, who became principal in June 2021, did not indicate in his resignation announcement if he has taken on a new position and didnt comment as to the circumstances surrounding his resignation when reached by Hearst Connecticut Media.

In response to Mankas resignation, DiCorpo wrote she respects his decision in an email Friday evening.

I wish him the best, she added.

When asked about the petition, she said she had no comment.

New Milford Board of Education Chairman Wendy Faulenbach said staff additions and staff turnover are part of every months board meeting.

It is not unique to New Milford to have staff come and go, she said.

Faulenbach additionally said the board is aware of the petition that has been circulated, and the fact that it reflects the sentiment of a large segment of the community. We recognize the concerns that have been expressed.

However, she said that as much as she and other board members would like to comment on this issue, the board has to respect the legal protocols that require us to refrain from addressing specific personal matters while they are pending.

Farinha, caregiver of a child in the New Milford Public School District, said hes very concerned about the turnover  which he said is what prompted him to create the petition.

After the difficulties we have experienced during COVID, and so many leadership positions leaving, how can our community expect to recover and see change in our education system and kids? Farinha said. We as a community need to come together to support our education system and support our kids and our educators who are trying to do good in our town.
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  The U.S. secretaries of state and defense met Sunday night with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the highest-level visit to the countrys capital by an American delegation since the start of Russia's invasion.

The secretive meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin came as Ukraine pressed the West for more powerful weapons against Russia's campaign in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where Moscow's forces sought to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops in the battered port of Mariupol.

Blinken and Austin told Ukraines president, Volodomyr Zelenskyy, and his advisers that the United States would provide more than $300 million in foreign military financing and had approved a $165 million sale of ammunition.

They also said that U.S. President Joe Biden would soon announce his nominee for ambassador to Ukraine and that American diplomats who left Ukraine before the war would start returning to the country this coming week

Reporters who accompanied Austin and Blinken to Poland were barred by Pentagon and State Department officials from reporting the Kyiv visit until the two men physically left Ukraine. U.S. officials cited security concerns.

Before the session with Blinken and Austin, Zelenskyy said he was looking for the Americans to produce results, both in arms and security guarantees.

"You cant come to us empty-handed today, and we are expecting not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons,'' he said.

Zelenskyys last face-to-face meeting with a top U.S. official was Feb. 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris, five days before Russias invasion. While the West has funneled military equipment to Ukraine, Zelenskyy has stressed repeatedly that his country needs more heavy weapons, including long-range air defense systems and warplanes.

In an apparent boost for Ukraine, polling agencies said French President Emmanuel Macron would win reelection over far right candidate Marine Le Pen, who has faced questions about her ties to Moscow.

The result was hailed by Frances allies in the European Union as a reassuring sign of stability and continued support for Ukraine. France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and is supplying weapons systems to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy's meeting with U.S. officials took place as Ukrainians and Russians observed Orthodox Easter. Speaking from Kyiv's ancient St. Sophia Cathedral, Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, highlighted its significance to a nation wracked by nearly two months of war.

The great holiday today gives us great hope and unwavering faith that light will overcome darkness, good will overcome evil, life will overcome death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win! he said.

Still, the war cast a shadow over celebrations. In the northern village of Ivanivka, where Russian tanks still littered the roads, Olena Koptyl said "the Easter holiday doesnt bring any joy. Im crying a lot. We cannot forget how we lived.

The Russian military reported hitting 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, including fortified positions and troop concentrations, while its warplanes destroyed 26 Ukrainian military sites, including an explosives factory and several artillery depots.

Since failing to capture Kyiv, the Russians have aimed to gain full control over the eastern industrial heartland, where Moscow-backed separatists controlled some territory before the war.

Russian forces launched fresh airstrikes on a Mariupol steel plant where an estimated 1,000 civilians are sheltering along with about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters. The Azovstal steel mill where the defenders are holed up is the last corner of resistance in the city, otherwise occupied by the Russians.

Zelenskyy said he stressed the need to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, including from the steel plant, in a Sunday call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is scheduled to speak later with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Arestovych, the Zelenskyy adviser, said Ukraine has proposed holding talks with Russia next to the sprawling steel mill. Arestovych said on the Telegram messaging app that Russia has not responded to the proposal that would include establishing humanitarian corridors and the exchange of Russian war prisoners for the fighters still in the plant.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is scheduled to travel to Turkey on Monday and then Moscow and Kyiv. Zelenskyy said it was a mistake for Guterres to visit Russia before Ukraine.

Why? To hand over signals from Russia? What should we look for? Zelenskyy said Saturday. There are no corpses scattered on the Kutuzovsky Prospect, he said, referring to one of Moscows main avenues.

Mariupol has endured fierce fighting since the start of the war because of its location on the Sea of Azov. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere, and allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

More than 100,000 people  down from a prewar population of about 430,000  are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate over 20,000 civilians have been killed. Recent satellite images showed what appeared to be mass graves to the west and east of Mariupol.

Children in an underground bunker were seen receiving Easter presents in a video released Sunday by the far-right Azov Battalion, which is among the Ukrainian forces at the steel plant in Mariupol. The groups deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, said the video was shot at the plant.

One toddler is seen wearing homemade diapers made of cellophane and people are seen hanging laundry on makeshift hangers.

Please help us, one woman in the video said through tears, appealing to world leaders. We want to live in our city, in our country. We are tired of these bombings, constant air strikes on our land. How much longer will this continue?

Mykhailo Podolyak, another presidential adviser, tweeted that the Russian military was attacking the plant with heavy bombs and artillery while accumulating forces and equipment for a direct assault.

Zelenskyy over the weekend accused Russians of committing war crimes by killing civilians and of setting up filtration camps near Mariupol for people trying to leave the city. He said the Ukrainians  many of them children  are then sent to areas under Russian occupation or to Russia itself, often as far as Siberia or the Far East. The claims could not be independently verified.

Zelenskyy highlighted the death of a 3-month old girl in a Russian missile strike Saturday on the Black Sea port of Odesa. The baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at Odesa, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, citing social media, reported that the infant's mother, Valeria Glodan, and grandmother also died when a missile hit a residential area. Zelenskyy promised to find and punish those responsible.

The war started when this baby was 1 month old,'' Zelenskyy said. "Can you imagine what is happening? They are filthy scum; there are no other words for it."

For the Donbas offensive, Russia has reassembled troops who fought around Kyiv and in northern Ukraine. The British Ministry of Defense said Ukrainian forces had repelled numerous assaults in the past week and "inflicted significant cost on Russian forces.

A fire erupted early Monday at an oil depot in Russia near its border with Ukraine, but Russia's Tass news agency gave no immediate cause for the blaze in oil storage tanks.

NASA satellites that track fires showed something burning at coordinates that corresponded to a Rosneft facility some 110 kilometers (70 miles) north of the Ukrainian border. Moscow previously has blamed Ukraine for attacks on the Russian region of Bryansk, which borders Ukraine.

The spiritual leaders of the world's Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics on Sunday appealed for relief for Ukraine's suffering population.

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Associated Press journalists Yesica Fisch in Sloviansk, Ukraine, Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Cara Anna, Inna Varenytsia and Oleksandr Stashevskyi in Kviv and AP staff around the world contributed.

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Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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NEAR THE POLISH-UKRAINIAN BORDER  The United States is giving new military assistance to Ukraine and renewing a diplomatic push in the war-ravaged nation as President Joe Bidens secretary of state and Pentagon chief complete a secretive trip to Kyiv.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin informed Ukraines president of a more than $300 million package of foreign military financing and a $165 million sale of ammunition.

They also said President Joe Biden would announce his pick for a U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and that American diplomats who left ahead of Russias invasion in February would start returning to the country this coming week.

Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said he planned to meet with the U.S. officials in Kyiv on Sunday, but the Biden administration refused to confirm that or discuss any details of a possible visit.

It was the highest-level American visit to the capital since Russia invaded in late February.

Austin and Blinken announced a total of $713 million in foreign military financing for Ukraine and 15 allied and partner countries. Some $322 million is earmarked for Kyiv.

Officials say the remainder will be split among NATO members and other nations that have provided Ukraine with critical military supplies since the war with Russia began.

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LVIV, Ukraine __ A fire has erupted at a Russian oil depot near the border with Ukraine.

The Tass news agency reported the fire early Monday in Bryansk. The Russian report said oil storage tanks at the facility caught fire around 2 a.m. local time.

NASA satellites that track fires show a burning fire at coordinates that correspond to a Rosneft facility some 110 kilometers (70 miles) north of the Ukrainian border.

Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the head of Ukraines Ministry of Internal Affairs, was cited by the Ukrainian news agency Unian as saying that people who live near the burning oil depot were being evacuated.

Moscow previously has blamed Ukraine for attacks on the Russian region of Bryansk, which borders Ukraine.

Ukraines top security officials have denied that Kyiv was behind an earlier airstrike on an oil depot in the Russian city of Belgorod, about 60 kilometers (35 miles) from the border.

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KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:

 Civilians in Mariupol steelworks beg for aid in newly released video

 Ukraine official: Zelenskyy meets top-level US delegation

 Ukrainians mark Orthodox Easter with prayers for those trapped

 Far from home, Ukrainian refugees pray at Easter for peace

 Ukrainian village faces a churchless Easter

 Sanctions hit Russian economy, though Putin says otherwise

 Follow all AP stories on Russia's war on Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

MARIUPOL, Ukraine  A newly released video shows Ukrainian children in an underground bunker receiving Easter presents.

The video was released Sunday by the far-right Azov Battalion, which is among Ukrainian forces at the Azovstal steelworks where soldiers and civilians have been holed up under a Russian attack.

The groups deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, says the video was shot Sunday at the plant.

One toddler is seen wearing homemade diapers made of cellophane. People are hanging laundry on makeshift hangers.

One of the women in the video begs for help from world leaders and says she and others stuck under the plant are tired of the bombing and are desperate for their freedom.

We want to live in our city, in our country. We are tired of these bombings, constant airstrikes on our land. How much longer will this continue? she says through tears.

The children are constantly crying here -- they want to play and live, she adds. Stop this aggression. I ask everyone, help please, free us!

Another woman says there are 600 civilians sheltering under the plant, without food and water.

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KYIV, Ukraine  An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the U.S. secretaries of state and defense are meeting with the Ukrainian leader in the highest-level visit to Kyiv by an American delegation since the start of Russias invasion.

The adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, said in an interview on Ukrainian TV late Sunday that the talks are going on right now.

Zelenskyys meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin comes as Ukraine presses the West for more powerful weapons in its fight against the Russian invasion, which began 60 days ago.

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SHARJAH, United Arab Emirates  Hundreds of Russians and Ukrainians crowded into the only Russian Orthodox Church on the Arabian Peninsula on Sunday to celebrate Easter  far from home and in the shadow of a war that has brought devastation to Ukraine and international isolation to Moscow.

Although the two nationalities, united in language and history, typically celebrate Easter in harmony in this corner of the world where theyve forged new lives as expats, this year there was unspoken tension.

I dont have any problems with Russians as people, said Sergei, a Ukrainian businessman from Kyiv and Dubai resident of five years, who like others interviewed declined to give his last name for privacy reasons. But war changes people. Children are dying. The Russians now hate my country.

A few Russians interviewed said they did not support the war and felt sick or guilty about it. But to avoid any confrontation in the pews, they stuck to small talk with Ukrainians about the festivities and warming weather, they said.

Ordinary Russians say Dubai has become an increasingly rare haven as anti-Russian hostility escalates around the world over the grinding war, which has rocked the stability of Europe, sent oil prices soaring and triggered the continents worst refugee crisis since World War II.

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KYIV, Ukraine  Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he has discussed the evacuation of civilians from Mariupol in a call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Zelenskyy said on Twitter that he stressed the need for immediate evacuation of civilians from Mariupol, including Azovstal, and immediate exchange of blocked troops in Sundays call with Erdogan. He noted that the call came before Erdogans planned conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine has urged Russia to allow the evacuation of civilians holed up at the giant Azovstal steel plant, the last remaining Ukrainian pocket of resistance in the strategic Sea of Azov port. It also has pushed Russia to conduct talks on a safe exit for the Ukrainian defenders of the plant, but Moscow has stonewalled the demands.

Zelenskyy said he and Erdogan also discussed the course of the negotiation process and possible security guarantees for Ukraine from Turkey and other nations.

Erdogans office said he told Zelenskyy in their call that Turkey is ready to mediate and assist in talks between Ukraine and Russia.

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VATICAN CITY  Pope Francis has renewed his call for an Easter truce as Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter Sunday, when the faithful mark the resurrection of Jesus.

Without naming countries, Francis urged aggressors to stop the attack to help the suffering of the exhausted people.

Francis told a crowd gathered in St. Peters Square that two months had passed since Russias invasion of Ukraine and said that instead of stopping, the war got worse. It is sad that in these days that are the holiest and most solemn for all Christians, the deadly clamor of arms is louder than the sound of bells announcing the Resurrection.

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BERLIN  Switzerland has rejected two requests by Germany to export Swiss ammunition to Ukraine, citing the Alpine nations strict neutrality.

The decision was first reported Sunday by Swiss weekly Sonntagszeitung.

Switzerlands State Secretariat for Economic Affairs confirmed that both requests from Germany, whether the ammunition received from Switzerland can be passed on to Ukraine, were answered negatively with a reference to Swiss neutrality.

Germany needs Switzerlands consent for the arms delivery as part of the original sale contract. The Swiss office declined to specify what type of ammunition Germany had sought to export to Ukraine.

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MOSCOW  The Russian military says it has struck a Ukrainian explosives factory, several artillery depots and hundreds of other targets.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Sunday that the Russian military used precision-guided missiles to destroy a factory making powder and explosives near Pavlohrad in the Dnipro region in central Ukraine.

Konashenkov said Russian forces also struck several depots with artillery munitions and rockets in Barvinkove, Nova Dmytrivka, Ivanivka, Husarivka and Velyka Komyshuvakha in the Kharkiv region.

He added that the Russian artillery hit 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, including fortified positions and troops concentrations, while Russian warplanes destroyed 26 Ukrainian military targets.

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ISTANBUL -- The spiritual leader of the worlds Orthodox Christians has called for the opening of humanitarian corridors in Ukraine, saying a human tragedy was unfolding in the country.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I spoke Saturday night in Istanbul during midnight mass marking the resurrection of Jesus Christ ahead of Orthodox Easter Sunday.

Let us ask the Risen Redeemer that this year, (Easter) will be the impetus to open humanitarian corridors, safe passages to truly safe areas for the thousands of people surrounded in Mariupol, civilians, among them the wounded, the elderly, women and many children, Bartholomew said. The same applies to all other regions of Ukraine, where an indescribable human tragedy is unfolding.

Istanbul-based Bartholomew is considered first among equals among Eastern Orthodox patriarchs, which gives him prominence but not the power of a Catholic pope.

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BERLIN  The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe says it is extremely concerned about the detention of several Ukrainian members of its monitoring mission in the east of the country.

The Vienna-based body said in a brief statement Sunday that it is using all available channels to facilitate their release. A spokesperson declined to specify how many national mission members were detained, when or by whom.

Several OSCE observers have been killed or injured since the bodys 57 participating states established a mission to monitor the conflict in eastern Ukraine eight years ago. Russia recently vetoed an extension of the mission.

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KYIV, Ukraine  Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has spoken of hope and victory for his nation during an Easter Sunday address.

Speaking from the ancient St. Sophia cathedral, Zelenskyy said that the great holiday today gives us great hope and unwavering faith that light will overcome darkness, good will overcome evil, life will overcome death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win!

He said that the Lord and the holy heavenly light are on our side, adding: We are going through very difficult ordeals. Let us reach a just end on this path  the beginning of a happy life and prosperity of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said that on Easter, we ask God for great grace to make our dream come true - this is another great day -- the day when great peace will come to Ukraine.

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KYIV, Ukraine  A Ukrainian presidential adviser has urged Russia to allow civilians to leave a steel mill in Mariupol besieged by the Russian forces.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, appealed to Russia to announce a truce in Mariupol on Orthodox Easter Sunday and immediately open a humanitarian corridor for civilians holed up at the giant Azovstal steel plant. He also challenged Russia to conduct a round of talks to negotiate an exit for the Ukrainian defenders of the plant.

Podolyak tweeted that the Russian military is attacking the plant with heavy bombs and artillery barrage and is accumulating forces and equipment for an assault.

Sviatoslav Palamar, an officer with the Azov Regiment defending the plant, said in a video that on Eastern Sunday the Russians are continuing to shower the plant with bombs and shell it with heavy artillery.

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KYIV, Ukraine  The Ukrainian military says Russian forces have continued to press their attacks in the east.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said Sunday that the Russians fired on Ukrainian positions along the entire line of contact on the wars 60th day. It also said the Russian military intensified its offensive and assault operations in the Siverodonetsk, Kurakhiv and Popasna directions.

A regional official in eastern Ukraine says at least eight people have been killed by the Russian shelling.

Luhansk regional Governor Serhiy Haidai said Sunday that two others were wounded by the Russian barrage in the past 24 hours.

The General Staff added that Russian forces have also continued to pummel the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, hitting it with air strikes, including by long-range aircraft.

The shelling comes as the Russians are pressing their offensive in a bid to gain full control over Ukraines eastern industrial heartland called Donbas.

The Russians have also shelled the Dnipro region west of Donbas, where at least one person was killed by a Russian missile, according to Dnipro regional Governor Valentyn Reznichenko.

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KYIV, Ukraine  The Ukrainian military said Saturday it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.

The Ukrainian military intelligence agency posted a statement saying the command post was hit on Friday and two generals were killed and one was critically wounded.

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in an online interview that 50 senior Russian officers were in the command center when it came under attack. He said their fate was unknown.

The Russian military did not comment on the claim, which could not be confirmed.

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KYIV, Ukraine  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said new evidence is emerging that shows Russian troops killed tens of thousands of civilians in Mariupol and then tried to cover it up. He said Ukraine has intercepted Russian conversations about how they are concealing the traces of their crimes. Satellite images have shown what appear to be mass graves dug in towns to the west and east of Mariupol.

Zelenskyy said the Russians set up filtration camps near Mariupol for those trying to leave the city, which has largely been reduced to rubble. He said those who survive these camps are sent to areas under Russian occupation or to Russia itself, often as far as Siberia or the Far East. Many of them, he said, are children.

He said he spoke with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday about the situation in Mariupol and the general course of the war.

Zelenskyy promised to find and punish those responsible for the missile attack on Odesa, which he said killed eight people and wounded 18.

Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians to observe a curfew and not attend Orthodox Easter services overnight. The lengthy services traditionally begin late Saturday and run through Sunday morning. But starting from 5 a.m. you may go to the church in your city, town or community, he said.
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TOKYO (AP)  Rescuers said that 10 people who were retrieved Sunday from the frigid sea and the rocky coast of a northern Japanese national park had died, a day after a tour boat with 26 aboard apparently sank in rough waters, triggering questions why it was allowed to sail.

The search for the others is still ongoing after the boat sent a distress call on Saturday afternoon saying it was sinking. The location, near the Kashuni Waterfall, is known as a difficult place to maneuver boats because of its rocky coastline and strong tide.

There were two crew and 24 passengers, including two children, on the the 19-ton Kazu 1 when it ran into troubles while traveling off the western coast of the Shiretoko Peninsula. The coast guard said the 10 victims  seven men and three women  were adults.

The Transport Ministry launched an investigation into the boats operator, which had two accidents last year. The ministry said it was looking into safety standards and the decision to conduct the tour despite rough weather on Saturday.

The operator, Shiretoko Pleasure Cruise, had been instructed to take steps to improve its safety following earlier accidents in which it ran aground in June without causing injuries, and another in May, when three passengers suffered minor injuries when the boat collided with an object.

We will thoroughly investigate what caused this situation and what kind of safety oversight was involved to allow the tour in order to prevent another accident," Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito, who visited the area Sunday, told reporters.

Following an intensive search involving six patrol boats, several aircraft and divers that went through the night, rescuers on early Sunday found four people near the tip of Shiretoko Peninsula and later six more in the same area, about 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) north from where the boat sent a distress call. Some of them were plucked from the sea, while others were washed onto the rocky coast.

An orange-colored, square-shaped lifesaving float with the boats name on it was also found near the rocks, the coast guard said.

Footage on public broadcaster NHK showed one of the victims arriving on a helicopter and being transferred to an ambulance on a stretcher. Rescuers held up blue plastic shields to protect the victim's privacy.

The sightseeing vessel made an emergency call early Saturday afternoon, saying its bow had flooded and that it was beginning to sink and tilt, the coast guard said. Contact with the boat had since been lost. The coast guard said the operator told them that everyone on the boat was wearing a life vest, but some of the victims found were without them.

Average April sea temperatures in Shiretoko National Park are just above freezing, which experts say would cause hypothermia.

Its a very severe condition especially when they are wet, Jun Abe, vice chairman of the Society of Water Rescue and Survival Research, told TBS TV.

Yoshihiko Yamada, a Tokai University marine science professor, said the boat was likely to have run aground after it was tossed around in high waves and damaged. A boat of that size usually does not carry a life boat, he said.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida cut short his attendance at a two-day summit in Kumamoto in southern Japan and returned to Tokyo. He told reporters early Sunday that he instructed officials to do everything they can for the rescue.

The cause of the accident is under investigation, but officials and experts suspect a safety negligence.

High waves and strong winds were forecast when the boat left and Japanese media reports said fishing boats had returned to port before noon Saturday because of the bad weather.

A tour boat crew belonging to another operator told NHK that he warned the Kazu 1 crew of rough seas and told them not to go. He also said the same boat ran aground last year and suffered a crack on its bow.

Saturdays tour was reportedly the first by the operator this season, and the accident just before Japans Golden Week holidays starting late April could dampen local tourism, which slumped during the pandemic. Japan is still largely closed to foreign visitors.

Hokkaido Gov. Naomichi Suzuki told reporters Sunday that he planned to request safety checks by tour operators in the prefecture ahead of the holidays.

According to the operators website, the tour takes around three hours and offers scenic views of the western coast of the peninsula and a chance to see whales, dolphins and brown bears. The national park is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site and is famous as the southernmost region to see drifting sea ice.
Connecticut State Police / Contributed

BRIDGEPORT  One person was found injured on Stratord Avenue after reported shooting incident on Saturday afternoon, police said.

Shortly after 4:30 p.m. Saturday, the Bridgeport Police Department were alerted to a possible shooting in the area of Stratford Avenue, between Union and Carroll Avenues. This was followed by multiple 911 calls indicating a possible person shot along with a vehicle struck.
A partly sunny and breezy day is forecast for Sunday before rain moves into Connecticut this week, according to the National Weather Service.

Skies will be partly sunny Sunday with a temperature high of 57 degrees and a strong breeze, the weather service said. The wind will be calmer Sunday night with a low of 43 degrees.
YINCHUAN, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Chai Peike, 83, has taken up an ambitious project to paint 480 characters of the "Dream of the Red Mansion," one of the four most famous classical Chinese literary works.

Chai hails from Guyuan City in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and is proficient in Chinese brush painting. Over the years, he has developed a habit of turning the characters of novels he has read into images.

"When I read books, I should be able to visualize the characters as well as practically see their images. My aim while reading is to absorb the stories and transform them into paintings," Chai said.

He has recently donated a set of paintings depicting 108 characters from "Outlaws of the Marsh," a classic Chinese novel series, to an archive in his hometown.

A fan of this epic novel series, Chai has developed his own understanding of the ancient heroes after studying their characteristics for years.

"Every time I close my eyes after reading the book, the characters play out in my mind. This allows me to paint them according to my visualizations and sometimes even improvise them," he said.

"Wu Song, who kills a tiger with his bare hands, is my favorite hero because of his hatred toward evil and knighthood spirit," Chai added. "So I painted him as a perfect man."

According to the novel, Wu Song had one arm chopped off by a bandit and was handicapped in the end, but Chai kept his two arms intact. Wu Song's facial expression was also based on Chai's own interpretation.

Chai's hometown Guyuan is the cradle of a local literary culture called "Xihaigu Literature." Xihaigu, a region that was long deemed "uninhabitable," bid farewell to poverty in recent years.

"Guyuan is not only the center of Xihaigu area but also the source of its literature," said Wang Lun, dean of the Guyuan Archives.

"The fighting spirit of the heroes in 'Outlaws of the Marsh' has inspired us to combat poverty and improve our lives, which accords with the local culture," Wang said. 
Today, the French vote for the man or woman who will govern them for five whole years and with more extensive powers than any other democratic head of state.

Will they again choose the still-young and dazzlingly brainy Emmanuel Macron? Or his pugnacious challenger, the veteran Marine Le Pen, who would be Frances first woman president?

Significantly, whoever is in charge will have a big effect on Britain.

So, can we expect a more cooperative attitude over fishing rights, Northern Ireland, queues at Channel ports and illegal crossings by migrants than the one we have experienced since Brexit?

I doubt it. Stirring up Anglophobia goes down very well with parts of the French electorate. Many of their politicians still consider our leaving the EU to have been not merely mad but a betrayal.

Will they again choose the still-young and dazzlingly brainy Emmanuel Macron? Or his pugnacious challenger, the veteran Marine Le Pen, who would be Frances first woman president?

Macron endlessly uses Brexit as an example of the sort of disaster he believes France would face if it fails to re-elect him  and did so once again on Friday.

Addressing the French people, he said a win for his rival would be a victory for hatred, adding: Think about what British citizens were saying a few hours before Brexit: Im not going to vote, whats the point? The next day, they woke up with a hangover.

The differences between the two candidates are dramatic. Macron plays on his technical competence and remarkable mastery of detail. Above all, he offers what he calls a sovereign Europe, with greater financial and military powers for the EU, which he claims will protect Frances vital interests.

Le Pen offers a radical break: action to bring down the sharply rising cost of living (including big cuts in value-added tax), a greater say for the electorate through popular referendums, tough controls on immigration, a ban on wearing the hijab in public and a nationalist economic policy, defying EU law to give preference to French workers and businesses.

Though no longer proposing Frexit, she promises to throw a large French sabot  or wooden clog  into the EUs works.

From this side of the Channel, it might seem perplexing that  even six years on  Brexit can generate such fury in the presidential Elysee Palace. Surely, you might think, theres room for compromise on such issues as fishing, immigration or the sale of entirely uncontentious goods  bedding plants, for example  between England and Northern Ireland.

That, however, is to misunderstand the French mindset. European integration has been the major project of successive French governments since the 1950s  and in some ways since the 1920s.

The aim is to link Germany to France in a special relationship, to buttress the French economy and to give France a prestigious global role as political leader of Europe.

Brexit, for most French people, is no mere technicality. It is partly an assault upon France itself.

The French are a politically-minded people. They are proud of their Republican traditions, which they believe showed the world the path to democracy. They have had numerous revolutions and rebellions, 14 constitutions and a reputation for going out on the streets causing mayhem.

Macron despises Boris Johnson, and hopes that another, successor, government would drift back towards Brussels. So he will not want to let bygones be bygones, especially if it seems that Brexit Britain is gaining advantages over France

They are usually keen on elections, too, turning out in greater numbers than the relatively apathetic British.

So is todays vote a cause of national excitement? Far from it. I cannot remember a time when the French people have been so disillusioned. Unprecedented numbers are likely to abstain  not because they dont care who wins, but because they dont want either candidate to emerge victorious.

Macron is deeply disliked by many for what they see as his arrogance. He is clever  and he shows it. He is described by opponents as the president of the rich, out of touch with the struggles of ordinary people faced, as they are in Britain, with steeply rising prices.

So why not vote for Le Pen?

Her main problem is different. Despite efforts to concentrate on bread-and-butter issues and project a somewhat cosier image, she represents a political tradition, inherited from her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, with its roots in racism and reactionary authoritarianism.

Many middle-of-the-road voters  and not only on the Left  would never consider voting for a Le Pen at any price. At least not until now.

Dislike of Macron will push even some ardent Left-wing voters, especially the young, to vote for her as a protest against the political establishment.

Indeed, anti-system candidates of the Left and Right won 58 per cent of the vote in the first round, while the rival Gaullists and Socialists  historically so dominant  together scraped less than 7 per cent.

Probably more people will not vote at all, meaning the outcome is particularly uncertain. How has this mature democracy got into a position in which the only two candidates for the presidency arouse such revulsion?

France is not unique in this  just think of the United States. But it is of little comfort to say that the choice between Macron and Le Pen is no worse than the choice Americans had to make between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

It suggests that the system is not working properly in either country. Some might say that the choice between Boris Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer is not inspiring either. But a British Prime Minister can be removed if parliament or the ruling party lose confidence in him or her. A French president will be in the Elysee Palace for five years come what may.

So how does it matter to Britain?

Le Pen has actually praised Brexit and would certainly disrupt the EU. But her economic nationalism might cause us trouble, including over fishing rights.

Her determination to reduce the number of immigrants in France means we could not count on cooperation over small-boat Channel crossings. She is also strongly anti-Nato and has been embarrassingly close to Putin. Victory for Le Pen could be chaos, although she is not, in my view, likely to win.

Macron, too, is an uncomfortable prospect. Uncompromisingly Eurofederalist, his government, backed by most French media, has been determined to show Brexit as a failure, for fear that other countries, including France, might follow. (The EUs own opinion polls suggest France today is the most Eurosceptical country in the bloc.)

Macron despises Boris Johnson, and hopes that another, successor, government would drift back towards Brussels.

So he will not want to let bygones be bygones, especially if it seems that Brexit Britain is gaining advantages over France.

He was apoplectic when a major security partnership was signed between Britain, Australia and the United States last September, with France on the sidelines and a huge order for its submarines lost.

Moreover, as Macron showed in several abortive attempts to persuade Putin to stay out of Ukraine, he hankers after a closer relationship with Russia, in stark contrast to Britains increasingly hard line with Moscow and the Kremlin.

In an ideal world, Britain and France would be true allies.

As Europes leading military powers, cooperation over Ukraine, as well as in the Indo-Pacific region, would be a boon.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely under either Macron or Le Pen.

A constructive relationship with Britain is simply not a consideration in todays ballot  far from it.

Whoever wins, we should be braced for friction between our two nations for years to come.
Hot-desking is surely one of the worst inventions of our time. Fortunately, I avoided it during my office career due to a) being the boss and b) not working somewhere the practice was commonplace.

So I can only imagine how miserable Id have been deprived of my own sliver of territory.

Last week, a House of Commons data manager called Alison Baker won a case arguing that she had the right to her own desk.

Although most workers wont have similar grounds for appeal, as Baker needed special equipment, hopefully its a small nail in the coffin for this horrible trend.

Desks, after all, are more than a piece of furniture. They arent just the place you tap on a keyboard, munch a lunchtime sandwich and watch the day pass.

They are personal spaces, the surface landscaped to our own design, whether cluttered or sparse. Or at least they are if they are yours alone and not shared by whoever might need a landing spot for the day.

My desk at home might be considered by others a disaster zone: piles of paper, loose change, books, jugs of pens, ranks of photographs and notebooks.

Last week, a House of Commons data manager called Alison Baker won a case arguing that she had the right to her own desk

It doesnt look efficient and the chaos would give some people a nervous breakdown. But when I sit at it I am in a space where I know I will get work done.

At Vogue, my desk was similarly chaotic. So were those of many other staffers, who were allowed to pile up anything they wanted.

Unlike the poor folk at Tatler on the floor below, who at one stage were forced nightly to clear their desks to a state of pristine blank whiteness.

But at least they didnt have hot-desking imposed on them, which I see as a crime against humanity that deprives the workforce of stability and individuality.

OK, that might be a bit strong, but having your own desk is a wonderful thing  and one worth fighting for.

Memories just too valuable to tip out

On a related subject, I was attempting to clear space for the Ukrainians due to arrive this week and came across some boxes stuffed with old photographs, scraps of paper, my sons infant clothes and much of his early schoolwork.

Naturally, I wasnt able to resist sifting through and going down a nostalgia rabbit hole.

There were my Pitman certificates showing I achieved 45 words-per-minute typing and 80 words-per-minute shorthand (not quite executive assistant level, it must be said); my tragic O-level certificate stating boldly that I achieved only five, at rather dismal grades; old exercise books with scrawled covers; and lovely pictures of my parents holding me in the hospital on the day I was born.

What purpose do these hoardings serve, other than triggering memories when they are stumbled on every few years?

Then again, no way is my past life going to the tip.

So I guess the boxes will sit there until they become a burden for the next generation to deal with.

The hottest stars on TV? Big coats

Im not sure when the coat became such an important status symbol in TV drama but now no series worth its kitchen island is free from an array of sweeping power coats on female characters.

First there was Nicole Kidman in The Undoing, above. Now, in Netflixs Anatomy Of A Scandal, Sienna Miller as the wronged wife appears in one chic beige variation after another  her wardrobe making up for the six-parters lame dialogue and jarring flashbacks.

I wonder if well be served another coat extravaganza in Ten Percent, the British version of the French hit series Call My Agent coming later this month.

The original was a big hit, but Ive been sceptical that a series set in a Parisian talent agents office can translate to London.

After all, the corpses of TV productions that dont travel well from country to country are legion. But judging by the trailer, the British series created by John Morton  who worked on the brilliant BBC spoof W1A  may be a very funny exception.

Sorry, but the times up for the apology

The hour has come to call time on the power of the apology. In recent years, sorry has been regarded as an all-purpose salve without which no wrong can be healed.

Apologise! shrieks the Greek chorus of tribunals, investigations, commissions and commentators.

A few months back, broadcaster Evan Davis discussed on Radio 4 whether the Prime Minister needed to apologise for something or other. Sometimes you have to say it even if you dont believe it, Davis opined. Horribly cynical as that sounds, he may have been right. At least back then.

But if the vociferous reaction to Boris Johnsons repeated Partygate apologies over the past week are anything to go by, times are changing.

In the political world at least, the once-reliable sorry ploy has been clearly been overused and run its course.

How the country went to the doggies

Brexit Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg may yearn for full offices, but hes got a problem: puppies were bought by the truckload during lockdown. Who will look after them if their owners have to toddle back to work?

Good doggie care has become as expensive  and as difficult to source  as childcare. Canine creches in the workplace, perhaps?

Im not ready to be called a lovely lady

Maybe Im mean-spirited, but it was deeply annoying when a young waitress called me and a friend lovely ladies recently.

Im sure she meant well, but it felt like being chucked under the chin by someone who assumed my place in a care home couldnt be far off.
The Church hit out at Boris Johnson with biblical fury.

According to Lambeth Palace spokesman John Bingham, it was a disgraceful slur for the Prime Minister to claim the Archbishop of Canterbury and other clergymen had been more vociferous in condemning the Governments Rwanda policy than they had been in condemning Vladimir Putin.

The Archbishops spokesman may have done better to curb his indignation. Because what Boris said was absolutely correct.

What Boris said about the Archbishop (pictured at Easter Sunday mass) was absolutely correct

A fortnight ago, I appeared with the Archbishop on BBCs Question Time.

Asked about the unfolding atrocities in Ukraine, Justin Welby talked about his experience of visiting a mass grave in South Sudan.

He talked of the need for a ceasefire. He talked of the length of time it would take to bring any possible perpetrators to justice. But he didnt mention Putin.

At the heart of this, its not the rulers, he said.

They will be held to account by God, if not before.

He went on to explain how stopping the conflict means sanctions, but it also means diplomacy. And sadly, it often means negotiating with people who have done pretty unpleasant things.

Compare this hard-headed  some might say cynical  pragmatism to the tone he adopted on the Governments immigration strategy, which involves sending asylum seekers who have illegally arrived in the UK to Rwanda while their claims are processed.

Delivering his Easter sermon, Welby declared the details are for politics and politicians.

The principle must stand the judgment of God, and it cannot it cannot carry the weight of our national responsibility as a country formed by Christian values; because sub-contracting out our responsibilities, even to a country that seeks to do well like Rwanda, is the opposite of the nature of God, who himself took responsibility for our failures.

As I pointed out in my Question Time response, Ukrainians cannot be expected to wait for Putin to face a reckoning in the afterlife.

And with Rwanda  or any other issue  God wouldnt like it has never been an especially robust argument.

How will the new Rwanda migrant scheme work? Cross-channel arrivals assessed and anyone deemed an economic migrant rather than a refugee is sent to Rwanda Initial agreement worth 120million over five years

Failed immigrants urged to start new life in Africa

Initially based at hostel in Kigali

Hope House is currently being used as budget accommodation for tourists

Privately owned, the East African nation's government is understood to be in negotiations to lease the property

Memorandum of understanding (MOU) says Government will screen asylum seekers 'without delay' after arrival in the UK

All requests will require approval from Rwanda before relocation

Nation can refuse to take people with criminal records

People who cross the Channel in small boats will undergo initial checks at the Western Jet Foil facility in Dover

Further checks at a processing site in Manston, Kent. Where their claim is deemed inadmissible, they may be removed to a 'third safe country'.

Royal Navy to lead Channel policing role, helping Border Force from today

PM attacked 'a formidable army of politically motivated lawyers' who have thwarted previous action

PM: 'Our compassion may be infinite but our capacity to help people is not. We can't ask the British taxpayer to write a blank cheque to cover the costs of anyone who might want to come and live here.' Advertisement

BUT when he clambered up into his pulpit to denounce the immorality of the Governments new migration policy, Justin Welby wasnt alone. His criticism was widely echoed, including from several of Boriss own MPs.

Criticism thats misplaced. First, lets consider the immorality of the status quo.

In 2018, 539 people tried to cross the Channel in small boats. In March this year alone, that figure was 4,000.

Thats 4,000 people a month being entrusted to the tender mercies of the people traffickers.

Last year, one of them spoke about their experiences.

Its a kind of slavery, he said.

Poor refugees work as house servants for smugglers; women sell their bodies; others are made to be lookouts or drivers, and can then be arrested and thrown in jail. But they do it because it is their best chance at a safe life.

And they still represent the lucky ones. Last year 44 people died, or were reported missing, while attempting the crossing.

In one incident, 27 people drowned trying to cross in what French officials described as a boat that resembled a childs inflatable pool. The youngest victim was seven.

Then there is the argument the UK is sub-contracting out its ethical responsibility to provide sanctuary.

But paying other countries to support refugees has always been an accepted  indeed lauded  part of British Government policy.

One of the biggest critics of the Rwanda plan was former Minister Rory Stewart. I think they are offshoring a British problem and theyre trying to put it out of sight and out of mind, he said.

Its very strange and very disturbing.

But in 2019, the same Rory Stewart travelled to the Zaatari refugee camp to announce a 55 million payment to the Jordanian government to support 22,000 refugees from Syria.

Rather than condemn that initiative as offshoring, he said the money was part of a story of improvement, and of some hope.

And then there are the attacks on Rwanda itself.

Justin Welby spared the country his wrath. But others did not.

During last Tuesdays Commons statement, Labour MP Paula Barker condemned Rwandas authoritarian regime. Florence Eshalomi said the Foreign Office website states that Rwanda is not a safe place and that it is frowned on for people to be LGBT.

Her colleague Afzal Khan demanded to know how can the Home Secretary possibly tell the House with a straight face that Rwanda is a safe country to send people seeking asylum to.

If such criticism of an African country had come from politicians on the Right, the charges of racism and neo-colonialism would have swiftly followed. But as ever, amid the storm of liberal righteousness, the rules have been inverted.

Rwanda is not a model of perfect governance.

But given the genocide that tore the nation asunder less than 30 years ago, thats hardly surprising.

And to claim it cannot provide security for refugees is to fly in the face of the facts.

According to the UNHCR, Rwanda has provided sanctuary to 74,000 Congolese refugees.

It opened its borders to provide a haven for thousands more from Burundi, and taken refugees from Afghanistan, Angola, the Central Africa Republic, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Haiti, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.

At no time did the Commons benches ring with denunciation at their treatment.

Yes, there are huge practical and logistical complexities to the proposal. As one Minister said: We cant even manage to deport foreign criminals who have been caught doing all sorts of terrible things. The idea well manage to successfully pack off a load of refugees to Rwanda is a joke.

Yet whether or not the scheme succeeds is ultimately an operational question, not a moral one.

There are people who deserve condemnation from our clergy and legislators.

But its not the Ministers who are trying  however imperfectly  to find a solution to a complex humanitarian crisis.

How about a sermon castigating Bashar al-Assad for perpetrating and prolonging Syrias agony?

Or the people smuggler who boasted to The Guardian: A growing obstacle course on the border made crossing alone impossible for migrants.

This attracted mafia groups who studied the controls and found ways around them, knowing what desperate people would pay for these ways. We thank your government for our full pockets.

If Russias leader is off limits, is there any chance of a word or two of reproach for Emmanuel Macron, who cancelled a meeting between his interior minister and Priti Patel after last years mass drowning because he objected to the tone of one of Boriss tweets?

It would appear not.

Although Boris doesnt seem unduly alarmed.

While he reacted with genuine anger at Keir Starmers inaccurate allegation that he had criticised the BBC for their Ukraine coverage, he and his press team had no qualms about doubling down on his attacks on the clergy.

That should give Justin Welby and his colleagues pause for thought.

There would have been a time not so long ago when a Conservative Prime Minister would have been terrified at the prospect of becoming embroiled in an Easter row with senior clergy.

Now its a golden political opportunity.

Which is especially remarkable given the week Boris has just had. Even his closest allies wouldnt claim he is a politician who gravitates easily towards the moral high ground.

Yet he feels comfortable going head to head with the Archbishop of Canterbury on an issue of morality.

From the Churchs perspective, that should be troubling.

At the end of his Easter sermon, Justin Welby said: Maybe there can be an ending of a world where we turn away from the refugee, the end of a world where we dont care, the end of the world where propaganda wins.

Maybe there can. But some direct words of admonishment for the likes of Vladimir Putin would be a good place to start.
A Ghanaian student sings a Chinese song in a Chinese speech and performance competition held by the Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana, in Accra, Ghana, on April 23, 2022. The Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana on Saturday held a Chinese speech and performance competition to further boost the cultural exchange between China and Ghana. (Xinhua/Xu Zheng)

ACCRA, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana on Saturday held a Chinese speech and performance competition to further boost the cultural exchange between China and Ghana.

The competition, as part of the institute's activities to mark the UN International Chinese Day which falls on April 20 annually, also served as a platform for many university students in Ghana to display their talents in the Chinese language and culture.

The competition featured a variety of talent shows including Chinese traditional dance, martial arts, and stand-up crosstalk, which won constant applause from the audience of both countries.

Ayawuli Richmond, a contestant and senior student of the university, told Xinhua that the past four years' experience of learning Chinese bolstered his determination to further study in China and devote himself to a Chinese teaching career.

"Chinese culture is really beautiful, and I want to go to China to experience a different culture. For self-development, I want to become a Chinese teacher to promote the Chinese culture in Ghana," he said.

Chu Beijuan, Chinese dean of the institute, spoke highly of the Ghanaian contestants' performances, saying many of the students worked very hard on the Chinese language behind the scene and they have made obvious progress.

"The importance of Chinese can never be underestimated in Ghana because of the strong bilateral relationship between China and Ghana, and also because there are many Chinese enterprises in the country willing to create jobs for students, especially students who study Chinese," Chu said, adding that the institute will continue serving as a platform to more Chinese firms looking for young Ghanaian talents.

According to her, the Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana established in 2013 has enrolled about 40,000 students, which played an important role in boosting cultural exchanges between the two countries. 

Audiences watch a Chinese speech and performance competition held by the Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana, in Accra, Ghana, on April 23, 2022. The Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana on Saturday held a Chinese speech and performance competition to further boost the cultural exchange between China and Ghana. (Xinhua/Xu Zheng)

A Ghanaian student performs Sichuan opera in a competition held by the Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana, in Accra, Ghana, on April 23, 2022. The Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana on Saturday held a Chinese speech and performance competition to further boost the cultural exchange between China and Ghana. (Xinhua/Xu Zheng)
Even as treacherous Tory MPs demanded the scalp of Boris Johnson in the Commons last week, the mood in No 10 was upbeat.

Focus groups of floating voters had indicated in the previous days that Partygate was fading as an issue.

There was also growing support for the Rwanda plan to process off-shore the claims of asylum seekers who have crossed the Channel illegally.

And even though Labour was averaging an 8 per cent lead in the polls, the partys leader Sir Keir Starmer was making no impact with those floating voters.

Focus groups of floating voters had indicated in the previous days that Partygate was fading as an issue

Yesterday a poll found that lead had fallen to just 2 per cent, while Tory canvassers were reporting back to No 10 that Party-gate was not a big issue on the doorstep when they were campaigning for the local elections on May 5.

And yet in defiance of this positive news for the Conservatives, it has emerged that 46 Tory MPs have sent letters calling for a vote of no confidence in Mr Johnsons leadership to Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the backbench Conservative 1922 Committee.

Thats just eight letters short of the number needed to trigger the vote.

Panic is in the air. The rebels have post-dated their letters for after the local elections, fearing a bloodbath. But they are conveniently forgetting that incumbent parties rarely do well in mid-term elections, while the majority of seats up for grabs are in strong Labour-held areas anyway.

In Downing Street, there is not just exasperation but genuine anger with the rebels  including former Brexit minister Steve Baker who was backing Boris on Tuesday but twisting the knife in his leader by Thursday. What on earth do they think they are doing? Should they even get the requisite 54 letters, at least 50 per cent of Tory MPs will then have to vote against Boris to force a change of leader.

And even though Labour was averaging an 8 per cent lead in the polls, the partys leader Sir Keir Starmer was making no impact with those floating voters

Boris will win a confidence vote, and even if the win is only by a handful of votes, hes going nowhere. All the rebels will have done is paralyse the Government during a national and international crisis.

At the very time they should be united, some sections of the Tory party seem to be beset by a kind of madness.

The Government has undoubtedly made mistakes, not least the Whips Offices appallingly clumsy handling of last weeks attempt  abandoned at the last minute  to delay a vote on whether the PM should be investigated over Partygate by a Commons committee.

But Boris has apologised for Partygate  no fewer than 35 times in the Commons on Tuesday  and shown genuine remorse. To get rid of the leader who secured the Tories their biggest majority for decades, simply because he happened to be present at an impromptu birthday gathering for less than ten minutes, would be absurd.

Boris may be infuriating, shambolic and economical with the truth on occasions, but it is only Boris who can hold the vital Red Wall seats where so many Labour loyalists voted Tory for the first time in 2019.

The voters there knew instinctively that no other politician could steam-roller Brexit through the way he did.

They will surely recognise, too, that on all the big decisions he has been right so far.

The vaccine roll-out was an extraordinary triumph which led the world. Could anyone seriously imagine Sir Keir Starmer turning down an invitation from the EU to join its disastrous vaccine roll-out as Boris did?

Britains emergence from Covid restrictions was faster and better handled than in most countries. He defied the doom-mongers to get the economy going again.

On Ukraine, his leadership has been exemplary. He is President Zelenskys favourite European leader, and has shown mature resolve and gumption, ensuring that the UK was sending military help long before other countries. And in any case, however many of the rebels fantasise about a post-Boris future, there is simply no heir apparent in the Conservative Party.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak was the runaway favourite, but his fall from grace has been swift after he misjudged mini-Budget, the revelations about his US green card status, and his tetchy response to legitimate questions about his wifes non-dom tax status.

Other wannabe leaders include former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt whose acolytes were on manoeuvres in the Commons last week. An arch Remainer, he conspired with Theresa May to try to impose her deal  a fake Brexit  on Britain.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss fancies her chances but she is a charisma-free zone and simply does not have what it takes to be prime minister.

The plotters should be careful what they wish for. Without the Red Wall, the Tories will not win the next election. And waiting in the wings is Sir Keir Starmer, a man who tried to subvert democracy by overturning Brexit, and who campaigned for Jeremy Corbyn to be prime minister. He is furthermore a man who refuses to say if he thinks a woman can have a penis and who leads a party with zero economic credibility.

The latest poll shows Boriss approval ratings rising again. Tory MPs should get behind him and remember that guerrilla warfare against John Major by Tory malcontents in the last years of his government contributed to the Tony Blair landslide 25 years ago this week, pushing the Tories out of power for 13 years.

If ever there was a time for Tory MPs to hold their nerve, it is now.
An outraged small business owner accused a stationery giant of copying her rug making kits.

Sydney-based Nakisah Williams is the founder of DIY brand Craft Club, an independent company that sells rug making kits for around $89 (50).

She was horrified to discover stationery brand Typo, part of the Australian Cotton On Group, was selling an almost identical product for $59.99 (34).

The Typo product, which has since been removed, also used a technique called latch hooking and featured a similar floral design.

Sydney-based Nakisah Williams is the founder of Craft Club, an independent company that sells rug making kits for around $89 (50)

Nakisah was horrified to discover stationery brand Typo (below), part of the Australian Cotton On Group, was selling an almost identical product to her Craft Club kit (top)

Nakisah accused Typo and their supplier Cotton On of ignoring claims that their product is similar to her rug kit

Typo removed the product from their website after receiving a flood of comments about the situation and have claimed that they are now in contact with Nakisah.

The business owner initially took to Instagram to call out Typo for 'stealing' her product.

She wrote: 'I am heartbroken. As a small business owner who has worked so hard on creating our best selling rug kits, this is such a blow.

'For a company with as much power and resources as @cotton_on_group to blatantly copy a unique product from a small Aussie business is horrible. Especially at a time when retail is struggling and the pandemic has made small businesses so much more vulnerable.

'And then to completely ignore over one hundred messages and comments calling out their theft, the lack of accountability is gut wrenching. Since they've removed their reel and disabled comments on their Instagram, it's been so awful feeling like our voice has been lost. But seeing your messages of support has meant the world.

A stream of commenters reassured Nakisah that they prefer her products to those being sold by Typo

'Please share this post to raise awareness for what Typo have done. Tag @typoshop to show that we will not let them throw this under the rug, as they have done so many times before.

'A company like @cotton_on_group can't just hide behind performative feminism and performative activism. When behind the scenes they steal from small businesses and female founders. Practice what you preach Typo. Don't be a d***.'

The post racked up over 1,000 likes and a stream of comments as Instagram users showed their support for Nakisah's claims, despite her brand not being registered to give their products legal protection.

One person wrote: 'I am shocked and saddened for you. Will be boycotting typo from now on.'

Posting on Instagram, Typo reassured critics that they are listening to the backlash and have contacted Nakisah directly. The company later revealed it had removed the product

Commenters blasted Typo for not apologising in their statement in response to the backlash

Another said: 'Your designs are so much better anyway! Sending you love girl'

Typo responded to the backlash in an Instagram post claiming that they are in contact with Nakisah in the hopes of resolving the situation.

Typo wrote: 'In response to claims from Craft Club about a DIY rug-making kit sold by Typo, we acted quickly to acknowledge the concern and work with Craft Club to resolve it.

'In this instance, we have identified similarities and we have pulled the item from stores and online globally. Were working to resolve further with Craft Club directly.'

Nakisah told Pedestrian TV that small businesses are 'vulnerable to big business taking advantage', while it's difficult for them to spend $1,500 (840) on a single design copyright in Australia.

Nakisah added: 'Collaborations and stocking the work of independent businesses is a fantastic way for a large company to create new products in an ethical and positive way.

'A company like Cotton On might not stock products, but doing a collaboration with a small business/artist is an amazing way to boost both brands and show that they actually do want to make a 'positive impact'. '
A 'broke university student' was diagnosed with melanoma at just 21 after her boyfriend spotted a dark freckle on her back, before launching her own sunscreen to encourage others to wear the life-saving product.

Hillary Wilcox, who is now a naturopath and owner of Maaemo Organic skincare, was first alerted to the suspicious mole by her partner at the time, who mentioned one of her freckles was 'almost black'.

'The freckle was in a position on my back that I never would have been able to see myself, so I am incredibly lucky and grateful that he noticed it and prompted me to get it checked,' the now 27-year-old from the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, told FEMAIL.

Hillary was naive to the risks of skin cancer at 21 and thought it was something that affected Aussies later in life, but with the encouragement from her boyfriend, she booked in a visit with her GP.

Hillary Wilcox, who is now a naturopath and owner of Maaemo Organic skincare, was first alerted to the suspicious mole by her partner at the time, who mentioned one of her freckles was 'almost black'

'The GP briefly looked at it and actually told me it wasn't anything to worry about,' she said.

'I left it for a while longer but my partner at the time kept telling me it just looked so black and different to any of my other freckles. He really encouraged me to go to the actual skin cancer clinic.

'Skin checks and mole maps are done in way more detail but they are expensive and being a broke university student at the time, the upfront costs were a big deterrent for me.

'So at the time I was not in a rush to make the appointment, especially since the GP said it was okay.'

Thankfully the insistence of loved ones around her saw Hillary locking in an appointment all the same, only to have it removed the very same day.

Thankfully the insistence of loved ones around her saw Hillary locking in an appointment all the same, only to have it removed the very same day (pictured is Hillary's new sunscreen product)

Melanoma: The most dangerous form of skin cancer Melanoma is the most dangerous form of skin cancer. It happens after the DNA in skin cells is damaged (typically due to harmful UV rays) and then not repaired so it triggers mutations that can form malignant tumours. Causes Sun exposure: UV and UVB rays from the sun and tanning beds are harmful to the skin

Moles: The more moles you have, the greater the risk for getting melanoma

Skin type: Fairer skin has a higher risk for getting melanoma

Hair colour: Red heads are more at risk than others

Personal history: If you've had melanoma once, then you are more likely to get it again

Family history: If previous relatives have been diagnosed, then that increases your risk Treatment Removal of the melanoma: This can be done by removing the entire section of the tumor or by the surgeon removing the skin layer by layer. When a surgeon removes it layer by layer, this helps them figure out exactly where the cancer stops so they don't have to remove more skin than is necessary. Skin grafting: The patient can decide to use a skin graft if the surgery has left behind discoloration or an indent. Immunotherapy, radiation treatment or chemotherapy: This is needed if the cancer reaches stage III or IV. That means that the cancerous cells have spread to the lymph nodes or other organs in the body. Prevention Use sunscreen and do not burn

Avoid tanning outside and in beds

Apply sunscreen 30 minutes before going outside

Keep newborns out of the sun

Examine your skin every month

See your physician every year for a skin exam Source: Skin Cancer Foundation and American Cancer Society Advertisement

Once the skin cells had been tested doctors alerted Hillary to the fact it was an early stage melanoma.

Melanoma is the most common cancer for the 20 to 39 age group to get in Australia, partly because of our outdoor lifestyle and harsh climate.

It happens after the DNA in skin cells is damaged (typically due to harmful UV rays) and then not repaired so it triggers mutations that can form malignant tumours.

'It was pretty shocking to hear it, especially at such a young age,' Hillary said.

'I had grown up seeing the ads on TV which tell you that melanoma is incredibly dangerous so I knew it was serious.

'Skin cancer is almost entirely preventable so I was honestly just disappointed in myself for not being more careful and proactive about sun protection.'

She said: 'Skin cancer is almost entirely preventable so I was honestly just disappointed in myself for not being more careful and proactive about sun protection'

Hillary now lives with a large scar on her back from where surgeons had to remove a large portion of tissue from the cancerous site, but most importantly the experience encouraged her to create a sunscreen she wanted to put on her face and body.

'I have tried most of the sunscreens on the market that were readily available to me,' she said.

'I found that chemical SPFs were not well suited to sensitive skin and would also break me out, and then I found that most of the mineral based SPFs either felt super chalky and drying on my skin, or they left a white cast on my face.

'Then there's all the scents! I found that chemical SPFs were highly scented and the mineral/zinc options smelt very unpleasant. When I asked others what they used, the feedback was similar. The options, especially in the mineral category were very limited.

What are the warning signs of melanoma? The first five letters of the alphabet are a guide to help you recognise the warning signs of melanoma. A is for Asymmetry. Most melanomas are asymmetrical. If you draw a line through the middle of the lesion, the two halves don't match, so it looks different from a round to oval and symmetrical common mole. B is for Border. Melanoma borders tend to be uneven and may have scalloped or notched edges, while common moles tend to have smoother, more even borders. C is for Colour. Multiple colours are a warning sign. While benign moles are usually a single shade of brown, a melanoma may have different shades of brown, tan or black. As it grows, the colours red, white or blue may also appear. D is for Diameter or Dark. While it's ideal to detect a melanoma when it is small, it's a warning sign if a lesion is the size of a pencil eraser (about 6 mm, or  inch in diameter) or larger. Some experts say it is also important to look for any lesion, no matter what size, that is darker than others. Rare, amelanotic melanomas are colourless. E is for Evolving. Any change in size, shape, colour or elevation of a spot on your skin, or any new symptom in it, such as bleeding, itching or crusting, may be a warning sign of melanoma. Source: Skincancer.org Advertisement

'When you ask someone why they don't wear sunscreen, it normally always comes back to the fact that they can't find one they like enough to use.'

So Maaemo Organic has launched its Pure Defence SPF 30 which is a zinc based sunscreen that uses physical UV filters to act as a physical barrier to reflect UV rays from the skin.

'It's scent free, super hydrating and rubs in without leaving a white cast behind,' she said.

'We've sold over a thousand units since we launched which hopefully means over a thousand people who are now wearing SPF daily that might not have been doing so before.'
The owner of a replica Bluey house - complete with a canary yellow exterior and rainbow coloured playroom - who was banned from promoting the likeness by the BBC, distributors of the hit Australian cartoon show, has sold the property for a $1million profit.

Emma Hoskin is the proud owner of 'Bluey's Heeler House' in Paddington, Brisbane, which was transformed with the help of Airbnb to allow one lucky family to stay in it over a weekend in February.

After spending a month on promotional material - and several news outlets picking up the story - Ms Hoskin was informed in March she could no longer connect her home to Bluey now that she wanted to sell it.

But according to the Courier Mail the three-bedroom property, which was reverted back to its original white fence post look after the campaign, sold for $1.845million anyway to a buyer who 'doesn't know a thing about Bluey'.

Ms Hoskin originally bought the house in 2014 for $730,000.

Emma Hoskin is the proud owner of 'Bluey's Heeler House' in Paddington, Brisbane, which was transformed with the help of Airbnb to allow one lucky family to stay in it over a weekend in February

But after spending a month on promotional material - and several news outlets picking up the story - Ms Hoskin was informed she could no longer connect her home to Bluey now that she wanted to sell it

In March selling agent Chris Gower received a call from the British Broadcasting Corporation asking him to take down a social media post that linked Ms Hoskin's home to Bluey.

But Mr Gower was unsure that would make a difference now that a quick search of the home online brings up hundreds of material connecting the two already, courtesy of the Airbnb competition.

Thousands of Aussie families have walked past the home in recent weeks, with Ms Hoskin deploying security guards and traffic controllers to keep the peace.

The Bluey home comfortably fits two adults and two children (pictured)

The plan was always to take down the yellow facade and revert it back to its previous design before selling the hugely popular house, with neighbours hoping Ms Hoskin gives the furniture inside to flood victims.

But even after tearing down the 'Bluey' aspects of the property the BBC were still asking for Ms Hoskin to avoid bringing up its past life as the blue heeler puppies' real-life home at the auction.

The popular children's cartoon Bluey has been screened in more than 60 countries.

The brightly-coloured home features a yellow exterior with a pink roof, staircase leading to the front porch and incredible bedrooms with something to look at in every corner

The Bluey home, as it was known, comfortably fits two adults and two children.

When it was renovated the brightly-coloured home featured a yellow exterior with a pink roof, staircase leading to the front porch and incredible bedrooms with something to look at in every corner.

This was the first time in Australia guests had been offered an 'Only On AirBnB' experience, as in the US the Home Alone house and Carrie Bradshaw's New York City apartment from Sex and the City have also been replicated.

Airbnb Australia and New Zealand Manager Susan Wheedon said the house was a perfect addition for families

This is the first time in Australia guests have been offered an 'Only On AirBnB' experience

Airbnb Australia and New Zealand Manager Susan Wheedon said at the time the house was a perfect addition for families.

'Like many parents with young children, I've been captivated by the adventures of Bluey and her family, which bring so much joy and quintessential Aussie humour to audiences across the globe,' Ms Wheedon said.

'We're delighted to add Bluey, Bingo, Chilli and Bandit to our growing community of Airbnb Hosts.

'And while we have some incredible homes on Airbnb, there will be nothing quite like waking up in the Heeler house and getting to live and breathe in Bluey's magical world for one wondrous weekend.'

An Airbnb spokesperson said this week that all materials inside the home - including plants, props and toys - will be rehomed.

'Airbnb has also donated a number of items to the Queensland Children's Hospital for patients to enjoy,' they said.
A business-minded beauty therapist has made $13,000 in the first 12 hours of launching her brand's latest skincare serum - after it racked up a 50,000-person waitlist.

Kayla Houlihant, 32, from Geelong, Victoria, is the proud owner of Tribe Skincare which just released its $68 Brightening Vitamin C Serum to a host of eager fans.

'We are selling on average one of the serums every four minutes since launching,' she told FEMAIL.

'It's a vitamin C serum for sensitive skin that helps with anti-ageing and gives your skin a healthy glow.'

Kayla Houlihant, from Geelong, Victoria, is the proud owner of Tribe Skincare which just released its $68 Brightening Vitamin C Serum to a host of eager fans

The product, which contains hydrating ingredients like niacinamide and antioxidants, is to be used first thing in the morning under your moisturiser to give customers an all-day glow.

In August 2020 Tribe made a staggering $10,000 within an hour of launching its $55 hydrating mist.

'It's a real relief to launch them and have success,' Kayla said at the time.

'We were due to bring out the Hydrating Spritzes in March, but had to postpone due to Covid, so it's really exciting to give our customers the chance to try them.'

In August 2020 Tribe made a staggering $10,000 within an hour of launching its $55 hydrating mist

The Hydrating Spritzes ($55 each) come in two flavour combinations designed to do different things.

The 'Peachy Rose' Hydrating Spritz is designed to get rid of redness and calm your skin, while the 'Citrus Burst' Hydrating Spritz is all about reducing breakouts and clearing your complexion.

Both products are vegan, Australian-made and cruelty-free, and they feature skin-boosting natural ingredients like aloe vera, oatmeal, rose oil and radish root.

The spritzes are designed to be sprayed onto skin under makeup for added glow or over the top of your makeup for a luminous look.

The spritzes are designed to be sprayed onto skin under makeup for added glow or over the top of your makeup for a luminous look

Kayla Houlihan founded cruelty-free brand Tribe Skincare four years ago, and has since seen her business enjoy a meteoric rise to the top, making a staggering $1.3million in 2020 alone.

Kayla previously told FEMAIL that she counts herself as lucky that during the global pandemic she has managed to continue in business:

'I have seen a lot of businesses struggling with all the changes caused by Covid-19. Fortunately for e-commerce brands, online sales are thriving,' she said.

'A lot of people are choosing to stay home, even if they aren't locked down.

'We are in a very fortunate position to be able to take their orders online and send them directly to their front doors.'

For more information about Tribe, please click here.
William was four when he had his first carriage ride alongside Princess Diana and the Queen mother at 1988's Trooping of the Colour

Set to include appearance on the Buckingham Palace balcony and carriage ride

Prince George, eight, Princess Charlotte, six, and Prince Louis, four, are set to have a 'starring role' at the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations this summer

Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis are set to have a 'starring role' at the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations this summer.

The children of Prince William, 39, and Kate Middleton, 40, will take a 'visible' part in the celebrations to mark the monarch's 70th year on the throne, as part of a 'royal show of force', according to the Telegraph.

George, eight, Charlotte, who turns seven next week, and four-year-old Prince Louis are likely to make their debut in the carriage to the Trooping the Colour, and will also likely be seen on the Buckingham Palace balcony for the famous flyover.

William was four, the same age of his youngest son Louis, when he had his first carriage ride alongside Princess Diana and the Queen mother at 1988's Trooping of the Colour.

Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis are set to have a 'starring role' at the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations this summer. The family are pictured in their Christmas card

William was four, the same age of his youngest son Louis, when he had his first carriage ride alongside Princess Diana and the Queen mother at 1988's Trooping of the Colour (picutred)

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will likely not confirm their children's attendance until the last minute.

While the final plans for the weekend are still being drawn up, it is understood William will be taking the lead on military events, including standing in for Her Majesty reviewing the Trooping of the Colour in a formal inspection the week before the jubilee weekend.

Meanwhile, Kate will continue her work with early years learning and will help coordinate Superbloom, the project which sees the Tower of London flooded with hundreds of flowers and even a slide.

Elsewhere, Prince Charles will host a bank holiday concert and the Duchess of Cornwall will host a Big Lunch.

Other members of the royal family including Prince Edward, Sophie Wessex, Princess Anne, Peter Phillips, Zara Tindall, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie will make appearances throughout the weekend.

Her Majesty, 96, will undergo less engagements than at previous jubilees due to mobility problems.

William had his first carriage ride aged four. He is pictured with his mother Princess Diana and great grandmother, the Queen mother

Harry was just two and William four when they appeared on the Buckingham Palace balcony for Trooping of the Colour in 1988. They are pictured with Princess Diana, Princess Margaret, and Lord Frederick Windsor

It's understood that royal aides are 'moving heaven and earth' for the Queen to be able to cheer her horses on from the royal box at the Platinum Jubilee Epsom Derby.

This includes changing the route of her official car so that it can draw up directly outside the Queen's stand so that she only has to walk a few yards to get a lift straight up to her seat.

A source said: 'She really is absolutely determined to attend.'

The Cazoo Derby on Saturday June 4 is one of the official national celebrations over the four-day jubilee weekend in June and one that has particular personal resonance for the monarch.

The news comes as Prince George has had a 'trial day' at a school close to Windsor that his parents, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, have been to visit half a dozen times.

The news comes as Prince George has had a 'trial day' at a school close to Windsor that his parents, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, have been to visit half a dozen times. The family are pictured last week at an Easter service

William and Kate have been considering where their eldest son should continue his education and, as the Daily Mail reported yesterday, are also thinking about sending their other children, Princess Charlotte, six, and Prince Louis, four, to the same school.

According to a source close to the school teachers arranged a settling in-style 'trial class' for the eight-year-old future King.

Teachers are understood to have been amused and relieved that the other children in the class did not recognise George or understand his status.

While the school has several children from wealthy European and Russian families, it is not as high profile as Ludgrove School in Berkshire, where William went, or Marlborough College, where Kate was schooled.

Georges formal education began, aged two, at the Westacre Montessori School Nursery near the familys Norfolk home Anmer Hall.

He enrolled at Thomass School in Battersea, South London, in September 2017
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have hired the PR guru who helped to re-elect Barack Obama in the latest hint the couple may have political ambitions.

Miranda Barbot, who was part of the team behind Obama's re-election in 2012, has been hired by the Sussexes in the hope to 'transform their image'.

Speaking to the Mirror, an insider said: 'There are shades of the Clintons or even Kennedys. It wouldn't be a huge shock now if Meghan went into politics.'

Ms Barbot was a 19-year-old undergraduate at university when she won a scholarship onto Obama's team.

According to sources, she has now left US public relations firm BerlinRosen and joined the Sussexes' firm Archewell.

She was also reportedly been spotted among Harry and Meghan's team at the Invictus Games in Holland.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have hired the PR guru who helped to re-elect Barack Obama in the latest hint the couple may have political ambitions

Miranda Barbot, who was part of the team behind Obama's re-election in 2012, has been hired by the Sussexes to 'transform their image'.

Ms Barbot was named a 'key figure' in Harry and Meghan's team and described as a 'shrewd operator' by a source.

They added that Ms Barbot has 'plenty of experience' to help them adapt to their lives away from the Royal Family.

On Twitter, Ms Barbot's bio says she is a 'New Yorker and year-round iced coffee drinker.'

It comes days after it emerged that the couple are protected by an ex-Obama bodyguard.

Harry and Meghan have faced swathes of controversies that have affected their public image.

This includes last year's interview with Oprah Winfrey in which Meghan claimed an unnamed royal had been racist.

Ms Barbot was a 19-year-old undergraduate at university when she won a scholarship onto Obama's team. Pictured: The Obama's in 2010

The Sussexes have been accused of 'meddling' in both UK and US politics after stepping back as 'senior royals', despite never declaring their political allegiance.

It was claimed in October that Meghan had lobbied for paid leave for parents by using 'tactics of an aspiring politician.'

Using the Sussexes' headed paper, she penned a letter to the Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader in the US Senate Chuck Shumer about paid family leave policies.

Meghan also phoned Republican senators to encourage them to agree to the plans. In the cold calls she introduced herself as the Duchess of Sussex.

Harry was pictured with Obama in Toronto five years ago, when the city hosted the Invictus Games

The Obamas have a long-standing relationship with Harry, having bonded with him over his Invictus Games (pictured with the Duke of Sussex and Duke of Duchess of Cambridge in April 2016)

The Obamas have a long-standing relationship with Harry, having bonded with him over his Invictus Games - for which they starred in a video with the prince and the Queen to help promote it in 2016.

The following year Harry interviewed Barack in Toronto for his guest edit of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, during which they discussed the risks of social media and the corrosion of civil discourse.

Meghan also made a point of attending Michelle's talk at the London Southbank Centre in December 2018, with the two women reportedly getting together backstage afterwards for a 'power meeting' to discuss their shared passion for girls' education.

The Sussexes have followed a similar trajectory to the Obamas since quitting royal life, having signed a multi-million dollar deals with Netflix and Spotify to produce their own documentary series and podcasts.

Harry has also signed a lucrative four-book deal with Penguin Random House - the same publishers used by Obama for his memoir A Promised Land in November last year. In 2018 Michelle published her life story, Becoming.
My name is Giulia Crouch and, according to some peoples definition, Im a serial ghoster. If youve been in a relationship for a long time or never done online dating you might not even know what that means. But if youve been single at any point in the past few years I bet you do  and you may well judge me.

To ghost someone means to abruptly cut communication with no explanation. Its a way of rejecting somebody without having to face any consequences. As a 30-year-old Londoner who conducts my love life mainly via my phone, its a phenomenon with which Im unfortunately very familiar.

No matter what your age, if youre using apps to try to find love, I bet youre familiar with it, too.

In fact, the stats show its ridiculously common. Hinge, a popular dating app aimed at those looking for long-term relationships, found that 91 per cent of its users report having been ghosted and 63 per cent say theyve done the ghosting.

Giulia Crouch, 30, (pictured) describes how she has ghosted two men in the past and decided to apologise to them

I have been both ghoster and ghostee. While Ive been in serious relationships for most of my adult life, even in the brief time I have spent on dating apps, I admit Ive vanished mid-conversation on hundreds of men. The conversation gets boring, I get distracted or I simply forget and then too much time has gone by.

This is low-level ghosting  where you go quiet on somebody youve just been speaking to online, and Im very guilty of it.

But ghosting comes in varying degrees. You could ghost after a few dates, which Ive been guilty of, or theres the serious kind where you leave a long-term relationship without a trace. Of course, the latter is more damaging, but all lead to feelings of confusion, hurt and self-doubt for the one whos ghosted.

Its such a problem in the world of modern dating that apps are now trying to counter it. Snack, a video-first dating app that launched last year, lets users leave negative reviews to frequent ghosters and de-prioritises you from the platform if you ghost too many times. Elate, which calls itself the anti-ghosting app also asks for private feedback, and will limit ghosters exposure on the platform.

These app tweaks made me question my own ghosting record and I wondered whether I should make amends for previous bad behaviour.

Two men sprang to mind, both Id been on dates with in 2020 and then failed to get back to afterwards, leaving them in the dark about how I felt. These incidents were nearly two years ago and since then Id like to think Ive changed my ways.

Giulia (pictured) had very different responses from the men she had ghosted; one went to dinner with her and spoke about the concept of ghosting whilst the other firstly agreed to speak to her then ghosted her

At the time I squirmed at the idea of hurting someones feelings by telling them I wasnt interested. I found it easier to let it fizzle out than send a message, hoping that theyd eventually get the picture.

But after a sudden break-up earlier this year that left me without closure and feeling sick with confusion for a long time, I realised just how painful it is not to be given an explanation.

Also, having turned 30, I decided it was time to change my ways and not opt for the cowards route when it came to matters of the heart.

It was a long shot but I decided to get in touch with my two ghostees, apologise and ask them if theyd go on a date with me so that I could explain why. Amazingly, it worked.

The first was Ed, a then 28-year-old South Londoner who worked in marketing. Wed been on three dates, the final one at his house where he cooked me dinner.

We got on well, but I didnt feel much of a spark. And between our second and third date, an ex-boyfriend reappeared and took up a lot of my attention. I went to stay with my family in Gloucestershire and Ed asked me to let him know when I was back in London.

I never did. In fact, looking back at the messages, I just stopped replying in the middle of a conversation.

Had the shoe been on the other foot, I have no doubt my friends and I would have been incensed about his lack of manners and cowardly approach. In retrospect, Im ashamed of my behaviour. It would have taken less than a minute to tell him where he stood.

The second guy I ghosted was a very tall and very chatty man named Rob, 30, from North London. I remember him talking remarkably fast, with a never-ebbing zeal, as we ate pizza at a little restaurant.

His energy was so high, so frantic I felt as if he might achieve lift-off and launch into space. By the end I felt exhausted and knew, as nice a guy as he was, he wasnt right for me.

He sent me a text after the date and after engaging in a little chitchat, I simply stopped replying. Again, I shouldve just told him where he stood, but I ducked out.

I can imagine their surprise to hear from me nearly two years later. Hey, I wrote, sheepishly. Brace yourself for a weird message.

Firstly I owe you an apology. It was lame, immature and cowardly to have ghosted you. Its not something I would do nowadays. I have some reasons for it, which, if youre keen, Id like to explain to you over dinner  on me.

I told them I was writing this story exploring the phenomenon of ghosting. I was nervous. I didnt know how theyd both take it. Maybe theyd been really hurt by my sudden disappearance?

Maybe theyd be even more upset I was now contacting them? Ed was the first to reply  and, happily, forgave my ghosting immediately. No need to apologise. Weve all done it.

Wanting to do his bit for modern dating, he agreed to go for dinner with me to discuss it further. I booked a table at a pub and went to meet him. We embraced, sat down and laughed in awkward acknowledgement of the surreal situation.

Id have appreciated a text to explain. I wasnt angry about it, but it would have been great to know what was going on, he said.

Saying that, I saw it coming. I got the vibe on our third date that you werent interested. It felt like you didnt really want to be there. When we were texting and you didnt commit to any plans, I knew. I think had our third date been different Id have felt more betrayed by the ghosting. I didnt feel betrayed, but it did play on my mind.

Online relationship therapist Charisse Cooke believes the internet has made ghosting more prevalent

So, why can being ghosted be hard to deal with? The uncertainty of it can lead us to question all kinds of things about ourselves, says Maria Uther, professor of psychology at the University of Wolverhampton, who specialises in cyber psychology. You start to over-analyse everything youve said and done. It can impact peoples self-esteem.

The ambiguity of it also makes it harder to move on, says Logan Ury, Hinges director of relationship science. You dont know where you stand with the other person, she says. Are they gone for ever or one text away from seeing you again?

While 17 per cent of Hinge users who ghost say they do it because its less hurtful to disappear than to straight-out reject someone, thats not what people getting ghosted prefer. When asked how theyd like to be treated when someone isnt interested, 85 per cent said, Tell me! Rejection hurts, but Id rather know.

Ghosting isnt new, but online relationship therapist Charisse Cooke believes the internet has made it more prevalent. Being online makes it easier to have a lack of normal manners and etiquette. You are less accountable and distance means you can avoid difficult conversations or responsibility, she says. We dont wish to cause anyone upset or pain. But really, not knowing what has happened is worse.

My date with my second ghostee, Rob, was planned for the day after my first. Id booked a cafe for brunch. Hed responded to my text very differently to Ed. Its not ghosting after one date, he said brusquely, with no hello. You dont owe anyone anything until about three dates. What you did was normal and sound. In my perception you didnt ghost me.

But I cut contact with you after our date, I replied. I think its worse after a few dates but still bad after one.

By this definition Ive been ghosted countless times and ghosted others countless times, he said. So, youve got no qualms about not replying to someone youve been on a date with then? I ask. No  I do that all the time. Its normal!

It was an interesting perspective and one, I told him, Id be keen to hear more about. We agreed to meet and he told me hed speak completely candidly on the condition I wouldnt print his name or photograph. Not a problem, I said.

I got a text the day before. Bailing on tomorrow. Dont trust you. Sorry. I explain I wouldnt be allowed to use his name and photo without his permission but he doesnt respond. A little later, I text again: Hi. What do you think?

Nothing. Radio silence. Id been ghosted by my ghostee. I cancelled the table and thought about how beautifully ironic it was. Did he do it on purpose for that reason? I guess thats the thing about ghosting  Ill never know. But sending the perfect let-down message can be tricky.

So what is the best thing to say when you want to let someone down gently? Professor Uther recommends keeping it simple. Something like, youre very nice but its not for me, she says.

Charisse said: I recommend a degree of honesty but not total honesty that will hurt their feelings  for example saying you think theyre unattractive. We need to approach dating as open-heartedly and courageously as possible.

And how can you deal with it if you are ghosted? Dont make assumptions, says Professor Uther. Dont assign the worst possible story to yourself about it. It has more to do with them than you.

Now, Im dating again, but this time Ill be braver and kinder if I dont feel a connection with someone. Having been on both sides of ghosting, I now know its not right for anyone.
Spring is a time for new beginnings and on this page last week the respected investment banker and Christian philanthropist Ken Costa argued that business leaders should receive the opportunity for redemption if they fall from grace.

He worries that in the UK we are less forgiving of failure than in the US and that our attitude might dampen risk-taking and enterprise.

I'm not sure about that. He is probably right that the stigma against bankruptcy is greater in the UK, though we are moving in the US direction. And when it comes to corporate wrongdoing, punishments in the States are far more draconian.

New beginnings: Generosity is not the same as letting top executives get away with it

In the accounting and insider trading scandals of the noughties, a string of high-profile figures were sent to jail in the US, including Enron executives and domestic goddess Martha Stewart.

The notorious Bernie Madoff was jailed for 150 years and died in prison. It's difficult to think of any parallel examples in the UK, where corporate malefactors rarely end up behind bars. Regulatory investigations take forever because of 'Maxwellisation', a process named after the late pension fraudster, that allows people to review any criticism of them and have their say.

Far from being unforgiving, this country  or at least the regulators and City establishment  exhibit remarkable tolerance.

Andy Hornby is a case in point. He was chief executive of HBOS when it went to the wall in the financial crisis at huge expense to the taxpayer. He is now under fire for a bonus just shy of 600,000 in his role as chief executive of The Restaurant Group, which has claimed more than 160m of furlough cash.

His progress seems unhindered by a long-running probe by City regulators into senior managers at the defunct bank.

And consider errant fund manager Neil Woodford. His investors lost heavily, but there has been no retribution against the man himself, who, with an absence of visible contrition, has been seeking to start again.

Make of these examples what you will. But they hardly speak of a vengeful environment where lapsed businessmen and women are condemned out of hand.

It is often said that if business leaders are persecuted for mistakes, it might deter gifted people from seeking senior jobs. A far bigger problem would occur if an over-lenient attitude keeps a group of privileged mediocrities in jobs they don't deserve, depriving others of opportunities to shine.

An absence of effective and swift regulatory action is a breeding ground for public anger, which favours no-one.

When we think about giving executives a second chance, we must balance our treatment of them against the wider good.

Forgiveness should not be an easy entitlement, but hard-earned and humbling, as Ken Costa says. It involves honesty about what went wrong, apologising and making amends, all of which are often absent in corporate scandals.

Powerful executives have lawyers and spin doctors if they feel wronged and hefty piles of cash to cushion their bruised egos.

I am more concerned about the 300,000 investors who lost money through Woodford and the taxpayers forced to bail out HBOS and The Restaurant Group.
British Gas owner Centrica and EDF have slammed administrators for 'aggravating' problems caused by the collapse of energy suppliers.

Centrica has written to Ofgem, demanding that the regulator intervenes to speed up the process of 'onboarding' customers stranded when their supplier has gone bust.

It claims administrators had not only slowed the process of handing over customers' details, but also taken unnecessary direct debit payments, leaving consumers furious.

Complaint: Centrica has written to Ofgem, demanding that the regulator intervenes to speed up the process of 'onboarding' customers stranded when their supplier has gone bust

British Gas was named by MoneySavingExpert as the worst firm to pick up customers via the process. It took consumers from nine of the nearly 30 suppliers which went bust last year as wholesale energy costs soared. Customers cited missing credit balances, billing delays and poor communication.

But, giving evidence to MPs last week, Centrica chief Chris O'Shea said: 'The administrator of the failed company is not incentivised to do anything quickly. They would not give us any information on credit balances [Customers] are several months into their journey with British Gas, and they are quite rightly deeply unhappy.'

EDF UK chief Simone Rossi claimed administrators had 'aggravated an already-difficult situation', adding: 'Our experience with administrators has been awful.'

O'Shea singled out consultancy Alvarez and Marsal  which worked on the administration of PFP Energy and People's Energy  for the 'two worst transfers'.

A&M said it did 'everything we can to facilitate a smooth transition' but had a duty to act in the best interests of creditors.
CAIRO, April 23 (Xinhua) -- As the world is marking World Book Day, Egyptian writers, intellectuals, and cultural officials wish for more popularity of the occasion that highlights the value of books, writers and reading as well as the significance of preserving copyrights.

Short for World Book and Copyright Day, it is an annual celebration on April 23 to promote reading, publishing, and copyright.

"Book is something basic and essential. Its popularity reflects the extent of a nation's progress and its ability to be a future civilization maker," said Egyptian novelist Youssef al-Qaeed.

World Book Day is significant because it promotes intellectual property rights "not only for writers and publishers but for the reader as well," said al-Qaeed.

Authors' rights are no small matter in terms of protecting one's original thinking and creativity as well as preserving history, Fathy Abdel-Wahab, head of Egypt's Cultural Development Fund, told Xinhua on Saturday.

"A writer's creativity is from his inner self, personal experience, and culture, among many other things," Abdel-Wahab added, stressing the need to raise public awareness.

"Writings do not perish by the death of their owners," he noted, citing the works of late Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, a Nobel laureate in 1988, whose depiction of Egyptian neighborhoods and alleys has remained unique and influential for decades.

Abdel-Wahab is also in charge of the Naguib Mahfouz Museum and Creativity Center, which was opened by the culture ministry in 2019 in the heart of Cairo, featuring his books, handwritten drafts, and other personal belongings, as well as the texts commemorating his life and works.

Echoing al-Qaeed's opinion, Egyptian award-winning novelist Saeed Noah said World Book Day "is a day of festivity for any writer, reader and librarian," and Egypt should do more to raise its visibility to the general public. 
Scandal-stricken accountant KPMG has won 10m of government contracts after saying it would no longer bid for them.

The audit giant agreed to temporarily stop seeking public sector work last December, after it was threatened with a ban.

Scandal-stricken: KPMG agreed to temporarily stop seeking public sector work last December, after it was threatened with a ban

But it has since bagged 22 UK public sector contracts  including an estimated 3m chunk of a 21m NHS England contract.

Figures supplied by data provider Tussell to the Financial Times showed it had also signed deals to advise four government departments.

KPMG said it had agreed with the Cabinet Office to 'continue with tenders already in progress or new work where it was in the public interest'.

It said the number of contracts was 'very small'.
A Scottish start-up aiming to reduce the world's seafood waste has bagged more than 17m from top investors.

Rooser, which has built an online platform for traders of fish, scooped the funding from firms including Index Ventures, Google Ventures and Point Nine Capital.

Reducing waste: Scottish start-up Rooser has built an online platform for traders of fish

The business was co-founded in 2019 by Joel Watt, who remortgaged his parents' house to raise the money with his cousin.

Watt said: 'In the long run, what we're building should help us to understand and manage global fish stocks more responsibly, to see where our seafood comes from and to ensure the best-quality produce ends up on plates.'

Currently, Rooser claims, for every two fish that end up on plates, one goes to waste.

There are many players in the supply chain  fisheries, primary processors, wholesalers and buyers. All rely on a blizzard of emails and messages.

Through Rooser, however, fish suppliers can manage stocks, upload different fish to their online store and also access the wider online marketplace.

Georgia Stevenson, at Index, said: 'Rooser promises to make the whole experience simpler.'


A slew of Britain's biggest companies face revolts this week over 'excessive' pay packages handed to bosses.

Gambling giant Flutter, house builders Taylor Wimpey and Persimmon, insurer Admiral Group and British American Tobacco (BAT) are all in investors' crosshairs ahead of annual general meetings (AGM).

Large pay increases have drawn criticism as Britain struggles with the cost-of-living crisis.

Former work and pensions minister Baroness Altmann said: 'I would hope that those at the top would show restraint. It is not healthy for corporate Britain if the workforce are made to feel that their bosses are entitled to massive rises in their already-high pay.'

Shareholder advisory group Pirc advised Taylor Wimpey investors to vote against the pay report at the AGM tomorrow.

This covered 2021, when chief executive Pete Redfern bagged 2.8m. His salary is in the top 25 per cent of comparable companies, Pirc said, 'which raises concerns over excessiveness of his pay'.

Pirc also admonished Taylor Wimpey for shelling out 42 times the average employee's wages on Redfern. This is 'not acceptable', the advisers said.

Persimmon, which once handed its former boss, Jeff Fairburn, a 75m bonus, will also come under fire at its AGM on Wednesday for planning to award current boss Dean Finch base pay of 746,800. New finance director Jason Windsor will pocket a base wage of 675,000  27 per cent higher than his predecessor.

Admiral is one of just a handful of major firms to have a female chief executive, but Pirc still lambasted the business for paying Milena Mondini de Focatiis 43 times the average employee's wage. Her total variable pay last year, which includes bonuses, was 247.8 per cent of her salary  'above the acceptable limit of 200 per cent'. De Focatiis scooped a total of 2.4m last year.

Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Centre think tank, said: 'Boards and chief executives have to decide whether to prioritise their own self-enrichment, or if they want their businesses to be valued and respected.

'If [they decide on the former] support for more aggressive regulation of business is likely to increase.'

A chunk of the FTSE 100 could be left with a bloody nose on Thursday, as several companies hold their AGMs.

Flutter, which owns Paddy Power and Betfair, was blasted by advisory service ISS for ramping up the base pay of chief executive Peter Jackson by 26 per cent to more than 1.1m.

BAT was criticised for proposing bonuses and incentives to its boss Jack Bowles of up to 750 per cent of his salary  a deal which would be worth 11.8m if BAT hit all its targets.
The Ministry of Justice has been forced to pay out compensation to 17 staff infected by dirty needles in drug-ridden prisons over the past six years.

Settlements, including legal costs, came to 660,000 from 2016 to 2021 after staff contracted diseases like hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV on the job from sharps injuries.

Needle injuries can occur when prison officers search inmates' cells for drugs.

The Ministry of Justice has paid out settlements worth 660,000 including legal costs to prison officers infected by dirty needles in drug-ridden prisons between 2016 to 2021

Prisoners are up to 28 times more likely to carry hepatitis C than the general population, with a prevalence as high as one in five in some institutions, and prison officers can contract the infection by being pricked with a dirty needle, bitten by a carrier or splattered with bodily fluids

There is no vaccine for hepatitis C or HIV, meaning officers have no protection against the diseases.

Prisoners are up to 28 times more likely to carry hepatitis C than the general population, with a prevalence as high as one in five in some institutions, according to The Hepatitis C Trust.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has even had to set up a hotline for prison officers who fear they have been infected.

The MoJ's bloodborne disease hotline has received 113 calls from prison staff worried about their infection status between September 2020 to August 2021

Infections can happen after being stabbed with a dirty needle, bitten by a carrier or splattered with bodily fluids.

From September 2020 to August 2021, official figures show the bloodborne disease hotline received 113 calls from prison staff worried about their infection status.

A spokesperson for the MoJ said: 'The safety of our staff is our top priority and we are spending 100 million to bolster security across the prison estate.

'We have already provided PPE and extra training to protect staff from needle injuries, which has led to a drop in claims.'
For many, the words 'Changi' and 'Thai-Burma Railway' are enough to conjure images of Japanese barbarity towards Australian and British prisoners in World War II.

But thousands of captured Australian soldiers were subjected to unimaginable brutality at lesser-known and more isolated prisoner of war camps in the Pacific - and some of the horrors there were even worse.

Australians were held on Hainan, an island off the south coast of China, where they were used as slave labour, and at Ambon in Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies) where prisoners died in medical experiments.

Even more appalling were the degradations and deprivations faced by the doomed occupants of Sandakan, a camp in north Borneo.

Thousands of captured Australian soldiers were subjected to brutality in prisoner of war camps across the Pacific in World War II. This emaciated soldier from the 2/21st Battalion was incarcerated at Bakli Bay on Hanian, an island off China's south coast

The single greatest wartime atrocity committed upon Australians took place with the Sandakan death marches between two camps in Borneo. Only six Australians at Sandakan in January 1945 survived the war. These four Sandakan officers were suspected war criminals

By the war's end some Australians were being held as far away as Burma, Thailand, Korea and Japan. About 8,000 of about 22,000 Australian prisoners - more than one in three - had been killed or died in the camps

As Allied troops approached Borneo more than 1,000 emaciated Australian and British prisoners were made to trek 260km through swamp and dense jungle from Sandakan to Ranau.

The Sandakan death march - actually a series of marches - is considered the greatest atrocity committed upon Australians during the bloodiest conflict in history.

Only six men - all Australian - who had been interned at Sandakan or Ranau survived the war by escaping shortly before the Japanese surrender.

An estimated 2,428 Allied servicemen - 1,787 Australians and 641 British - held at Sandakan died in Japanese captivity between January and August 1945.

About 8,000 Australians were held captive by the Germans and Italians during World War II but the fates of more than 22,000 taken prisoner by the Japanese were far worse.

Most were captured in early 1942 as the Imperial Japanese Army swept through Malaya, New Britain, the Dutch East Indies and Singapore.

Most Australian prisoners were captured in early 1942 as the Imperial Japanese Army swept through Malaya, New Britain, the Dutch East Indies and Singapore. Allied soldiers are pictured after the surrender to the Japanese in Malaya in February 1942

These three prisoners pictured at Shimo Sonkurai No 1 Camp were deemed fit to work on the Thai-Burma Railway. About 13,000 Australians were among the Allied prisoners forced to carve the 415km line through the jungle

'Changi' is used to describe both Singapore's Changi Gaol and the much larger Selarang barracks camp where 15,000 Australians were taken in February 1942.

While the overcrowded prison's brutal reputation is well-deserved, the Selarang camp was relatively comfortable until near the end of the war.

There is no such confusion about the horrors experienced by the 13,000 Australians who laboured on the 415km long Thai-Burma Railway in 1942-1943, most notoriously at Hellfire Pass.

By the war's end some Australians were being held as far away as Burma, Thailand, Korea and Japan. About 8,000 - more than one in three - had been killed or died in the camps.

In February 1942, about 1,100 men of Gull force, consisting of the 2/21st Battalion supported by anti-tank artillery, engineers and others, surrendered to the invading Japanese on Ambon.

'Changi' is used to describe both Singapore's Changi Gaol and the much larger Selarang barracks where 15,000 Australians were taken in February 1942. Captured Diggers are pictured in the Selarang barracks, which until late in the war were relatively comfortable

Many of the prisoners who passed through Changi were sent to work on the Thai-Burma Railway and died of disease, starvation and beatings. Australian prisoners are pictured laying tracks in Burma

Two companies of Gull Force were immediately massacred after their capture at the island's airfield.

Two other groups escaped home to Australia by island hopping across the Arafura Sea but the rest were imprisoned in a camp at Tantui (sometimes Tan Toey) near Ambon town.

Conditions at Tantui were at first tolerable but after rapidly deteriorated after another successful escape by a small band of Australians in March.

In October, 263 of the Australians at Tantui, including most of the senior officers and medical personnel were taken to Bakli Bay camp at Hainan.

In February the next year an Allied air raid blew up a munitions dump at the camp and the only Australian doctor officer was killed.

Despite the best efforts of a Dutch doctor and an Australian dentist rates of death and illness kept rising and a back-breaking work regime commenced.

In February 1942, about 1,100 men of Gull force, consisting of the 2/21st Battalion supported by anti-tank artillery, engineers and others, surrendered to the invading Japanese on Ambon. Most were taken to Tantui camp (pictured)

One crippling task was known as the 'long carry', a pointless exercise in which prisoners were made to haul bombs or bags of cement between villages.



Prisoners died in experiments conducted by the camp's Japanese doctor who took nine groups of 10 prisoners and killed about 50 by injecting them with a substance supposed to be vitamin B and the protein casein.

Others who traded for food outside the camp were beaten and tortured, while some said to have 'disappeared' were executed.

On Hainan, where many died from disease including dysentery and malnutrition, the workload was unbearable. 'Jeez, they worked us like slaves,' one prisoner recalled.

Discipline dissolved and a desperate Lieutenant Colonel William Scott tried a terrible way to maintain some sort of order after suffering an emotional breakdown.

At Bakli Bay prisoner of war camp many Diggers died from disease including dysentery and malnutrition and the workload was unbearable. 'Jeez, they worked us like slaves,' one prisoner recalled. The camp is pictured

Scott decreed subordinates who broke military regulations would be dealt with by their captors who delivered electric shocks and life-threatening bashings.

That practice destroyed relations between officers and enlisted ranks in the camp which remained fractured for decades after the war.

The first Australians arrived at Sandakan to build two airstrips in mid 1942 and like on Ambon at the start conditions were almost bearable, according to Private Keith Botterill.

'We had it easy the first twelve months,' he later said.

'Sure we had to work on the 'drome, we used to get flogged, but we had plenty of food and cigarettes.'

In late 1942 a new form of punishment known as the 'cage' introduced systematic violence as small transgressions were met with swift retaliation.

Discipline at Bakli Bay on Hainan island dissolved and a desperate Lieutenant Colonel William Scott (above) tried to maintain order by handing rule breakers over to the Japanese for punishment

The cage was a 130cm by 170cm barred wooden structure only high enough to sit down. Prisoners crawled in through a narrow opening and sat at attention through the day.

At night there was no bedding, no food was permitted for the first week and guards came twice daily to deliver beatings. Time in the cage for misdemeanours could last from a few days to a month.

Mass beatings of work details under gunpoint also began, as Warrant Officer Bill Sticpewich recalled.

'My gang would be working all right and then would be suddenly told to stop,' he said after the war.

'They would walk along the back of us and smack us underneath the arms, across the ribs and on the back. They would give each man a couple of bashes if they whimpered or flinched they would get a bit more.'

One of the most sadistic of the Ambon guards was camp manager and interpreter Masakiyo Ikeuchi, who in September 1947 was executed by firing squad for war crimes. Ikeuchi is pictured right next to Masachi Haraguchi, another suspected war criminal

Major camp offences could lead to arrest by the Japanese secret police, the Kenpeitai.

Lieutenant Rod Wells, who had been a school teacher, was caught helping another soldier build a radio and spent four months under merciless interrogation, including torture.

'The interviewer produced a small piece of wood like a meat skewer, pushed that into me left ear, and tapped it in with a small hammer,' Wells later said of his ordeal.

Lieutenant Rod Wells (above) was tortured at Sandakan in Borneo for helping build a radio

Wells lost his hearing and further torment awaited. He was sent to Outram Road Gaol in Singapore, a prison used by the Japanese for secondary punishment.

Billy Young, who had enlisted at 15 and was taken prisoner when Singapore fell, attempted to escape from Sandakan and was sent to Outram Road.

Like Wells, he suffered further brutality, but unlike almost every man they had known at Sandakan, the pair at least survived the war.

Conditions at Sandakan worsened when the Japanese moved most Australian and British officers to the Batu Lintang camp at Kuching in what is now Malaysia.

Rations were reduced even further and even the sickest prisoners were made to labour on the airstrip, which was repeatedly bombed by the advancing Allies from September 1944.

As it became clear Japan was losing the war punishments became even harsher and beatings more regular. In January 1945 the Japanese stopped issuing rice altogether and each prisoner took 85 grams of rice a day from their own accumulated stores.

In anticipation of Allied landings the camp's commandant ordered the remaining prisoners to be walked westward to Ranau.

As Allied troops approached Borneo more than 1,000 emaciated Australian and British prisoners were made to trek 260km through swamp and dense jungle from Sandakan to Ranau. Only six men - all Australian - who had been interned at Sandakan or Ranau survived

The first 455 prisoners thought to be fit enough to travel - all of whom were malnourished or seriously ill - left in nine groups between late January and early February 1945.

Gunner Albert Cleary (above) was tortured at Ranau for 11 days before he died of dysentery

Most were barefoot and many afflicted with beriberi. Botterill was with the third group to leave Sandakan and took 17 days to make the journey. Of the 50 who started, 37 reached Ranau.

Those who were too slow or collapsed of exhaustion were shot, beaten to death or bayonetted.

Behind the final group on the first march a Japanese killing squad disposed of any prisoners who had been unable to go on and were clinging to life.

Once the survivors made it to Ranau, every day more of them died.

In early March, Gunner Albert Cleary escaped but was recaptured four days later and tied to a log. For 11 days Cleary was beaten with fists, boots and rifle butts, spat at and urinated on.

Near death, he was washed in a creek by his fellow prisoners and taken to a hut where he died.

By May, only about 30 prisoners were still alive at Ranau. Two of them, Botterill and Private Richard Murray, stole 20kg of rice from their captors for a planned escape.

Private John Macmillan was arrested at Sandakan for bringing radio parts and medical supplies into the camp and sent to Outram Road Gaol in Singapore then to Changi. Macmillan's weight dropped from 85kg to 41kg during his time in Japanese custody

Botterill and Murray had known each other since enlistment and been captured together in Singapore.

Once the theft was discovered, the surviving prisoners were lined up to find the culprit for what they all knew was a capital crime.

Private Richard Murray (above) sacrificed his life at Ranau so his comrade Keith Botterill could live

No-one spoke but Murray stepped forward to save Botterill's life. His was bayoneted to death and his body thrown in a bomb crater.

'The Japanese found a biscuit bag (that we stole) and asked who owned it,' Botterill said.

'I told Murray not to say it was his as he would be killed but at length he did admit having stolen the food and he was tied up outside the guardhouse.

'I said that I would go up and untie him that night and we would escape. However at about five o'clock that afternoon he was taken away and bayoneted.'

Of those who reached Ranau, by late June only five Australians and one British prisoner were still alive.

Back at Sandakan, between February and May about 885 Australian and British prisoners had died.

Keith Botterill (pictured) pleaded with Richard Murray not to admit he stole a biscuit bag from the Japanese. 'I told Murray not to say it was his as he would be killed but at length he did admit having stolen the food and he was tied up outside the guardhouse,' he said

The camp was burnt and a second round of marches began in late May with about 530 prisoners sent off in 11 groups accompanied by guards.

These men were even sicker than those in the first parties, were provided fewer rations and often had to forage for food during the approximately 26-day march.

Within a day, 12 members of the second party of were dead. Private Nelson Short, who was part of that group, described leaving mates behind.

'If blokes just couldn't go on, we shook hands with them, and said, you know, hope everything's all right.'

An estimated 2,428 Allied servicemen - 1,787 Australians and 641 British - held at Sandakan died in Japanese captivity between January and August 1945. Graves are pictured at the site of Sandakan after the war

Short, who survived by eating snails and tree ferns, said some men who could not keep up were beheaded. Just 183 made it to Ranau.

Along the way, Gunner Owen Campbell and Bombardier Richard Braithwaite fled into the jungle where they were eventually found by Allied rescuers.

The Japanese had planned to let the last 288 prisoners at Sandakan starve to death but in mid June decided to send 75 men on a final march. None appears to have survived beyond 50km.

There were 38 prisoners left alive at Ranau in July when Botterill escaped from the camp with Sticepwich, Short and Lance Bombardier William Moxham.

The 23 prisoners who could still walk at Sandakan were taken to the airstrip and shot. The remaining 28 died of disease, starvation and exposure before the Japanese surrender on August 15.

Those who died at Sandakan were identified by members of the Australian Prisoner of War Contact and Inquiry Unit. Two members of that unit are pictures sifting through the personal belongings of dead prisoners after the war

A Chinese cook, Wong Hiong, witnessed the death of the last Sandakan prisoner - Private John Skinner - who was dragged to a drain wearing a loin cloth.

Hiong watched Sergeant Major Hisao Murozumi force the Australian to kneel as he tied a black cloth over his eyes.

'He did not say anything or make any protest,' Hiong told war crimes investigators.

'He was so weak that his hands were not tied.'

Morozumi cut Skinner's head off with one sword stroke and pushed his body into the drain. The last prisoners at Ranau were shot in late August.

Botterill, Short, Sticepwich and Moxham had been hidden from the Japanese by villagers after their escape and survived the war, as did Campbell and Braithwaite.

Sandakan commandant Captain Hoshijima Susumi, his successor Captain Takakuwa Takuo and his second-in-command Captain Watanabe Genzo were executed in 1946 for war crimes.
Special forces veteran Heston Russell is concerned the Anzac spirit is threatened

Since Anzac Day last year, I have been asked to comment on a wide range of Veteran issues.

Proposed changes to our national curriculum to question the "myth" of Anzac Day, and even statistics showing that many young Australians would not choose to stay and fight for our country if we were invaded like seen in Ukraine.

Each year on Anzac Day we reflect on the selfless actions of those servicemen who landed at Gallipoli and fought through what could only be described as hell on earth.

Fighting through the carnage of familiar faces, friends and comrades who fell within the first few ferocious minutes and hours of that battle.

Fighting through to show the character and courage that set the precedence for our national legacy, our Anzac spirit, to be recognised around the globe.

This is no myth, as a matter of fact, the enemy our Anzacs fought against were so inspired by the example of our troops that they went on to erect monuments and still to this day, pause on April 25th to commemorate the heroism of our Anzacs.

Proposed changes to our national curriculum to question the "myth" of Anzac Day, and even statistics showing that many young Australians would not choose to stay and fight for our country if we were invaded like seen in Ukraine, Heston Russell says

This year, I want to focus on what supported and sustained the actions of our Anzac heroes who fought on that day and throughout the four years of World War I.

At the outbreak of the war in 1914 the population of Australia was just 4.9million. Most of our people had never travelled overseas, given the great distances that had to be traversed by slow ships that often cost the lives of some onboard.

We were not connected by the technology of today. Newspapers and public broadcasts provided the updates that were then carried by word of mouth, as everyday Australians stopped and spoke to each other in the streets. There wasn't any social media, internet or even colour TV. Telegram was a signal carried by wire, not an app.

Yet over 400,000 young Australians decided to sign up and serve overseas during what was to be called 'The Great War', to fight for the freedoms and liberties that have been the topics of community conversations and political campaigns over the last two years.

'Each year on Anzac Day we reflect on the selfless actions of those servicemen who landed at Gallipoli and fought through what could only be described as hell on earth,' Heston Russell says. An Australian soldier is pictured carrying his mate to safety at Gallipoli

Over 400,000 young Australians, nearly 10 per cent of our population. Made up mostly of young men aged between 18 and 44 years old - nearly 40 per cent of all Australian men living within this age bracket.

They couldn't google Gallipoli or know how long they would be gone for, yet they signed up to serve and left on crowded ships from our shores. Leaving behind their families, loved ones, businesses and lives, with letters home as their only likely communications to be seen or heard from for the years to come.

Over 100 years ago, our country was a place where nearly forty percent of our most fit and healthy men were willing to enter the unknown and fight for the freedoms and liberties that they believed in.

They may not have been supported by all in our nation, but they were by the majority who were willing to also take up the call, to work in the factories, in the fields and fend for their families while their loved ones went away.

Our nation was a place where we valued the courage and conviction of those who were willing to risk their lives to support those we shared common bonds and values with away on foreign soil. Without the ability to pick up a phone and call their loved ones, check in online or snap a smiling selfie for their families back home.

'Over 100 years ago, our country was a place where nearly forty percent of our most fit and healthy men were willing to enter the unknown and fight for the freedoms and liberties that they believed in,' writes Heston Russell. An Anzac Day crowd is pictured in Sydney

I want to reflect on this because over the last two years we have watched our nation tear itself apart as our politicians and bureaucrats have struggled through the COVID- 19 pandemic. The legacy of leadership left on the battlefield by our Anzacs has been replaced by management strategies based on statistics and spreadsheets that have left families separated, isolated and too often in distress.

Travelling around the country I have spoken with many including current and former serving veterans, along with young Australians with thoughts towards joining our armed forces. Too many have said to me 'What are we fighting for?' They have spoken about not being able to even dream of affording a house let alone build their own home.

Worried about how they would be able to support their families if they, like our Anzacs, were sent away to fight for our country. Many with children or intentions to start their own families spoke of how this would not be possible because their partners could not afford to take the time away from their full paying employment.

Heston Russell says he has spoken with current and former serving veterans, along with young Australians with thoughts towards joining our armed forces. 'Too many have said to me 'What are we fighting for?'' he says. Diggers are pictured in Melbourne in an Anzac Day parade

These are the realities eating away at the pride and patriotism that once brought our communities and country together. At a time when we need to come together to build our nation and become the best of our potential.

Instead, everyday Australians are being left to fend and fight for their own survival. Fighting for the survival of their families within our own borders, without being in the face of a foreign foe. Further afraid of what else might happen at home or overseas to make matters even worse.

These are the realities not captured in the statistics spun by our political leaders to support their economic statements and campaign slogans. Political leaders that many Australians, young and old, no longer identify with, let alone trust to be able to lead our nation in a true conflict or crisis.

Career politicians need to be replaced with people who know what real leadership is. Leadership that connects and unites people with purpose.

The spark of our Anzac spirit resides in every Australian that knows how to come together and support each other in times of need. The authentic Australian character shown best through actions, not pre-prepared words.

Young Australians were worried how they would be able to support support their families if they were sent away to fight for their country, Heston Russell says. A young girl is pictured proudly greeting a sailor at an Anzac Day march in Melbourne

As we come out of COVID and come together as communities in commemoration across our beautiful country, I hope that we can take the time this Anzac Day to remember what can be achieved when people are united with purpose. Not simply in times when we need to send off our bravest to fight in wars or conflicts, but instead to find ways to focus our efforts to build the best future for Australia and all our people.

Let this Anzac Day be a time to pause and reflect on what we can achieve as a nation brought together with purpose. Draw from the courage and commitment of those who went away to fight for our freedoms.

Lest we never forget the spirit they showed, and always remember that they carried it with them, inspired by those they left behind, who stood together as a nation and kept that spirit burning brightly at home.
Dean Corll (pictured) - known as the 'Candy Man' - murdered eight of his 28-plus teenage victims at 2020 Lamar Drive, Pasadena. The property is currently up for sale

One of the homes where prolific Houston-area serial killer Dean Corll tortured and killed many of his 28-plus teenaged victims in the 1970's just hit the market for $185,000.

Corll - known as the 'Candy Man' because his family owned a candy company and he was known to give free candy to local children - moved to the house on 2020 Lamar Drive in Pasadena in 1973.

There, the frequency of his murders and the depravity of his methods increased, according to court testimony from his teen accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley and David Owen Brooks, who lured teens to Corll's various residences with the offer of a party or a ride.

All of Corll's victims' recovered corpses had been sodomized, investigators found, and most bore evidence of sexual torture: their pubic hairs had been plucked out, their genitals were often chewed, and glass rods were often inserted into their urethrae and smashed.

After stringing up eight boys between the ages of 13 and 20 to his 'torture board' before killing them at the Lamar Drive house within the span of three months, a fed-up Henley, then 17, shot Corll dead, exclaiming 'I can't go on any longer! I can't have you kill all my friends!' before firing.

Now, nearly 50 years later, the 1,231 square foot home is being sold for by Keller Williams Signature on HAR.com for $184,900 - a steal in Pasadena, where the average home was selling for $235,000 in March of 2022, according to Realtor.com.

Nearly 50 years after Dean Corll took the lives of eight teenagers there, the 1,231 square foot home on 2020 Lamar Dr. in Pasadena is on the market for $184,900

Corll (pictured) - known as the 'Candy Man' because his family owned the a candy company and he was known to give free candy to local children - moved to the house on 2020 Lamar Drive in Pasadena in 1973

Pictured are San Augustine County deputies alongside a 'torture board' - where Corll would restrain his victims - found at another home where Corll lived in Broaddus, Texas, similar to the one he kept in the bedroom at 2020 Lamar Drive, along with other torture implements

Since 1995, five owners have lived in the residence, according to the Harris County Appraisal District website.

The three-bedroom, one bathroom home built in 1952 has been on the market for 78 days. The listing boasts new flooring, fresh paint, new countertops and a big backyard to host family and friends on the 7.148 square-foot property.

The one full bath of the home - where 15-year-old Homer Luis Garcia bled to death in Corll's bathtub on July 7, 1973 - is painted the same periwinkle gray seen throughout the house, and now only features a granite-tiled shower.

The new black and white countertops and cabinets in the bathroom are also seen in the kitchen, which hosts a microwave, dishwasher and oven.

The three-bedroom, one bathroom home built in 1952 has been on the market for 78 days. The listing boasts new flooring, fresh paint, new countertops and a big backyard to lure - er, host - family and friends on the 7.148-acre property

Pictured are workers searching for corpses in Corll's rented boat cabin - the backyard at 2020 Lamar Drive was also overturned for corpses. The skull of Corll's tenth victim is pictured above in a wheelbarrow

On August 8, 1973, Corll dragged Henley's bound body into the same kitchen and held a .22 caliber pistol to his stomach - after three years of bringing teens to Corll, the killer became enraged at Henley for bringing a girl, rather than a boy, to the house for slaughter.

Henley was able to escape Corll's grasp by convincing the killer he would torture and kill the girl, 15-year-old Rhonda Louise Williams, while Corll would do the same to Timothy Cordell Kerley, 19.

Then, in Corll's bedroom - which is now also painted a light gray, and is currently outfitted with brown laminated flooring, a ceiling fan and ample natural light from two sets of windows - the two victims were chained to the 'torture board.'

In Corll's former bedroom - which is now also painted a light gray, and is currently outfitted with brown carpeting, a ceiling fan and ample natural light from two sets of windows - victims were chained to a 'torture board'

The one full bath of the home - where 15-year-old Homer Luis Garcia bled to death in Corll's bathtub on July 7, 1973 - is painted the same periwinkle gray seen throughout the house, and now only features a granite-tiled shower

The new black and white countertops and cabinets in the bathroom are also seen in the kitchen, which hosts a microwave, dishwasher and oven

But before they were killed, Henley managed to shoot Corll with his own pistol. The first bullet hit Corll's forehead, but failed to penetrate his skull - as the killer continued lurching toward him, Henley fired two more shots into Corll's left shoulder.

Then, Henley fired three bullets into Corll's lower back and shoulder, and Corll fell dead in the hallway outside the bedroom - which is currently painted a clean white.

The home's backyard, which dug up and turned over in a search for corpses by Texas Equusearch, now features a small tool shed that matches the light gray color of the home's exterior and featured throughout the house.

The search and rescue organization most recently overturned the backyard in November of 2021, but found no human remains - only the bones of a small animal.

Texas Equusearch said in a news release they believed the corpses of more victims are buried in the area, and that 'there is a good probability that we can find, and recover some of the still-missing boys.'

With Henley's help, the majority of Corll's victim's corpses were found in a rented boat shed in Southwest Houston, encased in clear plastic and buried under a layer of lyme.

Now locked up in the notoriously-tough Michael Unit in Anderson County, Texas, for his role in the murders, Henley has been denied every parole appeal since he first became eligible in 1980. Brooks, also serving life in prison, passed away in 2020 from complications related to COVID-19.
After months of calling out progressives for their perceived missteps, liberal commentator Bill Maher has returned to form and sharply criticized the Republican Party, arguing that conservatives are abandoning their commitment to democracy.

In the new episode of his HBO show Real Time on Friday, Maher argued that restrictive new voting laws, bitter acrimony over the 2020 election, and the US Capitol riot show that the GOP is willing to abandon democratic principles.

'Now many Republicans have decided that democracy is what's wrong with America,' Maher said in a monologue.

'That is pretty much the position of the Republican Party now, that you can vote for anyone you like, but it doesn't count if it's not us. Heads we win, tails we coup,' he added.

Bill Maher has returned to form and sharply criticized the Republican Party, arguing that conservatives are abandoning their commitment to democracy

Trump is seen at a rally in Ohio on Saturday to endorse JD Vance

'[Democracy] dies in plain sight because enough people think democracy is a luxury America can no longer afford,' he said.

'I know that some people like to say there's not much difference between the parties, but actually in America 2022, there's more of a difference between the parties than there ever has been in American history,' he said.

'Democrats, for all their flaws, still see democracy as the essence of Americathey see America and democracy as inextricably linked. They believe that one without the other is unthinkable. Republicans? Thinkable.'

Maher went on: 'Republicans now seem to be ok with America continuing to exist as a country, but without being a democracy.'

Maher went on to give examples of Republicans who supposedly oppose democracy, including Utah Senator Mike Lee.

Maher cited Utah Senator Mike Lee as a Republican who supposedly opposes democracy

Lee in October 2020 tweeted: 'Democracy isn't the objective. liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.'

The pundit also struck out at Donald Trump's loyalists who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden's election win.

'I'm no constitutional scholar, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't say in the case of an election loss, break s**t and install your guy anyway,' he said.

'A lot of people drive themselves crazy asking Republicans for evidence that Biden somehow stole the election. But that's a fool's errand. In the circular logic of today's right, the evidence that the election was stolen is that they lost.'

At Trump's rally in Ohio on Saturday, a man wears a cross with a Trump shirt reading 'Trump 2024, Cheated, Not Defeated in 2020'

Maher struck out at Donald Trump's loyalists who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden's election win

However, Maher did not spare Democrats from criticism, saying that they were focused on ill-advised policies such as defunding police departments and teaching kids 'crazy s**t' in schools.

'The left today is getting a lot of things wrong,' he said, including reframing 'America as irredeemably racist.'

'I get the panic, but solutions short of junking democracy can and must handle this,' he added.

'But conservatives now sound creepily like the generals in some country where they finally experimented with democracy for the first time, and well, they didn't like it so much,' he said.
Woolworths has unveiled brazen plans to transform a petrol station into a pick-up grocery site in Sydney's eastern suburbs.

In a major overhaul of the retail experience customers will be invited to make their orders online and then pick them up in an allocated time window.

Attendants will deliver groceries straight to the boots of cars which can be parked in one of six parking spaces at the former Rose Bay Caltex petrol station.

Attendants will deliver groceries straight to the boots of cars which can be parked in one of six parking spaces at the dedicated pick-up site (pictured, a render of the plan)

The site on Old South Road is expected to service at least 100 customers a day and comes in response to a major surge in online orders seen during the pandemic.

The redevelopment of the petrol station will cost the shopping giant $560,000 with the plans still under consideration by Woollahra Council.

Woolworths said the contactless delivery service would save shoppers time and reduce their risk of being exposed to Covid-19.

'Customers using this service will only be parked for a matter of minutes while they wait for their order to be delivered to their car, as opposed to a typical shopping trip which can take upwards of 30 minutes,' the company said.

'This model is in response to a sustained increase in online shopping that is seen within the existing supermarket network while also providing a reduced Covid-19 risk for customers.'

The redevelopment of the petrol station (pictured) will cost the shopping giant $560,000 with the plans still under consideration by Woollahra Council

Concept images show the site would still resemble a petrol station with 11 car spaces, six for customers and the others for employees and delivery drivers.

The space would also feature a loading dock for the five delivery trucks required to deliver the groceries to the former petrol station.

The pick-up site would be serviced by between two and eight workers who would deliver groceries to at least 100 households each day.

Plans drawn up by Fabcot, the development arm of Woolworths, estimate the set-up would remain for up to five years as a temporary use of the space.

The supermarket giant plans to eventually build a physical shop at the site with the pick-up service to 'activate' the site as those works are finalised (pictured, a Woolworths in Miranda)

The supermarket giant plans to eventually build a physical shop at the site with the pick-up service to 'activate' the site as those works are finalised.

Traffic modelling predicts the site would generate up to 340 daily car movements with Transport for NSW also weighing in on the plans.

The transport body said Woolworths would need to provide detailed line-marking and signage to reduce the impact on traffic on the busy road.

In plans the supermarket said the dedicated pick-up site 'would increase the overall availability of fresh and healthy food available in Rose Bay'.
Two people have died inside neighbouring apartments in Manchester amid reports of a suspected gas leak.

A woman and a man were found dead by Greater Manchester Police in Princess Road, Rusholme, on Saturday afternoon and evening respectively.

Officers had discovered the woman at around 4.20pm, before receiving a call around three hours later over concerns for the man next door.

Police entered his home and found he had also passed away.

Fire crews remained in attendance late on Saturday evening following the reported gas leak, while nearby shops were evacuated.

An investigation is under way but police say there is no risk to the wider community at this stage while they have ruled out any third party 'physical involvement'.

Superintendent Mark Kenny said: 'The deaths may not be connected but at this stage the precise cause of death cannot be established.

'However, we can rule out direct third-party physical involvement.

'I would like to reassure the community that there is no wider risk at this time.

'Detectives are now investigating the circumstances to ascertain the cause of death and will remain at the scene while the investigation is ongoing.'

A woman and a man were found dead by Greater Manchester Police in Princess Road, Rusholme, on Saturday afternoon and evening respectively. (Pictured: Police cordon off scene)

Fire truck arrives to the scene in south Manchester on Saturday night

Earlier, a Greater Manchester Police spokesman said they had been called to the scene at around 4.20pm by the North West Ambulance Service (NWAS).

The force added: 'Officers attended and while at the address were further contacted at 7.10pm in relation to a concern for welfare at a neighbouring flat.

'NWAS attended the address first and, sadly, found a man deceased inside.

'An investigation is under way into both deaths and there is a scene in place.

'GMFRS [Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service] attended to test for a gas leak and nearby shops were evacuated as a precaution to ensure public safety.

'At this stage there is no risk to the wider community and the investigation is at a very early stage.'

Fire crews remained in attendance late on Saturday evening following the reported gas leak, while nearby shops were evacuated (scene pictured)

An investigation is under way but police say there is no risk to the wider community at this stage. (Pictured: Fire truck arriving to the scene)

Photos from the scene show police and fire in attendance on Princess Road, close to the junction with Bowes Street.

A fire service spokesperson said: 'At 7:52pm on Saturday 23 April 2022, fire engines from Withington and Salford fire stations attended a suspected gas leak in a flat on Princess Road, Manchester.

'Firefighters used gas detectors to check the affected and neighbouring properties and supported colleagues from Greater Manchester Police and North West Ambulance Service. Crews remain in attendance.'
ABUJA, April 24 (Xinhua) -- At least 10 people were killed and several others wounded following an attack by extremist militants group Boko Haram in Nigeria's northeastern state of Yobe earlier in the week, police authorities said on Saturday.

Heavily armed members of the group moving on motorcycles also torched the staff quarters of a public school in Geidam, a town in Yobe, during the attack on Wednesday, according to Dungus Abdulkarim, a spokesman for the police, who briefed reporters in Damaturu, the state capital.

Abdulkarim said the police had already beefed up security in the town, in the first official confirmation of the incident since its occurrence mid-week.

"Currently, normalcy has returned and people are going about their normal businesses as security operatives were deployed for patrols and visibility policing to avert future occurrence of the attack," the police official said.

Boko Haram has been collaborating with its sister group, Islamic State West Africa Province, to establish an Islamist state in northeast Nigeria. The terror groups have also extended their attacks to other countries in the Lake Chad Basin. 
Farmers in Ukraine will have their fields cleared of deadly landmines and booby traps, thanks to the generosity of Mail readers.

The Halo Trust, a British charity which has received a 250,000 donation from Mail Force, is preparing to launch a huge operation to find and clear landmines and unexploded bombs in the towns and villages surrounding the capital, Kyiv.

It is feared the deadly detritus of war littering the countryside after weeks of fierce fighting will prevent farmers sowing crops this spring, resulting in worsening food shortages and starvation later this year.

As well as planting landmines, Russian President Vladimir Putins forces have used cluster munitions to scatter thousands of bombs across a huge area, with up to 30 per cent of fields too dangerous to sow.

James Cowan (above), chief executive of the Trust, last week visited areas around Kyiv, including the towns of Brovary and Bucha, where hundreds of civilians appear to have been executed and their corpses dumped in mass graves

Ukraines farms are a major supplier of corn, sunflower oil and wheat but the size of the harvest is expected to plummet by around 40 per cent this year.

The effect is already being felt in the UK where some supermarkets are limiting the amount of cooking oil that shoppers can buy.

The Halo Trust is assembling a team of 280 explosives experts. They will start mapping where the landmines and unexploded bombs are this week and begin clearing them in early May.

James Cowan, chief executive of the Trust, last week visited areas around Kyiv, including the towns of Brovary and Bucha, where hundreds of civilians appear to have been executed and their corpses dumped in mass graves.

Mr Cowan said: The authorities are in danger of being overwhelmed by people trying to get back into buildings that may have been booby trapped. There is evidence of childrens toys being set up as booby traps with landmines. There is evidence of doors with wires on them so you open the door and it pulls the pin out of a hand grenade.

Founded more than 30 years ago, the Halo Trust shot to global prominence in 1997 when Princess Diana walked through a minefield being cleared by Halo in Angola.

A Ukrainian rescuer clears mines off a territory near Brovary city of Kyiv's area

He said: There is a lot of agricultural land in between the dormitory towns and this is the planting season and farmers need to be getting out to plant their crops.

But they cant do this because of the presence of landmines and booby traps. There is a great pressure to get on and clear that.

Farmland covers 70 per cent of Ukraine and agricultural products are its top export, making up 10 per cent of its gross domestic product.

Russian troops are also shelling granaries and food storage sites and destroying farm equipment.

Four members of Ukraines armed forces and emergency services were killed by landmines or booby traps in three days last week. Two rescue dogs were also killed after triggering Russian trip wires.

Mairi Cunningham, Halos Ukraine programme manager, said: Deadly munitions litter fields and farmland but thanks to Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday readers, Halo is working with local authorities to start clearing explosives.

Princess Diana wearing a bombproof visor during her visit to a minefield in Huambo, in Angola in 1997

Every pound will make a difference as we clear Ukraines roads, fields and farmland and make its cities and towns safe for families to return home.

Meanwhile, Russian forces and their allies have been seizing vast farms in territory they occupy.

Albert Cherepakha, owner of a business that cultivates 49,000 acres near Kherson, told how Chechen gunmen commandeered areas of his farm earlier this month and threatened to behead staff.

They commanded my workers to start sowing, he said.
Peter Dutton has warned Australia should prepare for a chemical weapon attack on one of its allies and claimed China would play Penny Wong 'like a fool'.

Australia's Defence Minister described the country's strategic position as 'dire', comparing it with the nation's position in the lead up to the Second World War in the 1930s.

'We want a normalised peaceful relationship with every country, including China. But China has changed,' the minister told the Daily Telegraph.

'It's conceivable that there could be a chemical warfare attack on a capital city of one of our allies and so you could be drawn back into a conflict in the Middle East.'

Australia's Defence Minister described the country's strategic position as as 'dire' as it was in the lead up to the Second World War in the 1930s

The defence minister also hit out at Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong (pictured) and said China would play the politician 'like a fool'

Mr Dutton said while it was in Australia's best interests to have a good relationship with China we weren't going to be 'subservient or cower to them'.

He said the country's military and naval capacities had to be prepared for a situation that just a year ago would have been 'inconceivable' and more had to be spent on defence to maintain peace and stability with the eastern power.

The defence minister also hit out at Penny Wong and said China would play the Opposition spokesperson for Foreign Affairs 'like a fool'.

He claimed that Ms Wong believed she could resolve issues between the two countries if she paid a visit to Beijing and called her strategy 'dangerous'.

'She believes that she could embark effectively on an appeasement strategy that I think is frankly quite dangerous,' he said.

Mr Dutton said while it was in Australia's best interests to have a good relationship with China we weren't going to be 'subservient or cower to them' (pictured, Chinese troops in 2021)

Mr Dutton said China's actions against India and movements in the South and East China Sea meant the power would not be swayed by Ms Wong's 'so-called charm'.

'They'd laugh under their breath and Penny'd think "well, well, if we pull back on the AUKUS deal, and show that as a sign of good faith to the Chinese, they would enter into good faith negotiations with us". They'd play her like a fool,' he said.

His comments about of the shadow minister comes after his own party were criticised for not doing enough to deter a security pact between China and the Solomon Islands.

There are fears the deal between the two countries will mean China could build a military base less than 2,000km from Australian shores.

Prime Minister Scott Mr Morrison has said the Solomon Islands government had stated it would not allow any Chinese naval bases under the deal.

On Sunday morning Mr Dutton left open the suggestion that China may have bribed the Solomons to sign the deal.

'Theyve got a port in Sri Lanka, where theyve taken that port back because the Sri Lankans couldnt pay for the debt that theyd incurred from the Chinese in building that port,' the Defence Minister told Sky News.

'If you look at whats happened in Africa, there are corrupt payments being made  we could never compete with that sort of playbook.'

But Mr Dutton didn't go as far as suggesting the same had occurred in the Solomon Island.

'Its not something that I can comment on.

'Chinas incredibly aggressive  the acts of foreign interference, the preparedness to pay bribes to get outcomes, and to beat other countries to deals  thats the reality of the modern China.'

Mr Dutton said China's actions against India and movements in the South and East China Sea meant the power would not be swayed by Ms Wong's 'so-called charm'

There are fears a security pact between China and Solomon Island will mean the superpower could build a military base less than 2,000km from Australian shores (pictured, members of the Communist Party of China in April, 2021)

Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce didn't rule out the possibility of a Chinese base in the Solomons.

'(It's) dual-purpose, which means China is able, if they follow through, to set up a military base there,' he said.

'That's a very bad day for Australia. We don't want our own little Cuba off our coast.'

Ms Payne in a joint statement with Pacific minister Zed Seselja said they were 'deeply disappointed' by the deal.

'We are concerned about the lack of transparency with which this agreement has been developed, noting its potential to undermine stability in our region,' the statement read.

'We continue to seek further clarity on the terms of the agreement, and its consequences for the Pacific region.'

Meanwhile, Ms Wong has pledged to repair Australia's battered relationship with China if Labor is voted in next month after two years of hostilities.

Ms Wong has pledged to repair Australia's battered relationship with China if Labor is voted in next month after two years of hostilities

She told the Guardian's Australian Politics Podcast that recent tactics by Scott Morrison to paint Labor as soft on China will only make the situation worse.

The Prime Minister in February branded Labor deputy leader Richard Marles a 'Manchurian candidate' after he called for closer defence ties with China on a trip to Beijing in 2019.

Ms Wong said the extraordinary attack to portray the Opposition as weak on national security and a puppet of an enemy power, was an act of 'desperation by the government'.

'It is also a trashing of Australia's national interests because one of the things that makes us strongest is our unity,' she said.

'What we won't do is play domestic politics with the China relationship.'
Emmanuel Macron is on course to defeat his rival Marine Le Pen in today's nail-biting French presidential race.

Voters go to the polls today, with front-runner Macron holding a narrow lead over the far-Right leader.

However, there were fears last night that public apathy could mean the contest is closer than predicted.

Mr Macron warned supporters at a final rally on Friday night: 'Hours before the Brexit vote, millions of people asked themselves what was the point of voting the next day they woke up with a hangover.'

Ms Le Pen's campaign has been dogged by accusations of racism and ties to the Kremlin, which were exacerbated yesterday as fresh allegations emerged that her party was paying 10 million to a Russian military contractor under US sanctions as settlement of a loan.

Polls predicted a narrow lead for Mr Macron when campaigning ended on Friday, with the incumbent ahead of Le Pen by 56.6 per cent to 43.5 per cent.

Voters go to the polls in France today, with front-runner Emmanuel Macron (pictured at a rally Friday) holding a narrow lead over the far-Right leader Marine Le Pen

Ms Le Pen's campaign has been dogged by accusations of racism and ties to the Kremlin (Pictured: Le Pen during a campaign rally on Thursday)

A man carries a dog as he registers to vote in the French presidential runoff election, in Burbank, California on April 23, 2022

The voting began in overseas French territories on Sunday.

The first vote in the election was cast by a 90-year-old man in the tiny island territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon off the northern coast of Canada.

Polls subsequently opened in France's islands in the Caribbean and the South American territory of French Guiana and in territories in the Pacific and then Indian Ocean.

A victory over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the election battle would make Macron the first French president in 20 years to win a second term.

All opinion polls in recent days converge toward a victory for the 44-year-old pro-European centrist - yet the margin over his nationalist rival appears uncertain, varying from 6 to 15 percentage points, depending on the poll.

Polls also forecast the potential of a record-high number of people who either vote blank or stay at home and don't vote at all in this second and final round.

The first vote in the election was cast by a 90-year-old man in the tiny island territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon off the northern coast of Canada

Voting for French citizens in overseas territories have begun voting in the presidential runoff

French citizens register to vote in the second round of the French presidential election

A French citizen exits a polling booth after voting in the second round of the French presidential election at a polling station at the Palais des Congres in Montreal

French voters in Quebec were seen voting at the region's Palais-de-Congres in Montreal

Emmanuel Macron urged voters to turnout as he attempts to out-run Marine Le Pen for a second time

President Emmanuel Macron spent the day at the seaside as voters begin to decide his fate

Emmanuel Macron on the beach with his wife Brigitte in Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, on the eve of the second round of the presidential election in France

And, speaking in Figeac, an idyllic medieval village in south-west France, Macron warned that 'nothing is decided'.

Describing a potential win for Le Pen as a victory for 'hatred' and invitation to economic ruin, he also said: 'Think about what British citizens were saying a few hours before Brexit or (people) in the United States before Trump's election happened: 'I'm not going out to vote, what's the point?' The next day, they woke up with a hangover.

'So if you want to avoid the unthinkable...choose for yourself.'

In her final campaign stop in Pas-de-Calais, her heartland, Ms Le Pen also called for supporters to turn out.

She said: 'Polls aren't what decide an election.'

People wait to vote in the second round of the French Elections at the Palais de Congres in Montreal

Macron's last campaign meeting, two days before the presidential election, in Figeac, south-west France

Marine Le Pen greets people as she leaves the port city of Berck as part of a one-day campaign visit in northern France

Analysts have also reported that Le Pen could upset the polls amid low voter turnout.

'It could be bigger than Brexit,' said Michael Hewson, of UK traders CMC Markets.

Also referring to the surprise election of Donald Trump as president of the US in 2016, Mr Hewson added: 'It could be bigger than Trump, if Le Pen prevails.'

Strategists at Citi, the U.S. investment bank, suggested tactical voting combined with low turnout could yet mean victory for the far-Right French candidate.

'Uncertainty stems from the risk of low voter turnout, as leftist voters refuse to give their vote to Macron, even at the risk of handing over to Le Pen,' reads a research document.

'Voter turnout is a factor that pollsters find particularly hard to forecast accurately.'

The April 10 first-round vote eliminated 10 other presidential candidates and the victor between Macron and Le Pen will largely depend on what people who backed those losing candidates do on Sunday.

It is complicated to predict what will happen, especially with leftist voters who dislike Macron but do not want to see Le Pen in power either.

A second term for Macron relies in part on their mobilisation, prompting the French leader to issue multiple appeals to leftist voters in recent days.

The two rivals both appeared combative in the final days before Sunday's election, including clashing Wednesday in a one-on-one televised debate.

Macron argued that the loan Le Pen's party received in 2014 from a Czech-Russian bank made her unsuitable to deal with Moscow amid its invasion of Ukraine.

He also said her plans to ban Muslim women in France from wearing headscarves in public would trigger 'civil war' in the country that has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe.

'When someone explains to you that Islam equals Islamism equals terrorism equals a problem, that is clearly called the far-right,' Macron declared Friday on France Inter radio.

Le Pen slumped in the polls after vowing to ban the Muslim headscarf and after Macron's civil war warning.

During the debate, Le Pen confirmed that she stood by her controversial idea of banning the headscarf, which she called 'a uniform imposed by Islamists', but she said she was not 'fighting against Islam.'

'I'm telling it in a very clear manner: I think the headscarf is a uniform imposed by Islamists,' Le Pen said.

Describing a potential win for Le Pen as a victory for 'hatred' and invitation to economic ruin, Macron said: 'Think about what British citizens were saying a few hours before Brexit or (people) in the United States before Trump's election happened: 'I'm not going out to vote, what's the point?' The next day, they woke up with a hangover'

Macron argued that the loan Le Pen's party received in 2014 from a Czech-Russian bank made her unsuitable to deal with Moscow amid its invasion of Ukraine

'I think a great proportion of young women who are wearing it have no other choice in reality.'

Survey results published hours after the face-off showed Macron on 59 per cent of the vote, and his right-wing right rival on 39 per cent, with 2 per cent abstentions.

A similar result on Sunday in the final round of the 2022 presidential election would see Macron win his second five-year term of office, and suggests a widening in the polls from yesterday when the pair were eight to 12 points apart.

The sitting President has said he would not ban religious clothing, but he has overseen the closure of numerous mosques, schools and Islamic groups, with help from a special team to root out suspected breeding grounds for radicalism.

The Macron government also passed a controversial law last year to fight 'separatism,' the word used to describe the mixing of politics with Islam, deemed dangerous to France's prized value of secularism.

But Le Pen has pledged to take things a step further by placing an outright ban on religious clothing in public - a law she says would be enforced like 'wearing a seatbelt in a car'.

In his victory speech in 2017, Macron had promised to 'do everything' during his five-year term so that the French 'have no longer any reason to vote for the extremes.'

Marine Le Pen (pictured campaigning in Arras) has slumped in the polls after vowing to ban the Muslim headscarf in a fiery TV debate

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, left, talks to a woman in a headscarf as she campaigns in a market in Pertuis, southern France, Friday, April 15, 2022

Centrist candidate and French President Emmanuel Macron, left, and far-right contender Marine Le Pen pose before a televised debate in La Plaine-Saint-Denis, outside Paris, Wednesday, April 20, 2022

However, Le Pen has since consolidated her place on France's political scene, the result of a years-long effort to rebrand herself as less extreme.

Le Pen's campaign this time has sought to appeal to voters struggling with surging food and energy prices amid the fallout of Russia's war in Ukraine. The 53-year-old candidate said bringing down the cost of living would be a top priority if she was elected as France's first woman president.

She criticized Macron's 'calamitous' presidency in her last rally in the northern town of Arras.

'I'm not even mentioning immigration or security for which, I believe, every French person can only note the failure of the Macron's policies... his economic record is also catastrophic,' she declared.

Political analyst Marc Lazar, head of the History Center at Sciences Po, told the AP he thinks that Macron is going to win again. Le Pen 'has this lack of credibility,' he said.

But if Macron is re-elected, 'there is a big problem,' he added. 'A great number of the people who are going to vote for Macron, they are not voting for this program, but because they reject Marine Le Pen.'

He said that means Macron will face a 'big level of mistrust' in the country.

Macron has vowed to change the French economy to make it more independent while protecting social benefits at the same time. He said he will also keep pushing for a more powerful Europe.

His first term was rocked by the yellow vest protests against social injustice, the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. It notably forced Macron to delay a key pension reform, which he said he would relaunch soon after reelection, to gradually raise France's minimum retirement age from 62 to 65. He says that's the only way to keep benefits flowing to retirees.

The French presidential election is also being closely watched abroad.

In an opinion piece Thursday in several European newspapers, the center-left leaders of Germany, Spain and Portugal urged French voters to choose him over his nationalist rival. They raised a warning about 'populists and the extreme right' who hold Putin 'as an ideological and political model, replicating his chauvinist ideas.'
Chris Rock's mother has spoken out about the slap her son took from Will Smith at the 2022 Academy Awards, blasting the actor's actions.

Rose Rock, an author and motivational speaker, spoke to WIS-TV in South Carolina about the incident, in which Smith took to the stage and slapped Rock after he told a joke about Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, and her shaved head.

'You reacted to your wife giving you the side-eye and you went and made her day because she was mulled over laughing when it happened,' Rock said.

Rose Rock said she watched from home and initially thought the incident was staged until Smith began to say 'take my wife's name out your f--king mouth.'

'When he slapped Chris, he slapped all of us. He really slapped me.'

Chris Rock's mother Rose Rock has spoken out about the slap her son took from Will Smith at the 2022 Academy Awards, blasting the actor's actions

Rose Rock, an author and motivational speaker, spoke to WIS in South Carolina about the incident, in which Smith approached the stage and slapped Rock after he told a joke regarding Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, and her shaved head

'You reacted to your wife giving you the side-eye and you went and made her day because she was mulled over laughing when it happened,' Rock said of the incident

Rock said that her son was excited to present the award for Best Documentary Feature to friend Questlove (though Rock couldn't know that The Roots' drummer was going to win ahead of time) and that Smith's actions ruined his speech.

'No one even heard his speech. No one was able to just be in the moment because everyone was sitting there like, 'what just happened?'

The Academy banned Smith for 10 years for his actions. Rock seemed to think this was appropriate.

'I wouldn't take his award away, and I don't see any good way they could have taken him out without disrupting,' she said.

Smith apologized via Instagram, which Rock found less than convincing.

Rose Rock said she watched from home and initially thought the incident was staged until Smith began to say 'take my wife's name out your f--king mouth'

'I feel really bad that he never apologized,' she said. 'I mean his people wrote up a piece saying I apologize to Chris Rock, but you see something like that is personal, you reach out.'

Smith was all smiles as he landed in India Saturday - where he was seen for the first time since the infamous Oscar's slap.

Smith was pictured touching down in a private airport in Mumbai, where he was greeted by adoring fans who he took snaps with.

Smith is reportedly in India to meet spiritual leader Sadhguru, who Smith and his family met with back in 2020 in Los Angeles.

Dressed casually in a white t-shirt, dark grey shorts over white compression tights and a pair of Nike sneakers, Smith looked relaxed and happy after landing in the South Asian country.

As staff helped him unload his things from his vehicle nearby fans excitedly scream 'Will, Will Smith!'

Smith then takes a couple of selfies with security and turned to the fans yelling his name, giving them a wave while flashing a smile before continuing to take a few more selfies and entering a building where he gives someone a hug.

This is the first time Smith has been spotted in public nearly a month after slapping master of ceremony and comedian Chris Rock on live TV and in front of his co-stars after he n made a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith's buzzcut.

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Smith was pictured touching down in a private airport in Mumbai where he was greeted by adoring fans who he took snaps with

A happy fan gives Smith the thumbs up as he arrives in Mumbai. As staff helped him unload his things from his vehicle nearby fans excitedly scream 'Will, Will Smith!'

Dressed casually in a white t-shirt, dark grey shorts over white compression tights and a pair of Nike sneakers, Smith looked relaxed and happy after landing in India

Smith looked in high spirits as he waved to adoring fans calling out his name as he touched down in Mumbai on Saturday

Smith took the time to chat to security members helping him as he exited his cars, taking multiple pictures

After waving at fans and taking a few pictures, Smith entered the building where he greeted someone with a hug

Jada has been open in the past about her struggles with alopecia.

After the slap, Will returned to his seat and screamed 'keep my wife's name out of your f*****g mouth' twice.

The slap divided Hollywood and the public, with some insisting he should be stripped of his Oscar and not be rewarded for violence, while others said he was standing up for his wife.

Several film projects that Smith had been involved in were put on hold since the controversy, including a sequel to the actor's 2017 sci-fi action thriller 'Bright' directed by David Ayer, which was cancelled by Netflix, Bloomberg reported.

Smith's National Geographic nature series, 'Pole to Pole' which follows the 53-year-old star to the North and South Poles, and was set to begin filming in three weeks, has been paused until fall 2022, the news outlet reported.

Additional projects Smith had lined up that have been getting smacked down, include a movie for Sony that has been delayed and another Netflix project for the 'Fast and Loose'.

Netflix was in the midst of finding a new director for the film after David Leitch left the film ahead of the Academy Awards.

The Sony film, 'Bad Boys 4,' which had started pre-production before the awards ceremony, was also put on hold.

Amid mounting pressure, Will resigned from the Academy and issued an apology to Chris Rock, who has not publicly responded.

But two weeks after awards night, the Academy issued the actor with a ten-year ban from all of its events, while issuing a statement blasting his 'unacceptable' and 'harmful' behavior.

'During our telecast, we did not adequately address the situation in the room. For this, we are sorry,' the Academy's statement read. 'This was an opportunity for us to set an example for our guests, viewers and our Academy family around the world, and we fell short  unprepared for the unprecedented.

'The Board has decided, for a period of 10 years from April 8, 2022, Mr. Smith shall not be permitted to attend any Academy events or programs, in person or virtually, including but not limited to the Academy Awards.

Smith is reportedly in India to meet spiritual leader Sadhguru, who Smith and his family met with back in 2020 in Los Angeles

Smith said he was a huge fan of Sadhguru and had followed him since reading his book 'Inner Engineering' and wanted to introduce the guru to his family

Following their meeting Willow Smith revealed that Sadghuru helped her through an 'existential crisis,' saying she was filled with 'gratitude' for this moment

'We want to express our deep gratitude to Mr. Rock for maintaining his composure under extraordinary circumstances. We also want to thank our hosts, nominees, presenters and winners for their poise and grace during our telecast.'

After the decision was reached Smith released a statement saying: 'I accept and respect the Academy's decision.'

The actor had already resigned from the Academy when the ban was issued.

Smith's documented one of his meetings with Sadhguru at his LA home in 2020.

The yogi, 65, whose real name is Jaggi Vasudev and who owns an Ashram in India, started his own non-profit spiritual foundation and has more than three million followers on Twitter.

Smith said he was a huge fan of Sadhguru and had followed him since reading his book 'Inner Engineering' and wanted to introduce the guru to his family.

'I wanted my family to meet spiritual people, to start interacting with people who are not hooked on the material world,' he said.

In a clip shared to Smith's social media, Sadhguru is seen pulling up to the actor's home on a motorcycle and chatting with him and his daughter Willow.

Sadhguru tells the group: 'In any area of life, those who are most successful are always the most miserable people because they get to the top of the world and the top of the world doesn't feel like the top of the world.'

'What happened yesterday they're suffering today. Are you suffering life or your memory? You're just suffering your memory,' he tells an attentive Smith.

'What may happen tomorrow you already suffer. You're suffering your imagination!'

Following their meeting Willow Smith revealed that Sadghuru helped her through an 'existential crisis,' saying she was filled with 'gratitude' for this moment.
Pictured: Ryan and Karen Fowler with daughter Remi and their late son, Rio

The shattered parents of a toddler who was hospitalised with a stomach bug but tragically died days later with a rare artery condition pledge to help build end-of-life facilities for children.

When Ryan and Karen Fowler's four-year-old daughter Remi came home from pre-school in November 2017 with gastroenteritis - a very common condition that causes diarrhoea and vomiting - they assumed the whole family would get it.

Sure enough, 17-month-old son Rio became ill the next day - but he seemed a little sicker than Remi, so Mrs Fowler took him to Sydney Children's Hospital where doctors treated him for dehydration, before they were sent home.

However, the little boy's condition only worsened - he was later placed on a drip for eight hours, but his body wouldn't rehydrate and left doctors stumped when it effectively began to shut down.

He underwent surgery for what experts thought was a tumour, only to find out the mass they saw on the X-rays wasn't a tumour at all - it was actually a blockage in Rio's arteries which was cutting the blood supply to parts of his body.

Three days after he was hospitalised with gastro, the little boy had his leg amputated and sadly died of starvation 40 days later - when blood stopped flowing to his stomach.

Mr Fowler told Daily Mail Australia on Sunday that he does feel frustrated and angry sometimes because his son died from a condition so rare it still has no name, but he is eternally grateful the family had access to palliative care at Bear Cottage.

Rio seemed like a healthy child before he got a common stomach bug. Pictured with his mum Karen and older sister, Remi

Ryan Fowler (pictured left with Rio) said his oldest son seemed perfectly healthy before he got gastro

Bear Cottage is one of only three end-of-life facilities for children in Australia - there is one in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, but the Fowlers want to change that.

'I lost my mum when I was young and I'd been to hospices with her, but I never thought I'd be there with my son - I knew this was where he was going to die,' he said.

'We had so much care at Bear Cottage - they made us cups of tea when we didn't even ask, they took our daughter to Wiggles concerts and had therapists talk to her, and basically did things with her we couldn't do because of Rio's condition.

'We were able to operate as a family while Rio was so sick - they even have a dog who will go in and sit with a child and keep them comfort if they're alone in a room.'

After Rio died in January 2018, his parents made a charity called Rio's Legacy and started raising money to fund hospices for kids.

Rio's health deteriorated quickly after he went to hospital with gastro. Rio is pictured with his mother, Karen

Rio had his leg amputated at just 17 months old. Doctors had never done that surgery on a baby before

'There are only three here when there are over 50 in the UK, and I think it's because kids dying isn't spoken about - it's a tough subject,' Mr Fowler said.

'The head of ICU at Sydney Children's Hospital in Randwick told me companies will donate machines to help kids get better, but unfortunately that's not always the case.

'It sucks that my son was in that category, but Bear Cottage made such a difference to my family and other people in our position should have access to the same thing.'

Mr Fowler has type one diabetes - a chronic autoimmune condition where the body destroys insulin-producing cells in the pancreas - but continues to challenge his body and run huge distances to raise money for his charity.

The 40-year-old ran from Sydney to Melbourne in 2018, he then cycled from Adelaide to Sydney via Melbourne in 2019, and plans to run the Sydney City2Surf later this year.

Pictured: Rio with an amputated leg. He didn't survive for long after his leg was removed

Pictured: Rio with his mum Karen, dad Ryan, and big sister Remi - before Rio got sick

'It's tough to run and ride with diabetes, but I do my best - it's amazing what you can do when you're inspired by your little boy like I am,' he said.

'He'd be about five now - he was my first little boy and I was looking forward to doing things with him, like riding a bike.

'By doing this, I feel like I can still run and ride with him.'

When Mr Fowler found out that one family in need had to fly from Western Australia to Sydney to access end-of-life care for their child, he realised there was a severe need for more facilities in the country.

Through the charity, the family raised $600,000 to go towards the first palliative care house for children in WA.

Ryan Fowler (pictured) has diabetes, but continues to push his body to raise money for his charity

Pictured: Rio Fowler, before he got sick. Doctors still don't have a name for his illness

When Rio was admitted to hospital for the third time with severe dehydration, doctors sent him straight to ICU when they realised his heartbeat was well over 228 beats per minute.

The average heartbeat for a child between one and three years' old is between about 80 and 150 beats per minute.

Surgeons tried to work fast to figure out what was going on, and thought a mass on Rio's chest X-ray was a tumour.

He was raced into a six-hour surgery, only to work out the mass wasn't a tumour at all - it was a blockage in his arteries, which essentially stopped his blood flowing properly.

'Every time they tried to get Rio's blood pressure down, his arms and legs would change colour,' Mr Fowler said.

'His blood pressure was so high because his body was trying so hard to get blood pumping properly - the blood flow to his right leg in particular was so bad that his body made new veins.'

The Fowlers had another baby boy, Levi (pictured), after Rio passed away. They are pictured with Remi, who is now 8

Even with all the effort Rio's little body was putting into keeping him alive, it wasn't enough - his arteries were clogged so badly in some areas that there was no blood flow at all.

The following day - just three days after Rio was admitted to hospital with gastro - his right leg deteriorated to the point where it had to be amputated.

'There was no blood flow to that leg at all, and there hadn't been for a while - the doctors couldn't believe he was walking around on it a few days earlier,' Mr Fowler recalled.

Sadly, the little boy got gangrene on the remaining part of his leg - a potentially fatal condition which happens when the blood flow to a large area of tissue is cut off, causing healthy tissue to break down and die.

Surgeons had no choice but to give Rio a hindquarter amputation - where the entire leg is removed, along with part of the pelvis.

'They'd never done a surgery like that on a kid before, and they'd never seen the arteries clog up like his,' Mr Fowler said.

'It progressed so quickly, and doctors eventually said his condition was life-limiting - I'd never heard that term before.'

Rio's arteries were clotting at such an alarming rate there was nothing anyone could do to save him.

Levi is two and does not have the same condition his brother had. His parents said Rio's condition was not genetic

His parents couldn't take him home because he needed special equipment and he was on a lot of medication, so doctors suggested they go to Bear Cottage.

Rio's death certificate says arterial vasculopathy - which means inflammation of the arteries, but Mr Fowler said experts had never seen anything like it in a person so young, and that condition alone isn't a cause of death.

'We had genetic testing and counselling and there are no genetic indicators at all,' Mr Fowler said.

Their daughter Remi, who is now eight, was tested and cleared, and their youngest son Levi - who was born after Rio died - was tested, and he's also fine.

Rio appeared happy and healthy before his sister came home with gastro and, while they'll never know for sure, they believe that's what triggered his artery collapse.

The only way the Fowlers can rationalise what happened to their eldest son is to believe he was born for a reason.

'We're Christian and our faith has helped us a lot to get through it and understand it the best we can.

'Rio was a little trooper and I'm proud of the legacy he's been able to give - I wish he was still here and I miss him - he fought so hard, and he was a gift to us.'
First Lady Jill Biden was opposed to her husband selected Kamala Harris as his presidential running mate, according to an explosive new book.

Jill Biden expressed her frustration with the selection of Harris, who lashed out at Joe Biden in the first Democratic primary debate, New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns wrote in their upcoming book This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future.

The first lady reportedly said in a conversation that 'there are millions of people in the United States' and asked 'why do we have to choose the one who attacked Joe,' according to an excerpt of the book provided to Fox News.

At the primary debate in June 2019, Harris launched an explosive broadside at Biden, who at the time was taking criticism for remarks about working with segregationists in Congress. Biden had remarked: 'at least there was some civility. We got things done.'

First Lady Jill Biden was reportedly opposed to her husband selected Kamala Harris as his presidential running mate after she lashed out at him in the Democratic primary debate

At the primary debate in June 2019, Harris launched an explosive broadside at Biden, all but accusing him of racism over his opposition to desegregation busing in the 1970s

At the debate, Harris told Biden, 'I do not believe you are a racist' but went on to slam his remarks as 'hurtful' and to accuse him of working with segregationists in the Senate 'to oppose busing.'

Biden did oppose school busing in the 1970s, when it was a controversial measure to racially integrate schools.

In one of the most memorable moments of the primary, Harris then told Biden: 'There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.'

According to the new book, Biden himself expressed reservations about selecting Harris for his ticket.

Noting her 'past romantic relationship with Willie Brown, the California politician who appointed Harris to a pair of minor political positions,' the book said Biden described romance 'as the kind of thing that should be off limits.'

Harris had a relationship with Brown, who later served as San Francisco's mayor, between 1994 and 1995, when Harris was beginning her career in the Alameda County District Attorney's Office.

Biden reportedly described Harris' romance with political mentor Willi Brown 'as the kind of thing that should be off limits.' Brown and Harris openly dated in 1995 (above)

At the time, Brown was 60 and a powerful figure in California politics, serving as speaker of the state assembly, and Harris was 29 and just getting started in politics.

Though Brown was legally married at the time, he had been separated from his wife for more than a decade, and Harris and Brown made no secret of their relationship, appearing in public together.

Despite Joe and Jill Biden's reported concerns with Harris, she also had her champions in the Biden campaign, according to the new book.

Ron Klain, now the White House chief of staff, had been tasked with vetting vice presidential candidates and, according to the book he told Biden early on that Harris was most qualified for the job.

'Yes, Harris had attacked Biden more harshly than any other major candidate in the Democratic primaries. Yes, the Biden family had seen it as a smear and a betrayal. In Klain's assessment, that would work to Biden's advantage,' the book states.

Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris, Jill Biden and Joe Biden wave as they arrive on the East Front of the U.S. Capitol for the inauguration on January 20, 2021 in Washington, DC

'Choosing Harris will show people that you are magnanimous and forgiving, Klain told Biden. It will show the country just what a unifying leader you can be.'

Since taking office as Biden's vice president last year, Harris has been plagued by sinking approval ratings, negative headlines, and a steady exodus of top staffers that has raised questions about the work environment in her office.

This week Harris' chief of staff Tina Flournoy became the 12th staffer, and the most senior, to depart her office, after a series of reports about internal conflicts.

The list of those leaving now includes her deputy chief of staff, her speechwriter, her chief spokeswoman, her security advisor, and other figures in her staff.

It all comes at a time of increased scrutiny on the White House ahead of 2024, following a report that Biden told Barack Obama he plans to run again at the age of 81.

Rumors have run rampant among Beltway insiders that Biden seeks to swap running mates in 2024 -- but he has denied those claims.

U.S. President Joe Biden pumps his fists as Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation on April 8

In January, was asked whether he was satisfied with Harris' work on voting rights and if he could 'guarantee' to keep her as a running mate and responded: 'Yes and yes.'

Pressed to elaborate, Biden said: 'There's no need to, I answered the question.'

'She's going to be my running mate, number one,' he said. 'And number two, I did put her in charge. I think she's doing a good job.'

Other juicy details of tension and chaos in the VP's office have trickled out in leaked excerpts of the new book, 'This Will Not Pass'.

Harris' office kicked up a fuss over a Vogue cover that pictured the vice president in sneakers before being told to back down by President Biden's office who said concerns over the cover were 'first world problems,' according to the book.

Harris reportedly sent out her chief of staff to scold Biden's staffers for not standing up when she entered the room, the way they do for the president, and her some in her office complained about Biden's 'all-white inner circle.'

They complained about Harris being assigned to work on immigration with Northern Triangle countries, and the VP herself hissed at Biden for calling her 'border czar,' insisting she was focused on the 'root causes' of immigration, according to the book.
Seven people have been injured and one left in critical condition after a fire erupted at a hotel in North Adelaide.

Witnesses reported hearing explosions as the blaze took hold at the Comfort Hotel Meridien on Melbourne Street just after 6:30am on Sunday morning.

At least seven people have been taken to hospital with one person left in a critical condition as firefighters fought the 'intense' flames.

South Australian Police said firefighters rescued over 15 people from the hotel using ladders and aerial appliances and evacuated 95 rooms.

Fire Cause Investigators have determined the fire was accidental.

@SA_MFS crews are curretnly working to extinguish a #fire in a motel on Melbourne St #NorthAdelaide. Multiple appliances are present. Traffic and the public are asked to avoid the area.  SA Metropolitan Fire (@SA_MFS) April 23, 2022

Witnesses reported hearing explosions were heard as the blaze took hold at the Comfort Hotel Meridien (pictured) on Melbourne Street on Sunday morning

Billy-Kelly Ingrim was just three doors down from where the fire erupted and said he heard a 'pop' and a woman screaming.

'The smell (of smoke) was really potent,' he told The Advertiser.

'We just shouted 'it's a fire' and everybody started screaming and we all got out and made it by coming down the stairs.'

Another hotel guest said he heard 'five consecutive explosions like a bang' at about 7am and then saw a man being brought down on a crane.

It's understood guests were allowed back into their rooms at about 10am.
A half-price ticket campaign to encourage people to return to the railways was last night dubbed by critics the Great British Rail Fail.

The sale, publicised last week by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, offers the discounted fares on travel from tomorrow until May 27.

But figures from the Office of Rail and Road and the Department for Transport suggest that of the potential 150 million journeys that could take place in those five weeks, only one million will have the discounts  or 0.66 per cent.

Shapps touted the rail sale with a not-so-slick marketing video dubbed 'cringe' on Twitter

And that figure includes tickets on less popular routes that have still not been snapped up since the sale began last Tuesday.

Bosses blame Queen for bank holiday chaos Transport chiefs are blaming the expected chaos on the rail network over the May Bank Holiday weekend on the Queen. Some journey times will treble when around 300 sets of engineering work, costing 70 million, are undertaken over three days, starting on Saturday. Network Rail says it has increased the amount of work being carried out over the period to reduce disruption to the Queens Jubilee Bank Holiday weekend in June. Former Transport Minister Norman Baker, spokesman for the Campaign for Better Transport, said: Its not fair to blame the Jubilee. Theres never a perfect time to do engineering works, but Network Rail does far too many closures for works. Its about time it started putting passengers first. The West Coast Main Line  serving the West Midlands, North-West England and West Scotland  will be severely hit next weekend when its London terminus at Euston is closed. Passengers taking flights will be affected too. The Gatwick Express will be suspended for three days because of rail engineering work, while travellers using the Stansted Express will have to board replacement buses for part of their journey due to rail work. A Network Rail spokesman said: Theres never a good time to do such disruptive work. We want to avoid impacting the Jubilee weekend and the Commonwealth Games [July 28 to August 8] in Birmingham when demand for rail travel is expected to be high. The vast majority of the network is open for business as usual over the May Bank Holiday weekend. Rail passengers using Londons Paddington station yesterday found journeys disrupted or cancelled due to a shortage of staff at Network Rails Thames Valley Signalling Centre in Didcot. Some Heathrow Express services were affected. Advertisement

Some of the tickets offered in the sale can even be found at lower prices elsewhere online.

Bruce Williamson, from campaign group Railfuture, said: A million reduced-price tickets sounds like a lot, but it really is a drop in the ocean compared to the tens of millions of rail journeys made.

The sale tickets are for more lightly-used services. Busier services are not included.

Advance fares on many of the more popular routes and times in the sale have already sold out.

There has also been anger that the sale would not help commuters travelling at busier times, nor families going away over the next half-term holiday.

Passenger Lee Butterley tweeted: Just as useless as Id imagined discounted tickets at ridiculous times. Its a #GreatBritish RailFail.

Some savings saw the price of travelling between Manchester and Newcastle cut to just over 10 while seats on some London to Edinburgh services fell from 44 to 22.

However, it is possible to buy a non-sale ticket between the Scottish and English capitals for 20.90 with new operator Lumo.

And Greater Manchesters Mayor, Andy Burnham, took to social media last week to note that it can be cheaper to fly to India, Brazil and Jamaica than catch a train to London from his city.

He said a return ticket from Manchester to the capital could cost as much as 369.40.

In contrast a trip to India was 343, while flights to Brazil cost 325, and those to Jamaica are 345.

Can we now agree that 369.40 for a two-hour rail journey and 400-mile round trip is daylight robbery? he tweeted.

Some routes in the sale  which ends on May 2  will not even have trains running on certain dates, due to engineering works.

And two weekends in May do not have tickets available on services run by Avanti on the West Coast Main Line, as it has still not finalised its timetables.

Meanwhile, customers who had bought tickets before the sale was announced were fuming.

Tim Saunders tweeted: Its galling as Id already bought advance tickets but now they are cheaper.

Mr Shapps was accused of turning himself into a laughing stock last week by wearing sunglasses and a hoodie in a YouTube video to promote the sale.

He lauded the attractions of London, Cornwall, the Lake District and Edinburgh saying: Weve had two years of living virtually. It is time to get real and visit our beautiful country.

The Rail Delivery Group, which represents railway operators, said: We want peoples first journeys back on trains after Covid to be on trains and routes with more capacity, to ensure a more enjoyable experience.

The Department for Transport would not say why only a small percentage of journeys were in the sale but a spokesman added: Operators are offering unprecedented discounts to help people see the country and connect with friends and families.
Priti Patel last night accused the BBC's coverage of her Rwanda migrant plan as carrying 'undercurrents of xenophobia'.

In her latest war of words with the broadcaster, the Home Secretary accused the corporation of 'stereotyping' the central African nation and 'showing prejudice'.

She told the Sunday Telegraph: 'I was quite taken aback just by the tone of [BBC journalists'] references to Rwanda.'

In a new interview, Priti Patel said some BBC reporters were guilty of xenophobia (pictured in Rwandan capital Kigali, where the Home Secretary announced the migrant deal on April 14)

The corporation's coverage had 'undercurrents' of xenophobia similar to points made by opponents of the deal, she said.

Patel stated: 'When you hear the critics start to stereotype, start to generalise, first of all that's all very offensive. It's deeply offensive, and it's based on ignorance and prejudice, some of this, in my view.

'I could call them lazy and sloppy characterisations, but actually they're not.

'I was in Parliament on Tuesday and there are undercurrents, if I may say so, of just sheer xenophobia, which I think is absolutely appalling.'

Patel said the BBC has been responsible in part for some 'sheer xenophobia' toward Rwanda

A BBC spokesman, responding to the comments, said: 'The governments agreement to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda led to considerable public debate.

'Journalists from the BBC and other media were there to report the story and ask questions about the plan.'

Patel's fiery comments look set to reignite a conflict between the BBC and the Government.

Patel's plan seeks to move prospective migrants to Rwanda while their claims are processed (Channel migrants pictured arriving in Kent on April 14, the same day the deal was launched)

Just weeks ago the government-appointed Ofcom chair and Tory grandee Lord Grade criticised the BBC licence fee 'regressive' in an appearance before MPs.

Lord Grade, 79, spoke in favour of privatising Channel 4 and attacked the BBC's coverage of events such as the Downing Street parties as 'gleeful and disrespectful'.

The former controller of BBC One reiterated his critique of the licence fee's unfairness, stating: 'I didn't think that was an opinion, I thought that was a statement of fact, actually.'

Earlier this year the Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries hit the Corporation with a two-year licence fee freeze  as her allies warned that the days of state-run television are over.

Tense negotiations between the Government and the BBC over the cost of the annual fee until the end of 2027 concluded in January, with Ms Dorries deciding to hold the licence at 159 for the next two years.

Officials calculate that the Corporation will have to find savings of more than 2 billion over the next six years as a result of the freeze.
Ukrainian leaders were 'desperate' to buy weapons from the UK following Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014, but were turned down by three successive prime ministers, it was claimed last night.

Former defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon told the Sunday Times how concerns over provoking Vladimir Putin appeared to trump the plight of the Ukrainian leadership.

When serving under former Conservative prime minister David Cameron, for example, he claims he was told to turn down requests for assistance in upgrading Ukraine's defences despite the Ministry of Defence wanting 'to do more'.

He said this policy was in place for seven years, and was only lifted in the weeks before the invasion in February of this year.

'We were stymied and we were blocked in Cabinet from sending the Ukrainians the arms they needed,' Mr Fallon told the newspaper.

'Some in the Cabinet felt extremely strongly that we should do nothing to further provoke Russia.

Former defence secretary Michael Fallon (pictured) told the Sunday Times how concerns over provoking Vladimir Putin appeared to trump the plight of the Ukrainian leadership.

When serving under former Conservative prime minister David Cameron (pictured left), for example, Mr Fallon claims he was told to turn down requests for assistance in upgrading Ukraine's defences despite the Ministry of Defence wanting 'to do more'. This policy was continued by Theresa May (pictured right), he said.

'I felt that was absurd. The Russians didn't need any provoking. They were already there, sending people across the border.'

He added that during his years as defence secretary, between 2014 and 2017, Ukraine was 'desperate' to buy British weapons.

He said: '[They] wanted almost everything. They were not able to resist the incursions into Donbas. At times they had little more than rifles.'

But the policy initiated by Cameron's government, he claimed, was to not send any lethal weaponry to the country.

This was adhered to by his successor Theresa May, who in November 2017 accused Russia of running malign cybercampaigns 'to sow discord in the West and undermine our institutions'.

However, she made it clear she did not want to alienate Russia and cause another Cold War, adding: 'So while we must beware, we also want to engage, which is why in the coming months the foreign secretary will be visiting Moscow.'

Even Mr Johnson sought a 'normalisation' of relations with Moscow when he was foreign secretary in 2016 - which was after the illegal annexation of Crimea, the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 and the Kremlin's military support to President Assad's bloody regime in Syria.

Even Boris Johnson (pictured) sought a 'normalisation' of relations with Moscow when he was foreign secretary in 2016 - which was after the illegal annexation of Crimea, the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 and the Kremlin's military support to President Assad's bloody regime in Syria.

In a series of tweets, Boris Johnson (pictured with Zelensky during trip to Kyiv) said Britain will provide Ukraine with 'further military aid', including armoured vehicles

In stark contrast to today, Mr Johnson was vocal about sending only non-lethal military equipment to Ukraine, despite calls from his colleagues to give the former Soviet state weapons that might have actually deterred Russian attacks.

But according to the Sunday Times, such calls were ignored and the policy of sending real arms and weaponry to Ukraine was not lifted until a few weeks before the invasion this year.

It suggest Mr Johnson's government, too, rejected Ukraine's pleas for weapons until very recently.

It comes as the current Ukrainian president Saturday praised Britain's efforts in training his military.

Volodymyr Zelensky told a press conference in Kyiv that the UK, along with the US, was supplying the 'biggest military aid' in its struggle against Moscow's invading forces.

Boris Johnson vows to re-open UK embassy in Kyiv while warning Putin his regime will be held to account in a series of tweets on Saturday evening

In a phone call earlier on Saturday, he personally thanked Boris Johnson for Britain providing training on home soil, with Ukraine's armed forces being taught how to use armoured vehicles that are being given to boost the war effort in eastern Europe.

In the run-up to and during the current incursion, London has emerged as one of Ukraine's closest allies in terms of supplying Nato-class weapons.

Mr Zelensky expressed his gratitude in a conversation with the Prime Minister on Saturday and during a press conference in his country's capital.

Asked during a briefing about military support from the West, he told reporters: 'We want more than we're being given, but we're satisfied.

'We cannot refuse or reject anything during the war from the biggest military aid, which is coming from the United States and the United Kingdom.

'There are many other friends in Europe, but I'm talking about volumes of help and I'm grateful for it.'

In an earlier series of tweets Saturday, the prime minister also said Britain will provide the country with 'further military aid', including armoured vehicles.

The Conservative leader then warned Vladimir Putin's regime that his government will be collecting evidence on potential 'war crimes', saying Russia must be 'held to account'.

He wrote: 'Today I spoke with President @ZelenskyyUa to update him on the latest steps the UK is taking to support Ukraine.

'We are providing further military aid, including protected mobility vehicles. We have issued new sanctions against members of the Russian military.

'We will be reopening our embassy in Kyiv, demonstrating our solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

'And the UK government is helping to collect evidence of war crimes. Russia must be held to account for its actions.'

Mr Zelensky also announced that he will hold talks with the US secretary of state Antony Blinken and secretary of defence Lloyd Austin in Kyiv on Sunday - a meeting taking place more than two weeks after Mr Johnson made a similar trip east.

When the Prime Minister was on a trade trip to India last week, he revealed that Ukrainian forces were in the UK as part of British efforts to support the territorial defence.

More than 20 soldiers arrived last week for training on 120 armoured vehicles, including the Mastiff, Wolfhound and Husky, that are being supplied to help resist Moscow's advances.

The battle for Donbas in eastern Ukraine continues to rage but Saturday also saw fresh attacks in the south, with a missile strike in Odesa killing a three-month-old baby and another five people.

In the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said Russian forces launched an offensive on a steel plant in an apparent bid to eliminate the last stand by Kyiv's defenders.

An estimated 1,000 civilians remain sheltered in the Azovstal plant alongside the remaining 2,000 Ukrainian fighters.

Mr Putin only two days ago ordered that Russian troops not be sent into the plant but instead that the facility be blocked off, in an apparent attempt to starve out the Ukrainians and force their surrender.

In footage shared online of the conditions in Azovstal, one young girl said she and her relatives 'haven't seen neither the sky, nor the sun' since they left home on February 27, with fears food supplies are running low after the two-month siege.

During Mr Johnson and Mr Zelensky's telephone conversation, No 10 said both leaders joined in condemning the attacks by Russian forces against civilian targets in Mariupol and Odesa, as well as in the west of the country in Lviv.
1,500 destitute Afghans receive China-donated humanitarian assistance

Xinhua) 09:05, April 24, 2022

People receive food donated by China in Kabul, Afghanistan, April 23, 2022. The Ministry for Refugees and Repatriation Affairs distributed China-donated humanitarian assistance to 1,500 destitute people here on Saturday.(Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)

KABUL, April 23 (Xinhua) -- The Ministry for Refugees and Repatriation Affairs distributed China-donated humanitarian assistance to 1,500 destitute people here on Saturday.

"Today we distributed the humanitarian assistance to 1,500 needy people and would continue to help needy families next week," Minister for Refugees and Repatriation Affairs Khalil-ur-Rahman Haqqani told reporters.

In the meantime, Spokesman for the ministry Abdul Mutalib Haqqani told Xinhua that each needy person received a 50 kg sack of rice donated by China in humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan.

"We are thankful to China for providing assistance to the people of Afghanistan at this critical stage," Haqqani told Xinhua.

The war-torn Afghanistan has been facing extreme economic problem since the defeat of the U.S.-led forces and their evacuation from Afghanistan last August. Washington has frozen more than 9.5 billion U.S. dollars of Afghanistan's asserts in U.S. banks that further worsened the country's fragile economy.

"I am grateful to China and other countries including the neighboring states for providing humanitarian assistance to us and hope such a cooperation will continue," an aid recipient Farid Ahmad, 35, who is also the head of a 10-member family, told Xinhua.

Welcoming the assistance, an aged widow only identified as Halima, 60, said, "I received a bag of rice and have to cook it without cooking oil to feed her three-member family."

The Chinese government announced last September that it has decided to provide food, winter supplies, COVID-19 vaccines, and medicines worth 200 million yuan (about 31.4 million U.S. dollars) in emergency humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.

China has provided a total of 6,220 tons of food aid to Afghanistan.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Hongyu)
ABUJA, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Three police officers were killed early Saturday when unidentified shooters attacked a police station in central Nigeria, police authorities said.

The police officers were killed when repelling the attack in Adavi Local Government Area in the central state of Kogi, said Edward Egbuka, the state police chief, in a statement.

The shooters, who had shot sporadically in an attempt to break into the security facility, "took the policemen on duty by surprise," he said.

"The hoodlums fled with gunshot wounds, as they could not get access into the station. Operatives are trailing the hoodlums with a view to apprehending and bringing them to book," Egbuka said, adding a team of tactical operatives has been deployed to the area to restore normalcy. 
Residents on the Isles of Scilly face having to fly or take the ferry to their nearest bank after the last branch there closes its doors tomorrow.

Businesses and residents of the isolated community are outraged at the decision by Lloyds to shut its St Marys branch.

Joseph Badcock, 53, said: Its going to be hard for the elderly and the vulnerable. I run a business here and luckily I can use online banking. But there will be a lot of people who cant. Travelling to the mainland will cost people money.

Barclays closed their island branch four years ago and Lloyds have sought to justify this closure by saying that just 33 customers visited at least once a month, and 71 per cent of residents now prefer online banking.

Businesses and residents of the isolated community are outraged at the decision by Lloyds to shut its St Marys branch

In a letter, Lloyds told customers that their new nearest branch would be just 44.15 miles away  but it failed to explain how arduous the trip will be.

One option is a ferry from St Marys to Penzance, which takes two hours and 45 minutes and costs around 140, followed by an 11-minute walk to the nearest Lloyds.

Travellers would also be forced to stay overnight because the journey times do not align with the banks opening hours.

However, the ferry does not run between December and February, leaving a flight as the only option. A daytime return starts at 127.

Age UK expressed concern that the trip would be too strenuous for some and pointed out that many people still rely on local banks.

There are 2,300 permanent residents on the islands, but the population reaches more than 4,000 in the summer months.

Lloyds has promised to keep their ATM on the island open and will test sending a community banker over once every two weeks.

The local Post Office is likely to end up having to deal with smaller financial issues.
A Florida sheriff is encouraging residents to take gun safety courses after a homeowner frightened a prospective burglar by firing at them - saying that residents of the state are 'more than welcome' to shoot and kill intruders and that he would 'prefer you do, actually.'

Santa Rosa County Sheriff's deputies caught Brandon J. Harris of Milton, 32, after his burglary spree in the town of Pace on Wednesday when he was cornered by officers after fleeing from an armed homeowner, Sheriff Bob Johnson said the next day at the press conference.

'Probably 20 deputies get there, the dogs are out, and he's jumping fences and breaking into houses as he goes,' Johnson recounted.

'One of the homeowners, he was breaking into their house, and they shot at him. So he continues to run, we finally corner him in a house that he broke into on Tom Sawyer and we cornered him in a bedroom.'

Harris was charged with attempted burglary with assault, resisting arrest, criminal mischief, attempted larceny and other charges. His bond was set at $157,500.

Although the resident on Tom Sawyer Road fired several shots at the intruder around 5:12 p.m. that day, Johnson said, none of them hit.

That homeowner hasn't come forward to police, but the sheriff said they won't face charges - and did the right thing.

'I guess they think they did something wrong, which they did not. If someone's breaking into your house, you're more than welcome to shoot them in Santa Rosa County. We prefer that you do, actually.'

Sheriff Bob Johnson (pictured) commended the homeowner who shot at the burglar on Thursday, saying 'if someone's breaking into your house, you're more than welcome to shoot them in Santa Rosa County' and that his department would 'prefer it if you do'

Brandon J. Harris of Milton, 32, was thwarted in his spree of home invasions on Wednesday by an armed Pace homeowner who fired several shots at him frightening him out of their house and toward the deputies who captured him

'So, whoever that was, you're not in trouble, come see us.'

Johnson also suggested that the unidentified homeowner - and other residents - take the departments' gun safety classes.

'We have a gun safety class we put on every other Saturday. If you take that, you'll shoot a lot better,' he said.

'Hopefully you'll save the taxpayers money.'

In 2005, Florida became the first state in the nation to enact a 'Stand Your Ground law, which said people could use firearms or other lethal force against home intruders if they 'reasonably believed' they faced an imminent threat of death or serious injury.

More than 20 other states followed Florida's lead, passing similar self-defense laws. In all, 23 states currently have 'Stand Your Ground' laws on the books.

Johnson said Harris has long history of run-ins with local law enforcement beginning when he was just 13 years old - since, the sheriff said, he's been had 'like 17 arrests.'

Harris is pictured on home surveillance footage in a home on Tom Sawyer Road, barricading himself into a room in an attempt to evade police

The burglar hurled himself from a window after running into a house to evade capture - and was immediately cornered by Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Deputies

'We sent him to prison for six and a half years for home invasion, and he just can't seen to get the picture of crime does not pay,' he said.

Harris has previous charges of aggravated assault, battery and violation of probation, according to the Pensacola News Journal. He is also registered as a high-risk sex offender.

Surveillance footage shown at the press conference showed Harris barricading himself into a bedroom in the house where he was cornered, then jumping headfirst out of a closed window, shattering the glass.

He was then swiftly captured in the backyard by deputies.

'They set up a perimeter really quick, closed it in as they found locations on him, then finally caught him on Tom Sawyer,' Johnson said. 'So it was a great job by the deputies.'
Scott Morrison has made a special appearance at a Greek Orthodox mass at the conclusion of the second week of the federal election race.

The Prime Minister attended the crowded midnight service at the Kogarah Greek Orthodox Church in Sydney with his wife Jenny and Dr Lina Mendoni on Sunday morning.

Dr Mendoni, who is Greece's culture minister under Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, is currently visiting Australia.

Scott Morrison has made a special appearance at a Greek Orthodox mass at the conclusion of the second week of the federal election race

The Prime Minister attended the crowded mass service at the Kogarah Greek Orthodox Church in Sydney with his wife Jenny and Dr Lina Mendoni on Sunday morning

The trio were amongst hundreds of church-goers who took part in the early morning service.

The Prime Minister sat near the altar in front of the crowd as the mass was conducted.

At the conclusion of the ceremony he attempted to speak Greek in front of the worshippers, which was met with laughs and cheers, reports The Daily Telegraph.

One attendee said he was grateful the Prime Minister 'tried' to speak the language while another added that he had 'no idea' what Mr Morrison was saying.

The trio were amongst thousands of church-goers who took part in the early morning service

Scott Morrison, his wife Jenny and Dr Mendoni, were all pictured carrying candles and greeting attendees

The Prime Minister soon switched back to English after trying to speak a few lines in Greek, thanking the crowd for their 'great sense of community'.

'You are lighting up this country tonight with your faith and your belief and your community,' he said.

'Let us pray for peace...in Ukraine [and] for our nation.'

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg also attended a Greek Orthodox mass in North Balwyn in Melbourne.

He shared images of the service to his social media accounts, writing, 'Kalo Pascha to our wonderful Greek community!'

'Together with thousands of people, it was special to be a part of an Easter service at The Presentation Of Our Lady To The Temple Greek Orthodox Parish in North Balwyn.'

The Prime Minister sat pride-of-place on the altar in front of the crowd as the mass was conducted

Mr Morrison attempted to speak Greek in front of the worshippers, which was met with laughs and cheers, and one parishioner saying he had no idea what the prime minister said

The midnight appearance came after Mr Morrison was slammed for not doing a press conference on the Solomon Islands security deal with China on Saturday.

The Prime Minister was campaigning on the NSW Central Coast but refused to take questions from reporters on the pact.

Instead, Mr Morrison discussed the economy and also announced a $20 million fund for an outdoor recreational package as he toured West Gosford in the Liberal seat of Robertson at a campaign rally for supporters.

The Opposition has consistently slammed the Government for its 'epic failure' in permitting negotiation of the agreement, with questions raised over how soon they became aware of the deal.
Tech firms are buying up new washing machines so they can harvest their computer parts in a desperate bid to beat the global microchip shortage.

Once solely used in PCs and mobile phones, semiconductors are now vital in cars, kitchen appliances, TVs, smart speakers, thermostats, smart light bulbs and even some dog collars.

Microchip manufacturers are unable to meet the ever-growing demand  accelerated by families buying more computers and gadgets during lockdown  as it takes two years and billions of pounds to build each factory.

Severe shortages have hit production at multinational firms, from car giants such as Tesla and Ford to appliance firms such as Bosch and Hotpoint and video games console makers Sony and Microsoft

Severe shortages have hit production at multinational firms, from car giants such as Tesla and Ford to appliance firms such as Bosch and Hotpoint and video games console makers Sony and Microsoft.

Hardest hit are car makers, which can end up with vehicles worth 100,000 or more stuck in factories because they cannot get hold of basic chips that two years ago cost just 1.

They are now having to resort to buying washing machines and cannibalising them for semiconductors rather than wait six months with such expensive goods stuck in a factory.

Modern washing machines can contain several chips which allow the operation of touchscreen displays, wi-fi connection, load weight sensors and fault detectors.

Stuart Miles, founder of technology website Pocket-lint, said: It is good old scavenger tactics. In this case, a company needs a part that is vital for its finished product, say a car, and they have to get creative getting it.

You can imagine the beleaguered procurement team whose struggles to get a sensor are holding up products worth tens of thousands.

They probably had a Eureka moment, but rather than being in the bath as Archimedes was, they were likely putting the dirty laundry in the washing machine, tapping away at its TV-style display to pick which cycle to use.

They rushed breathlessly into the next board meeting and proclaimed, I have solved it. We are going to buy 10,000 washing machines and we can take the sensors out of them. What are we going to do with the leftover appliances? Lets worry about that tomorrow.

The desperate tactics emerged last week when Dutch company ASML, which sells chip-making machines to firms such as Intel and Samsung, reported its first quarter earnings.

Peter Wennink, the firms boss, told investors a major company had informed him it had resorted to buying washing machines and tearing out the chips inside them. He did not name the firm, but it is thought to be linked to the automotive industry.

The demand we are currently seeing comes from so many places in the industry, Mr Wennink said, pointing to the growth of the so-called Internet of Things where increasing numbers of products are connected to each other.

Its so widespread. We have significantly underestimated the width of the demand. That, I dont think, is going to go away, he added. At present, there is a year-long wait for ASMLs machines that print circuits on to semiconductors. It has a near-monopoly of some of the more complex devices.

Chip shortages have particularly hit new car deliveries, with sales down on 2019 figures despite higher demand. Cars use 15 per cent of all chips made, with each vehicle needing around 3,000.

When the pandemic started, vehicle-makers cancelled chip orders as demand plummeted. Other gadget makers snapped up the spare production space for laptops, tablets, TVs and smart appliances. Vehicle makers are now struggling. Chip shortages are expected to continue into next year or even 2024, with the market expected to double in value to 779 billion by 2030, according to analysts.

Manufacturers are gearing up to meet demand.

Intel last month said it is investing 28 billion in research and factories in Europe. TSMC  the Taiwanese firm that has become the worlds biggest chipmaker by supplying firms such as Apple, Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm  is investing $100 billion 78 billion over the next three years while rival manufacturer Samsung is going further, investing 150 billion.

RUTH SUNDERLAND: Proof global shortages are turning the economy upside down

By Ruth Sunderland for the Mail on Sunday

When the bosses of big industrial conglomerates are reduced to scavenging like Steptoe & Son to get their hands on vital components, its obvious something has gone badly wrong in the global economy.

The very idea that global captains of industry are ordering subordinates to dismantle domestic appliances for their semi-conductor chips shows we are in the realms of Alice In Wonderland.

We had better get used to it, though. The old pre-pandemic, pre-Ukraine war world, when the global supply chains that power modern economies whirred away seamlessly, can no longer be taken for granted.

Microchips are a particular problem because they are at the core of all the essential machinery of our lives, from cars to smartphones to fridges. And it is not easy just to ramp up production. They may be tiny, but their fabrication is an elaborate process involving more than 3,000 steps.

(As an aside, the current supply crisis does make one question the wisdom of the UK Government, which has failed so far to intervene in the sale of a Welsh microchip factory to China and which previously permitted our national champion Arm to be sold to Japanese investors in 2016.)

Unfortunately, the supply bottlenecks go far beyond semi-conductors. They have even hit the other variety of chip  prices are going up due to a shortage of sunflower oil, much of which comes from Ukraine. As for the fish that would have been served alongside, it turns out we were importing loads from Russia.

Most people dont devote much thought to the intricacies of supply chains. Until recently, they havent needed to: stuff simply appeared when we wanted it. But the economic model underpinning such luxuriant availability may be vanishing before our eyes.

A combination of factors, including Covid-19, Vladimir Putins vile aggression, a rise in economic nationalism and climate change, is playing havoc with the supply of vital goods and foodstuffs.

The question at this stage is whether it is a temporary setback or early rumblings in a seismic change to the global economic order.

For the past three decades, the dominant assumption has been that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Gorbachev reforms heralded a permanent triumph for capitalism and liberal democracy. But history has followed a different course  one that has torpedoed the just-in-time global supply chains that underpin our lifestyles. These cheap, fast and efficient supply lines are only feasible in a world with open borders, where goods can be transported without wrecking the planet.

Faced with war, Covid-19, and global warming, it falls apart. Even Brexit, whether you voted Leave or Remain, is a challenge to globalisation, as is the rise of Marine Le Pen in France. Politicians are likely to continue to be devilled by supply chain dilemmas in the coming years. To mention just one, rare earth minerals such as lithium are crucial in the fight against climate change, as they are used in electric car batteries. So it is extremely problematic that one of the worlds biggest deposits, worth an estimated $1 trillion, is in Afghanistan, under the control of the Taliban.

Future historians may look on the shortages and cost of living crisis we are suffering now as an ominous sign of difficult times ahead.
A North Carolina family visited their local sheriff's office hours before the father fatally shot his girlfriend and two children, later setting their home on fire and killing himself in an apparent murder-suicide.

Investigators believe Aschod Ewing-Meeks, 26, killed his family last week in what Davie County Sheriff JD Hartman referred to as 'one of the worst, if not the worst' case he had ever witnessed.

He allegedly shot and killed his girlfriend, Ashton Brown, 26, and their two children Bella, 4, and Brixtyn, 8 months, and set their Davie County home on fire before shooting himself.

About two hours before the tragedy Ewing-Meeks, Brown and the kids were captured on surveillance video speaking with a receptionist at the Davie County Sheriff's Office.

Officials told WGHP the family was vague about what they wanted but had requested to speak with a deputy. The family made several attempts to speak with authorities before their deaths.

Aschod Ewing-Meeks (right), his girlfriend Ashton Brown (left) and their daughters, Bella (center) and Brixtyn (in Brown's arms) visited the Davie County Sheriff's Office two hours before Ewing-Meek allegedly killed the family and himself in an apparent murder-suicide

Investigators believe Aschod Ewing-Meeks, 26, shot his girlfriend and kids and set fire to their family home before turning the gun on himself. He is pictured with his daughter, 4-year-old Bella in a photo shared on social media on March 5

The family walked into the sheriff's office around 12:10 p.m. on April 18, seeking to speak with a deputy.

The receptionist asked for the family's information and then gave them a phone number of someone to contact within the department. They reportedly left the premises around 12:15 p.m.

'There was nothing out of the ordinary. They really wouldn't interact with the receptionist or tell her what they wanted,' Hartman said of the visit during a press conference Wednesday, People Magazine reported.

Brown called 911 at 12:35 p.m., again asking to speak with a deputy. She said the family had safety concerns but reportedly did not specify what their concerns were.

Eleven minutes later a deputy returned Brown's call. The mother-of-two answered the phone and told officials she had been calling on behalf of Ewing-Meeks.

She passed the phone to Ewing-Meeks, but the call ended after 30 seconds. It is unclear if signal was dropped or if someone hung up.

The family walked into the sheriff's office around 12.10pm on April 18, seeking to speak with a deputy. The receptionist asked for the family's information and then gave them a phone number of someone to contact within the department. They left the premises around 12.15pm

Bella is seen looking at the receptionist as her parents face the door to leave

After they left the law enforcement agency, Ashton Brown (pictured with her daughters in October 2021) called 911 asking to speak with a deputy. She said the family had safety concerns but reportedly did not specify what their concerns were

Authorities called the family back multiple times and had several short conversations over the span of about 30 minutes.

During the longest call, which lasted about six minutes, Ewing-Meeks explained he believed the family was being followed, adding that they were driving around the community.

He refused to give the deputy his specific location or return to the sheriff's office to meet the officers.

'He advised with the officer that he thought that someone was following him, but he wasn't in danger, they weren't threatening him,' said Hartman. 'The officer attempted to get them to come back to the sheriff's office. They were driving around; they wouldn't tell the officer where they were.'

After the call, the deputy made two more attempts to reach Ewing-Meeks, shortly after 1 p.m., but the phone went to voicemail. Officials were ultimately unable to reach the family.

The family and the deputy the had several short phone calls over the course of 30 minutes. Ewing-Meeks told police he was fearful they were being followed. Around 1pm the family became unreachable. Their home is pictured above shortly after the tragedy

Ewing-Meeks and Brown were last seen around 2 p.m. arguing in the front yard of their home, witnesses told police. A few minutes later smoke was seen coming out of the house. Firefighters responded to the property 15 minutes later and discovered the victims' bodies as they worked the fire

Authorities found the bodies of the two children in the kitchen. Bella is pictured holding Brixtyn in a photo her mother shared to Facebook last September

Ewing-Meeks and Brown were last seen around 2 p.m. arguing in the front yard of their home, witnesses told police.

Moments later smoke was seen coming out of the house.

A community member, who happened to be driving past the burning home, drove to the local fire station to report the incident.

Firefighters responded to the property by 2:15 p.m. and discovered the victims' bodies as they worked the fire.

The two children were found in the kitchen and Brown in the doorway of a bedroom. Police say Ewing-Meeks was found at the end of a hallway, near the kitchen, holding the gun.

Preliminary on-scene investigation revealed the fire had been intentionally set, however authorities have not stated how or where it originated.

'All four victims are deceased from gunshot wounds,' Hartman told reporters. 'The fire was intentionally set. Mr. Meeks was deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and we found the gun that matches all of this actually still in Mr. Meeks' hand.'

Police say Brown (left) was found in the kitchen and Ewing-Meeks (right) at the end of a hallway, near the kitchen, holding the gun. The couple is pictured with their daughter in June 2021. Brown was pregnant with Brixtyn at the time

A GoFundMe campaign was created to cover funeral costs for Brown and her children. The mother was an early childhood educator and reportedly well-loved throughout the community

Investigators collected and removed evidence from the home as they continue to probe the incident.

'I've seen a lot in 30 years, but children  and especially children that are killed by gunshots and burned  it's pretty heinous, so it's pretty close to the worst, if not the worst,' the sheriff added.

A GoFundMe campaign has been launched to help cover the funeral expenses and honor the mother and her young children.

Brown's loved ones say she was an early childhood educator and well-loved throughout the community.

'She loved her students and went the extra mile to make sure they were cared for as her own,' the fundraising page states. 'Ashton lived to be the best mother she could be for her two children, Bella and Brixytn. We are saddened by this sudden tragedy and wish to honor and remember them as such.'

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones. For confidential help, call the Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or click here.
The famous 'Washington Crossing the Delaware' painting, which hung in the White House from the 1970s to 2014, is coming up for auction next month, when it is estimated to fetch about $20million.

The 1851 oil painting is one of three versions painted by Emanuel Leutze of the man who was to be the first U.S. president leading troops during a key moment of the American revolution. Only two survive.

The first version was destroyed during a World War Two air raid in Germany, said American Art specialist Paige Kestenman at Christie's New York.

'The second is the monumental work that is the centerpiece of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's American Wing, and the third is this work right here,' said Kestenman.

The version at New York's Met measures 12.4 feet-by-21.25 feet.

The famous 'Washington Crossing the Delaware' painting, which hung in the White House from the 1970s to 2014, is coming up for auction next month, when it is estimated to fetch about $20million

The 1851 oil painting is one of three versions painted by Emanuel Leutze of the man who was to be the first U.S. president leading troops during a key moment of the American revolution. Only two survive

The first version was destroyed during a World War Two air raid in Germany, said American Art specialist Paige Kestenman at Christie's New York

The painting up for sale on May 12 is smaller - about 3 feet-by-6 feet. It had hung for decades in the White House, mainly in the West Wing reception room.

The work depicts George Washington leading soldiers across the Delaware River to surprise the infantry hiding on the other side on Christmas Night, 1776, Kestenman said.

'A German-born American immigrant, Leutze was also a staunch abolitionist and in 'Washington crossing the Delaware' he deliberately included a variety of the figures that make up the melting pot that formed the American nation,' said Kestenman.

She pointed out a Black soldier, another soldier wearing a Scottish bonnet, and moccasins and buckskin clothing suggesting the American West and Native Americans.

A reenactment of this famed moment happens every year and draws in crowds to the banks of the Washington River in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

In 2021, the re-enactment celebrated its 241st anniversary.
Dr. Anthony Fauci told the Florida federal judge who struck down the CDC's mask mandate for public transportation to stay in her own lane - adding that he thinks the CDC should make the decision rather than 'a judge with no experience in public health.'

'The CDC has the capability, through a large number of trained epidemiologists, scientists, to be able to make projects and make recommendations,' the White House chief medical adviser said in a Thursday interview with CBS News.

U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Tampa, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, struck down the Biden administration policy on Monday.

New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin harshly criticized Fauci's comments on The Ingraham Angle Sunday night, referring to the longtime White House COVID-19 adviser derisively as 'Lord Fauci.'

'Lord Fauci thinking that he has higher power than the legal system [is a] very slippery slope,' he said.

'In the name of a public health emergency, this type of an awesome power that he wants to claim going forward can end up going even further than what we witnessed for the last two years.'

In Judge Mizelle's 59-page ruling, she suggested that the mandate - in which non-complying travelers are 'forcibly removed from their airplane seats, denied board at the bus steps, and turned away at the train station doors' - was akin to 'detention and quarantine,' CNN reported.

Mizelle said the only remedy was to vacate the rule entirely because it would be impossible to end it for the limited group of people who objected to it in the lawsuit.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci (left) said in a CBS interview that the Centers for Disease Control should have the final say in whether mask mandates are maintained on public transportation

Fauci also said that U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, who struck down the federal mandate, had 'no experience in public health'

New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin harshly criticized Fauci's comments on The Ingraham Angle Sunday night, referring to the longtime White House COVID-19 adviser derisively as 'Lord Fauci'

Judge Mizelle wrote in her decision that the mandate - in which non-complying travelers are 'forcibly removed from their airplane seats' -- was akin to 'detention and quarantine. Travelers are pictured at the Miami International Airport on Friday

The judge said 'a limited remedy would be no remedy at all' and that the courts have full authority to make a decision such as this  even if the goals of the CDC in fighting the virus are laudable.

'Because our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends, the court declares unlawful and vacates the mask mandate,' she wrote.

The Department of Justice filed a notice that it will appeal her ruling at the urging of the CDC.

'The Department continues to believe that the order requiring masking in the transportation corridor is a valid exercise of the authority Congress has given CDC to protect the public health,' the DOJ wrote in a Tuesday statement.

'That is an important authority the Department will continue to work to preserve.'

President Biden left for New Hampshire Tuesday wearing a mask as he boarded Air Force One. The White House has told officials and journalists to wear masks aboard the flight the day after a federal judge in Florida struck down the national mask mandate on planes

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called the ruling a 'disappointing decision' during her briefing Monday afternoon and advised Americans to continue wearing masks on public transport

The announcement of a potential appeal comes after a string of U.S. airlines have already told passengers that masks are optional.

The mandate had been due to expire on Monday before the CDC said it was extending the rule until May 3 to allow for the study of the BA.2 omicron variant which is causing the majority of cases across the nation.

During his appearance, Fauci also told correspondent Robert Costa that the variant, which emerged in March, did not 'appear to be associated with an increase in hospitalizations and severe disease.'

'Its obvious to everyone were seeing that infections are on the rise. Whether or not that will result in an increase in hospitalizations, we dont know. We hope not,' he told CBS News.

He said that he had urged Biden to follow CDC recommendations and mask up while traveling - anyone who traveled with the President to New Hampshire on Tuesday was also instructed to do so.

Fauci said that he, personally, will wear an N-95 mask in transit - but that Americans will have to assess the risk and 'have to make their own individual choice.'

'There are going to be plenty of people who are 25 years old, healthy and say, "No, as far as Im concerned, I dont like the discomfort of a mask,"' he said.

On Tuesday, Biden offered his own interpretation of the CDC recommendations when he was asked at the airport in New Hampshire whether passengers should continue to wear masks.

'That's up to them,' he said.

Fauci said that he, personally, will wear an N-95 mask in transit - but that Americans will have to assess the risk and 'have to make their own individual choice.' Travellers are pictured in the Miami International Airport on Friday, some wearing masks and others opting out

But White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre contradicted the president's statement, saying that 'as the CDC recommends, the president thinks you should mask right now, especially as they learn more about BA.2.'

Although he said he still had a 'very, very good relationship' with Biden, one that existed 'long before he was president of the United States,' he hinted at an upcoming retirement.

'I've always said we've got to get this thing under control. I'm obviously 81 years old, at the point in my career where I'm going to have to sit down at some time,' he told Costa.

'But I would want it to be when get get this under better control. And we may be coming to that point right now. We may be closer to that now.'

Fauci also recalled 'uncomfortable' moments and 'tough times' when he worked under former President Donald Trump when he had to publicly contradict the administration and its top officials on COVID matters.

'I did not like that. I do not like having to do that,' he said. 'I am very respectful of the presidency. But I never said to myself, "I want to walk away from it."'

Following Judge Mizelle's ruling, Ohio Republican Congressman tweeted that 'Fauci Lost. Freedom Won.' Ahead of upcoming midterm elections, North Carolina Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn renewed his criticism of Fauci ahead of midterm elections by repeatedly calling for the official to be fired or jailed.

Fauci lamented to Costa how political divisiveness has impeded the country's response to the pandemic.

'When you have a common enemy in the virus, you've got to all pull together, fight that common enemy. And the degree of profound divisiveness in the country has really hindered that,' he said.
Five teenagers have been hospitalized after a shooting that took place outside a Waffle House in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park.

The shooting took place just before 10 p.m., according to police, in the area of John Portman Boulevard and Centennial Olympic Park Drive in northwest Atlanta.

Authorities found three people shot after some type of altercation that may have been a carjacking, Deputy Chief Timothy Peek said.

They later learned that two more victims had transported themselves to the hospital before authorities could arrive.

All five victims, a mix of males and females between the ages of 15 and 19, are in stable condition, according to Peek.

Police also said they recovered three firearms from the scene, as well as a stolen car.

Five teenagers have been hospitalized after a shooting that took place outside a Waffle House in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park

The shooting took place just before 10 p.m., according to police. They found three people shot after some type of altercation that may have been a carjacking

Atlanta Deputy Police Chief Timothy Peek addresses the situation

Police in Atlanta have yet to uncover a motive, but noted the possibility of a carjacking and that there were 911 calls before the shooting of juveniles on scooters in the area.

'We have not had the opportunity to determine whether they were directly involved with this incident but, of course, that will be a part of the investigation,' Peek said.

'There were a number of scooters that were on scene when we got here. Now, how they got here and who was using them, we'll have to figure that piece out.'

'Anything is possible at this stage,' Peek said, not even clear if a shootout had taken place.

The incident is still under investigation. Police have yet to identify any specific suspects.

The incident is still under investigation. Police have yet to identify any specific suspects

Police in Atlanta have yet to uncover a motive, but noted the possibility of a carjacking and that there were 911 calls before the shooting of juveniles on scooters in the area

'What we'll say is that the investigators are certainly still working in turning over every leaf to determine what happened,' Peek said. 'All individuals thus far have been identified. Of course, based off the area surveillance, we will look to see who else we can identify that may have had some involvement with this shooting.'

While many cities have seen rises in crime in 2022, Atlanta's numbers are actually down 1% so far, according to city data. Homicides, however, have increased 47 percent from 2021.

Coincidentally, this weekend marks the fourth anniversary of a shooting at a Waffle House in Nashville that killed four people.
The U.S. secretaries of state and defense are making a secret visit to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky as he calls for more powerful weapons to fight Russian forces.

Anthony Blinken and Lloyd Austin met with Zelensky in Ukraine on Sunday - 13 days after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson won plaudits for flying to the war-torn nation and walking the streets of Kyiv with Zelensky.

Joe Biden has made no such-attempt to show solidarity with his own in-person visit, and his press secretary Jen Psaki has said there are no plans for the 79-year-old to travel there.

Zelensky said he was looking for the Americans to produce results, both in arms and security guarantees.

'You can't come to us empty-handed today, and we are expecting not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons,' he said before the arrival of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Sunday night's meeting marks the highest-level visit to the war-torn country's capital by an American delegation since the start of Russia's invasion.

The U.S. secretaries of state and defense are making a secret visit to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky as he calls for more powerful weapons to fight Russian forces. Zelensky is pictured during a press conference Saturday

The meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left) and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (right) was confirmed by Zelensky's presidential adviser

The meeting with Blinken and Austin was confirmed by Zelensky's presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych in an interview on Ukrainian TV.

It came as Ukraine pressed the West for more powerful weapons against Russia's campaign in the eastern Donbas region, where Moscow's forces sought to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops in the battered port of Mariupol.

'Yes, they're meeting with the president. Let's hope something will be decided on further help,' Arestovych said during the TV interview.

The visit is the first by senior U.S. officials since Russia invaded 60 days ago.

Blinken stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil in March to meet with the country's foreign minister during a visit to Poland.

Zelensky's last face-to-face meeting with a top U.S. official was February 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris.

While the West has funneled military equipment to Ukraine, Zelensky has stressed repeatedly that the country needs more heavy weapons, including long-range air defense systems, as well as warplanes. An aerial view shows damaged buildings in Mariupol on Sunday amid Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine

While the West has funneled military equipment to Ukraine, Zelensky has stressed repeatedly that the country needs more heavy weapons, including long-range air defense systems, as well as warplanes.

His meeting with Austin and Blinken was set to take place as Ukrainians and Russians observed Orthodox Easter, when the faithful celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Speaking from Kyiv's ancient St Sophia Cathedral, Zelensky, who is Jewish, highlighted the significance of the occasion to a nation wracked by nearly two months of war.

'The great holiday today gives us great hope and unwavering faith that light will overcome darkness, good will overcome evil, life will overcome death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win!' he said.

Still, the war cast a shadow over celebrations. In the northern village of Ivanivka, where Russian tanks still littered the roads, Olena Koptyl said 'the Easter holiday doesn't bring any joy. I'm crying a lot. We cannot forget how we lived.'

Victor Lobush of Kyiv said Ukraine needs more weapons and financial support, and for Western nations 'not to buy even a drop of the Russian oil.'

'Actions, not words, are needed,' he said on Independence Square.

The Russian military reported hitting 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, including fortified positions and troop concentrations, while its warplanes destroyed 26 Ukrainian military sites, including an explosives factory and several artillery depots.

A part of a destroyed tank and a burned vehicle sit in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol on Saturday

Ukrainian soldiers stand on a road near Lyman, eastern Ukraine, on Sunday

Most of Sunday's fighting focused on the Donbas region, where Ukrainian forces are concentrated and where Moscow-backed separatists controlled some territory before the war. Since failing to capture Kyiv, the Russians are aiming to gain full control over the eastern industrial heartland.

Ukraine's national police said two girls, aged five and 14, died in shelling in the town of Ocheretyne, part of the industrial region.

Russian forces launched fresh airstrikes on a Mariupol steel plant where an estimated 1,000 civilians are sheltering along with about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters.

The Azovstal steel mill where the defenders are holed up is the last corner of resistance in the city, which the Russians have otherwise occupied.

Zelensky said he stressed the need to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, including from the steel plant, in a call with Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is scheduled to speak later with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Arestovych said Ukraine has proposed talks with Russia next to the sprawling steel mill. Arestovych said on the Telegram messaging app that Russia has not responded to the proposal that would include establishing humanitarian corridors and the exchange of Russian war prisoners for the fighters still in the plant.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Guterres is scheduled to travel to Turkey on Monday and then Moscow and Kyiv. Zelensky it was a mistake for Guterres to visit Russia before Ukraine.

'Why? To hand over signals from Russia? What should we look for?' Zelensky said Saturday. 'There are no corpses scattered on the Kutuzovsky Prospect,' he said, referring to one of Moscow's main avenues.

Ukrainian military medics transport an injured Ukrainian serviceman in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine on Sunday

Zelensky's His meeting with Austin and Blinken was set to take place as Ukrainians and Russians observed Orthodox Easter. Worshipers are pictured during an Easter celebration at a church in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, on Sunday

Mariupol has seen fierce fighting since the start of the war due to its location on the Sea of Azov. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere, and allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

More than 100,000 people - down from a prewar population of about 430,000 - are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate over 20,000 civilians have been killed. Recent satellite images showed what appeared to be mass graves to the west and east of Mariupol.

Mykhailo Podolyak, another presidential adviser, tweeted that the Russian military was attacking the plant with heavy bombs and artillery while accumulating forces and equipment for a direct assault.

During a Saturday address to the nation, Zelensky accused Russians of committing war crimes by killing civilians, as well as of setting up 'filtration camps' near Mariupol for those trying to leave the city. He said the Ukrainians - many of them children - are then sent to areas under Russian occupation or to Russia itself, often as far as Siberia or the Far East.

This photograph taken on Sunday shows a destroyed building in Irpin, northwest of Kyiv

Rescuers work after a missile attack by Russia, at a residential house in Odessa, Ukraine on Sunday

The claims could not be independently verified. But they were repeated by Ukrainian lawmaker Yevheniya Kravchuk on ABC's This Week.

'They have pulled these people from Mariupol - they are put to filtration camps ... its sort of something that can't be happening in the 21st century,' Kravchuk said.

Zelensky claimed intercepted communications recorded Russian troops discussing 'how they conceal the traces of their crimes' in Mariupol. He also highlighted the death of a 3-month old girl in a Russian missile strike Saturday on the Black Sea port of Odesa.

In attacks Saturday, Russian forces pounded cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine. The baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at Odesa, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, citing social media, reported that the infant's mother, Valeria Glodan, and grandmother also died when a missile hit a residential area. Zelensky promised to find and punish those responsible.

'The war started when this baby was one month old,' Zelensky said. Can you imagine what is happening? They are filthy scum, there are no other words for it.'

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stands with Ukraine Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal during an arrival ceremony at the Pentagon on Thursday, April 21

For the Donbas offensive, Russia has reassembled troops who fought around Kyiv and in northern Ukraine. The British Ministry of Defense said Ukrainian forces had repelled numerous assaults in the past week and 'inflicted significant cost on Russian forces.'

'Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganize forces from prior offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness,' the ministry said.

The spiritual leaders of the world's Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics appealed for relief for Ukraine's suffering population.

From Istanbul, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I said a 'human tragedy' was unfolding. Bartholomew, considered the first among his Eastern Orthodox patriarch equals, cited in particular 'the thousands of people surrounded in Mariupol, civilians, among them the wounded, the elderly, women and many children.'

Pope Francis, speaking from a window overlooking St. Peter's Square, renewed his call for an Easter truce, calling it 'a minimal and tangible sign of a desire for peace.'
The home fraudulently purchased by the wife of the 'most wanted' member of the Alameddine clan will be auctioned off after police seized the couple's assets.

Masood Zakaria allegedly directed his wife Azza to fake a series of documents about her annual income and employment history to obtain a loan to buy the home.

The couple purchased the luxurious Greystanes property for $1.5million in 2019 after applying for funds that would cover three quarters of the asking price.

Masood Zakaria (pictured) allegedly directed his wife Azza to present fake documents about her annual income and employment in order to obtain the home loan

The couple purchased their luxurious Greystanes home (pictured) for $1.5million in 2019 after applying for funds to cover three quarters of the asking price

Azza recently pleaded guilty to one count of dishonestly obtaining advantage by deception at Parramatta Local Court.

Her husband's whereabouts remain unknown after he disappeared on December 15.

Police on the same day had arrived at the Greystanes home in Sydney's west to arrest Masood over the alleged attempted murder of rival Ibrahem Hamze.

Masood's whereabouts remain unknown after he disappeared last December

Police believe rivals had been planning to carry out an attack on Ibrahem Hamze when a stolen Mercedes was spotted on Walker Street on August 14.

The driver allegedly refused to stop the vehicle for officers before speeding off and running through a red light.

NSW Police criminal groups squad commander Detective Superintendent Grant Taylor said the two men were allegedly in the area 'for the sole purpose of shooting dead a man who they believe is a rival in territorial disputes in south-west Sydney'.

Masood couldn't be found when police knocked on his door last December and is now believed to have fled to Turkey.

Parramatta Local Court heard the high-ranking member guided his wife through the process of creating a series of fraudulent financial documents later used to secure a home loan.

In the loan application Azza claimed to have an annual income of $240,000 in her role as an external consultant to childcare centres.

She stated she had previously been a centre director and had been self-employed in the childcare industry for five years before that.

The 26-year-old supplied references from 'employers' and said her role included training staff, organising extra-curricular activities and drafting education plans.

Pictured from left to right is Tareek Hamzy, Ibrahem Hamze and Haissam Hamzy. Police arrived at the home of Masood Zakaria on December 15 to arrest him over the alleged attempted murder of Ibrahem

Police on the same day had arrived at the couple's home in Sydney's west to arrest Masood over the alleged attempted murder of rival Ibrahem Hamze

Azza was granted a $1.125 million loan for the home (pictured) in early 2020 however unbeknownst to the broker the documents were almost all fraudulent

Azza was granted a $1.125 million loan for the home in early 2020 however unbeknownst to the broker the documents were almost all fraudulent.

Police checks later found she had enrolled in a childcare training course but had later withdrew and had no certifications to her name.

The court heard Masood had masterminded the purchasing of the property which would leave a mark on his wife's otherwise clean criminal record.

He allegedly directed Azza to make him the beneficial owner to ensure the house couldn't be seized by law enforcements, which it later was.

Masood allegedly then arranged for $310,000 to settle the property be transferred into his wife's bank account through an associate.

Azza was sentenced to a 12-month community corrections order for her part in the scheme due to be complete in April 2023. Pictured is the master suite in the Greystanes home.

Azza was then instructed to transfer those funds to a nominated account which she had to do at a physical branch.

'It is alleged Zakaria is the beneficial owner of the property and the mortgage fraud was perpetuated in Azza's name to intentionally conceal his connection to the property,' documents tendered to the Parramatta Local Court read.

Azza was sentenced to a 12-month community corrections order for her part in the scheme due to be complete in April 2023.

The six-bedroom home with an 'absolutely enormous' master bedroom and ensuite bathroom will go to auction on April 30 for an expected $2million.

'Inclusive of ducted air-conditioning throughout, a wood-fired heater, purpose built study nook, walk-in linen press and secure window shutters, nothing has been missed on an offering of exceptional quality,' the description reads.
KABUL, April 24 (Xinhua) -- About 750 people after receiving training have been commissioned to security forces under Afghanistan's Taliban-led caretaker government, the country's Ministry of Defense said on Sunday.

The newly trained soldiers received professional, military and intellectual training at a training center in army's 205th al-Badar Corps and attended a graduation ceremony on Saturday, the ministry said in a statement.

The Afghan caretaker government has been working to establish a 350,000-strong security force, Acting Deputy Prime Minister Mawlawi Abdul Salam Hanafi told local media recently.

About 2,000 new cadets have joined the security forces this week, according to the ministry. 
Hundreds of Ukrainian refugees now gathered in Mexico face a deadline of midnight on Sunday to safely cross into the US, before the Biden administration closes the border to them and forces them to apply for asylum online from Europe.

Under a new program, the US says it will streamline refugee applications for Ukrainians and others fleeing the fighting, but will no longer routinely grant entry to those who show up at the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum.

Meanwhile, volunteers in Tijuana tell DailyMail.com that they expect a chaotic situation on Sunday, with Ukrainians arriving on flights booked well in advance and rushing to make it to the border before it is sealed at midnight.

'I'm pretty sure there's going to be a lot of crying and sad faces, because many people won't cross,' one volunteer helping refugees said in an interview.

Co-Founder of United For Ukraine Anastasia Bolo told DailyMail.com that the last bus for the border will leave at 8pm, and that refugees flying into the city later in the day will likely end up stuck in Mexico.

'Of course everybody is upset because people bought tickets in advance,' she said.

Ukrainian refugees wait for further transport to a temporary shelter before they are able to cross the border after arriving at Tijuana Airport on Saturday

Hundreds of Ukrainian refugees now gathered in Mexico face a deadline of midnight on Sunday to safely cross into the US by the land border

Under a new program, the US says it will streamline refugee applications for Ukrainians and others fleeing the fighting, but will no longer routinely grant entry at the border

The Biden administration only announced the new program and border deadline on Thursday, throwing transit plans for many refugees into chaos

The Biden administration only announced the new program and border deadline on Thursday, throwing transit plans for many refugees into chaos.

Bolo said that her group will still be working from its base in Mexico City to help Ukrainians who don't make it to Tijuana before the border closes.

She said that her group is urging Ukrainians to remain in Europe and apply for refugee status online through the new program, which she says has the benefit of regularizing the process.

Thousands of Ukrainian refugees have been using the southern border to seek asylum in the US since the invasion ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin began almost two months ago.

The US says it expects to admit up to 100,000 refugees from Ukraine and about 15,000 have come since the February 24 invasion, mostly through Mexico.

Starting Monday, that will no longer be an option except in extreme circumstances, officials said.

'This program will be fast, it will be streamlined and it will ensure the United States honors its commitment to go through the people Ukraine and need not go through our southern border,' President Joe Biden said in remarks on Thursday.

Ukrainian refugees arrive at Tijuana Airport on Saturday. The land border will close Sunday at midnight for Ukrainian refugees

The US says it expects to admit up to 100,000 refugees from Ukraine and about 15,000 have come since the February 24 invasion, mostly through Mexico

The Biden administration has been exempting Ukrainian refugees from swift rejection under Title 42, but will do so no longer under the new rules

Without direction from the White House on how to enter the U.S., many Ukrainians figured it out for themselves: arriving via tourist visa, or flying to Mexico to enter via the Southern border.

Many, if not most of those at the southern border, have been released into the United States via humanitarian parole, which allows people to stay temporarily.

However, once the 'Uniting for Ukraine' program begins on April 25th, any Ukrainian trying to enter via the U.S.-Mexico border will be refused under Title 42, the public health order that the Department of Homeland Security uses to turn away refugees, Biden administrational officials said.

The Biden administration has been exempting Ukrainian refugees, but will do so no longer under the new rules.

'As of April 25, Ukrainians who do seek to enter the United States at a land border without a visa or without completing the 'Uniting for Ukraine' process may be refused entry under our existing laws,' a DHS official said on a briefing call with reporters on Thursday morning ahead of Biden remarks.

Complicating matters, the use of Title 42, which has been used to quickly turn away more than 1.7 million people, is set to end May 23.

A swath of Republicans and some Democrats have urged Biden to delay the lifting of Title 42 over fears it will cause a surge in migrant crossings at the southern border.

Ukrainian refugees arrive at Tijuana Airport on Saturday as they race to cross the US border

Ukrainian refugees watch an informational video after arriving at Tijuana Airport

U.S. officials say a majority of the Ukrainian refugees want to stay in Eastern Europe because many hope eventually to return home

'We are proud to deliver on President Bidens commitment to welcome 100,000 Ukrainians and others fleeing Russian aggression to the United States,' Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a statement announcing the new program.

'The Ukrainian people continue to suffer immense tragedy and loss as a result of Putins unprovoked and unjustified attack on their country.'

U.S. officials say a majority of the Ukrainian refugees want to stay in Eastern Europe because many hope eventually to return home.

Advocates have said the U.S. should take more than 100,000 refugees and further expedite the process.

Public support doesn't seem to be an issue. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll shows 65 percent of Americans favor accepting Ukrainian refugees into the U.S., while 15 percent oppose. An additional 19 percent say they neither favor nor oppose.

To qualify for admission to the U.S. under the new program, officially known as Uniting for Ukraine, people must have been in Ukraine as of Feb. 11; have a sponsor, which could be family or an organization; meet vaccination and other public health requirements; and pass background checks.

Ukrainian refugees are processed as they arrive at Tijuana Airport on Saturday

Most of those admitted under the new program will receive two years of residence and authorization to work in the United States under whats known as humanitarian parole

Refugees will now encounter a streamlined process in Europe, but they wont be able to complete it in Mexico, senior administration officials told reporters

Ukrainian refugees from Lutsk arrive at Tijuana Airport on Saturday

A van transports Ukrainian refugees to a temporary shelter before they are able to cross the border after arriving at Tijuana Airport on Saturday

Typically, people would start applications in their home country, but that's no longer possible because the U.S. pulled its diplomats from Ukraine. The State Department will expand resettlement operations in Eastern Europe under the new program to compensate.

Most of those admitted will receive two years of residence and authorization to work in the United States under whats known as humanitarian parole.

Those coming to the U.S. through the formal refugee process, including members of religious minority groups, will receive permanent legal residency.

A downside of the new effort is that humanitarian parole generally does not include temporary housing support and other benefits provided through the traditional refugee program, which is only slowly recovering from Trump-era cutbacks, said Krish OMara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

Nevertheless, Vignarajah and other refugee advocates welcomed the announcement. 'Families desperately seeking to bring their loved ones directly to safety in the U.S. have a glimmer of hope, where there once was exceedingly little,' she said.

Refugees will encounter a streamlined process in Europe, but they wont be able to complete it in Mexico, senior administration officials told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the program before the public announcement.

Instead, Ukrainians who show up at the border will generally be turned away and told to apply for entry under the new program.
Scott Morrison has slammed Labor over what he called a 'sewer tactic' for an attack ad it has released about Hong Kong-born Liberal MP Gladys Liu.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg called Labor's ad 'racist' four times in a matter of seconds at a press conference in Melbourne, but Labor's Senate leader Penny Wong said Ms Liu has 'questions' to answer.

Labor is reportedly using Facebook, Google, YouTube and Instagram ads that say 'what do we know about Liberal Gladys Liu?'

'She spread fake news on Chinese messaging apps, she and the Liberal Party had to give back $300,000 because the donors were deemed a national security risk.

Liberal member for Chisholm Gladys Liu (left) is pictured with Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday, April 15, 2022. Mr Morrison has defended Ms Liu after Labor released an ad attcking her

'And her campaign tried to trick voters with election day signage in the colours of the Australian Electoral Commission,' the Labor ad said.

Ms Liu holds the Melbourne seat of Chisholm on a margin of 0.5 per cent - fewer than 1,100 votes - and it is one Labor has in its sights as vital to winning the Federal election on May 21.

Labor's ad continues, 'We need someone who represents Chisholm with hard work and integrity, not tricks. You deserve better than Scott Morrison and Gladys Liu.'

But Mr Morrison, who is campaigning in Alice Springs, accused Labor of racism. 'They go after Gladys Liu because she's Chinese,' he said.

'They're engaged in what I think is a sewer tactic here.'

Mr Frydenberg had earlier called the ad a 'scare tactic' targeting the Chinese Australians who make up nearly 20 per cent of the electorate, which borders his seat of Kooyong.

'(It is) a desperate, dishonest, racist attack ad by the Labor Party,' he told reporters in Melbourne.

'Again, the Labor Party here is being dishonest, deceitful and engaging in scare tactics and in a racist attack ad on the first Chinese-born person to sit in the House of Representatives in Gladys Liu.

Liberal member for Chisholm Gladys Liu (left) is pictured with Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg (right)

'She is a proud Australian citizen and this racist attack ad by the Labor Party has no place in our community. This is dishonest, disgraceful, racist behaviour by the Labor Party.'

Mr Frydenberg and Mr Morrison both used their comments to direct criticism at Labor deputy leader Richard Marles.

It has been revealed Mr Marles gave the Chinese embassy in Canberra an advance copy of a speech he was to give to the Beijing Foreign Studies University in 2019.

Mr Marles defended doing so, saying it was a 'courtesy' and none of his speech was changed.

Deputy Labor leader Richard Marles is pictured on Saturday, April 23, 2022. On Sunday, he was criticised by both Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg

But Mr Morrison said the attack ad on Ms Liu is 'a desperate ploy by a Labor Party opposition who has been caught out actually running their own policies and speeches past the Chinese government'.

Ms Wong, who is also campaigning in Alice Springs, said 'In relation to Ms Liu, there were a number of these issues raised a few years ago in parliament.

'And I can remember my then counterpart, Senator (Mathias) Cormann, accusing me and others of attacking her because of her ethnic heritage. Which is not the case.

'I think there were questions that she should have answered ... and it is legitimate for those to be answered,' Ms Wong said.
Parents are suing the Welsh Government over plans to force children as young as three to learn about sex and gender identity.

Four mothers - representing more than 5,000 parents and grandparents - have started legal action to overturn a proposal by the Labour-led administration to make Religious and Sex Education (RSE) lessons compulsory.

Ministers insists the new curriculum, which will also see themes of religion, sex and gender embedded in day-to-day teaching, was developmentally appropriate for children, but campaigners say the topics are inappropriate for primary pupils.

Kim Isherwood, 39, who chairs the campaign group Public Child Protection Wales, believes the teaching is 'dangerous'. Pictured, the group protesting

Kim Isherwood (left), 39, chairs the campaign group Public Child Protection Wales. Lucia Thomas (right), 41, is the group's treasurer

Kim Isherwood, 39, who chairs the campaign group Public Child Protection Wales, said: Its dangerous and it absolutely infuriates me. Ive always fought for childrens rights, but theyre removing my right to protect.

The mother-of-two from Port Talbot added: This new curriculum is not like the stand-alone RSE lessons that pupils and parents are used to. The new mandatory element also means that every child, aged 3-16, must take part.

It cannot be avoided by anyone and there are no rights for parents to request information on what will be taught, at what age, or to ask that their child sit out.

The guidance includes the notion that pupils explore sexual attraction and not just the biology of having sex.

It says: Learners can explore how relationships, sex, gender, romantic and sexual attraction and personal experiences may shape and inform a persons identity and individuality ... [and] how and why attitudes have changed and are changing including towards gender and sexuality diversity.

The group is campaigning against a plan to make Religious and Sex Education (RSE) lessons compulsory

The Welsh government criticised over Equality Act interpretation In October last year, the Welsh government was accused of being 'dictated' to by LGBT+ charity, Stonewall. The government had decided to adopt the charity's interpretation of the Equality Act. This included swapping the term 'gender reassignment' to 'gender identity' in its Equality and Diversity Policy. It was included in a document seen by the BBC, and faced criticism by some MPs, including Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi. 'They are promoting an ideological culture and rewriting the Equality Act at the same time,' she told the BBC at the time. 'To misrepresent the law in this way shows a contempt not only for the law, but also to anyone who wishes to speak up for women or who has concerns around safeguarding.' Advertisement

But Lucia Thomas, 41, said: The very first time I heard anything about sex education coming in for children as young as three, my heart skipped a beat and my stomach churned.

School is a place to learn about vital biology, learn how to develop relationships with both sexes and to develop respect. But, as parents, we believe what is happening here is the sexualisation of children, not their education.

The parents have instructed international human rights barrister Paul Diamond to represent them and legal papers have been filed at the High Court in Cardiff.

In England, the rollout of sex education in primary schools is also set to go ahead, but parents will be able to withdraw their children from sex education classes until the age of 15.

Last night, a spokeperson for the Welsh Government said groups including the NSPCC and the Welsh Childrens Commissioners Office supported the plans, adding: It is completely untrue to suggest that were sexualising children.

'As part of the new curriculum, all pupils in Wales will have full access to high-quality Relationships and Sexuality Education designed to safeguard them and in time, support them to navigate the complex area of relationships and sexuality.

Last night, The Mail on Sunday revealed that almost one in every 15 pupils at a leading secondary school identifies as transgender or non-binary.

More than 60 youngsters at the school which has about 1,000 students on its roll have declared their gender to be different from their birth sex or do not identify as either male or female.

The majority have done so since most Covid-19 lockdown restrictions were lifted last summer, raising concern about the impact of online trans influencers on youngsters who were largely confined to their homes for months.

A teacher said the pupils involved were aged between 11 and 18, almost all were girls and most identified as non-binary.

While the school tells parents if a pupil asks to go by a different name or pronoun, staff were blundering along in the dark without government guidance, the teacher said.

The revelation comes days after Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said officials were drawing up clear guidance on how teachers should deal with trans pupils.

Emphasising the need for guidance, Tory MP Miriam Cates said: The Department for Education needs to produce very clear, very detailed guidance about what schools should do about pupils who say they are trans or non-binary.

Ms Cates, who has called for an inquiry into the spread of gender ideology in schools, added: They also need to make sure schools understand that when a child claims to be trans or non-binary they then need to be safeguarded in the same way as children who may have anorexia.
New South Wales flood victims are being forced to live in their water-ruined homes as they continue to wait for government financial assistance almost two months after the disaster.

Flood-affected residents across the state were last month promised up to $20,000 under the 'Back Home' grant to help replace goods, reconnect utilities, and carry out structural repairs to make their homes safe and habitable.

But thousands are still waiting to receive much-needed funds, leaving families forking out rental costs on top of mortgages or camping inside their mould-ridden properties.

Premier Dominic Perrottet on Thursday revealed only 125 of 5900 applications for the scheme have been processed and just 1 in 10 have been granted.

Left with little choice, Lismore residents have started moving back into the shells of their homes, stripped bare as they await restoration.

Jahnaya Mumford, who has been paying $350 weekly mortgage payments and $500-a-week for rent, plans to move back into her gutted home with her three kids in two weeks.

Thousands of NSW flood victims are still waiting for government grants to help them fix their water-damaged homes. Pictured: Lismore in NSW on March 30, 2022

Currently on maternity leave, the additional costs have been straining on the 32-year-old and her partner, who have only received the initial $3000 flood emergency help payment from the government.

The interior walls have been removed and, without a kitchen, they will be using a barbeque and plug-in-frying pan to cook.

'Hopefully, I'll be moving back in two weeks, without a kitchen but with power and hot water,' Ms Mumford told the Daily Telegraph.

'I haven't got the money for a kitchen,' she said.

Ms Mumford's brother and friends have launched a fundraiser to help the family get back into their abode, with lining the inside set to cost $15,000 without labour.

On top of slow insurance claims and grant applications, the crisis has sparked a shortage of rentals in northern NSW as pledged emergency accommodation never eventuated.

Ms Mumford said she has been applied for accommodation housing but is yet to hear back from anyone.

On Thursday, it was revealed only 125 of 5900 applications for the payment had been processed. Pictured: Lismore in NSW on March 28

Due to the red tape, she is also waiting for her insurance company to formally reject her request so she can apply for the grant, which is co-funded by the NSW and Commonwealth governments.

Neighbour Liz Swift is in a similar boat after being left with little choice but to move back into her water-damaged home.

She has spent almost eight weeks couch surfing with friends and family, but has just set up a campsite inside her lounge room while she continues repairs.

There are still mouldy plaster walls that need removal, the kitchen has been stripped, and the force of the water has pushed the eastern wall away from the floor.

'Lots have moved back in because there is nowhere else to go, really. It is hard not having a home to go to,' she said.

'I'm working on the $20,000, but at this stage I've just had the three $1000 payments, so I've been living off that.'

Ms Swift said she will need a new kitchen and bathroom, and her father and brother - both builders - will fortunately be able to assist.

However, with her dad having lost his house and her brother his business, it will be a matter of time until all of their respective restorations are complete.

Clive Tresidder and partner Debbie Grant, who also live on Casino St, have set up a living space in his lounge room with a bed and a TV.

Residents have started moving back into their properties while they wait for vital restorations. Pictured: Staff clean up after flood damage at Miss Brown vintage clothing in Byron Bay on March 31

As a pensioner, Mr Tressider could not afford the $10,000 a year needed to insure his home and is also waiting for his insurance company to knock him back so he can apply for the grant.

The $112 million Back Home grant to assist residents the Hawkesbury, Ballina, Byron, Clarence Valley, Kyogle, Lismore, Richmond Valley and Tweed Local Government Areas was announced in mid March, before officially opening on April 21.

Under the scheme, owner-occupiers are eligible for one-off payments of $20,000, landlords $15,000, and $5000 for renters.

Minister for Customer Service and Digital Government Victor Dominello said more than 10,000 homes had been assessed as damaged, with more than 4,000 assessed as uninhabitable across the State.

Deputy Premier and Minister for Regional NSW Paul Toole said getting residents back home was a 'priority'.

'Housing continues to be one of our most pressing priorities in flood-affected communities, especially across the Northern Rivers, and this package helps support their rebuild and recovery,' Mr Toole said on Thursday.

'We want to see people safely back in their homes. This grant provides payments to help people make critical repairs like fixing roofs, reconnecting utilities or replacing furniture and whitegoods.'
Anzac Day commemorations to honour soldiers and remember fallen heroes will proceed as usual across most of the country.

After two years of disruptions caused by Covid restrictions that prevented large gatherings, the popular marches and dawn services will make a return on Monday.

Some business will be shut for the public holiday but essentials such as supermarkets will be open - as will pubs and, of course, RSLs for the traditional games of two up.

NSW Minister for Veterans David Elliot said the return of Anzac Day public events this year would be particularly special for many.

Anzac Day will go ahead as normal this year (pictured: servicemen look on as part of the ANZAC Observance during the 2022 AFL match between the North Melbourne Kangaroos and the Geelong Cats)

'This year marks the first year since the Australia Defence Force's withdrawal from Afghanistan,' Mr Elliot said.

'It is also the first time since 2019 that veterans will be able to reconnect with mates to attend their annual reunions free of restrictions,' he added.

Below is Daily Mail Australia's quick guide to the public holiday - from when and where dawn services will be held, to what shops will be open and when pubs will let in patrons.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

In Canberra, Sydney and surrounding regions buses, trains and ferries will be free for anyone attending Anzac Day events.

Brisbane and Melbourne will also have free public transport for veterans, their families, defence personnel and anyone in uniform including Scouts and Guides.

Serving and returned defence personnel in Perth. Adelaide and Hobart can also travel for free.

Dawn services will be held in most communities with local RSLs and councils providing information (pictured: Anzac Day 2019 on the Gold Coast)

DAWN SERVICES

ACT: Large crowds are expected at the Australian War Memorial for the service led by Governor-General David Hurley at 5.30am.

The service will be broadcast on ABC and ABC iView.

NSW: The state's official Anzac Day dawn service will begin at 4.30am at the Cenotaph in Martin Place, Sydney CBD.

There will also be community dawn services throughout suburban areas of capital cities and regions in each state and territory - local RSLs and councils will post information.

VIC: Melbourne's event will be from 5.30am at the Shrine of Remembrance in the CBD.

QLD: The Shrine of Remembrance at Post Office Square will hold the Brisbane dawn service from 4.28am.

On the Gold Coast the dawn service at the scenic coastal spot of Elephant Rock at Currumbin will return after two years.

While in Townsville a service will be held at Anzac Park on The Strand.

NT: Dawn services will be held in Darwin, Palmerston, Katherine, Tennant Creek and Alice Springs.

The Darwin service begins at 6am at the esplanade Cenotaph. In Palmerston the service will be at Memorial Park also at 6am.

SA: The Adelaide dawn service will begin at 6am on North Terrace in the CBD.

TAS: Hobart's dawn service will be at the Cenotaph in the Queen's Domain from 6am and another service at 11.45am.

Launceston's service will be at 6am at the Cenotaph at Patterson St and another will be at 11am.

WA: At 5.55am the service will begin in Kings Park at the State War Memorial.

Members of the RAAF are seen marching during the Anzac Day march at the Shrine of Remembrance on April 25, 2021 in Melbourne, Australia

MARCHES

Canberra: The veterans march will begin at 9.30am.

Sydney: The march will begin at Martin Place at 9am and proceed via Elizabeth St to finish at the Liverpool St side of Hyde Park.

Darwin: The annual march will begin at 9am at the esplanade Cenotaph and proceed along Knuckey St.

RAAF F35 fighter jets and Tiger helicopters will also do a fly-past at the Darwin and Palmerston events.

Brisbane: The Anzac Day parade will begin at 10am on the corner of George and Elizabeth Streets in the CBD before proceeding down Adelaide St to Creek St.

Adelaide: The city's commemorative march will begin at 9.30am on the corner of North Tce and Gawler Place.

Hobart: The Light Horse will lead the march in Hobart at 11am from Town Hall to the Cenotaph.

Melbourne: From 8.30am along Princes Bridge to the Shrine of Remembrance where another commemoration ceremony will take place.

Perth: The corner of Barrack St and St George's Tce will see the march begin at 9am.

The march will be broadcast on ABC with the RSL recommending only those who have relatives in the march should attend to watch with some Covid restrictions still in place.

Most shops will be open from midday except in Queensland where they are shut for the whole of Anzac Day (pictured: Fremantle markets in WA)

WHAT'S OPEN?

Woolworths - Open from 1pm in NSW, ACT and VIC. Closed in Queensland and WA. And open in Tasmania and the NT.

Coles - From 1pm in NSW, ACT, and VIC. Closed in Queensland. From 12.30pm in NT and Tasmania. And in SA and WA metro stores are closed but regional stores are open from about midday.

Bunnings - Open in all states and territories except Queensland.

Kmart - Open from 1pm except in Queensland, SA and WA where they will be closed all day.

Dan Murphy's - Open from 1pm in most states and territories.

Big W - Open with reduced hours in most states and territories except Queensland and WA where they will be closed.

Post Offices and Banks - closed in all states and territories.

Liquor can be served at most pubs from midday and earlier at RSLs and gaming license rules are relaxed to allow for games of two-up (pictured)

PUBS AND RSL VENUES

RSL can in most cases trade earlier than their usual licensing hours such as from 5am on Anzac Day.

Gaming licence rules are also relaxed across most states and territories allowing for games of two-up on Anzac Day.

Pubs can serve alcohol from 12pm in Victoria, SA and WA and food earlier.

In Queensland, from 10am to 1pm on Anzac Day liquor may only be sold with a meal.

Take away liquor is not permitted before 1pm but after 1pm normal liquor trading hours apply.

In NSW most pubs can open from 10am.
The race is on to save one of Australia's most iconic beaches at a cost of $3 million.

Dendy Street Beach in Melbourne - famous on social media for its colourful beach huts - has been under threat from erosion and rising sea levels for several years.

Bayside City Council will import sand from north Brighton Beach next month to 'renourish' the heritage-protected boxes and could spend as much as $3million to build a groyne - a protective barrier for the shoreline.

Dendy Street Beach in Melbourne - famous on social media for its colourful beach huts - is under threat from coastal erosion

The colourful huts have become a trend on social media and locals believe the council sees the beach as a 'cash grab'

In 2013 the colourful boxes were moved away from the high-tide line and a masterplan for the beach recommended new boxes be built for the southern end of the famous beach.

However box owner and the secretary for Brighton Bathing Box Association John Rundell said the beach had a long history of issues.

'There used to be 120 bathing boxes at the beach, the numbers had dropped down to 82, and the council have built 14 new boxes, including six at the southern end of the beach, which is where boxes were washed away historically,' he told The Age.

The iconic boxes have become a status symbol in Melbourne with the tiny wooden shacks costing well over $300,000 each and only open to locals for purchase

'The southern end of the beach has been subject to storm damage.'

Other association members have also slammed the recommendation as irresponsible arguing it would only prove the council saw Dendy Street Beach as a local cash grab.

Last July the council was forced to take action against 'unusual sand movement' and protect five boxes using sandbags, which locals complained didn't help the problem.

The iconic boxes have become a status symbol in Melbourne with the tiny wooden shacks costing well over $300,000 each and only open to locals for purchase.

Tourists have flocked to the iconic beachfront huts to share photos on their social media

Owners of the beachfront boxes are subject to strict decoration guidelines and are expected to pay $1,000 annual rates for the shacks that have no electricity or running water.

But despite their issues the boxes are still incredibly popular and local real estate agents believe their value will only increase over time.

Coastal erosion has been a long-standing issue for Bayside City Council and a recent report from Corelogic found Brighton was at risk of losing $415.4 million in property value, the third worst affected in Melbourne.

Dendy Street Beach is one of few Melbourne beaches owned by council, with the majority being Crown land.
An Extinction Rebellion chief has been slammed for proposing to 'euthanise boomers' in retaliation for climate change.

Boomers is a term for the post-war generation of people born between 1946 and 1964, who would be aged 58 to 76 today.

Environmental radical Jessica Townsend, 59, said 'rich boomers' would be the 'first to go' under her sick purge even though she herself is a so-called boomer.

Extinction Rebellion chief Jessica Townsend, 59, said baby boomers should be euthanised as revenge for climate change

She was one of three eco-morons to spray 'lies, lies, lies' on an office durng an eco-protest in 2020

Conservative MP Richard Holden told The Telegraph Townsend's euthanasia comments showed the 'truly sinister and dangerous motives' behind XR.

Townend told senior eco-warriors: 'How about 'euthanising' boomers as they caused [the] problem and are such a big part of [the] population? First to go rich boomers,' according to The Telegraph.

The purple-haired grandmother, who was found guilty of criminal damage for an eco-protest in 2020, added: 'If they start with the rich, they'll never get to me.'

Along with XR co-founder Clare Farrell and eco-leader Professor Rupert Read, she daubed graffiti reading 'lies, lies, lies' on the office of a The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a think tank aiming to fight against harmful eco-policies that was once run by former chancellor Nigel Lawson.

Townsend received a 100 fine and a six-month conditional discharge for her crime.

However, in a blog post from 2021 MailOnline can reveal she said wrote: 'Condoning violence against your opponents is a new low move from the GWPF'.

She added: 'XR knows that everyone is a climate hypocrite: in our toxic society, it's impossible not to be.

'But we are not in the blaming and shaming game. There isn't time.

'We believe we are on the right side of history.'

Along with XR co-founder Clare Farrell and eco-leader Professor Rupert Read, she daubed graffiti reading 'lies, lies, lies' during a protest (pictured) on the office of a The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a think tank aiming to fight against harmful eco-policies that was once run by former chancellor Nigel Lawson

She was man-handled by police at the protest and later was convicted for criminal damage

The 59-year-old former playwright and screenwriter is a full-time activist with Extinction Rebellion.

She became an eco-fanatic when XR was born in 2018 and just two years later the eco-moron was found guilty of criminal damage for her 2020 eco-protest.

She has also claimed people who oppose Extinction Rebellion will be referred to 'in the same way as those who opposed the abolition of slavery, the enfranchisement of the working classes, the suffragettes'.

Townsend's comments came as dozens of Extinction Rebellion activists glued their hands to the London HQ of Shell last week while hundreds marched on Buckingham Palace.

Video shared by XR shows two activists with their hands down on a reception desk with the logo of oil giant Shell visible in the background. Other pictures show three people holding XR signs saying: 'Insiders wanted'.

Sharing the footage on their Twitter page, XR said: 'Ordinary people have glued to the reception Shell HQ in London as protestors fill the lobby and surround the building.'

Video shared by XR shows two people with their hands down on a reception desk with a Shell sign visible in the background

Pictured: In the video, one of the protesters says: 'We are here to talk to HR, because we feel like there is not much point in talking to people at a corporation like this because those people clearly have not got any idea what is going on.'

Police formed a barrier to stop more activists entering Shell HQ in London after protesters managed to infiltrate the building

In the video, one of the protestors says: 'We are here to talk to HR, because we feel like there is not much point in talking to people at a corporation like this because those people clearly have not got any idea what is going on.'

A security guard then arrives and asks if they have glued themselves to the desk, with the protestor replying: 'We have, yes.'

Pictured: Police carry away an activist from Extinction Rebellion who glued herself to the reception of the Shell building

Police lead away an activist from XR who glued herself to the reception of the Shell building on the Southbank in London

Police lead away an activist from Extinction Rebellion who glued himself to the reception of the Shell building in London

Activists from Extinction Rebellion hold placards at an entrance to the Business Department in London

Demonstrators from Extinction Rebellion walk along Constitution Hill towards Buckingham Palace in London this afternoon

Outside, one hundred people from XR held up a placard with the name of an individual Shell employee and the words 'Please Join Us', while activists also handed out flyers to staff urging them to 'switch to the right side of history, before Shell turns toxic on your CV'.

Another group positioned a fireman's trampoline below the office windows bearing the message: 'Jump Ship'.

While the protests took place in and outside the Shell building, another group who said they were scientists, superglued themselves to an entrance of the nearby Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy as they continue to call for immediate action on climate change.

Hundreds of demonstrators also walked along Constitution Hill towards the Queen's official London residence - although she is currently living at Windsor Castle  waving flags and holding a large banner saying: 'End fossil fuels now'.

Also today, in a separate third protest, activists from the Just Stop Oil group - which is linked to XR - launched a 12th day of action by gluing their hands to roads and climbing on top of oil tankers in Purfleet, Essex.

MailOnline has contacted XR for comment.
Britain's first openly transgender MP has revealed he is ready to begin the process of transitioning 'as quickly as possible' - as he used a TV interview to describe how 'part of him died' following his rape ordeal last year.

Jamie Wallis, the Conservative MP for Bridgend, last month became the first MP to come out as trans as he spoke of having been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

The 37-year-old, who still prefers to be known as he/him for the time being, was widely praised by MPs across the House of Commons.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson hailed his 'immense amount of courage' and 'bravery'.

In an interview with Sky News, Mr Wallis acknowledged the 'incredible amount of support' he has received.

He also revealed his hopes of beginning the 'challenging and difficult' process of transitioning 'as quickly as possible'.

'There are lots of hurdles to overcome and its not going to be done overnight, it's going to take many, many years,' he told the Sophy Ridge on Sunday show.

'I think now that I am out and people do know, I'm free to start that and actually go on that journey at a pace that I find comfortable.'

Jamie Wallis, the UK's first openly transgender MP, told Sky News how he had come to the realisation it was 'pretty foolish to live for other people'

The 37-year-old revealed his hopes of beginning the 'challenging and difficult' process of transitioning 'as quickly as possible'

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has hailed the Bridgend MP's 'immense amount of courage' and 'bravery'

Mr Wallis described how he had come to the realisation it was 'pretty foolish to live for other people'.

'No matter what they may say or what might happen and no matter who those people are, you cant live your life for them,' he added.

'About a year ago, maybe about seven or eight months ago actually, I woke up one day and I realised actually I am no longer ashamed of this.'

In his statement last month in which he came out as trans, Mr Wallis - who was elected to Parliament at the 2019 general election - described how he had 'felt this way since I was a very young child'.

But he added he had 'always imagined I would leave politics well before I ever said this out loud'.

Mr Wallis also revealed how someone had blackmailed him in April 2020 and outed him to his father and sent photographs to other family members.

The blackmail plot - for which they had demanded 50,000 - ended in a conviction for the culprit, who has since been given a prison sentence.

Mr Wallis told Sky News how the experience had put him 'in a very dark place' but he praised the 'fantastic' actions of the police.

He described how he was still 'not okay' following a rape in September last year, when someone he 'hooked up' with after meeting online refused to wear a condom.

'I met someone that I liked and things started off quite well,' he told the broadcaster.

'Then I was not okay with not being what I consider to be responsible and safe practice in the bedroom, so I withdrew consent and then there was then he just decided that he was going to do it anyway and I was powerless to stop him and in that moment a part of me died and I have been trying to get it back ever since.'

Asked if he had managed to get that part of himself back, he replied: 'No.'

'I tried to forget about it for a few weeks and it almost worked, almost worked but then you start getting nightmares, flashbacks, it starts occupying every one of your thoughts and you find yourself just staring off into the distance because you're thinking about it again and that's when I chose to get some help.

'Like I said in my statement, I'm not okay, I'm not the person I was before that happened but I am at least in a place where I can get on with my life whilst I am dealing with it.'

Mr Wallis also urged young people grappling with gender identity issues not to 'wait as long as I've waited'.

He said: 'I waited and a lot of young people right now I think are dealing with gender issues and my advice to them would be, youve got a long life, I wouldnt wait as long as Ive waited  Im 37, maybe you could move a little bit quicker than that.

'But actually there is nothing wrong with just taking some time and discovering yourself and dont feel rushed to pick up a label or view it in any way, but when you know who you are, you are ready and you want to tell the world, there are people like myself who are waiting and were welcoming, were friendly and were here to help and support.'
The disgraced P&O Ferries have been accused of trying to pay its new low-paid foreign crew even lower wages.

The ferry company drew national outage last month when they illegally fired nearly 800 staff members without notice over Zoom and replaced them all immediately with cheaper foreign workers.

The agency workers who were hired to replace 786 staff say they were asked to sign new contracts on even lower pay.

It is claimed that if they refused to agree they faced being out of work and one agency worker emailed the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) , declaring: 'We are desperate.'

The 'desperate' agency worker is from the Spirit of Britain ferry, which until Friday had been detained in order to fix 'a number of' safety issues.

The 700ft long ship is now commencing operations, though the Pride Of Kent vessel, which also runs along Dover-Calais crossing, is still detained.

The detentions of both ships caused a shortage of ferry capacity in the run-up to Easter on the key Dover-Calais crossing and sparked massive queues of lorries on coastbound roads in Kent.

P&O Ferries reportedly offered some of the agency workers, who replaced the near 800 staff fired last month, new contracts with even lower wages

P&O Ferries sacked 786 staff members (pictured protesting earlier this week) over Zoom without notice and replaced them with cheaper agency worker from a Malta-based company

Fired workers protested in Dover, even wearing masks of their former boss Peter Hebblethwaite

P&O's boss Peter Hebblethwaite, who earns 345,000 a year, admitted firing the workers over Zoom without notice was illegal in testimony to MPs

P&O's millionaire boss Peter Hebblethwaite, who admitted the sackings were unlawful in testimony to MPs, replaced employees with cheaper 5.50-an-hour foreign agency workers.

Some crew earn just 748 a month for a 40-hour week  barely 4.50 an hour.

In one example reported by The Mirror, workers say chefs paid 2,336 a month on temporary contracts were asked to sign new deals giving them 195 a month less.

Although it is not known who faced a cut in wages, or if staff on seven other ferries were targeted too.

Darren Procter, national secretary of the RMT says some of the new workers were brought in on just a month's contract, and when those contracts expired the staff were offered 'inferior terms'.

The RMT are campaigning for dismissed P&O staff to be reinstated, but 'irrespective of nationality' are concerned for the new staff members, Mr Procter added: 'they are just as much victims as our members.'

The new crew was hired through Malta-based International Ferry Management, which was only set up in February.

Shipping firms registered abroad and running routes from the UK to Europe are exempt from minimum pay legislation.

The Spirit of Britain (pictured yesterday) has passed it safety inspection and sailed out of The Port of Dover with contractors on but no passengers or freight

In the email seen by the Sunday Mirror, a Romanian chef claimed IFM and P&O were trying to make agency crew sign new contracts.

He said: 'They don't care about rights. This is my sixth day working without contract, please help us. They try to give us less money. We are desperate.'

A Maritime and Coastguard Agency spokesman said: 'Prior to reinspecting the Spirit of Britain yesterday, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency received a complaint via the RMT, that a seafarer had been asked to sign a contract with reduced wages.

'As part of the re-inspection the MCA investigated and as a result the affected seafarers were issued with amended contracts, which reverted to their original wages.'

The RMT was allowed to board the ship last week and speak to crew.

Mr Procter said: 'I spoke with three Honduran crew and explained they only have 50 minutes in port and will not set foot on dry land for shore leave for 17 weeks  as there is no time to do so. The colour drained from their faces and I think they realised they were joining a ferry and not a P&O cruise ship!

'Their contract is basic pay of $961 per month for 40 hours work per week. This equates to 748 per month on board a vessel, away from loved ones on the most intensive ferry route in UK.'

Long Freight lorry queues occurred at The Port of Dover in Kent as P&O Ferries services were suspended, and continue to be so with the Pride of Kent still detained

Sacked P&O chef John Lansdown, 40, slammed 'another example of corporate greed'.

Mr Lansdown, of Herne Bay, Kent, who is suing for unfair dismissal, said: 'P&O are exploiting workers. If they get away with it again it could give the green light to others.'

P&O has said the sackings came after 100million-a-year losses jeopardised all 3,000 staff. The company, which refused to comment yesterday, was bought back for 322milion in 2019 by Dubai-based DP World, which first owned it in 2006.

It comes as several P&O Ferries agency staff were fired after testing positive for alcohol when they turned up for work.

Seven of the new workers, who were employed to replace permanent staff dismissed by the firm last month, were relieved of their duties after breaching guidelines on alcohol consumption. The agency staff returned to work on board a ferry over the limit, after leaving the ship for shore leave.

They were dismissed with immediate effect by P&O, which has a zero-tolerance policy on alcohol.

A spokesperson for P&O Ferries said: 'No agency seafarers were asked to accept reduced wages and we have contacted the MCA to request that they withdraw their statement, which is misleading.

'There was an administrative misunderstanding around the contract presented to one individual who appears to have been unaware of an appendix which made clear that he would be entitled to an additional 195 a month, meaning that there was no change in his overall pay.

'There are no plans to change or reduce the wages of any of our agency seafarers and we have made clear that we will continue to comply fully with any national minimum wage obligations introduced by the UK Government.'
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A Ukrainian mother and her three-month-old baby killed when a Russian missile hit a residential tower block in Odesa on Saturday have been identified.

Videos from Odesa yesterday showed the attack, with a huge ball of fire and smoke erupting from the building as it was struck by a flying object. At least eight people are believed to have been killed, and a further 18 injured.

Valeria Hlodan, 27, and her baby daughter Kira were in their apartment at the time of the strike. Ms Hlodan's mother - who was originally from Russia - was also killed.

The strike came a day before both Russia and Ukraine marked Orthodox Easter, with pictures showing president Vladimir Putin on Sunday attending a service at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Many Ukrainians and Russians celebrate Easter according to the Julian calendar, with Easter Sunday falling this year on April 24.

The attack sparked outrage in Ukraine at Putin over the missile strike on the coastal city, which hit the family's residential block while supposedly targeting a military target using a Tu-95 strategic bomber flying over the Caspian Sea, according to reports.

In his customary nightly address to the nation, an emotional Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to find and punish those responsible for the missile strike.

'The war started when this baby was 1 month old. Can you imagine what is happening?' Zelensky said. 'They are just b***ards. I don't have any other words for it, just b***ards.'

Zelensky urged Ukrainians to observe a curfew and not attend Orthodox Easter services overnight. The lengthy services traditionally begin late Saturday and run through Sunday morning. 'But starting from 5 a.m. you may go to the church in your city, town or community,' he said.

On the attack and the Russian invasion, which today entered its third month, Zelensky said: 'The world has not seen such barbarism in 80 years.' Zelensky's chief of staff Andriy Yermark said: 'Nothing is sacred. The evil will be punished.'

Valeria Hlodan (pictured), 27, and her baby daughter Kira were in their apartment at the time of the strike. Ms Hlodan's mother - who was originally from Russia - was also killed

Pictured left: Baby Kira with her grandmother Liudmila, who was killed alongside Kira and her young mother Valeria, pictured right with her husband Yuriy

Valeria, pictured while she was pregnant with her daughter Kira, was killed by a Russian missile in Odessa, Ukraine

Yuriy Glodan with baby daughter Kira, killed on 23 April 2022 by a Russian missile in Odesa. Upon learning of the attack, the broken-hearted father wrote: 'My dear ones, Kingdom of Heaven! You are in our hearts!'

Left: A missile is seen flying through the air over Odesa before striking the apartment building. Right: Flames are seen as the missile hits the building

Multiple videos from Odesa yesterday showed the missile strike, with a huge ball of fire and smoke erupting from the building. At least eight people are believed to have been killed, and a further 18 injured

Thousands of Ukrainians have fled to Odesa since the start of the war and there had previously been only a handful of attacks on the city.

In recent days, the local authorities had even begun dismantling anti-tank barriers and some checkpoints in the city centre after the Ukrainian military foiled a series of Russian strikes. But the attack raised fears more could be immanent in the city.

Analysts believe Putin wants to capture the city and form a land bridge in the south of Ukraine, between Russia and Transnistria - the pro-Russian breakaway region of Moldova - in order to cut off Kyiv's access to the Black Sea.

The mayor of Odesa Gennadiy Trukhanov said in front of the blitzed apartment block: 'Behind my back is what the [Russian] occupiers name 'a military object'.

'What they hit today with their high-precision weapon, this is what they call a military object. Eight people were killed, one of them a three-month-old baby girl, a resident of Odesa, who wasn't given a chance to see life.

'Scumbags you are, may you burn in hell,' he said.

Emergency service workers extinguish fire after a missile strike, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Odesa Oblast, Ukraine April 23, 2022

Rescuers work to remove debris from a building that was hit in a military strike, amid Russia's invasion, in Odesa, April 24

An apartment building damaged after Russian shelling in Odesa, Ukraine, Saturday, April 23

View shows a residential building damaged by a missile strike amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine, April 23, 2022

Members of the emergency team work near a residential building damaged by a missile strike amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine, April 23, 2022

A woman holds a dog as she sits near a residential building damaged by a missile strike amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine, April 23, 2022

Kira's family had Russian roots, and spoke Russian.

Her loving grandmother Liudmila Yavkina, 53, was from Novosibirsk - Siberia's largest city - which means Putin is killing his own, because they happen to be in Ukraine.

And after her wedding to Kira's father Yuriy on July 30, 2019, Valeria, a brand manager who was also studying journalism in Odesa, posted: 'This was the best day! 'Thank you my darling husband, this was the happiest start of our family history.

'We will remember the wedding day forever - and thank you to all our family members and friends for being with us.' The brokenhearted father wrote: 'My dear ones, Kingdom of Heaven! You are in our hearts!'.

A message from Ukraine's parliament said: 'A charming young mother and her three-month-old child Their lives were taken by Russia today when a Russian rocket hit a residential building in Odesa.RIP, our angels.'

Ukrainian official Anton Gerashchenko - an advisor to the Interior Ministry - said: 'Odesa will never forgive murder of its children.

'An entire family perished - Liudmila Yavkina, her daughter Valeria and her three-month-old granddaughter Kira. Hatred is filling our hearts.

'This was an ordinary yard of an ordinary apartment block in Odesa. It was a holiday, the Saturday before Easter, so there were children playing in the yard, there was laughter, there was life.

'But the Russian b***ards don't have a [holy] ceasefire. They aim at where it hurts the most - the peaceful cities, unarmed civilians, innocent children.'

Putin was shown in footage apparently attending the midnight mass at Christ the Saviour Cathedral close to the Kremlin in Moscow.

He held a lighted candle and when Patriarch Kirill - head of the Orthodox Church - said 'Christ has risen', Putin joined other worshippers with the reply 'Truly he is risen'.

The Russian defense ministry claimed it had hit a logistics terminal at a military airfield where Russia said a 'large consignment' of weapons from the US and European countries was being stored.

Russian forces had also destroyed weapons, ammunition and fuel depots, among other targets, and killed up to 200 Ukrainian fighters.

KYIV: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses Ukrainian people with Orthodox Easter message, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, at the Saint Sophia cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine April 23, 2022

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the Orthodox Easter service at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, Russia, 24 April 2022

Saturday's brutal assault has brought fresh fears that Vladimir Putin intends to seize all of southern Ukraine.

One man at the scene said he had been in his parents' flat on the 12th floor of the 14-storey building when there was an explosion and all the windows shattered.

To leave, the family had to push aside the fragments of a door and climb down before jumping to safety from the first floor.

Anna Vishenka, a 38-year-old dentist from Odesa, described how she had been on a bus  and therefore could not reach a shelter  when the bombing began.

'A child on the bus was crying and telling his mother that if we die, he will always love her,' she said. 'It is difficult to comprehend the horror of everything that is happening.

'You feel fear not for yourself or your life, but for your relatives, because you don't know where the next blow may be.'

Samuel Ramani, a Russian expert at Oxford University, warned Putin would 'intensify attacks' on Odesa, a major export hub.

'Gaining control of Odesa helps landlock Ukraine and grants Russia complete hegemony over its Black Sea coast,' he said.

Two of Putin's stooges warned Saturday that Moscow's forces would look to make further territorial gains inside the country.

Russian MP Leonid Babashov said Russia will aim to place the Ukrainian cities of Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Odesa under its 'protection', while Mikhail Sheremet, a member of Putin's United Russia Party, claimed the Crimea and southern Ukraine would be united into a single 'federal district' of Russia.

It came a day after one of Putin's top generals, Rustam Minnekayev, revealed plans to annex Ukraine's coastline and hinted at future military action in Moldova to protect 'oppressed' Russian speakers in the enclave of Transnistria, which has been effectively controlled by Moscow since 1992.

Elsewhere, speaking on Saturday, Zelensky said new evidence is emerging that shows Russian troops killed tens of thousands of civilians in Mariupol and then tried to cover it up.

A view shows the city in the course of Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port of Mariupol, Ukraine April 22, 2022

An aerial view shows damaged buildings, amid Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, in Mariupol, Ukraine in this handout picture taken with a drone released April 24, 2022

This satellite image released by Maxar Technologies on April 22, 2022, shows a cemetery near Vynohradne, Ukraine (approximately 12 kilometers east of Mariupol) on March 22, 2022

This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows a closer view of new graves being dug at a cemetery near Vynohradne, approximately 12 kilometers east of Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 29, 2022

He said Ukraine has intercepted Russian conversations about 'how they are concealing the traces of their crimes.' Satellite images have shown what appear to be mass graves dug in towns to the west and east of Mariupol.

Zelenskyy said the Russians set up 'filtration camps' near Mariupol for those trying to leave the city, which has largely been reduced to rubble.

He said those who survive these camps are sent to areas under Russian occupation or to Russia itself, often as far as Siberia or the Far East.

Many of them, he said, are children.

He said he spoke with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday about the situation in Mariupol and the general course of the war.

Russia resumed its assault on the last Ukrainian defenders holed up in a giant steel works in Mariupol on Saturday, days after Moscow declared victory in the southern city and said its forces did not need to take the plant.

The fate of the Ukrainians in the sprawling and besieged seaside complex, where Russia says its forces have taken the rest of the city, wasn't immediately clear.

A Ukrainian military unit on Saturday released a video reportedly taken two days earlier in which women and children holed up underground, some for as long as two months, said they longed to see the sun.

'We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe in fresh air,' one woman in the video said. 'You have simply no idea what it means for us to simply eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, it is already happiness.'

Russia said it took control of several villages elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region and destroyed 11 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including three artillery warehouses. Russian attacks also struck populated areas.

The Ukrainian military said Saturday it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.

The command post was hit on Friday, killing two generals and critically wounding another, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said in a statement. The Russian military did not comment on the claim, which could not be confirmed.
PHNOM PENH, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen on Sunday called on the public to get their booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines, saying that the booster jabs are necessary to strengthen their immunity against the highly contagious disease.

The southeast Asian nation launched a national vaccination drive against the disease in February 2021, with China being the key vaccine supplier.

So far, 14.88 million people, or 93 percent of the country's total population of 16 million, have obtained at least one shot, the Health Ministry said, adding that 14.14 million, or 88 percent, have been fully vaccinated with two required doses.

Also, some 8.22 million, or 51 percent, have got a third dose, and 1.36 million, or 8.5 percent, have had a fourth dose.

Hun Sen said all eligible Cambodians must receive at least three vaccine shots to strengthen their immunity and advised the health authorities to focus their vaccination campaign on garment factory employees, construction workers, market vendors and students.

"I'd like to appeal to all people in Cambodia to get their third doses ... in order to strengthen herd immunity and ensure that our full reopening will not see any setbacks," he said in an audio message released publicly.

Cambodia has fully resumed its socioeconomic activities and reopened its borders to vaccinated travelers without quarantine since last November.

The prime minister said that thanks to the effectiveness of vaccines, Cambodia did not see any sign of COVID-19 resurgence after the kingdom celebrated its traditional new year from April 14 to 16, during which some 4.6 million tourists traveled nationwide.

"During the Khmer New Year, a lot of people were in close contact with each other, but there were no (mass) infections," he said.

The country registered 16 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday with new zero fatalities, bringing the country's confirmed total cases since the pandemic began to 136,216, including 3,056 deaths, according to the Health Ministry. 
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The scale of Russian troop losses in Ukraine has tipped 21,000 as Putin's war rumbles into its third month today.

The latest statistics, published by the Ukrainian Land Forces this morning, suggest 21,800 Russian fighters have been killed amid bitter resistance from Ukraine's armed forces and territorial defence units - though this figure could not be verified.

Meanwhile, the land forces claim to have dealt massive damage to Russia's military equipment and machinery.

A total of 873 tanks are said to have been destroyed, along with 2238 armoured vehicles, 179 planes, 154 helicopters and 408 artillery systems.

Putin's forces rolled across the border on February 24 from the north, east and south, and quickly made a beeline for Kyiv.

But they were forced to withdraw from the outskirts of the capital in late March and refocus their efforts on a targeted offensive in the eastern Donbas region after Ukraine successfully repelled their advances, inflicting heavy losses.

Russia's vast troop losses have been put down to poor tactical decisions by Russian military leaders and a considerable underestimation of the capabilities of Ukraine's armed forces.

At the start of the war, Russia's military dwarfed that of Ukraine and led many to believe that the invasion would be swift and effective.

On February 24, Russia's land army consisted of 280,000 full-time active soldiers compared with Ukraine's 125,600.

But the amount of Russian soldiers needed to seize the whole country and control the entire population would be close to 1 million, according to Michael Clarke, a visiting professor in King's College London's department of war studies - suggesting the Kremlin woefully underestimated the amount of force needed to force its neighbours into submission.

Elsewhere in Ukraine today:

The war entered its third month as Russia continues to batter the port city of Mariupol and the Donbas

Putin's forces called in more airstrikes on Mariupol's Azovstal steel plant - the city's last Ukrainian holdout

The move ignored Ukrainian officials' calls for an 'Easter truce' to allow civilians trapped there to evacuate

Russian forces intensified attacks in Popasna and Sieverodonetsk in Luhansk, and Kurakhiv in Donetsk

Putin's forces also deployed mine-clearing vehicles to destroy Ukrainian armed forces holdouts in Rubizhne

The attacks come as Ukrainians and Russians alike celebrate Orthodox Easter, two months since war began

The Kremlin announced it will deploy its fearsome nuclear-capable 'Satan II' missile this autumn

Valentyna Sherba, 68, stands next to a Russian tank in the backyard of her father's home, both destroyed, in the aftermath of a battle between Russian and Ukrainian troops on the outskirts of Chernihiv, northern Ukraine, Saturday, April 23, 2022

A man rides his bicycle next to a destroyed Russian tank in Chernihiv, Ukraine, on Thursday, April 21, 2022

A man jumps from a Russian T-72 tank destroyed during Russia's invasion, in the village of Yahidne, Ukraine April 20, 2022

This image, released by General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on April 3, 2022 shows the burning wreckage of a downed Russian fighter jet in the Kharkiv region

Ukrainian sappers search for unexploded explosives at the burnt remains of a Russian helicopter destroyed during recent fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces at the Antonov airport in Hostomel, outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 18, 2022.

The wreckage of a downed Russian helicopter lies in a field near Kharkiv on April 16, 2022

Ukraine's fighting force has grown dramatically thanks to the number of reservists who signed up in the weeks prior to the invasion, the influx of foreign fighters volunteering to fight for Ukraine, and the introduction of conscription.

Facing stiff resistance, morale among Russian troops is said to have tanked as they were shipped off to battle, underprepared, untrained and poorly equipped.

These issues have continued to plague the Russian invasion force, even as they pulled from Kyiv and other cities in order to concentrate on the seizure of the Donbas region.

'Despite Russia making some territorial gains, Ukrainian resistance has been strong across all axes and inflicted significant cost on Russian forces,' the UK Ministry of Defence said.

'Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganise forces from prior offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness.'

Experts say this 'second phase' of the war - Russia's attempt to seize territory in the Donbas region of Donetsk and Luhansk - is likely an outcome of its army's slow progress and massive losses of troops and equipment early in the war, which prompted a change in tactics.

Director of the FMES strategic studies institute Pascal Ausseur said the Russian army, having failed in its initial shock-and-awe assault of Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, may well be hoping to establish an axis from Kherson in the south to Izyum, cutting off huge swathes of territory in eastern Ukraine over the course of several gruelling weeks or months.

'They realised that the Blitzkrieg option didn't work out, so they returned to the traditional Soviet bulldozer model. If you can't break the will of your enemies, you grind them down,' Ausseur said.

'They will Mariupol-ise the operation,' he added, in reference to the southern port city that has been subjected to relentless Russian bombardment over the past two months.

Colin Clarke, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center think tank, concurred with Ausseur's analysis, stating: 'It looks like the Russian military is simply pursuing a scorched earth approach, attempting to break the will of the Ukrainian military through the use of overwhelming force and indiscriminate shelling to force remaining civilians to flee.'

On Friday, Russian Major General Rustam Minnekaev was quoted as saying that 'one of the tasks of the Russian army is to establish full control over the Donbas and southern Ukraine', adding this would provide 'a land corridor to Crimea', the peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

But this ambition brings challenges, according to Michel Goya, a former French army colonel.

'The deeper Russian forces go into Ukraine, the more vulnerable they are,' he said on Twitter.

Russia has succeeded in controlling the overwhelming majority of Mariupol, with only a few hundred Ukrainian fighters thought to remain in the city, holed up in the Azovstal steel plant by the port city's harbour.

But Putin's declaration that the city had been 'successfully liberated' earlier this week came only after it had endured constant bombing campaigns over the course of eight weeks, effectively reducing most of the city to rubble.

An aerial view shows damaged buildings, amid Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, in Mariupol, Ukraine in this handout picture taken with a drone released April 24, 2022

A man walks near damaged buildings in the course of Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 22, 2022

Russia has succeeded in controlling the overwhelming majority of Mariupol, with only a few hundred Ukrainian fighters still holed up in the Azovstal steel plant (pictured) by the port city's harbour. But Putin's declaration that the city had been 'successfully liberated' earlier this week came only after it had endured constant bombing campaigns over the course of eight weeks, effectively reducing most of the city to rubble

Multiple videos from Odesa yesterday showed the missile strike, with a huge ball of fire and smoke erupting from the building. At least eight people are believed to have been killed, and a further 18 injured

Valeria Hlodan (pictured), 27, and her baby daughter Kira were killed when a missile struck an apartment block in Odesa yesterday. Ms Hlodan's mother - who was originally from Russia - was also killed

Mariupol's mayor Vadym Boychenko said earlier this month that 90 per cent of Mariupol's infrastructure had been damaged, with 40 per cent completely destroyed.

Odesa, another port city in southern Ukraine, also endured a rocket attack yesterday which killed at least eight civilians, including a three-month-old baby and her mother, sparking fears Russian commanders may order further air and missile strikes given the progress made in Mariupol.

Ausseur said Ukraine would need to orchestrate a robust air defence system, perhaps with the support of Western military aid packages, to defend itself from continued air attacks - Russia's most effective weapon in the war thus far.

'They need a shield that makes the equation less favourable to the Russians,' he said, adding that otherwise Russia could pursue air strikes indefinitely.

'The emerging scenario is one of high-intensity bombings lasting several weeks, or maybe several months.'

But experts no longer believe Russia has any designs on Kyiv, having sustained too many losses to continue pursuing control of the capital.

A steady stream of images and videos captured by Ukrainian armed forces personnel and regular citizens has provided constant evidence of Russian losses in Ukraine.

Footage obtained earlier this week from the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade - a formation of the Ukrainian Ground Forces - showed how a Russian tank was caught in an anti-tank missile system's crosshairs before the projectile soared through the air and blew it to smithereens.

The brigade titled the video (in Ukrainian): 'Stugna against T-72: attackers of the 128th brigade destroyed a Russian tank with a Ukrainian missile from a distance of 4.5 km'.

It comes as separate footage emerged of a Russian Ka-53 attack helicopter being blown out of the sky over Zaporizhzhia by another Ukrainian man-portable missile system.

This is the moment a Russian tank is blown to smithereens by a Ukrainian anti-tank guided missile fired from almost three miles away (R). Footage obtained today from the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Ground Forces shows how the tank is caught in the missile system's crosshairs (L) before it is destroyed

A Ukrainian service member stands next to a damaged Russian tank T-72 BV, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in Donetsk region

The Stugna-P is a Ukrainian anti-tank guided missile system developed by the Luch Design Bureau, located in Kyiv.

It can attack from both long range - up to three miles in the daytime, depending on the type of missile - and close range - 100 yards.

The brigade said that it took the missile just 21 seconds to travel almost three miles before obliterating the invaders' armour.

'The missile from the Stugna anti-aircraft missile system flies at a speed of 200-220 metres per second, so the enemy tank was at a distance of about 4.5 kilometres,' the brigade's statement read.

'(The tank) did not stand still, it moved, but this did not prevent the ATGM [anti-tank guided missile] operator from hitting him.'

The brigade added: 'Neither the Swedish-British anti-tank complex NLAW, nor the American Javelin work at such long distances.

'And our Stugna destroyed a moving tank 4.5 kilometres away.'

NLAWs have a typical maximum firing range of roughly half a mile (800-1000m), while the Javelin is effective at distances of over a mile (2-2.5km).

The brigade did not specify where in Ukraine the strike took place. However, fighting has recently been most intense along a 300-mile front in the country's eastern Donbas region.

The T-72 referred to by the brigade is a family of Soviet main battle tanks that entered production in 1969.

They are currently operated by over 40 countries, including both Russia and Ukraine, though the latter has retired most in favour of the earlier T-64.

Meanwhile in Zaporizhzhia, drone footage showed a Russian attack helicopter blown out of the sky by a Ukrainian 9K38 Igla man portable air defence system (MANPADS).

The footage, shared by Ukrainian telegram channel Unian and later distributed on Twitter, showed the Russian Ka-53 hovering over farmland and lakes, before the missile streaked through the air and engulfed the chopper in a huge fireball

Footage from yet another video shows a Russian helicopter erupting into a fireball after being hit by a Ukrainian missile

A Ukrainian soldier gestures towards a destroyed Russian helicopter in the outskirts of the village of Malaya Rohan, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, April 20, 2022. Picture taken April 20, 2022

The Igla, or 'needle', is a Soviet-era anti-aircraft missile launcher which was first deployed in the early 1980s, but has proven incredibly effective in Ukrainian hands against Russian choppers.

The footage, shared by Ukrainian telegram channel Unian and later distributed on Twitter, showed the Russian Ka-53 hovering over farmland and lakes, before the missile streaked through the air and engulfed the chopper in a huge fireball.

Though Russia's armed forces outnumber their Ukrainian counterparts and have more equipment and machinery at their disposal, poor tactical decisions have been preyed upon by Ukrainian fighters, who have used their anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry to great effect.

And despite most of the conflict in Ukraine being waged on the ground and with air and missile strikes, Russia has even lost 8 of its boats - including the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva, in an embarrassing moment for Putin's navy.

The flagship was severely damaged by Ukrainian missiles last week before it sank to the bottom of the Black Sea, yet Russian authorities took more than a week to recognise the ship had been lost.

The Kremlin reported that one serviceman died and 27 dozen others were missing after the ship sank, having previously stated that all members of the crew - believed to be roughly 500-strong - had been rescued.

The loss of the Moskva, one of three missile cruisers of its kind in Russia's fleet, was shrouded in mystery from the moment it was first reported early on April 14.

Ukraine said it hit the ship with missiles, but the Russian Defence Ministry would not acknowledge an attack, saying only that a fire broke out on the vessel after ammunition detonated, causing serious damage.

Despite most of the conflict in Ukraine being waged on the ground and with air and missile strikes, Russia has even lost 8 of its boats - including the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva (pictured), in an embarrassing moment for Putin's navy.

Images captured before the vessel sank appeared to show damage to the left-hand side of the vessel close to the water line, smoke and fire damage along its left-hand side, missing lifeboats and open helicopter bay doors - suggesting the aircraft had taken off

To avoid encirclement in the east amid Russia's latest assault on the Donbas, the defending Ukrainians may disperse into several fronts, Colin Clarke of the Soufan Center think tank said, in order to stretch Russian supply and communication lines. 'That strategy has been successful so far,' he said.

Western aid has been boosted in recent days, notably with the announcement of an $800-million military package by US President Joe Biden, specifically aimed at the struggle in the Donbas.

But the clock is ticking. Armoured personnel vehicles 'will take weeks or even months' to get to the Ukrainian army, according to Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

'Even if the vehicles come out of stocks already in Europe, they will require some servicing before they are ready for shipping,' he said.

NATO countries have started supplying Ukraine with - originally Soviet-developed - S300 missile systems but experts noted their deployment also takes time.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin travel to Kyiv today to discuss with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky the kinds of weapons he needs to fight off Russia, after Biden's announcement of the mammoth $800m military support package.

Alexander Khramchikhin, of the Moscow-based Institute for Political and Military Analysis, said the fighting could even go on for years in light of the capabilities of Ukraine's armed forces, reinforced with Western aid packages and arms shipments.

'Russia has so far achieved none of its objectives, and it's not easy to see how it will achieve them in the future,' he told AFP.

Russian troops invaded Ukraine on 24th February in what the Kremlin is calling a 'special military operation' to 'demilitarise and denazify' the country.

The invasion has now lasted two months, with Russia 'most likely' to intensify attacks in Ukraine before its 9th May Victory Day celebrations, according to UK intelligence.
Russia and Ukraine both marked Orthodox Easter on Sunday, with pictures showing Vladimir Putin in a Moscow church as his army's missiles continued to rain down on Ukrainian civilians across the country.

The Russian strongman attended the midnight mass at the capital's vast Christ the Saviour Cathedral, that sits close to the Kremlin.

But as his invasion - which was meant to result in a swift, decisive victory over Russia's smaller neighbour - entered its third month, pictures showed Putin's mind appeared to be elsewhere as he stood by the church's altar during the ceremony, dwarfed by a large mural of the Virgin Mary resting Baby Jesus on her lap.

He held a lit candle and when Patriarch Kirill - head of the Russian Orthodox Church - said 'Christ has risen', Putin joined other worshippers with the reply 'Truly he is risen'.

Across the border, just 280 miles from Moscow, the same words were spoken by people in Ukraine as the embattled nation also marked Orthodox Easter, in some cases in the ruins of churches destroyed by Russian shells.

In the capital of Kyiv, prayers were held for those fighting on the front lines and others trapped beyond them in places like Mariupol.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed in an Easter message that no 'wickedness' will destroy the country and prayed that God returns happiness to children and brings solace to grieving mothers.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis appealed again for a truce in war-torn Ukraine over the weekend, 'to ease the suffering of exhausted people'.

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the Orthodox Easter service in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, April 24, 2022

KYIV: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses Ukrainian people with Orthodox Easter message, as Russia's attack continues, at the Saint Sophia cathedral, April 23

In a video address from one of the country's best known landmarks, the 1,000-year-old Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Zelensky said Ukraine will overcome the darkness that Russia's invasion had brought upon it.

'Today, we still believe in the new victory of Ukraine and we are all convinced that we will not be destroyed by any horde or wickedness,' said Zelensky, wearing his trademark dark khaki outfit.

'We are overcoming dark times and on this day I - and most of us - are not in bright clothes, but we are fighting for a luminous idea.'

Ukraine's St. Volodymyr's Cathedral - also in Kyiv - was ringed by hundreds of worshipers with baskets to be blessed.

Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the eastern Luhansk region, said on Sunday that seven churches there have been destroyed in the war.

While churches used to be full for overnight and morning Easter services, this year churches have been asked not to gather many people, with concerns they could be targets for missiles.

Zelensky said on Thursday Russia had rejected a proposal for a truce over the Easter period.

Senior Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said on Sunday Russian forces were shelling the Avozstal steelworks in the besieged southern city of Mariupol, where Ukrainian defenders are holed up..

In a Twitter message, he called for 'a real Easter truce in Mariupol', along with an immediate humanitarian corridor for civilians and a special talks to facilitate the exchange of military and civilians.

Inside, a woman clutched the arm of a soldier, turning briefly to kiss his elbow. Other soldiers prayed, holding handful of candles, then crossed themselves.

An older woman bent slowly made her way through the crowd and stands of flickering candles. One young woman held daffodils.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (pictured in the backfround) and Moscow's Mayor Sergei Sobyanin (to Putin's right) attend Orthodox Easter mass led by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill (walking down the stairs) at the Christ The Saviour Cathedral on April 24, 2022 in Moscow

Family members mourn during the funeral service for fallen soldier Kobryn Oleg, aged 39, at Saint's Peter and Peul Garrison Church on April 23, 2022 in Lviv, Ukraine

Left: Worshippers receive a sanctification during an Orthodox Easter service in front of St. Volodymyr's Cathedral in Kyiv on April 24, 2022. Right: Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulate each other after the Easter service at the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, Russia, early Sunday, April 24, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends Orthodox Easter mass led by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill at the Christ The Saviour Cathedral on April 24, 2022 in Moscow, Russia

A Ukrainian soldier lights candles at the Volodymysky Cathedral during Easter celebration in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Apr. 24, 2022

Left: A Virgin Mary statue stands in front of a flag of Ukraine, as Ukrainian believers attend an Orthodox Easter service at the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows in Pardubice, Czech Republic, early 24 April 2022. Right: Russian President Vladimir Putin holds a candle during the Orthodox Easter mass in Moscow. Behind him, a nativity painting towers over him

Believers attend the Orthodox Easter service at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, Russia April 24, 2022

Faithfuls attend an Orthodox Easter service outside the damaged Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Peremoha village, Ukraine, 24 April 2022

Pope Francis scraps planned meeting with Russia's Putin-backing Patriarch Kirill Pope Francis this week dropped plans to meet in June with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who has backed Moscow's war in Ukraine. Francis, who has several times implicitly criticised Russia and Putin over the war, told Argentine newspaper La Nacion in an interview that he regretted that the plan had to be 'suspended' because Vatican diplomats advised that such a meeting 'could lend itself to much confusion at this moment'. In Moscow, the RIA news agency quoted Metropolitan Hilarion, a senior Russian Orthodox Church official, as saying the meeting was postponed because 'the events of the last two months' would have created many difficulties in its preparation. Reuters reported on April 11 that the Vatican was considering extending the pope's trip to Lebanon on June 12-13 by a day so that he could meet with Kirill on June 14 in Jerusalem. Kirill, 75, has given his full-throated blessing for Russia's invasion of Ukraine since it began on Feb. 24, a position that has splintered the worldwide Orthodox Church and unleashed an internal rebellion that theologians and academics say is unprecedented. Francis, 85, has used terms such as unjustified aggression and invasion in his public comments on the war, and has lamented atrocities against civilians. Asked in the interview why he has never named Russia or Putin specifically, Francis was quoted as saying: 'A pope never names a head of state, much less a country, which is superior to its head of state'. Advertisement

With the Orthodox church split by the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, some worshippers hoped the holy day could inspire gestures of peace-making.

'The church can help,' said one man who gave only his first name, Serhii, as he came to a church in Kyiv under the Moscow Patriarchate.

He and others brought baskets to be blessed by priests for Easter, with flicks of a brush sprinkling holy water over offerings of home-dyed eggs, lighted candles and even bottles of Jack Daniels.

Residents of rural villages battered by the war approached the holiday with some defiance.

'We'll celebrate Easter no matter what, no matter much horror,' said Kateryna Lazarenko, 68, in the northern village of Ivanivka outside Chernihiv, where ruined Russian tanks still littered the roads.

'How do I feel? Very nervous, everyone is nervous,' said another resident, Olena Koptyl, as she prepared her Easter bread.

'The Easter holiday doesn't bring any joy. I'm crying a lot. We cannot forget how we lived.' She and 12 others spent a month sheltering from Russian soldiers in the basement of her home before the soldiers withdrew.

Away from Kyiv, under the rain at a military position in the eastern town of Lyman, on the frontline, soldiers traded the usual patriotic salutation of 'Glory to Ukraine!' for the ritual 'Christ has risen!'

'Truly risen!' came the reply.

In the town's small Orthodox church, around 50 civilians had braved possible mortar fire to gather to pray from dawn. Ukrainian and Russian artillery fire could be heard throughout the singing of the psalms.

'If we make the wrong choices then darkness will ruin us, as darkness is destroying us during this war,' the priest said in his sermon.

On another part of the frontline, in the eastern city of Severodonetsk, Ukrainian troops had hidden their small stock of supplies under a bridge after they were hit by Russian mortar rounds in the night.

Along with water and Coke bottles, Kalashnikovs and cereal bars, three large Easter breads covered in icing and sprinkled with multicoloured sugar beads awaited them, after a delivery from their commander.

Worshipers stand next to their traditional cakes and painted eggs prepared for an Easter celebration during a religious service at a church in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, on Sunday

Olga Zhovtobrukh, 55, cries during an Easter religious service celebrated at a church in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, on Sunday, April 24, 2022

People attend a service at the Volodymysky Cathedral during Easter celebration in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Apr. 24, 2022

Local residents walk after the Orthodox Easter service next to The Nativity of the Holy Virgin Church damaged by shelling during Russia's invasion in the village of Peremoha, in Kyiv region, Ukraine April 24, 2022

An Orthodox priest Oleksandr conducts the Orthodox Easter service at the remains of Trinity church in the village of Hostroluchchia, in Kyiv region, Ukraine April 24, 2022

In his Saturday message Zelensky also said Mariupol and its 'heroic defenders' should not be forgotten.

'It is possible to destroy the walls, but it is not possible to destroy the foundation on which the spirit of our warriors, the spirit of the whole country, rests,' he said.

Ukrainian officials said least 213 children have been killed in the war, including a 3-month-old infant in strikes on Saturday in the southern city of Odesa.

Pavlo Krylenko, the governor of Donetsk region, said on Telegram that two girls aged 5 and 14 were killed on Sunday when the building where they lived was destroyed by Russian shelling.

Russia has denied targeting civilians.

'Give every boy and every girl a happy childhood, youth, and old age, which will allow at least a bit to shed the memories of their terrible childhood during the war,' Zelensky said.

'Take care of our mothers, give endurance to those who are waiting for a son or daughter to return from the war,' he added. 'Give endurance to those who, unfortunately, would not see the return of their child from the front.'

Ukraine on Sunday prepared for the first high-level U.S. trip to Kyiv since before the war began on February 24 after Zelensky announced he would meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Zelensky in his news conference Saturday night gave few details but said he expected results - 'not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons.'

Meanwhile, the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine flew among the faithful gathered in the Vatican on St Peter's Square, where the leader of the Roman Catholic Church recalled that fighting erupted two months ago on February 24.

'Instead of halting, the war has become worse,' Pope Francis said.

'It is sad that on these most holy and solemn days for Christians we hear more of the murderous noise of weapons than that of the bells announcing the resurrection' of Christ.

'I renew the appeal for an Easter truce, the smallest tangible sign of a willingness for peace,' he pleaded.

'Stop the attacks to ease the suffering of exhausted people,' the pope added, with both Russians and Ukrainians celebrating Orthodox Easter this Sunday.

UN Ukraine crisis coordinator Amin Awad called on Sunday for an 'immediate stop' to fighting in Mariupol to allow the evacuation of trapped civilians in the battered port city almost all of which is now under Russian control.

On Palm Sunday, April 10, the pope had called for an Easter truce leading 'to peace through veritable negotiations'. On Thursday he backed UN secretary general Antonio Guterres' own appeal for an end to the fighting.

Worshippers light candles at the Saint Volodymyr's Cathedral during Orthodox Eastern celebrations in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 24, 2022

A female Ukrainian soldier crosses herself during an Orthodox Easter service in St. Volodymyr's Cathedral in Kyiv on April 24, 2022

An Orthodox priest Oleksandr conducts the Orthodox Easter service at the remains of Trinity church in the village of Hostroluchchia, in Kyiv region, Ukraine April 24, 2022

The modest Easter celebrations came just a day after missile struck a residential building in the Black Sea port of Odesa, killing eight people and wounding at least 18, according to Zelensky, who said five missiles hit the historic city.

'We will identify all those responsible for this strike; those responsible for Russia's missile terror,' he said.

Russia's defence ministry said it had targeted a major depot stocking foreign weapons near Odesa, attacks that upended the relative calm the city has enjoyed since the beginning of the war.

The ministry also charged that Ukrainian special services in Odesa were preparing a 'provocation with the use of toxic chemical substances' that could then be blamed on Russia.

Western powers have accused Russia in the past of making such allegations as a cover or diversion for attacks its own forces are planning.

The latest fighting followed an announcement earlier this week from a senior Russian military officer who said Moscow aimed to take full control over the eastern Donbas region and southern Ukraine.

Russian forces, who withdrew from around Kyiv and the north of Ukraine after being frustrated in their attempts to take the capital, already occupy much of the Donbas and the south.

After changing their strategic focus to southern and eastern Ukraine, Russian forces left behind a trail of destruction around Kyiv, including in the commuter town of Bucha.

A United Nations mission to Bucha documented 'the unlawful killing, including by summary execution, of some 50 civilians there', the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

Russian forces had 'indiscriminately shelled and bombed populated areas, killing civilians and wrecking hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure, actions that may amount to war crimes'.

Tania Boikiv, 52, said Russian troops took her husband from their home in Bucha, held him for two weeks, then beat him to death as they retreated.

'The most terrible thing in my life is that my husband, my loved one, is gone,' she told AFP. 'I don't know what could be worse.'
A knifeman shouted 'we have to kill Macron' as he stabbed a priest and a nun multiple times in an unprovoked attack in France this morning.

Father Krzysztof Rudzinski, 59, was stabbed 20 times with a 7cm knife before Sister Marie-Claude, 72, was cut in the hand as she reportedly snatched the knife from the attacker.

French police arrested a 31-year-old French man from Frejus, southeastern France, after the attack at 10am in the Saint Pierre d'Arene church, Nice.

France began voting on Sunday in a presidential run-off election in a race between incumbent Emmanuel Macron and far-right politician Marine Le Pen.

The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, tweeted a picture from inside the church and said the attacker was a 'disturbed' Frenchman who may have planned the attack for 'a few days'.

He said: 'I was the first on the scene once I was alerted to the incident by my assistant and the local police.

'Both local and national police were swiftly on the scene together to neutralize the disturbance.

A knifeman stabbed a priest and a nun multiple times in an unprovoked attack in France this morning at the Saint Pierre d'Arene church in Nice, France

The priest, Father Krzyzstof Rudzinski, 59, was stabbed 20 times with a 7cm knife and an elderly nun was cut in the hand trying as she tried to protect him from the attacker in the Saint Pierre d'Arene church (pictured)

Police officers stand guard outside Saint-Pierre d'Arene church following the attack of a priest

Police and firefighters vehicles are parked outside Saint-Pierre d'Arene church following the attack of a priest by a man in the French riviera city of Nice, on April 24

Police forensics get ready to investigate outside Saint-Pierre d'Arene church following the attack of a priest by a man with 'obvious bipolar disorder' in the French riviera city of Nice, on April 24

'The perpetrator was a disturbed man, who was born in Frejus, who has no prior convictions and who took out several knives.

'We have to ask if this was a premeditated attack because he had acquired a knife 7cm long a few days before the attack.

'I want to thank the emergency services even though the priest is currently in the emergency care unit, he's being well taken care of and we are in constant contact with him and despite everything he is doing well and is awake and alert.

'A female worshiper was also injured and a number of parishioners are currently in shock and are being treated by psychologists and I want to thank again the emergency services.

'The national and local police have collaborated together remarkably to neutralize the situation and to secure the church of Saint Pierre d'Arene as quickly as possible.'

The man reportedly approached the priest and stabbed him with a knife this morning.

Nice's mayor Christian Estrosi answers journalists' questions following the attack of a priest in a church of Nice by a man with 'obvious bipolar disorder' in the French riviera city of Nice, on April 24, 2022

A nun was also allegedly injured in the attack, which came as voting in the French election started today.

Mr Macron is in pole position to win re-election in the country's presidential run-off on Sunday, although his lead over Ms Le Pen depends on one major uncertainty: voters who could decide to stay home.

A Macron victory in this vote would make him the first French president in 20 years to win a second term.

French voters began casting their ballots Sunday for the presidential run-off between centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. Pictured: Marine Le Pen casts her vote during the second round of France's presidential election at a polling station in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, on April 24, 2022

French President Emmanuel Macron, candidate for his re-election, and his wife Brigitte Macron leave their home to vote in the second round of the 2022 French presidential election, in Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, France, April 24, 2022

Members of the public cast their votes at Lycee Voltaire polling station during the final round of the presidential elections on April 24, 2022 in Paris, France

A man walks in front of campaign posters of Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen (Christophe Ena/AP)

All opinion polls in recent days converge toward a win for the 44-year-old pro-European centrist  yet the margin over his nationalist rival varies broadly, from six to 15 percentage points, depending on the poll.

Polls also forecast a possibly record-high number of people who will either cast a blank vote or not vote at all.

Polling stations opened at 8am local time on Sunday and close at 7pm in most places, apart from big cities that have chosen to keep stations open until 8pm.
Popular cookware company Le Creuset has warned customers against cooking with olive oil, as its low smoke point is damaging pans.

After numerous customer complaints about the bottom of pots and pans becoming damaged when used, the French brand has written to customers advising that their choice of cooking oil may be causing the problem.

Olive oil has a low smoke point, meaning that it can burn quicker and give food an acrid taste, compared to oils such as sunflower, avocado, canola, coconut, corn and sesame.

Le Creuset has warned customers against cooking with olive oil, as its low smoke point is damaging pans. File image

The French company warned that burnt oil an form a brownish film on the pan, creating a barrier between the food and the cookware. File image

After writing to the company, one Le Creuset customer was told: 'We advise to avoid using olive oil and recommend oils with a higher burning point like rapeseed oil, coconut oil and sunflower oil.

'Olive oil has a very low burning point, and this can form a brownish film on the pan (burnt oil), creating a barrier between the food and the pan.

'We would advise that every now and then you rub cooking oil around the pan and leave it whilst it is not in use. This will help preserve the quality of it.'

Similar advise has also been issued by John Lewis, which warned that olive oil will 'carbonise' on ceramic pans and leave behind a residue.

And Smeg recommended customers not allow oil to 'smoke or burn', adding that food can be cooked and fried in its non-stick pans without oil.

Chef and author Mark Greenaway said that olive oil should be used for 'finishing a dish'. File image

Allowing olive oil to burn can ruin the taste of food, warned chef and author Mark Greenaway.

'You should never cook with olive oil. It should only ever be used in finishing a dish,' he told The Sunday Telegraph.

'If you cook with it, the smoking point is so low, it removes the Teflon from non-stick pans or burns traditional pans.'

Smoking oil is not always a warning sign, wrote Niki Achitoff-Gray, former Serious Eats editor-in-chief, in her blog.

'Oftentimes, you'll want that wok or skillet rippling hot. But when a flavourful raw oil or pool of butter starts sending up smoke, you're headed into a danger zone.

'Heated past its smoke point, that fat starts to break down, releasing free radicals and a substance called acrolein, the chemical that gives burnt foods their acrid flavour and aroma.'

Oils with a low smoke point are recommended for dressings, drizzling over a finished dish, or lower heat cooking. File image

Are burnt oils bad for your health? Olive oil contains polyphenols, micronutrients that are high in antioxidants. But they start to break down when exposed to high heat, meaning that health benefits of the oil decrease. When unsaturated oils, including olive oil, are heated too much, some research has found that they can develop compounds with carcinogenic properties. However other studies have disputed this, and say that they are safe to cook with. Advertisement

Oils with a low smoke point are recommended for dressings, drizzling over a finished dish, or lower heat cooking.

With speciality oils on the rise, the market has grown from 47 million in 2019 to 51 million, according to research company Mintel.

The olive oil market has also risen from 158 million to 179 million during the same period, it reports.

But supply chain problems caused by Putin's war in Ukraine mean that there are now limits on the amount of oil shoppers can buy.

Most of the UK's sunflower oil comes from Ukraine and shortages have also increased demand for alternatives.

Morrisons and Waitrose are limiting customers to two purchases per person, and Tesco three. Iceland is also rationing its stocks of sunflower oil.

Sainsbury's and Asda have not placed limits on its oils.

The British Retail Consortium's (BRC) Tom Holder said the move was a temporary measure 'to ensure availability for everyone', reported the BBC.

He said that retailers are 'working with suppliers to ramp up production of alternative cooking oils, to minimise the impact on consumers'.

According to the Office for National Statistics, cooking oils are almost a quarter more expensive than a year ago.

And retail research firm Assosia reported that a one-litre bottle of own-brand sunflower oil has gone up by an average of 12p to 1.26 since January 2022  an increase of more than 10%.
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French voters cast their ballots on Sunday for the presidential run-off between centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen.

The vote comes after a close first round on April 10 - which saw Macron and Le Pen clinch first and second place respectively to go through to today's run-off - and after a fractious campaign that has seen the French far right come its closest yet to winning power, sending nervous shudders across Europe.

A big question now is how many of France's 48.7 million eligible voters won't cast ballots because of their aversion to Macron and Len Pen, a choice often colloquially compared to deciding 'between the plague and cholera.'

Turnout figures on Sunday showed a 63.23% participation rate by 5 p.m. (1500 GMT), the interior ministry said, below the 65.30% recorded at the same time in the 2017 election.

The result of voting in France, a nuclear-armed nation with one of the world's biggest economies, could also impact the conflict in Ukraine, as France has played a key role in diplomatic efforts and support for sanctions against Russia. However, Le Pen has been accused of having close ties to the Kremlin.

Despite this, Le Pen's support in France's electorate has grown during this campaign to her highest level ever.

Speaking on Saturday, Macron acknowledged that Le Pen had alacrity and resonance among some voters, adding that 'she has managed to draw on some of what we did not manage to do, on some of the things I did not manage to do to pacify some of the anger, respond quickly to what voters want.'

In a bid to seduce working-class voters who cast some 7.7 million votes for left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon in the first round, Macron has watered down a campaign pledge to progressively raise the retirement age in France to 65. Macron, a former banker depicted by critics as friend to the rich and oppressor of the poor, now says he will consult with unions before deciding on the new legal retirement age.

Le Pen, who was behind Macron in the latest opinion polls by around 10 points, was pictured Sunday morning casting her ballot in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, in France's struggling former industrial heartland.

She cheerily greeting election workers, and emerged from the ballot booth beaming to drop it in a transparent box. Outside, she took selfies with supporters.

Then came incumbent Emmanuel Macron, who shook dozens of hands - and was handed a small child to hold up - on his journey from his family home in the resort town of Le Touquet on the English Channel to his voting station.

Inside, he greeted yet more people, posed for photographs with his wife Brigitte, and cast his ballot with a wink for the cameras. The voting booths were shielded by curtains in the red-white-and-blue of the French flag.

Campaigning in her northern France stronghold in a last-ditch effort to close the gap on Friday, she lashed out at Macron's planned pensions reform, which she described as an effort to make the French work forever. 'The French, with Emmanuel Macron, will end up with life,' she said. 'This reform of Emmanuel Macron is a deep social injustice.'

French President and candidate for re-election, Emmanuel Macron greets supporters as he arrives to vote in the second round of the 2022 French presidential election, at a polling station in Le Touquet, France, 24 April 2022

French voters began casting their ballots Sunday for the presidential run-off between centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. Pictured: Marine Le Pen casts her vote during the second round of France's presidential election at a polling station in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, on April 24, 2022

French President and centrist candidate for re-election Emmanuel Macron exits the voting booth at a polling station in Le Touquet, northern France, Sunday, April 24, 2022

Campaigning in her northern France stronghold in a last-ditch effort to close the gap last night, she lashed out at Macron's planned pensions reform, which she described as an effort to make the French work forever

French President Emmanuel Macron, candidate for his re-election, walks in the street as he leaves his home to vote in the second round of the 2022 French presidential election, in Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, France, April 24, 2022

Members of the public cast their votes at Lycee Voltaire polling station during the final round of the presidential elections on April 24, 2022 in Paris, France

Members of the public cast their votes at Lycee Voltaire polling station during the final round of the presidential elections on April 24, 2022 in Paris, France

Former French president Francois Hollande casts his ballot for the second round of the Presidential elections at a polling station in Tulle, on April 24, 2022

French Prime minister Jean Castex leaves the polling booth on his way to cast his ballot for the second round of the Presidential elections at a polling station in Prades, on April 24, 2022

France's leftist movement La France Insoumise (LFI) party leader and former candidate for the 2022 presidential election Jean-Luc Melenchon holds a ballot during the second round of France's presidential election at a polling station in Marseille, southern France, on April 24, 2022

French far-right Reconquete! party President and former presidential candidate Eric Zemmour leaves a polling booth during the second round of France's presidential election at a polling station in Paris on April 24, 2022

The two candidates made their final pitches to the French electorate on Saturday as all campaigning and opinion polling must end by midnight on Friday. A first-round vote on April 10 led to Le Pen and Macron facing each other Sunday in a rematch of the 2017 presidential election runoff.

During his final campaign speech, delivered deep in France's southern heartland, Macron described the election as a 'referendum for or against a secular, united, indivisible Republic.' He presented himself as a guardian of democratic values and the rule of law, and hinted that Le Pen posed a threat to freedom of expression.

The centre-right incumbent, laid into the nationalist challenger, accusing Le Pen of trying to divide France over Islam. Le Pen has proposed to ban Muslim headscarves in public and wants to give French citizens priority over foreigners in receiving housing and job benefits.

'The far right lives off fear and anger creating resentment. It says that excluding parts of society is the answer,' Macron told France Inter radio.

Macron went into the election with a stable lead in opinion polls, an advantage he consolidated in the frenetic final days of campaigning, including a no-holds-barred performance in the pre-election debate.

But analysts have cautioned that Macron, who rose to power in 2017 aged 39 as the country's youngest-ever modern leader, can take nothing for granted given forecasts of low turnout that could sway the result in either direction.

He must above all hope that left-wing voters who backed other candidates in the first round on April 10 will back the former investment banker and his pro-business, reformist agenda to stop Le Pen and her populist programme.

Voting stations will close at 8:00 pm local time (1800 GMT), when preliminary results will be released that usually predict the final result with a high degree of accuracy.

Some 48.7 million people in France are eligible to vote in the election.

Marine Le Pen, French far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National) party candidate for the 2022 French presidential election, arrives to vote in the second round of the 2022 French presidential election at a polling station in Henin-Beaumont, France, April 24, 2022

Voters stand in voting booths at a polling station in Lyon, central France, Sunday, April 24, 2022

French people cast their ballot for the second round of French Presidential Election at a polling station in Montigny-le-Bretonneux near Paris, France on April 24, 2022

Voters go to the polls in France today, with front-runner Emmanuel Macron (pictured left at a rally Friday) holding a narrow lead over the far-Right leader Marine Le Pen. Ms Le Pen's campaign has been dogged by accusations of racism and ties to the Kremlin (Pictured right: Le Pen during a campaign rally on Thursday)

Macron himself repeatedly made clear that the complacency of stay-at-home voters precipitated the shocks of the 2016 elections that led to Brexit in Britain and Donald Trump's election in the United States.

Analysts say abstention rates could reach 26 to 28 percent, though the 1969 record for a second-round abstention rate of 31.1 percent is not expected to be beaten.

Far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who scored a close third-place finish in the first-round vote, has pointedly refused to urge his millions of followers to back Macron while insisting they should not vote for Le Pen.

Another factor is that elections are being held in the midst of the Easter school break in much of France.

According to Martial Foucault, director of the CEVIPOF political studies centre, a high abstention rate will narrow the gap between Macron and Le Pen, describing this as a 'real risk' for the president.

Early turnout indications will be closely watched from the overseas territories, where average incomes are lower than in mainland France and which generally backed Melenchon in the first round.

In New Caledonia, for example, turnout at midday was just 18.2 percent. In mainland France, the first turnout estimation will be published at 12:00 pm.

A woman votes in the second round of the French presidential election in Lyon, central France, Sunday, April 24, 2022

French nationals walk past posters of candidates Emmanual Macron (R) and Marine Le Pen as they arrive to vote in the second round of the French presidential elections, at the French consulate in the Lebanese capital Beirut, on April 24, 202

French people cast their ballot for the second round of French Presidential Election at a polling station in Montigny-le-Bretonneux near Paris, France on April 24, 2022

Members of the public cast their votes at Lycee Voltaire polling station during the final round of the presidential elections on April 24, 2022 in Paris, France

The stakes are huge for both France and Europe, with Macron pledging reform and tighter EU integration while Le Pen, who would be France's first female president, insists the bloc should be modified in what opponents describe as 'Frexit' by another name.

Macron has also opposed Le Pen's plan to make it illegal to wear the Muslim headscarf in public, though her team has walked back on the proposal ahead of the vote, saying it was no longer a 'priority.'

They have also clashed on Russia, with Macron seeking to portray Le Pen as incapable of dealing with the invasion of Ukraine due to a loan her party took from a Russian-Czech bank.

Macron would be the first French president to win re-election in two decades since Jacques Chirac in 2002.

If elected, he is expected to address supporters on the Champ de Mars in central Paris at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

Polls have shown Macron with a lead of around 10 percentage points, a much closer outcome than in 2017, when the same two candidates faced off and Macron carried the day with 66 percent of the vote.

Macron received a warm welcome in Figeac, where Melenchon came in second place in the first round of voting. but suddenly paused in his speech to address protesters who deployed a banner opposing the privatization of state services.

Macron told them he did the opposite during the coronavirus pandemic and exhorted them to think about their right to protest before they cast their ballot on Sunday.

Members of the public cast their votes at Lycee Voltaire polling station during the final round of the presidential elections on April 24, 2022 in Paris, France

People and election posters are seen outside a polling station in Sevres, near Paris, France, Sunday, April 24, 2022

'You should congratulate yourselves for living in a democracy where you can challenge an acting president, a candidate,' Macron said. 'And I hope it can continue. Because on the 24th of April, with another candidate, it will be a different choice.'

Earlier, Le Pen was in Etaples, at a marketplace near Le Touquet - a pointed choice on the final day of campaigning given that it is the constituency in which Macron himself votes.

The National Rally leader displayed a combative spirit following a bitter televised debate with Macron this week that buoyed some of her poll numbers.

Speaking on C-News, Le Pen called on the French to read her manifesto and wake up to the failures of Macron's five-year term. She responded to criticism that her policies did not hold up under scrutiny.

'I call on the French to check for themselves and form an opinion by reading what I propose to do to respond to the rampage that was Emmanuel Macron,' she said.

To take account of the time difference with mainland France, polls opened earlier in overseas territories, home to almost three million French.

The first vote in the election was cast midday on Saturday, Paris time, by a 90-year-old man in the tiny island territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, off the northern coast of Canada.

Polls subsequently opened in France's islands in the Caribbean and the South American territory of French Guiana, followed by territories in the Pacific and then the Indian Ocean.

Meanwhile, a priest was attacked with a knife in a church in Nice, southern France, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on his Twitter feed on Sunday. He said the priest's life was not in danger and added that police have arrested the attacker.
Three men are in critical condition and another four injured after an blazing inferno at a popular hotel.

About 6.30am on Sunday guests at the north Adelaide Comfort Hotel Meridien were forced to flee in their pyjamas while firefighters fought to rescue those trapped in the building.

The three men fighting for their lives are now receiving treatment in ICU at Royal Adelaide Hospital's burns unit. The are aged 43, 44 and 54.

About 6.30am on Sunday guests at the north Adelaide Comfort Hotel Meridien were forced to flee as the hotel was set alight

A group of seven people - including two little girls - were rescued by fire crews from their balcony.

One man who suffered burns in the fire was forced to leap into the hotel's swimming pool to escape the flames.

Several witnesses claimed they could not hear any fire alarms or announcements from the staff.

Three critically injured men aged 43, 44 and 54 are receiving treatment in ICU at Royal Adelaide Hospital's burns unit while another four were treated for injuries

Firefighters worked to rescue trapped guests from their rooms while one burnt man was forced to jump from his hotel balcony into the swimming pool

Johan Linde said he was woken up by a domestic dispute and 'explosion' moments before the fire started.

'I could hear this really loud shouting, it sounded like domestic violence, it was really aggressive,' he told Adelaide Now.

'Someone was yelling "help me, help me" then there were these explosions and all this commotion.

Several guests said there were no fire alarms sound during the incident and claimed to have heard a domestic dispute followed by an 'explosion'

South Australian Police said firefighters rescued over 15 people from the hotel using ladders and aerial appliances and evacuated 95 rooms

'I could hear a beeping like we had left the fridge door open and then people were shouting there was a fire. There wasn't any fire alarm or anything coming over loud speakers.'

South Australian Police said firefighters rescued over 15 people from the hotel using ladders and aerial equipment. There were 95 rooms in total that were evacuated.

Criminal investigators spoke to guests at the scene while 46 firefighters worked to control the flames.

Early investigations have ruled the fire as an accident.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted the Comfort Hotel Meridien for comment.
The Government is likely to try and ban prosecutions of Northern Ireland veterans who were involved in the Troubles within the next six months, according to a report.

The plan to introduce legislation is expected to be a key pledge in the upcoming Queen's Speech next month.

Once in place, the law is believed to put an end to trials linked to the Troubles after a number of high-profile cases collapsed due to a lack of admissible evidence.

The family of Northern Ireland veteran, Dennis Hutchings, who died while on trial last year over shooting during the Troubles, demanded apology from prosecutors over 'lost' evidence.

Two more trials last year collapsed, involving Soldier F, charged with two murders and five attempted murders during Bloody Sunday, and Soldier B, charged with killing a teenager in Derry.

The cases relied partly on statements the soldiers gave soon after the shootings, but these were later found to be inadmissible as they were not cautioned before giving the statements.

For cases that date back decades, the trials often rely on statements like these in the absence of other evidence.

Recently there has been concern from MPs and veterans that the Prime Minister would not deliver on his 2019 manifesto commitment to block further 'unfair prosecution'.

Trials for Troubles veterans like Dennis Hutchings's, who died at the age of 80 during his trial last year, may not take place in the future amid reports the Government is looking to introduce a statute of limitations

Mr Hutchings contracted Covid and died while he was on trial for attempted murder last year (picutred at Knightsbridge Barracks, 1978)

Veterans minister, Leo Docherty (pictured), hopes the bill will give veterans who were involved in the Northern Ireland operation closure

It is now expected the Legacy Bill will be pledged in the Queen's Speech next month as part of the Government's legislative agenda for the coming year, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

The Bill would impose a statute of limitations on criminal prosecutions for offences committed during the Troubles up until the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Leo Docherty the veterans minister said that he expected the legislation to be introduced within the next six months.

Mr Docherty told the Sunday Telegraph: 'If this was easy, we would have done it already - and it is very complicated because it is Northern Ireland.

'But, I'm pleased to say, we expect from the Northern Ireland Office a bill that will give closure to veterans of (Operation) Banner, of whom there are some 300,000.

'We expect this bill to give closure with honour and finality and I expect that to come forward very soon.

'It's really about ensuring that it was legally watertight - it has taken this long because we're trying to get it right.'

The proposals, which Boris Johnson said would allow Northern Ireland to 'draw a line under the Troubles'.

Former veterans minister Johnny Mercer (pictured), quit the role due to slow progress on the bill

But the plan has been criticised by political parties in Northern Ireland as well as the Irish Government, and a number of victims' and survivors' groups.

Former veterans minister Johnny Mercer, who quit as the minister last year over the lack of progress on the legislation, said he would 'believe it when I see it'.

Mr Mercer said: 'A named bill in the Queen's Speech is a significant move forward on this legislation that should have been enacted years ago.

'The delays have cost lives and put Northern Ireland veterans through hell needlessly. My thoughts are with them today.'

In response, a Government source told the newspaper: 'It is absolutely our intention to include this legislation to be introduced in the third session.

'Pressure on the parliamentary timetable meant it wasn't introduced before the pre-election period in Northern Ireland.

'Our hope is for a swift introduction, as we are able to bring forward proposals having reflected on all our engagement following our command paper last summer, as we promised.'

Dozens of people formed a guard of honour for Dennis Hutchings when he arrived at Plymouth Crown Court in 2019

Towards the end of last year, Northern Ireland veteran Dennis Hutchings died aged 80 in October midway through his attempted murder trial.

Mr Hutchings had been ill with kidney failure and required dialysis three times a week but travelled to Belfast to stand trial.

At the time, the family of the Army veteran called on prosecutors to unreservedly apologise for bringing charges amid claims police lost key evidence.

Lawyers acting for great-great-grandfather Dennis Hutchings, ended up filing a formal complaint to police and Northern Irelands prosecution service insisting he should never have been prosecuted.

Mr Hutchings was accused of the attempted murder of John Pat Cunningham, 27, who was shot dead in the village of Benturb, County Tyrone, in June 1974.

In evidence presented to the court shortly before Mr Hutchings passed away in Belfast, the trial heard that Soldier B had fired tracer rounds  which have a small pyrotechnic charge  and Mr Hutchings had not. These bullets would have left chemical residue on field dressings applied to wounds at the time, but this evidence is now presumed lost.

His legal team suggested this evidence means investigators could have established which bullets killed Mr Cunningham.

A complaint said: If the police had lost the key evidence by which this could be determined, that should have been disclosed and the case withdrawn.

Prosecutors claimed Mr Hutchings and a serviceman known as Soldier B  now dead  both fired their weapons, but they could not prove who fired the fatal shots.

This led to the former Life Guards staff sergeant being charged with only attempted murder.

What is the timeline of the Northern Ireland troubles and peace process? Police officers and firefighters inspecting the damage caused by a bomb explosion in Market Street, Omagh, 1998 August 1969 British Government first send troops into Northern Ireland after three days of rioting in Catholic Londonderry. 30 January 1972 On 'Bloody Sunday' 13 civilians are shot dead by the British Army during a civil rights march in Londonderry. March 1972 The Stormont Government is dissolved and direct rule imposed by London. 1970s The IRA begin its bloody campaign of bombings and assassinations in Britain. April 1981 Bobby Sands, a republicans on hunger strike in the Maze prison, is elected to Parliament. He dies a month later. October 1984 An IRA bomb explodes at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, where Margaret Thatcher is staying during the Tory Party. conference Early 1990s Margaret Thatcher and then Sir John Major set up a secret back channel with the IRA to start peace talks. The communications was so secret most ministers did not know about it. April 1998 Tony Blair helps to broker the Good Friday Agreement, which is hailed as the end of the Troubles. It establishes the Northern Ireland Assembly with David Trimble as its first minister. 2000s With some exceptions the peace process holds and republican and loyalist paramilitaries decommission their weapons. May 2011 The Queen and Prince Philip make a state visit to Ireland, the first since the 1911 tour by George V. In a hugely symbolic moment, the Queen is pictured shaking hands with Martin McGuinness - a former IRA leader. Advertisement

Aidan McAnespie was 23 when he was killed in Aughnacloy, County Tyrone, moments after walking through a border security checkpoint

Former Grenadier Guardsman David Holden pictured leaving Laganside Courts in Belfast on March 28, where he is charged with the unlawful killing of Aidan McAnespie, 18, close to a checkpoint in Co Tyrone in 1988

This year, a soldier who shot and killed a man in Northern Ireland during the Troubles is on trial, but insisted in police interviews he accidentally fired.

David Jonathan Holden appeared at Belfast Crown Court earlier this month, accused of killing Aidan McAnespie in February 1988.

The 23-year-old was killed after walking through a border checkpoint at Aughnacloy, in County Tyrone.

Grainne Teggart from Amnesty International (left), Sean McAnespie, Aidan's brother (centre) and Aidan's cousin Brian Gormley (right) speaking to the media in Belfast where former Grenadier Guardsman David Holden is charged with the unlawful killing of Aidan McAnespie

Mr Holden, a former Grenadier Guardsman who is now 52, denies one charge of manslaughter. The trial continues.

In 1988, he admitted responsibility for discharging the GPMG (general-purpose machine gun), but stressed emphatically that he had accidentally squeezed the trigger when moving the gun from right to left in the observation slit.

However, the new Government plans would see trials like this not take place.

But members of Mr McAnespie's family, supported by Amnesty, said that there should not be an end to Troubles prosecutions.

Speaking outside court in March, Grainne Taggart from Amnesty said: 'Today represents the due process that the UK Government is seeking to shut down for victims.

'Their plans to legislate for an effective amnesty would permanently deny justice to other victims.

'It is imperative that the UK Government heed the opposition to those proposals.'
Boris Johnson has led a backlash against 'misogynistic' claims from among his own Conservative MPs that Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner attempts to put him 'off his stride' by crossing and uncrossing her legs in the House of Commons.

Conservative MPs suggested Ms Rayner likes to distract the Prime Minister when he is at the despatch box by deploying a Parliamentary equivalent of Sharon Stones infamous scene in the 1992 film Basic Instinct.

The claims were condemned as 'categorically untrue' by the Ashton-under-Lyne MP, who also hit out at 'perverted smears'.

The PM himself also intervened in the row, posting on Twitter: 'As much as I disagree with Angela Rayner on almost every political issue I respect her as a parliamentarian and deplore the misogyny directed at her anonymously today.'

Mr Johnson's remarks about the Labour deputy were echoed by Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.

Ms Rayner thanked the PM for his comments. She also hit out at the claims from Tory MPs in a series of Twitter posts.

'Boris Johnsons cheerleaders have resorted to spreading desperate, perverted smears in their doomed attempts to save his skin,' she said.

'They know exactly what they are doing. The lies they are telling.'

She accused the PM of 'dragging the Conservative Party into the sewer' and claimed the 'anonymous Tory MPs doing his bidding are complicit'.

'He and his cheerleaders clearly have a big problem with women in public life,' she added.

'They should be ashamed of themselves. I wont be letting their vile lies deter me. Their attempts to harass and intimidate me will fail.'

As well as the PM's intervention, Ms Rayner won further support from across Westminster - including among Labour colleagues, other opposition parties and political journalists.

Labour deputy Angela Rayner sits opposite Boris Johnson in the House of Commons. She has been accused of trying to put the PM 'off his stride' by crossing and uncrossing her legs

Ms Rayner was compared to Sharon Stone in the 1992 thriller Basic Instinct

Ms Rayner accused the PM of 'dragging the Conservative Party into the sewer' and claimed the 'anonymous Tory MPs doing his bidding are complicit'

Ms Rayner thanked Boris Johnson for his comments on Twitter after he intervened in the row

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, offered her 'solidarity from across the political divide' to Ms Rayner, adding: 'Its a reminder of the deep misogyny women face every day.'

Labour former shadow minister Dawn Butler said it was Ms Rayner's 'words not legs that gets him rattled the most'.

'It's never what a woman wears that causes a man to offend or attack her,' she added.

'If the Tories don't understand that they should step down and take some consent classes this is why rape convictions are so low.'

Conservative peer Lord Daniel Finkelstein said: 'I think the MP or MPs responsible for saying this are shameful.

'It is outrageous that Angela Rayner has to put up with this and the Tory party should do its best to identify who was responsible.'

Andrew RT Davies, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives in the Senedd, said: 'This is a disgrace.

'The anonymous misogynist fuelling this story is contributing to the atmosphere in which many women dont feel that public life is for them. Unacceptable.'

The claims about Ms Rayner were made in relation to her clashes with Mr Johnson at Prime Minister's Questions, which occur when Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is absent.

It was suggested that Ms Rayner also employs the tactic when sitting next to Sir Keir when he faces Mr Johnson at PMQs.

One MP told the Mail on Sunday: She knows she cant compete with Boriss Oxford Union debating training, but she has other skills which he lacks.

'She has admitted as much when enjoying drinks with us on the [Commons] terrace.

Last night, a spokesman for Ms Rayner described the allegation as categorically untrue.

Ms Rayner, 41, a grandmother who left school at 16 while pregnant and with no qualifications before becoming a care worker, has frequently landed blows on the PM in the Commons.

During one encounter in January, Mr Johnson raised claims that she was agitating to succeed Sir Keir by saying: We all know what job she wants.

Ms Rayner hit back: Ive heard on the grapevine there might be a vacancy for Prime Minister soon, so maybe I should show aspiration.

In Basic Instinct, Ms Stone played Catherine Tramell, an enigmatic writer involved in a relationship with a police detective played by Michael Douglas. Ms Stone claimed the scene in which she uncrossed her legs was filmed without her knowledge.

Last week, Ms Rayner accused Mr Johnson of having mocked [the] sacrifice of Britons during the Coronavirus pandemic.

She said: As a care worker, I know the sacrifices they made in the pandemic on the frontline, putting themselves at risk to care for others. It is the least that they deserve for the Prime Minister to be held to account for his own conduct.

While the Prime Minister was partying, they were unable to be with their loved ones in their dying moments, or unable to attend miserable funerals with only a handful of people because they were following his rules.

A Labour source said: Just when you think the Conservative party cant get any lower they outdo themselves. The Conservatives clearly have a problem with women in public life.

A spokesman for Ms Rayner said last night: Im telling you categorically its untrue.
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The war in Ukraine entered its third month today as Russia continued to batter the southern port city of Mariupol and launched fresh attacks throughout the Donbas as Ukrainians and Russians alike celebrated Orthodox Easter.

Putin's forces today called in more airstrikes on the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol to try to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops holding out in the strategic port, according to Ukrainian Armed Forces spokesman Oleksandr Shtupun.

'The place where our civilians and military are located is shelled with heavy air bombs and artillery,' senior Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter today, calling for 'a real Easter truce in Mariupol'.

Russia has been trying to take the city for nearly two months, and the port on the Sea of Azov has seen some of the war's worst deprivations.

Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere, and establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014.

Some 2,000 troops have been fighting tenaciously to hold on to the steel plant - the last remaining Ukrainian outpost in the city - which also has civilians taking refuge in its labyrinthine tunnel system.

Mariupol has been blockaded for most of the war, and Ukrainian officials have said they expect to find thousands of dead civilians and evidence of war crimes there when the fighting ends, as images emerged earlier this week of mass grave sites on the outskirts of the city.

In the last day, Russia also pressed its attacks elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region where Moscow-backed separatists controlled some territory before the war as Putin attempts to gain full control over Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland.

Russia has been trying to take Mariupol for nearly two months, and the city on the Sea of Azov has seen some of the war's worst deprivations - large residential areas have endured constant bombardments

An aerial view shows damaged buildings amid Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, in Mariupol, Ukraine in this handout picture taken with a drone released April 24, 2022

A view of the destruction in Ukraine's besieged port city of Mariupol where the Russian Army has taken control, on April 22, 2022

Rescue teams and firefighters work to evacuate civilians from a destroyed building in Mariupol

The Ukrainian army said Russian forces 'continued to carry out air strikes and attempted assaults in the area of the port and the Azovstal plant'

Local civilians gather to get humanitarian aid distributed by Donetsk People Republic Emergency Situations Ministry in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, Saturday, April 23, 2022

Putin's forces today called in more airstrikes on the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol (pictured) to try to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops holding out in the strategic port, according to Ukrainian Armed Forces spokesman Oleksandr Shtupun

A part of a destroyed tank and a burned vehicle sit in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, Saturday, April 23, 2022

Shtupun said Russian forces intensified their assault operations toward the cities of Popasna and Sieverodonetsk in Luhansk, and Kurakhiv in Donetsk.

The governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said two children were killed by shelling in his area today, while Luhansk regional Gov. Serhiy Haidai that eight people were killed and two others were wounded in a Russian barrage on Saturday.

Fresh video footage has also emerged from the city of Rubizhne in Luhansk of a Russian mine-clearing weapon destroying a building thought to be a Ukrainian army stronghold.

The UR-77 'Meteorite' is a Soviet-era vehicle which sets off a charge designed to cause a shockwave destroying or disabling mines for up to 90 metres - but the vehicle has been deployed in combat as an anti-personnel weapon.

The Kremlin has instructed its forces to conduct further air and missile strikes on targets west of the Donbas, despite refocusing the bulk of its assault in the east of Ukraine and pulling back troops from key areas in the north around Kyiv, as well as the south of the country.

Russia said on Sunday its missiles hit several military targets West of the Donbas, including a facility in the Dnipropetrovsk region it said was producing explosives for the Ukrainian army.

At least one person was killed by a Russian missile in the strike on Dnipro, according to regional Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko.

Elsewhere, a Ukrainian mother and her three-month-old baby were among at least eight killed when a Russian missile hit a residential tower block in the southern city of Odesa.

Valeria Hlodan, 27, and her baby daughter Kira were in their apartment at the time of the strike. Ms Hlodan's mother - who was originally from Russia - was also killed.

Video footage emerged yesterday showing the attack in which a huge ball of fire and smoke erupted from the building as it was struck by a flying object.

At least 18 people are thought to have been injured in the attack besides the eight killed.

Moscow claimed the missiles targeting Odesa destroyed a logistics terminal 'containing weapons supplied by the United States and European states'.

Thousands of Ukrainians have fled to Odesa since the start of the war, as there had previously been only a handful of attacks on the city.

In recent days, the local authorities had begun dismantling anti-tank barriers and some checkpoints in the city centre amid Russia's focus on the Donbas, but the attack raised fears the Kremlin's forces could launch more aerial bombardments on the southern port city like in Mariupol.

Fresh video footage has also emerged from the city of Rubizhne in Luhansk of a Russian mine-clearing weapon destroying a building thought to be a Ukrainian army stronghold

The UR-77 'Meteorite' is a Soviet-era vehicle which sets off a charge designed to cause a shockwave destroying or disabling mines for up to 90 metres - but the vehicle has been deployed in combat as an anti-personnel weapon

A local resident stands next to debris of an open market destroyed by a military strike, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in Sievierodonetsk, Luhansk region

Local resident Viacheslav walks on debris of a residential building damaged by a military strike, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in Sievierodonetsk

Ukrainian servicemen take their position in a zone between Luhansk and Donetsk areas, Ukraine, 18 April 2022, amid increasing Russian troops activity

Multiple videos from Odesa yesterday showed the missile strike, with a huge ball of fire and smoke erupting from the building. At least eight people are believed to have been killed, and a further 18 injured

Valeria Hlodan (pictured), 27, and her baby daughter Kira were killed when a missile struck an apartment block in Odesa yesterday. Ms Hlodan's mother - who was originally from Russia - was also killed

Rescuers work to remove debris from a building that was hit in a military strike, amid Russia's invasion, in Odesa, Ukraine, April 24, 2022

Local authorities in Odesa had begun dismantling anti-tank barriers and some checkpoints in the city centre amid Russia's focus on the Donbas, but the attack raised fears the Kremlin's forces could launch more aerial bombardments on the southern port city like in Mariupol

Russia has pulled back forces from Kyiv and the north of the country to feed into the Donbas offensive, but the British Ministry of Defense said this morning that Ukrainian forces had successfully repelled the invaders' assaults throughout the Donbas thus far.

'Despite Russia making some territorial gains, Ukrainian resistance has been strong across all axes and inflicted significant cost on Russian forces,' the ministry said in an intelligence update.

'Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganize forces from prior offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness,' it said.

The MoD statement came as the latest statistics, published by the Ukrainian Land Forces this morning, suggested 21,800 Russian fighters have been killed amid bitter resistance from Ukraine's armed forces and territorial defence units - though this figure could not be verified.

The land forces also claim to have dealt massive damage to Russia's military equipment and machinery - a total of 873 tanks are said to have been destroyed, along with 2238 armoured vehicles, 179 planes, 154 helicopters and 408 artillery systems.

Ukraine said its forces repulsed 12 attacks on Donetsk and Luhansk on Saturday, destroying four tanks, 15 armoured equipment units and five artillery systems.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to meet U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin today, two months on from the start of the war.

The Ukrainian leader did not give specifics on the topics set to be discussed, but told reporters he expected the Americans to come bringing 'not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons.'

The visit represents the first to Ukraine's capital by high-level U.S. officials since the invasion began Feb. 24 - Zelensky's last face-to-face meeting with a U.S. leader was Feb. 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris.

The meeting was set to take place as Ukrainians and Russians observed Orthodox Easter, an occasion Zelensky highlighted the allegorical significance of to a nation wracked by nearly two months of war.

'The great holiday today gives us great hope and unwavering faith that light will overcome darkness, good will overcome evil, life will overcome death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win!' he said, speaking Sunday from the ancient St. Sophia Cathedral.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to meet U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin today. The Ukrainian leader did not give specifics on the topics set to be discussed, but told reporters he expected the Americans to come bringing 'not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons'

Worshippers light candles at the Saint Volodymyr's Cathedral during Orthodox Eastern celebrations in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 24, 2022

'We are all convinced that we will not be destroyed by any horde or wickedness,' Zelenskiy added, praying God would 'give endurance to those who, unfortunately, would not see the return of their child from the front.'

In attacks on the eve of Orthodox Easter, Russian forces pounded cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine. A 3-month-old baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa, officials said. Zelensky said 18 more were wounded.

'The war started when this baby was one month old. Can you imagine what is happening?' Zelensky said. 'They are just bastards... I dont have any other words for it, just bastards.'

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide, called for humanitarian corridors in Mariupol and other areas of Ukraine, where he said 'an indescribable human tragedy is unfolding'.

The Ukrainian military said Saturday it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.

The command post was hit on Friday, killing two generals and critically wounding another, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said in a statement. The Russian military did not comment on the claim, which could not be confirmed.

If true, at least nine Russian generals have been killed since the start of the invasion, according to Ukrainian reports.

On Saturday the Azov Regiment of Ukraine's National Guard, which has members holed up in the Mariupol steel plant, released a video of around two dozen women and children sheltering there.

Its contents could not be independently verified, but if authentic, it would be the first video testimony of what life has been like for civilians trapped underground there.

The video shows soldiers giving sweets to children who respond with fist-bumps.

One young girl said she and her relatives had 'seen neither the sky nor the sun' since they left home on February 27, while her mother said:

More than 100,000 people - down from a prewar population of about 430,000 - are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate that over 20,000 civilians have been killed in the city.

Meanwhile, yet another attempt to evacuate women, children and older adults from Mariupol failed Saturday.

Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol's mayor, said Russian forces did not allow Ukrainian-organized buses to take residents to Zaporizhzhia, 140 miles to the northwest.

Ukraine has accused Russia of repeatedly breaking previously agreed temporary ceasefires, designed to allow civilians to flee Mariupol via 'humanitarian corridors'.
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Orthodox Christians around the globe are celebrating Easter today, with thousands lighting candles at services in their community.

In Istanbul, Turkey, people attend an Easter Resurrection Service at the Church of Fener Orthodox Patriarchate.

The Patriarchate is the centre of Greek Orthodox Christianity, which has a religious population of around 260 million people worldwide.

A service at the the Patriarchal Church of St. George was conducted by Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, regarded as the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Orthodox worshippers light candles during an Easter Resurrection Service in Istanbul, Turkey

The service at the Church of Fener Orthodox Patriarchate is conducted by Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople

Ecumenical patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, spiritual leader of Greek Orthodox world, officiates the Easter ceremony at the St. George Church

A woman lights a candle and places it in the sand during the service

Worshippers leave lit candles as part of the service, at the Church of Fener Orthodox Patriarchate

A woman wearing a headscarf stands illuminated by the candle she cradles, in a crowd in Istanbul

Crowds gather together with candles as they mark the religious day in the Julian calendar

Standing shoulder to shoulder, worshippers congregate for the Easter service

Based at the Church of Fener Orthodox Patriarchate, Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople conducts the service

IRAQ: Iraqi Orthodox Christians celebrating Easter Saturday light candles at the church of the ancient Mor Mattai Monastery in Bashiqa, some 30km northeast of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul

An evening celebration on Easter Saturday sees crowds gather at the ancient Mor Mattai Monastery in Bashiqa

Iraqi Orthodox Christians attend the Easter service in the village of Bashiqa, northeast Mosul

Hordes of people gather to celebrate Easter Saturday at the church of the ancient Mor Mattai Monastery

POLAND: Greek Catholic priests celebrate the Easter Sunday Mass at the Catholic Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Przemysl, southeastern Poland

Candles are lit at the Easter service at St John the Baptist in Przemysl, southeastern Poland

Metropolitan of Przemysl-Warsaw Greek Catholic Archbishop Eugeniusz Popowicz (R) celebrate the Easter Sunday Mass

Russia and Ukraine both marked Orthodox Easter today, with pictures showing Vladimir Putin in a Moscow church as his army's missiles continued to rain down on Ukrainian civilians across the country.

The Russian strongman attended the midnight mass at the capital's vast Christ the Saviour Cathedral, that sits close to the Kremlin.

Putin held a lit candle and when Patriarch Kirill - head of the Russian Orthodox Church - said 'Christ has risen', Putin joined other worshippers with the reply 'Truly he is risen'.

Across the border, just 280 miles from Moscow, the same words were spoken by people in Ukraine as the embattled nation also marked Orthodox Easter, in some cases in the ruins of churches destroyed by Russian shells.

In the capital of Kyiv, prayers were held for those fighting on the front lines and others trapped beyond them in places like Mariupol.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed in an Easter message that no 'wickedness' will destroy the country and prayed that God returns happiness to children and brings solace to grieving mothers.

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the Orthodox Easter service in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, Russia

The service is led by Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church

Russian President Vladimir Putin (pictured in the background) and Moscow's Mayor Sergei Sobyanin (to Putin's right) attend Orthodox Easter mass led by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill (walking down the stairs) at the Christ The Saviour Cathedral

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill holds candles representing the Holly Light with during the service

Believers cross themselves during the Orthodox Easter service in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow

Worshippers attend the Orthodox Easter service at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow

Priest Nikolai Gensitsky sprinkles holy water on traditional Easter cakes and eggs during the Orthodox Easter service in a church in the village of Yekaterininskoye in Omsk Region, Russia

Believers attend the Orthodox Easter service in a church in the village of Yekaterininskoye in Omsk Region, Russia

More Easter food baskets are blessed during the church service of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church community

A clergyman attends the Orthodox Easter service in a church in the village of Yekaterininskoye in Omsk Region, Russia

Choristers sing during the Orthodox Easter service in a church in the village of Yekaterininskoye in Omsk Region, Russia

Priest Nikolai Gensitsky blesses traditional Easter cakes and eggs during the Orthodox Easter celebrations in the village of Nagornoye in Omsk Region, Russia

In a video address from one of the country's best known landmarks, the 1,000-year-old Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine will overcome the darkness that Russia's invasion had brought upon it.

'Today, we still believe in the new victory of Ukraine and we are all convinced that we will not be destroyed by any horde or wickedness,' said Zelensky.

'We are overcoming dark times and on this day I - and most of us - are not in bright clothes, but we are fighting for a luminous idea.'

Ukraine's St. Volodymyr's Cathedral - also in Kyiv - was ringed by hundreds of worshipers with baskets to be blessed.

KYIV: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses Ukrainian people with Orthodox Easter message, as Russia's attack continues, at the Saint Sophia cathedral, April 23

A Ukrainian soldier lights candles at the Volodymysky Cathedral during Easter celebration in Kyiv, Ukraine

Worshippers receive a sanctification during an Orthodox Easter service in front of St. Volodymyr's Cathedral in Kyiv

Standing outside St. Volodymyr's Cathedral in Kyiv, attendees receive a sanctification as part of the Easter service

People attend a service at the Volodymysky Cathedral during Easter celebration in Kyiv, Ukraine

Worshippers light candles at the Saint Volodymyr's Cathedral during Orthodox Eastern celebrations in Kyiv, Ukraine

Ukrainian believers attend an Orthodox Easter service at a church in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine amid the Russian invasion

An orthodox priest leads a procession as people gathe at the cathedral of the Holy Protection of the Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia

Worshippers light candles during the celebrations of orthodox easter day at the cathedral of the Holy Protection of the Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia

A woman lights a candle during the celebrations in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine

Ukrainian believers attend an Orthodox Easter service at a church in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, amid the Russian invasion

Local residents walk after the Orthodox Easter service next to The Nativity of the Holy Virgin Church damaged by shelling during Russia's invasion in the village of Peremoha, in Kyiv region, Ukraine

An Orthodox priest Oleksandr conducts the Orthodox Easter service at the remains of Trinity church in the village of Hostroluchchia, in Kyiv region

ITALY: Clergyman Eugenio Sagulin, from Kyiv, during the confession rite at an orthodox Easter service for Ukrainians, both residents and refugees, in Melzo, in the outskirts of Milan, Italy

An Ukrainian woman bows to kiss a representation of the death bed of Christ at a service in Melzo, in the outskirts of Milan, Italy

Ilia, 11, a refugee from Kamianets-Podilskyi, Western Ukraine, bows to kiss a representation of the death bed of Christ, during an orthodox Easter service for Ukrainians, both residents and refugees, in Melzo, in the outskirts of Milan, Italy

What is Orthodox Easter and when does it fall? Orthodox Christians base their Easter date on the Julian calendar. Designed by Julius Caesar in 45 BC - the calendar considers a year to be the time it takes the Sun to go around the Earth. It has years that last either 365 days or leap years with 366 days, and slightly exceeds an astronomical year. This means that the Julian calendar gains a day every 128 years. At the moment, it is 13 days behind the Gregorian Calendar. Created in 1582 by Pope Gregory, the Gregorian Calendar changed a year from 365.25 days to 365.2425 days. Great Britain adopted this calendar in 1752. Advertisement

With the Orthodox church split by the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, some worshippers hoped the holy day could inspire gestures of peace-making.

'The church can help,' said one man who gave only his first name, Serhii, as he came to a church in Kyiv under the Moscow Patriarchate.

He and others brought baskets to be blessed by priests for Easter, with flicks of a brush sprinkling holy water over offerings of home-dyed eggs, lighted candles and even bottles of Jack Daniels.

Residents of rural villages battered by the war approached the holiday with some defiance.

'We'll celebrate Easter no matter what, no matter much horror,' said Kateryna Lazarenko, 68, in the northern village of Ivanivka outside Chernihiv, where ruined Russian tanks still littered the roads.

'How do I feel? Very nervous, everyone is nervous,' said another resident, Olena Koptyl, as she prepared her Easter bread.

'The Easter holiday doesn't bring any joy. I'm crying a lot. We cannot forget how we lived.'

She and 12 others spent a month sheltering from Russian soldiers in the basement of her home before the soldiers withdrew.

Away from Kyiv, under the rain at a military position in the eastern town of Lyman, on the frontline, soldiers traded the usual patriotic salutation of 'Glory to Ukraine!' for the ritual 'Christ has risen!'

'Truly risen!' came the reply.

UKRAINE: Worshipers stand next to their traditional cakes and painted eggs prepared for an Easter celebration during a religious service at a church in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, on Sunday

Olga Zhovtobrukh, 55, cries during an Easter religious service celebrated at a church in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, on Sunday

A female Ukrainian soldier crosses herself during an Orthodox Easter service in St. Volodymyr's Cathedral in Kyiv on April 24, 2022

An Orthodox priest Oleksandr conducts the Orthodox Easter service at the remains of Trinity church in the village of Hostroluchchia, in Kyiv region, Ukraine

Egyptian Coptic Christians were also pictured marking Easter this weekend, as part of the Julian calendar.

On Holy Saturday, hundreds gathered at the Samaan el-Kharaz monastery in Cairo's Mount Muqattam, Egypt, to mark the celebration.

The stone monastery is located at the top of the Muqattam Mountain, with six churches carved into the rock of the mountain.

EGYPT: Egyptian Coptic Christians attend a religious ceremony for the Holy Saturday at the Samaan el-Kharaz monastery in Cairo's Mount Muqattam

The stone monastery is located at the top of the Muqattam Mountain, with six churches carved into the rock of the mountain
SYDNEY, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Authorities of Australia's most populous state of New South Wales (NSW) announced COVID-19 plan for schools across the state as colder season is approaching.

The COVID smart plan for schools unveiled on Saturday came after the state eased the isolation requirement for those close contacts of confirmed COVID-19 cases.

Under the new rules that took effect last Friday, close contacts of a confirmed COVID-19 case will not have to isolate, as long as they have no symptoms.

But those close contacts still have to notify their employer or educational facility about their status, and comply with guidelines including not visiting aged care and hospitals unless a special exemption applies, undertaking daily rapid antigen tests (RATs) before coming into close contact with people outside their household, avoiding contact with elderly and immunocompromised persons, and wearing a face mask in indoor settings outside the home.

In line with the updated rules, teachers and students who are household contacts, but do not have COVID-19 or any symptoms, can return to school, according to the COVID smart plan for schools.

They must, however, notify the schools that they are household contacts, and do a daily rapid antigen test before school and wear a face mask indoors in the next five school days after their household confirmed positive.

More free RATs are expected to be provided to school staff and students to support compliance with these new rules. The authorities also pledged to provide good ventilation for schools with additional air quality measures.

NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said the removal of isolation requirements for household contacts will support continuity of teaching and learning in schools.

However, the transmission of virus in local schools is still alarming. According to local media The Sydney Morning Herald, attendance among the state's 823,000 public sector students dropped to about 86 percent in mid-March, compared with almost 92 percent during the same period last year. The fall equates to more than 45,000 students.

On Sunday, the state recorded 11,107 new cases, and 1,588 people are being treated in hospitals with 64 in intensive care. 
A boarding school has been condemned for withdrawing support from a Christian charity after receiving a single complaint about its orthodox views on marriage.

Bosses at 37k-a-year St Lawrence College in Ramsgate, Kent, promptly severed ties with Samaritans Purse and told parents it had vetted the charity which clearly states its religious motivations on its website.

Last night, one parent at the 625-pupil school described the move as religious discrimination while former Tory Education Minister Sir John Hayes said: Its deeply disappointing that what must be the extremely fragile and broken management of St Lawrence College should have allowed their resolve to be broken by the militant ramblings of a single Bolshevik parent.

The school, which declares it is run on Christian values and counts former defence chief General Lord Dannatt among its alumni, began helping the charitys Operation Christmas Child project to get supplies to needy children last year.

Bosses at 37k-a-year St Lawrence College in Ramsgate (pictured), Kent, promptly severed ties with Samaritans Purse and told parents it had vetted the charity which clearly states its religious motivations on its website

In recent weeks, Samaritans Purse, founded by Franklin Graham, son of the late US evangelist Billy Graham, has teamed up with 3,200 churches to deliver 660,000 gift-filled shoeboxes to Ukraine.

But a web page created by an anonymous parent, which was later deleted, attacked the views of Franklin Graham as homophobic and suggested anyone sharing the charitys beliefs is a danger to children.

A parent then made a formal complaint and the school eventually announced it was pulling its backing. In a statement, it said: The College carried out due diligence on Samaritans Purse ... and believed its values were in line with the Colleges Christian ethos.

The school, which declares it is run on Christian values and counts former defence chief General Lord Dannatt (pictured, file photo) among its alumni, began helping the charitys Operation Christmas Child project to get supplies to needy children last year

We now accept our research, which was conducted in good faith, did not give sufficient consideration of the wider potential impact that supporting Operation Christmas Child may have on the existing College community, or a proper assessment of the charitable purposes of Samaritans Purse. We have therefore decided not to support this charity in future.

Andrea Williams, Chief Executive of Christian Concern, said: This is another in a long line of cancel culture stories where the pressure of an ideological LBGT lobby has forced people in charge into submission because they are scared to resist.

Reverend Graham, 67, said: We welcome everyone to fill shoeboxes with gifts for children. Its disappointing that anyone would take issue with that.

A College spokesman said the school stood by its statement to parents.
Civil service leaders are facing new calls to get Whitehall officials back to their offices as it was revealed many high-paying roles are still being offered on a work from home (WFH) basis.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Cabinet minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency, is currently leading a government drive to end WFH practices among civil servants after the Covid pandemic.

He has declared that those who refuse to return to Whitehall could risk losing their jobs in London.

But, despite those efforts, it has been revealed how large salaries are still being offered to new civil service recruits even without the need to attend an office every day.

The Sun reported that 21 highly-paid London roles are being advertised - across different Government departments - that will allow for 'flexible working'.

Civil service guidance states that 'flexible working' can mean that 'it might be possible to do some or all of the work from home or anywhere else other than the normal place of work'.

One job being advertised on a 'flexible working' basis is a Cyber Director role within the Cabinet Office, with a salary of up to 160,000 per year.

Some of the job adverts are even more explicit in their offer of home-working.

So-called 'Levelling Up Directors' in Michael Gove's Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities are being offered salaries up to 144,000.

The advert states that the department, including for roles based in London, offers 'hybrid working, so you can mix office working from multiple locations and remote working'.

A job as a Principal Private Secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, worth up to 118,000 a year, is also advertised with the message: 'BEIS does not normally offer full home working (i.e. working at home); but we do offer a variety of flexible working options (including occasionally working from home).'

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Cabinet minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency, is currently leading a government drive to end WFH practices

Mr Rees-Mogg was revealed to have left notices in Government offices for civil servants not at their desks

Whitehall was left deserted during the Covid lockdown - and ministers are trying to convince civil servants to end home-working

Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith told the newspaper: 'It's time for civil servants, particularly senior ones, to get back to the office.

'They need to come back to teach younger people and show them the way. We are social animals and exchange ideals outside formal meetings.'

In his drive to get civil servants back to offices, Mr Rees-Mogg was revealed to have been conducting personal headcounts of officials in some Whitehall departments.

He has also left notices in Government offices for civil servants not at their desks, which read: 'Sorry you were out when I visited. I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon.'

Asked about those notes today, Mr Rees-Mogg told GB News: 'There's certainly a place for working from home, it works in some instances.

'But I know that people are having difficulties getting government services; getting driving licences from DVLA, there's a delay with some passports.

'We need people whose jobs are dependent on being in the office back in the office. The rest of the country is getting back to normal and I'm encouraging the civil service to do the same.'

Conservative Party chairman Oliver Dowden today denied that Mr Rees-Mogg's notes were passive aggressive.

"I've never found Jacob Rees-Mogg passive aggressive," Mr Dowden told Sky News' Sophy Ridge on Sunday show.

He also insisted that Mr Rees-Mogg's efforts were 'driven by getting the very best value for taxpayers and I support him in doing that'.

Mr Dowden paid tribute to 'hardworking civil servants' for their contributions during the Covid pandemic, but suggested many should now return to their offices.

'They worked tirelessly day and night to deliver solutions,' he added.

'They did so working from home, as indeed I did. But the world has changed since then.

'As we learn to live with Covid, I think if we really want to serve the British people best, one of the things we need to do is have that collaboration, that kind of sharing ideas that comes from working in the office.

'So, Jacob's efforts are driven by getting the very best value for taxpayers and I support him in doing that.'

A Government spokesman told the Sun: 'Ministers have been clear that departments should make maximum use of office space and progress is being monitored.'

Earlier this week, Western intelligence agencies warned that Russian state-sponsored hackers are targeting critical infrastructure - and cautioned that home-working increases the risk of a successful attack.

They cautioned about the use of remote desktops and 'other potentially risky services'.
Hutchinson has a long track record as a conservative, dating from his time as a George W. Bush administration official to the House of Representatives to the governor's mansion in Little Rock

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson on Sunday became the latest Republican to publicly toy with the idea of running for president in 2024 -- potentially setting up a fierce battle within the GOP if Donald Trump attempts another White House bid.

'Im not ruling it out. Thats something that is a consideration, an option,' Hutchinson told Fox News of a possible presidential campaign.

'Im certainly not ruling it out, because this is too critical a time for our nation and its a defining moment and I want to not only engage the debate now but keep my options open down the road.'

Hutchinson, who chairs the National Governor's Association, will be leaving Little Rock at the end of this year after serving two terms leading the southern state.

During his Sunday interview, the governor dismissed the ex-president's baseless gripe about fraud in the 2020 election and said he wanted to lead the GOP in a 'new direction.'

'To me the Republican Party has to be talking about future ideas and the direction of our country, the strength of America,' he said.

'I think we have to be talking about ideas and not the past and I think my voice is helpful to those candidates who want to look to the future.'

In an indirect attack at the former president, Hutchinson said he was working to 'showcase the ideas that work and that we can be problem-solving and not just creating chaos.'

Asked specifically about Trump's claims of a rigged election, he called them an 'unnecessary distraction.'

It's not the first time Hutchinson has publicly criticized Trump, either -- a rare move in today's Republican Party politics.

Earlier this year he said Trump 'should not define' the GOP and refused to give the ex-president his support for another White House bid.

'I would not support him for reelection in 2024,' Hutchinson told CNN's State of The Union in February.

Hutchinson has previously said that he would not support the former president if he ran for president in 2024

'Hes going to have a voice, as former presidents do, but theres many voices in our party.'

Hutchinson is headed to New Hampshire on Monday to kick that mission off, appearing at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics speaking series 'Politics and Eggs' at Saint Anslem College.

The state is known as the first to hold a presidential primary during the election cycle.

The event has traditionally attracted presidential hopefuls. Chris Christie, who has also been floated as a GOP 2024 contender, spoke there last month.

'I want to have a bold message and the best place to start is New Hampshire,' Hutchinson said, adding that he would like to 'be a leading voice for a new direction for our party and our country.'

Hutchinson touted his 'record' both in Arkansas' governor's mansion and as a two-term Congressman in the House.

'Thats the reason Im speaking at Politics and Eggs,' he said.

'That gets attention whenever you are speaking at a political event in New Hampshire, and I welcome the opportunity to influence the debate and shape debate.'

The governor sparked Trump's ire just weeks ago when he vetoed a bill banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. The Republican state legislature overrode his block.

'Asa Hutchinson, the lightweight RINO Governor of Arkansas, just vetoed a Bill that banned the CHEMICAL CASTRATION OF CHILDREN,' Trump said in a statement on April 8. '"Bye-bye Asa," that's the end of him! Fortunately for the Great State of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders will do a fantastic job as your next Governor!'

Hutchinson is limited to two terms by the state's constitution and is not seeking re-election.

He also said in an interview on April 18 that Trump is not the leader of the Republican Party.

'I wouldnt consider him that at all,' Hutchinson told Business Talk & Politics. 'President Trump has the largest megaphone now just because he has such an enormous following of support and voters. So hes certainly a player. I pay attention to that. But theres many voices in the party.'

Earlier this month he took another telling step toward a possible presidential run by announcing his intention to start a national fundraising operation called 'America Strong and Free.'

'I am concerned about what the future holds under the Biden administration. Were spending too much money. Were over-regulating, theres a lot of pushback, and I think its important for me to be a balanced voice, but also an important voice in pushing back on that, but also shaping our party in a good way in 2022,' Hutchinson told Business Talk & Politics.

Neither Hutchinson nor Trump have definitively said they would run in 2024 -- and the Arkansas official is doubtful the ex-president will.

He also admitted that Trump's handling of the country after last year's Capitol riot was a significant factor in losing Hutchinson's support.

'I dont necessarily expect him to run, but I thought he did not handle and did not lead our country in the right direction post-election on January 6th,' he said.
Pro-Russian graffiti has defaced one of Northern Ireland's most iconic roads, and has been slammed as 'completely at odds' with the local community.

It appeared at the Dark Hedges, a route in North Antrim which was made famous worldwide after being featured in Game Of Thrones.

The incident comes as a number of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion of their country have started to arrive in Northern Ireland.

DUP North Antrim Assembly Candidate Mervyn Storey condemned those behind the graffiti.

He said the sentiment of the graffiti is completely at odds with the welcome that arriving Ukrainian refugees have received to the area.

Graffiti in support of Russia and the invasion of Ukraine has appeared on one of Northern Ireland's most recognisable roads, the Dark Hedges route in North Antrim (pictured)

The Dark Hedges outside Ballymoney (pictured) provided the backdrop to this season two Game of Thrones scene

'This is a wanton act of vandalism at one of Northern Ireland's most iconic locations,' he said.

'It is completely at odds with the warm welcome our local community provide to tourists from all over the world who come to see what the Dark Hedges and the North Coast have to offer.'

Mr Storey said he has recently been able to welcome refugees from Ukraine into his church community.

DUP North Antrim Assembly election candidate Mervyn Storey (pictured) has condemned pro-Russian graffiti

'It is despicable that they should have to encounter this type of behaviour glorifying Russia's oppressive campaign of terror in their homeland.

'Our support must be with the people of Ukraine,' he said.

'I will be working closely with local authorities and the PSNI to ensure this graffiti is removed immediately and those responsible held to account.'

The Police Service of Northern Ireland have been contacted for a response.

The site featured in Game of Thrones series two, doubling as the Kingsroad which a young Arya Stark travelled on in the back of a cart along with Yoren, Gendry and Hot Pie.

Earlier this month in Ireland a similar incident of support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine was spotted.

Some of the cars were spotted flying the Irish tricolour alongside the Russian insignia this month in Dublin, with users condemning the two being put side by side

A convoy of cars waving Russian flags marked with the pro-war Z symbol has been spotted in Ireland, with the Ukrainian embassy slamming the 'disgusting disrespect' against the 'Irish people who stand against Russia's war on Ukraine'.

Pro-Russia protesters rallied on Irish roads earlier this month, with a line of cars spotted on the M50, in Dublin, Ireland's busiest motorway, with huge Russian flags waving from the windows.

Some of the cars had various other flags on display, with others having the letter 'Z' written across the windows.
Home Secretary Priti Patels former borders boss has called for the Home Office to be broken up in an alarming assessment following the Ukraine refugee crisis.

Glyn Williams, who served as director-general of borders and immigration till a few months ago, has said immigration including visa processing should be removed from the Home Offices power.

It comes as the latest figures reveal that just 6,600 refugees have arrived through the Homes for Ukraine scheme despite more than 150,000 people registering their interest to house Ukrainians last month.

The visa system has been heavily criticised with even former Government minister Robert Jenrick, who welcomed a Ukrainian family into his home, describing it as overly bureaucratic.

Now Mr Williams, one of the countrys most senior mandarins until his retirement in December after 16 years as a Home Office director, has issued a stark warning over the failures of the UKs immigration visa system and called for it to become a separate department.

Glyn Williams (Pictured), who served as director-general of borders and immigration till a few months ago, has said immigration including visa processing should be removed from the Home Offices power

It comes as the latest figures reveal that just 6,600 refugees have arrived through the Homes for Ukraine scheme despite more than 150,000 people registering their interest to house Ukrainians last month. Pictured: Ukrainian refugees walk a bridge at the buffer zone with the border with Poland

The visa system has been heavily criticised with even former Government minister Robert Jenrick, who welcomed a Ukrainian family into his home, describing it as overly bureaucratic. Pictured: Helena (R) and her brother Bodia (L) from Lviv are seen at the Medyka pedestrian border crossing, in eastern Poland on February 26

He said: Going forward the Home Office really desperately needs some kind of stability in terms of policy, and delivery options.

One interesting thing about the Ukraine crisis, and the two visa schemes, is for the first time a cross-section of the British public is seeing the British visa system in action and really doesnt like what its seeing.

Nowadays everyone wants to go on their mobile phone, press a few buttons and get an instant response and that isnt happening with the visa system.

Theres a whole thing about expectations as well as Home Office competence and whether the Home Office currently is able to catch up.

Should there be a department for immigration? Personally I think there should, if it can be planned properly and resourced properly.

I think its far too big a subject now both in policy terms and delivery terms to be part of the Home Office.

Under the Home Office UK Visas and Immigration is responsible for handling visa applications while Border Force monitors immigration enforcement and ports of entry. Pictured: Priti Patel

Under the Home Office UK Visas and Immigration is responsible for handling visa applications while Border Force monitors immigration enforcement and ports of entry.

The agencies were established by former Home Secretary Theresa May in 2013 and brought under the control of the Home Office.

But in the wake of the Ukraine crisis the department has struggled to cope with the demand of more than 100,000 visa applications with just 21,000 arrivals so far.

It also follows the Windrush scandal, which emerged in 2018, when it was uncovered that hundreds of British citizens, many of whom came to the UK from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1973 - had been wrongly detained, deported and denied legal rights.

Conservative MP Tim Loughton, of the Home Affairs Committee, said: Immigration is a large part of the challenges but in a couple of years it could be something else. The problem of immigration is that there has been a series of failures such as Windrush which meant they all went into panic mode and all the other issues were neglected.

Conservative MP Tim Loughton, of the Home Affairs Committee, said: Immigration is a large part of the challenges but in a couple of years it could be something else'

And then we have Afghan refugees stuck in hotels - the Home Office is a problem making department rather than a problem solving department.

They need a crack team of civil servants to challenge these policy areas internally and come in with fresh ideas and put people on the spot - its the same people with the same mentality making the same mistakes. That would be my suggestion first before hiving off the departments.

Former director-general Mr Williams, who also travelled to Rwanda to help begin negotiations for the Governments asylum deal which could see migrants deported to claim refugee status in the African country, said the policy would face fierce legal battles and only start slowly.

The deal has faced strong criticism from campaigners, refugee charities and even Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who described the policy as ungodly.

Obviously people are going to try to launch legal challenges at the point the Home Office tries to put them on the plane, Mr Williams said at a Policy Exchange think-tank event last week.

The asylum deal has faced strong criticism from campaigners, refugee charities and even Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury (pictured), who described the policy as ungodly

On, for example, grounds that my ECHR [European Court of Human Rights] rights have been infringed and Im at risk of inhumane or degrading treatment, the Home Office is going to have to demonstrate the treatment they are likely to get, and they actually get in Rwanda, is to the required standard.

And then they are going to have to come up with some sort of rationale for choosing certain people and not others to go on that plane - those are difficult things that the Home Office is going to have to do.

I think it will start slowly and then youve got to get over those hurdles, then weve got to see what actually happens in Rwanda, then try and escalate the numbers because it is only once the numbers become material that people will think twice about coming...

I would have thought it is going to be hundreds, maybe thousands.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: A new points-based immigration system, an easy digital process that has protected the rights of millions of EU citizens in the UK and the record roll out of visas for Ukrainians seeking safety all show an immigration system being transformed  under Home Office leadership.

We are constantly making improvements to immigration policies, including through the Nationality and Borders Bill which will fix our broken asylum system.
A British man who had been unlawfully detained in Yemen since 2017 has been released and will return to the UK to see his family.

Luke Symons, who who was in Yemen working as a teacher while studying Islam, was arrested aged 25 because he had a UK passport, and was accused of spying according to his family.

Symons, originally from Cardiff, was detained by Houthi authorities in the capital Sanaa at a security checkpoint in the southwestern city of Ta'iz on April 4 2017.

The Briton had been held in squalid conditions in solitary confinement in a prison in Sanaa, with his family saying that early on he was tortured to make him 'confess' to being a spy.

The Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, issued a statement after Mr Symons was freed from detention by the Houthis in Yemen.

Luke Symons (pictured) ,30, from Cardiff, was released from prison in Yemen after being arrested in 2017 on suspicion of spying, but he was never charged with a crime

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said she was pleased about Luke Symons' release and thanked the staff members that helped with the process

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said: 'I am pleased that Luke Symons, who was unlawfully detained, without charge or trial since 2017 in Yemen, has been released. Luke was 25 when he was unlawfully detained by the Houthis. His son was only a few months old at the time.

'He was allegedly mistreated, in solitary confinement, and refused visits by his family.

'He has been flown to Muscat and soon he will be reunited with his family in the UK.

'We thank our Omani and Saudi partners for their support in securing his release.

'I pay tribute to our excellent staff for their hard work in returning Luke home.'

Luke's MP Kevin Brennan tweeted: 'This is terrific news - after 5 years finally my constituent Luke Symons has been released from captivity - thanks to all at the FCDO and most of all to Lukes family for their tireless campaigning.'

Luke Symons, from Cardiff, moved to Yemen after meeting his wife Massir in 2012

Luke and his family have connections with Yemen, and in 2012 he travelled to the country where he met and married his wife, a Yemeni national.

When the civil war in Yemen began, the couple tried to flee the country by travelling to Djibouti, but the pair were effectively forced back to Yemen by the Houthi-run Yemeni embassy, according to Amnesty.org.

Symons and his wife, who was then heavily pregnant, were threatened with detention in a desert refugee camp as well as suffering physical threats.

The couple sought help from the UK authorities in neighbouring Ethiopia, however, the UK authorities would not issue Symons wife with a travel visa and the couple reluctantly returned to Yemen.

Symons was stopped and arrested soon after their return.
A 14-year-old girl who went missing from Twickenham on Thursday has now been found 'safe and well' following appeals from family friend Sophie Ellis-Bextor, police have confirmed.

An image was released in the effort to find Clementine Reardon, who went missing on April 21 from London, and Ms Ellis-Bextor had appealed for help finding her friend's missing daughter after she disappeared from their family home.

Police released multiple appeals to try and find her, and the teenager has now been found safe and well, a Metropolitan Police spokesman said.

Clementine Reardon went missing on Thursday, April 21 and Met Police say she has been found 'safe and well'

Fourteen-year-old Clementine went missing after leaving her family's home in Twickenham

Ms Ellis-Bextor has taken to Twitter to urge the public to help find Clementine, adding she is likely to be in the Twickenham area

The likes of Georgia Tennant, James O'Brien and James Purefoy had also shared appeals to try and find her.

Met Police had launched an official appeal, writing: 'Though there is no information at this time to suggest she has come to harm, her disappearance is very much out of character and concern for her welfare is growing.

'A number of appeals for information have been issued by Clementine's desperately worried family and by police on social media, but as yet her whereabouts remains unknown.

'It is unknown where she might have gone or whether she may have travelled outside of London. She is last thought to have been wearing a white t-shirt with blue Nike tracksuit bottoms, however may have changed clothes since then.

'Clementine's family urge her to contact them and let them know she is safe.'

In appeals put out on Twitter, Richmond Borough Police, which is part of the Metropolitan Police, appealed for help trying to find her.

In a tweet on Friday, it posted a picture of her with the caption: 'MISSING Clementine, born 2007, is missing from her home in Twickenham.

The teenager, who is the daughter of a friend of Sophie Ellis-Bextor, disappeared on Thursday, April 21

'If you have any information, or if you see her, please call police on 101 with reference to 22MIS013222.'

A renewed appeal was put out, saying: 'Clementine is still missing. Please continue to assist by calling us with sightings and any help you can offer.'

Tweeting on Saturday morning, Ms Ellis-Bextor said: 'This is a friend's daughter so please let the police know if you see Clementine. Likely to be round Twickenham area.'

Police and other celebrities have appealed to try and find the missing teenager, who has now been found safe and well

On Friday actress Georgia Tennant wrote: 'Ok team I need your help. My dear friends daughter is missing. Her name is Clementine, born 2007 and is missing from her home in Twickenham.

'If you have any information, or if you see her, please call police on 101 with reference to 22MIS013222.'

Actor James Purefoy tweeted: 'URGENT IN LONDON. Has anyone seen Clementine, 14, from Twickenham, London? Missing since Thursday.

'Please call Police on 101 if you have any information at all. Retweet far and wide.'

Broadcaster James O'Brien added: 'Clementine, 14yo & about 5ft 5 (165 cm) has been missing from her home in Twickenham for three nights now.

'If you have any information, or if you see her, please call police on 101. Reference: 22MIS013222.'
A California man could face the death penalty after he allegedly murdered his co-worker and the co-worker's roommate at their Anaheim apartment where neighbors described seeing blood 'everywhere.'

Ramy Hany Mounir Fahim, 26, of Irvine was charged Friday with murder in the stabbing deaths of Griffin Cuomo, 23, and Jonathan Bahm, 23, early Tuesday morning, according to the Orange County District Attorney's Office.

Fahim was charged Friday with two counts of murder, two enhancements each of lying in wait, multiple murders, and the personal use of a deadly weapon. The special circumstances of lying in wait and multiple murders make him eligible for the death penalty, the DA's Office said.

A motive for the killings is not yet known, but prosecutors said that Fahim and Cuomo worked together at Pence Wealth Management in Orange County. Cuomo, who joined the company in 2021, served as a marketing and media assistant, according to his bio.

Prosecutors said a building security guard had encountered Fahim on the Katella Avenue apartment complex' roof at midnight on April 18, 2022, just hours before the men were murdered around 6:30 a.m.

Ramy Hany Mounir Fahim, 26, of Irvine, California, was charged Friday with murder in stabbing deaths of two men, charges that make him eligible for the death penalty, the DA's Office said

Griffin Cuomo, 23, (pictured) was stabbed to death Tuesday. A motive is not yet known, but prosecutors said Fahim and Cuomo worked together at Pence Wealth Management

Cuomo's roommate, Jonathan Bahm, 23, was also a victim in the brutal stabbings at the Anaheim apartment on Tuesday

Fahim was then seen a short time later on the fifth floor, where the victims lived. When Anaheim police arrived to the call of a possible assault in progress, they discovered the victims' bodies and Fahim still inside the apartment suffering from an unspecified minor injury.

A knife believed to have been used in the slayings recovered from the scene, prosecutors said. Neighbors described seeing blood 'everywhere' in the elevator and the hallway. Fahim's vehicle was also located nearby.

Fahim was taken to the hospital where he was treated for his injuries and arrested on suspicion of murder in the double homicide. He is being held without bail and his arraignment is scheduled for May 6 in Fullerton.

Sgt. Shane Carringer of Anaheim Police Department told The Los Angeles Times that the apartment building was equipped with surveillance cameras and some residents also had doorbell cameras. He added a neighbor's camera reportedly captured Fahim in the building hours before the killings.

Detectives will use the video evidence to piece together a timeline of the murders and the moments leading up to the tragedy with the hope of finding a motive, Carringer said, adding that the footage from the neighbor's camera showing Fahim 'is pretty clear.'

Cuomo had recently graduated with a degree in strategic communication from the School of Communication at Chapman University

Prosecutors said a building security guard had encountered Fahim on the Katella Avenue apartment complex' roof at midnight on April 18, 2022, just hours before the murders

The victims, Cuomo and Bahm, 23, were both alumni of Chapman University. Cuomo had recently graduated with a degree in strategic communication from the School of Communication. Bahn had graduated from the Fowler School of Engineering with a degree in computer science.

'These young men were just starting to live out their dreams and find their places in the world. But an intruder who stalked them and then slashed them to death in their own home interrupted those dreams,' O.C. District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement. 'The callous way that two young lives were ended cannot be ignored and we will do everything we can to ensure justice is served.'

Heartfelt messages were posted to the school's website following the murders, by professors, classmates, and friends who remembered the two young men for their bright minds, kindness, and positive attitudes throughout their academic careers.

'Being such recent graduates, I know that many on campus share in the heartbreak of this tragedy. It is terrible when we lose members of our Chapman family,' Chapman Executive Vice President Matthew Parlow said in an email to the campus community.
IGOR BUTOV: Unlike most of my countrymen, I believed Russia's potential aggression was quite real, and I prepared my family and myself for it

In recent years, Ukrainians have been diligently trying to ignore local hostilities in eastern Ukraine. The war in Donbass was barely mentioned in the news, and it was unheard of to discuss the likelihood of a major conflict.

Unlike most of my countrymen, I believed Russia's potential aggression was quite real, and I prepared my family and myself for it.

The arrivals at the Kramatorsk airstrip near Donetsk on February 24 gave us a sense of impending catastrophe. We felt a terror for our life that we had never felt before. However, I tried to be brave enough not to scare my family.

I was at a loss for the first two days of the war: I didn't know what to do, what to do for my family. The situation was rapidly shifting, and I was concerned that I was losing control of my own life and that I would be unable to respond to my wife's inquiries about how we should go.

I tried to be brave enough not to scare my family when I first arrived on the front lines

My wife didn't agree with my plan - she didn't want me to endanger myself, so she sought backing from her parents and eldest daughter

On the evening of February 25, I realized I had to go to fight. The realization came naturally and literally released me from torment, instilling calm confidence in me.

My wife didn't agree with my plan - she didn't want me to endanger myself, so she sought backing from her parents and eldest daughter.

All attempts to talk about the need for my participation in the war at the time resulted in her crying. As a result, I quietly packed my belongings into my bag while she pretended not to notice and privately grieved in the room with our eldest daughter.

When I joined the army, the first thing I discovered was that war was not a heroic route for a soldier, but rather a path of hard labour.

Ukrainian servicemen are seen on the frontline in Donbas, Ukraine on April 14, 2022

An Ukrainian tank runs on a road near Lyman, eastern Ukraine, on April 24, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine

To be honest, it was difficult for me at first. I had to put in a lot of physical effort, but I didn't know how to work with my hands and didn't enjoy it.

My squad crossed the front line a week later. Our front line service was hard as well.

While the news was buzzing with active fighting in the Kyiv area, Kharkiv, Chernikov, and Nikolaev, as well as Russian crimes against our population, my unit went about its business at the advanced observation post, where we were to watch and report on the situation.

The enemy then assaulted our side with mines, but with little success; it was more of a harassing fire.

A week ago, we were hit by the active phase of the war: round-the-clock shelling, corrected by drones, allowing the enemy to squeeze us out of our positions.

Due to a lack of vehicles, the group and surrounding units evacuated on foot, dumping all unneeded items save ammo along the way.

The total shelling and forced retreat hardened and rallied the fighters, and we are currently re-staffing and preparing for future engagements.

The unit was able to make up for the loss of equipment and items in just a few days thanks to the help of volunteers.

From the conversations of brothers, I can draw an unambiguous conclusion that most of us are now more ready for military operations than before the retreat.

A Ukrainian soldier reads a book as he rests at a checkpoint in Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, on April 23, 2022 amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine

I can assume that there are several reasons behind this readiness: we've reached conclusions and are prepared to battle, having learned from our failures in the past.

Being under artillery fire tempers a soldier and leads him to believe that if he can perform a task in a situation over which he has no control (you just lie in your trench and wait for a shell to fly into your trench), then everyone will have a chance to influence the situation when they come into contact with the enemy or use a combat technique.

I see that my colleagues are aware of this opportunity and are prepared to seize it; this is an unusual sense of solidarity among my colleagues that I had not noticed before. I'm sure they never imagined themselves in this position, because just a week ago, several of us were volunteers with no combat experience.

The battle in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions has its own unique characteristics: sadly, the Ukrainian army is fighting not only against Russians, but also against the residents of the occupied territories, whom Russia has armed and converted against Ukraine.

I heard about the Russians' harsh treatment of residents in our area of stay, and I observed that civilians in the JFO zone need food and assistance.

Worst of all, people's psyches are harmed, and someone is slowly going insane from fear and hopelessness.

For those who have experienced combat, their feeling of security is eternally lost. It is really difficult on the elderly, women, and children; they are tired of being terrified, and they are unsure if they will survive.

A Ukrainian soldier lights candles at the Volodymysky Cathedral during Easter celebration in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Apr. 24, 2022

I assume you're interested in hearing about other people's deaths, injuries, suffering, anguish, and grief... Have I seen everything? Unfortunately, the answer is yes.

This is terrifying! When it comes to you, believe me, it's so terrifying that I won't even attempt to describe it... God forbid you feel such terror or see the source of it with your own eyes. Please, God, do not let this happen...

I'd conclude my post by expressing my appreciation to the European people (I'm not sure how to call them), because I see and feel your assistance on the front lines, and sometimes I even feel it in my hands, which aids us in destroying the aggressor.

My wife now lives in Amsterdam with her children, they were taken in by strangers. The prevalence of Ukrainian insignia on the streets of Amsterdam, as well as the generosity of local inhabitants toward Ukrainians, were the first things she wrote to me that impressed her.

Thank you for your support! I hope you will not stop halfway, and we will be able to free our country from the invasion of self-proclaimed brothers thanks to your help.

Glory to Ukraine!
A climate activist who died after setting himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court on Earth Day is a buddhist who hinted at his future self-immolation with a fire emoji under a Facebook post from 2020.

Wynn Bruce, 50, of Boulder, Colorado, lit himself on fire on the court's plaza at around 6.30pm Friday.

He suffered critical burns and was pronounced dead at a local hospital on Saturday.

On October 30, 2020, he shared a link to an online class on climate change offered by edX, a free online course platform created by Harvard and MIT.

Last April, he went back and commented: '4-1-1 4/22/2022,' along with a fire emoji.

Surveillance footage of the immediate aftermath of the fire show police officers as they attempt to calm Bruce, who can be heard screaming in the background.

Police are still investigating a motive, but a Buddhist priest from Boulder took to Twitter to clarify that Bruce's death was not a suicide, but a 'deeply fearless act of compassion.'

Scroll down for video

Wynn Bruce, 50, of Boulder, Colorado, set himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court on Friday afternoon during Earth Day

Facebook posts reveal that he was a practicing Buddhist who often shared posts about his beliefs and the dangers of climate change

In October 2020, he posted a link to an online course about climate change. Last April, he commented '4/22/2022' - the date he set himself ablaze - and a fire emoji

Video of the immediate aftermath on Friday show police officers as they attempt to calm Bruce, who can be heard screaming in the background

Buddhist priest Sensei Kritee Kanko, who calls herself a 'friend' of Bruce, says his death was a 'fearless act of compassion to bring attention to the climate crisis'

'This guy was my friend. He meditated with our sangha. This act is not suicide,' said Zen priest Sensei Kritee Kanko.

'This is a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to climate crisis. We are piecing together info but he had been planning it for atleast one year. #wynnbruce I am so moved.'

Bruce's Facebook page has since been inundated with comments both praising his actions and criticizing his way of bringing attention to his cause.

'How can you solve the climate crisis when you leave in the middle of the fight. Now you cant do anything to be helpful,' one person commented.

Another wrote: 'I see he was a fighter for his beliefs and that may have contributed to this tragedy.'

A LinkedIn profile for a Wynn Bruce of Boulder, Colorado states he was a photojournalist who had previously attended Front Range Community College and the Community College of Denver.

Supreme Court police, Capitol Police and DC police all responded to the incident.

'A medical helicopter landed on the plaza and the individual was airlifted to a local hospital.

#Breaking: Just in - Video of the police on the scene near the Supreme Court building in Washington #DC, showing you and hearing the sounds of a person screaming in agony after he set himself on fire, and after the fire was extinguished by police officers. #US pic.twitter.com/Xpkee02BC7  Sotiri Dimpinoudis (@sotiridi) April 22, 2022

A LinkedIn profile for a Wynn Bruce of Boulder, Colorado states he was a photojournalist who had previously attended Front Range Community College and the Community College of Denver

Emergency personnel tend to Wynn Bruce, who had just lit himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court building on Friday

Pictured: the helicopter as it lands to transport Bruce from the plaza in front of the Supreme Court building

No one else was injured,' court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said in a statement.

Authorities had to temporarily close two roads as the helicopter EMS crew tended to the medical emergency.

Although she confirmed the 252-foot oval plaza had been closed to allow for investigation, she did say the incident was 'not a public safety issue.'

The plaza itself is up a small flight of steps from the sidewalk outside the court building.

Back in May 2019, disturbing footage emerged of another man setting himself on fire and calmly walking around near the White House as police desperately tried to douse the flames.

The man, later identified as Arnav Gupta, set himself on fire at Ellipse Park in downtown Washington, DC.

The 33-year-old died of his injuries the next day. He had already been reported missing by police, who said they were 'concerned for Gupta's physical and emotional welfare,' according to CNBC.

In May 2019, another man set himself on fire near the White House, with terrifying footage showing him engulfed in flames

Video of the incident showed the man walking calmly across the Ellipse near the Washington Mall, an area popular with tourists, with flames covering his body.

Several seconds later, US Secret Service staff could be seen towards him with a fire extinguisher to put out the blaze.

It occurred less than a mile from the White House.

Just a few days prior to Friday's incident, Capitol Police evacuated courthouses and Congressional buildings in the area after an unidentified aircraft was spotted within seconds of the US Capitol on Wednesday.

It was eventually determined that the single engine airplane was on a flight by the Golden Knights Parachute Team for Military Appreciation night at Nationals Park.
FAIZABAD, Afghanistan, April 24 (Xinhua) -- A senior provincial official along with his security guard were killed and eight others injured in a bomb attack in Afghanistan's northern province of Badakhshan on Sunday, a local source confirmed.

Mawlawi Abdul Fatah, head of province's Mines and Petroleum Department, and one of his bodyguards were killed when a bomb attached to his pick-up truck was detonated in Police District 4 in the provincial capital Faizabad, the source told Xinhua anonymously.

Five people aboard the vehicle and three passersby were also wounded in the blast which came roughly at mid-day, according to the source.

The wounded were transported to a provincial hospital in the city.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

In recent months, war-torn Afghanistan has been hit by a series of terror attacks reportedly staged by militants of the Islamic State (IS) group opposing the Taliban-led caretaker government. 
Not-so-clever smart bins  programmed to tell council staff when they need emptying  have been left overflowing with rubbish by a glitch.

Under the high-tech plan, the solar powered giant rubbish-crunchers were supposed to emit a signal when full.

But they were left spewing rubbish over the High Street in Dinnington, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire, due a malfunction.

The smart bins, fitted with a solar-powered hydraulic ram to crush the waste, hold eight times more rubbish than regular bins, so they do not need emptying as often.

Tory councillor Ben Whomersley told a Rotherham Council meeting the bins had been left overflowing.

Councillor Dominic Beck, environment boss on the at the Labour council, said: 'There have been some intermittent problems when we have been rolling out the new bins.

'They have not always been sending the alerts that they should be doing to our staff to let them know that it needs emptying.

The rubbish-crunchers were supposed to emit a signal when full, but were left spewing rubbish over the High Street in Dinnington. File image of a street in Dinnington

'This may have affected Dinnington high street, but we are reassured now that the problems with some of those bins have been fixed and rectified.'

The bins have a 12-volt battery that powers the internal waste compactor, and need around eight hours of sunlight per month to function as intended.

They are meant to alert the councils street cleansing teams when full and in need of emptying.

Smart bins such as these were first trialled in the UK in 2011, and can cost up to 5,500 each to buy, depending on individual deals.
Cabinet minister Oliver Dowden has put pressure on France and Germany to increase their help for Ukraine, as he told Paris and Berlin: 'It would be good to see more'.

The Conservative Party chairman called on Western nations to 'continue to tighten the ratchet on Russia' following Vladimir Putin's barbaric assault on Ukraine.

He said this could be through more military kit being sent to Kyiv, an increase in aid, or a tightening of sanctions against the Kremlin regime.

It came as MPs continued condemnation of France and Germany for selling arms to Russia, despite an EU ban imposed after Mr Putin annexed Crimea in 2014.

The two EU countries have sold more than 230million of weapons to the Kremlin, prompting fears they could be used to kill Ukrainian people and decimate the country's cities.

Latest analysis of EU data shows France and Germany sold weapons, including bombs, rockets, missiles and guns, as well as thermal imaging cameras for 1,000 Russian tanks and navigation systems for fighter jets and attack helicopters.

They were among 12 EU states that exploited loopholes in the 2014 sanction scheme, one of which allowed members to sell weapons that were dual-use equipment.

The weapons were sold on the reassurance by the Kremlin that the hardware was entirely for civilian use.

Germany sold 102million of weapons, which included rifles and special protection vehicles.

France sold 128million of weapons, using another loophole that allowed it to fulfil contracts that were signed just before the 2014 sanctions were imposed.

Bob Seeley, the Tory MP for the Isle of Wight and a former soldier, said: It is very clearly amoral and wretched, but not entirely surprising, given the handwringing approach from both Berlin and Paris. I am embarrassed for them.

They are damaging their relations not only with Ukraine, but with Eastern European states such as Poland, the Baltic republics and the Czech Republic. Frankly they are undermining their leadership of the EU.

Andrew Bridgen, the Tory MP for North West Leicestershire, said: It is deeply disappointing that two of our NATO allies have been selling huge quantities of arms to Putins Russia as well as buying his oil and gas.

They have and still are feeding the monster, perhaps in the hope that it eats them last? No wonder the Ukrainians hold them both in such low regard.

The German government said it would not have sold the weapons if it knew they would be used by the Russian army, whilst the French did not comment.

The EU loophole was closed since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

MPs continued condemnation of France and Germany for selling arms to Russia, despite an EU ban imposed after Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in 2014

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky told a press conference in Kyiv on Saturday that the UK, along with the US, was supplying the 'biggest military aid' as he attempts to hold off Russia's war machine.

In a phone call with Mr Johnson this weekend, the Ukrainian leader also thanked the PM for the training of Ukrainian military personnel currently taking place in Britain.

And Mr Johnson confirmed the UK would provide more armoured vehicles, drones and anti-tank weapons to Kyiv.

Speaking to Sky News' Sophy Ridge on Sunday show, Tory chair Mr Dowden said Britain was stepping up its assistance to Ukraine as the war enters a third month.

Asked if he would like to see other European nations, such as France and Germany, increase their support, Mr Dowden said: 'Yes, I would and I think we've had very positive noises from France and Germany.

'But I would like to see further action from them. It is actually heartening that the US is continuing to step up its support for Ukraine, I think their military support has reached over 2billion.'

Pressed on whether he thought France and Germany were lagging behind the contributions of the US and UK, the Cabinet minister added: 'Well, I would like to see more but the Prime Minister is engaging on precisely that point

'Earlier this week he had a call not only with President Biden but also President Macron and the leaders of other countries such as Germany.

'So I think there's a desire for us all to do it but it would be good to see more from France and Germany as well, yes.'

Oliver Dowden called on Western nations to 'continue to tighten the ratchet on Russia' following Vladimir Putin's barbaric assault on Ukraine

The Cabinet minister said it 'would be good to see more' from French President Emmanuel Macron (left) and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky told a press conference in Kyiv on Saturday that the UK, along with the US, was supplying the 'biggest military aid'

Mr Putin has been forced to redeploy his troops to eastern Ukraine - after they failed to capture Kyiv and other parts of the country in the first phase of Russia's invasion attempt.

But, despite the fierce ongoing resistance of Ukrainians, Mr Dowden reiterated Prime Minister Boris Johnson's belief that Moscow could yet be victorious.

Speaking on his recent visit to India, the PM admitted a Russian victory was a 'realistic possibility' as he warned that Mr Putin was determined to 'grind the Ukrainians down'.

Asked what had influenced Mr Johnson's remarks, Mr Dowden told the BBC's Sunday Morning programme: 'What I think we are seeing is both changing Russia tactics, so Russia concentrating on the east of Ukraine, and a Russian determination to keep on going and going.

'That's why I think it is really important that we need to continue to tighten the ratchet on Russia, whether that's, for example, the 120 armoured personnel carriers that the Prime Minister agreed with Zelensky just last week or whether it is continuing to increase aid and tighten our sanctions.

'So, the West has to respond in turn and we are willing to do so.'

Mr Zelensky told reporters at a press conference on Saturday that Ukraine wanted 'more than we're being given' when it came to Western help, but added: 'We're satisfied.'

'We cannot refuse or reject anything during the war from the biggest military aid, which is coming from the United States and the United Kingdom,' he said.

'There are many other friends in Europe, but I'm talking about volumes of help and I'm grateful for it.'
Two men are suing a crane operator who crushed their family home and almost killed them.

Anna Pace, her son Fred Pace, 20, and nephew Daniel Pantalleresco, 22, were inside their Yarraville home, in Melbourne's inner west, when it was suddenly destroyed by a falling crane in April 2019.

Two people were injured in the crash and the Pace's family dog was killed.

In April 2019 a crane fell on top of the Pace's family home, narrowly missing mother Anna Pace by just 50cm

The son Fred Pace, 20, and nephew Daniel Pantalleresco, 22, are now suing the crane operator, alleging he failed to properly weigh down the base of the crane

Ms Pace only narrowly avoided being crushed by the fallen crane by about 50cm.

Now Mr Pace and Mr Pantalleresco have launched legal action against the crane operator, Jason Briggs for the emotional distress the incident caused.

Both men claim they have suffered from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) since the incident.

The Pace's home was flattened by the large crane and their family dog was killed in the crash

The son and nephew claim they have suffered post traumatic stress from the incident as well as sleeping troubles

Mr Pantalleresco also claims he is unable to sleep because of the distressing incident.

They have argued that Mr Brigg's did not secure the crane properly or perform a risk assessment before using the machinery on the Pace's neighbouring property.

In documents submitted to the Country Court of Victoria, the family claims they weren't warned of any possible dangers before the incident, the Herald Sun reported.

At the time of the incident family members recalled Mr Pace was unable to sleep and Mr Pantalleresco described the incident as traumatic

Mr Pace's father said shortly after the crash his son was already struggling with its physiological effects.

'Fred didn't sleep well at all. He's taking it as well as he can,' he said.

Mr Pantalleresco also spoke in 2019 and described the crash as sudden and terrifying.

'We just looked over and the side of the house and the roof just caved in,' he said.

'Everything was flying everywhere and we just screamed and ran.'
Progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tore into House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy on Sunday, branding the lawmaker a 'liar and a traitor' after explosive leaked audio revealed he wanted Donald Trump to resign after the Capitol riot.

McCarthy has been under fire from both sides of the aisle since a recently-revealed private phone call days after the January 6th insurrection showed the true depth of his fury at the ex-president -- only for him to fly to Florida for an audience with Trump in a show of support just days later.

'Kevin McCarthy is a liar and a traitor. This is outrageous,' Warren said on CNN's State of the Union.

'And that is really the illness that pervades the Republican leadership right now. Because they say one thing to the American public, and they say something else in private.'

She accused McCarthy of focusing more on Trump's baseless claims the 2020 election was rigged rather than moving the country 'forward.'

'They understand it is wrong what happened -- an attempt to overthrow our government,' Warren said.

'And that the Republicans instead want to continue to figure out how to make 2020 election different instead of spending their energy on how it is we go forward...in order to make this country work better.'

She added, 'Shame on Kevin McCarthy.'

It comes after the California Republican told other GOP leaders that he would ask Trump to resign and accused the ex-president of 'inciting people' to go to the Capitol that day.

Progressive Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren said McCarthy should feel 'shame' over the explosive leaked audio

"Kevin McCarthy is a Liar and a traitor." @ewarren reacts to new audio of McCarthy talking about former President Trump's role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. #CNNSOTU @CNNSotu pic.twitter.com/gHnxfPoEva  CNN (@CNN) April 24, 2022

Other Democrats were quick to pile on McCarthy as well, with Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) calling him a 'liar' on Twitter late last week.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said on April 22, 'Authoritarians don't come to power alone. They come to power on the backs of men like Kevin McCarthy.'

GOP Senator Roy Blunt also weighed in on Sunday, telling NBC News he was 'surprised' McCarthy even mentioned resignation to Trump.

'He's been close to Trump. Frankly, when I first heard this, I thought, anybody who'd been as close to President Trump as Kevin McCarthy was would know that the last thing Donald Trump was gonna do is either resign or quit,' Blunt said.

'There was no way that was gonna happen. I was frankly so surprised that Kevin would even suggest that it might be a realistic suggestion to make to President Trump.'

GOP Senator Roy Blunt was 'surprised' that McCarthy would even suggest asking Trump to resign, claiming it was the 'last thing' the ex-president would do

WATCH: @RoyBlunt says he was surprised" that Rep. Kevin McCarthy even mentioned fmr. Pres. Trump resigning.



There was no way that was gonna happen. I was frankly  surprised that Kevin would even suggest  that it might be a realistic suggestion to make to President Trump. pic.twitter.com/JQu4PtsxZV  Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) April 24, 2022

Most Republicans, meanwhile, have for held back their reactions until they hear from Trump -- who reportedly is not mad at the GOP leader.

McCarthy phoned the former president following the release of stunning tapes that captured internal GOP leadership discussions after the Capitol riot, according to the Washington Post.

It might be expected that Trump would be fuming at the fellow Republican, whom he once called 'My Kevin,' after hearing McCarthy's tough talk with fellow House members.

That includes McCarthy telling fellow lawmakers 'What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it,' in a January 10, 2021 call.

But a source confirmed to DailyMail.com that Trump isn't sore at McCarthy.

In fact, Trump was 'glad the Republican leader didnt follow through, which Trump saw as a sign of his continued grip on the Republican Party,' according to the Post, which cited three anonymous sources.

Former President Donald Trump isn't upset at leaked tapes that reveal House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy

McCarthy has longtime hopes of being elected speaker  a task that would become herculean with outright opposition from Trump, whose grip on the party is so strong that his own name has even been floated for the post (the speaker does not have to be a sitting House member under House rules).

The two men spoke before CNN aired still more recorded audio of McCarthy, including the House leader saying Trump bore 'some responsibility' for Jan. 6.

'I know this is not fun. I know this is not great. I know this is very tough, but what I want to do, especially through here is, I don't want to rush things. Want everybody to have all the information needed. I've had it with this guy. What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it,' McCarthy said on a phone call with a small group of House Republicans on January 10th, 2021.

McCarthy was also recorded on a Jan. 11, 2021 call with the larger GOP Conference, where he again gave Trump public blame.

'Let me be very clear to all of you, and I am very clear to the president. He bears responsibilities for his words and actions, no IFS, ands, or buts. I asked him personally today, does he hold responsibility for what happened? Does he feel bad about what happened? He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened. And he needed to acknowledge that,' he said.

THE RECEIPTS: On Thursday night's Rachel Maddow Show, the MSNBC host played a clip of a conversation between House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Liz Cheney. In it, McCarthy says what was reported in a forthcoming book by New York Times reporters, which he denied saying earlier Thursday

Rep. Liz Cheney denies she leaked audio of a call to New York Times reporters in which House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy says he'll pressure former President Donald Trump to resign in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol attack

The recordings were revealed by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, who are promoting their new book, This Will Not Pass.

Trump has not publicly responded to the leaks.

And in the many months after Jan. 6th, he has not made any kind of public statement of responsibility for what transpired.

Instead, Trump has railed against an election he calls 'rigged,' attacked the House select committee probing Jan. 6th as the 'unselect' panel, and sought to engineer primaries against the small group of Republicans who voted to impeach him.

The McCarthy tapes have not gone over well with former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, who cast it as disloyal on his podcast.

'Right there you're hearing all the money, all the leadership in the Republican Party, how they plot, in probably Trump's weakest moment, when the whole world turned against him,' Bannon said.
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Alec Baldwin just can't catch a break from a run in with the law.

Baldwin, 64, was spotted opening an envelop containing a parking ticket after stopping to grab lunch near his home in ritzy East Hampton over the weekend.

Baldwin and his wife Hilaria, 38, who is pregnant with their seventh child, have been seen in the upscale Long Island community several times since he has come under fire for shooting cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of his western, Rust, last October.

The actor, who was out for lunch Saturday, returned to his vehicle to find the dreaded bright yellow parking ticket on his windshield. He grabs it, gets into his car and looks at it before driving away.

The parking ticket comes just days after Baldwin said he was exonerated over Halyna Hutchins' death in a new report Wednesday that blasted producers of the film.

The actor issued the statement shortly after New Mexican Occupational Health and Safety Bureau officials levied the maximum fine against the producers of Rust, the film on which Hutchins was shot and killed by Baldwin in October 2021.

Executive producers were hit with a $136,793 film - the maximum available. Baldwin himself was a producer, but highlighted a passage in the investigation which said that he was involved in the script and casting - but not safety procedures.

Alec Baldwin was out to lunch in East Hampton, New York on Saturday when he notices a parking ticket on the windshield of his vehicle

The actor, 64, grabs the parking ticket and scrambles into his vehicle

Baldwin gets into his vehicle and tears open the parking ticket

Since the incident, Baldwin has been slowly emerging back into the public view. Baldwin and his wife Hilaria put on a loved-up display while attending the opening night of the dark comedy Hangmen on Broadway, by the British-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, in New York City on Thursday evening.

The couple had recently announced that they are expecting their seventh child to add to their brood of children, including daughters Carmen Gabriela, eight, Lucia, one, and sons Romeo Alejandro David, three, Leonardo Angel Charles, five, and Rafael Thomas, six.

But on Saturday, Baldwin once again looked defeated as he grabbed the yellow parking ticket from his car's windshield.

In the summer of 2021, both Sag Harbor and East Hampton villages made deals with online companies to electronically monitor parked cars and issue violations to those that stay in their spots too long, Dan's Papers reported.

This involves license plate recognition software and overhead surveillance cameras.

Mayor Brian Figaro of Hampton Village told Dan's Papers that he was very happy with and hopes to make additions to it.

'We will give 10% off to people who continuously lived in the Hamptons for more than five years, 20% off for people who've lived here more than 10 years and 30% off for people who've lived here for a generation,' he said. 'Those who can trace their residency back to the early settlers would be totally exempt from parking fines. They can park wherever they want and for however long they want.'

The fee for Baldwin's parking ticket he received on Saturday is unknown, but the actor didn't look too happy about it.

Just days earlier, on Wednesday afternoon, Baldwin, who has argued that he did not know the gun was loaded when it was handed to him by the film's assistant director David Halls, resulting in the death of Hutchins last October, issued a statement that touted the scathing report as a victory.

Baldwin's statement read: 'We are grateful to the New Mexico Occupational and Safety Bureau for investigating this matter. We appreciate that the report exonerates Mr. Baldwin by making clear that he believed the gun held only dummy rounds.

'Additionally, the report recognizes that Mr. Baldwin's authority on the production was limited to approving script changes and creative casting. Mr. Baldwin had no authority over the matters that were the subject of the Bureau's findings of violations, and we are pleased that the New Mexico officials have clarified these critical issues.'

The statement concluded: 'We are confident that the individuals identified in the report will be held accountable for this tragedy.'

In their report, officials cited a slew of 'willful and serious' safety violations that led them to dishing out the fine - the maximum sum for such safety infractions - and criticized film brass for failing to follow industry safety guidelines.

Baldwin has since claimed that he did not pull the trigger of the gun that fired, and that it went off by accident in his hand.

The parking ticket comes just days after Alec said he was exonerated over Halyna Hutchins' death in a new report Wednesday blasting producers

Baldwin is spotted leaving lunch just moments before getting a parking ticket in East Hampton

Baldwin (pictured here on Saturday) and his wife Hilaria, 38, who is pregnant with their seventh child, have been seen in the upscale Long Island community, where they own a home

Baldwin opens the bright yellow parking ticket that he got over the weekend in East Hampton

A glum looking Baldwin takes a minute before driving off after he was issued the ticket

In Baldwin's statement, his PR team cited how Halls and another staffer, property master Sarah Zachary - two of three employees to handle the gun before it was passed to Baldwin - were responsible for safety slip-ups that resulted in Hutchins' death, ignoring assertions that the company as a whole should be held 'fully accountable' for the failures.

The fine comes after a six-month investigation by the bureau into the circumstances leading up to the shooting, which saw Baldwin fire a round at Hutchins with a prop gun that inexplicably contained live ammunition on October 21.

The actor, who was also a producer on the unfinished film, has argued that he did not pull the trigger and has no idea how a live bullet made its way onto the Santa Fe set.

The latest: Alec said he was exonerated over Halyna Hutchins' death in a new report blasting producers of the film whose set witnessed the tragedy on Wednesday

Hutchins, 42, was shot and killed on set by Baldwin on October 21, after the actor fired a prop gun that inexplicably contained live ammunition in her direction while practicing for a scene

Alec Baldwin said Wednesday that a report released by New Mexico safety regulators slamming Rust producers as responsible for the accidental shooting death of a staffer on the film's set last year, has seen him 'exonerated' - despite serving on the unfinished film's production team himself. Pictured is the Wednesday statement from the actor

In the filing, officials wrote that the makers of Rust - a group which includes Baldwin - showed 'plain indifference to recognized hazards associated with use of firearms on set,' revealing that film brass ignored complaints from staffers regarding gun safety following 'two firearms-related incidents' five days before the fatal shooting.

The report described the incidents as 'misfires,' which reportedly occurred on the film set October 16.

Officials revealed that Rust Movie Productions failed to follow up on those claims, circumventing industry-implemented safety procedures 'which likely would have prevented the accident from occurring,' the filing states.

The report concluded that management for Rust Movie Productions - which would include Baldwin - 'knew that firearm safety procedures were not being followed on set and demonstrated plain indifference to employee safety by failing to review work practices and take corrective action.'

The agency went on to declare that because of those infractions and shortcuts by staff - including those by assistant director Halls, whom regulators noted handed Baldwin the loaded gun without consulting with on-set weapons specialists - the production company must be held 'fully accountable' for Hutchins' death.

Property master Zachary also failed to 'work in conjunction with the production's designated Safety Representative to assure that the following standards,' the report revealed.

The report also said that weapons specialists were barred from making decisions about additional firearm safety training.

Director Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust

'Through our investigation, we determined that Rust Productions' failures were both serious and willful,' regulators wrote. 'It was the employers' obligation to follow national standards, and that did not happen on the set of Rust.

'This was a terrible tragedy and our thoughts are with the victim - a mother, a wife, an experienced cinematographer and a well respected member of the film community. Today we continue to extend our thoughts and prayers to her loved ones.

'While I realize no fine can compensate for the loss of life, we are holding Rust Productions fully accountable.'

Officials said Rust Movie Productions must pay the sum or face legal action.

'What we had, based on our investigators' findings, was a set of obvious hazards to employees regarding the use of firearms and management's failure to act upon those obvious hazards,' Bob Genoway, bureau chief of the New Mexico regulator, said Wednesday of the OSHA report.

In a statement following the report's release, Rust Movie Productions spokesman Stefan Friedman rebuked the bureau's findings.

Hutchins' October 19, 2021 Instagram post showed cast members and staffers, including Baldwin alongside Hutchins herself and armorer Gutierrez-Reed (circled left to right) on the set of Rust in Santa Fe, New Mexico

This aerial photo shows the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, N.M., on Oct. 23, 2021.

The Bonanza Creek Ranch, where the film 'Rust' was being filmed, appears in Santa Fe on Oct. 23, 2021. On Wednesday, New Mexico workplace safety regulators issued the maximum possible fine against a film production company for firearms safety failures on the set of 'Rust' where a cinematographer was fatally shot in October 2021 by actor and producer Alec Baldwin

'While we appreciate OSHA's time and effort in its investigation, we disagree with its findings and plan to appeal. Our thoughts and prayers remain with Halyna's family,' Friedman said.

Baldwin said in a December interview with ABC News that he was pointing the gun at Hutchins at her instruction on the New Mexico set of the Western film when it went off without his pulling the trigger.

The new occupational safety report confirms that a large-caliber revolver was handed to Baldwin by assistant director Halls, without consulting with on-set weapons specialists during or after the gun was loaded.

Regulators note that Halls also served as safety coordinator and that he was present and witnessed two accidental discharges of rifles on set, and that he and other managers who knew of the misfires took no investigative, corrective or disciplinary action.

Crew members expressed surprise and discomfort.

'The Safety Coordinator was present on set and took no direct action to address safety concerns,' the report states. 'Management was provided with multiple opportunities to take corrective actions and chose not to do so.

'As a result of these failures, Director Joel Souza and cinematographer Halyna Hutchins were severely injured. Halyna Hutchins succumbed to her injuries.'

A spokesman for Rust Movie Productions did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. An attorney for Baldwin was not immediately available.

James Kenney, secretary of the Environment Department that oversees occupational safety, said the agency dedicated 1,500 staff hours to its investigation, examined hundreds of documents and conducted at least a dozen interviews with cast and crew members.

Baldwin is seen on October 21, 2021, after speaking to investigators of Hutchins' fatal shooting

Investigators found production managers placed tight limits on resources for a small team that controlled weapons on set and failed to address concerns about a shotgun left unattended twice.

The report also revealed that the third person to handle the gun before Baldwin, armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the daughter of a sharpshooter and consultant to film productions, was limited to eight paid days as an armorer to oversee weapons and training, and was assigned otherwise to lighter duties as a props assistant.

As her time as an armorer ran out, Gutierrez Reed aired concerns over firearm safety procedure's on the film's set, but was rebuffed, the report said.

Safety investigators also note that the production company did not develop a process to ensure live rounds of ammunition were not brought on set, in violation of industry safety protocols. Safety meetings were conducted, but not every day weapons were used, as required.

Kenney said the separate investigations into possible criminal charges are still underway.

He said his agency received no direct safety complaints from cast or crew prior to the fatal shooting, even though anonymity is offered.

'This tragedy, this loss of life, it could have been prevented, and we want people to say something,' he said.

Kenney was appointed in 2019 by Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a staunch advocate for the film industry who increased a state cap in industry incentives shortly after taking office.

New Mexico competes with non-Hollywood production sites in states such as Georgia, Louisiana and New York.

Film productions have flocked to New Mexico in recent years to seize on its diverse outdoor scenery, moderate costs and generous state incentives, including a rebate of between 25 percent and 35 percent of in-state spending for video production that helps filmmakers large and small underwrite their work.
A top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the United Nations Secretary-General is 'not really' authorized to speak for Kyiv when he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week.

Speaking to NBC News' Meet The Press on Sunday, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Ihor Zhovkva signaled his government was wary of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' plan to travel to Moscow more than two months into Russia's brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

He went a step further and accused the international body of 'lagging behind' in terms of its support for Ukraine, despite more than 10 million people there being forced to flee their homes by Russia's military.

'This is not good idea, to travel to Moscow. We do not understand his intention to travel to Moscow and to talk to President Putin,' Zhovkva said.

The official said that 'any peace talks are good' if they yield results, but quickly followed up by casting doubt that Guterres will get far with the Russian autocrat.

'I really doubt if those peace talks organized by the Secretary-General of the UN would end up with any result,' he said.

Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Ihor Zhovkva was skeptical that the UN chief's talks with Vladimir Putin would yield results

TODAY: Igor Zhovkva, President Zelenskyys top diplomatic adviser, says the UN Secretary General is "not really" authorized to speak for Ukraine in upcoming meetings with President Putin.



"We do not understand his intention to travel to Moscow and to talk to President Putin." pic.twitter.com/Vw0LdgEtF2  Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) April 24, 2022

'The UN should do more, not only in terms of political things ... but in terms of humanitarian needs. The UN is lagging behind in Ukraine in terms of humanitarian support to my country.'

Zhovka it would be good if the UN Secretary-General would concentrate on these things' in addition to negotiating with Putin.

Ukraine's prime minister similarly said he's 'not sure' the Moscow talks would produce results, during his own Sunday US news interview.

'So many leaders of countries, of civilized world, international organizations try to have these negotiations,' Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told CBS News' Face The Nation'

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres plans to meet with Putin on April 26 and Zelensky on April 28

Shmyhal said the Kremlin would rather commit genocide in Ukraine and destabilize global supply chains than negotiate peace talks for the invasion it started.

'The Russian Federation, Putin, are not interested in these negotiations. They're interested in other things,' the elected official said.

'They are interested in genocide of Ukrainians, in creation of migration crisis in Europe, in the world. They're interested in creation of food crisis, energy crisis.'

The United Nations announced last week that Guterres would travel to Moscow on April 26 for a 'working lunch' with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and would be received by Putin himself.

'He hopes to talk about what can be done to bring peace to Ukraine urgently, a UN spokesperson said.

Guterres will be in Ukraine just two days later on April 28 to meet face-to-face with Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Zelensky.

Meanwhile, two of US President Joe Biden's top Cabinet officials are expected to be in Kyiv on Sunday to speak with Zelensky.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's visit is the highest-profile such trip yet by American officials since Putin first declared his invasion on February 24.

This week U.N. Sec. Gen. Guterres is expected to meet with Russian President Putin, but, Ukrainian PM Shmyhal is not sure this is a diplomatic breakthrough. He thinks the Russian Federation is more interested in the "genocide of Ukrainians." pic.twitter.com/tKkKMRwlai  Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) April 24, 2022

An aerial view shows damaged buildings, amid Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, in Mariupol, Ukraine in this handout picture taken with a drone released April 24

Local civilians gather to get humanitarian aid distributed by Donetsk People Republic Emergency Situations Ministry in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, Saturday, April 23

Zelensky announced they would be visiting during a press conference on Saturday, and that they would discuss 'the list of weapons that we need and the pace of its supply.'

He also said, 'We will be expecting, when the security will allow, the President of the United States to come and to talk to us.'

Shmyhal said on Sunday that their visit was an 'important political symbol and 'a symbol of uniting for the countries and politicians and nations.'

'When our partners go to Ukraine to see by their own eyes what's happened, which atrocities and war crimes [the] Russian Army and Russian Federation made in Ukraine during this 58 days of this bloody war... So it's important signal and issue for our nation when our partners are represented in Ukraine,' he said.

No details of the visit have yet been released from the US government.
The Queen's daughter, Princess Anne, is predicted to replace her youngest nephew, Prince Harry, in a senior military role, despite approaching 71.

Princess Anne is to make military history by becoming the first woman ever to head the Royal Marines.

Prince Harry held the post for less than two years, but was stripped of the prestigious Royal Marines job after marrying Megan and moving to the USA.

The Princess Royal currently holds the honorary title of Admiral in the Royal Navy, but her new role is understood to be announced in August after officially being endorsed by the Queen.

Princess Anne is no stranger to military life, being married to a naval officer, Admiral Sir Tim Lawrence.

The Royal family has undergone significant changes in the past few years, currently Prince Charles takes a leading role in public appearances as the Queen, 96, reduces her commitments.

While both Prince Harry and Prince Andrew have had all of their honorary military titles removed from them.

Princess Anne is set to take over as head of the Royal Marines, after her nephew Prince Harry was stripped of his military roles when he stepped back from being a senior member of the Royal family

Harry was assigned the appointment of Captain-General of the Royal Marines by his grandfather, Prince Philip, but quit in order to take up a new life in the United States with his wife Meghan

According to the Daily Star Sunday, a number of new military appointments will be announced by Buckingham Palace, including Princess Anne heading the marines and potentially at least two new Army roles.

Regiments such as the marines, the Grenadier Guards, the Irish Rangers and the Yorkshire regiment have been left without an honorary head after Prince Harry and Prince Andrew were removed from their roles.

The Princess, 70, is known for undertaking a large number of public engagements and already heads ten regiments including Colonel in Chief of the King's Royal Hussars, the Royal Scots, The Gurkhas and the Royal Army Veterinary Corps.

The Princess Royal (pictured talking with Australian Army soldiers earlier this month) will visit marines in training and attend ceremonial events in her new role

The Princess Royal wears her military uniform when attending related services and events (pictured on the 40th anniversary of the departure of the Falklands Taskforce this month)

As Captain-General of the 350-year-old Corps, the Princess will be expected to visit young marines in training, attend ceremonial events and join the commandos in the field.

Prince William was understood to be in the running as the new Captain-General of the Royal Marines, but royal aides limited his workload after it was revealed the Queen would be handing over to Prince Charles.

A senior Royal Marine source told the Daily Star that the Corps would be delighted if the Princess Royal becomes the next Captain-General.

He said: 'Princess Anne has a long tradition of working with the Royal Navy and would be a perfect fit for the role.

He added: 'Harry was only with us for a short time and we gave him his green beret, which concerned some people and then he had to stand back from public life'.
Border district Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar accused the Biden administration of 'listening to immigration activists' more than lawmakers and agents at the border.

The Texas lawmaker told Fox News Sunday that he has communicated to the White House that it should keep Title 42 in place until the public health emergency from the COVID-19 pandemic is lifted  at the earliest.

'We told them but they said that they're going to continue with lifting the title,' he told host Sandra Smith.

'But the thing is, yes, they're listening to the immigration activists,' Cuellar said in reference to the White House. 'But my question is, who's listening to the men and women in green and in blue? And more importantly, who's listening to the border communities, the sheriffs, the landowners, the rest of the people that live on the border?'

'I was in Roma, I was with a lot of people there, not only public officials but other folks  none of them said, 'yes go ahead and lift Title 42,'' he added. 'None of them said 'open up the border.''

'They're very concerned because they're on the front line and they're the ones that, I think, we need to listen to. We need to listen to the border communities,' the lawmaker insisted.

Texas Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar accused the Biden administration of sending 'mixed messages' with ending Title 42 but keeping other COVID-related policies in place

Cuellar's district includes hundreds of miles of southern border along the Rio Grande River separating Texas and Mexico  it also stretches into the state to include parts of San Antonio

Texas Democrat Congressman Henry Cuellar: Nobody in a border community is saying "lift Title 42" pic.twitter.com/Y4bGewZkNi  RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 24, 2022

'Yes, they're listening to the immigration activists. But my question is... who's listening to the border communities, the sheriffs, the landowners, the rest of the people that live on the border?' Cuellar questioned. 'We need to listen to the border communities.' Pictured: Asylum-seeking migrants from Haiti cross the Rio Bravo river into El Paso, Texas on Friday, April 22, 2022

Since Biden took office, more than 2.4 million migrants were apprehended by CBP. Last month hit a new high with 221,303 encounters in March alone

Cuellar's district runs along the Rio Grande River from just west of McAllen, Texas up the western border hundreds of miles  it also encompasses parts of San Antonio and border towns of Loredo and Rio Grande City.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has the authority to activate Title 42, announced earlier this month that it would end the program on May 23.

The public health policy allows for immigration agencies to instantly deport migrants crossing into the U.S. without hearing their asylum claims. Under typical Title 8 in immigration code, if an individual crosses the border and expresses fear of returning to their home country, the lengthy asylum process immediately launches.

Bipartisan bills in Congress are trying to stop the administration from ending Title 42 before the public health emergency is lifted by the White House.

'How can you ask for international travelers to make sure  they're vaccinated or even show their COVID-19 negative tests if they fly in?' Cuellar questioned in his interview with Fox on Sunday morning.

'How can we have the federal public emergency extended to July 15 and say there's a pandemic going on in the United States, but at the border, everything's fine and just let people into the United States?' he continued.

'Those are mixed messages.'

Massive influxes of migration are expected next month once Title 42 ends on May 23, 2022. Pictured: People scale fencing with a ladder on the Mexico side of the border in Tecate on Thursday, April 21, 2022  then men use ropes to lower themselves down on the U.S. side of the wall

A Haitian asylum seeker crosses into the U.S. from Mexico to turn himself into Border Patrol agents in El Paso, Texas on Friday, April 22, 2022

The White House received immense pressure from immigration advocates to end Title 42 enforcement, despite the Biden administration upholding the Trump-era policy and even defending it in court during the last year-and-a-half.

Now that Biden's team has announced an end, Republicans and some Democrats have expressed outrage over the move that will surely triple the current migration crisis at the southern border, according to internal estimates.

March saw the latest record-breaking number of apprehensions by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) with 221,303 encounters last month alone. This was a number not seen for decades and broke the last high of 213,593 in July 2021.

Concerns are rising that the lifting of Title 42 is coinciding with the peak season of illegal immigration going into Spring and Summer months.

Since Biden took office in late January 2021, CBP has apprehended more than 2.4 million migrants crossing the southern border.

Some estimates predict that the current 8,000 per day migrant crossing could rise to 18,000 once Title 42 is lifted next month. And some groups warn that there are already hundreds of thousands of migrants within days of the border ready to cross once the policy is no longer being enforced.
Shanghai authorities have put up fences outside residential buildings as China hardens its strict 'zero-COVID' policy, sparking fresh public outcry over a lockdown that has forced much of the city's 25 million people indoors.

The largest district in Beijing, meanwhile, will require everyone living or working in the area to take three COVID tests this week, and put more than a dozen buildings under lockdown, after the Chinese capital reported 22 new cases for Saturday. The district, Chaoyang, is home to 3.45 million people.

The announcement set off panic buying Sunday evening, with vegetables, eggs, soy sauce and other items wiped off grocery shelves.

In Shanghai, images of workers in white hazmat suits sealing entrances of housing blocks and closing off entire streets with green fencing - roughly roughly two metres tall - went viral on social media, prompting questions and complaints from residents.

Shanghai authorities have put up fences outside residential buildings as China hardens its strict 'zero-COVID' approach. Pictured: A courier in a protective suit makes deliveries to a residential compound amid the coronavirus disease outbreak in Shanghai, China, April 23

Volunteers wearing PPE disinfect a residential community at Yangpu district during the phased lockdown triggered by the COVID-19 outbreak on April 24, 2022 in Shanghai, China

Health workers walk along a street past a group of neighbourhood residents waiting for a bus during the Covid-19 lockdown in the Jing'an district in Shanghai on April 24, 2022

Volunteers and government workers erected metal barriers in multiple districts to block off small streets and entrances to apartment complexes.

In the city's financial district, Pudong, the barriers - thin metal sheets or mesh fences - were put up in several neighborhoods under a local government directive, according to Caixin, a Chinese business media outlet.

Buildings where cases have been found sealed up their main entrances, with a small opening for pandemic prevention workers to pass through.

'This is so disrespectful of the rights of the people inside, using metal barriers to enclose them like domestic animals,' said one user on social media platform Weibo.

One video showed residents shouting from balconies at workers trying to set up fencing. The workers relented and took it away. Other videos showed people trying to pull fences down.

'Isn't this a fire hazard?' asked another Weibo user.

Many of the fences were erected around compounds designated 'sealed areas' - buildings where at least one person tested positive for COVID-19, meaning residents are forbidden from leaving their front doors.

It was not clear what prompted authorities to resort to fencing. A notice dated Saturday from one local authority shared online said it was imposing 'hard quarantine' in some areas.

Reuters news agency was not able to verify the authenticity of the notice or all of the images, but saw green fencing on a street in central Shanghai on Sunday.

In recent days, police in hazmat suits have been seen patrolling Shanghai streets, setting up road blocks and asking pedestrians to return home.

The Shanghai government did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

The latest outbreak, driven by the highly contagious omicron variant, has spread nationwide, but has been particularly large in Shanghai.

The city, a financial hub with 25 million residents, has counted hundreds of thousands of cases but fewer than 100 deaths since the outbreak began nearly two months ago.

Shanghai is using a tiered system in which neighborhoods are divided into three categories based on the risk of transmission.

Those in the first category face the strictest COVID-19 controls and were the main target of the new heightened measures. In the third category, some buildings allow people to leave their homes and visit public areas.

Volunteers wearing PPE disinfect a residential community at Yangpu district during the phased lockdown triggered by the COVID-19 outbreak on April 24, 2022 in Shanghai, China

A volunteer wearing PPE disinfects a residential community at Yangpu district during the phased lockdown triggered by the COVID-19 outbreak on April 24, 2022 in Shanghai, China

Members of the 'Blue Sky Rescue Team' disinfect a residential community during the phased lockdown triggered by the COVID-19 outbreak on April 24, 2022 in Shanghai, China

Shanghai is China's most populous city and most important economic hub, and anger has been growing, with videos showing its citizens rioting in some areas.

It is battling the country's biggest COVID-19 outbreak since the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan in late 2019 with a policy that forces all positive cases into quarantine centres.

The lockdown, which for many residents has lasted over three weeks, has fuelled frustration over lost wages, family separation and quarantine conditions as well as access to medical care and food.

Supermarket Freshippo, backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd , said on Sunday it was adding couriers to meet demand in the city.

The lockdown has also dragged on China's economy, the world's second-largest, with factory production disrupted by snarled supply chains and difficulties faced by locked-down residents returning to work.

Shanghai is carrying out daily citywide COVID tests and accelerating transfer of positive cases to central facilities to eradicate virus transmission outside quarantine areas.

In the past week, authorities have also transferred entire communities, including uninfected people, saying they need to disinfect their homes, according to residents and social media posts.

Many residents have vented on the internet about the lockdown and express dissent, using euphemisms and other means to battle government censors who often remove content critical of the authorities.

Videos of 'Do You Hear The People Sing?', a protest anthem from 'Les Miserables', have been widely reposted, with the title of the French musical receiving over 90 million mentions on WeChat on Saturday, the chat app's data showed.

Neighbourhood residents walk with their luggage past a barrier separating areas before boarding a bus during the Covid-19 lockdown in the Jing'an district in Shanghai on April 24

People sit for a Covid-19 test at a residential area on April 22, 2022 in Shanghai, China

View of residential units during a Covid-19 coronavirus lockdown in the Jing'an district of Shanghai on April 21, 2022

Shanghai reported 39 COVID deaths for April 23, versus 12 a day earlier and by far the most during the current outbreak.

It did not report any deaths in the first few weeks, fuelling doubt among residents about the figures. It has since reported 87 fatalities, all in the past seven days.

The city recorded 19,657 new locally transmitted asymptomatic cases, versus 20,634 a day prior, and 1,401 symptomatic, versus 2,736.

Cases outside quarantined areas totalled 280 from 218 on the previous day. Other cities that have been under lockdown began easing restrictions once cases hit zero.

China largely succeeded in keeping coronavirus at bay following the Wuhan outbreak, with a 'dynamic zero' policy aimed at stamping out chains of infection.

That approach has been challenged by the spread of the highly infectious but less deadly Omicron variant, which has prompted cities to impose various levels of restrictions on movement.

Nationwide, China reported 20,285 new asymptomatic coronavirus cases for Saturday, versus 21,423 a day earlier, with 1,580 symptomatic cases, versus 2,988.

News of the barriers in Shanghai came after a viral video last week showed an elderly broom-wielding woman busted out of quarantine three times and evaded guards wearing hazmat suits trying to enforce the city's zero-Covid lockdown.

The 95-year-old was seen in one video walking down the street in an attempt to break free of the city-wide lockdown when she was stopped by one of the guards.

But the man, who tried to block her path with a wooden broom, was in for a surprise when she jumped into action and pushed her way past him.

The flustered guard again positioned himself in front of the woman to stop her from getting any further down the street, but she grabbed the broom handle and tried snatch it from his grasp.

An elderly broom-wielding Chinese woman (pictured) busted out of quarantine in Shanghai three times and evaded guards wearing hazmat suits trying to enforce the city's zero-Covid lockdown. Pictured: The woman is shown grabbing the broom of a medical workers in the city

This sparked a tug-of-war between the pair, with the guard - wearing full PPE - being forced to retreat backwards down the small residential backstreet.

The bewildered medical worker continued to stand in her way, but she marched towards him while angrily pointing at him and gesturing to an onlooker.

The guard is also seen gesturing towards the elderly man watching the scene unfold, as if the guard is asking for his help with dealing with the women.

Eventually, the 95-year-old appears to give up and a second video taken nearby showed the women was put into a small confinement area nearby.

But this did not deter her, as she was able to break free of a corrugated iron cage.

The medical worker who tried to block her path with a wooden broom was in for a surprise when she pushed her way past him (pictured left). The woman grabbed the boom, sparking a tug-of-war between the pair, with the guard - wearing full PPE - being forced to retreat backwards down the small residential backstreet

Eventually, the 95-year-old appears to give up as the man orders her away (pictured). A second video taken nearby showed the women was put into a small confinement area nearby

In one photo of the determined woman, six guards in hazmat suits can be seen running away from her as she marches towards them - a metal pole in hand

She was then reported to have returned home by jumping over the wall of the quarantine centre. According to The Daily Telegraph, the woman staged three daring escapes in total.

In one photo of the determined woman, six guards in hazmat suits can be seen running away from her as she marches towards them - a metal pole in hand.

Finally, another video showed the woman being carted off in the back of a yellow tricycle by a group at least six of the hazmat-wearing medical workers, escorting her down an otherwise empty road.

One neighbour posted on social media: 'The old lady was taken away by a tricycle yesterday; she climbed the wall of the quarantine centre and got back the same evening.'

It is believed that the woman lived in a flat close to where the videos were filmed, and that she came to the attention of local police when her neighbours reported her walking around outside - having recently tested positive for Covid-19.

'The old lady is trying everything to 'prison break',' the video's description said, as it was posted to Chinese social media.

One user wrote in response to the video: 'We all should learn from this lady. There is no need to wait for or depend on anyone, but gain our freedom with action.'
The former chair of the Democratic National Committee said Sunday that Kevin McCarthy's response to reports he called for Donald Trump to resign following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot proves he is 'afraid' of the ex-president.

'I think he's terrified of Trump,' Donna Brazile said on ABC's This Week panel when speaking about the House Republican leader.

'I think he's terrified of telling the truth in terms of what he did in those five to seven days following the mob attack that everyone knows that former President Trump inspired when he assembled that group at the ellipse.'

'Kevin McCarthy is afraid of Trump,' she added.

'He needs Trump in order to become Speaker of the House. And he's afraid of turning off his base.'

Republicans are anticipating a take back of the majority in the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections, meaning McCarthy would be on a sure track for speaker as the current GOP leader.

Many candidates, however, are relying on riding Trump's coattails to Washington, D.C.

Leaked audio revealed this week that McCarthy wanted Trump to resign after the Capitol attack last year.

The leader's office did not reply to a DailyMail.com request for comment on the revelations in the tape. Prior to its release, however, his spokesperson said that McCarthy had never tried to push Trump out after the riot.

'Let me be very clear to all of you, and I've been very clear to the president  he bears responsibility for his word and actions, no ifs, ands or buts,' McCarthy said on the bombshell audio recording.

Former DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile (pictured) said Sunday Kevin McCarthy's response to reports he called for Trump to resign following the January 6 Capitol riot proves he is 'terrified' of the ex-president

Kevin McCarthy is afraid of Trump. He needs Trump in order to become Speaker of the House. And he's afraid of turning off his base, former DNC chair @DonnaBrazile says of House GOP leaders response to leaked Jan. 6 audio. https://t.co/XUC6SIz60z pic.twitter.com/ED6IYKW83t  This Week (@ThisWeekABC) April 24, 2022

Bombshell leaked audio reveals that McCarthy told Republicans during a private meeting days after the January 6 attack that he feels Trump 'bears responsibility' for the riot. Pictured: McCarthy speaks at a California Republican Party convention in Anaheim, California onSaturday, April 23, 2022

The audio from a private meeting with Republicans revealed that he also claimed that Trump admitted to him in a phone call following the January 6 attack that he did 'have some responsibility for what happened.'

At the time, McCarthy said that they needed to acknowledge that fact.

Many Republicans are hesitant to speak on the leader's comments, especially as reports claim the former president is not mad. Others have been more open about their distaste for his remarks.

But McCarthy has come under fire from both sides of the aisle since a recently-revealed private phone call showed the true depth of his fury at the ex-president  which was followed up by him flying to Florida for an audience with Trump in a show of support just days later.

Progressive Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren branded McCarthy a 'traitor'.

'Kevin McCarthy is a liar and a traitor. This is outrageous,' Warren said during an interview with CNN's State of the Union on Sunday.

'And that is really the illness that pervades the Republican leadership right now. Because they say one thing to the American public, and they say something else in private.'

She accused McCarthy of focusing more on Trump's baseless claims the 2020 election was rigged rather than moving the country 'forward.'

'They understand it is wrong what happened -- an attempt to overthrow our government,' Warren said.

'And that the Republicans instead want to continue to figure out how to make 2020 election different instead of spending their energy on how it is we go forward...in order to make this country work better.'

She added, 'Shame on Kevin McCarthy.'

It comes after the California Republican told other GOP leaders that he would ask Trump to resign and accused the ex-president of 'inciting people' to go to the Capitol that day.

Progressive Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren said McCarthy should feel 'shame' over the explosive leaked audio

"Kevin McCarthy is a Liar and a traitor." @ewarren reacts to new audio of McCarthy talking about former President Trump's role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. #CNNSOTU @CNNSotu pic.twitter.com/gHnxfPoEva  CNN (@CNN) April 24, 2022

Other Democrats were quick to pile on McCarthy as well, with Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell of California calling him a 'liar' on Twitter late last week.

Schiff said on April 22, 'Authoritarians don't come to power alone. They come to power on the backs of men like Kevin McCarthy.'

GOP Senator Roy Blunt also weighed in on Sunday, telling NBC News he was 'surprised' McCarthy even mentioned resignation to Trump.

'He's been close to Trump. Frankly, when I first heard this, I thought, anybody who'd been as close to President Trump as Kevin McCarthy was would know that the last thing Donald Trump was gonna do is either resign or quit,' Blunt said.

'There was no way that was gonna happen. I was frankly so surprised that Kevin would even suggest that it might be a realistic suggestion to make to President Trump.'

GOP Senator Roy Blunt was 'surprised' that McCarthy would even suggest asking Trump to resign, claiming it was the 'last thing' the ex-president would do

WATCH: @RoyBlunt says he was surprised" that Rep. Kevin McCarthy even mentioned fmr. Pres. Trump resigning.



There was no way that was gonna happen. I was frankly  surprised that Kevin would even suggest  that it might be a realistic suggestion to make to President Trump. pic.twitter.com/JQu4PtsxZV  Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) April 24, 2022

Most Republicans, meanwhile, have for held back their reactions until they hear from Trump -- who reportedly is not mad at the GOP leader.

McCarthy phoned the former president following the release of stunning tapes that captured internal GOP leadership discussions after the Capitol riot, according to the Washington Post.

It might be expected that Trump would be fuming at the fellow Republican, whom he once called 'My Kevin,' after hearing McCarthy's tough talk with fellow House members.

That includes McCarthy telling fellow lawmakers 'What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it,' in a January 10, 2021 call.

But a source confirmed to DailyMail.com that Trump isn't sore at McCarthy.

In fact, Trump was 'glad the Republican leader didn't follow through, which Trump saw as a sign of his continued grip on the Republican Party,' according to the Post, which cited three anonymous sources.

Former President Donald Trump isn't upset at leaked tapes that reveal House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy

McCarthy has longtime hopes of being elected speaker  a task that would become herculean with outright opposition from Trump, whose grip on the party is so strong that his own name has even been floated for the post (the speaker does not have to be a sitting House member under House rules).

The two men spoke before CNN aired still more recorded audio of McCarthy, including the House leader saying Trump bore 'some responsibility' for Jan. 6.

'I know this is not fun. I know this is not great. I know this is very tough, but what I want to do, especially through here is, I don't want to rush things. Want everybody to have all the information needed. I've had it with this guy. What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it,' McCarthy said on a phone call with a small group of House Republicans on January 10th, 2021.

McCarthy was also recorded on a January 11, 2021 call with the larger GOP Conference, where he again gave Trump public blame.

'Let me be very clear to all of you, and I am very clear to the president. He bears responsibilities for his words and actions, no IFS, ands, or buts. I asked him personally today, does he hold responsibility for what happened? Does he feel bad about what happened? He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened. And he needed to acknowledge that,' he said.

THE RECEIPTS: On Thursday night's Rachel Maddow Show, the MSNBC host played a clip of a conversation between House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Liz Cheney. In it, McCarthy says what was reported in a forthcoming book by New York Times reporters, which he denied saying earlier Thursday

Rep. Liz Cheney denies she leaked audio of a call to New York Times reporters in which House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy says he'll pressure former President Donald Trump to resign in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol attack

The recordings were revealed by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, who are promoting their new book, This Will Not Pass.

Trump has not publicly responded to the leaks.

And in the many months after Jan. 6th, he has not made any kind of public statement of responsibility for what transpired.

Instead, Trump has railed against an election he calls 'rigged,' attacked the House select committee probing Jan. 6th as the 'unselect' panel, and sought to engineer primaries against the small group of Republicans who voted to impeach him.

The McCarthy tapes have not gone over well with former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, who cast it as disloyal on his podcast.

'Right there you're hearing all the money, all the leadership in the Republican Party, how they plot, in probably Trump's weakest moment, when the whole world turned against him,' Bannon said.
COPENHAGEN, April 24 (Xinhua) -- A passenger car collided with the audience stands at a monster truck event in the Bjerke district of Norway's capital city of Oslo on Sunday afternoon, injuring several people, including six who were taken to the hospital, the Oslo Police Operations Center confirmed via social media.

"Six people have been taken to hospital for further check-ups. We are still working on site to obtain witness information," said the Oslo Police on Twitter.

Norwegian media NRK quoted Thomas Broberg, a task chief of Police at the scene, as saying that the accident occurred at around 18:19 local time (1619 GMT) causing "chaos" and "some of the injuries are classified as serious."

It was a passenger car that drove into the stands, not a monster truck, Oslo police operations chief Sven Christian Lie confirmed to Norwegian news agency NTB. 
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French President Emmanuel Macron has reached out to Marine Le Pen's frustrated supporters after he was re-elected for a second five-year term tonight.

Mr Macron, the 44-year-old centrist, won with a 58.54 per cent share of the vote  beating the far-Right Ms Le Pen, 53, on 41.46 per cent, the final results showed.

In an ambitious victory speech, Mr Macron said: 'From now on I am no longer the candidate for a party. I'm everyone's President!'

He conceded that France was 'full of anger and division', but pledged: 'Nobody will be left by the wayside.'

Mr Macron arrived at a rally on the Champ de Mars, underneath the Eiffel Tower, an hour-and-a-half after the result was called.

To rapturous cheers and applause, he held hands with his wife, Brigitte Macron, as Beethoven's Ode to Joy  the European Union anthem  blasted out of speakers.

Making his way up to stage with giant screen behind it, he said: 'Thank you!

'Thank you, dear friends, fellow citizens, here tonight in Paris, and everywhere in France and our overseas territories and abroad, before anything else let me say thank you.

'After five years of difficult but happy transformation and exception challenged this date  24 april 2024 - a majority amongst us chose me to pilot the Republic for the next five years.'

Wearing his trademark blue suit and tie, he continued: 'Together we can make France more independent and Europe stronger. By freeing our creativity, we can make France a great, green nation.

'I know a lot of people voted for me tonight, not because of my ideals, but to block the far-Right. I have been entrusted with their sense of duty for the next five years.'

He added, to boos, that he 'thought of Ms Le Pen and her supporters,' but added: 'No booing I don't want to hear that.

'Because from now on I am no longer the candidate for a party. I'm everyone's President'.

'I understand the anger that prompted people to vote far-Right, that will be my responsibility.'

He said 'Our own project is a humanist one, for the whole Republic.'

Conceding defeat, Ms Le Pen told supporters at her campaign HQ in Paris: 'We could have seen a great wind of freedom sweeping across this country, but the French people have said otherwise.

'When we see the results of tonight's election, we can nevertheless say we have been victorious. Millions have voted for us, and I want to thank all of them.'

Saying her National Rally party would remain a counterbalance to Mr Macron, Ms Le Pen said: 'Those who voted for me overwhelmingly in this second round  I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. We will continue to defend the citizens of France, now like never before.'

In response to the result, Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, tweeted: 'Dear @Emmanuel Macron, congratulations on your re-election as President of the Republic. I look forward to continuing our excellent cooperation. Together, we will move France and Europe forward.'

Boris Johnson said: 'Congratulations to @Emmanuel Macron on your re-election as President of France. France is one of our closest and most important allies. I look forward to continuing to work together on the issues which matter most to our two countries and to the world.'

Labour and opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer also offered his congratulations, adding on Twitter: 'The relationship between our countries is based on respect and allyship, and we look forward to that continuing.'

The Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, added: 'My heartfelt congratulations to @Emmanuel Macron, who has just been re-elected President of France.

'I am pleased that we can continue our broad and good cooperation within the EU and NATO in the coming years. I look forward to further strengthening the excellent relationship.'

The turnout of those eligible to vote was just 72 per cent, the lowest in any presidential election second-round run-off since 1969.

In a striking sign of public disenchantment with politics, 8.6 per cent of people who voted either delivered a blank ballot or spoilt their papers, interior ministry figures showed. The abstention figure was 2.6 per cent higher than in 2017  when Mr Macron first beat Ms Le Pen to seal his first term.

Mr Macron is a passionate supporter of the EU and now hopes to go on to become de-facto leader of the bloc, following the retirement of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron celebrate after his victory in France's presidential election

Macron has reached out to Marine Le Pen's frustrated supporters after he was re-elected for a second five-year term tonight

In an ambitious victory speech, Mr Macron said: 'From now on I am no longer the candidate for a party. I'm everyone's President!'

He conceded that France was 'full of anger and division', but pledged: 'Nobody will be left by the wayside'

Mr Macron arrived at a rally on the Champ de Mars, underneath the Eiffel Tower, an hour-and-a-half after the result was called

To rapturous cheers and applause, he held hands with his wife, Brigitte Macron, as Beethoven's Ode to Joy  the European Union anthem  blasted out of speakers

Making his way up to stage with giant screen behind it, he said: 'Thankyou!'

'Thank you, dear friends, fellow citizens, here tonight in Paris, and everywhere in France and our overseas territories and abroad, before anything else let me say thank you'

'After five years of difficult but happy transformation and exception challenged this date  24 april 2024 - a majority amongst us chose me to pilot the Republic for the next five years'

Wearing his trademark blue suit and tie, he continued: 'Together we can make France more independent and Europe stronger. By freeing our creativity, we can make France a great, green nation'

He added, to boos, that he 'thought of Ms Le Pen and her supporters,' but added: 'No booing I don't want to hear that'

'Because from now on I am no longer the candidate for a party. I'm everyone's President'

'I understand the anger that prompted people to vote far-Right, that will be my responsibility'

He said 'Our own project is a humanist one, for the whole Republic'

He will also be bracing himself for more rows with the British over a range of issues including the migrant boat crisis and English Channel fishing rights.

The 44-year-old president now faces the challenge of parliamentary elections in June, where keeping a majority will be critical to ensuring he can realise his ambitions.

In a sign of trouble to come, two polls published late Sunday showed that most voters do not wish for him to also carry the parliamentary vote.

'Macron's biggest challenge will be to create a sense of cohesion in an extremely fragmented country,' said Tara Varma, senior policy fellow and head of the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. 'Le Pen will do her best to capitalise on her result for the June parliamentary elections.'

Despite constantly leading the opinion polls, Macron had warned of a possible defeat comparable to Donald Trump winning the American presidency.

Macron  who once compared Britain's democratic vote to leave the EU as 'a crime'  had also suggested that a low turnout might have seen him robbed of power.

Just before his re-election, Mr Macron said: 'We must get used to far-Right ideas'.

He conceded that Ms Le Pen's party  the National Rally  had increased its share of the vote since 2017, when he beat Ms Le Pen by a landslide 66%.

But he also said Ms Le Pen was unfit to replace him because her party was still paying money back to Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

'War is raging on the continent,' he said during a TV debate last Wednesday, before snarling at Ms Le Pen: 'You are in fact in Russia's grip.'

Mr Macron also warned that Ms Le Pen risked sparking a 'civil war' with her plans to ban Muslim women from wearing headscarves in public and Jewish men from wearing the kippah.

In turn, Ms Le Pen described the former merchant banker and financial civil servant as a 'President of the Rich' who was 'contemptuous and very arrogant'.

Mr Macron used his own initials to create En Marche ! (On the Move!) his own political movement as recently as 2016, and is independent of any established party.

Ms Le Pen changed the name of her family party, the National Front, to National Rally in 2018, so as to try and soften its extremist image.

It was founded in 1972 by her father, the convicted racist and Holocaust denier, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Mr Le Pen, who is now 93, was runner-up in the French presidential election on 2002, and carried on contesting elections afterwards until 2012.

This suggests that his daughter will also keep pushing to enter the Elysee Palace, and has no thoughts of retirement.

Mr Macron will now serve as France's head of state until 2027  a period of time which will include the Paris Olympics of 2024.

Presidents are only allowed two terms, meaning Mr Macron  by far the youngest head of state in modern French history  is likely to retire from politics before his 50th birthday.

His immediate predecessors as President  the Socialist Francois Hollande and the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy  were both forced out of office after a single term.

French President Emmanuel Macron was re-elected for a second five-year term tonight as he crushed his far-Right rival Marine Le Pen amid low turnout levels

Supporters react at the Eiffel Tower after the victory of French President and La Republique en Marche (LREM) party candidate in France's presidential election

Mr Macron, the 44-year-old centrist, won with a 58.5% share of the vote  beating the far-Right Ms Le Pen, 53, on 41.5%, according to exit polls

They are always extremely accurate in France, meaning major broadcasters and other media outlets called the Macron victory as soon as polls closed at 8pm local time on Sunday

Conceding defeat, Ms Le Pen told supporters at her campaign HQ in Paris: 'We could have seen a great wind of freedom sweeping across this country, but the French people have said otherwise'

'When we see the results of tonight's election, we can nevertheless say we have been victorious. Millions have voted for us, and I want to thank all of them'

Saying her National Rally party would remain a counterbalance to Mr Macron, Ms Le Pen said: 'Those who voted for me overwhelmingly in this second round  I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. We will continue to defend the citizens of France, now like never before'

Le Pen delivers a speech after being defeated in the second round of the French presidential elections at the Pavillon d'Armenonville in Paris

As he prepared to celebrate with a rally by the Eiffel Tower, supporters in Paris could be heard chanting 'Five more years!'

Marine Le Pen reacts as she sits with supporters in Paris, on April 24, 2022, following the announcement of the results

Mr Macon was set to celebrate on the historic Champ de Mars underneath the blue-and-yellow flag of the European Union, as well as the French Tricolour

Preparing to take pride-of-place alongside him was his wife, 69-year-old retired teacher Brigitte Macron

France's Prime Minister Jean Castex (C) arrives at the Champs-de-Mars after French President Emmanuel Macron won

Former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls stands next to the stage before French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech after being re-elected

Ms Le Pen described the former merchant banker and financial civil servant as a 'President of the Rich' who was 'contemptuous and very arrogant'

By 7pm on Sunday, the turnout of those eligible to vote in the Macron-Le Pen second round was just 72% - the lowest since 1969

This was the year Charles de Gaulle resigned as head of state, and only 69% turned up to vote Georges Pompidou into power

This year's abstention figure was 2.6% higher than in 2017  when Mr Macron first beat Ms Le Pen to seal his first term

French far-right party Reconquete! presidential candidate Eric Zemmour delivers a speech after France's presidential election results were announced

Mr Macron is a passionate supporter of the EU, and now hopes to go on to become de-facto leader of the bloc, following the retirement of German Chancellor Angela Merkel

He will also be bracing himself for more rows with the British over a range of issues including the migrant boat crisis, and English Channel fishing rights

Ms Le Pen changed the name of her family party, the National Front, to National Rally in 2018, so as to try and soften its extremist image

Despite constantly leading the opinion polls, Macron had warned of a possible defeat comparable to Donald Trump winning the American presidency

French President and candidate for re-election, Emmanuel Macron greets supporters as he arrives to vote in the second round of the 2022 French presidential election, at a polling station in Le Touquet, France, 24 April 2022

French far-right party Rassemblement National's (RN) presidential candidate Marine Le Pen (C) speaks with Sebastien Chenu before the first results of the second round of the Presidential election in Paris

French voters began casting their ballots Sunday for the presidential run-off between centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. Pictured: Marine Le Pen casts her vote during the second round of France's presidential election at a polling station in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, on April 24, 2022

French President and centrist candidate for re-election Emmanuel Macron exits the voting booth at a polling station in Le Touquet, northern France, Sunday, April 24, 2022

Campaigning in her northern France stronghold in a last-ditch effort to close the gap last night, she lashed out at Macron's planned pensions reform, which she described as an effort to make the French work forever

Campaigning in her northern France stronghold in a last-ditch effort to close the gap last night, she lashed out at Macron's planned pensions reform, which she described as an effort to make the French work forever

Members of the public cast their votes at Lycee Voltaire polling station during the final round of the presidential elections on April 24, 2022 in Paris, France

Members of the public cast their votes at Lycee Voltaire polling station during the final round of the presidential elections on April 24, 2022 in Paris, France

Former French president Francois Hollande casts his ballot for the second round of the Presidential elections at a polling station in Tulle, on April 24, 2022

French Prime minister Jean Castex leaves the polling booth on his way to cast his ballot for the second round of the Presidential elections at a polling station in Prades, on April 24, 2022

The two candidates made their final pitches to the French electorate on Saturday as all campaigning and opinion polling must end by midnight on Friday. A first-round vote on April 10 led to Le Pen and Macron facing each other Sunday in a rematch of the 2017 presidential election runoff.

During his final campaign speech, delivered deep in France's southern heartland, Macron described the election as a 'referendum for or against a secular, united, indivisible Republic.' He presented himself as a guardian of democratic values and the rule of law, and hinted that Le Pen posed a threat to freedom of expression.

The centre-right incumbent, laid into the nationalist challenger, accusing Le Pen of trying to divide France over Islam. Le Pen has proposed to ban Muslim headscarves in public and wants to give French citizens priority over foreigners in receiving housing and job benefits.

'The far right lives off fear and anger creating resentment. It says that excluding parts of society is the answer,' Macron told France Inter radio.

Macron went into the election with a stable lead in opinion polls, an advantage he consolidated in the frenetic final days of campaigning, including a no-holds-barred performance in the pre-election debate.

But analysts have cautioned that Macron, who rose to power in 2017 aged 39 as the country's youngest-ever modern leader, can take nothing for granted given forecasts of low turnout that could sway the result in either direction.

He must above all hope that left-wing voters who backed other candidates in the first round on April 10 will back the former investment banker and his pro-business, reformist agenda to stop Le Pen and her populist programme.

Voting stations will close at 8:00 pm local time (1800 GMT), when preliminary results will be released that usually predict the final result with a high degree of accuracy.

Some 48.7 million people in France are eligible to vote in the election.

Marine Le Pen, French far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National) party candidate for the 2022 French presidential election, arrives to vote in the second round of the 2022 French presidential election at a polling station in Henin-Beaumont, France, April 24, 2022

Voters stand in voting booths at a polling station in Lyon, central France, Sunday, April 24, 2022

French people cast their ballot for the second round of French Presidential Election at a polling station in Montigny-le-Bretonneux near Paris, France on April 24, 2022

Voters go to the polls in France today, with front-runner Emmanuel Macron (pictured left at a rally Friday) holding a narrow lead over the far-Right leader Marine Le Pen. Ms Le Pen's campaign has been dogged by accusations of racism and ties to the Kremlin (Pictured right: Le Pen during a campaign rally on Thursday)

Macron himself repeatedly made clear that the complacency of stay-at-home voters precipitated the shocks of the 2016 elections that led to Brexit in Britain and Donald Trump's election in the United States.

Analysts say abstention rates could reach 26 to 28 percent, though the 1969 record for a second-round abstention rate of 31.1 percent is not expected to be beaten.

Far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who scored a close third-place finish in the first-round vote, has pointedly refused to urge his millions of followers to back Macron while insisting they should not vote for Le Pen.

Another factor is that elections are being held in the midst of the Easter school break in much of France.

According to Martial Foucault, director of the CEVIPOF political studies centre, a high abstention rate will narrow the gap between Macron and Le Pen, describing this as a 'real risk' for the president.

Early turnout indications will be closely watched from the overseas territories, where average incomes are lower than in mainland France and which generally backed Melenchon in the first round.

In New Caledonia, for example, turnout at midday was just 18.2 percent. In mainland France, the first turnout estimation will be published at 12:00 pm.

A woman votes in the second round of the French presidential election in Lyon, central France, Sunday, April 24, 2022

French nationals walk past posters of candidates Emmanual Macron (R) and Marine Le Pen as they arrive to vote in the second round of the French presidential elections, at the French consulate in the Lebanese capital Beirut, on April 24, 202

French people cast their ballot for the second round of French Presidential Election at a polling station in Montigny-le-Bretonneux near Paris, France on April 24, 2022

Members of the public cast their votes at Lycee Voltaire polling station during the final round of the presidential elections on April 24, 2022 in Paris, France

The stakes are huge for both France and Europe, with Macron pledging reform and tighter EU integration while Le Pen, who would be France's first female president, insists the bloc should be modified in what opponents describe as 'Frexit' by another name.

Macron has also opposed Le Pen's plan to make it illegal to wear the Muslim headscarf in public, though her team has walked back on the proposal ahead of the vote, saying it was no longer a 'priority.'

They have also clashed on Russia, with Macron seeking to portray Le Pen as incapable of dealing with the invasion of Ukraine due to a loan her party took from a Russian-Czech bank.

Macron would be the first French president to win re-election in two decades since Jacques Chirac in 2002.

If elected, he is expected to address supporters on the Champ de Mars in central Paris at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

Polls have shown Macron with a lead of around 10 percentage points, a much closer outcome than in 2017, when the same two candidates faced off and Macron carried the day with 66 percent of the vote.

Macron received a warm welcome in Figeac, where Melenchon came in second place in the first round of voting. but suddenly paused in his speech to address protesters who deployed a banner opposing the privatization of state services.

Macron told them he did the opposite during the coronavirus pandemic and exhorted them to think about their right to protest before they cast their ballot on Sunday.

Members of the public cast their votes at Lycee Voltaire polling station during the final round of the presidential elections on April 24, 2022 in Paris, France

People and election posters are seen outside a polling station in Sevres, near Paris, France, Sunday, April 24, 2022

'You should congratulate yourselves for living in a democracy where you can challenge an acting president, a candidate,' Macron said. 'And I hope it can continue. Because on the 24th of April, with another candidate, it will be a different choice.'

Earlier, Le Pen was in Etaples, at a marketplace near Le Touquet - a pointed choice on the final day of campaigning given that it is the constituency in which Macron himself votes.

The National Rally leader displayed a combative spirit following a bitter televised debate with Macron this week that buoyed some of her poll numbers.

Speaking on C-News, Le Pen called on the French to read her manifesto and wake up to the failures of Macron's five-year term. She responded to criticism that her policies did not hold up under scrutiny.

'I call on the French to check for themselves and form an opinion by reading what I propose to do to respond to the rampage that was Emmanuel Macron,' she said.

To take account of the time difference with mainland France, polls opened earlier in overseas territories, home to almost three million French.

The first vote in the election was cast midday on Saturday, Paris time, by a 90-year-old man in the tiny island territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, off the northern coast of Canada.

Polls subsequently opened in France's islands in the Caribbean and the South American territory of French Guiana, followed by territories in the Pacific and then the Indian Ocean.

Meanwhile, a priest was attacked with a knife in a church in Nice, southern France, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on his Twitter feed on Sunday. He said the priest's life was not in danger and added that police have arrested the attacker.

Emmanuel Macron might have been re-elected President of France... But quelle horreur! He thinks Boris Johnson is the devil incarnate, writes JONATHAN MILLER

'As a French woman who cannot stand Macron and despises Le Pen, I'm staying away from the news. It's a nightmare. I'll cry when I vote Macron,' said Nana yesterday, one of millions of voters preparing to cast her ballot for Emmanuel Macron in the French presidential election.

This is how Macron was re-elected president of France on Sunday. By voters holding their noses.

The result was confirmed as the polls closed. The polling companies were unanimously forecasting a Macron win of between 54 and 58 per cent of the votes.

A convincing victory and one which marks the end of Marine Le Pen. This has been her third failed attempt at the presidency.

Few here greeted the results with enthusiasm. Weary resignation characterised the general mood.

Few in France greeted the results of Emmanuel Macron's win with enthusiasm. Weary resignation characterised the general mood

Marine Le Pen gestures at the Pavillon d'Armenonville after her defeat in the second round of the 2022 French presidential election

The re-election of Macron is not good news for France  which faces five more years of his eccentric, egocentric politics  nor for Britain and Boris Johnson, who is seen as the Brexit devil incarnate by the Paris political establishment, including in particular the tight circle surrounding the president himself.

Johnson has so far stoically put up with Macron's tantrums, insults and his hard lines over the EU withdrawal agreement.

The Prime Minister can surely no longer be under the illusion that Macron is his 'friend'.

For the European Union itself, the French election is the least worst result. A Le Pen victory would have been a disaster.

Her promise to make French law supreme to EU law would have amounted to a Frexit.

Macron talks of a deeper, stronger EU (led by him) but the Europe he imagines is a fantasy.

The days when the Germans and French called all the shots are finished.

Europe has moved on  split asunder by Russia's invasion of Ukraine with Poles and eastern Europeans in one camp and the French in another.

It's a curiosity of the French political system that a greatly disliked politician rejected by 72 per cent of voters in the first round has held on to his job, despite his previous five-year term characterised by rising crime and civil disorder, incomplete and abandoned economic and social reforms, an often incoherent and absurd Covid policy, as well as innumerable scandals and unanswered questions.

Macron has a talent for talking too much, listening too little.

Even if it's true that the French like a bit of arrogance in their presidents, Macron's utter lack of humility is grating.

He's incapable of empathy with ordinary French people. Yet he adores posing for photographs. His arrogance is likely to be reinforced by his victory.

The re-election of Macron is not good news for Boris Johnson, who is seen as the Brexit devil incarnate by the Paris political establishment, including in particular the tight circle surrounding the president himself

His re-election isn't a democratic endorsement of a respected leader, but the product of an electoral system guaranteed to ignore what people really want and instead impose on them a choice likened by some here as between plague and cholera.

As if to add insult to this farcical election, it was an exact re-run of the previous presidential election in 2017, in which Macron beat Le Pen by 66 per cent to 34 per cent.

Le Pen closed the gap, but still was unable to seriously dent an incumbent who is widely distrusted and unloved.

All the problems facing France, unresolved or made worse in Macron's first term, are still present.

Macron is again at the helm, facing a cluster of colossal crises including war in Europe, restless cities, skyrocketing inflation and collapsing public services.

There are those who say that despite all these problems, France remains a paradise.

And it's true that the France most British tourists see on holiday can be delightful.

But for millions of people, la vie en rose, washed down with an agreeable rose and some olives, is not the way it is.

The terrible position in which France now finds itself is partly of Macron's own making.

Now that Angela Merkel has finally left the stage, the French president considers himself ex officio the uncontested leader of the EU.

But German allies have turned out to be faithless and wholly dependent on Russian energy. The European defence force is a joke, a paper tiger when confronted with Russian aggression. It's not the French or the Germans who are helping Ukraine but the Poles, Czechs, Balts, plus Americans and Brits who are not even in the EU.

Macron might imagine he is the ringmaster of this circus.

Supporters of Marine Le Pen were seen in tears shortly after the exit polls predicted a win for Emmanuel Macron

A supporter of French President Emmanuel Macron holds a placard reading 'Emmanuel Macron With You' and others wave flags as they watch the first election projections being announced in Paris

He's more of a clown  which, incidentally, is an insult he levelled at Boris Johnson.

Macron and the team around him are viscerally anti-British.

They have imposed an EU withdrawal agreement on Brexit Britain that is a time bomb for future conflict.

Instead of accepting Britain as a friend on independent terms, for the benefit of both sides, Macron insisted on aggressive punishment of the Brits for their insolence in leaving his beloved European Union.

France and Britain have the closest imaginable commercial and social connections.

Macron and his men have ignored this and picked fights even as he has annoyed his supposed allies in Europe.

In France, the misery will now continue as the exhausted electorate is invited to vote again in June elections for the National Assembly.

At which point, Macron will have to stitch together some kind of government with a parliamentary majority that is unlikely to be stable or durable.

Vive la France? There's trouble ahead.
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Socialist stalwarts Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praised Amazon Labor Union workers during a rally on Staten Island on Sunday for organizing the first successful Amazon union drive in the country.

The rally comes three weeks after 55 percent of workers at the Staten Island JFK8 fulfillment center voted to join the Amazon Labor Union. The union is demanding higher pay and job security.

'What you have done in taking on Amazon and having this facility here in Staten Island, the very first Amazon facility to unionize in the entire country, is an extraordinary achievement,' Sanders said. 'You have taken on one of the most powerful corporations in America.'

'What you are doing here is sending a message to every worker in America is the time is now to stand up to our oligarchy,' the Vermont senator added.

But there's still work to be done. On Monday, the LDJ5 Amazon Sort Center is set to hold their own vote.

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez indicated that this victory will be part of a larger effort to unionize other Amazon facilities across the country.

Sanders said at the rally Sunday that this has been a struggle not just happening on Staten Island, but a struggle that is happening all over the country with workers falling behind while billionaires like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos become much richer.

'What this struggle is about is not just Amazon and Staten Island. This is the struggle taking place all across this country,' Sanders said. 'Working people are sick and tired of falling further and further behind while billionaires like Bezos become much richer.'

Ocasio-Cortez, who famously helped kill Amazon's plan to build a headquarters in her district in Queens, criticized the company for not yet recognizing the union.

'When these workers win fair and square they refuse to recognize their victory,' Ocasio-Cortez said. 'Jeff Bezos, Amazon, everybody, we got to recognize the fact that they did this thing and they won a union election.'

Amazon is currently disputing the results, and seeking to overturn the election.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hug at a rally on Staten Island Sunday as they praised Amazon Labor Union workers for organizing the first successful Amazon union drive in the country

Sen. Sanders called the win 'an extraordinary achievement,' adding, 'You have taken on one of the most powerful corporations in America'

Ocasio-Cortez criticized Amazon for not yet recognizing the union. 'When these workers win fair and square they refuse to recognize their victory. Jeff Bezos, Amazon, everybody, we got to recognize the fact that they did this thing and they won a union election'

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez arrive to a rally outside an Amazon facility on Staten Island in New York, on Sunday where they praised workers for for organizing the first successful Amazon union drive in the country

In the aftermath of their hard-won labor victory, Amazon workers in the New York City borough of Staten Island popped Champagne, cheered their victory and danced in celebration on Sunday.

But their jovial attitude will be tested by a company that seems likely to drag its feet to the bargaining table.

Among other things, the nascent Amazon Labor Union, or ALU, has said it wants longer breaks for warehouse employees, more time off and a dramatically higher minimum hourly wage of $30, up from just over $18 an hour now at the Staten Island facility.

To achieve anything close to that, the grassroots union would need to negotiate a contract with Amazon that both sides, as well as union members, agree on. Doing so could prove difficult.

Amazon is seeking to overturn the election, having argued in a filing with the National Labor Relations Board this month that the vote was tainted by organizers and by the board's regional office in Brooklyn that oversaw the election.

On Friday, the company submitted material to support its objections in a filing to the agency. A spokeswoman for the labor board said the agency won't make that filing public while the case is still open. A separate NLRB regional office in the Southwest will likely hold hearings and decide whether to certify the results.

If Amazon's effort fails, it could appeal to the national labor board, whose Democratic majority is expected to favor the fledgling union. But even in cases when the agency upholds a union victory, companies often refuse to negotiate - a stance that can trigger lengthy legal battles in federal court as a backdoor way to thwart labor victories.

Data compiled in 2009 by Kate Bronfenbrenner, a labor expert at Cornell University, found that fewer than half of unions obtained their first contract within a year of winning an election, and 30% didn't secure one within three years. In the meantime, time ticks away as workers are left in a state of uncertainty.

Sen. Sanders tells the crowd at the rally on Staten Island Sunday that this has been a struggle that is happening all over the country with workers falling behind while billionaires like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos become much richer - but hopes now that'll change

Sen. Sanders and Amazon Labour Union (ALU) organizer Christian Smalls meet workers at an Amazon facility during a rally in Staten Island on Sunday

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks during a rally with Amazon workers outside the company building in Staten Island on Sunday

John Logan, director of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University, says anti-union companies have traditionally taken the view that even if they lose an election, the battle isnt truly lost until a union contract is signed.

'There's every incentive for them to delay the process at every opportunity,' Logan said. 'Law firms and consultants who specialize in continued avoidance activity have, for years, told employers explicitly, "Time is on your side."'

Even if Amazon goes to federal court and fails, it could still cause a contract delay and potentially blunt some of the momentum a union victory might create.

Chris Smalls, the fired Amazon worker who leads the Amazon Labor Union, has said that since the group won its election earlier this month, workers from more than 100 Amazon facilities in the U.S. have contacted the union about organizing their own workplaces. A neighboring Amazon warehouse on Staten Island, which has roughly 1,500 workers, is set to have its own union election this week.

Experts say delays for a contract can frustrate such union campaigns and undermine employee confidence in organized labor. The result can be a weak contract or diminished interest among workers in organizing.

If Amazon pursues a protracted legal battle before agreeing to a contract, the number of employees at the warehouse who voted for the union would also likely dwindle. Amazon is known for its high turnover rate - up to 73% at the unionizing warehouse in the past two years alone, according to a recent court filing by the company.

One way workers can push back is by employing a strike. That, of course, carries its own risks. Michael Duff, a former NLRB lawyer who teaches at University of Wyoming College of Law, noted that Amazon could replace any striker with a substitute worker, potentially leaving strikers out of a job for months or even years.

Some unions have funds to help out-of-work strikers stay afloat. But sustaining such support can be burdensome for unions. Its also difficult for workers to survive long strikes, Duff said, something that employers know well.

Connor Spence, an Amazon employee who is ALUs vice president of membership, says the nascent union is ready to pressure the company by making its case through the news media and by engendering public sympathy. According to a Gallup poll from August, public approval of unions is at its highest level since 1965.

Spence said ALU organizers, who appeared recently at a virtual event with Sen. Bernie Sanders, a longtime champion of labor causes, will also try to persuade lawmakers to lean on the retailer.

'But at the end of the day, it's collective action that works,' Spence said.

Organizers could deploy a strike or a walkout to disrupt Amazon's operations on Staten Island, Spence said, noting that walkouts have occurred at other Amazon facilities in recent months. The group also plans to set up a strike fund, using donations collected through its GoFundMe page.

Sen. Sanders speak at a rally Sunday: 'What you are doing here is sending a message to every worker in America is the time is now to stand up to our oligarchy'

Amazon workers hold signs at a rally at the Staten Island Amazon facility

For now, organizers are focused on a rematch with Amazon at the neighboring Staten Island warehouse known as LDJ5. A victory there would give Amazon workers additional leverage during any potential strike or walkout.

Amazon and its CEO, Andy Jassy, have said that while it's up to employees to decide whether to join a union, they believe they're better off not doing so. To press its argument, the company is continuing to hold mandatory anti-union meetings for workers - a practice that the labor board's top prosecutor is trying to get outlawed.

Organizers have previously accused Amazon of confiscating union flyers from the LDJ5 warehouse. Last week, the union filed a complaint with the NLRB, asserting that Amazon has unlawfully barred it from displaying a pro-union sign in the break room. Organizers say workers had been able to display the same sign at JFK8, the neighboring facility that voted to unionize.

Seth Goldstein, a lawyer who is providing pro-bono legal help to the union, contended that Amazon managers told workers that it was against company policy to display the sign but didn't specify the policy and threatened discipline. An Amazon spokesman said some workers had 'erected a banner in violation of company policy' but declined to say why the same banner was allowed to be displayed in the nearby warehouse.

'It's an information war,' said Madeline Wesley, one of the organizers who works at the LDJ5 warehouse. 'It's not going to stop us. But we're going to have to be a little careful, making sure that no one gets to the point where they're starting to get seriously disciplined or lose their job.'
Vladimir Putin looked frail and unsteady in footage purporting to be from a midnight mass for Orthodox Easter, stoking rumours surrounding the Russian president's ailing health.

He chewed his lip and appeared unsure of his footing as he stood in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral alongside the city's mayor Sergei Sobyanin.

A nervous-looking Putin fidgeted and appeared distracted while watching the church service.

He appeared to chew the insides of his mouth, shifting uncomfortably, adding to a swirl of commentary that the pressure of Russian setbacks over the war in Ukraine was getting to him.

A dry mouth can be a symptom of Parkinson's Disease - a condition which the Kremlin was forced to deny Putin was suffering from last year.

The Russian president has seen rumours circling around his physical and mental fitness after footage emerged of him gripping the table in front of him during a meeting with one of his senior staff.

Putin, 69, was seen gripping the table and tapping his foot frantically, prompting the rumours of his mental deterioration.

The mass was led by Russian Orthodox leader Patriarch Kirill, who has supported Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin attends the Orthodox Easter service in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow. The Russian president appeared unsteady and distracted during the ceremony

He appeared to chew the insides of his mouth, shifting uncomfortably, adding to a swirl of commentary that the pressure of Russian setbacks over the war in Ukraine

In recently broadcast footage, Putin stood in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral alongside the city's mayor Sergei Sobyanin

Putin gives himself the sign of the cross, but seemingly does so with deliberate slowness.

Vladimir Putin's five medically-related disappearances November 2012: Business trips and long-distance flights of the president are canceled, some of Putin's meetings shown by the Kremlin turn out to be 'canned food' March 5  15, 2015: Putin does not appear in public, all meetings are 'canned' - in other words pre-recorded events were shown with the pretence they were in real time August 9-16, 2017: The President, with journalists, visits Abkhazia and Sochi, and then for a week the Kremlin publishes only 'canned food' February 2018: In the midst of an election campaign, the president cancels public events. Peskov admits that the head of state 'had a cold' September 13-29, 2021: Putin goes into 'self-isolation', all events are held via video link Advertisement

Observers said Putin's actions are consistent with someone suffering from Parkinson's disease, which causes tremors, slow movement and stiffness.

Reuters reported Putin did not join in with the congregational response, declining to respond 'he has truly risen', along with the rest of the congregation.

The Eastern Orthodox churches observe the ancient Julian calendar, and so Russia is celebrating Orthodox Easter on April 24, later than the Roman Catholic calendar date for Easter.

Putin was recently shown on Russian TV giving orders for troops in Ukraine to blockade the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol where more than 1,000 Ukrainians are held up inside, resisting the Kremlin's control over the city.

'An able-bodied president would not need to keep himself propped up with a hand held out for leverage and would not be concerned about keeping both feet planted on the ground,' professor Erik Bucy, a body language expert from Texas Tech University, told the Sun.

The Russian leader's poor posture and his apparently bloated face and neck sparked speculation about the Russian leader's health, which has reportedly been in decline since the invasion of Ukraine.

Putins legs also appeared quite thin, suggesting he may be suffering from weight or muscle loss, said professor Bucy.

'I am persuaded by a lot of medical advice that he is an ill man and the most persuasive diagnosis is that he has early Parkinsonia,' said former government defence and Nato adviser Professor Gwythian Prins, appearing on Good Morning Britain.

'I happen to live with a clinical neurological psychologist, my wife who has spent 30 years dealing with people who have had degenerative brain diseases.'

He said people living with Parkinson's often show 'all or nothing thinking' where they become disinhibited, stopping them from taking in information rationally.

Russian Orthodox leader Patriarch Kirill, who has supported his invasion of Ukraine, led the service. Eastern Orthodox churches observe the ancient Julian calendar, and this year celebrate the Orthodox Easter on April 24

Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulate each other after the Easter service at the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow

Putin's appearance was the opposite of president Zelensky's, who addressed the Ukrainian people with Orthodox Easter message of hope and unity.

In a video address from one of the country's best known landmarks, the 1,000-year-old Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Zelensky said Ukraine will overcome the darkness that Russia's invasion had brought upon it.

He vowed that no 'wickedness' will destroy the country and prayed that God returns happiness to children and brings solace to grieving mothers.

'Today, we still believe in the new victory of Ukraine and we are all convinced that we will not be destroyed by any horde or wickedness,' said Zelensky, wearing his trademark dark khaki outfit.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses Ukrainian people with Orthodox Easter message, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, at the Saint Sophia cathedral in Kyiv

Putin's last public appearance was with his minister of defence, Sergei Shoigu.

Shoigu, who is in charge of the bloody invasion of Ukraine, has been noticeably absent from public view amid reports the defence minister and Putin's relationship has become strained after Russia's military operation in Ukraine has led to more than 20,000 Russian troops being killed.

Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist and former adviser to Ukraine and Russia, said the video showed both Putin and Shoigu 'depressed and seemingly in bad health'.

Shoigu does not appear to have fared any better than Putin in the eight weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, with the defence minister slurring his words and reading from his notes following an apparent heart attack.

Last week, a Russian-Israeli businessman claimed Shoigu suffered a heart attack, which he suspects was caused by foul play.

Leonid Nevzlin claimed Shoigu had been in intensive car after suffering 'a massive heart attack' which 'could not have occurred due to natural causes', suggesting Putin's longtime ally may have been the subject of an assassination attempt.

But Putin's poor posture and his apparently bloated face and neck sparked speculation about the Russian leader's health, which has reportedly been in decline since his invasion of Ukraine

A bloated Vladimir Putin has been seen gripping a table whilst slouching in his chair during a televised meeting with his defence minister Sergei Shoigu amid rumours the Russian strongman is battling cancer. Shoigu does not appear to have fared any better in the eight weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, with the defence minister slurring his words and reading from his notes following an apparent heart attack

The scale of Russian troop losses in Ukraine has tipped 21,000 as Putin's war rumbles into its third month today.

The latest statistics, published by the Ukrainian Land Forces this morning, suggest 21,800 Russian fighters have been killed amid bitter resistance from Ukraine's armed forces and territorial defence units - though this figure could not be verified.

Meanwhile, the land forces claim to have dealt massive damage to Russia's military equipment and machinery.

A total of 873 tanks are said to have been destroyed, along with 2238 armoured vehicles, 179 planes, 154 helicopters and 408 artillery systems.

Putin's forces rolled across the border on February 24 from the north, east and south, and quickly made a beeline for Kyiv.

But they were forced to withdraw from the outskirts of the capital in late March and refocus their efforts on a targeted offensive in the eastern Donbas region after Ukraine successfully repelled their advances, inflicting heavy losses.

Russia's vast troop losses have been put down to poor tactical decisions by Russian military leaders and a considerable underestimation of the capabilities of Ukraine's armed forces.

At the start of the war, Russia's military dwarfed that of Ukraine and led many to believe that the invasion would be swift and effective.

On February 24, Russia's land army consisted of 280,000 full-time active soldiers compared with Ukraine's 125,600.

But the amount of Russian soldiers needed to seize the whole country and control the entire population would be close to 1 million, according to Michael Clarke, a visiting professor in King's College London's department of war studies - suggesting the Kremlin woefully underestimated the amount of force needed to force its neighbours into submission.

The wreckage of a downed Russian helicopter lies in a field near Kharkiv on April 16, 2022

This image, released by General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on April 3, 2022 shows the burning wreckage of a downed Russian fighter jet in the Kharkiv region

Valentyna Sherba, 68, stands next to a Russian tank in the backyard of her father's home, both destroyed, in the aftermath of a battle between Russian and Ukrainian troops on the outskirts of Chernihiv, northern Ukraine, Saturday, April 23, 2022
A black cat with enormous eyes and giant feet is set to make history and become the first mayor of a small Michigan town with a demonic name.

Jinx was given the keys to govern Hell, a township located 20 miles northwest of Ann Arbor with an estimated population of 72 people, on Sunday at 4 p.m.

The town offers anyone to be 'Mayor of Hell' for an entire day or even just an hour and Jinx will be Hell's most popular ruler: The kitty has 736,000 followers on TikTok, 402,000 on Instagram and 248,000 on Twitter.

The cat's owner, Mia, lives in California with her famous feline, who she rescued in 2018. Jinx was only about three weeks old when she was found by Mia in a field behind her house.

Throughout the years, Mia noticed that Jinx's eyes were only getting bigger even after the cat stopped growing. The black feline also developed large feet, prompting her to walk funny.

'She learned how to land on her feet only around a year ago,' Mia told Newsweek. The cat owner doesn't share her last name or specific location because of her pet's booming online popularity.

Jinx is set to become the mayor of Hell, Michigan, for a day starting on Sunday at 4p.m.

Jinx and her owner, Mia, both live in California

Jinx is known all over social media for her oversized eyes and wonky feet

She also recalls the time she took Jinx to the vet due to being fearful of her pet's health condition.

'She had big eyes and as she grew bigger, her eyes didn't get smaller and I also noticed she had big feet. She doesn't have a condition and the vet says she's healthy,' Mia said. 'She just has these birth defects. She's also not as agile as most cats and is a little clumsy. She only learned how to land on her feet a year ago.'

The feline became an internet sensation thanks to those same birth defects, with her owner constantly posting pictures and video of her pet's unique appearance on a daily basis for the past three years.

On April 8, however, Mia asked around social media if her popular cat could ever run for mayor anywhere in the country.

'Isn't there some town that made a dog the mayor?' she asked on Twitter. 'Can we make Jinx mayor or something somewhere?

Much to Mia's surprise, she received answers from people living in Hell, where anyonehuman and animals, too are eligible to become mayor for just a day, with a $100 donation made to the township. A fee of $25 is all that it takes to be mayor for just one hour.

'Jinx is going to be mayor in three days,' Mia told her Twitch followers on Thursday. The cat's fans responded by suggesting that Jinx should be rewarded for her public duty, suggesting delicacies including salami and cat treats.

'She also wants big murals of her and the mandatory following of her social media,' Mia told news outlets about Jinx.

The township of Hell, Michigan, has a population of nearly 70 people and allows people to pay to become mayor for a day

The prizes that come along with being mayor of Hell for a day come with 'horns, a T-shirt, a mug, a badge and a mayoral proclamation certificate', among other things, as well as an impeachment call at the end of the day.

Jinx will also be given her very-own square inch property in the township.

'We love our in-person and distant mayors,' said Reverend Vonn of Hell, who will also be announce Jinx as mayor over the phone. 'They get to have one Helluva fun day and at the end of it, will receive the dreaded phone call to be impeached.'

Mia will be broadcasting the furry mayor's proclamation via Jinx's Twitch page at around 4 p.m. ET (1 p.m. PT.).
Boris Johnson has congratulated Emmanuel Macron on his re-election saying he will 'continue to work together with France' as European Union leaders breathed a sigh of relief at news the far-right had been prevented from taking power.

Macron, the 44-year-old centrist, won with a 58.2% share of the vote  beating Marine Le Pen, 53, on 41.8%, according to exit polls.

Mr Johnson tweeted: 'Congratulations to Emmanuel Macron on your re-election as President of France.

'France is one of our closest and most important allies. I look forward to continuing to work together on the issues which matter most to our two countries and to the world.'

Labour and opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer also offered his congratulations to the 44-year-old, adding on Twitter: 'The relationship between our countries is based on respect and allyship, and we look forward to that continuing.'

David Lammy, Labour's shadow foreign secretary, congratulated the president for 'defeating the far-right to win a historic second term'.

Shortly after the poll was released, Le Pen conceded defeat in an address to her supporters.

Addressing his supporters by the Eiffel Tower, Macron reached out to those who voted for Le Pen, saying he was 'everyone's President'.

European Council President Charles Michel, as well as the prime ministers of Belgium and Luxembourg, were among the first to congratulate Macron, followed by almost all of the bloc's 27 leaders.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted in French, 'together we will make France and Europe advance.'

The Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte tweeted his hope to 'continue our extensive and constructive cooperation in EU and NATO.'

In Germany, politicians around the political spectrum offered support, including from the pro-business Free Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and conservative Christian Social Union.

Emmanuel Macron has won the French Presidential election, according to exit polls, defeating Marine Le Pen

Marine Le Pen delivers a speech after being defeated in the second round of the French presidential elections at the Pavillon d'Armenonville in Paris

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted his congratulations to Macron and said he was looking forward to 'continuing to work together' with the French leader

The outcome, expected to be confirmed by official results overnight, caused immense relief in Europe after fears a Le Pen presidency would leave the continent rudderless following Brexit and the departure of German chancellor Angela Merkel.

France, a founding member of the EU, has been at the centre of efforts to integrate Europe since the end of World War Two, even if such policies have been divisive.

Having Le Pen, a deeply eurosceptic politician who has professed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the Elysee Palace would have had huge implications for the stability of the EU, analysts and diplomats said.

Le Pen had long flirted with the idea of leaving the bloc, although she insisted she had no 'secret agenda' this time for quitting the EU or the euro single currency.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who along with Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is seen as forming a powerful trio of pro-EU leaders, also said the re-election was 'wonderful news for all of Europe.'

Draghi said: 'France and Italy are working side by side, along with the other European partners, to construct a stronger, more cohesive, more just European Union, capable of being a protagonist in the greatest challenges of our times, starting with the war in Ukraine.'

Scholz offered continued Franco-German cooperation, which is regarded as the engine of European integration.

Echoing the sentiment of many, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said Europe was the biggest winner.

Portugal's Prime Minister Antonio Costa said that, by voting for Emmanuel Macron, 'French people have demonstrated once again their commitment to the European project.'

Costa, a socialist who was re-elected earlier this year in a landslide victory, wrote Sunday in a tweet that he was enthusiastic about working together with the centrist politician during the next four years.

The Portuguese prime minister made a case for voting to elect Macron in an open letter also signed by his Spanish and German counterparts, Pedro Sanchez and Scholz.

Sanchez tweeted his congratulations to Macron.

'The chance that there will be pro-European governments in France and Germany for at least the next four years must be seized,' Anton Hofreiter, chairman of the Europe Committee in the German Bundestag, said.

EU president Charles Michel said the bloc can now 'count on France for five more years'.

'Bravo Emmanuel,' Michel wrote on Twitter. 'In this turbulent period, we need a solid Europe and a France totally committed to a more sovereign and more strategic European Union.'

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, a French national, offered warm words for the pro-business Macron, saying 'strong leadership is essential in these uncertain times.'

The leaders of Sweden, Romania, Lithuania, Finland, the Netherlands and Greece, all reacted within about half an hour of the result with their congratulations.

Irish premier Micheal Martin also sent his congratulations saying at a time of challenges, it is 'important that we have a president in Paris who is as committed as he is to the fundamental values of the European Union and to its success'.

'Throughout his first term in office, he has offered strong, decisive and principled leadership. I very much look forward to this continuing and to working closely with him in the coming years,' he said.

'France and Ireland are good friends and partners, France is our nearest neighbour in the EU.

'We are like-minded on many issues, including our ambition on climate action and our commitment to an EU that works well and that delivers for its citizens. Most importantly, France and Ireland are strongly committed to the success of the European project which remains the bedrock of prosperity and well-being on our continent.

'With crisis on our borders, it is has never been more vital that we remain a beacon of democracy and of hope in our neighbourhood and to the world.'

After Britain's surprise vote to quit the EU and the election of Donald Trump in the United States in 2016, the bloc was alarmed by Le Pen's potentially explosive social and economic reforms, even if polls showed Macron winning in Sunday's second round.

In a combative speech to supporters in Paris where she accepted the result but showed no sign of quitting politics, Le Pen, 53, said she would 'never abandon' the French and was already preparing for June legislative elections.

'The result represents a brilliant victory,' she said to cheers.

In his victory speech by the Eiffel Tower on Sunday evening, Macron said he would be 'everyone's President'

Supporters react at the Eiffel Tower after the victory of French President and La Republique en Marche (LREM) party candidate in France's presidential election

Leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said Le Pen's defeat is 'very good news for the unity of our people,' and vowed to lead the fight against Macron's party in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Melenchon, who failed to reach the second round by a few hundred thousand votes and had urged his supporters not to vote for Le Pen, said Macron's 'presidential monarchy survives by default and under the constraint of a biased choice.'

In his address, Melenchon exhorted Macron's opponents to vote in June's parliamentary elections to 'choose a different path' and elect a majority of leftist lawmakers. Melenchon said he would be prepared to lead an opposition government.

'Courage, action, determination, always refusing fatality and resignation,' Melenchon said.

The relatively comfortable margin of victory gives Macron some confidence as he heads into a second five-year mandate, but the election also represents the closest the far-right has ever come to winning power in France.

Macron is the first French president to win re-election since Jacques Chirac in 2002 after his predecessors Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande left office after only one term.

Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former spin doctor, congratulated France for 'deciding against having a Trump or Brexit moment'.

'Populism can and must be defeated', he added. 'This is a good day in that fight.'
Outraged farmers hit back at a rural council that asked its staff to eat less meat and dairy, saying it will discourage support for local businesses.

Farmers asked Pembrokeshire council to apologise for sending out an internal newsletter urging staff to cut back on meat and dairy.

Farmer Charles George, of Wolf's Castle, called it a 'kick in the teeth' according to the BBC.

'They have got it completely wrong,' he said. 'They should be out there encouraging people to eat local, to support local businesses, instead of having some vegan food that might have come from anywhere in the world.'

Farmer Charles George called a rural council's call for locals to consume less meat and diary a 'kick in the teeth'

Pembroke Council sent out a memo to residents asking them to cut back on meat and dairy as part of a series of tips on 'saving the planet'

The council said it was part of a series of tips on how to save the planet, but the farmers said the council should be encouraging residents to buy more locally-sourced products.

NFU Cymru, a Welsh farming organisation, has called for a meeting with the council's chief executive.

The Liberal Democrats said councils should not be 'trying to dictate what staff can and cannot eat'.

Plaid Cymru said communities should redouble efforts to support local businesses as the cost of living crisis worsens.

Rachel Evans, the Countryside Alliances Director for Wales said: 'What local farmers in Wales need right now is to know local representatives have their back and for them not to be briefing against their industry behind closed doors.

'It is becoming increasingly clear that an animal rights agenda is masquerading itself as genuine environmentalism, which in this case has been legitimatised by the local council.'

Ms. Evans added: 'The way Pembrokeshire Council can rectify this mess, is to commit to supplying local produce and to encourage the public to do so too. Doing so will not only show support for sustainability, but it will signal much needed support for Welsh farmers at this critical time.'
Supermarkets are being accused of fooling shoppers by labelling bread as 'made with sourdough' despite being produced in factories with up to 10 ingredients.

A food and farming group has said that the bread - which is seen as a healthy alternative to other baked loaves - is traditionally made by the simple combination of flour, water and salt.

While Sustain has said the sourdough bread that can often be found in supermarkets is really low-cost and quickly made 'sourfaux' that is made with additions like palm oil and commercial yeast.

Sustain, leading the Real Bread Campaign, urged for new bread labelling rules to protect small bakeries from major chains selling sourdough for as little as 1.20, according to the Guardian.

Supermarkets are being accused of fooling shoppers by labelling bread as 'made with sourdough' despite being produced in factories with up to 10 ingredients (stock image)

A farming group has said that the bread - which is seen as a healthy alternative to other baked loaves - is traditionally made by the simple combination of flour, water and salt (stock image)

Chris Young, coordinator of the Real Bread Campaign, which has complained about the 'sour-faux'. said: 'We believe many people are being misled when they are buying their bread.

'Making sourdough is a slower process. We would want the definition to be "bread made without additives and using a live sourdough starter culture".'

The campaign also wants to make it so 'no person shall sell or advertise for sale any bread in contravention of this regulation'.

The Government is examining the regulations on bread labelling and is assessing 'whether providing a definition of sourdough would be beneficial to consumers'.

Under the department for the environment, food and rural affairs' bread and flour technical working group, it is also being asked to look into supermarkets 'loaf tanning salons' that allow chains to claim their baked goods are freshly baked.

Though the Real Bread Campaign argues the need for a legal definition does not rely on health benefits it argues it 'might'.

The group also says: 'The key reasons are to help protect the livelihoods of bakers who make sourdough bread, and to help prevent shoppers from being misled, for whatever reasons they want or need to choose it.'

While the sourdough bread that can be found in supermarkets is really low-cost and quickly made 'sourfaux' that is often made with palm oil and commercial yeast (stock image)

For example, Sainsburys 800g white farmhouse loaf with sourdough, containing just 3.5%, sells for 1.30 and also has rapeseed oil, palm oil, soya flour and a flour treatment agent added to it.

Consumer website Which? has said a loaf can cost up to 4 in a bakery but a fraction of this in the supermarket.

Of the 19 supermarket and branded loaves it looked at, only four got the stamp of approval for authenticity from The Real Bread Campaign in 2018.

Which? said: 'Many supermarket sourdough loaves we investigated contained additional ingredients that make it possible to complete a loaf in a couple of hours, making it cheaper to produce.

'While these ingredients arent bad for you, or unhealthy, they are not present in traditional sourdough bread. And if youre someone who chooses sourdough because it doesnt contain added yeast, youll want to avoid those loaves that contain it.'

A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: 'Food information is robustly regulated in the UK and must not mislead consumers. This includes claims such as fresh and baked in store.

'There are continuing discussions on the use of sourdough  and while regulation is an option, we encourage further work on the draft industry code of practice which could help achieve better understanding.'

Sainsburys said staff can answer questions about bakery products and ingredient information is available online.
A South Carolina cop was shot and killed while responding to a domestic disturbance call early Sunday morning.

Roy Andrew 'Drew' Barr, 28, arrived at a home in Cayce, just outside the state capital of Columbia, at around 2:50am.

He and two other officers found a man in the front yard. After making contact with him, shots rang out from inside the house. A bullet then struck and killed Barr.

'There was no call for it, there was no reason for it,' said Cayce Police Chief Chris Cowan, according to WLTX. 'It was inexcusable.'

Suspect Austin Henderson, 36, killed himself at the scene after negotiator spent seven hours trying to get him out safely. According to his Facebook page, he had a young daughter with his wife Kristin.

Officer Barr survived a previous shooting while on duty in 2017, according to The State. He was chasing a man in a stolen car who later jumped out, ran into the woods and shot him and another officer.

South Carolina police officer Roy Andrew 'Drew' Barr, 28, was shot and killed while responding to a domestic disturbance call early Sunday morning

Officers found a man standing in front of the yard at 118 Rossmore Road. Shots then rang out from inside the house, with a bullet striking and killing Officer Barr

Barr joined the force in 2016 and was promoted to the K-9 unit in 2020. Chief Chris Cowan (center) said: 'He loved his dog Molly and he loved his job.'

Police have not clarified whether Henderson went back inside the home before shooting Barr early Sunday morning. They also haven't said whether police fired back at Henderson.

Chief Cowan said negotiators with the Columbia Police Department tried talking to Henderson for seven hours.

'Ultimately, the suspect took his life,' Cowan said during a press conference later on Sunday.

Barr joined the Cayce Police Department in 2016 and was promoted to the K-9 unit in 2020.

He was also an EMT and a firefighter, Cowan said. He had no spouse or children.

'He loved his dog Molly and he loved his job. He was good at, not only interacting with children, the community, but also his officers, his peers as well as the citizens of this great city,' Cowan said.

Hours after the shooting, people in the community had placed flowers on Barr's police cruiser, which was parked outside the Cayce Police Department.

Members of the fire department put a helmet on the car and held a brief moment of silence, WLTX reports.

Officer Barr had survived an on-duty shooting in the past.

'Our Cayce citizens mourn with officer Barr's family,' said Mayor Elise Partin. Cayce is right outside the state capital of Columbia

On May 27, 2017, he and another officer saw a car speeding and tried to make a traffic stop.

The driver of the stolen vehicle, Eugene Jonathon James, kept driving.

James eventually jumped out of the car and ran into the woods.

He 'assumed a crouched position, which appeared to the officers to be lying in wait for them,' the U.S. Attorney's Office said at the time, according to The State.

One officer threatened to use a Taser to get him to comply.

James then shot both of them, one in the leg and another one in the leg and chest, though it's not clear where Barr was struck.

Both officers returned fire and James was also wounded.

James later pled guilty to multiple charges, including two counts of attempted murder, failure to stop, possession of a stolen pistol, possession of a firearm by a person convicted of a violent felony, possession of a stolen vehicle and speeding.

He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2021.
Authorities say they were able to rescue a woman by helicopter after she got stuck in the vast marshland of a Florida state park on Friday.

Various agencies were deployed to the 11,000-acre Estero Bay Preserve State Park on the Gulf Coast south of Fort Myers.

The Iona McGregor Fire District says the woman, who was not immediately named, was out hiking with her husband, but the man had gotten tired and had decided to return while she kept going and got lost.

After hours of searching, the woman was eventually found in one of the deepest, marshiest areas of the preserve.

The unidentified woman was rescued by helicopter and reported to be in good condition.

Estero Bay Preserve State Park on the Gulf Coast south of Fort Myers, entrance pictured above

After hours of searching, the woman was eventually found in one of the deepest, marshiest areas of the preserve

Authorities said the woman was out hiking with her husband in the Florida wetlands, pictured, but the man had gotten tired and had decided to return while she kept going and got lost

Pictured: Estero Bay Preserve State Park to the north of several other state parks, where the unnamed woman was rescued by helicopter after getting stuck in the deepest, marshiest area

State authorities caution that the trails along coastal marshes in the preserve are rugged and seasonally flooded.

Last year, emergency personnel in Florida rescued a naked woman from a storm drain, weeks after she was reported missing.

Firefighters pulled the unidentified female, believed to be in her 40s, from below the sidewalk in Delray Beach after a pedestrian heard cries for help.

Local authorities said the drain is eight feet deep, and it is unclear how long she was stuck there.

'She was lucky,' Delray Beach Fire Rescue spokeswoman Dani Moschella told the Sun Sentinal.

A naked woman has been rescued from a storm drain in Florida, weeks after she was reported missing

Firefighters pulled the unidentified female from below the sidewalk in Delray Beach after a pedestrian heard cries for help

Local authorities said the drain is eight feet deep, and it is unclear how long she was stuck there. Rescuers are seen lowering themselves down to grab her out

'I dont know how much longer she would have been OK down there. The idea that somebody might be down there for any length of time is disturbing.

'Its dirty, dangerous, theres snakes, rats, garbage, dirt and leaves, anything thats on the street that washes into a sewer, and it smells terrible.

Pictures released from Delray Beach Fire and Rescue show the woman, mostly covered by white sheets, was dirty, had leaves in her hair and was too weak to stand up.

Images show the firefighters using a ladder and harness to drop down into the drain and retrieve her.

Cops confirmed that she was reported missing from Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office on March 3.
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Australians have gathered at Anzac Day dawn services across the country to pay tribute to servicemen and women for the first time in big numbers since the Covid pandemic began in 2020.

The moving ceremonies kicked off a day of commemorations 107 years after the Australian and New Zealand forces landed on the shores of Gallipoli during World War I.

This year sees the return of full scale Anzac Day commemorations since 2019 in the wake of Covid-19 restrictions in recent years. It is also the first ceremony to be held since Australia and the US-led Coalition withdrew soldiers from Afghanistan.

Australians gathered at Currumbin on the Gold Coast, Martin Place in Sydney, Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance, the Cenotaph in Brisbane and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra from 4.30am on Monday - as well as at ceremonies across the nation.

However, not everything went to plan.

In Sydney's eastern suburbs, a massive crowd at the North Bondi were left shocked after a serviceman made a awkward slip-up, not realising his microphone was still on.

Shortly after the minute's silence, the serviceman at the podium was heard muttering 'what the f** kids.'

While it wasn't immediately clear what prompted the outburst, his comment came just moments before a children's choir from Bondi Beach Public School performed the New Zealand and Australian national anthems from the balcony of the RSL.

The accidental slip-up was caught on microphone towards the end of the 75 minute service was heard by many in the crowd and on video posted on the North Bondi RSL sub-branch Facebook page, which remained online for several hours.

A serviceman (pictured) leading the North Bondi dawn service uttered an expletive heard by many in the crowd, not realising his microphone was still turned on

A children's choir performed the New Zealand and Australian anthems moments after the slip-up

'It was heard by most people who were there,' one attendee told Daily Mail Australia.

'Everyone was in shock. It was just a slip-up. I think he was just frustrated about the time it was taking.'

Online viewers also picked up the gaffe.

'Lovely service, minus the swearing from a service person,' one woman wrote.

The video has since been taken down.

Mortified North Bondi sub-branch officials have acknowledged the incident was unfortunate in what was otherwise a beautiful and inclusive service.

They also stressed the serviceman's comment wasn't directed at the children but plan to apologise to the school if any offence was caused.

'There was a problem with the sequencing of the service and the children's choir wasn't ready at the time, which resulted in a lengthy pregnant pause,' secretary Jack Gray told Daily Mail Australia.

'The service was about inclusiveness, which is why the children were there.

'It's important the community doesn't see the service as a pile-on about veterans remembering the past as it's about the both past and the future.'

'It was unfortunate but what was said wasn't meant to be derogatory towards the kids. It was out in frustration about the order of the service.

'Anything that was said wasn't meant to demean or diminish the children, it was said out of exasperation.'

Two servicemen on stage had their microphones turned on at the time.

'I'm yet to find out what actually was said and who said what but both men are committed in serving both their country and community,' Mr Gray added.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison led commemorations in Darwin, where he used his address to warn Australians of a 'changing of the world' amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and China's new security pact with Solomon Islands.

'War does strike Europe again, coercion troubles our region once more, an arc of autocracy is challenging the rules-based order our grandparents secured and democratic free peoples are standing together again,' the Prime Minister said.

'In facing this world, we must remember again, it is only then we truly appreciate what these times require of us all.'

The Last Post is played in Sydney's Martin Place, where thousands gathered for the Anzac Day dawn service

On the Gold Coast, Australians of all ages packed Currumbin's foreshore to commemorate Anzac Day

Past and present servicemen were among the large crowds at a dawn service in Currumbin

For many veterans in attendance, it was the first dawn service they've been to since 2019. Pictured are war veterans at the Currumbin dawn service

Massive crowds packed the North Bondi foreshore to commemorate Anzac Day

A man pays his respects to servicemen and women at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance

50,000 Melburnians braved chilly conditions at the Shrine of Remembrance on Monday

In Darwin, Prime Minister Scott Morrison mingled with locals after delivering a poignant Anzac Day address

He reminded Australians they are one and free because of the sacrifices of servicemen and women who fought for their country as he reiterated the nation's united stance with Ukraine.

'To veterans and all serving Australians with us today, we owe a debt and sense of gratitude that we can never express fully enough,' he said.

'We gather at this dawn to remember, to reflect and rededicate ourselves.'

'As General Jim Molan, our colleague in the Parliament, who said 'it takes a nation to defend a nation'.

'And what ultimately matters in that task is a people with a fierce and protective love of their nation and their liberty. A love of home, family, community and country.

'A willingness to live for all of these things that are necessary to sacrifice for something far greater than themselves.

This morning far away from here, the people of Ukraine are doing exactly that. And on this particular day, as we honour those who fought for our liberty and freedom, we stand with the people of Ukraine who do the same thing at this very moment.'

He happily mingled and posed for photos with Darwin locals after the dawn service as he entered the third week of the federal election campaign.

Isolating at his Sydney home with Covid, federal Opposition Leader Mr Albanese delivered his Anzac Day address in a video message.

He said the Australian character was confirmed at Gallipoli and since then Australians had 'stood steadfast as warriors and as builders and keepers of the peace'.

'Yet as the war in Ukraine so tragically reminds us, darkness is not vanquished from the world,' he said.

'It reminds us freedom cannot be taken for granted. It reminds us that freedom isn't free.'

Across the Tasman, thousands of Kiwis joined New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for a service at the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Gallipoli, the site of the Australia's most disastrous wartime endeavour, has also welcomed back thousands of Australians and Kiwis for the first time since 2019.

In Sydney, thousands braved the rain to fill Martin Place to capacity for the solemn service which marked the 95th anniversary of the first dawn service held there.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet attended with two of his seven children and led commemorations by reciting the poem Salute, penned by Sydney Elliott Napier, who served with the First Australian Imperial Force during World War I.

He was joined by state opposition leader Chris Minns and federal Opposition frontbencher Tanya Plibersek.

Major General Matthew Pearse reminded the crowd of a number of significant anniversaries in 2022.

They include the 80th anniversary of the Bombing of Darwin, the Fall of Singapore, the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Kokoda campaign.

2022 also marks 60 years since Australia's first involvement in the Vietnam War.

He added it was a day to give thanks for all veterans 'for their service, their sacrifice and their resilience'.

'They're filled with stories of ordinary Australians who pulled together despite adversity to support their mates and put their lives on the line to defend our national interests and secure a brighter future,' the commander of Forces Command said.

Thousands more gathered at local dawn services across the city, including massive crowds at North Bondi.

An ADF servicewoman pays her respect to fallen servicemen and women at Sydney's service

In Martin Place, Sydneysiders were reminded of a number of significant anniversaries in 2022

The rain didn't put a dampener on Sydney's dawn service at a packed Martin Place

There were similar scenes at dawn services across Sydney, including North Bondi (pictured)

The eternal flame was lit as Melburnians paid their their respects at the Shrine of Remembrance

Hundreds of young families on the Gold Coast gathered at the Currumbin foreshore to commemorate Anzac Day

Prime Minister Scott Morrison (pictured with locals) commemorated Anzac Day in Darwin on day 15 of the election camapign

Thousands also braved the rain on the Gold Coast as they gathered on the Currumbin foreshore to pay their respects.

There were similar scenes in Melbourne, where 50,000 braved the chilly conditions to pay their respects to the fallen at the Shrine of Remembrance.

It was the biggest crowd there since the centenary of Gallipoli in 2015.

RSL Victoria state president Robert Webster expected numbers to be slightly down on pre-pandemic crowds due to the long weekend and school holidays.

'But one of the messages that we've been giving to the broader community is that we've got 270-odd sub-branches across the state, most of whom will be running a dawn service or a local march,' he told AAP.

'So go local.'

Dr Webster said Covid restrictions in recent years was hard on veterans who see Anzac Day as a time to reflect and catch up with mates.

The traditional Anzac Day march is already underway in Melbourne, the first one since 2019 without Covid restrictions

A Sydneysider quietly reflects to pay tribute to fallen servicemen and women on Anzac Day

Monday marks 107 years after the Australian and New Zealand forces landed on the shores of Gallipoli during World War I. Pictured are Sydneysiders in Martin Place

Veterans were joined by thousands of Sydneysiders in Martin Place, despite the rain

Veterans rose early to take their seat in Martin Place, many for the first time since 2019

Big crowds are expected at Anzac Day marches will be held in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra later on Monday morning.

Governor-General David Hurley will deliver an address to the nation from the Australian War Memorial in Canberra following the march.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of Anzac Day commemorations at the memorial.

NSW has temporarily lifted the ban to allow two-up to be legally played in pubs, clubs, and elsewhere across the entire three-day Anzac Day long weekend.

The one-off aims to give back to veterans who missed out during the Covid-19 pandemic at the biggest Anzac Day commemoration since 2019.

Australian soldiers regularly played the coin toss betting game in trenches and on troopships during World War I, after it was originally played by immigrants and convicts in the 1850s goldfields.

The game involves a designated 'spinner' who throws two coins or pennies into the air as players bet on whether the coins will land on heads or tails.

A member of the Australian Defence Force stands guard during Anzac Day commemorations at the Cenotaph in Brisbane

Australians have paid tribute at dawn services across the country. Pictured is soldier standing guard in Brisbane

Commemorations were restricted to televised services only and no marches for the first time in more than a century in 2020 due to onset of Covid, where thousands paid their respects at home in driveway dawn commemorations.

Services and marches returned with limited crowds in most parts of the country in 2021, except for Perth and the surrounding Peel region which were plunged into a snap lockdown sparked by a hotel quarantine outbreak.

Monday is the first Anzac Day since forces withdrew from Afghanistan, where 41 Australians died in service.

Veterans' Affairs Minister Andrew Gee said the number of lives saved and terrorist attacks prevented by Australian defence personnel could never be known.

But what is known is that they improved medical services, built critical infrastructure and helped a generation of women and girls access education and build careers.

'The men and women who've served our nation through the generations have never asked for much in return,' Mr Gee said.

'In the end it comes down to one thing: that we never forget what they have done for us. That we keep their memory alive in our hearts and in the consciousness of our nation.

'That sacred duty of remembrance currently rests with our generation and it is a commitment that we will in turn pass onto the next.'

Anzac Day commemorations are back to full capacity for the first time in three years

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern led the the country's Anzac Day commemorations at the Auckland War Memorial Museum

Federal election campaigning will take a back seat to Anzac Day commemorations.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Labor deputy leader Richard Marles will be in Darwin for services, as Labor leader Anthony Albanese remains in isolation at his Sydney home as he recovers from COVID-19.

Overseas, Anzac services will take place in Turkey, France, Thailand, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.

'No matter how you mark Anzac Day this year - at a dawn service, at your own home, at your local RSL, or watching the national service on television - I encourage all Australians to pause and reflect on all those who have served, and those who continue to serve,' Mr Gee said

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet was joined by two of his children at the Sydney dawn service
HOUSTON, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of residents have been asked to evacuate as "half the state" of New Mexico faces the threat of growing wildfires, authorities said on Saturday.

More than 20 wildfires were burning in at least 16 of the state's 33 counties, fueled by gusty winds and drought conditions, the state's governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said at an online news conference on Saturday.

"Half the state has a fire issue," said the governor. Since Friday, a state of emergency has been declared for five counties.

"This executive order makes funding and state resources available for communities battling ongoing wildfires," she said.

Earlier on Saturday, fire officials said that two large wildfires in northern New Mexico have merged and burnt a combined 42,341 acres.

"Our risk season is incredibly and dangerously early," the governor said. Local media reported that wildfire season in the region typically starts in May or June.

According to local media reports, nearly a dozen large and uncontained wildfires are burning from Arizona to the Texas Panhandle in the U.S. Southwest due to windy and drought conditions. 
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Protesters clashed with riot police in Paris as Emmanuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen to be re-elected as President of France.

There were violent clashes in the French capital with clashes between protesters, who ignited flares, and police officers who responded by firing tear gas in an attempt to disperse the crowds.

Macron's supporters were seen celebrating at the Eiffel Tower, while Marine Le Pen's backers reacted with dismay, as the French leader became the first person to be re-elected in 20 years.

The centrist, 44, defeated his far-right rival, 53, on Sunday by a comfortable margin, securing a second term and heading off what would have been a political earthquake.

Cheers of joy erupted as the results appeared on a giant screen at the Champ de Mars park at the foot of the Eiffel tower, where Macron supporters waved French and EU flags. People hugged each other, danced and chanted 'Macron!' and Five more years!.

Protesters participate in a demonstration at Place de la Republique in Paris after it was announced that Emmanuel Macron had won the French presidential election

Parisians were seen gathering at Place de la Republique to take part in a protest on Sunday night and where they clashed with riot police

Hundreds of people took to the streets to protest against Macron's victory over Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election

A protester receives treatment after riot police clashed with demonstrators in the centre of Paris on Sunday evening

People seen running through central Parisian streets shortly before Emmanuel Macron was announced as the winner of the election

Riot police attempt to arrest a man during protests in the centre of Paris on Sunday - the day France went to the polls to elected its new president

Protesters were seen gathering on Place de la Republique before and after Macron was re-elected for the next five years

Le Pen, who at one stage of the campaign had trailed Macron by just a few points in opinion polls, quickly admitted defeat but vowed to keep up the fight, with parliamentary elections looming in June.

'I will never abandon the French,' she said to supporters chanting 'Marine! Marine!'

'It was the least worst choice,' said Stephanie David, a transport logistics worker who backed a communist candidate in round one.

It was an impossible choice for retiree Jean-Pierre Roux. Having also voted communist in round one, he dropped an empty envelope into the ballot box on Sunday, repelled both by Le Pen's politics and what he saw as Macron's arrogance.

'I am not against his ideas but I cannot stand the person,' Roux said.

In contrast, Marian Arbre, voting in Paris, cast his ballot for Macron 'to avoid a government that finds itself with fascists, racists.'

'There's a real risk,' the 29-year-old fretted.

France's centrist incumbent president Emmanuel Macron beats his far-right rival Marine Le Pen for a second five-year term as president

Supporters of French President and candidate for re-election Macron celebrate at the Champs-de-Mars

Macron supporters react at Champs de Mars as they find out the result of the French presidential election

Supporters of Marine Le Pen react as it is projected that France's centrist incumbent president Emmanuel Macron has beaten his far-right rival

French far-right party Rassemblement National (RN) presidential candidate Le Pen (R) is applauded by supporters as she embraces her mother Pierrette in Paris

Parisians celebrate in Le Carillon, a scene of the November 13th terrorist attacks

Emmanuel Macron's supporters celebrated at the Eiffel Tower, while Marine Le Pen's backers reacted with dismay, as the French leader became the first person to be re-elected in 20 years

Cheers of joy erupted as the results appeared on a giant screen at the Champ de Mars park at the foot of the Eiffel tower, where Macron supporters waved French and EU flags

People hugged each other, danced and chanted 'Macron!' and Five more years!

People watch the television in a bar showing as the news breaks that Macron has won

Customers react as a television displays the results in France's presidential election, at a bar in Paris

Former minister Elisabeth Guigou (C) et actress Rachel Khan (R) wait prior to the arrival of French President

Customers react as a television displays the results in France's presidential election at a bar in Paris

Supporters of far-right leader Marine Le Pen react as they hear the early result projections of the French presidential election

Members of the photographer's family watch the announcement of the presidential election

A supporter holds a French flag after the victory of Macron

A man watches the sunset from the Old Port of Marseille shortly before the vote closes

Supporters of French President Emmanuel Macron react as the first election projections are announced

Le Pen, who at one stage of the campaign had trailed Macron by just a few points in opinion polls, quickly admitted defeat but vowed to keep up the fight, with parliamentary elections looming in June

Supporters of French President Emmanuel Macron hold placards reading 'Emmanuel Macron With You'

Parisians celebrate in Le Carillon as France's centrist incumbent president Macron wins

A Parisian watches the results of the French Presidential Election in Le Carillon

Parisians celebrate in Le Carillon, a scene of the November 13th terrorist attacks

A supporter of Macron celebrates reports of his victory on Sunday

'I will never abandon the French,' she said to supporters chanting 'Marine! Marine!'

Supporters of Marine Le Pen are left in shock as Macron wins the presidential election

Anarchist activists protests after announcement of French presidential election against both presidential candidates

Tiphaine Auziere, daughter of French first Lady Brigitte Macron, and French politicians stand next to the stage before Macron delivers a speech

Supporters of far-right leader Le Pen gather on stage after the early official results of the French presidential election

Policemen run towards an anarchist protest inside Les Halles shopping mall in Paris

Macron defeated Le Pen in the final round of France's presidential election

This is the second consecutive time the two candidates face-off in the final round of elections
Jim Hartz, a 'folksy newsman' who hosted the Today show with Barbara Walters in the 1970s, has died in Fairfax County, Virginia. He was 82.

Hartz died on April 17 from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to his wife, Alexandra Dickson Hartz, as reported by Deadline on Sunday.

When the former WNBC anchor Hartz joined the Today show in 1974 at the age of 34, he succeeded Frank McGee, who had died months earlier at age 58.

His stint at Today lasted only two years, but Hartz covered big time stories, including President Richard M. Nixon's resignation, the end of the Vietnam War and the American Bicentennial.

Jim Hartz, a 'folksy newsman' (pictured here in 1976) who hosted the Today show with Barbara Walters in the 1970s, died April 17, 2022, in Fairfax County, Virginia. He was 82

Pictured: (l-r) Co-anchor Barbara Walters and co-anchor Jim Hartz in the 1970s

Hartz died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to his wife, Alexandra Dickson Hartz, as reported by Deadline on Sunday

When Walters left in 1976 to become ABC's evening news co-anchor, Jane Pauley was brought on board. Her low-key style matched Hartz' similar style so a decision was made to bring in Tom Brokaw for balance, Deadline reported.

Hartz moved on to anchoring at WRC, the NBC affiliate in Washington and later working at PBS, co-hosting 'Over Easy,' a celebrity talk show, with actress Mary Martin, and 'Innovation,' a weekly science show.

Hartz covered several space missions throughout his career, recalling the first time he saw a Saturn rocket lifting off at Cape Kennedy on an Apollo mission, he said, 'I was just not prepared for that 36-story building walking right off the platform into the air.'

At a 20th-anniversary gala for the Apollo 11 project in Houston, he described the 1969 moon landing in lofty terms, the New York Times reported, calling it 'the grandest thing we could think to do' at the time and lauding 'what man can do with a singleness of mind and a clearly defined goal.'

Hartz was born on February 3, 1940, in Tulsa, Oklahoma to Rev. Marvin Dillard Hartz, an Assembly of God minister, and Helen Elvira (Potter) Hartz. He was their fifth child.

While still in college, Hartz married Norma Tandy and they had three children. A year after their 1979 divorce, he married Alexandra Dickson from Alexandria, Va.

He's survived by his wife, Alexandra Dickson, two daughters, Jana Hartz Maher and Nancy Hartz Cole, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. A son, John Mitchell Hartz, died in 2015.

Jim Hartz attends the 'TODAY' Show 60th anniversary celebration at The Edison Ballroom on January 12, 2012 in New York City
A British financier faces extradition to the US for allegedly masterminding a share price-fixing scam that cheated investors out of nearly 60million.

Venture capitalist Ronald Bauer, 47, is accused of leading an elaborate pump and dump fraud that involved secretly acquiring large amounts of stock in publicly traded companies in the US.

The suspects allegedly made millions by selling on the shares at artificially inflated prices to unsuspecting victims after manipulating the market.

Cambridge University-educated Bauer, from west London, used shell companies around the world to orchestrate the racket, according to court documents.

He and his co-accussed manipulated the markets by co-ordinating trades and running misleading promotional campaigns to con victims around the world, the documents allege.

Venture capitalist Ronald Bauer, pictured outside his home in South Kensington, 47, is accused of leading an elaborate pump and dump fraud that involved secretly acquiring large amounts of stock in publicly traded companies in the US

The prosecution documents filed in the Southern District of New York state: Bauer was the leader of the stock manipulation schemes in which he participated and controlled the various aspects of the schemes.

In a pump and dump scheme, fraudsters usually spread misleading information to create a buying frenzy that will artificially inflate the price of a stock, before dumping their shares at inflated prices.

Bauer, who runs several investment firms, faces five counts of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one of wire fraud and one money laundering charge.

He is on 250,000 conditional bail, has been forced to wear an ankle tag and has surrendered his UK and Canadian passports until his next extradition hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court on June 20.

The financier must stay at his 8million five-storey Kensington mansion, which has a gym and two reception rooms.

Bauer bought the home, on a tree-lined street close to the restaurants and shops of Knightsbridge and Belgravia, with his wife for 5million in 2010.

The suspects allegedly made millions by selling on the shares at artificially inflated prices to unsuspecting victims after manipulating the market (stock image)

The court documents state: While on paper the defendants and their co-conspirators had no connection to these companies, in reality they exercised substantial control, including installing management at the companies, financing the companies operations and funding payments for attorneys in order to prepare public filings.

The fraud is said to have involved Bauer and nine other financiers.

Bauer and three other suspects  Daniel Ferris, 40, a Briton who lives in Monaco; Craig Auringer, 40, a Canadian who lives in London; and Petar Mihaylov  are said to have made about 59million from the scam.

The four face the possibility of 20 years in prison for each charge, following an investigation by the FBI and US Securities and Exchange Commission.

A source said Bauer was arrested on April 7 at Heathrow after arriving back from Dubai.

Mihaylov was arrested in Bulgaria, Auringer is understood to have been picked up in Spain and Ferris is said to be still at large.

Other suspects have been arrested in Canada, Spain and the Bahamas.
Farmers are warning of a food crisis sparked by shortages and spiralling wholesale prices  amid fears rationing could spread beyond cooking oil.

Major supermarkets are already limiting how much sunflower oil, which is largely sourced from Ukraine, customers can buy.

And other shortages and punishing price rises are being felt in the food chain, with an inevitable knock-on effect on choice and household budgets.

Farmers leaders warned the Environment Secretary George Eustice about the crisis at emergency talks last week.

Tim Lang, professor emeritus of food policy at City, University of London, said: We are talking about rationing sunflower oil today, but it could be other products soon.

The Ukraine crisis is piling on the agony and reminding us  and the Government  that we cannot assume supermarket shelves will always be full.

Farmers are warning of a food crisis sparked by shortages and spiralling wholesale prices  amid fears rationing could spread beyond cooking oil (file image)

Other shortages and punishing price rises are being felt in the food chain which will effect the shelf prices of bread, pasta, beer, chicken and sausages (stock image)

Tesco, Morrisons, Waitrose and Iceland are limiting how much sunflower oil can be bought and there are concerns this will spread to other products and, more likely, see reduced choice on shelves.

Ukraine and Russia normally export tens of millions of tons of wheat and other grain, which is used in food production and animal feed.

Shortages and higher prices will affect the shelf prices of everything from bread, pasta and beer to chicken and sausages.

Professor Lang said: We are seeing a destabilisation coming into food system and it is time for the Government to get a grip.

It should not be up to supermarkets to decide what we can and cant buy, the Government must be involved.

A shortage of white fish is also a danger as Russia is a major supplier to Europe and the UK.

Food security expert Professor Erik Millstone, of the University of Sussex, said a failure by supermarkets to pay farmers more to cover their rising costs risks causing shortages.

He added: The combination of rising input prices for farmers with the supermarkets determination to keep their prices competitive to avoid losing market share could mean that incentives for farmers to increase production would evaporate.

Producers of salad crops under glass in the UK and on the Continent have cut back on production because of the soaring cost of energy to provide heat.

As a result, the wholesale prices of some tomatoes are up by 58 per cent in a year. Even McDonalds has been unable to get all the tomatoes it needs meaning some restaurants have cut the number of slices in its burgers.

The wholesale price of butter and skimmed milk powder, which is used in processed foods, is up by 59 per cent in a year, according to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. It says the figure for cream is up by 58 per cent and for mild cheddar by 45 per cent.

Major supermarkets are already limiting how much sunflower oil, which is largely sourced from Ukraine, customers can buy. Sainsbury's have put signs up in their shops advising customers that some products may substitute sunflower oil with rapeseed oil most likely

Karen Betts, of the Food and Drink Federation, which speaks for manufacturers, said the war and associated sanctions will translate into food price rises.

She added: Sunflower oil is rapidly becoming unavailable, pushing up the cost of alternatives. Other products, such as white fish and the wood pulp used in packaging and labels, are becoming scarce as supplies from Russia and Ukraine dry up.

Farmers leaders are warning of a collapse in egg and pork production as farmers give up because they cannot afford the soaring costs of feed and energy.

At the same time, a quadrupling in the cost of fertiliser means UK arable farmers are using less, which will hit yields of wheat.

Separately, there are concerns about a lack of labour to harvest crops. Last year, some 67 per cent of UK seasonal workers came from Ukraine, which will not be repeated this year.

National Farmers Union leader Minette Batters warned: It is the most serious situation for food production since the Second World War.
Building homes with double garages for more than one car is old-fashioned and may harm the environment, a Government adviser has warned.

The cities of the future should not be filled with two-car homes, according to sustainability expert Stefanie OGorman, who said construction of houses with double garages drove her bonkers.

She said that to help ensure families dont need more than one car per household, neighbourhoods should be planned to provide amenities such as shops and schools close by so they dont need to travel too far and can go on foot or by bike.

The cities of the future should not be filled with two-car homes, according to sustainability expert Stefanie OGorman, who said construction of houses with double garages drove her bonkers Are two car families a thing of the past? A government adviser has said homes with double garages for more than one car is old-fashioned and may harm the environment

Speaking at Edinburgh Science Festival, Miss OGorman, director of sustainable economics at civil engineering firm Ramboll who has advised the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on green spaces, said: Whole communities being a certain number of people with a certain number of cars is just not acceptable any more.

Speaking afterwards, she added: Designing new homes with double garages doesnt consider the social and cultural changes taking place as we adapt our lives to live more sustainably... we cant afford for everybody to have two cars.

Responding to her comments, the AAs Luke Bosdet said many families need two cars, and double garages avoid paving over flowers and grass and ensure streets are not filled with cars parked up on pavements.

He added: There is a wider problem  to find affordable housing, people have to live further out... and then they need their cars for daily trips. Britain has an estimated 11million garages, but an RAC study last year suggested more than half did not have cars in them  two-thirds using them for storage.

Miss OGorman, who also advises the Scottish government on climate change, further called for communities to be designed where people could stay their whole lives.

The talk also discussed a return to renting colour televisions and sharing power tools.
Civil servants will be forced back into the office if they are found to be looking after their children when they are supposedly working from home, it can be revealed.

Staff at major government agencies have been warned against taking advantage of the new hybrid working arrangements that allow them to spend only two or three days a week at their desks.

Internal HR policies obtained by the Daily Mail make clear that working remotely cannot be used as a way to avoid paying for childcare or putting in fewer hours, and that employees privileges can be removed if their performance is found to be suffering.

Staff at major government agencies have been warned against taking advantage of the new hybrid working arrangements that allow them to spend only two or three days a week at their desks

It comes after the minister responsible for ending WFH culture raised the prospect of home-based staff losing the extra pay they receive for being based in the capital, known as London weighting.

Jacob Rees-Mogg wrote in The Mail on Sunday: If people are not back in their office it will be fair to assume that the job does not need to be in London.

He has been branded passive-aggressive for patrolling Whitehall buildings and leaving notes behind in deserted offices but his approach was backed yesterday by Tory chairman Oliver Dowden.

Mr Dowden told Sky News: If we really want to serve the British people best, one of the things we need to do is have that collaboration that comes from working in the office.

So, Jacobs efforts are driven by getting the very best value for taxpayers and I support him in doing that.

The Mail has revealed that dozens of public bodies have recently developed hybrid working policies that only require staff to spend 40 per cent of their time in the office. But the documents also warn staff that they can be ordered back to their desks if they do not put in their full hours.

Jacob Rees-Mogg wrote in The Mail on Sunday: If people are not back in their office it will be fair to assume that the job does not need to be in London'

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority  which requires staff to spend only three days a month in the office  states: Anyone with caring responsibilities must be able to commit to the provision of sustainable caring substitution during their working periods. Working from home cannot be a substitute for care provision.

The British Council  which pays home-working staff 18 a month towards their utility bills  says: Employees should ensure they are contactable when working from home.

Employees with caring responsibilities must be able to separate out their domestic and work activities by arranging alternative care during agreed working hours when working from home.

It warns: If any issues arise... they will be discussed with the employee and managed in accordance with the relevant British Council policies.

The Information Commissioners Office points out that a manager is placing their trust in someone to work with less supervision.

It states: The ability to work at home may be withdrawn from an individual if there are concerns about performance.

The data watchdog says they must remain logged on and able to be contacted when working at home in the same way as when office-based.

The Parole Board says it can withdraw approval for flexible working if they believe it is being abused.

The Disclosure and Barring Service says managers will monitor remote working and any issues will be addressed immediately and remote working may be withdrawn.
HRT shortages could lead to menopausal women taking their own lives, experts warned last night.

Manufacturers have vowed to solve the issues by June, but campaigners say that may be too late for some.

And they criticised the Governments bad planning  in failing to meet rising demand for the hormone treatment.

Oestrogen gel has been in critically short supply since the start of the year, forcing women to take desperate measures.

Some have resorted to rationing their prescription, swapping treatments in car parks, turning to the black market, driving to far-flung pharmacies and even looking abroad.

It is feared that without HRT some women will lose jobs, marriages or  in the worst cases  become depressed and even suicidal.

Manufacturers have vowed to solve the issues by June, but campaigners say that may be too late for some. And they criticised the Governments bad planning  in failing to meet rising demand for the hormone treatment (stock image)

Panicking: Millie Kendall, pictured, who runs the British Beauty Council, admitted she was so desperate she bought Oestrogel from the black market online. She also bought a dose from a work colleagues mother for 50

Women are terrified of their symptoms coming back, said Katie Taylor of the Latte Lounge support group.

Some women talk of feeling suicidal, they have extreme anxiety and depression, and are panicked by the thought of the black hole they were in before treatment returning. It is no coincidence the highest rate of suicide among women is in the 45 to 55 age group.

Women are losing jobs, marriages are breaking down  someone needs to get a grip of it urgently.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid yesterday announced he would appoint a new HRT tsar to tackle the crisis.

Ministers blame increased demand and Covid-related global supply problems for the shortages.

But Labour MP Carolyn Harris, who co-chairs the UK menopause taskforce, said the Department of Health had to take responsibility. Awareness has been growing and it has led to women like myself, who were prescribed anti-depressants, realising that maybe they werent depressed after all but were experiencing the menopause, she said.

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Women have been empowered to go to their GP and ask about HRT. The Government should have been talking to suppliers a long time ago, they should have realised demand was increasing.

If this was insulin there would be an outcry. HRT is no different to diabetes. There are women who are suicidal. People havent taken it seriously and womens health has been ignored.

The problem has arisen because prescriptions for one popular form of HRT gel, Oestrogel, have risen dramatically, with 500,000 now written each month, compared with 300,000 a year ago.

Besins, the firm that supplies it to the NHS, has admitted it is struggling to meet extraordinary demand, but has pledged to increase production.

In the meantime, GPs have been forced to prescribe alternatives. But supplies of those gels are now also running short and women are reluctant to try alternative treatments, or even go back to taking HRT tablets, which are not as popular because they have a higher risk of blood clots and strokes.

The Daily Mail spoke to pharmacists across the UK yesterday and they said the situation in the South East and London was very acute.

A pharmacist in Middlesbrough said they had been experiencing shortages across all HRT medication for at least a year.

We have to give the prescription back and tell the patient to try a different chemist, he said. They do get quite upset about it but theres nothing we can do.

Another pharmacist, in Norwich, said patients were upset. They then have to go back to their GP to get a different prescription, she said.

Often this is for patches or tablets which a lot more women react negatively to compared with gels. People understandably get really frustrated. Its not very nice for them.

A spokesman for Boots chemists said: We are in regular contact with suppliers and understand that they are increasing their production and expect issues to be resolved in the coming weeks.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid, pictured, announced he would appoint a new HRT tsar to tackle the crisis.

Around 1.5million women a year experience debilitating symptoms of the menopause, including disturbed sleep, hot flushes, anxiety, depression and joint pain.

Of these, around 10 per cent are prescribed HRT gels, patches or tablets. A businesswoman yesterday described the national shortage of HRT as a disgrace.

Millie Kendall, who runs the British Beauty Council, admitted she was so desperate she bought Oestrogel from the black market online.

She also bought a dose from a work colleagues mother for 50. I was panicking, Miss Kendall said.

Im 55 years old, my legs get very swollen, I cant sleep, and my anxiety has come flooding back. Its a necessity  and a shortage is a disgrace.

Dr Clare Spencer, a GP based in Leeds and menopause expert from My Menopause Centre, said it was almost impossible to get hold of HRT gel and switching to a patch was not always as effective.

For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116 123 or visit www.samaritans.org
A frustrated refugee mother is considering returning to war-torn eastern Ukraine after UK immigration delays left her stuck in Poland for weeks.

Katarina Tymashov, 34, said her sister-in-law Elena Hrybanov felt beyond scared after the Home Office took more than a month to approve her visa.

While Mrs Hrybanovs nine-year-old daughter Anna had her application accepted in just five days, her seven-month-old son Yehor is still waiting.

Until Yehor is given one, they are unable to join other family in London  and so she is contemplating returning to Ukraine, to be with her husband Olexandr.

Katarina Tymashov, 34, said her sister-in-law Elena Hrybanov felt beyond scared after the Home Office took more than a month to approve her visa

Mrs Tymashov said: She is staying with a nice family in Poland who are trying to support her, but she has two young children and she is tired.

Mrs Tymashovs husband Vladimir, 34, added: Right now, she feels frustrated.

She applied at the very beginning of the programme and she had really high hopes that, maybe in a week, she could join us. She has even considered moving back to Ukraine. The war is far from being over but sometimes its easier being with your family.

Mr and Mrs Tymashov, who work in IT, moved to Wimbledon, south-west London, from Ukraine last July with their two sons Bohdan, 11, and Alyosha, six.

While Mrs Hrybanovs nine-year-old daughter Anna had her application accepted in just five days, her seven-month-old son Yehor is still waiting

Mr Tymashov said they cannot contact anyone at the Home Office who can update them on the visas.

For Elena, now technically they are safer than they were in Ukraine, but they are struggling with the conditions, Mr Tymashov said at a Vigil for Visas demonstration outside the Home Office on Saturday.

The family fled their home near Dnipro, in eastern Ukraine, in the second week of the war.

Once in Poland, they were forced to travel more than 300 miles just to visit a visa application centre because Yehor did not have a passport.

Despite their exhausting journey, the babys visa is yet to be approved.
Multiple US airlines are now so desperate for staff that they've swapped planes for buses on some shorter routes.

Several carriers, including American Airlines have hired coach companies to carry passengers when the distances are small.

American will bus people between Philadelphia and between multiple other airports that would only be a short hop away by air.

The service will start June 3 between Philadelphia International and airports in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Atlantic City, New Jersey with the bus company called Landline.

Meanwhile, United is offering one-stop connectivity to both Fort Collins and Breckenridge, with four daily buses from Denver to the former and just one to the latter.

American Airlines will bus people between Philadelphia and several airport pairs that are only a short hop away by air

The bus services come as U.S. airlines face a pilot shortage forcing them to ramp up training programs and even recruit pilots from overseas.

Breeze Airways, a discount carrier and SkyWest, are both recruiting foreign pilots from Australia in a bid to ramp-up staff numbers.

The industry is also raising pay in the hope of attracting and retaining pilots.

An average of 14,500 new pilots each year until 2030, according to federal labor statistics.

Landline, based in Fort Collins, Colorado, has similar deals with Sun Country Airlines in seven cities in Minnesota and Wisconsin

'The pilot shortage for the industry is real and most airlines are simply not going to be able to realize their capacity plans because there simply aren't enough pilots, at least not for the next five-plus years,' Scott Kirby, chief executive officer of United Airlines said last week during a conference call. '

'It will likely force United to keep 150 regional planes parked despite increased domestic travel demand,' he said.

Landline and American made no mention of the pilot shortage instead pitching the bus service as 'an easier way' to get between the Philadelphia airport and Lehigh International Airport in Allentown 73 miles away, and Atlantic City International Airport, 56 miles away.

Brian Znotins, American's vice president of network planning, said it would help customers connect to the airline's international flights from Philadelphia.

United Airlines in Denver also plans to bus some of its passengers

American's regional affiliate, American Eagle, operates flights from Allentown to Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina. The Fort Worth, airline does not serve Atlantic City.

Landline, based in Fort Collins, Colorado, has similar deals with United Airlines in Denver and Sun Country Airlines in seven cities in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The company said it raised $28 million to expand its geographic reach.

Even before the pandemic, airlines were facing staffing shortages when it came to pilots.

When Covid struck, the travel downturn saw thousands of pilots furloughed or retiring early.

It left the industry struggling to recover when travel resumed, according to Bloomberg and it now means airlines are not able to find enough qualified crews to fully reinstate route maps.

Breeze Airways, a discount carrier, plans to recruit some of its pilots from Australia

'This is going to be one of the biggest constraints for the industry going forward,' Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci said last week during a call.

Airlines have been anticipating a huge boon to the travel industry for summer 2022.

The number of tickets sold in February for those traveling between June and August of this year was down just three percent from February 2019 but carriers have scaled back their schedules compared to pre-pandemic times.

In summer of 2021, scheduled flights were down 16 percent from the summer of 2019.

This year, United says flying will be down 13% from 2019, with Delta Air Lines projecting a 16% fall. American will be down by around 8% with Alaska down 9%. JetBlue has trimmed 10% of its summer flights.

Airlines have been anticipating a huge boon to the travel industry for summer 2022. Pictured, during the pandemic, many planes were parked up. American housed some jets in Pittsburgh

JetBlue said that despite already hiring 2,500 new workers this year, it's still unable to fill all the openings needed for a fuller summer schedule.

'We've already reduced May capacity 8-10 percent and you can expect to see a similar size capacity pull for the remainder of the summer,' Joanna Geraghty, JetBlue's COO and president, said in an email to staff obtained by CNBC last week.

The problems are worse at the smaller regional carriers with many pilots having moved on and hired by larger carriers.

'We don't have the regional aircraft flying the summer right now [that] we would like,' American's chief executive officer, Robert Isom, told CNBC. 'This is a fantastic opportunity for people that want to come in and fly planes. They can make a lot of money.'

'This is the pivotal point,' Faye Malarkey Black, chief executive of the Regional Airline Association, said to Bloomberg. 'We have not seen this level of service loss since right after 9-11, when that crisis changed the fly-drive equation. I expect this bad situation to get worse before it gets better, no matter what we do.'
Britain could soon approve its first new coal mine in decades as it tries to reduce reliance on Russian imports.

Levelling Up secretary Michael Gove is reportedly preparing to give the thumbs up to a new colliery in Cumbria despite opposition from climate campaigners.

Woodhouse Colliery will produce coking coal, used in the production of steel rather than to generate energy for homes.

A senior Tory source has said Michael Gove is set to approve a new colliery in Cumbria despite opposition from climate campaigners, giving permission for Britain's first new coal mine in decades. The steel industry currently relies on Russia for almost half of its coal

Currently, the steel industry relies on Russia for almost half of its coal  a position which has become undesirable following the Kremlins invasion of Ukraine.

Cumbria County Council had originally approved the plan, but ministers launched an inquiry last year after activists objected to the mine ahead of the Cop26 climate change conference. Now the decision is down to Mr Gove, who has until July 7.

The Planning Inspectorate sent a report on the mine to Mr Gove earlier this month.

A Tory party source told The Sunday Telegraph: I dont know for certain, but I get the impression he is going to approve it.

Advocates, including several Tory MPs, believe the mine will be good for the economy. The private equity-backed West Cumbria Mining claims it will create 500 jobs.

And they say it could reduce the carbon emissions generated by shipping coking coal around the world, from countries such as Russia and Australia.

But climate change activists have criticised the plans, saying Britain should be reducing its reliance on fossil fuels.

They also want to encourage steel-makers to invest more in cleaner production methods, and claim new technologies will reduce the need for Cumbrian coal in coming years.

Boris Johnson said at the Cop26 summit in November that he was not in favour of more coal, but did not explicitly rule out his support for the mine.
Australia's Christian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said it is "entirely appropriate" that Brian Houston has stepped down from Hillsong over alleged inappropriate behaviour.

Houston co-founded Hillsong nearly 40 years ago and resigned earlier this week as its Senior Global Pastor.

In a statement, the board said he had breached the Pastor's Code of Conduct.

Morrison has been criticised over his connections to Hillsong.

In his 2008 maiden speech, Morrison credited Houston with helping to shape his Christian faith, and in 2019, he addressed the annual Hillsong conference from the stage.

Morrison shared his reaction to Houston's resignation with reporters on Thursday.

"I must admit we were very disappointed and shocked to hear the news," Morrison said.

"My first thoughts were with the victims, as they've been rightly described and so I was very concerned.

"And the actions that have been taken are entirely appropriate."

Hillsong announced Houston's resignation on Wednesday. In a statement, it said Houston had been investigated over allegedly sending "inappropriate" text messages to a Hillsong staffer, and a separate complaint that he had entered the hotel room of a woman who was not his wife.

"As you can appreciate, there is still much to be done and our church leadership continues seeking God for His wisdom as we set the course for the future. We acknowledge that change is needed," the board said.

Phil Dooley is acting senior global pastor of Hillsong in place of Houston.



Reposted with permission from Christian Today
A 20-year-old MS-13 gang member will spend the next 50 years behind bars after he was found guilty of involvement in a pair of grisly murders in 2017.

Jose Joya Parada was just about to turn 16 when he took part in the slayings of supposed informant Irvin Orellana, 17, and rival gang member, Victor Antonio Turcios-Valle, 37, in rural Maryland.

The killings, which were just days apart from each other, took place less than 50 miles from the nation's capital as concerns grow over MS-13's increasing presence in the United States.

And last week, justice was finally served to the killer who had earned the nickname Little Jason, a reference to the homicidal maniac from the Halloween movie franchise.

MS-13 gang members are pictured in Honduras. The gang - which has an increasing presence in the US - has two mottos, one is 'kill, rape, control,' the other is, 'see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing'

Joya Parada was sentenced to 50 years in prison at the U.S. District Court in Maryland. His three co-defendants in the case were also found guilty in January 2022. They will learn their respective fate in May

Joya Parada was sentenced in a Maryland Federal Court to 50 years in prison after being found guilty alongside three other members of the gang in January 2022 of a string of heinous crimes.

Those other members, Milton 'Little Gangster' Portillo-Rodriguez, 26; Juan Carlos 'Rogue' Sandoval-Rodriguez, 22; and Oscar Armando Sorto 'Wolf' Romero, 22, will be sentenced in May 2022 after being found guilty in the same trial. The trial lasted for three months.

According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Maryland, 30 people have been sentenced in the district in relation to the activities of MS-13 in the area. That press release referred to Joya Parada as an 'upcoming' clique member of MS-13.

Joya Parada is a member for the Fulton Locos Salvatruchas, which translates as the Crazy Fulton Street Smart Salvadorians. The feds said in a press conference that MS-13 had been involved in killings as a means to extend their control in the areas of Frederick County, Montgomery County, and Anne Arundel County.

During his trial, Joya Parada's lawyers defended the murderous teen by saying he had become overwhelmed by peer pressure after moving to the United States from El Salvador to be with his mother as a young teenager, reports The Capital Gazette in Annapolis.

MS-13 has been described by federal authorities as one of the most active and violent street gangs in the United States. Members are encouraged to prove their loyalty by hunting down members of rival gangs. Former director of ICE Tom Homan shows a selection of ICE tattoos in 2017

MS-13 has two mottos, one is 'kill, rape, control,' the other is, 'see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing.'

Members are encouraged to prove their loyalty to the gang by killing rival gang members who are known as chavalas.

On March 31, 2017, Joya Parada, a few weeks shy of his 16th birthday, collaborated with other members of the group to kill a supposed teenage rival named Irvin Orellana, 17, by luring him to a wooded area in Maryland.

Prior to Orellana's arrival, Parada went to the location with a shovel in order to dig a clandestine grave.

Upon his arrival, Joya Parada contributed to stabbing Orellana more than 100 times, cutting out his heart and burying him in the grave.

In total, 30 members of MS-13 who were operating in Maryland have been sent to prison for their roles in racketeering

Orellana was lured to the park amid a promise of a party with girls, according to The Capital Gazette. He was accused of giving information about MS-13 to a rival gang.

Just two days later, Joya Parada and his murderous cronies were at it again when they kidnapped an intoxicated man named Victor Antonio Turcios-Valle, 37, in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Turcios-Valle was taken to a laundry room where MS-13 established that he was a member of a rival gang through the victim's tattoos. The group okay'd his murder based on his ink.

In a wooded area in Frederick, Maryland, Turcious-Valle was set up on by Joya Parada and other MS-13 members. In that attack, Joya Parada plunged his machete into the Turcious-Valle's back several times, killing him.

It was following that killing that Joya Parada, who also went by the nickname Calmado, was given a new moniker, Little Jason.
A toddler has been killed in a tragic car accident at a home in Queensland's north-east.

The 18-month-old was reversed over by a car at a private property in the Townsville suburb of Mount Louisa on Sunday, emergency services said.

The little girl was rushed to hospital in a critical condition, Queensland Ambulance said.

She died on Sunday evening. Police investigations continue.
Putin has deployed Iskander-M mobile battlefield missile launchers within 40 miles of the Ukrainian border, Ukraine's military has said.

The mobile system's two ballistic missiles have a range of up to 300 miles and can carry conventional or nuclear warheads.

'Then enemy has increased the number of troops in the Belgorod region by transferring and concentrating additional units,' the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in its daily morning update.

'According to available information, Iskander-M launchers have been deployed 60 km from the border with Ukraine,' it said, without providing more detail on the location of the systems.

Belgorod is a city and the administrative centre of Russia's Belgorod region, north of the border with Ukraine.

The Iskander, a mobile ballistic missile system codenamed SS-26 Stone by NATO, replaced the Soviet Scud missile.

First used in combat in 2008 in Georgia, the Iskander is designed to confound missile defences by flying on a low trajectory and manoeuvring in flight to strike targets as far out as 500km with an accuracy of 2-5 metres, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

It comes as Russia is planning a staged referendum in the city of Kherson in a bid to create a link to Crimea and justify its invasion in southern Ukraine, the Ministry of Defence has claimed.

Putin has deployed Iskander-M mobile battlefield missile launchers (above) within 40 miles of the Ukrainian border, Ukraine's military has said

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the Orthodox Easter service at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow

The mobile system's two ballistic missiles have a range of up to 300 miles and can carry conventional or nuclear warheads

Russia previously held a rigged vote on the accession of Crimea into the Russian Federation in 2014 in which 97 per cent voted in favour - a result then US President Barack Obama said would 'never be recognised'.

On Sunday evening, the MoD said Russia was planning a similar move in Kherson where it is planning to establish a land bridge to Crimea.

The southern Ukraine city was one of the first settlements to fall to Russian troops after the war broke out. There had been hopes that Ukrainian soldiers could liberate the people of Kherson as Russian forces withdrew towards the east of the country.

In an intelligence update, the MoD said: 'Russia is planning a staged referendum in the southern city of Kherson aimed at justifying its occupation. The city is key to Russia's objective of establishing a land bridge to Crimea and dominating southern Ukraine.

Iskander missile launch at the command post of the Armed Forces brigade

Crews of Iskander operational-tactical missile systems attacked military infrastructure facilities and military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in April

The Iskander, a mobile ballistic missile system codenamed SS-26 Stone by NATO, replaced the Soviet Scud missile

'Russia previously held an illegitimate referendum on the accession of Crimea into the Russian Federation in 2014 to retrospectively justify its seizure of the Peninsula.

'Russia's own domestic elections have been beset by allegations of vote rigging and have seen high profile opposition blocked from running.'

In the vote held in Crimea in 2014, final results showed 96.6 per cent of voters backed passing control of the region from Kiev to Moscow.

It came after Ukraine's then prime minister Arseny Yatseniuk vowed to hunt down the 'separatist leaders' in Crimea, warning that the ground would 'burn under their feet'.

The US, EU and Ukrainian government declared the ballot illegal and said they would not back the outcome.

The Kremlin back Crimean officials and President Putin claimed to Obama that the vote 'complies with international law'.

Russia is planning a staged referendum in the city of Kherson in a bid to justify its invasion in southern Ukraine, the Ministry of Defence has claimed

Russia previously held a rigged vote on the accession of Crimea into the Russian Federation in 2014. Pictured: pro-Russian supporters in Crimea celebrate the results of the 2014 vote

The 2014 vote in Crimea was not backed by the US, the EU or the Ukrainian government who all declared the ballot illegal

However, Obama responded by saying that the vote 'will never be recognised' by the US, and instead warned Russian against further military moves outside of Crimea.

Earlier on Sunday, the scale of Russian troop losses in Ukraine tipped 21,000 as Putin's war rumbled into its third month.

The latest statistics, published by the Ukrainian Land Forces this morning, suggest 21,800 Russian fighters have been killed amid bitter resistance from Ukraine's armed forces and territorial defence units - though this figure could not be verified.

Meanwhile, the land forces claim to have dealt massive damage to Russia's military equipment and machinery.

A total of 873 tanks are said to have been destroyed, along with 2238 armoured vehicles, 179 planes, 154 helicopters and 408 artillery systems.

Putin's forces rolled across the border on February 24 from the north, east and south, and quickly made a beeline for Kyiv.

But they were forced to withdraw from the outskirts of the capital in late March and refocus their efforts on a targeted offensive in the eastern Donbas region after Ukraine successfully repelled their advances, inflicting heavy losses.

The wreckage of a downed Russian helicopter lies in a field near Kharkiv on April 16, 2022

Russia's vast troop losses have been put down to poor tactical decisions by Russian military leaders and a considerable underestimation of the capabilities of Ukraine's armed forces.

At the start of the war, Russia's military dwarfed that of Ukraine and led many to believe that the invasion would be swift and effective.

On February 24, Russia's land army consisted of 280,000 full-time active soldiers compared with Ukraine's 125,600.

But the amount of Russian soldiers needed to seize the whole country and control the entire population would be close to 1 million, according to Michael Clarke, a visiting professor in King's College London's department of war studies - suggesting the Kremlin woefully underestimated the amount of force needed to force its neighbours into submission.
Airlines should be forced to give holidaymakers automatic refunds for travel disruption as part of a shake-up of passenger rights, MPs urge today.

A report by the Commons transport committee also calls for the industry regulator to be handed new powers to fine airlines which fail to pay compensation quickly for cancelled or delayed flights.

It comes amid fears of disruption for holidaymakers this summer as some carriers struggle to ramp up operations to meet surging demand following the pandemic.

A report by the Commons transport committee also calls for the industry regulator to be handed new powers to fine airlines which fail to pay compensation quickly for cancelled or delayed flights

British Airways has axed more than 1,000 flights in the past three weeks as it grapples with staff shortages, and hundreds more services have been delayed. Some customers have reported difficulties seeking refunds and other forms of redress.

Yesterday BA cancelled another 100 flights. It said customers were given several days notice. EasyJet has also axed hundreds of flights.

The report warns that the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) urgently requires the power to immediately fine airlines that allegedly breach consumer law by not paying compensation within the legal time frame. As it stands, legal cases against carriers can take years before reaching the courts.

It also calls on ministers to introduce a system forcing airlines to pay automatic compensation, eliminating the need for customers manually to apply for a refund.

Which? has also called for an investigation into BAs recent cancellations after claiming to have seen correspondence with passengers which did not notify them of their full compensation rights.

The consumer champion said it meant some were left out of pocket or forced to pay for expensive new flights.

Ministers are set to beef up the CAAs powers after a three-month consultation. Rocio Concha, chief of policy at Which?, said: We have long called for the CAA to be given the power to fine airlines directly, so operators can be held accountable when they flout the law.

Passengers whose flights are cancelled are entitled to new ones on the original day of departure if a seat is available, even if it means being booked with a rival airline.

If the cancellation was notified less than two weeks before departure and the airline is responsible, passengers are also due cash compensation. For delays over three hours that are the airlines fault, compensation of up to 520 can be claimed.
A renowned British surgeon is helping Ukrainian medics save victims of the war  from hundreds of miles away.

London-based trauma surgeon David Nott recently used an internet link to guide a Ukrainian doctor through a procedure to save the leg of a man caught in an explosion.

Professor Nott has warzone experience having worked in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. He had recently returned from Ukraine when he got the call for advice on the operation.

The Ukrainian medic who contacted him, referred to only as Oleksandras as he wants to keep his identity secret, told the BBC: I was quite nervous, and it was slowly, step-by-step surgery, but it went well, thanks to David Nott.

Dr David Nott has helping Ukrainian medics save victims of the war by video calls. He has warzone experience having worked in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, but has turned his talents to guiding Ukrainian medics through difficult surgeries from hundreds of miles away

Professor Nott told the broadcaster of the horrors he saw in Ukraine: It is the worst possible way of attacking the opposition, by simply shelling. It causes enormous damage. It causes dreadful, dreadful injuries.

The consultant at St Marys Hospital in Paddington previously helped doctors in Syrian city Aleppo complete an operation via Skype days before the facility was bombed.

Professor Nott, 66, said Russia was also targeting hospitals, just as in Syria. Blowing up hospitals and killing doctors is a real weapon of war too, its just despicable, he said.

Last month, he gave an online war surgery course to hundreds of doctors in Ukraine. One said: David has gone through almost all the wars of the past 20 years and... has the most conflict medical experience in the world. He did this course for us.
Australia's richest woman Gina Rinehart has made a surprise move into fashion, partnering with this year's Brisbane Fashion Festival.

The mining magnate, 68, has signed on to help showcase emerging design talent at the Next Gen Group show on August 24, according to The Courier Mail.

Putting her support behind the festival is a first for Rinehart, after she attended the event as a spectator alongside Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Lady Mayoress Nina Schrinner last year.

From the mines to the catwalk! Australia's richest woman Gina Rinehart, 68, (pictured) has signed on to help showcase emerging design talent at Brisbane Fashion Festival's Next Gen Group show on August 24, according to The Courier Mail

'Brisbane Fashion Festival is Queensland's much loved annual fashion event,' Rinehart said of the partnership.

'We very much enjoyed last year's event and the next generation designers and are delighted to be asked to assist this year's emerging designers.

'Emerging is when they most need enthusiastic support. Through this partnership we will be able to provide a platform for emerging designers to showcase their talent and best designs.'

Passionate: 'Emerging is when they most need enthusiastic support. Through this partnership we will be able to provide a platform for emerging designers to showcase their talent and best designs,' Rinehart said

Event organisers were taken by surprise after discovering Rinehart put in a request to purchase 10 front row tickets for the sold out event last year.

Paying for the tickets in full, she brought along stars such as Olympic gold medallist Ariane Titmus to sit alongside her each night.

She looked stylish in an all-white ensemble white pants, a matching coloured shirt and coat.

From spectator to supporter: Rinehart attended the event alongside Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Lady Mayoress Nina Schrinner last year. Pictured at Melbourne Cup Day in 2018

Applications for business-ready emerging designers are open now.

Rinehart is Australia's richest person with her wealth growing to $32.64 billion as resource prices rise.

Last month she beat out every male billionaire to top The Australian's The List: Australia's Richest Top 250.
Nigella Lawson is set to replaced disgraced chef Pete Evans on My Kitchen Rules ahead of the cooking show's return to Channel Seven later this year,.

The British chef, 62, will be appearing in the upcoming season alongside returning judge Manu Feildel.

'Going to restaurants can be a treat, but for me, the true story of food is told through the cooking we do at home,' Nigella said.

New judge: British chef Nigella Lawson, 62, (pictured) is set to join My Kitchen Rules judge Manu Feildel in the upcoming season, replacing former judge, disgraced chef Pete Evans

'So, to have the chance to champion home cooks and be given the intimate privilege of being invited into people's homes to eat their food fills me with gratitude and excitement in equal measure!'

She added: 'I'm so looking forward to working with Manu too. Although he's a chef and I'm a home cook, the fact is we both just want to eat good food. I feel I've got a lot to learn from him, but just know we'll have a lot of fun in the process. I can't wait!'

Manu also shared his excitement for the new season.

'I'm so looking forward to working with Manu too. Although he's a chef and I'm a home cook, the fact is we both just want to eat good food. I feel I've got a lot to learn from him, but just know we'll have a lot of fun in the process. I can't wait!' Nigella said

'I'm very excited to be sitting back at the head of the MKR table and even more thrilled to have the lovely Nigella Lawson at my side,' he said.

Manu continued: 'As MKR judges, we make the perfect team with our years of experience in professional and home kitchens respectively.'

'And as lovers of delicious food and a fabulous dinner party, I can promise you we're also going to have a lot of fun. Bring it on!'

'I'm very excited to be sitting back at the head of the MKR table and even more thrilled to have the lovely Nigella Lawson at my side,' Manu said

Manu previously worked together with Pete Evans as judges on My Kitchen Rules for 10 years, before Pete was sacked from the network in May 2020.

The pair were often the subject of rumours they didn't like each other, with a source revealing in 2017 that Manu thought Evans was 'stranger than strange'.

Evans has been involved in a string of controversies since being sacked by Seven for his extreme views.

Past: Manu previously worked together with Pete Evans (pictured) as judges on My Kitchen Rules for 10 years, before Pete was sacked from the network in May 2020

He previously claimed COVID-19 was a 'f**king hoax' and that the pandemic 'doesn't compare to what is happening in the world on a large scale'.

Among his false claims about the pandemic, Pete previously declared he's immune to coronavirus, and blamed the health crisis on 5G technology.

He also endorsed fellow conspiracy theorist David Icke, a Holocaust denier who was denied entry to Australia last year after protests from the Jewish community.

He was dropped by 15 sponsors and companies in the space of 48 hours in November 2020.

Divisive: Evans has been involved in a string of controversies since being sacked by Seven earlier this year for his extreme views. He previously claimed COVID-19 was a 'f**king hoax' and that the pandemic 'doesn't compare to what is happening in the world on a large scale'

MKR had once been a ratings juggernaut for Seven, but its popularity nosedived in recent years as viewers flocked to Channel Nine's Married At First Sight instead.

In 2020, its eleventh season drew an average of 500,000 metro viewers per episode.

At its height in 2014, the fifth season had attracted an average audience of 1.891 million across the five major cities.
Tammy Hembrow has revealed her secret anxiety about welcoming her first child with fiance Matt Poole.

The influencer, who shares daughter Saskia, five, and son Wolf, six, with ex-fiance Reece Hawkins, admitted on Sunday she's scared she won't be able to love her newborn daughter as much as her eldest children.

In an emotional Instagram post, the expectant mother confessed: 'Crazy to think Ill be meeting her soon not gonna lie Ive been having some of the anxious weird feelings I remember having before I welcomed Sass.'

'Do any other mamas feel like this?' Heavily pregnant Tammy Hembrow, 28, admitted on Sunday she's anxious about loving her two eldest children more than newborn daughter

'That feeling of how can you possibly love another soul as much as the little ones already here. Or the guilt that you will have to give your time and attention to another. Allllll the emotions,' she lamented.

Tammy, who is currently enjoying a lavish babymoon in the Maldives, went on to ask: 'Any other mamas feel like this?' before adding: 'I know all these feelings are just going to fade away as soon as shes here.'

She ended her caption on an optimistic note, writing: 'This little girl was meant for me & my heart just keeps growing.'

Growing brood: The influencer shares daughter Saskia, five, (left) and son Wolf, six, (Right) with ex-fiance Reece Hawkins

The activewear entrepreneur accompanied her caption with two photos of herself posing with her huge baby bump on display in tiny pink lingerie.

In the image, Tammy was seen posing on the veranda of her lavish Maldives villa.

The pot comes after Tammy was forced to defend herself after she was criticised for jetting off to the Maldives for a babymoon while 32 weeks pregnant.

Fears: In an emotional Instagram post, the expectant mother admitted she was questioning 'how can you possibly love another soul as much as the little ones already here'. The activewear entrepreneur accompanied her caption with two photos of herself posing with her huge baby bump on display in tiny pink lingerie

The businesswoman flew business class with Singapore Airlines last weekend, joined by her children and fiance.

While the airline permits women with an 'uncomplicated single pregnancy' to fly at 32 weeks with a medical certificate, some of Tammy's Instagram followers were quick to criticise her decision in the comments section of her holiday album.

Baby joy! Tammy is expecting a baby girl with fiance Matt Poole (left)

Case of the ex: Tammy's former fiance Reece is married to Texan influencer London Goheen. The pair share a son named Stone (all pictured)

'Wow, you're game to fly that pregnant... there was no way I would risk having a baby overseas or on a plane,' one follower wrote.

Tammy responded, 'I'm only 32 weeks haha not about to have this baby on a plane,' to which the fan replied: 'Problem is, it's not always planned.

'Mine came at 33 weeks without warning. It's so unpredictable with birth and we don't know how good the healthcare is overseas... your life your choice though, I'm more of a worry wort than most.'

Criticism: It comes after Tammy was forced to defend herself after she was criticised for jetting to the Maldives for a 'babymoon' while 32 weeks pregnant. (Pictured on the flight over)

'Flying this pregnant,' another critic wrote, adding: 'She could develop a blood clot, go into labour mid-flight, have labour complications and not have proper medical treatment, etc. There are tons of reasons not to fly in your third trimester.'

Tammy responded: 'Midwife said it's perfectly fine. Fit and healthy and so is bub.'

One follower commented: 'I personally wouldn't fly anywhere after 20 weeks into pregnancy because no one knows when the baby will be born.

Critique: While the airline permits women with an 'uncomplicated single pregnancy' to fly at 32 weeks with a medical certificate, some of Tammy's Instagram followers were quick to criticise her decision in the comments section of her holiday album

'And if you're overseas and your baby is born prematurely, you'll need a lot of money and not sure if travel insurance would cover things like that.'

'Travelling in third trimester is very risky,' another agreed.

Air travel is permitted on Singapore Airlines until 36 weeks for an uncomplicated single pregnancy, and until 32 weeks for an uncomplicated multiple pregnancy.

Babymoon in paradise: Tammy is enjoying a lavish babymoon in the Maldives (pictured at her villa with Saskia, Wolf and Matt)

No medical certificate is required for women who are in their 28th week of pregnancy or earlier.

For between 29 and 36 weeks, a medical certificate is required stating the woman is fit to travel, as well as the estimated date of delivery and number of weeks of pregnancy.

The 'certificate must be dated within ten days of the first flight after 28 weeks of pregnancy', the Singapore Airlines website states.

Not long now! Tammy showed off her huge baby bump while on holiday on Tuesday evening

An average flight time from Tammy's home in the Gold Coast to the Maldives is approximately 17 hours.

Tammy revealed her pregnancy back in December, just two weeks after she and Matt announced their engagement.

Her ex Reece meanwhile is married to Texan influencer London Goheen. The pair share a son named Stone.
Heidi Klum, Sofia Vergara, and Simon Cowell looked cheerful as they arrived to America's Got Talent filming in Pasadena on Saturday.

The German supermodel, 48, and the Modern Family star, 49, were glamorous as ever, with Heidi rocking a green and black coat and Sofia looking chic in an olive silk shirt and pants set.

Meanwhile Cowell, 62, sported his usual laid-back style, wearing a blue T-shirt, jeans, and black boots.

Co-workers: Heidi Klum, Sofia Vergara, and Simon Cowell looked cheerful as they arrived to America's Got Talent filming in Pasadena on Saturday

The entrepreneur paired the look with black shades and sported a brace on his injured wrist.

Heidi paired her stylish look with thigh-high black high-heel boots and a large red handbag.

The runway sensation accessorized with a round pair of reflective sunglasses and wore her long blonde tresses in a straight style.

Laid-back: Cowell, 62, sported his usual laid-back style, wearing a blue T-shirt, jeans, and black boots

Outfit change: The ladies switched out of their outfits later in the day, as they teamed up to film a skit for the show

Meanwhile Sofia added a bit of color to her outfit with an oversized Christian Dior pink, yellow and black tote.

She wore her long brunette strands parted on the side and gently flowing down her shoulders.

The Colombian beauty shielded her eyes from the sun with large black shades and wore a pair of nude stilettos.

Stylish: Heidi looked incredible in a half silver sequin/half black blazer, nude T-shirt, black jeans, and a pair of black shoes with intricate gold heels

Bright: Meanwhile Sofia looked bright in a vivid pink ensemble, consisting of a sparkly bustier top, pants and heels

Fun heels: Both ladies sported high heels for the day

The ladies switched out of their outfits later in the day, as they teamed up to film a skit for the show.

Heidi looked incredible in a half silver sequin/half black blazer, nude T-shirt, black jeans, and a pair of black shoes with intricate gold heels.

Meanwhile Sofia looked bright in a vivid pink ensemble, consisting of a sparkly bustier top, pants and heels.

Hot stuff: Heidi looked incredible as she leaned on a brand new KIA on the set of the show

Smiling: The beauty flashed a bright smile while working

Adventurous: Meanwhile Sofia looked like she was about to hop on a bike in her incredibly high stilettos

The two beauties were spotted laughing it up as they worked behind the scenes.

At one point Sofia looked like she was about to hop on a bicycle, in her incredibly high stilettos.

Simon was also spotted riding a bicycle, despite his hand injury which he sustained in a motorcycle crash in February.

Relaxed: Simon paired his look with black shades and sported a brace on his injured wrist

Coming prepared: The busy record executive carried an iPad in his hand

Cheers: Simon flashed a smile on his way to filming

Creator: Cowell is the creator of the show, which is currently filming its 17th season

Careful! Simon was spotted riding a bicycle, despite his hand injury which he sustained in a motorcycle crash in February

Heidi also took to her Instagram to document the fun day as she was 'learning the lines' for the skit with a member of the crew.

The two were seen laughing it up as they read from a script, while standing in front of a brand new KIA.

There were also other crew members around them, as they filmed a skit that involved the car.

Car skit: Heidi and Sofia drove a KIA as they filmed a skit

Working: The two beauties sat inside of the car, while a crew stood around them

Cameras: They had cameras mounted on the front windshield

Heidi also posted a cute clip of her and Sofia in the car. 'Okay, I know all my lines,' she told Sofia, who sat in the driver's seat.

'Do you?' Sofia asked, skeptically.

'I do,' Heidi insisted.

'Okay we'll see, let's rehearse! Heidi, where are we going?' she asked. 'Oh you see, you forgot your lines,' she said when Heidi did not reply.

Cute: Heidi also posted a cute clip of her and Sofia in the car joking about not knowing their lines

Learning the lines: The model also documented the fun day with a series of photos in which she was 'learning the lines' for the skit with a member of the crew

Laughing it up: The two were seen laughing it up as they read from a script

Busy day: There were also other crew members around them, as they filmed a skit that involved the car

Focused: Heidi smiled as her co-worker pointed something out on the page

Cowell recently told ET he was initially disappointed by the level of talent that applied for the new season.

'When [taping] first started - you know, I am always expecting, always hoping, the show can or should should be better year on year.'

'But the first two days really were horrific, and I really thought we had an issue. Just nobody was any good. It was terrible and I was really upset.'

'Everybody kept saying, "No, no, no, I promise you, There is much better to come." And I thought, "Maybe we're just out of sync this year,"' Cowell continued.

'And then by day three, it all turned. It just went great.'

The new season of the talent show is set to premiere on May 31 on NBC.
Jodie Comer reportedly found herself at the centre of a security scare after an overzealous fan allegedly tried to get under a shutter to the stage door at the theatre of her play Prima Facie in London.

It is claimed the actress, 29, was whisked out of a separate door after a man in a suit with flowers attempted to meet the Killing Eve star at her usual exit last Saturday.

According to The Sun, the gentleman was exhibiting 'worrying' behaviour to security staff and Jodie will no longer be meeting fans outside the Harold Pinter Theatre in the West End 'to protect Jodie as much as possible'.

Shock: Jodie Comer, 29, reportedly found herself at the centre of a security scare after a fan allegedly tried to get under a shutter to the stage door at the theatre of her play Prima Facie

A fan told the publication: 'The crowd was mostly young girls, so this man was very out of place.

'He claimed to be from Hungary, but he spoke with a French accent.

'He was scrolling through images of Jodie on his phone. A few of the fans standing near him were worried by his behaviour, so they notified security staff.'

Safety first: It is claimed the actress was whisked out of a separate door after a man in a suit with flowers attempted to meet the Killing Eve star at her usual exit last Saturday

A source told MailOnline any security worries were settled after the CCTV was reviewed and the curbing of fan meetings is to reduce the chance of Covid infection.

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Jodie and the Harold Pinter Theatre for comment.

It comes after Jodie was left fearing for her life after a French stalker threatened to kill her, before a man was arrested by police in France last August.

There is no suggestion the man from last week's alleged incident is the same person.

Screen star: The star, best known for her role as the assassin Villanelle in Killing Eve (pictrured), alerted authorities after receiving sinister online threats from an unnamed man last year. There is no suggestion it is the same man

The star, best known for her role as the assassin Villanelle in Killing Eve, alerted authorities after receiving sinister online threats, and an unnamed man, 44, was apprehended after officers stormed his home in the city of Roubaix.

Jodie, who was noticeably absent from social media while police investigated her case, received terrifying messages from a stalker, including one warning: 'I am coming to England to create carnage.'

It's thought that technology experts were brought in after Jodie and her family received the threats, which were traced to the northern French city of Roubaix.

Armed officers raided the mans home during a dawn raid last month, and held him in custody.

Computer files and other technical equipment were seized during the raid, when the man cooperated with officers.

Prosecutors in Lille, confirmed that the alleged threats from a man, who lives in nearby Roubaix, were 'a matter of great concern'.

A spokesman for Lille prosecutors said at the time: 'Following an official approach by the British authorities, a man was taken into custody for acts of harassment against an English actress.'
(CP) A video posted by Pastor Jack Jensz Jr. of his ministry team worshiping aboard an airplane in mid-flight has amassed over 35 million views online  but the reason they were on the plane in the first place is the real star of the show.

The clip posted on April 6 of people from Kingdom Realm Ministries and other churches worldwide singing "How Great Is Our God" during a commercial flight out of Poland gained traction after Muslim U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., posted the clip on her Twitter page Saturday. She included the caption, "I think my family and I should have a prayer session next time I am on a plane."

Her comments were criticized by some Republican politicians, such as Vernon Jones, a former Democrat who is running to represent Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives, who suggested Omar's comments were hateful toward Christians.

Others criticized the worshippers, claiming the event was invasive and forced everyone else on board to listen to music praising God against their will.

Jensz said the impromptu worship moment was not a part of "a political agenda at all."

"I didn't post it to stir anything up," the Australian-born pastor shared in an interview with The Christian Post. "It was actually just a post to share with our friends and encourage our friends that have been following our journey."

"When she posted that, I just looked at it and I didn't really give it too much thought. I didn't really enter into any political debate," he continued. "For us, we just came to share the love of God, we came just to reveal to people that Jesus loves them so much, and that's our focus. Our focus wasn't a political agenda at all."

The minister captioned the video, "We are taking this flight over for Jesus!"

The video showed a guitar player leading a group of people in worship to the popular Chris Tomlin song. Many passengers joined in and filmed the event that lasted a few minutes as others sat in silence.

The song came on the heels of Jensz and his team being spiritually high because of what they saw God do while serving at the Ukrainian border. He said the plane ride came after their time in Ukraine, and it was their way of keeping hope going.

"We were with our team. We're flying away from Ukraine to another place to have a meeting. We had 10 members of our team on the plane, and we've been worshiping and praying for people all over the place," he explained. "We decided, 'How awesome would it be if we could just bless these people with a song and bring hope and joy to this flight as so many people are in such a devastating place in pain and suffering?'"

They approached the air host and shared what they were doing in Ukraine and asked permission to sing worship music in an attempt to keep morale high even while in the air. Jensz said they would not have done the video if they weren't granted permission because they "believe in honor, we believe in respecting authority."

After asking the air host if they could sing the song, Jensz said, "she took a step back, and she was so surprised and so happy."

"She's like, 'Oh, wow, really? This would be so beautiful.' So she went to the pilot and asked the pilot, the pilot was in agreement, and everyone was in agreement," he stated. "Then she jumped on the intercom and goes, 'Hey, passengers, we have guests from all around the world who have been serving in Ukraine and helping the beautiful Ukrainian refugees, and they want to sing one song, just to bring joy and hope to you in this time.'"

"As she announced that, everyone clapped, a bunch of smiles on the plane, and we stood up to our feet with our team and we sang 'How great is our God,' which is a beautiful song," Jensz continued.

"As we sang it, we saw people smiling, some people even crying, they were touched. We had people filming on their phones. It was a real joyful moment on the plane. Then we shared with them. We said, 'Hey, this might be the most interesting plane flight that you've ever been on in your life. But we're here to bring joy and happiness and just to tell you, God loves you and He's with you.'"

Jensz said many Ukrainian refugees were on that flight, and it's why they felt compelled to do what they did.

"No one said anything negative, no one stood up [against it], everyone was there enjoying," he shared. "It was just a beautiful time, and it seemed like everyone was truly blessed."

After the clip went viral, it created an uproar online. People had varying opinions about what took place.

For Jensz and his team, however, it was another miraculous ministry opportunity for them as they saw God move in a significant way during their entire trip.

The founder and president of the Philadelphia-based Kingdom Realm Ministries testified of what God did leading up to that worshipful moment that has caught the world's attention.

"Ukraine is in the midst of a great war, and this is devastating to see. So on the second day of the war, our teams from all over the world were like, 'Hey, let's go to the Ukrainian border and minister to the people, love the people and help the people," Jensz recalled.

He said his ministry affiliates came from all over the world to do "four different types of ministries."

"The first thing that we did is we did a border ministry, where we went to the Ukrainian border, and we came with supplies, humanitarian aid, we came with medical supplies, food, blankets, you name it. Just helping the immediate needs of these beautiful refugees," he said.

The stories he heard were heartbreaking. He recalled seeing people waiting in line to cross the border for three or four days by car. Others were standing in line waiting to get in for hours upon hours.

He even heard reports of refugees suffering from frostbite because they were standing so long in the cold.

"I've never seen anything like this! Walking down the lines, you have people throwing their children at you saying, 'Please take them,' and they're just filled with great fear," he described. "These people have driven days to get to the border. These people are leaving war-torn areas where they've even seen their houses bombed. They've had to send their sons and fathers back in to fight the war, and so it's just so devastating."

Jensz said it is essential for churches to pray, but he and his team felt called not only to pray but to action.

He shared how they went to refugee centers to pray with various refugees and help them get connected with family members throughout Europe.

"It's amazing because when you hand humanitarian aid to these beautiful people, they say thank you, they're so kind and so happy that we're there to help from all around the world," Jensz noted. "But when you sit and you tell them, 'Hey, can I just share with you that God loves you so much. Even though you're going through this, know that Jesus is with you.' They begin to just melt, they cry, they get so touched."

Ukraine is known as a predominantly Christian nation. A 2018 survey conducted by the Razumkov Centre think tank found that 71.7% of the population declared themselves believers.

The pastor said that telling the people that God loved them meant "the world to them."

"So it's not pushing religion down their throat at all. It's actually something that's so dear to their heart, and it moves them," he clarified.

"We also went to the train stations, where all these refugees are jumping on trains to go throughout Europe to find family members. We were there with humanitarian aid, with food, we gave candy to the kids, make the kids smile and have joy in the midst of this crazy war. Then we just share the beautiful Gospel," Jensz continued.

"We are not ashamed of the Gospel. The Gospel has the power to save and transform."

Jensz saw the transformative power of Jesus Christ in his own life.

He was brought up in an abusive home and saw God intervene by changing his mother's life and his own life, setting them on a course of hope and fulfillment.

"We believe that Jesus is the answer. Obviously, we don't want to shove that down their throat. We wait for the opportunity for God to open it up. But these people were so open to receiving the good news of God," Jensz assured.

"We actually saw healings and miracles. Multiple people received healing in their bodies, and it was beautiful. It's like God was kissing them, saying, 'I'm with you and I'm for you and I love you' by healing their body. It was incredible!"

While their worship video has gone viral, Jensz wants all the attention to bring glory to God.

"From a Christian perspective, I just hope that the Church rises up and realizes that the Gospel is powerful. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. ... We have a call to action to love people more, a call to action to serve people more. We have a call to action to share the Good News more. That's really my heart," he concluded.

When asked if worship on a plane should be encouraged in the future, Jensz said he's been on several plane rides where other beliefs have expressed their faith.

"I've been on different flights, and I have friends that have traveled to different countries where there are different religions that are widely spread there. I've been on flights where you have a Muslim or Islamic person come up, and they'll share and they'll pray. I've been on flights where they pray before we take off, even had Jewish people that will stand up and they'll pray," he described.

"It happens quite often. I think that we just shook the ground a little bit because it was a worship song. So it's very out there in that sense. But I think that if you ask for permission and it's granted and what you have to say is encouraging and uplifting and brings hope and light, sure! ... We live in a beautiful, free country, and we're free to express what we believe and what we stand firm on in our heart and if that's bringing life."

The pastor believes the criticism he and his team have received is what's expected as a follower of Christ.

"They persecuted Jesus and persecuted the disciples. This is just what we laid our life down for. This is the cost," Jensz maintained.

 The Christian Post
Toni Collette has reflected on ageing ahead of her 50th birthday in November.

Speaking to this weekend's issue of Stellar magazine, the Australian actress admitted that she faced struggles over the past decade and is looking forward to a starting a new chapter.

'I found 40 psychologically difficult,' she said.

Golden age: Australian actress Toni Collette, 49, (pictured) has revealed that she feels comfortable turning 50 after finding her 40s 'psychologically difficult'

'For me, the past decade has been a treasure-trove of opportunities for learning life lessons, big and small. I finally feel like I'm really at home in myself. So I'm excited and, apparently contrarily, rather comfortable about turning 50.'

The Australian actress exclaimed that she was looking forward to what's to come and that 50 is not the cut-off point anymore but rather an invitation to embrace herself unconditionally.

'That, I believe, is why older female actors are soaring. As they grow to know themselves, they potentially also accept themselves,' she said.

Raw: 'I found 40 psychologically difficult,' she told this week's this week's issue of Stellar Magazine

'Then there's nothing to hide, nothing to lose, no approval to seek  and everything to share as actors.'

Toni is set to start in her darkest role yet in the upcoming HBO Max series The Staircase.

Toni will play the character of murder victim Kathleen Peterson, who was notoriously killed by her husband Michael Peterson in 2001.

New role: Toni is set to start in her darkest role yet in the upcoming HBO Max series The Staircase

Denials: Toni will play the character of murder victim Kathleen Peterson, who was notoriously killed by her husband Michael Peterson in 2001. Michael Peterson (pictured) has continually denied responsibility for his wife's death

The eight-episode series has been in development for two years and is based on the 2004 docuseries of the same name, which was updated with new episodes in 2018, reports Variety.

The show initially premiered on Canal+ before it moved to Netflix, where it received widespread attention and garnered critical praise.

It is also inspired by various books and reports about the case of Michael Peterson, who will be played by Colin Firth.

History: The miniseries examines the Peterson family's travails ahead of Kathleen (right) being found dead at the bottom of a staircase in the family home on December 9, 2001; and the murder allegations against Michael, who authorities said killed his spouse

The now 77-year-old author claimed that his spouse died after falling down the stairs at their home in North Carolina, although police suspected that he had killed her and covered up his evidence.

He was eventually convicted of murder, although his sentence was later reduced to voluntary manslaughter.

Meanwhile, acclaimed actress Toni has been focused on streaming content recently, having appeared in the 2019 Netflix limited series Unbelievable and the 2021 outer space drama Stowaway, which launched on the platform earlier this month.

She will also appear in the upcoming drama Pieces of Her for the streamer.

The long-time theatrical star first made a splash on the small screen with her Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning work on the Showtime series United States of Tara.

The HBO series The Staircase will stream on BINGE from May 5, 2022.
Married At First Sight success story Bryce Ruthven and Melissa Rawson are proof that a relationship can survive a bad reality TV edit.

And on Saturday night, the happy couple stepped out with this year's 'villains' Jackson Lonie and Olivia Frazer as they went out on a double date in Sydney.

The quartet appeared to be in good spirits as they were seen leaving Churrasco, a popular Brazilian barbecue restaurant in Coogee after having dinner inside.

EXCLUSIVE: Married At First Sight's Olivia Frazer (far left) and Jackson Lonie (second, left) went on a double date night with Bryce Ruthven (second, right) and Melissa Rawson (right) in Coogee, Sydney on Saturday

New mother Melissa, 33, lead the way as she pushed twins Levi and Tate, six months, in a stroller while husband Bryce, also 33, followed.

Liss cut a casual figure in a white button up shirt which she teamed up with denim jeans and black sneakers.

She showed off her natural glow, wearing minimal makeup for the outing.

You can't sit with us! The quartet appeared to be in good spirits as they were seen leaving Churrasco, a popular Brazilian barbecue restaurant in Coogee after having dinner inside

Night out: New mother Melissa, 33, lead the way as she pushed twins Levi and Tate, six months, in a stroller while husband Bryce, also 33, followed

Comfort: Liss cut a casual figure in a white button up shirt which she teamed up with denim jeans and black sneakers

Bryce opted for an orange coloured T-shirt which wore over an another shirt left unbuttoned.

He teamed up his look with black jeans and matching Converse shoes.

Olivia, 28, oozed confidence in a black dress and knee high boots.

Dressed up: Olivia, 28, oozed confidence in a black dress and knee high boots

Casual: Meanwhile, Jackson, 31, opted for comfort in an oversized grey T-shirt which he teamed up with a black denim jacket, ripped jeans and matching Vans sneakers

The former teaching student accessorised her look wearing hoop earrings.

Meanwhile, Jackson, 31, opted for comfort in an oversized grey T-shirt which he teamed up with a black denim jacket, ripped jeans and matching Vans.

Bryce recently revealed that he and Liss had formed a friendship with Olivia and Jackson are watching their experience on the Channel Nine show.

Dressed to impress: The former teaching student accessorised her look wearing hoop earrings

Can you drive? At one point Olivia was seen handing over Jackson the keys to her car

'Our heart goes out to them,' Ruthven told The Herald Sun last week.

'Olivia and Jackson, watching them felt like we were watching us, just with roles reversed with Olivia being more like myself.

'We have been in touch with them and spoken to them and honestly they seem like two great humans and are nice people.

Bryce said he feels like the harassment Olivia has copped outside the show is 'next level and unacceptable'.

Bryce recently revealed that he and Liss had formed a friendship with Olivia and Jackson are watching their experience on the Channel Nine show
Isla Fisher dressed for comfort as she took her dog Maisy for a walk in Los Angeles on Saturday.

The Australian actress, 46, cut a relaxed figure in a white T-shirt and floral sport tights as she glanced at her phone.

The Confessions of a Shopaholic star completed her look with a pair of blue sneakers and a navy cap.

Out and about: Actress Isla Fisher, 46, (pictured) cut a relaxed figure in tights and a T-shirt as she took her dog Maisy for a walk in Los Angeles on Saturday

She left her long hair out and wore sunglasses to protect herself from the sun.

Isla appeared relaxed as she looked down at her phone while Maisy walked alongside her during the outing.

The sighting comes after Isla recently returned to the US after living in her native city of Perth, Western Australia.

Comfort: The Australian star dressed for comfort in a white T-shirt and floral sport tights during the outing

During the coronavirus pandemic, she and her husband Sacha Baron Cohen, along with their three children, Olive, 12, Elula, eight, and Montgomery, four relocated to Australia.

Isla spoke to Marie Claire Australia in May about their decision to relocate Down Under.

The flame-haired beauty, who grew up in Perth, rubbished reports she and Sacha had wanted to escape 'Trump's America', saying their relocation from LA to Sydney was a personal rather than a political decision.

Relocating: The sighting comes after Isla and her husband Sacha recently returned to live in her native city of Perth, Western Australia

She added that it 'feels very magical' to be back home after spending so long in the U.S. and that she can 'be herself' in Australia.

She also told Stellar magazine of their move across the Pacific: 'I just feel so safe, I suppose the word is cosy, when I'm in Australia. It's where I grew up.'

Isla was born in Oman but grew up in Perth, before moving back to Australia with her family.

She and Sacha met at a party in Sydney in 2002 and married eight years later.
Gigi Hadid celebrated her 27th birthday with a lavish party in New York City on Saturday, April 23.

And legendary supermodel Helena Christensen and a catwalk queen of more recent years, Martha Hunt, were among the recognizable party attendees.

The star-studded shindig took place at the private club Zero Bond in the city's NoHo neighborhood.

Catwalk queens: Gigi Hadid is celebrating her 27th birthday with a lavish party in New York City on Saturday, April 23. And legendary supermodel Helena Christensen and a catwalk queen of more recent years, Martha Hunt, were among the recognizable party attendees

Christensen, 53, made her way along the bustling streets in an elegant black dress that was underneath a stylish blue trench coat.

The Denmark. native also donned a pair of unique ankle boots that had a plunging opening in the front, along with a thin short heel.

Her brunette locks were pulled into a long ponytail and her bangs were styled wispy.

Having risen to prominence in the 1990s, Christensen became one of the most popular models out of a group that were credited with helping put the 'super' in supermodel' during that time.

Stylin': Christensen, 53, made her way along the bustling streets in an elegant black dress that was underneath a stylish blue trench coat

Infectious: Both Christensen and Hunt flashed big beaming smiles during their stroll down the bustling streets of Downtown Manhattan

Lady in black: Hunt, 32, opted to go with a youthful ensemble, consisting of black capri pants, that fell to about mid-calf, a crop tp and matching blazer

Hunt, 32, opted to go with a youthful ensemble, consisting of black capri pants and a matching crop top that showcased her toned abs. She finished off her ensemble with a matching blazer and treaded leather shoes.

The North Carolina native wore her blonde tresses long and flowing well past her shoulders with a center part.

She started to make her case for supermodel status by 2009, when she made the cover of some of the biggest fashion magazines in the world, including Harper's Bazaar, Vogue China, among many others.

Despite a gap of at least two generations, Christensen and Hunt looked to be great friends as they chatted and laughed as they approached the entrance of Zero Bond.

Gal pals: Despite their generational gaps of more than 20 years, the two models looked to be great friends as they walked to the entrance of the private club Zero Bond

Revealing; The North Carolina native showcased her midriff with her ensemble

The private club, situated at 0 Bond Street, opened in 2020, and spans 20,000 feet across two floors, according to Timeout.com

The star-studded bash also included the likes of Gigi's parents, Mohamed Hadid, Yolanda Hadid, and Yolanda's boyfriend Joseph Jingoli, as well as Gigi's younger brother Anwar Hadid, younger sister Bella Hadid, and Bella's boyfriend Marc Kalman.

There was also such stars as Blake Lively, Emily Ratajkowski and Antoni Porowski, among others.

Earlier that day, Bella and her boyfriend were spotted bringing balloons to Gigi's New York City apartment for her birthday.

Head turner: The birthday girl stepped out in a in a white lace outfit, consisting of see-through pants, bustier, and jacket with matching heels; sister Bella Hadid is seen behind her in black

Earlier in the day, before stepping out to the party, Bella took to Instagram to share

'Happy Birthday to my big sister @gigihadid, she began alongside a photo of the two sisters, adding, 'thank you for being born so that I could be born that was very sweet of u.'

She continued, 'Thank you for being the best sister, mom, daughter, human bean ever. You teach me something new everyday and sometimes I just smile because I feel so lucky to be your baby sister.'

Bella ended the post: 'I'm sitting next to you right now so don't make it weird when you read this. I love you.'
She's admitted to undergoing surgery in her quest to achieve the perfect silhouette.

And Too Hot To Handle star Larissa Trownson proudly flaunted her surgically-enhanced assets as she posed for a glamorous Instagram photo shoot on Sunday.

The Kiwi beauty, 29, sizzled in a beige midi-dress, which featured a racy plunging neckline and cut-outs around the waist.

Busty in beige! Too Hot To Handle's Larissa Trownson flaunted her surgically-enhanced cleavage as she posed in racy cut-out dress in Queenstown, New Zealand, on Sunday

Pouting next to a brick building, the Queenstown-based lawyer completed her look with a white Chanel handbag and matching platform heels.

Her flaxen locks were pulled into a voluminous half-up style, while her face was painted with dramatic makeup.

'I'm not like other girls I'm worse!!' she joked in the caption.

'I'm not like other girls I'm worse!!' Pouting next to a brick building, the lawyer completed her look with a white Chanel handbag and matching platform heels

Larissa appeared on season two of the hit show Too Hot To Handle, which aired on Netflix in 2021.

She recently admitted to getting a breast enlargement, regular Botox injections and lip filler.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia in June, the blonde said she's unashamed to speak about her cosmetic enhancements and wants to be 'transparent' to help other women.

Rise to fame: Larissa appeared on season two of the hit show Too Hot To Handle, which aired on Netflix last year

'I think it's really important that we're transparent about work we've had done, otherwise that helps portray unreal beauty standards especially for younger women,' she said.

'So I've always been upfront about it and I chose to have it, so I'm proud of it.'

When asked to describe herself in three words, Larissa said she's 'brains and beauty'.

Too Hot To Handle follows a bunch of sexy singletons staying in a beachside mansion who must get through a four-week sex ban to win $100,000.

Cosmetic work: Speaking to Daily Mail Australia in June, the blonde said she's unashamed to speak about her cosmetic enhancements and wants to be 'transparent' to help other women
Paris Hilton and her husband Carter Reum attended the Collectors Committee Gala at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Saturday evening.

The reality television star, 41, modeled a darling baby blue dress made of a netted fabric that allowed her bronzed skin to peek through.

Hilton slipped her feet into a pair of chic silver kitten heels and she accessorized with a pair of diamond stud earrings.

Date night: Paris Hilton and her husband Carter Reum attended the Collectors Committee Gala at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Saturday evening

She posed for several snapshots at the event with a pair of white framed sunglasses over her eyes.

The socialite wore her signature blonde tresses in a gorgeous half up half down hairdo that flowed down her back and chest in curls.

Hilton's better half, 41, donned a dark blue blazer and matching slacks over a black button-down shirt. He added black dress shoes to the look, and his dark hair was cut short and styled with gel.

Reum, who married Hilton last year, is a LACMA trustee.

Darling: The reality television star, 41, modeled a darling baby blue dress made of a netted fabric that allowed her bronzed skin to peek through

Shady: She posed for several snapshots at the event with a pair of white framed sunglasses over her eyes

Host extraordinaire: Several other famous faces also came out for the event including Ryan Seacrest, who was recently named a trustee at the museum

Several other famous faces also came out for the event including Ryan Seacrest, who was recently named a trustee at the museum and spoke onstage at the event alongside LACMA Trustee Ann Colgin and LACMA Director Michael Govan.

The television personality, 47, cut a fashionable figure in an all black suit and was joined at the event by his 24-year-old girlfriend Aubrey Paige.

The social media influencer matched her man in a black dress though she added a plaid jacket to the look.

Onstage: Seacrest (right) poke onstage at the event alongside LACMA Trustee Ann Colgin (center) and LACMA Director Michael Govan (right)

Never a night off: Seacrest seemed to be in full host mode while at the event

Date night: The television personality, 47, cut a fashionable figure in an all black suit and was joined at the event by his 24-year-old girlfriend Aubrey Paige

Couples photos! The happy couple took a photo alongside businessman Kurt Rappaport and his wife Zorana who sparkled in a low-cut black dress

The happy couple took a photo alongside businessman Kurt Rappaport and his wife Zorana who sparkled in a low-cut black dress.

English actor Julian Morris of Pretty Little Liars fame and his partner Landon Ross ran into Reum and Hilton at the event and chatted with the darling couple.

The pair donned smart-looking suits and each carried a drink.

Locked in conversation: English actor Julian Morris of Pretty Little Liars fame and his partner Landon Ross ran into Reum and Hilton at the event and chatted with the darling couple

More casual: Twin Peaks star Kyle MacLachlan also came out to support the arts in a white-button down shirt, gray blazer and designer jeans

Twin Peaks star Kyle MacLachlan also came out to support the arts in a white-button down shirt, gray blazer and designer jeans.

His silver hair was slicked back, and he wore clear framed glasses as he posed with LACMA trustee Ann Colgin and his wife Desiree Gruber.

Gruber wore a white coat and black slacks to the classy affair.

Hilton and Reum both took a few moments to pose for pictures with other LACMA trustees who wore fanciful outfits including bright yellow pantsuits and well-tailored gray ensembles.

Say cheese: Hilton and Reum both took a few moments to pose for pictures with other LACMA trustees who wore fanciful outfits (L to R: LACMA Trustee Elaine Wynn, Paris Hilton and LACMA Trustee Colleen Bell)

Reum even took a photo with Viveca Paulin-Ferrell, the wife of comedian Will Ferrell, who stunned in a dark blue blouse and black skirt.

The Collectors Committee Gala is an annual event where members vote for what artwork should join LACMA's permanent collection.

There are a number of fancy events all weekend including a private dinner made by a celebrity chef and a silent auction to raise money for purchasing more artwork.

According to the museum's website, membership costs anywhere from $15,000 to $60,000.
Ryan Seacrest stepped out with his much younger girlfriend Aubrey Paige on Saturday night to attend the LACMA 2022 Collectors Committee Gala in Los Angeles.

Held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the annual event promises 'art, food and wine, and fun' as committee members 'vote for artworks to join LACMA's permanent collection.'

Seacrest, 47, looked dapper in a black fitted suit while posing for photos inside with the lovely 24-year-old by his side.

Going strong: Ryan Seacrest stepped out with his much younger girlfriend Aubrey Paige on Saturday night to attend the LACMA 2022 Collectors Committee Gala in Los Angeles

The longtime American Idol host finished his stylish ensemble with a partially unbuttoned black dress shirt and a pair of black leather shoes.

Paige looked demure in a black gown with a modest neckline and a skirt that slightly ruffled towards the bottom.

She layered up with a cropped plaid blazer with shoulder pads.

The model's brunette hair was styled in a ponytail and she rocked minimal makeup to let her natural beauty shine.

Well-dressed duo: Seacrest, 47, looked dapper in a black fitted suit while posing for photos inside with the lovely 24-year-old by his side. Paige looked demure in a black gown with a modest neckline and a skirt that slightly ruffled towards the bottom

Annual festivities: Held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art , the annual event promises 'art, food and wine, and fun' as committee members 'vote for artworks to join LACMAs permanent collection'

Paige accessorized with a pair of dainty silver earrings and carried her belongings in a black purse that she tucked under her arm.

The couple were captured schmoozing with the other high-profile guests at the annual gala.

Other attendees included Paris Hilton and her husband Carter Reum, as well as Twin Peaks star Kyle MacLachlan.

The Collectors Committee assembly is a two-day event, which kicked off on Friday with committee members earning invitations to 'one of several private dinners in LACMA trustees' homes.'

Speaker: Seacrest spoke onstage during Sunday's gala

Prestigious: He was onstage with LACMA Trustee Ann Colgin and LACMA Director Michael Govan

Each dinner is prepared by a renown celebrity chef, as well as wine pairings from renowned California vintners, according to the LACMA.

On Saturday, the members are invited to LACMA 'to view artworks presented by LACMA's curators as possible acquisitions for the museum.'

After getting in private viewing and listening to curator presentations, members are whisked off to the Collectors Committee Gala.

It is during the gala that Collectors Committee members will vote for 'which artworks will be acquired with funds pooled from Collectors Committee membership dues, a live auction held at the gala, and any additional funds members wish to contribute.'

Loved up: Seacrest and Paige were first spotted in each other's company while spending time together this past Memorial Day weekend. Us Weekly confirmed that they were dating in June

Seacrest spoke onstage during Sunday's gala with LACMA Trustee Ann Colgin and LACMA Director Michael Govan.

Seacrest and Paige were first spotted in each other's company while spending time together this past Memorial Day weekend.

Us Weekly confirmed that they were dating in June of that year.

An insider also spoke to the media outlet and expressed that the radio host had 'met Aubrey's family,' who thought that he was a 'wonderful guy.'

The source also pointed out that the pair were 'very happy together and doing great.'
She announced she was expecting her first child with radio titan Kyle Sandilands in February.

And on Sunday, Tegan Kynaston showed off her baby bump in all its glory, as the couple enjoyed a trip to their $1.3million holiday home in Port Douglas, Queensland.

The 34-year-old shared a photo of herself relaxing by the property's infinity pool while wearing a tiny floral bikini, tagging her location as, 'Baby on the way'.

Baby on board! On Sunday, Tegan Kynaston showed off her baby bump in all its glory as she and her partner Kyle Sandilands enjoyed a trip to their $1.3million holiday home in Port Douglas, Queensland

In the image, a blissfully relaxed Tegan closed her eyes while lapping up the sunshine, as her left hand delicately caressed her growing stomach.

Tegan tagged the photo with the word: 'Happiness'.

She also shared an image of her husband-to-be, 50, lapping up some rays while floating on a pool inflatable, which she captioned: 'You float my boat.'

It was revealed in February 2021 that Kyle and Tegan had splashed $1.3million on the stunning tropical property.

Baby joy: Kyle and Tegan revealed they were set to become first-time parents back in February

Loving life! Tegan also shared a photo a photo of her husband-to-be, 50, lapping up some rays while floating on a pool inflatable, which she captioned: 'You float my boat'

Kyle uses the 2.5-hectare property primarily as a holiday home, but also occasionally broadcast his KIIS FM breakfast show from there when he's not in Sydney.

While no sale price was disclosed at the time the house was listed for $1.3million and it's believed Kyle paid about that figure, The Cairns Post reported.

The home is an entertainer's dream for Kyle and his partner, and features a blue-tiled infinity pool which looks out to the hinterland.

There's three bedrooms and three bathrooms, meaning Kyle and Tegan have plenty of space for guests, as well as a breezy open-plan living and dining area.

A holiday home fit for a king! In February 2021, it was revealed that Kyle and Tegan had splashed out a rumoured $1.3million on their Port Douglas holiday home (pictured)

Kyle had announced the purchase on air during an interview with The Amazing Race host Beau Ryan.

'I just bought a house up there [in Port Douglas], it is that beautiful,' he said on The Kyle and Jackie O Show.

Port Douglas is known for its exquisite beaches and proximity to the Great Barrier Reef, and is also near to Daintree National Park.

The town itself, which is a one-hour drive north from Cairns, is filled with boutique shops and restaurants and is popular with tourists and backpackers.

Meanwhile, Kyle and Tegan announced they were set to welcome their first child together live on The Kyle and Jackie O Show in February this year.

'We're having a baby!' he declared as the entire KIIS FM studio cheered.

His co-host Jackie 'O' Henderson said she was 'so happy' for the pair and told them their lives were about to change forever.
Gigi Hadid celebrated her 27th birthday with a lavish party in the NoHo neighborhood in Downtown Manhattan.

Among the attendees was the model's close pal Blake Lively, who was captured arriving to the private club Zero Bond in the NoHo neighborhood of Downtown Manhattan.

The actress, 34, wowed in a fitted purple minidress that highlighted her toned physique.

Party time; Blake lively spent part of her Saturday at her pal Gigi Hadid's 27th birthday party in New York City

Along with her cleavage, the bright number showed off her lean legs.

Looking tanned, Blake rounded out the ensemble with a pair of bold red platform heels and a matching clutch.

The birthday bash guest list included the likes of Gigi's parents, Mohamed Hadid, Yolanda Hadid, and Yolanda's boyfriend Joseph Jingoli, as well as Gigi's younger brother Anwar Hadid, younger sister Bella Hadid, and Bella's boyfriend Marc Kalman.

Wow! Lively (born Blake Ellender Brown), 34, wowed in a fitted purple minidress that highlighted her toned physique

Hadid birthday bash: The star-studded shindig took place at the private club Zero Bond in the NoHo neighborhood of Downtown Manhattan

Legendary 1990s supermodel Helena Christensen, catwalk queens of more recent years, Martha Hunt and Emily Ratajkowski, and television personality Antoni Porowski were also among the recognizable party attendees.

For her party, Gigi slipped into a transparent white lace ensemble that consisted of a delicate lace bustier, matching see-through pants and a long white lace jacket.

Lively has been married for more than nine-years to Hollywood leading man Ryan Reynolds, 45, whom she started dating in October 2011.

Flattering fit: Along with her cleavage, the bright number showed off her lean legs

Arrival: Lively was captured walking through the club's entrance

The couple currently reside in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina with their three daughters: James, seven, Inez, five, and Betty, two. They also own a home in New York.

Just one day before Lively stepped out to Hadid's birthday party, she took to Instagram and posted a series of photos dressed in blue jeans overalls.

'Overall it was a good day,' she wrote in the caption, in a funny play on words.

Just in the last six months, the actress made her directorial debut when she helmed the music video for longtime bestie Taylor Swift's song I Bet YouThink About Me.

Lady in blue jeans: Lively documented 'a good day' on her instagram page with a series of photos of herself in blue denim overalls and hanging earrings

Down on the farm: In the snaps, theLos Angeles native wore a skimpy tank top with the overalls

Lively made her directorial debut by helming the music video for Taylor Swift's I Bet You Think About Me, which dropped back on November 15, 2021
Married At First Sight star Cathy Evans sparked a lively debate as she flew from Phuket to Bangkok in Thailand on Sunday.

The 28-year-old took to Instagram to detail her nightmare journey, which featured a young child misbehaving on the seat behind her.

She then asked her 189,000 followers if they thought the situation she explained was 'socially acceptable'.

Sparking conversation: Married At First Sight star Cathy Evans sparked a lively debate as she flew from Phuket to Bangkok in Thailand this week

'Point of view: For the entire duration of the flight, the child is rapid kicking the back of your seat, however the back is thin so you feel every kick to the spine,' she began.

'The child then starts slapping the tops of everyone's heads seated in front of him. Noise is insatiable. Begins tagging the walls of the plane, their table then your arms.'

She added that she 'glanced over at the parent to hint at them to stop their child', but claimed: '...but then they abuse you in their native language and take off their mask to cough at you.'

She concluded her post with: 'Is this socially acceptable?'

Not happy: On Sunday, the 28-year-old took to Instagram to detail a nightmare ordeal involving a young child sitting behind her, asking her 189,000 followers if they thought the incident was 'socially acceptable'

Poll Do you think the situation was socially acceptable? Yes No Do you think the situation was socially acceptable? Yes 7 votes

No 198 votes Now share your opinion





Prior to the post, Cathy told her followers: 'I want to ask the public about a social situation.

'I'll give you a scenario and then cast your vote.'

After three hours, 96 per cent of those who voted on her Instagram poll said it was 'absolutely not' acceptable, while just four per cent voted that 'this is fine'.

Last year, Cathy underwent a $30,000 surgical makeover, including 10 liposuctions and a Brazilian Butt Lift.

Question: Prior to the post, she had told her followers: 'I want to ask the public about a social situation. I'll give you a scenario and then cast your vote'

Bad flight: She also complained the seats on the flight were 'so tiny'

At the time, the influencer revealed why she decided to go under the knife, after critics told her to 'go to the gym' instead of the plastic surgeon.

'People are saying, ''Why aren't you just going to the gym?'' And I do go to the gym,' she said in a YouTube video.

'What I am after is not found at the gym. This shaped, sculpted body by a surgeon or doctor is not found at the gym,' she added.

Curves ahead! Cathy underwent a painful $30,000 surgical makeover, including 10 liposuctions and a Brazilian Butt Lift, last year

Cathy debuted the results of her brutal full-body makeover on Instagram in late July.

The reality TV star has since been showing off her her artificial curves a slew of raunchy looks, including tiny bikinis and in Skims shapewear.

Cathy has proudly showed off her smaller waist and hourglass hips and thighs in dozens of photos on her Instagram.
If you ask anyone on the street: where are you heading to? Different people will reply with various answers. If we were asked this, apart from answering the question with a detailed address, are we certain about the direction that our lives are heading to?



A hectic morning



A recent experience provoked my thinking about this question. Two weeks ago, I made an appointment with the visa center at 10:00 am one morning to have my documents submitted. According to the email, I should be there on time. Otherwise, I need to make another appointment.



I checked on the map and arrived the main building 15 minutes earlier, thinking that I would arrive on time anyway. However, the door that I was told to get in was locked due to covid restriction. Instead, I was asked to enter through another gate which was about five-minute walking distance. It was only ten minutes left when I found the correct entrance.



I asked the guard about the direction of the visa center as the building looks complex. He told me to walk straight and take an escalator to the second floor, and then I would see it in the third floor. I followed the instruction and took the escalator to the second floor, assuming that I needed to take another escalator to the third floor to reach the final destination. However, I didnt see any escalator that could carry me to the third floor.



Direction prevails hard work



There were only five minutes left and I kept asking different people for the escalator. I was running around in the building like a headless chicken for almost 15 minutes. My mind went blank and I was getting more and more restless as the appointed time was missed.



Thankfully, the staff in the information desk told me the right way and I reached the visa center at last. The entrance turned out to be the spot that I passed by several times that morning, and the way to the third floor was through staircases rather than escalator. I arrived there at 10:08am and the staff agreed to check my documents.



I laughed at myself bitterly on my way back for such a frantic morning. I couldnt help thinking how ridiculous I was in running between wrong directions, no matter how hard I seemed to try to find the right way. All the sweat and efforts were in vain for they wouldnt take me any closer to the right location.

Jesus is the way



Thank God that I was given another opportunity although I missed the time! If it is essential to find a right direction for a physical address, how much more important when it comes to the final destination of our lives?

Jesus says that I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. (St. John chapter 14, verse 6). With all the things that we want to achieve in life, do we make it the aim to be with the Father? And to get there through Jesus? If not, we may be fighting for the wrong goal and walking on the opposite path, no matter how strenuously are we striving for the right way.

The gate that leads to destruction is easy and wide, while the gate that leads to life is narrow and hard. As a Christian, I am thankful and blessed to know Jesus, who assured me that I am walking on the right path and the reward to come is great! If you didnt know Jesus and wonder where your life is heading to now, I would like to recommend you to find a local church or read the Bible to unlock the truth that brings you home.
Julie Goodwin has revealed how she struggled with feelings of shame when she entered a mental health facility last year.

The MasterChef Australia star told News Corp on Sunday that she was wracked with 'guilt' at first.

'I was really blown away by the level of shame that was felt by the other patients in the hospital over being there,' the 51-year-old said.

Hard: Julie Goodwin (pictured) has revealed how she struggled with feelings of shame when she entered a mental health facility last year

'Their guilt in there. And I felt it too, but it took looking at these other people for me to think "Why would you feel ashamed of being here?"

'I just wanted to talk about it so some of those guys didn't have to feel so guilty and so ashamed of it. It's just the human condition,' she added.

Julie has admitted she previously struggled to set foot in the kitchen due mental health struggles following her momentous MasterChef win in 2009.

'I was really blown away by the level of shame that was felt by the other patients in the hospital over being there,' the 51-year-old said. 'Their guilt in there. And I felt it too'

'I had reached a point in my life where I had lost my joy,' she said tearfully during a recent episode of MasterChef Australia: Fans v Faves.

Reflecting on her post-MasterChef life, Julie said, 'I've been able to publish six cookbooks, I've had lots of fun doing television programs. Then I moved into radio. I spent four years on a breakfast show along with my cooking school, which I really love as well.'

'But I guess... The past 13 years hasn't all been amazing highs. There have been some struggles as well. I've really had to do some serious assessment of my mental health and wellbeing. I had reached a point in my life where I had lost my joy.'

Difficult: Julie has admitted she previously struggled set foot in the kitchen due mental health struggles following her momentous MasterChef win in 2009

'And I had to give up my job on the radio. I couldn't do that anymore. And I actually couldn't set foot in my kitchen. I think maybe I have done everything that I was here to do. And I have achieved everything that's possible for me to achieve.'

'So this for me is an opportunity just to see if there is another chapter, you know. If there's more,' said Julie with tears in her eyes.

Julie sent shock waves through the showbiz world four years ago when she was charged with drink driving twice over the legal limit.

Legal woes: Julie sent shock waves through the showbiz world four years ago when she was charged with drink driving twice over the legal limit. Pictured at Gosford Local Court in 2018

She was caught after trying to evade a police breath test.

After fronting up at court with her husband and acknowledging it was 'an error in judgment' and 'accepting full responsibility', Julie was fined $600 and disqualified from driving for six months.

She later revealed she had been suffering from depression and spent five weeks in a mental health facility.

Julie said she found comfort in her granddaughter, Delilah, one.

Battle: She later revealed she had been suffering from depression and spent five weeks in a mental health facility. Amid her mental health battle, she said she found comfort in her granddaughter, Delilah, one. Pictured with Delilah and her husband Michael

'In the midst of that really awful time I had decided that I was done,' Julie told the publication.

'I had nothing left to do, my work here was done. That's where I found myself. That landed me in hospital a bunch of times.

'So, I'm trying to figure out if my life here is not done, then what the hell is it? Delilah is obviously a massive part of that. She's a tiny little human who I want to be around for,' she added.

Julie famously beat runner-up Poh Ling Yeow on the popular cooking show with her hearty home recipes in 2009.
Sunetra Sarker has sparked fury among fans of Loose Women after making 'thoughtless' comments about meningitis on Friday's show.

During the show, the 48-year-old actress said she would 'rather deal with meningitis' than look at nits, which was the panellists' topic of conversation.

A number of fans took to Twitter, calling the former Casualty star's comments 'disgusting' and 'thoughtless'.

Fury: Sunetra Sarker sparked controversy on Friday as Loose Women fans were left 'appalled' at her comments on meningitis

The four Loose Women panelists were looking at nits through a magnifying glass, with Sunetra getting a scare as she jumped away from the glass.

She then said: 'I come to work and I don't expect to be faced with a jar of nits. Take me back to Casualty I'd rather deal with meningitis than nits'

Sunetra was referring to her time on the BBC medical drama, in which she played doctor Zoe Hanna for over eight years.

Controversial: During the show, the 48-year-old actress said she would 'rather deal with meningitis' than look at nits, which was the panellist's topic of conversation

Nit having it: The four women were looking at nits through a magnifying glass, with Sunetra getting a scare as she jumped away from the glass

But the comments didn't fare well with viewers, with many of those who had gone through Meningitis taking to Twitter to explain their outrage.

One tweeted: 'Did this actually come out of Sunetra Sarkers mouth today? Shocked and disgusted in equal measure; such ignorance. People lose their lives to meningitis. Nits dont come anywhere near!'

'Absolutely APPALLED with Sunetra Sarker on Loose women today as somebody who has fought Meningitis myself and nearly lose my life I am disgusted! Absolutely outrageous,' said another.

Awkward: She then said: 'I come to work and I don't expect to be faced with a jar of nits. Take me back to Casualty i'd rather deal with meningitis than nits,' referring to her time on the BBC drama

Appalled: But the comments didn't fair well with viewers, with many Meningitis sufferers taking to Twitter to explain their outrage

While another said the comment was 'absolutely disgusting'.

Meanwhile, charity Meningitis Now was met with a host of complaints over the comment too, as they put out a tweet reading: 'We totally understand the anger at a thoughtless and disappointing comment on today's @loosewomen.

'Meningitis can be fatal or cause long-term #aftereffects and many viewers with #meningitis experience have experienced significant trauma and loss.'

The charity then offered free support to anyone affected, detailing their helplines and contact details.

Representatives for Sunetra and Loose Women have been contacted by MailOnline for comment.

Support: Charity Meningitis Now was met with a host of complaints over the comment too, as they out out a tweet of support to fans
A friend of Neil Jones' ex Sophie Lily Kerr has said that the smitten Strictly star begged Sophie to move in with him within just weeks of dating.

The Strictly Come Dancing dancer, 39, dated the model, 32, for four months, during which time the pal claims he constantly talked about himself.

Speaking to The Sun, the friend claimed Sophie told them: 'It was a real whirlwind. Neil told me he loved me soon after we started dating and asked me to move in with him. He got very upset when I said no.'

Head over heels: A friend of Neil Jones ' ex Sophie Lily Kerr has said that the Strictly star begged Sophie to move in with him within just weeks of dating

The friend revealed: 'Sophie was troubled by the speed at which Neil wanted them to settle down.'

'He introduced her to his closest friends and family almost immediately then asked if they could announce the relationship to his fans. Her reply to him was, "Why? Were not royalty".'

'He was also very keen for her to move into his apartment. But Sophie knew his ex  who had been calling herself Mrs Luisa Jones  had moved out a few months earlier. She worried the pattern was being repeated.'

Sophie and Neil met on celebrity dating app Raya and their relationship got off to a great start, with her friend describing him as 'kind and sweet'.

Oh dear: The Strictly Come Dancing dancer, 39, dated the model, 32, (pictured) for four months, during which time the pal claims he constantly talked about himself

But he soon began talking about himself 'constantly' and becoming paranoid about his age and whether his Strictly contract would be renewed.

She claimed he would talk negatively about the other dancers, particularly Giovanni Pernice and would hang out with his ex-wife Katya a lot.

She said she knew the end was near when when he spent Christmas Day during the supposedly romantic break watching a Strictly special under a towel.

A spokesperson for Neil said: 'There is no truth whatsoever to Sophies claims and hes surprised to hear her take on things.

Another beauty: It comes as Neil was recently linked to another beauty - Miss Romania Sienna Hollen, 24

'Her version of events and decision to speak out on their time together only serves to show his intuition to end things was the right decision.

'With regards to Giovanni he only has the utmost respect and love for his fellow strictly professional and friend, the two of them will no doubt laugh about this ridiculous story. Neil is still very much happily single, contrary to recent inaccurate reports.

It comes as Neil was recently linked to another beauty - Miss Romania Sienna Hollen, 24.

Despite photos showing the two enjoying various nights out together, it's thought the pair are just friends after enjoying one date in February and Neil is currently single.

Earlier this year, Neil fuelled romance rumours by liking a string of Sienna's sexy Instagram photos.

He has made it clear he likes what he sees when it comes to Sienna's often scantily-clad snaps, with the bombshell even returning the favour by liking Neil's photos.

According to The Sun, the pair started following each other in January and have been 'liking each other's posts ever since'.

Neil liked one of the actress' posts when the model slipped into a clinging dress and 'hearted' a sizzling photo of her wearing a bikini while lapping up the sunshine in Dubai.
EastEnders is set to air an incredibly hard hitting storyline next month as they take on the subject of male rape for the first time.

The BBC soap will show Ben Mitchell (Max Bowden) become the victim of a shocking assault from new barman Lewis Butler (Aidan O'Callaghan).

The series is working with a number of charities, including SurvivorsUK, Survivors Manchester and the Male Survivors Partnership, to ensure the topic is tackled sensitively.

Harrowing: EastEnders is set to air a hard-hitting male rape storyline next month as Ben Mitchell is the victim of a shocking attack

It comes 10 years after the soap turned down a male rape storyline from executive producer at the time Bryan Kirkwood, with the show saying it was too difficult.

The storyline and it's aftermath are set to play out over several months, with Max, who play Ben, saying he is 'honoured' to portray it.

He said: 'Alongside some wonderful charities, and some very inspirational survivors of male sexual assault in the UK, I think we've been able to really strive to tell the most truthful account we can, and I hope we can raise awareness and understanding on a topic that is rarely covered.'

Victim: The BBC soap will show Ben Mitchell (played by Max Bowden) be the victim of a shocking assault, with it being the first time this is covered by the soap

Mistrust: Ben will face the attack from new barman Lewis Butler (Aidan O'Callaghan), trusting Lewis after his turbulent time

'I'm honoured to be given this opportunity to tell such an important story'

The harrowing storyline will not only focus on the assault but consent, masculinity, and how sexual assault affects loved ones around the victim.

Giving some context to the story, BBC head of continuing drama Kate Oates said: 'Ben has endured a traumatic time after witnessing a homophobic attack on Callum that brought back painful memories of losing Paul.'

Turbulent: It comes after Ben's traumatic time after witnessing a homophobic attack on Callum that brought back painful memories of losing Paul

'As a result, Ben lost his way in lifewhich is when he found Lewis.

'Ben finds Lewis attractive, and thinks of him as a someone who can understand him in a way Callum does not; but that trust is abused when Lewis crosses a line and rapes Ben,' she explained.

It comes as both Hollyoaks and Coronation Street have explored the storyline in 2014 and 2018.

It seems the soap is finally ready to explore the storyline, after Bryan Kirkwood previously revealed he was told to avoid the subject matter 'in no uncertain terms' while he was executive producer, before moving to Hollyoaks - where he ran the storyline.

Rape charity SurvivorsUK hope the plot will encourage male victims to come forward, with Service Manager Marta Almeida detailing: 'Storylines like this one are an amazing opportunity to explore the reality for so many men, families and communities up and down the UK'.
Home and Away stars Emily Weir and Juliet Godwin were busy shooting scenes for the soap earlier this month.

The actresses stripped down to swimwear for a day of filming at Palm Beach in Sydney's north.

Emily, 29, showed off her trim figure in a retro bikini which was tied at the sides in bows.

Hard at work: Home and Away stars Emily Weir (pictured) and Juliet Godwin were busy shooting scenes for the soap earlier this month

The yellow and white 1960s style swimwear was adorned with a floral pattern throughout.

She had on natural makeup for her beach scenes, her brunette hair down around her face.

Emily grabbed a white surfboard and took to the waves, before emerging from the water and strolling down the beach with her board under her arm.

Fun day: The actresses stripped down to swimwear for a day of filming at Palm Beach in Sydney's north

Looking good: Emily, 29, showed off her trim figure in a retro bikini which was tied at the sides in bows

Retro: The yellow and white 1960s style swimwear was adorned with a floral pattern throughout

The actress landed her breakthrough role as restaurateur Mackenzie on Home and Away in 2019.

Prior to that, she appeared in TV series The Sleepover Club in 2003.

Emily described her casting on Home and Away as like a dream come true in an interview with Stuff New Zealand.

Wet and wild: She had on natural makeup for her beach scenes, her brunette hair down around her face

Swim fan: Emily grabbed a white surfboard and took to the waves

Beach babe: She emerged from the water and strolled down the beach with her board under her arm

New role: The actress landed her breakthrough role as restaurateur Mackenzie on Home and Away in 2019

'It was like winning the Lotto for myself and for all my extended family members,' she said.

'My family still watches Home and Away. They call it Homie. When Homie is on... everything just shuts down. You are not allowed to make calls or anything.'

Juliet meanwhile waited on the shore while Emily filmed her scenes, looking out to sea pensively.

Thoughtful: Juliet (pictured) meanwhile waited on the shore while Emily filmed her scenes, looking out to sea pensively

Wow! The blonde star looked sensational in a pink and black wetsuit with a floral pattern through the centre

Details: It featured long sleeves and was worn partially unzipped with a grey bikini top peaking from underneath

The two stars then chatted to one another as their characters interacted during filming.

The blonde star looked sensational in a pink and black wetsuit with a floral pattern through the centre.

It featured long sleeves and was worn partially unzipped with a grey bikini top peaking from underneath.

Weather for it: She stayed on dry land for her scenes

On a stroll: She then walked down the beach while holding a blue surfboard under her arm

Pretty: Juliet wore her blonde hair down in curls and had on a beachy makeup look

Star power: While little is known about Juliet's character, Daily Mail Australia understands she will play a doctor who works at Northern Districts Hospital

She stayed on dry land for her scenes, walking down the beach while holding a blue surfboard under her arm.

Juliet wore her blonde hair down in curls and had on a beachy makeup look with a dusty pink lipstick.

While little is known about Juliet's character, Daily Mail Australia understands she will play a doctor who works at Northern Districts Hospital.

Scenes: The two stars then chatted to one another on the beach

Scripted: Their characters were interacting in the scene

Breaking in: Home and Away appears to be Juliet's first major TV gig, after she played the minor character of Cara in ABC drama series The Heights in 2020

Home and Away appears to be Juliet's first major TV gig, after she played the minor character of Cara in ABC drama series The Heights in 2020.

Home and Away has been through some upheaval of late following the exit of Sam Frost, who played nurse Jasmine Delaney.

Sam's exit in December came about two months after she caused controversy by comparing Covid vaccine rules to 'segregation'.

Pals? It seems like the pair will be friendly with one another in upcoming episodes

Relaxed: Juliet added to her natural makeup look with a dusty pink lipstick

The 33-year-old later apologised for her choice of words and is now fully vaccinated.

Channel Seven has stated it will not hire another actress to play Jasmine.

She was followed out the door by Harley Bonner, who portrayed Dr Logan Bennett.

Harley, 31, who previously starred in Neighbours as Josh Willis, quit Home and Away in January, reportedly because he did not want to get vaccinated.

The Seven Network requires all cast and crew working on its productions to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
Jessica Rowe went back to the 1980s on Sunday.

The television host was mopping her floors at home when she decided to recreate the iconic 'socks and shirt' dance from the 1983 movie Risky Business.

In the film, Tom Cruise plays Joel Goodsen, a teen from a wealthy family who is left to his own devices while his parents are away.

Laughs: Jessica Rowe (pictured) went back to the 1980s on Sunday. The television host was mopping her floors at home when she decided to recreate the iconic 'socks and shirt' dance from the 1983 movie Risky Business

Enjoying his freedom, he dances around the house to Old Time Rock & Roll by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, wearing just a shirt, white underwear and socks.

The scene is one of the most iconic in Hollywood film history and was Tom Cruise's breakout role.

In a video shared to Instagram, Jessica copied Tom's moves, sliding into the frame on her socks, wearing heart shaped sunglasses and an oversized white shirt.

Rock out: In the film, Tom Cruise (pictured) plays Joel Goodsen, a teen who is left to his own devices while his parents are away. Enjoying his freedom, he dances around the house to Old Time Rock & Roll by Bob Seger wearing just a shirt, white underwear and socks

Same same: In a video shared to Instagram, Jessica copied Tom's moves, sliding into the frame on her socks wearing an oversized white shirt

The author then gyrated and danced around the room to the music as Old Time Rock & Roll played.

'Mopping isn't risky business for this Crap Housewife,' she wrote in her caption.

Tom has previously revealed that he 'adlibbed' his now famous sliding dance, confessing he only decided to wear socks because the floor was 'too sticky'.

'I tried to go across [the floor] at one point and it was too sticky. What I did was I dusted the floor and then put sticky [tape] on the other side so I would get centre frame on that and wore the socks,' he told The Project in 2017.

Fun: The author then gyrated and danced around the room to the music as Old Time Rock & Roll played

'And that's how I finally did it - to figure out how to get that smooth, right on the beat kind of flow that got me there.'

Tom proceeded to make the rest of the dance up on the fly, taking inspiration from his childhood.

'And then I went around the room and was dancing,' he said. 'That's something that I did as a kid at home.'
Lisa Wilkinson couldn't hide her shock as she learned about communal bathing on The Sunday Project this week.

The presenter, 62, was left flabbergasted after her co-host Hamish MacDonald narrated a news report on the rise in popularity of the experiences, revealing that at least four major bathhouses had opened in Australia in the past year.

Hamish, 40, said he and co-host Jan Fran had spent the commercial break 'educating Lisa about nudity and bathhouses', before she told viewers: '...I have learnt stuff tonight that I really didnt come here expecting to learn!'

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Learning curve: Lisa Wilkinson (right) couldn't hide her shock as she learned about communal bathing on The Sunday Project this week. Pictured with co-host Hamish MacDonald (left)

Rove McManus was equally as shocked over the topic of discussion, adding: 'I dont feel comfortable bathing on my own, let alone with other people around.'

'And when youve got a perfectly good bath at home with a door that closes and locks, why would you move outside of that zone?' Lisa added.

Rove then asked Hamish about his own personal experiences with communal bathing, saying: 'Do you take your rubber duck when you got to one of your little communal baths?

Shook: Rove McManus (pictured) was equally as shocked over the topic of discussion, adding: 'I dont feel comfortable bathing on my own let alone with other people around...'

'Do you flick your little friends with a towel?'

Jan Fran chimed in: 'I think were talking about a very different kind of bathhouse now though, Rove.'

He replied: 'When you say to me Hamish McDonald goes to a communal bath, you do not want to know where my heads going!'

Hamish went on to say that he and Jan had been discussing Turkish baths, otherwise known as Hammam.

Hamman is a type of steam bath or a place of public bathing associated with the Islamic world.

Interesting discussion: Hamish went on to say that he and Jan were discussing Turkish baths, otherwise known as Hammam; a type of steam bath or a place of public bathing associated with the Islamic world

'Its a cultural experience. You can find it in Morocco. You can get a good scrub down with the loofah,' Jan said.

'Theres a very biggish woman who lifts things and moves things, and scrubs things. And I say bring that here, thats what we need  communal bathing 2.0.'

After Rove said he'd take part, Hamish said Lisa should follow suit - to which she replied: 'Thats three out of four [hosts]. Thats enough from The Project!'
Claire Danes ensured all eyes were on her on Sunday as she attended The Essex Serpent special screening in the Ham Yard Hotel, London.

The actress, 43, dazzled in a black sequinned gown that was emblazoned with a glittering orange dragon.

She wore her blonde locks in a sleek bob and added a pair of jade green earrings as she posed next to her husband Hugh Dancy, who looked smart in a black suit.

Incredible: Claire Danes ensured all eyes were on her on Sunday at The Essex Serpent special screening in the Ham Yard Hotel, London that she attended with her husband Hugh Dancy

Claire was joined at the event by her co-star Tom Hiddleston, 41, who looked as handsome as ever in a black suit layered over a white shirt.

His brown hair was artfully tousled, and he finished off his dapper look with a designer watch and shiny black shoes.

Also in attendance was Clemence Poesy who looked effortlessly stylish in a black blazer over a white T-shirt and blue jeans.

Looking good: She wore her blonde locks in a sleek bob and opted for a natural palette of makeup with a nude lip

Eye-catching: The actress, 43, dazzled in a black sequinned gown that was emblazoned with an orange snake to represent the TV series

The Harry Potter star elevated her height in a pair of black platform boots and wore her blonde tresses in a blunt bob.

Michael Jibson arrived in a casual outfit, made up of a navy jacket over a blue shirt and black jeans, paired with white trainers.

Joining them was Clio Barnard, who was the picture of elegance in a black silk gown which boasted a tie-up neck.

Dashing: Claire was joined by her co-star Tom Hiddleston, 41, who looked as handsome as ever in a black suit layered over a white shirt

New role: Mother-of-two Claire replaced Keira Knightley in the role when the actress had to withdraw for 'family reasons'

Pals: Claire and Tom looked in high spirits as they caught up and couldn't stop giggling

Handsome: His brown hair was artfully tousled, and he finished off his dapper look with a designer watch and shiny black shoes

On trend: Also in attendance was Clemence Poesy who looked effortlessly stylish in a black blazer over a white T-shirt and blue jeans

Flawless: The Harry Potter star elevated her height in a pair of black platform boots and wore her blonde tresses in a blunt bob

She wore black sandals and added a pair of bright yellow earrings to add a pop of colour to the monotone outfit.

Meanwhile, Patrick Walters cut a dashing figure in a white shirt with a blue wave patterned, which he teamed with brown trousers.

Frank Dillane followed in a tailored brown blazer, with matching trousers and a mint green shirt.

Looking good: The blonde beauties posed for a photo together at the star-studded event

Stylish: Michael Jibson arrived in a casual outfit, made up of a navy jacket over a blue shirt and black jeans, paired with white trainers

Glamorous: Joining them was Clio Barnard, who was the picture of elegance in a black silk gown which boasted a tie-up neck

The Essex Serpent follows London widow Cora Seaborne (Danes) who moves to Essex to investigate reports of a mythical serpent.

She forms an unlikely bond with the village vicar (Hiddleston), but when tragedy strikes, locals accuse her of attracting the creature.

Mother-of-two Claire replaced Keira Knightley in the role when the actress had to withdraw for 'family reasons'.

Casual: Meanwhile, Patrick Walters cut a dashing figure in a white shirt with a blue wave patterned, which he teamed with brown trousers. Frank Dillane wore Malone Souliers shoes

A representative for the star confirmed that she decided to pull out of the project over childcare concerns for two daughters, Edie and Delilah

The spokesperson told the Daily Mail at the time: 'There wasn't a comfortable scenario for Keira that could be put in place for an extended period of childcare required for the four-and-a-half-month production.'

The series is set for release on Apple TV+ on May 13.
Four-time Grammy nominee Iggy Azalea blasted American Airlines for allegedly stranding herself and her child without luggage in Florida last Monday.

But according to staff working at the Miami International Airport, the Australian 31-year-old arrived late to the terminal at 5:30pm for a 6pm flight to Los Angeles.

'She was able to check her bags and go through security, but someone in her party got held up going through TSA,' a source told TMZ on Sunday.

Outraged: Four-time Grammy nominee Iggy Azalea blasted American Airlines for allegedly stranding herself and her child without luggage in Florida last Monday (pictured April 16)

'Boarding ended 15 minutes before departure, which left Iggy and co. only 15 minutes to check baggage, get through security, and get to the gate. And, when she finally reached the gate, the door had already closed.'

Iggy (born Amethyst Kelly) had insisted that 'the airplane was still boarding when we got to the gate' but they still 'sold our seats' and 'refused to take our bags off the plane.'

'I feel this was handled very unprofessionally and without any care or compassion,' Azalea - who boasts 45.6M social media followers - wrote.

'I explained why stranding me is one thing but taking a [baby's] luggage is pretty s***. There's stuff he really needs. They do not care.

A source told TMZ on Sunday: 'She was able to check her bags and go through security, but someone in her party got held up going through TSA. Boarding ended 15 minutes before departure, which left Iggy and co. only 15 minutes to check baggage, get through security, and get to the gate. And, when she finally reached the gate, the door had already closed'

'TSA recommends arriving at least 3 hours before your domestic flight': But according to staff working at the Miami International Airport, the Australian 31-year-old arrived late to the terminal at 5:30pm for a 6pm flight to Los Angeles (March 27 stock shot)

Iggy (born Amethyst Kelly) had insisted that 'the airplane was still boarding when we got to the gate' but they still 'sold our seats' and 'refused to take our bags off the plane'

Azalea wrote: 'I explained why stranding me is one thing but taking a [baby's] luggage is pretty s***. There's stuff he really needs. They do not care. [Luckily], I booked a different airline but the average person would've been a** out and f***ed'

'[Luckily], I booked a different airline but the average person would've been a** out and f***ed, so [I] just wanted to warn other moms. Be careful!'

While in the Sunshine State, the Day 3 in Miami rapper got a cherub tattoo of her 22-month-old son Onyx Carter from artist Lua Hills.

'My new favorite and most special tattoo!' Iggy gushed of the new ink tribute on her arm.

'It makes me so happy that this was executed by a talented woman. @luahillsart Thank you again!'

Permanent tribute: While in the Sunshine State, the Day 3 in Miami rapper got a cherub tattoo of her 22-month-old son Onyx Carter from artist Lua Hills

Iggy gushed of the new ink tribute on her arm: 'My new favorite and most special tattoo! It makes me so happy that this was executed by a talented woman. @luahillsart Thank you again!'

Love of her life: Azalea welcomed Onyx (pictured March 8) during her on/off two-year relationship with Grammy nominee Playboi Carti, which ended acrimoniously in 2020

Azalea welcomed Onyx during her on/off two-year relationship with Grammy nominee Playboi Carti, which ended acrimoniously in 2020.

The platinum-blonde culture vulture is next scheduled to headline Croatia's Sea Star Festival on May 27 at the Stella Maris resort in Umag.

Iggy will later serve opening act duties for Pitbull's 51-date Can't Stop Us Now summer tour, which kicks off July 28 in North Carolina.
They are proud parents to two young children.

And on Sunday, Millie Mackintosh and Hugo Taylor celebrated the christening of their second daughter, four-month-old Aurelia, at St Peter's Church in Notting Hill.

The doting mum and dad, who also share 23-month-old Sienna, got dressed to the nines as they posed for a string of candid family photos during the milestone day.

Sweet: Millie Mackintosh and Hugo Taylor dressed to the nines as they celebrated four month-old daughter Aurelia's christening in Notting Hill on Sunday

Former Made In Chelsea star Millie, 32, cut an angelic figure in a white ensemble, which featured a gorgeous series of embroidered flowers on the top half.

She coiffed her brunette locks in a gorgeous up-do comprising a chunky braid around the centre of her head.

In one photograph, the reality star planted a kiss on 35-year-old Hugo's lips as Aurelia looked around contentedly.

Smooch: The doting mum and dad, who also share 23-month-old Sienna, posed for a string of candid family photos during the milestone day

Say cheese: Big sister Sienna didn't miss out on the big day and, wearing a sweet blue dress, sat atop her father's shoulders for a beaming family photo

Radiant: Former Made In Chelsea star Millie, 32, cut an angelic figure in a white ensemble, which featured a gorgeous series of embroidered flowers on the top half

Adorable: In one photograph, the reality star looked adoringly at 35-year-old Hugo as Aurelia looked around contentedly

Beauty: Millie's makeup spotlighted her stunning features

Hugo, who tied the knot with his former Made In Chelsea co-star in 2018, decked out in a crisp suit complete with a pale blue shirt and brown tie.

Matching with her mum, and donning typical christening babywear, little Aurelia looked adorable in a white dress and matching hat.

Big sister Sienna didn't miss out on the big day and, wearing a sweet blue dress, sat atop her father's shoulders for a beaming family photo.

Smiles: Hugo, who tied the knot with his former Made In Chelsea co-star in 2018, decked out in a crisp suit complete with a pale blue shirt and brown tie

Mummy's girl: Matching with her mum, and donning typical christening babywear, little Aurelia looked adorable in a white dress and matching hat

Gorgeous: Millie's outfit was perfectly complemented by espadrilles

The family have not long been back from a fun holiday in France.

Millie shared a slew of sweet snaps to Instagram recently showing her out and about with Sienna and Aurelia in Valbonne in southeastern France.

The TV star posted pictures of her cuddling her youngest daughter as they explored the sights.
Britain's Got Talent star Francine Lewis looked downcast as she was seen for the first time since accusing her husband of cheating on her live on GB News on Friday.

The comedian, 47, has vowed she will never forgive her husband of 17 years, Joel Ryan, 43, and sources have claimed she is refusing to speak to him.

Meanwhile Joel is said to have told friends that he 'made the biggest mistake of his life' after it emerged that he had been texting his best friend's girlfriend.

Spa break: BGT's Francine Lewis was seen at a spa in Essex on Saturday after vowing she will never forgive her husband after accusing him of cheating on her live on GB News

Just a day after her shock TV accusation, Francine was seen taking what appeared to be a tense phone call after fleeing for a spa break in Essex.

Francine was seen sporting a grey robe and nude sandals as she stepped outside to take a call and have a glass of water.

A source told The Sun: 'Francine has taken herself away for a few days to clear her head. Joel was desperate to speak to her after the interview yesterday but she's put her foot down and said no.'

On Friday, Francine appeared on GB News to discuss being scammed out of 90,000 by a phoney stocks company.

During the interview she claimed that her Joel had been unfaithful with 'his best friend's girlfriend' and she only found out about it the night before.

Affair claims: The comedian, 47, has vowed she will never forgive her husband of 17 years, Joel Ryan, 43, and sources have claimed she is refusing to speak to him

She said: 'There's so many scams going on all the time, but you know what's ironic? I stuck with my husband through this whole thing and last night I found out he was cheating on me with his best friend's girlfriend.

'You know what, I wish I'd gone there and then. He put me in that situation and now he's put me in this situation and I'm devastated.'

Francine's husband of 17 years has strongly denied the accusations, but a spokesperson for the star told MailOnline on Friday that Francine read 'crude' and 'disgusting' messages he sent to his best friend's girlfriend.

Yet despite having had an affair, Joel is said to 'deeply regret' texting another woman, with a source telling The Sun: 'Joel deeply regrets what happened and has been telling people he made the biggest mistake of his life. It wasnt a full blown affair but Joel knows that doesnt matter and is not seeking to downplay what happened.'

Casual: Francine was seen sporting a grey robe and nude sandals as she stepped outside to take a call and have a glass of water

The insider continued: 'He is desperate to speak to Francine to try and explain and win her back but shes not interested. As far as Francine is concerned its the ultimate betrayal and its shattered her world.

'Joel has now lost his wife and his best mate who is gunning for him and absolutely fuming. Hes made a total mess of things.'

Taking to Instagram on Saturday, impressionist Francine opened up to her followers explaining she didn't mean to 'wash her dirty laundry' on live TV.

No going back: On Friday Francine appeared on GB News to discuss being scammed out of 90,000 by a phoney stocks company before dropping the 'cheating' allegations

Alongside a bikini snap taken at the spa, she penned: 'I am so touched and grateful for all your wonderful messages I've received. I'm not one to talk about my personal life and I always thought, if something like this happened to me, I would never want anyone to know. I'm embarrassed even though I have nothing to be embarrassed about and i have a lot of pride.

'I thought I had this perfect family life but little did I know, it was quite the opposite. I really didn't mean to wash my dirty laundry on TV but it was so raw as I had only found out the night before and I had not slept all night. I'm just devastated.

'I'm a professional though, so I didn't want to cancel my slot on @gbnews and let them down. It just came out. It ended up in every national paper which was not nice for my kids and for that, I'm truly sorry.'

She continued: 'The good thing that has come out of this is that I have received huge support and this is very healing. Social media is not always a nice place but its been wonderful for me right now.

'I am away for a few days trying to absorb what is happening and I am having to process it all. It's crazy how your life can change in a split second. My family has always come before everything.

'I gave up my amazing career I was so blessed to have, to have my children and be a full time mum for many years before I did @bgt. And I loved it. It was coming up to our 17 years of married life. I am so sad for my children.

She signed off by saying: 'Joel has always been an incredible father and i know he will continue to be just that. Thank you to those who have sent me incredible messages, of support, to my family and to my team that I work with on a daily basis. Life is unpredictable so just enjoy every second.'

Upset: Francine told of her devastation and said she feels 'so sad for her children' while posing in swimwear after accusing her husband of cheating on her

It comes after on Friday, Francine vowed she will never forgive her husband after she accused him of cheating on her live on GB News.

The spokesperson told how Francine is 'going through hell' in the wake of her shock discovery and would never have risked breaking up her family if she was '100% sure' of his unfaithfulness.

They said: 'She will not forgive Joel. Despite his denial, she still believes he has been unfaithful after seeing the messages.'

'She would never break up her family home and marriage of 17 years if she wasn't 100% sure that he was unfaithful. Francine is devastated for the children.'

'She is going through hell. This has come as a great shock to her.'

Damage: The star - who made the original claims live on Friday's GB News - posed in leopard print swimwear on Saturday and discussed how her 'life changed in a split second'

Referring to the alleged texts between Joel and the woman, the spokesperson continued: 'The messages were very crude and she describes them as disgusting between Joel and the other woman and the messages were details of when they should meet as well as where as well as other crude things.

'She had seen messages that he had deleted so he had sent them and then deleted them for some reason.'

They insisted that Francine had no plans to reveal the affair live on TV, explaining: 'Her intention on GB News today was to talk about scamming, there was no plan to discuss anything that she had found out last night.

'It was her truth in the spur of the moment and she was being honest, vulnerable and very, very brave. Personally, it was very touching to watch.'

Francine has already unfollowed her husband on Instagram.

Since Francine's onscreen outburst, Joel, 43, denied the allegations and told GB News: 'I haven't had an affair and I totally deny all of the claims made against me.

'I sent some messages to a friend's partner and I hugely regret sending them, but I did not cheat or have an affair. I love Francine very much and I am ashamed of what I did and deeply sorry for the hurt I have caused. I just want to focus on my marriage.'

The impressionist, who shot to fame on BGT in 2013, was on the lunchtime programme to discuss fraud and how she lost her 90k Britain's Got Talent fortune to scam artists.

Francine's spokesperson: 'She would never break up her family home and marriage of 17 years if she wasnt 100% sure that he was unfaithful' (pictured with Joel and their children Jake and Brooke in 2013)

At the end of the GB News segment Francine suddenly dropped the affair bombshell, telling hosts Patrick Christys and Inaya Folarin Iman that she had found out her husband of 17 years, Joel had been 'cheating on me with his best friend's girlfriend.'

'There's so many scams going on all the time, but you know what's ironic? I stuck with my husband through this whole thing and last night I found out he was cheating on me with his best friend's girlfriend,' she said.

A shocked Patrick could only exclaim 'gosh' before Francine explained how she wished she had left her husband after he introduced her to the scam artists who swindled her out of her BGT fortune in 2018.

'You know what, I wish I'd gone there and then. He put me in that situation and now he's put me in this situation and I'm devastated.'

When asked by host Patrick if she was alright, Francine replied 'I will be. I'm still in shock and numb but you know what I'll get through it, I have to, I have two children.'

After Patrick called her 'a very strong woman' and pointed out her husband is 'hopefully watching,' Francine sounded emotional as she said 'I just feel like such an idiot again.'

The comedian then launched into an impression of three-timed married Katie Price, saying: 'Oh well looks like another divorce, what can I say? I love it.'

She then performed her take on Sharon Osbourne. 'You know what Mrs, don't let these men get to you. These scammers, me and my Ozzy will not let that happen.

Francine and Joel, who is the director of a construction company, married in 2005. They share two children, Brooke and Jake.
Christine Quinn blasted Selling Sunset for allegedly faking storylines minutes before its season five premiere on Friday.

The Netflix villainess, 33, told fans to enjoy the show's '5,000 fake storylines' in a tweet posted to her account 34 minutes before season five was set to drop on the streamer.

'30 minutes till the launch of #SellingSunset,' she posted on Thursday night. 'Enjoy the new season and all of it's 5,000 fake storylines!'

Putting them on blast! Christine Quinn slammed Selling Sunset for allegedly faking storylines minutes before its season five premiere on Thursday

She did not specify what exactly was real or fake on the newest season but ended her tweet with a money bag and nail painting emoji.

However, according to a source speaking with Page Six, the allegedly fake storyline concerns a '$5,000 bribe' fellow Selling Sunset realtor Emma Hernan claims Christine offered in order to steal one of her clients.

Season five of Selling Sunset debuted on Netflix on April 22 and the stars teased the drama to come in a cover shoot for Netflix's companion site Tudum.

The covers showed the 'real estate baegents' glammed up from head to toe and enjoying the finer things in life in the Barbie themed shoot.

Raising eyebrows: She did not specify what exactly was real or fake on the newest season but ended her tweet with a money bag and nail painting emoji

All dolled up! The leading ladies of Selling Sunset were living it up in Barbie's dreamhouse as they posed up a storm for Tudum's first digital cover

In the shoot, fan favorite Chrishell Stause wore a hot pink satin mini dress with long gloves as she clutched a martini glass and reclined on a plastic-wrapped sofa.

And Christine was all dolled up in a glittering mini dress and hot pink heels as she struck a pose on a girly bed decked out in pink.

One of the covers showed Heather Rae Young flashing her abs in a shimmering pink outfit as she floated about the pool while lowering her heart-shaped shades.

Amanza Smith kicked back sipping a drink while Davina Potratz rocked a feathered mini skirt and carried a tray of beverages.

In another shot, Chrishell raised her glass as she hung out with her glammed up co-stars/colleagues, Mary Fitzgerald and Emma Hernan.

Cover girls! Heather Rae Young, Amanza Smith, and Davina Potratz got the cover treatment

Christine and her new pal, Chelsea Lazkani, who is the latest real estate agent to join the show, also got the cover treatment as they kicked back on the pink bed.

Chelsea looked stunning wearing knee-high stockings, a furry pink top, and mini dress.

Maya Vander and Vanessa Villela turned up temperatures while posing in a retro-style bathroom.

Maya wore a pink towel dress as she blew dry her hair while Vanessa sported a pink romper and matching heels.

Working it! Chrishell raised her glass as she joined forces with Emma Hernan and Mary Fitzgerald

Glam! Christine shared the spotlight with Selling Sunset newcomer, Chelsea Lazkani

In the Tudum article, the women dished on what fans can expect from the next season of Selling Sunset.

In no surprise to fans, the Christine drama continues.

Without naming names, Chrishell tells the site: 'Its true that we dont all get along. It is really hard if youre being given an energy from someone. There are always times I wish I could have been better, but its difficult to support someone toxic.'

'I think the thing they get wrong about me is that Im just like everyone else. We have this thing up here that is our brain, and we have this thing here thats our heart,' Christine said.

Blown away! Maya Vander and Vanessa Villela turned up temperatures while posing in a retro-style bathroom

On the line! Amanza chatted on her baby pink phone as she floated in the pool

'I think the hardest thing is youre seen one way, and then people dont realize that you have feelings. People make mistakes and its OK.'

According to Tudum, newcomer Chelsea, who bonds with Christine in the premiere episode, used the words 'bully' and 'mean girls' to characterize the behavior of the other women in the office.

'The type of person I am and where my value system lies, I really just call things out how I see them, and I didnt take into account prior behavior,' Chelsea told the site.

She revealed the stars staged a 'care-frontation' to warn her - in a kind manner - of the perils of associating with Christine.

Mirror, mirror! Maya gazed at her reflection as Davina turned heads in a feathered mini skirt

Going glam! Newcomer Chelsea rocked a furry pink top as she lounged about the satin bed

Back for more: Season five of Selling Sunset will premiere on Netflix on April 22

'I hate that were being portrayed as mean girls this season,' Heather Rae Young told the site. 'Theres a reason why we choose not to have someone in our lives. Theres one person all of us girls have an issue with.'

Emma insisted they were anything but 'mean girls': 'These people are the opposite of mean girls. These are the most supportive girls to me, personally. I struggled in high school and coming into this group has been the biggest breath of fresh air.'

The Christine drama won't be the only story unfolding - so will the office romance between Chrishell and her boss Jason Oppenheim.

While they have since split, Chrishell admits she is not exactly looking forward to watching it play out on small screens.

'Knowing its coming, I almost just want to rip it off like a Band-Aid,' Chrishell says.

'We are going to have a laugh about it, a cry about it, take a minute, take a breath, regroup.'
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Thandiwe Newton was pictured for the first time on Saturday amid reports of her split from husband Ol Parker - and seemingly confirmed the end of their 23-year marriage with a very public display of affection with musician Lonr.

The 49-year-old Hollywood star, dressed in a green print fleece, khaki cargo trousers and bucket hat, gave credence to the whirling speculation that she had parted ways with her director husband by stopping for a passionate kiss and holding hands with the rapper, 25, in Malibu.

The embattled actress, who it has been said is heading to rehab, ditched her wedding ring and diverted her attention from recent adversity by lapping up some time in the balmy temperatures with the California native, whose real name is Elijah Dias.

At 25, Lonr is only a mere four years older than Thandiwe and Ol's eldest child, their 21-year-old daughter Ripley.

PICTURE EXCLUSIVE: Thandiwe Newton, 49, packed on the PDA with musician Lonr, 25, as embattled actress ditched her wedding ring in first sighting since reports she's heading to rehab and has split from husband Ol Parker

Lonr told The Post that all parties involved were focused on the welfare of Thandiwe's children when approached for comment on the new relationship, explaining:

'From the relatively short time I've been fortunate to spend with her, I know Thandiwe and Oliver care deeply about the welfare of their children. That's all I care about right now.'

Lonr's song with singer Amber Mark, Save My Love, appears in the trailer and on the soundtrack for Newtons 2021 film Reminiscence.

Accessorising with a round pair of sunglasses and toting a leopard print bag, Thandiwe, who has also faced an acrimonious exit from Magic Mike 3, appeared in very content spirits as she interlocked her fingers with Lonr's whilst walking alongside each other.

Close: The embattled actress, who it has been said is heading to rehab, diverted her attention from recent adversity by lapping up some time in the balmy Florida temperatures with the California native, whose real name is Elijah Dias

No sign: Although Thandiwe sported other jewellery, her wedding ring was absent

The hitmaker, followed by over 57,000 people on Instagram, kept his attire laidback, sporting a black hoodie, maroon trousers and crossbody leather bag.

The pair filled their weekend with plenty of quality time, which included a spot of retail therapy and winding down with a bite to eat.

The award-winning actress has joined her estranged husband in removing her wedding ring, as the director was spotted without his earlier this week as he left his London home.

Lonr, born in April 1997, entered the music industry with single A.M and he released his debut EP titled Land of Nothing Real, his stage name's acronym, in 2020.

He is a credible songwriter and has received nominations for multiple Grammy Awards for contributing to H.E.R's projects in 2019.

To date, Lonr has 626,213 monthly listeners on Spotify.

He dropped out of college around 2016, to his admission, and while working a 9-5, he would take trips up to New York every week 'to elevate himself and his music'

Self-taught, Lonr learned how to produce and play instruments in his bedroom and has described himself as an 'unpredictable, fun, silly but serious at the same time' type of person.

Split: The award-winning actress has joined her estranged husband in removing her wedding ring, as the director was spotted without his earlier this week as he left his London home

Malibu loving: Accessorising with a round pair of sunglasses and toting a leopard print bag, Thandiwe, who has also faced an acrimonious exit from Magic Mike 3, appeared in very content spirits

Day out: The hitmaker, followed by over 57,000 people on Instagram, kept his attire laidback, sporting a black hoodie, maroon trousers and crossbody leather bag

Passionate: The duo had no qualms about locking lips out in public

The musician has previously voiced a burning desire to 'take over the world,' and names Kurt Cobain and Kanye West amongst his influences.

Of his biggest hope for the future, the singer told Wonderland: 'That I reach heights that even surpass MY dreams and expectations. I'm looking forward to the moment where I can say, 'I never knew I would be here to see this'.

It has been reported that Thandiwe has been suffering with emotional and family problems after separating from her husband Ol, 52, with whom she shares children Ripley, 21, Nico, 17, and Booker, eight.

Display of affection: Thandiwe placed a hand on Lonr's arm as they got swept up in the moment

Toyboy: At 25, Lonr is only a mere four years older than Thandiwe and Ol's eldest child, their 21-year-old daughter Ripley (pictured far right with her parents and sister Nico)

Unwind: The parched pair stopped for a coffee fix

Happy: Lonr, born in April 1997, entered the music industry with single A.M and he released his debut EP titled Land of Nothing Real in 2020

Career: Lonr is a credible songwriter and has received nominations for multiple Grammy Awards for contributing to H.E.R's projects in 2019

Aspirations: The musician has previously voiced a burning desire to 'take over the world,' and names Kurt Cobain and Kanye West amongst his influences

Who is Lonr? A 25-year-old singer from California

His real name is Elijah Dias

Lonr is an acronym for Land of Nothing Real, his 2020 EP

He entered the music industry with single A.M

He is a credible songwriter and has received nominations for multiple Grammy Awards for contributing to H.E.R's projects in 2019

The musician has previously voiced a burning desire to 'take over the world,' and names Kurt Cobain and Kanye West amongst his influences

To date, Lonr has 626,213 monthly listeners on Spotify and over 57,000 followers on Instagram

He dropped out of college around 2016, to his admission

While working a 9-5, he would take trips up to New York every week 'to elevate himself and his music'

Self-taught, Lonr learned how to produce and play instruments in his bedroom

Of his biggest hope for the future, the singer told Wonderland : 'That I reach heights that even surpass MY dreams and expectations'

He has previously described himself as an 'unpredictable, fun, silly but serious at the same time' type of person Advertisement

Ol is a British filmmaker who previously wrote and directed the 2018 musical film Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.

A source said: 'Thandiwe had been acting strange on set, she has been very highly strung. Her apparent breakdown caused so much disruption, it became clear she couldn't play the role.

'There is a lot going on in her personal life, she and her husband have separated. She seemed so stressed she even brought her two pet rabbits to her hotel for emotional support.'

Thandiwe has reportedly been urged to seek mental health support following the break-up of her marriage - and an alleged bust-up with Magic Mike co-star Channing Tatum over Will Smith 's Oscars slap - which she has denied.

The star has previously told how she has suffered 'a number of breakdowns' in her troubled past, as well as discussing her heartbreaking experiences of sexual abuse, racism and bulimia during her time in the industry.

When she was 16 she was groomed by director John Duigan, who was 39 years old at the time.

The violations by Duigan lasted five years, two of those years were termed a 'relationship' after he sought Newton's parents' blessing for her to be his girlfriend when she was 18, while asking her to hide their previous intimacy which began when she was just 16.

The Bafta-winning actress has said the relationship left her feeling 'self-destructive' and said she has only spoken about it 'so teenagers can see they can resist and gain self-awareness'.

Speaking to InStyle magazine, Thandiwe claimed Duigan took advantage of her when she was vulnerable.

She said: 'I was a very shy, very sweet girl. I wasn't in control of the situation. Would I have liked things to be different? Sure.

'But I can now value myself more for the way I got through it. I don't see myself as a victim.'

'I was a very shy, very sweet girl. I wasn't in control of the situation. Would I have liked things to be different? Sure,' she said to InStyle in a 2011 interview.

'But I can now value myself more for the way I got through it. I don't see myself as a victim. In retrospect, although it was legal because I was 16, I was coerced.'

During the first Covid lockdown, she added: 'I had a very complicated relationship with sex. It was like I had to give something back for being noticed. Predators and sexual abusers can smell it a mile off.

'I had a very tough time being a teenager in the film business. It's not a place for young people unless you have your mum standing by you the whole time and that isn't possible.'

Tough times: Thandiwe has reportedly been urged to seek mental health support following the break-up of her marriage - and an alleged bust-up with Magic Mike co-star Channing Tatum over Will Smith 's Oscars slap - which she has denied

Embattled: A source said: 'Thandiwe had been acting strange on set [of Magic Mike] she has been very highly strung. Her apparent breakdown caused so much disruption, it became clear she couldn't play the role'

Difficulties: It has been reported that Thandiwe has been suffering with emotional and family problems after separating from her husband Ol, 52, with whom she shares children Ripley, 21, Nico, 17, and Booker, eight

Chilled: Thandiwe looked relaxed as she walked and talked with Lonr on their outing

Stealing a kiss: They attempted to hide their kiss behind Westside Estate Agency

Spotted: The pair did not hold back from making quite the statement during their first public appearance

Weekend outing: Thandiwe looked happy and relaxed in Lonr's company

Thandiwe has spoken of how an unnamed casting director asked her to touch herself on-camera when she was just 18-years-old.

She said: 'A director, on a callback, had a camera shooting up my skirt and asked me to touch my t**s and think about the guy making love to me in the scene,' she told W.

'I thought, 'Ok, this is a little weird,' but there was a female casting director in the room and I'd done weird stuff before so I did it.'

But years later, she discovered the unnamed man had kept her tape and was playing it at poker games for other Hollywood elite.

Estranged: Thandiwe and Ol tied the knot in 1998 (pictured in 2018)

Following the violating discovery, Thandiwe began to fight the abuse and call it out - an act that cost the actress many jobs.

'I was very aware of the climate of sexual abuse that was going on around me, so I became the person you didn't want to hire because I would call it out,' she told Marie Claire in 2019.

'In retrospect, I can see many instances where not only would I not be employed, but other actors and actresses would not necessarily want to be associated with me.'

'Probably the worst thing about having your innocence rocked is what stays with you. The sense of worthlessness, shamethese things are very hard to move on from. But you can,' she told the outlet.

Platform: Lonr often uses his social media to promote upcoming music

Fans: To date, Lonr has 626,213 monthly listeners on Spotify

Cheeky: In March, Lonr tweeted: 'Sex that's long overdue >>>>>>', but did not refer to anyone

The star said she terminated a contract with a publicist who begged her to stop talking about being sexually abused because it was 'not good for your reputation'.

Thandiwe said she felt 'scarred by 'the way I was exploited and the kind of role and the kinds of things I was expected to do in auditions.'

She has since revealed she was once told to stop talking about the assault so that it would not affect her job opportunities.

Past: The actress has previously told how she has suffered 'a number of breakdowns' as well as discussing her heartbreaking experiences of sexual abuse when she was in her teens (pictured 1991 aged 16)
Helen Flanagan opened up about having a 'challenging' time with motherhood on Instagram on Sunday as she decided to stop breastfeeding.

The 31-year-old, who is mum to Matilda, six, three-year-old Delilah and Charlie, 13 months, with her fiance Scott Sinclair, revealed to her one million followers that she has decided to get childcare help.

The former Corrie star plans to stop breastfeeding and has found help for the first time.

'I've felt so drained': Helen Flanagan detailed her 'challenging' time with motherhood and announced she has decided to stop breastfeeding son Charlie, 13 months

She explained: 'I've decided to stop feeding. I've really enjoyed nursing Charlie but the past month I've just had enough.

'Today was the first day I'm trying to gradually wean him off during the day (he feeds too much).

'I love being a mum and I'm so grateful for my babies, but I've just felt so drained so making some changes.'

Helping hand: The former Corrie star revealed her plans to stop breastfeeding and has found childcare help for the first time

She explained: 'I've decided to stop feeding. I've really enjoyed nursing Charlie but the past month I've just had enough'

Helen continued: 'Found the past weeks quite challenging with mum life. I think it's quite good to be honest as we see such perfect images of motherhood on social media.

'I've never had any childcare for Charlie but I've decided to get some this week. To help him eat more and get off the boob. It's just different stages and they will pass.'

Previously, Helen explained how Charlie refused to eat and preferred breast milk instead.

Family: The 31-year-old, who is mum to Matilda, six, three-year-old Delilah and Charlie, 13 months, with her fiance Scott Sinclair, revealed that she has decided to get childcare help

Earlier this month, the actress, who is best loved for playing Rosie Webster on the cobbles, revealed that all three of her children had caught scarlet fever.

Scarlet fever is a contagious infection that mostly affects young children but is easily treated with antibiotics.

A main symptom of scarlet fever is a rash of small, raised spots while some also suffer with flu-like symptoms, including a high temperature, a sore throat and swollen neck glands.

Under the weather: Earlier this month, Helen revealed that all three of her children were ill with scarlet fever

Taking to Instagram, Helen shared a snap of Delilah napping on the sofa while she battled with the infection.

She penned: 'All the kids have Scarlet Fever. Glad to know what it is after Delilah not been herself and the medicine to treat it.'

Parents have been warned to be on their guard for chickenpox and scarlet fever as cases rise among children across the country.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) issued the warning to parents after nearly 3,500 cases of scarlet fever were reported between September 2021 and March 2022 in England.
Simon Gregson is reportedly due to have no further action taken against him by cops after he was quizzed in the back of a police van following an altercation between two men at a Toby Carvery in Aintree earlier this month.

The Coronation Street actor, 47, was at The Rocking Horse pub opposite the racecourse after Aintree Ladies Day having enjoyed some time at one of the course's luxury suites earlier in the day.

He was pictured in the back of a police van in the car park of the pub and it was later claimed he apologised to ITV bosses for his actions.

The end: Simon Gregson is reportedly due to have no further action taken against him by cops after he was quizzed following an altercation between two men at a Toby Carvery in Aintree earlier this month (pictured on the day)

A pal of Simon's told The Sun: 'Simon has been told there will be no further action taken by the cops following the ruckus in the Toby Carvery.

'It is naturally a welcome relief for Simon and those around him. Simon knows his antics havent looked, or been, great and he made it clear to Corrie it wont happen again.'

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Simon, ITV and Merseyside Police for comment.

'He was acting pretty wildly': It came after Simon was reportedly kicked out of his co-star's leaving party in Manchester by bouncers after dancing shirtless on furniture

A spokesperson for Toby Carvery Aintree told MailOnline of the incident at the time: 'We can confirm there was an incident at the restaurant on Friday night which was reported to the police. We are fully co-operating with the police inquiry.'

According to the Mirror, police spoke to Simon as he sat in the back of their van in the car park of The Rocking Horse after the altercation inside the pub.

A source told the publication: 'There was a bust-up and bouncers kicked him out  they pinned him to the ground before the police arrived. He was taken to the police van and spoken to for some time. It was all very messy.'

Friends in high places: Simon was with Princess Annes daughter Zara Tindall and her ex-England rugby captain husband Mike at Aintree Ladies Day before the Toby Carvery incident

A police spokesperson added to the newspaper: 'We can confirm Merseyside Police were in attendance at the Rocking Horse pub on Grand National Avenue, Aintree.

'At around 9.20pm we received a report two men were involved in an altercation inside the pub. No injuries were reported and the victim declined to make a formal complaint to police. Inquiries are ongoing.'

Earlier in the day, Simon was seen with the likes of Princess Annes daughter Zara Tindall, 40, and her ex-England rugby captain husband Mike, 43.

It was later claimed Simon was 'hauled in to an emergency meeting by Coronation Street bosses after the incident

He was allegedly given a talking to in a bid to get him to keep his behaviour in check on nights out, according to a report.

Hilarious: An onlooker said of the earlier incident: 'He was the life and soul of the party but took it a bit far and it annoyed the bar staff and bouncers in the end' (pictured, centre, with Alexandra and her boyfriend Joe Parker, far left)

A source told The Sun: 'Simon is one of Corries longest-serving stars and is loved on set, but that doesnt mean he has carte blanche to behave however he likes.

'Bosses have told Simon his recent behaviour is not ok and its not a good look for the soap.

'Theyve warned him to clean up his act. Simon apologised and told them hed be on his best behaviour from now on.'

It came after Simon was reportedly ordered by bouncers to head home from his on-screen daughter Alexandra Mardell's leaving party in Manchester's Deansgate district in February.

In footage obtained by The Sun, the soap star could be seen dancing shirtless on furniture after becoming 'a bit merry'.

Simon allegedly directed his fury towards the security staff with an expletive-filled rant after they attempted to kick him out of the venue.

An onlooker told the publication 'He was the life and soul of the party but took it a bit far and it annoyed the bar staff and bouncers in the end.'

A lip-reading expert told the publication Simon he appeared to be saying 'f**k' and 'f**k you' to the two members of staff before assuring: 'I will get down.'

The star - who plays character Steve McDonald in the soap - had been partying with Corrie's Katie McGlynn at the showbiz bash.

She allegedly stepped in-between her pal and the bouncer in a bid to cool down the situation, later posting a beaming photo of herself in an unmissable yellow dress alongside Alexandra, who plays Emma Booker in the ITV favourite.

The source continued: 'Simon was acting pretty wildly  but more in the sense that he was in high spirits and getting carried away.

'The crowd were laughing and cheering, with a lot of people egging him on, and most people there saw the funny side. But some clubbers were shouting abuse at him as well, which was unnecessary.'

Gang: Elle Mulvaney (far left) Steve (centre-left), Emma (centre) and Tanisha Gorey (centre-right) appeared to be in high spirits during the star-studded party

Alexandra's photos from the night saw her party with Millie Gibson (Kelly Neelan), Colson Smith (Craig Tinker), Georgia Taylor (Toyah Battersby), Elle Mulvaney (Amy Barlow) and Mollie Gallagher (Nina Lucas).

As Simon rose to fame in the 1990s as a new heart-throb in one of the nation's most beloved soaps, he was hiding a secret life of binge-drinking and drug-taking.

Speaking exclusively previously to the Sunday Mirror, the star admitted that soon after his 1989 debut as Steve McDonald on Coronation Street, marijuana, cocaine and booze took a grip on his personal life.

'I went completely wild,' the 40-year-old actor admitted. 'Id go through a bottle of Scotch at four or five am after the pub... Sometimes Id be two hours late for work. Other times Id not be there at all.

Looking back: As Simon rose to fame in the 1990s as a new heart-throb in one of the nation's most beloved soaps, he was hiding a secret life of binge-drinking and drug-taking (pictured 2016)

'I didnt take it seriously and I didnt want to be there. I hated being famous. Im not proud of my behaviour, but getting wasted was a way of forgetting... The cocaine use came hand in hand with the alcohol abuse. I started smoking marijuana first.

'Reality wasnt too great so this alternative reality with the use of substances was a better place to be. It was an experimentation at first and I could afford it... I was spending a lot on it. It changed me as a person.'

Admitting that his resulting tardiness on the Corrie set led to tensions with on-screen dad Charlie Lawson, he turned things around soon after his troubles were made public in 1995.

However, a sober Simon said: 'Everything that happened has made me the person I am today and I am so grateful for the life I have. I have a fantastic job, a gorgeous family and amazing friends and colleagues. I am a lucky bloke.'
Drew Barrymore's ex-husband #3 Will Kopelman took a romantic arm-in-arm stroll with his new wife Alexandra 'Allie' Michler through Central Park in Manhattan on Saturday.

The 43-year-old art consultant and the 34-year-old director of fashion initiatives at Vogue - rocking matching Ray-Ban shades - will celebrate their first wedding anniversary on August 28.

Will sported a green jacket, grey jeans, and brown hiking boots while Allie was dressed in a grey jacket over white skinny jeans and black ballet flats.

Romantic: Drew Barrymore's ex-husband #3 Will Kopelman took an arm-in-arm stroll with his new wife Alexandra 'Allie' Michler through Central Park in Manhattan on Saturday

Kopelman and the 47-year-old former child star ended their four-year marriage in 2016, and they amicably co-parent their two daughters - Olive, 9; and Frankie, 8.

Drew frequently gushes publicly over how Michler is 'incredible,' 'amazing,' 'beautiful,' and 'wonderful' but she doesn't 'try to be her best friend.'

'I just feel like I won the lottery with her, like, I really did,' Barrymore said on Armchair Expert Podcast back in September.

'I feel like I'm lucky that there's this new beautiful soul that came into our lives...She knows that I absolutely worship the ground she walks on, and I'm her biggest cheerleader.'

Rocking matching Ray-Bans! The 43-year-old art consultant and the 34-year-old director of fashion initiatives at Vogue will celebrate their first wedding anniversary on August 28

Perky pony! Will sported a green jacket, grey jeans, and brown hiking boots while Allie was dressed in a grey jacket over white skinny jeans and black ballet flats

The five-time Emmy nominee added: 'But I give them space. We hang out. We do dinners with all the kids, birthdays. We might take a trip together, we're finding our way in a beautiful, slow, respectful manner.'

Drew previously divorced Canadian comedian Tom Green in 2002 after 15 months of marriage, and she famously divorced British bar owner Jeremy Thomas in 1995 after just two months.

Barrymore has had no luck finding Mr. Right on dating apps, so she was thrilled when Sienna Miller offered to help her with her love life on the April 13th episode of The Drew Barrymore Show.

'I am not a juggler,' the former Hollywood wildchild shrugged.

2021 family portrait: Drew has two daughters - Kopelman and the 47-year-old former child star (R) ended their four-year marriage in 2016, and they amicably co-parent their two daughters - Olive, 9; and Frankie, 8

'I just feel like I won the lottery!' Drew frequently gushes publicly over how Michler is 'incredible,' 'amazing,' 'beautiful,' and 'wonderful' but she doesn't 'try to be her best friend' (pictured in September)

Barrymore said on Armchair Expert Podcast back in September: 'She knows that I absolutely worship the ground she walks on, and I'm her biggest cheerleader. But I give them space. We hang out. We do dinners with all the kids, birthdays. We might take a trip together, we're finding our way in a beautiful, slow, respectful manner'

Her other exes: The five-time Emmy nominee previously divorced Canadian comedian Tom Green (L) in 2002 after 15 months of marriage, and she famously divorced British bar owner Jeremy Thomas (R) in 1995 after just two months

'I did have many years of my life when I was young, I would walk into a place and be like, "You!" Grab the tie, kiss, make out with, and then "Bye!" And now, I am like... I mean, look at the way I'm dressed! Does this not tell you everything?! I am so different now.'

Drew has been single for six years (the first four were on purpose) and she's focused on motherhood and learning how to 'have a relationship with myself for the first time.'

Barrymore will interview celebs like Rosie Perez, Jonathan Van Ness, Natasha Lyonne, Kiernan Shipka, and Anthony Anderson this week on her syndicated CBS daytime talk show.

'I am not a juggler!' Drew has had no luck finding Mr. Right on dating apps, so she was thrilled when Sienna Miller (R) offered to help her with her love life on the April 13th episode of The Drew Barrymore Show

Barrymore said: 'I did have many years of my life when I was young, I would walk into a place and be like, "You!" Grab the tie, kiss, make out with, and then "Bye!" And now, I am like... I mean, look at the way I'm dressed! Does this not tell you everything?! I am so different now'

Ready for love: The former Hollywood wildchild has been single for six years (the first four were on purpose) and she's focused on motherhood and learning how to 'have a relationship with myself for the first time'
The number of people contracting HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) in the last 10 years has come down significantly. (AP)

New Delhi: Over 17 lakh people contracted HIV in the country in the last 10 years due to unprotected intercourse, according to the data provided by National AIDS Control Organization in response to an RTI query.

However, the number of people contracting HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) in the last 10 years has come down significantly. HIV transmission by unprotected sex was recorded in 2.4 lakh people in 2011-12, while the number reduced to 85,268 in 2020-21.

In response to the RTI query filed by Madhya Pradesh-based activist Chandra Shekhar Gaur, the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) stated that 17,08,777 people contracted HIV by unprotected sex between 2011-2021 in India.

Among the states, Andhra Pradesh recorded the highest number of such cases of HIV transmission at 3,18,814 followed by Maharashtra at 2,84,577, Karnataka at 2,12,982, Tamil Nadu at 1,16,536, Uttar Pradesh at 1,10,911 and Gujarat at 87,440 cases.

Also, 15,782 people contracted HIV by transmission through blood and blood products from 2011-12 to 2020-21, and 4,423 contracted the disease by mother to child transmission according to 18 month antibody testing data.

Among all states and Union territories, a consistent decline in cases of transmission of HIV was seen, the data said.

As of 2020, there are 23,18,737 people living with HIV, including 81,430 children, in the country.

The information on modes of transmission of HIV has been recorded by the counselor from the response given by HIV positive individuals during the time of pre-test/post-test counseling so the data is self-reported, the RTI application said.

HIV attacks the body's immune system. If HIV is not treated, it can lead to AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).

The virus can be transmitted through contact with infected blood, semen or vaginal fluids.

Within a few weeks of HIV infection, flu-like symptoms such as fever, sore throat and fatigue can occur. Then the disease is usually asymptomatic until it progresses to AIDS. AIDS symptoms include weight loss, fever or night sweats, fatigue and recurrent infections.

HIV has no effective treatment. However, it can be managed with proper medical care.

Satish Koul, Director, Internal Medicine, Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram said the HIV situation in India has been stabilising in the last one decade.

India has a very good network of NACO, a Government of India organisation, which is responsible for managing HIV patients right from his/her diagnosis. With easy availability of Highly Active Anti Retroviral Treatment (HAART), the prognosis of HIV patients has improved over the last two decades. In fact since the year 2000, the prevalence of HIV infected patients is on a declining trend, he told PTI.

On the declining trend in the transmission cases of HIV, Prabhat Ranjan Sinha, Senior Consultant, Internal Medicine, Aakash Healthcare, Dwarka said due to the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown restrictions, HIV detection has been low in the country for the past two years.

Now that Covid has passed us by, the number of HIV patients is likely to rise. If a person tests positive for HIV, he should begin antiretroviral therapy (ART) as soon as possible, he added.
Hyderabad: The city police are evaluating drug analyzers, gadgets that can quickly establish the use of narcotics and psychotropic substances by people. With increasing incidences of substance abuse, the police are actively considering introducing analyzers to catch drug users.

Some manufacturers of drug analyzers approached us and demonstrated their products. We are still experimenting with different equipment. Though there is a need for drug analyzers, they should be accurate as the readings will be taken as evidence for further investigation, Hyderabad police commissioner C.V. Anand told Deccan Chronicle.

We are studying the accuracy of the readings of different analysers, especially some German ones, he said adding, We are in early stages of this process.

Agreeing on the need for such analyzers, Mahesh Bhagwat, Rachakonda commissioner of police, said: Ideally, the manufacturers should understand the drug menace in the state. It would be good if such equipment can be procured. If they come forward to offer the products on a no-profit basis, that would be even better.

Two companies, one from the United Kingdom and another from Germany, have recently demonstrated their drug analyzers to the city police, and drug investigating agencies.

Each analyzer is priced at about Rs 8 lakh, with the blood test expected to cost a little more than Rs 1,000.

The drug analyzers will be used during the preliminary investigation. Blood samples of suspected drug consumers will be used as exhibits-cum-evidence during the prosecution, sources in the police revealed.

A police official further said that the analysers would be of great help during frisking. The equipment can also be during raids on gatherings where drug consumption is suspected.

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ANANTAPUR: The quarters for postgraduate students of Anantapur Medical College were in a terrible condition while the doctors accommodation was being used by others on the premises of the Government General Hospital, Anantapur, according to Anantapur MP T. Rangaiah and MLA Ananta Venkatrami Reddy who were on a surprise visit on Saturday.

They were checking out the conditions and facilities at the college ahead of an assessment to provide additional seats in PG courses in specialised subjects at the hospital.

Recently, the super specialities hospital was started with outpatient services for patients with chronic ailments in several wings. The super specialities hospital was sanctioned as part of state bifurcation package to the region to provide medical facilities.

MLA Ananta Venkatrami Reddy observed the postgraduation seats in several subjects will get increased if the bed strength and super speciality services at the Anantapur Medical College are improved.

"But the PG quarters is in a poor conditions without minimum facilities of drinking water and drainage," the MLA said and said authorities were negligent in solving problems of the patients.

The MP and the MLA questioned Principal Dr Myreddy Neeraja and other officials over the poor facilities at the college.

MLA Venkatrami Reddy directed the GGH superintendent Dr Ramaswamy to take action to clear the doctors quarters of unauthorised personnel.

Rajagopal Reddy, engineer with the AP Medical Services & Infrastructure Development Corporation (APMSIDC) , was directed to prepare estimates towards necessary development activities.
VIJAYAWADA: Blood donations in Andhra Pradesh have finally come to normal levels after a long break due to crisis perpetrated by Coronavirus pandemic.

Average requirement of blood in AP is around 5 lakh units per year. Its normal availability has been 3.6 to 4 lakh units. This is largely by way of donations by voluntary blood donors, blood donation clubs, college students and fans associations of popular actors. These donors had become inactive during the three waves of Covid-19 pandemic.

As a result, most of the 125 licensed blood banks in the state went dry, which caused hardship to patients requiring critical surgeries, those suffering from cancer and thalassaemia or undergoing haemodialysis and women delivering babies.

However, the situation has been better since past four months. Donors have returned. Colleges and fans associations are conducting blood donation camps.

Availability at almost all blood banks has reached satisfactory levels.

Indian Red Cross Society is the major player with 18 blood banks with latest infrastructure in the state. It has qualified medical and paramedical staff who follow strict quality control guidelines fixed by Government of India and NACO.

AP state coordinator for Red Cross blood banks B.V.S. Kumar said with restoration of normal conditions, blood donors are now coming forward to donate blood during emergencies. He pointed out that Red Cross supplies 30 percent of blood collected by it to government general hospitals. It provides free of cost unlimited units of blood required for children suffering from thalassaemia.

The coordinator pointed out that Red Cross has established blood transfusion centres for thalassaemia children in Visakhapatnam, Kakinada, Eluru and Nellore. Steps are being taken to start such centres in some more districts.

Kumar explained that some operations like cardiac and lung surgeries need warm blood. This means blood donors have to be present at the time of surgeries.

For this purpose, their organisation is planning to conduct awareness programmes in colleges for motivating youth to enrol themselves with Red Cross under Donors on Call category. Their services could be utilised for such specialised surgeries and in emergencies.

The coordinator said Red Cross is contemplating to make available blood at non-blood bank locations by encouraging blood storage points. This will mitigate time lost in transporting blood over long distances in emergencies.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said digital transactions worth Rs 20,000 crore are now taking place daily in the country and asserted that this is not only increasing facilities but also encouraging an environment of honesty.

In his monthly Mann Ki Baat radio broadcast, Modi said small online payments are helping build a big digital economy and many new fintech start-ups are coming up.

He also urged people who have any experience related to digital payments and the startup ecosystem to share it with others.

"Your experiences can be a source of inspiration for others in the country," he said.

"Now digital transactions worth Rs 20,000 crore are taking place daily in our country. In March, UPI (Unified Payments Interface) transactions even reached Rs 10 lakh crore," he said.

This is not only increasing facilities in the country but also encouraging an environment of honesty, Modi added.

He said people from across the country have written letters and messages to him about the 'Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya' inaugurated on April 14, the birth anniversary of Babasaheb Ambedkar.

There can be no better time than 75 years of India's Independence to remember the contribution of prime ministers, Modi said.

He also urged people to visit a local museum during holidays and share their experiences using the hashtag 'MuseumMemories'.

"People's interest in history is increasing a lot and in such a situation the PM Museum is also becoming a centre of attraction for the youth, connecting them with the precious heritage of the country," he said.

In his remarks, Modi noted that just like in sports, 'divyangjan' are doing wonders in arts, academics and many other fields.

With the power of technology, they are achieving greater heights, he said.

He also urged people to take all Covid related precautions in view of upcoming festivals, including Eid and Akshaya Tritiya.

"In the midst of all this, you also have to be alert of Corona. Wearing a mask, washing hands at regular intervals, whatever are the necessary measures for prevention, keep following them," Modi said.

Stressing on the need for water conservation amid hot weather conditions in much of the country, the prime minister said water conservation is one of the resolves with which the country is moving forward.

"During the Amrit Mahotsav, 75 Amrit Sarovars will be built in every district of the country. You can imagine how big the campaign is. The day is not far when there will be 75 Amrit Sarovars in your own city," he said.

Lauding the work of panchayat Patwai of Rampur in Uttar Pradesh for rejuvenating a pond full of filth and garbage, he said availability of water will determine the speed of progress of any country.

He noted that during his interaction with students, including in 'Pariksha pe charcha', he found among some students were apprehensive about maths.

Citing the country's ancient knowledge of mathematics, he said this is one subject with which Indians should be most comfortable.

"If we invented zero, we have also expressed infinity well. In common parlance, when we talk about numbers, we speak and think million, billion and trillion, but, in Vedas and in Indian mathematics, this calculation goes much further," he said, highlighting the merits of vedic mathematics in solving complex calculations.
Mumbai: Yes Bank co-founder Rana Kapoor has told the Enforcement Directorate that he was "forced" to buy an M F Husain painting from Congress' Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and the sale proceeds were utilised by the Gandhi family for the medical treatment of Congress president Sonia Gandhi in New York, as per the chargesheet filed by the federal anti-money laundering agency in a special court here.

Kapoor also told the ED that he was told by the then petroleum minister Murli Deora that the refusal to buy the M F Husain painting will not only prevent him from building a relationship with the Gandhi family but also prevent him from getting the 'Padma Bhushan' award.

The statements of Rana Kapoor are part of the second supplementary chargesheet (overall third) filed in the special court here recently against the Yes Bank co-founder, his family, Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL) promoters Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan, and others in a money laundering case.

Stating that he had paid a cheque of Rs 2 crore, Kapoor claimed that "Milind Deora (son of the late Murli Deora and former Congress MP) later conveyed to him confidentially that the sale proceeds were utilised by the Gandhi family for the medical treatment of Sonia Gandhi in New York".

Kapoor also told the ED that Ahmed Patel, a close confidante of Sonia Gandhi, had told him that by supporting the Gandhi family at an opportune time for medical treatment of Sonia Gandhi, I (Kapoor) had performed a good deed for the family and it would be duly considered for the 'Padma Bhushan' award.

Murli Deora had tried to convince Rana Kapoor that the refusal to purchase the painting will also not permit him ever to build a relationship with the Gandhi family. It will also prevent him from getting the 'Padma Bhushan award, as per the chargesheet.

The late Deora had told Kapoor at dinner that the failure to purchase the painting could have "adverse repercussions" on him and Yes Bank, Kapoor has claimed in his statement to the ED.

The banker is currently in judicial custody following his arrest in the case in March 2020.

"First of all I wish to state that it was a forced sale for which I was never ready", the chargesheet said about the painting Kapoor allegedly purchased from Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

Milind Deora had made several visits to his (Rana Kapoor's) house and office to persuade him for purchasing an MF Husain painting from Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

"He had even made me several calls and messages also in this regard from multiple mobile numbers. In fact, I was very much reluctant to go for this deal and I had tried also to avoid this deal several times by ignoring his calls/messages and personal meetings," Kapoor told the ED, as per the chargesheet.

"Despite my best efforts to avoid this deal they were exceptionally persistent to finalise the deal rapidly," Kapoor claimed.

He further stated that later, in the year 2010, Murli Deora forced him to meet him for a vegetarian dinner (Marwari dinner) at his Lodhi Estate Bungalow in New Delhi.

He was Petroleum Minister at that time and had been allotted this bungalow in that capacity, Kapoor said, as per the chargesheet.

"During the meeting, the late Murli Deora told me in no uncertain terms that any further delay in purchasing the above-said painting could have adverse repercussions on me and my Yes Bank and it could jeopardise my relationship with the Deora family," Kapoor said.

"Simultaneously, he had tried to convince me that it will also not permit me ever to build me a relationship with the Gandhi family," the banker added.

Further, in the statement, Kapoor claimed, "He (Murli Deora) had also told me that any deviation on my part for the lack of closure of the deal will definitely prevent me from getting awarded the 'Padma Bhushan' for which, according to him, I was highly deserving at that time".

"Under this threat and against my family's wishes, since we are not high-value Art Collectors, I could not afford to invite any form of enmity with the two powerful families involved and thus I had to hesitatingly proceed given the looming and overhanging threat involved," Kapoor told ED, as per the chargesheet.

Kapoor told the ED that formalities for closing the deal were held at Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's office.

"Milind Deora had actively coordinated this final closing meeting. I wish to state that for this deal, I had made a payment of Rs 2 crore through a cheque of my personal account in HSBC Bank," he added.

Kapoor said a few weeks after the deal, Milind Deora conveyed to him confidentially that the sale proceeds were utilized by the Gandhi family for the medical treatment of Sonia Gandhi in New York.

"After a few months, while I (Kapoor) was visiting the residence of (late) Ahmed Patel, a close confidante of Sonia Gandhi, I was informed independently by him that by supporting the Gandhi family at an opportune time for medical treatment of Sonia Gandhi I had performed a good deed for the family and it would be duly considered for the 'Padma Bhushan' to me," the chargesheet said.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has alleged that Rana Kapoor and Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL) promoters Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan had siphoned off funds worth Rs 5,050 crore through suspicious transactions.

The ED had started its investigation after recording ECIR on March 3, 2020, and after the probe began, Rana Kapoor aggressively tried to dispose of his overseas properties to save them from being attachment by the ED under PMLA, the charge sheet said.

The POC involved in this case is Rs 5,050 crore. While Rana Kapoor is the founder of the said company namely DUVPL, his three daughters are 100 per cent shareholders therein.

Rana Kapoor is currently in judicial custody following his arrest in the case in March 2020. The Wadhwans too are in jail custody after their arrest in another case.
Disposing of the writ appeal filed by the Calvary Temple on Tuesday last, the HC said the GHMC shall be free to proceed ahead in accordance with law. (Representational law/ DC)

Hyderabad: Uncertainty looms large over Calvary Temple, an evangelical church, in Hafeezpet, with the Telangana High Court clearing the decks for the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation to take action against the alleged illegal structures following the due process of law.

The Calvary Temple management had approached a division bench of the High Court, challenging a single judges order directing the civic body to remove and raze to the ground all illegal and unauthorised constructions, built by it. The HC had initially stayed the demolition.

Disposing of the writ appeal filed by the Calvary Temple on Tuesday last, the HC said the GHMC shall be free to proceed ahead in accordance with law. It, however, did not go into other issues regarding the title and possession of the property.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a senior civic official told this newspaper that the Calvary Temple management took undue advantage of the stay order and went ahead with massive construction when the matter was pending before the court. The law is clear that the stay order does not allow further construction, he pointed out.

On the Calvary Temple management trying to opt for regularisation of illegal structures, the official said the High Court had rejected its earlier attempts to compound its offence. Second, the area came under conservation zone as per the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority master plan, he added.

The Calvary Temple management which is known for its proximity to the family of a former chief minister in combined Andhra Pradesh was in the thick of controversy over the land where the structures were built. Hundreds of employees of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited had formed a cooperative housing society and purchased 65 acres several decades ago in Survey No. 77 of Hafeezpet which is covered under CS 14 of 1958.

The state government which also claimed ownership of the land lost its case in the Supreme Court and decided to recognise the private ownership. However, several illegal transactions and registration of the property took place subsequently, forcing the HAL cooperative society to approach the High Court. The society alleged that the Calvary Temple built structures on the land belonging to it.

The High Court single judge in WP 38265 of 2012 ordered a field inspection by civic officials who in turn submitted a report to the court stating that the structures had come up illegally. The HC observed that the Calvary Temple never applied for building permission in accordance with Section 428 of HMC Act, mandatory before taking up any construction. On further actions of the Calvary Temple management, the HC observed that the former has taken things for granted and taken law into his hands.

Further, the court observed that obviously because of its (Calvary Temple) reach, it has assumed that none can deal with the default. This is totally unacceptable. The unauthorised and unlawful constructions deserve to be pulled down and shall not be allowed to be put to use, it said.
The judge directed the Registry of the Telangana High Court to circulate a copy of the order to all the courts concerned in the state. (Representational image/ DC)

Hyderabad: Justice Kasoju Surender of the Telangana High Court has directed the magistrate courts and special courts to not refuse to entertain applications for default or statutory bail filed under Section 167(2) CrPC.

The orders on the bail petitions shall be passed the same day, the judge said, after noticing that lower courts were refusing to issue bail to the accused even after the statutory period.

Justice Surender observed that the accused has the right of being released on bail if the chargesheet is not filed within 60, 90 or 180 days, depending on the case, and no extension of time is sought by the police.

He said magistrate courts and special courts should inform the accused that he or she has right of default bail or statutory bail on completion of 60, 90 or 180 days as the case may be, as applicable, if he or she is not released in the meanwhile.

The courts cannot refuse the petition filed under Section 167(2) CrPC on the ground of pendency of bail petition before any other court. This would amount to denying the accused the right of being released and prolonging the detention which is illegal, Justice Surender noted.

Unless orders are passed within the mandatory period, the accused shall have the right to be released on bail. In the absence of a chargesheet being filed within 180 days or an order by the concerned court extending extension of time to the investigating agency to complete the investigation, there is no alternative but to release the accused person on bail, Justice Surender said.

The judge directed the Registry of the Telangana High Court to circulate a copy of the order to all the courts concerned in the state.
The Polavaram Project special deputy dollector released nearly Rs 2.80 crore to bogus patta holders and the amount was directly credited to the accounts of farmers. (DC Image)

KAKINADA: Irregularities in payments of compensation to Polavaram Project Displaced Families have come to light at Gubbampet in Chinaramanayyapeta Panchayat of Devipatnam Mandal in Alluri Sitaramaraju district, related to land acquisition.

Revenue officials of Devipatnam mandal have given genuine certificates for fake pattas.

The Polavaram Project special deputy dollector released nearly Rs 2.80 crore to bogus patta holders and the amount was directly credited to the accounts of farmers. The Adivasi Maha Sabha has lodged a complaint in relation to bogus pattas.

Its legal adviser Inapurapu Suryanarayana said 22 acres of land is cultivated by two families for decades. Their survey numbers were uploaded in their names, online. Last year, pattas were created in the names of seven tribal farmers for 29 acres, issued in the year 2008, during the term of YS Rajasekhara Reddy.

The Devipatnam tahsildar gave genuine certificates to the pattas and the special deputy collector of Polavaram Project (land acquisition) Ramji released Rs 2.80 crore to the accounts of the tribal farmers based on these pattas.

Now, the real tribal farmers have come forward and refused to vacate their lands.

In fact, the amount released by the government as compensation may be withdrawn by some local leaders who played a fraud, and only small sums might have been given to the tribal farmers. Officials verified the bank accounts, only Rs 18 lakh was available in the farmers accounts, the legal adviser said and urged the collector to make a thorough inquiry into the irregularities.

Meanwhile, the Devipatnam tahsildar Veerraju told Deccan Chronicle that there were no records with the farmers on these lands. When Grama Sabha was held on the farmers and the lands issue, nobody had objected and instead accepted the lands belonged to the seven farmers. Now, due to local politics, a complaint was lodged on the lands, he claimed.

Polavaram project administrator CV Praveen Adhithya started a probe into the irregularities and made inquiries about the Devipatnam mandal tahsildar and other revenue officials and were surprised at the actions of the officials, it was stated.
VIJAYAWADA: YSR Congress president and Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy sounded the election bugle, two years in advance, by aggressively attacking the opposition parties and asking the public to support him

Support me if you trust me and feel I am doing good to you, the CM urged the public on Sunday.

While the CM has two more years to govern and implement his welfare schemes to win back the confidence of the people, he is facing severe criticism from the opposition, mainly the Telugu Desam and the Jana Sena, and hence started a reverse attack.

The chief minister started a mass-contact programme, meeting ordinary people at public meetings. He cautioned them that if the YSRC lost power, the welfare schemes benefiting crores of people in the state will be stopped by the others -- the opposition parties. He so far addressed three public meetings and would address people on April 28 with increased pitch.

Sources close to the CM said Jagan would tour districts as frequently as possible to address public meetings. His security wing has readied two bullet-proof buses with all the facilities for the district tours. It will have attached pantry, washroom and other facilities. Jagan will conduct Rachhabanda with villagers and also visit village secretariats to directly check how they are functioning.

As Leader of Opposition, Jagan had walked 3,648km in 341 days under the Praja Sankalpa Yatra walkathon, beating his father YS Rajasekhar Reddys Padayatra record of 1500km and Telugu Desam chief Chandrababu Naidus 2,000 km. The epic Padayatra of Jagan had turned a game changer as he interacted with nearly two crore people and it resulted in the landslide victory for YSRC in the 2019 elections.

The YSRC got 1,56,88,569 votes in 2019. At present, 1.41 crore households are benefited from any one of the YSRC governments Navaratnalu welfare schemes, which ensures Direct Beneficiary Transfer of funds into their bank accounts. Jagan is planning to consolidate maximum support from these households to YSRC in the next two years.

Senior political analysts say that CM Jagan is planning to interact and mingle with people in the coming two years to also know the ground realities, public pulse and to consolidate his support among the masses. He has already asked legislators to start house-to-house visits under the Gadapa Gadapa Ku YSRC programme to attract the people and he too would do the same.

Senior political analysts say Jana Sena founder Pawan Kalyan started yatras. TD chief Naidu I planning a Bus Yatra from May and BJP leaders are also planning to do yatras. Hence, Jagan is concentrating on the task of highlighting the governments welfare schemes at every meeting.

The CM addressed meetings in Narasaraopet, Nandyal and Ongole where he spoke aggressively, attacking the opposition TDP, Jana Sena and others, while explaining his welfare programmes. All these show Jagan is readying for 2024 assembly and Lok Sabha elections with a positive vote.

Political analysts say Jagan did not lose any chance to provoke people against opposition and hence he is highlighting the statements of Naidu and others about AP turning into Sri Lanka and, on the other hand, he himself explaining his governments successes.

They noted that all welfare schemes are being implemented by the CM without fail by depositing money into the bank accounts of beneficiaries directly and the beneficiaries will not want to have a stop to this facility.
The district police officials booked Ghanpur SI Uday Kiran by subjecting a victim to third degree methods that drove him to suicide. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: Cases of abetment of suicide against police officers, especially investigation officers (IOs), have been rising steadily. Many victims unable to bear police harassment are taking the extreme step.

Days after Kamareddy police registered abetment to suicide cases against Tungaturthy inspector Tanduri Nagarjuna Goud for harassing businessman Santosh and his mother Padma, both of whom committed suicide, a similar case has been reported from Ghanpur of Jayashanker Bhupalpally district.

The district police officials booked Ghanpur SI Uday Kiran by subjecting a victim to third degree methods that drove him to suicide.

Following the Ramayampet and Khammam incidents, superintendent of police and police commissioners have been instructed to conduct a review meeting with all station house officers (SHOs) and investigation officers (IOs) and urge them to verify the genuineness of evidences in any case they are handling before taking anyone into custody.

"Over-enthusiasm of SHOs and SIs in districts has created law and order issues and many victims have committed suicide. We have given strict instructions to district police officers to follow standard operation proceedings (SOPs) during investigation. Violators will face music and we will not tolerate indiscipline, irrespective of the police personnels position, a senior officer said.

In a recent case, one Prashant (24) went to a bike showroom to take his NoC after repaying his loan.

There was a heated argument between Prashanth and shop owner Motkuri Srinivas over the interest amount. Srinivas slapped Prashant.

The owner informed SI Uday Kiran who took Prashant into custody and allegedly used third degree methods.

While releasing him, the police asked Prashant to come to the police station the next day. However, feeling humiliated over the incident, he consumed pesticide and died.
SRINAGAR: Just before and during Prime Minister Narendra Modis, visit to Jammu and Kashmir, the twin regions of the Union Territory  Jammu and Kashmir Valley  witnessed a series of armed clashes between uniformed forces and separatists, leaving, at least eight militants including a top commander of proscribed Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), and a security official dead and more than a dozen other personnel injured.

Also, hours before the Prime Ministers arrival in Jammu on Sunday, a mysterious blast was reported from Laliyana in the Bishnah area on the periphery of the winter capital. Though no loss of life or damage was reported, the place where it occurred was about 12 kilometres from Palli where Modi addressed a mammoth rally on the National Panchayat Raj Day.

Officials said that the clashes between the militants and security forces take place routinely in the Kashmir Valley, but they believe the two alleged Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) militants killed in an encounter in Sunjwan on the outskirts of Jammu city on Friday had been tasked by their Pakistani handlers to strike in a spectacular way ahead of the Prime Ministers visit.

Jammus Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), Mukesh Singh, claimed that the JeM militants were speaking to one another and others only in Pashto, the official language of Afghanistan that is also spoken in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and some northern areas and could hail from there. "It is believed on the basis of the arms, ammunition and other equipment being carried by them that they had been tasked to strike in a spectacular way, most probably by carrying out a massive suicide attack in Jammu.

The police has arrested siblings Shafiq Ahmed and Asif Ahmed from Tral of Pulwama district who were working in a walnut factory in Narwal, close to Sunjwan, on the charge of helping the militant duo. It has launched a manhunt for another Kashmiri resident, Bilal Ahmed Wagay, who, according to the police officer, transported the JeM militants to Sunjwan from the frontier district of Samba in a vegetable-laden truck. He claimed that the accused were in touch with a Pakistani-based JeM commander known by his codename Veer through Telegram application.

A team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had also visited the encounter site in the Sunjwan area for the initial evidence gathering, the sources said.

The National Investigation Act, 2008 gives the NIA powers to take suo motu cognisance of terror activities in any part of the country and register a case, to enter any state or Union Territory without permission from the concerned government, and to investigate and arrest people. In 2019, the act was amended to expand the type of offences the agency could investigate and prosecute including the ones coming under the Explosive Substances Act, 1908. End it

Meanwhile, two militants killed in an encounter with the security forces in Puhoo area of Kashmir Valleys southern Pulwama district on Sunday have been identified as LeT cadres including Arif Hazar alias Rehan who, according to the officials, was deputy to the outfits top commander Basit.

The police sources said a 17-year-old youth Nazish Shakeel Wani from the Khanyar quarter of capital Srinagar who went missing on April 16 is among the slain. The third militant killed in the gunfight has been identified as a Pakistani resident known by his codename Haqqani.
KYIV: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Kyiv Sunday, the day the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its third month, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

"Tomorrow, the American officials are coming to visit us; I will meet the Defense Secretary (Lloyd Austin) and Antony Blinken," he told reporters Saturday.

It will be the first official visit by US government officials since the February 24 invasion.
PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari will take oath as Pakistan's foreign minister in a day or two, a senior party leader has said, ending speculation that all allies of the government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif are not on the same page.

The 33-year-old scion of the Bhutto-Zardari family -- who is the front-runner for the coveted post of the foreign minister -- did not take the oath on Tuesday, giving rise to speculation about his reluctance to join the new government.

Qamar Zaman Kaira, Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leader and Adviser to the Prime Minister on Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan, in a conversation with journalists in London, confirmed that Bilawal will take oath as the foreign minister in a day or two.

Also Read | Pakistan's top security forum rejects Imran Khan's 'foreign conspiracy' claims to topple his govt

A day after he excused himself from taking the oath as the foreign minister, Bilawal headed to London where he met Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo Nawaz Sharif during which they discussed the "overall political situation" in Pakistan and vowed to work together on issues pertaining to politics and national interest.

PPP and PML-N -- the two main political parties -- have been alternatively in power when the military was not ruling the country. The powerful Army has ruled the coup-prone country for more than half of its 75 plus years of existence.

Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb had earlier assured that the PPP Chairman would take the oath after he returns to Pakistan.

Kaira told reporters that Bilawal had left for Pakistan after he held two meetings with the PML-N supremo to exchange views on political matters, the Geo report said.

The PPP is the second-largest party in the current coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif who was appointed on April 11.

Also Read | Imran Khan warns those who ousted him to rectify their 'mistake' by holding early elections

In their meeting, Nawaz Sharif and Bilawal  the two key allies in the ruling coalition  discussed ways forward after a "constitutional victory for democracy, the rule of law and supremacy of parliament" and agreed to work closely to "repair the rot across the board," read a joint statement.

The joint statement said that during the meeting both leaders agreed that they have accomplished a great deal whenever they work together.

Matters relating to the broad roadmap for the future with the consensus of all democratic forces and the unfinished business left on the "Charter of Democracy" were also discussed in the meeting.

It was also agreed that high-level summitry is needed to brainstorm the path ahead for a new charter, read the statement.

"There was a strong realisation that the people of Pakistan have suffered greatly at the disastrous economic mismanagement and unprecedented incompetence of the PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) government, all of which needs to be addressed and repaired, the statement said.

The joint goals will focus on reversing in phases the drastic economic slide that Imran Khan has taken the country down on, the terrible blunders and self-serving trade-offs on foreign policy, as well as healing the deep scars from assaults made on the countrys democratic system," it said.

Although there was speculation that the PPP wanted more stake in the government, sources privy to the meeting confirmed that Bilawal and Nawaz Sharif did not discuss anything related to the posts of Senate, Punjab governor or presidency during their meetings, the Geo report said.

Nawaz Sharif -- against whom several corruption cases were launched by the government of former prime minister Imran Khan -- had left for London in November 2019 after the Lahore High Court granted him four weeks of permission allowing him to go abroad for his treatment.

The 72-year-old former prime minister had given an undertaking to the Lahore High Court to return to Pakistan, citing his record to face the process of law and justice within four weeks or as soon as he is declared healthy and fit to travel by doctors. Nawaz Sharif was also given bail in the Al-Azizia Mills corruption case in which he was serving seven-year imprisonment in Lahore's high-security Kot Lakhpat jail.

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Jose, an army captain, deserted after years of pressure. Rafael, a lieutenant, was prosecuted and expelled. Both had clean records with Venezuela's armed forces, but being gay brought them persecution, discrimination and humiliation before they left.

Venezuela's military justice code states that "unnatural acts" can be punished by three years in prison and a dishonorable discharge, which makes it impossible to serve in the military and be openly gay.

Even despite recent reforms and parliamentary petitions by activists, the controversial clause remains.

"It is worse to be gay than corrupt," said Jose, 36, a former National Guard captain who did not want his real name used.

"There are members of the military that are corrupt, thieves, drug traffickers, under investigation who are punished and then carry on working as if nothing happened," said Jose.

He says he was under so much pressure that "my hair fell out."

Venezuela's armed forces have been accused many times in recent years of violating human rights when repressing anti-government protests, which the high command denies.

The "first question they ask you in the entry interview is: what is your sexual orientation, homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual? If you don't reply that you are heterosexual, you're discarded. That's the first filter," said Rafael, the former army lieutenant.

Jose's nightmare began in 2017 when the military decided to investigate "a large group" to determine who was gay.

Jose was unmarried and without children, two conditions needed for promotion.

Many gay members of the military get married to save their careers, but Jose refused and maintained a secret relationship with a man. He spent "the worst four days of my life" in detention, he said through tears.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" he was aggressively asked over and again.

"The last day of the investigation, they made me take a polygraph test. They locked me in a room, connected me to machines, practically naked... and they asked me the most intimate questions."

"How are we going to keep a poof here," they kept telling him, using a derogatory term for a gay man, while trying to force him to sign a confession that he was gay.

"As they didn't have any firm evidence... they dedicated themselves to humiliating me."

He was never again allowed to command troops.

Instead, Jose was kept in a hangar, where he was only allowed to work a few hours a day. "The commander of this unit told me he was disgusted by poofs, that he didn't want me anywhere near him."

In the end, he was put in charge of the unit's Twitter account. "I was so disappointed that I decided to leave," said Jose, who now lives in exile in Spain.

For Rafael, 37, it was a casual encounter that cost him his career.

A fellow member of the military had tried to kill him following an intimate encounter after a night of heavy drinking. He was told to resign to avoid "humiliation."

"You are being investigated for being gay. There cannot be any homosexuals in the armed forces," Rafael was told.

"It is up to you whether it is done the easy way or the hard way," he was warned.

The hard way included a body cavity search without his consent. He was given two choices by the military prosecutor: resign or "we will have to continue the case and you will be jailed for two to three years."

Defiant, Rafael chose to go to trial. However, he was sacked over a disciplinary issue, and the trial was never held since he was no longer a member of the armed forces.

A former military official told AFP that administrative sackings were a common tactic to avoid a trial. "They try to cover up the investigations so they don't have to say they were kicked out for being homosexuals," said the former official on condition of anonymity.

Rafael was so devastated that he contemplated suicide but now hopes to take his case to the Supreme Court, although he is under no illusions that he might win.

Kelvi Zambrano, a lawyer from the Coalition for Human Rights and Democracy NGO, says that change will only come if the "unnatural acts" article in the military code is declared unconstitutional. That would take legal reform or a Supreme Court decision, as happened in Colombia and Peru.

However, even in Latin American countries where it is not illegal to be gay in the armed forces, homosexuality is rarely tolerated.

For Rafael, though, it was not just the military refusing to accept him for who he is. "My mother doesn't accept me, she will die without accepting that I'm gay," he said.

"She's one of those people that says, 'I would prefer a criminal son than a poof.'"

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India is tapping a new energy source that promises to help clean up smog-choked cities and is already providing a vital revenue stream for poor Indian farmers: truckloads of bovine manure.

Cows are venerated as sacred creatures by the country's Hindu majority. They also have pride of place in rural communities, where they are still regularly used as draught animals.

Rural households have long burned sun-dried cattle droppings to heat stoves, a practice that continues despite government efforts to phase it out with subsidised gas cylinders.

Villages on the outskirts of Indore are now being handsomely rewarded for handing over their mounds of bovine waste in a pilot project to help meet the city's power needs.

"We have a very good quality dung, and we keep the dung clean to ensure it fetches the best price," farmer Suresh Sisodia told AFP.

The 46-year-old has sold nearly a dozen truckloads of fresh manure at the equivalent of $235 (Rs 17,954 approximately) per shipment -- more than the monthly income of the average Indian farming household.

Also Read  Cow power: Chhattisgarh seeks greener energy from dung

Sisodia's farm has 50 head of cattle and, in the past, occasionally offset costs by selling manure for fertiliser. Now, he is hopeful for a more reliable revenue stream. "The farmers pick it up once every six or 12 months and there are seasons when they don't -- but the plant could give us a steady income," he said, adding that his farm generates enough manure to fill a truck every three weeks.

His family are one of the many beneficiaries of "Gobardhan" -- literally "dung money" in Hindi -- since the inauguration of a nearby biomass plant by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in February.

Sisodia's cattle droppings are carted to the plant, where they are mixed with household waste to produce flammable methane gas and an organic residue that can be used as fertiliser.

Eventually, the plant is slated to work through 500 tonnes of waste, including at least 25 tonnes of bovine faeces, each day -- enough to power the city's public transit system, with plenty left over.

"One half will run Indore buses and the other half will be sold to industrial clients," plant boss Nitesh Kumar Tripathi told AFP.

The Gobardhan pilot programme has faced its share of logistical hurdles, with decrepit rural roads making it hard for the plant's dung-carrying trucks to reach farms.

Farmers have also been sceptical of what appears to be a get-rich-quick scheme and required careful "assurances of quick and regular" payments before signing on, said Ankit Choudhary, who scouts villages for potential suppliers.

The government, however, has high hopes for the initiative, with Modi pledging waste-to-gas plants in 75 other locations since the Indore facility began operations.

Cultivating alternative energy sources is an urgent priority in India, which burns coal to meet nearly three-quarters of the energy needs of its 1.4 billion citizens.

Its cities regularly rank among the most smog-choked urban centres in the world as a result. Air pollution is blamed for more than a million deaths in India annually, according to a study published in The Lancet medical journal. The project is also guaranteed to appeal to Hindu nationalist groups -- Modi's most important political constituency and vocal advocates of cow protection.

Under their watch, "cow vigilantes" have run Muslim-owned abattoirs out of business and lynched people accused of involvement in cattle slaughter. But bovine-centric religious policies have led to unintended consequences, with stray cows now a common sight in villages and even on busy roads in big cities.

Government acolytes such as Malini Laxmansingh Gaur, a former Indore mayor and member of BJP, hope that scaling up the biogas project will incentivise farmers to keep their cows even when they are too old to give milk or help till fields.

"This extra income will both clean villages and help tackle the strays," she told AFP.

($1=Rs 76.40)

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Those who keenly follow politics might have heard the name Naresh Patel popping up in news reports of late. There was speculation that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was planning to send him to the Rajya Sabha after it notched up a spectacular win in Punjab.

There were also reports that poll strategist Prashant Kishor and Congress leader and Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot had met Naresh recently. (Kishor later denied such a meeting took place).

With so much political interest in him, Naresh, it appears, is clearly a man in demand. And the reason for this is simple: Gujarat Assembly polls.

Also Read | Of Patidars, parties and politics in Gujarat

The Congress, the AAP, which is looking to make a splash in the western state, and even the ruling BJP are said to be wooing the 56-year-old ahead of the Assembly polls slated to be held in eight months.

Some leaders in the Gujarat Congress, which has been leaking leaders constantly, are so desperate about getting Naresh into the party that they apparently bypassed the senior state leadership and pleaded for his inclusion with the high command in Delhi.

Thus, the question: Who is Naresh Patel?

Hailing from Rajkot, Naresh is an industrialist and a much sought-after public figure in Gujarat. His claim to fame is his stewardship of the Shree Khodaldham Trust (SKT).

Established in 2010 and spearheaded by Naresh, the trust manages the Khodiyar Mata temple at Kagvad in Rajkot. Khodiyar Mata is the reigning deity of Leuva Patels, a sub-group of the influential Patidar community in the state, and to which Naresh belongs.

The community has been the driving force behind the BJP's ascendancy and its subsequent stranglehold over the state since 1995.

Numerically strong in the Saurashtra region, which elects 48 of the 182 Assembly seats of Gujarat, the Patidar community can make or break the political fortunes of any party.

Also Read | BJP to launch membership drive in poll-bound Gujarat, HP

In 2017, in the wake of the sustained Patidar agitation, the Congress won 28 seats in Saurashtra, nearly twice the number of seats it won in the previous 2012 polls.

Well aware of this, the ruling BJP is leaving no stone unturned to retain its hold over the community and Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

In September 2021, jittery about the possible shift in loyalties of the Patidar community, the top BJP leadership made chief minister Vijay Rupani quit and brought in Bhupendra Patel, a Leuva Patidar, as the chief minister.

The move to bring in Bhupendra Patel was triggered by increasing pressure from the Patidars, including Naresh Patel. But the new CMs stint has so far been lacklustre. He hasn't looked strong and inspired confidence in the community.

On the other hand, Naresh Patel, with his cult following, stands taller than the chief minister in public perception.

Naresh also owns Patel Brass Works, which manufactures engineering components for domestic and overseas markets, including Canada, the US, Europe and the Middle East. However, it is his philanthropic work and chairmanship of the SKT that have endeared Naresh to the crowds.

SKT is now the most prominent umbrella organisation unifying Leuva Patels under its banner.

"Naresh Patel has single-handedly taken the Khodaldham to its current height. As he is one of the tallest Patidar leaders, it will certainly help any party he chooses," says Haribhai Desai, a senior journalist based in Ahmedabad.

The influence of the Khodaldham trust can be gauged by the fact that between January 17 and January 21, 2017, a record 75 lakh devotees from the community attended the temple's inauguration. The event created several records: over five lakh people from the Leuva Patel community sang the national anthem, securing it a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

The soft-spoken businessman is also a famed philanthropist, a legacy he is said to have inherited from his father, Ravjibhai Undhad, who set up hostels for the community's boys and girls in Rajkot. Naresh took forward the philanthropic work by establishing the trust, which runs several cultural and educational organisations.

Nareshs popularity can be gauged from the fact that despite feverish speculation over his political ambitions, no leader from any party has uttered a word against him.

"The community needs his leadership, says Manhar Patel, a Congress leader and a close associate of Naresh.

For the past three-four years, he has worked for the upliftment of the people at the social level, but now there is a need for political intervention. The reason is that the current leadership hasn't been able to resolve issues plaguing Gujarat. Why are Patidars leaving for other countries? Simply because they have no opportunity back home."

With polls due in the state, it will be interesting to see the influential industrialists next move and his political impact.

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The Trinamool Congress is quietly stepping into the opposition space in Uttar Pradesh.

After campaigning for Samajwadi Party in the recent Assembly elections, the Trinamool is apparently eyeing a bigger role in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

A Trinamool delegation will be visiting Prayagraj on Sunday where a family of five was found murdered on Saturday. This is the first party from outside the state to visit the site of crime.

Also Read | Its time for BJP to introspect in West Bengal

The Samajwadi Party (SP), which is the main opposition force in Uttar Pradesh, has not gone beyond condemning the incident in a press statement.

SP MLA Shivpal Singh Yadav, however, did visit the family of the deceased on Saturday but said that he had come in his 'personal capacity'.

The TMC delegation to Prayagraj comprises Dola Sen, Mamata Bala Thakur, Saket Gokhale, Uma Soren, and Lalitesh Tripathi.

Lalitesh Tripathi, who joined the Trinamool after quitting the Congress, said that the Prayagraj murders were 'shocking' because they come days after another family of five was murdered in the city.

Sources said that Trinamool had decided to play a more proactive role as an opposition party in Uttar Pradesh and will take on the Yogi government head on.

"It is clear that the opposition in UP lacks the punch needed to tackle the ruling BJP," said a Trinamool state leader.

It may be recalled that five members of a family were killed with sharp-edged weapons in the Khevrajpur village in Prayagraj.

This is the second such case reported in the state in one week.

Last Saturday, the bodies of five members of a family were found inside their house in Prayagraj.

The bodies of the woman and three daughters were found with their throats slit open, while the man was found hanging from a noose.

In the recent case, the victims were identified as Rajkumar Yadav, 55, his daughter Manisha ,25, his wife Kusum ,50, daughter-in-law Savita ,30, and Rajkumar's granddaughter Mitakshi 2.

As per the preliminary report, all five dead persons had head injuries. There is no confirmation if Rajkumar's daughter Manisha and daughter-in-law Savita were raped or not. Their vaginal swabs have been taken and sent to FSL lab for examination.

The house of the victims was also set on fire after the crime was committed. The police were informed about the incident by the brother of Rajkumar Yadav.

Prayagraj Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Ajay Kumar said, "There was a fire in the bedroom which has been extinguished by the fire brigade. Bodies have been sent for post-mortem. Till now motive behind the incident is not clear. Further investigation underway."

The Prayagraj incidents come days after the BJP sent similar teams to Bogtui in Birbhum district where nine people were burnt alive, and to Hanskhali in Nadia district where a minor girl died after she was allegedly gang-raped.

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Ashish Mishra, the main accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence of October 3, 2021, surrendered in the court of the chief judicial magistrate on Sunday in compliance with the Supreme Court directive. He is the son of Union Minister Ajay Kumar Mishra Teni.

The development comes six days after the Supreme Court cancelled his bail and granted him a week to surrender.

Ashish Mishra was granted bail by the Allahabad High Court in February 2022 in connection with the violence that broke out in Lakhimpur Kheri in October 2021, wherein eight people, including four farmers, were killed.

However, last week, the apex court revoked Ashish Mishra's bail, disposing of a petition filed by farmers, who had challenged the Allahabad High Court's order.

Also Read  Ashish Mishra's bail cancellation: SC rights a wrong

The three-judge bench noted that the victims of the violence were denied the right of hearing in the Allahabad High Court that had granted bail to Mishra. It also asked the high court to reconsider the bail granted to Ashish Mishra.

The incident dates back to October 3, 2021, when a group of farmers was protesting in Lakhimpur Kheri district against the Centre's three farm laws. However, a violent clash broke out, during which an SUVreportedly owned by Union MoS Ajay Mishraran over the farmers, killing four of them.

As alleged by the protesting farmers, Ajay Mishra's son Ashish Mishra was inside the car when the accident took place.

Following this, a case was registered and the Supreme Court also appointed retired Punjab and Haryana High Court judge Rakesh Kumar Jain to monitor and investigate the incident. An SIT was also reconstituted by the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government, which includes three IPS officers.

At the same time, the minister's son was also arrested. However, after investigation and filing a charge sheet, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court granted bail to Mishra on February 10, 2022.

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Three teenagers are due to appear in court this week after a priest was verbally abused and damage was caused to a County Derry church on Saturday afternoon.

A police spokesperson said they were treating the incident as a 'hate crime' and three teenagers had been arrested.

"Police received a report of criminal damage to a church in the King Street area of Magherafelt yesterday afternoon (Saturday 23rd April)," they said.

"At approximately 4pm, it was reported that three males had entered the building and verbally abused the priest and caused damage to a number of items.

"This is being treated as a hate crime and police attended the scene and subsequently arrested three males aged 11, 13 and 15 on suspicion of a number of offences including criminal damage.

"The 11 and 15-year-old are expected to appear before Coleraine Magistrates Court tomorrow (Monday 25th April).

"The 13-year-old male is expected to appear before Magherafelt Magistrates Court on Wednesday 18th May.

"As is normal procedure all charges will be reviewed by the Public Prosecution Service."

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The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and the Institute for Palestine Studies are extending the deadline to submit applications to participate in the Annual Palestine Forum until 31 May 2022. This extension has been granted in response to the request of many interested researchers to extend the period available to them to submit their applications.

The Annual Palestine Forum, is an academic conference organized by the two institutions to provide a space for both Palestinian and non-Palestinian researchers from all over the world to present papers related to Palestinian history, the Palestinian struggle, the apartheid regime, settler colonialism, Zionism, social and economic conditions under occupation, national liberation movements, the status of Palestine in Arab and international relations, public opinion and other relevant topics. The first round will be held in late January 2023.

This conference will serve as an opportunity for researchers who are already working on papers for publication to present and discuss in the manner of large-scale academic conferences. Participants who do not wish to submit research are nonetheless encouraged to register in advance to secure their attendance.

The Arab Center and the Institute for Palestine Studies invite researchers interested in the Palestinian cause, including young researchers and recent PhD holders, to submit their papers in topics related to Palestine, including but not limited to:

Policy and strategy analysis (local, regional, and international).

Patterns of Palestinian resistance.

Palestinian displacement.

The Nakba, Memory, and Oral History.

Historical writing of Palestine and the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian community on both sides of the Green Line and in the diaspora.

Zionism, Society and State in Israel.

Gender studies.

Political Economy and Development Studies.

Human rights and law.

Settler colonialism and apartheid.

Indigenous studies.

Security and military studies and the war economy.

Demography and Population.

Trauma studies.

Space and place studies.

Note that this list in non-exhaustive and the organizing committee is open to receiving studies on other topics relating to Palestine.

Participation Regulations

Once submitted, papers that have been reviewed and selected by the organizing committee will undergo a peer-review process. Following the peer-review, the papers will be assigned to specific conference sessions according to topic.

The organizing committee will receive research proposals (maximum 500 words), accompanied by an up-to-date academic CV of the researcher, in Arabic or English, no later than 31 May 2022. The proposal should include the research problem and hypotheses, methodology and theoretical frameworks used, and a description of the contribution made by the paper to its field in terms of its approach or conclusion. Use the application form to submit your research proposal.

If the research is already complete, a 300-word abstract can be submitted in place of a proposal and the paper can be directly sent for peer-review.

The participants will be notified of the selection of their paper, which may be subject to amendment, within two weeks of sending the proposal. Unsuccessful submissions will also be notified.

Research proposals selected by the Conference Committee should be followed up with a full paper (6000-9000 words) for peer-review no later than 15 September 2022.

A specialized committee will review the research and will be obligated to inform the researcher of the papers finalization or of any amendment requests no later than two months after receiving the full paper. The organizing committee reserves the right to withdraw papers that have been deemed unsuitable once they have been received in full and reviewed.

The conference committee's approval of the research proposal does not automatically guarantee the final papers inclusion in the conference.

All correspondence should be directed to: annualpalestineforum@dohainstitute.org

* Those who are interested in participating in the conference without submitting research Forum registration will open for scholars and those interested in research on Palestine at the beginning of October 2022.

Conference venue: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, Doha, Qatar.

Conference language: Arabic and English.

For any inquiries, please contact: annualpalestineforum@dohainstitute.org
Quintessence Theatre return to the live stage with an original play exploring the shadow pandemics of Irelands lockdown: domestic violence and parental alienation.

The play will ne performed in Droichead Arts Centre.

EVENING SHOWS - THURS 28TH & FRI 29TH APRIL | 8PM |

MATINEE - FRI 29TH APRIL

Drogheda, 2020. In the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic two neighbours, Matt and Aisling, are each trapped in their own cycles of relationship abuse from which there can be no escape during a national lockdown. She just wants to feel safe. He just wants to see his children.

In this original play based on true stories Quintessence Theatre use their dazzling physical ensemble theatre techniques mingled with the multi-media of film and music to intimately and poignantly explore the struggle of Irish men and women caught in abusive purgatories made all the more perilous by COVID-19 restrictions in an inefficient and unsympathetic system.

Behind Locked Doors first premiered as a short digital mini-series in Drogheda Arts Festival 2021. Now the fully-fledged live stage production will have its world premiere at Droichead Arts Centre as part of Drogheda Arts Festival 2022 (before transferred to An Tain Arts Centre, Dundalk in June).

Each performance will be followed by a post show discussion with the director, cast, and a representative from Womens Aid and Treoir. Suitable for ages 15+
Students from Dundalk Grammar School secured 460 in funding recently to advance their social innovation project for a sensory room.

The teenagers, who are taking part in Young Social Innovators (YSI), pitched their idea to a Dragons Den panel including representatives from The Community Foundation for Ireland, Virgin Media, and Young Social Innovators for access to a Social Impact Fund dedicated to advancing teenagers ideas for social good.

The project entitled Silver Linings aims to support the neurodivergent students in their school, or indeed anyone whose mental health may be suffering due to the hectic schedule of their day.

They are designing room at the school and piloting mental health breaks where a class on the timetable is replaced with sport or a coffee break so a student may take some time for themselves.

Funding awarded from the Social Impact Fund at The Den will go towards furnishing the sensory room with second-hand furniture, to keep the project as sustainable as possible.

Almost 10,000 was granted to 18 YSI teams through the Social Impact Fund that is supported by The Community Foundation for Ireland.

The students in receipt of funding are developing innovative ideas around a wide range of issues including biodiversity, plastic reduction, ocean pollution, inclusion, social media and online safety, racism, and more.

Some 7,000 students throughout Ireland are currently involved in similar projects with Young Social Innovators in 2022.

Rachel Collier, CEO and Co-founder, Young Social Innovators said: The applications submitted by young people to the Social Impact Fund were of a very high calibre and we are delighted to provide direct support to eighteen inspiring youth-led projects to help them advance their innovations which will make a real difference in their communities.

Witnessing the professionalism in which these students presented their ideas was truly remarkable and we wish them the very best of luck.

We are grateful to The Community Foundation for Ireland for supporting the Social Impact Fund this year, a fund which is dedicated to advancing youth-led ideas for social good.

Denise Charlton, Chief Executive of The Community Foundation for Ireland said: We believe in Empowering Generations. It is a key part of the equality mission we share with our donors and the 5,000 voluntary, community and charitable groups we work with across Ireland.

We are proud to work with Young Social Innovators as it promotes the vision, creativity and talent of our young people to address some of the biggest challenges facing our communities today.

We wish all those involved every success and look forward to seeing the freshness and energy they will bring to finding solutions to a range of issues.
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As with most every other aspect of modern society, computerization, augmentation and automation have hyper-accelerated the pace at which wars are prosecuted  and who better to help reshape the US military into a 21st century fighting force than an entire industry centered on moving fast and breaking things? In his latest book, War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future, professor and chair of the Anthropology Department at San Jose State University, Roberto J Gonzalez examines the military's increasing reliance on remote weaponry and robotic systems are changing the way wars are waged. In the excerpt below, Gonzalez investigates Big Tech's role in the Pentagon's high-tech transformations.

UC Press

Excerpted from War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future by Roberto J. Gonzalez, published by the University of California Press.  2022 by Roberto J. Gonzalez.

Ash Carters plan was simple but ambitious: to harness the best and brightest ideas from the tech industry for Pentagon use. Carters premise was that new commercial companies had surpassed the Defense Departments ability to create cutting-edge technologies. The native Pennsylvanian, who had spent several years at Stanford University prior to his appointment as defense secretary, was deeply impressed with the innovative spirit of the Bay Area and its millionaire magnates. They are inventing new technology, creating prosperity, connectivity, and freedom, he said. They feel they too are public servants, and theyd like to have somebody in Washington they can connect to. Astonishingly, Carter was the first sitting defense secretary to visit Silicon Valley in more than twenty years.

The Pentagon has its own research and development agency, DARPA, but its projects tend to pursue objectives that are decades, not months, away. What the new defense secretary wanted was a nimble, streamlined office that could serve as a kind of broker, channeling tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars from the Defense Departments massive budget toward up-and-coming firms developing technologies on the verge of completion. Ideally, DIUx would serve as a kind of liaison, negotiating the needs of grizzled four-star generals, the Pentagons civilian leaders, and hoodie-clad engineers and entrepreneurs. Within a year, DIUx opened branch offices in two other places with burgeoning tech sectors: Boston, Massachusetts, and Austin, Texas.

In the short term, Carter hoped that DIUx would build relationships with local start-ups, recruit top talent, get military reservists involved in projects, and streamline the Pentagons notoriously cumbersome procurement processes. The key is to contract quickly  not to make these people fill out reams of paperwork, he said. His long-term goals were even more ambitious: to take career military officers and assign them to work on futuristic projects in Silicon Valley for months at a time, to expose them to new cultures and ideas they can take back to the Pentagon... [and] invite techies to spend time at Defense.

In March 2016, Carter organized the Defense Innovation Board (DIB), an elite brain trust of civilians tasked with providing advice and recommendations to the Pentagons leadership. Carter appointed former Google CEO (and Alphabet board member) Eric Schmidt to chair the DIB, which includes current and former executives from Facebook, Google, and Instagram, among others.

Three years after Carter launched DIUx, it was renamed the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), indicating that it was no longer experimental. This signaled the broad support the office had earned from Pentagon leaders. The Defense Department had lavished nearly $100 million on projects from forty-five companies, almost none of which were large defense contractors. Despite difficulties in the early stages  and speculation that the Trump administration might not support an initiative focused on regions that tended to skew toward the Democratic Party  DIUx was a proven, valuable asset to the DoD, in the words of Trumps deputy defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan. The organization itself is no longer an experiment, he noted in an August 2018 memo, adding: DIU remains vital to fostering innovation across the Department and transforming the way DoD builds a more lethal force. Defense Secretary James Mad Dog Mattis visited Amazons Seattle headquarters and Googles Palo Alto office in August 2017 and had nothing but praise for the tech industry. Im going out to see what we can pick up in DIUx, he told reporters. In early 2018, the Trump administration requested a steep increase in DIUs budget for fiscal year 2019, from $30 million to $71 million. For 2020, the administration requested $164 million, more than doubling the previous years request.

Q BRANCH

Although Pentagon officials portrayed DIUx as a groundbreaking organization, it was actually modeled after another firm established to serve the US Intelligence Community in a similar way. In the late 1990s, Ruth David, the CIAs deputy director for science and technology, suggested that the agency needed to move in a radically new direction to ensure that it could capitalize on innovations being developed in the private sector, with a special focus on Silicon Valley firms. In 1999, under the leadership of its director, George Tenet, the CIA established a nonprofit legal entity called Peleus to fulfill this objective, with help from former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. Soon after, the organization was renamed In-Q-Tel.

The first CEO, Gilman Louie, was an unconventional choice to head the enterprise. Louie had spent nearly twenty years as a video game developer who, among other things, created a popular series of Falcon F-16 flight simulators. At the time he agreed to join the new firm, he was chief creative officer for the toy company Hasbro. In a 2017 presentation at Stanford University, Louie claimed to have proposed that In-Q-Tel take the form of a venture capital fund. He also described how, at its core, the organization was created to solve the big data problem:

The problem they [CIA leaders] were trying to solve was: How to get technology companies who historically have never engaged with the federal government to actually provide technologies, particularly in the IT space, that the government can leverage. Because they were really afraid of what they called at that time the prospects of a digital Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor

happened with every different part of the government having a piece of information but they couldnt stitch it together to say, Look, the attack at Pearl Harbor is imminent. The White House had a piece of information, naval intelligence had a piece of information, ambassadors had a piece of information, the State Department had a piece of information, but they couldnt put it all together [In] 1998, they began to realize that information was siloed across all these different intelligence agencies of which they could never stitch it together [F]undamentally what they were trying to solve was the big data problem. How do you stitch that together to get intelligence out of that data?

Louie served as In-Q-Tels chief executive for nearly seven years and played a crucial role in shaping the organization.

By channeling funds from intelligence agencies to nascent firms building technologies that might be useful for surveillance, intelligence gathering, data analysis, cyberwarfare, and cybersecurity, the CIA hoped to get an edge over its global rivals by using investment funds to co-opt creative engineers, hackers, scientists, and programmers. The Washington Post reported that In-Q-Tel was engineered with a bundle of contradictions built in. It is independent of the CIA, yet answers wholly to it. It is a non- profit, yet its employees can profit, sometimes handsomely, from its work. It functions in public, but its products are strictly secret. In 2005, the CIA pumped approximately $37 million into In-Q-Tel. By 2014, the organizations funding had grown to nearly $94 million a year and it had made 325 investments with an astonishing range of technology firms, almost none of which were major defense contractors.

If In-Q-Tel sounds like something out of a James Bond movie, thats because the organization was partly inspired by  and named after  Q Branch, a fictional research and development office of the British secret service, popularized in Ian Flemings spy novels and in the Hollywood blockbusters based on them, going back to the early 1960s. Ostensibly, both In-Q-Tel and DIUx were created to transfer emergent private-sector technologies into the US intelligence and military agencies, respectively. A somewhat different interpretation is that these organizations were launched to capture technological innovations... [and] to capture new ideas. From the perspective of the CIA these arrangements have been a win-win, but critics have described them as a boondoggle  lack of transparency, oversight, and streamlined procurement means that there is great potential for conflicts of interest. Other critics point to In-Q-Tel as a prime example of the militarization of the tech industry.

Theres an important difference between DIUx and In-Q-Tel. DIUx is part of the Defense Department and is therefore financially dependent on Pentagon funds. By contrast, In-Q-Tel is, in legal and financial terms, a distinct entity. When it invests in promising companies, In-Q-Tel also becomes part owner of those firms. In monetary and technological terms, its likely that the most profitable In-Q-Tel investment was funding for Keyhole, a San Franciscobased company that developed software capable of weaving together satellite images and aerial photos to create three-dimensional models of Earths surface. The program was capable of creating a virtual high-resolution map of the entire planet. In-Q-Tel provided funding in 2003, and within months, the US military was using the software to support American troops in Iraq.

Official sources never revealed how much In-Q-Tel invested in Keyhole. In 2004, Google purchased the start-up for an undisclosed amount and renamed it Google Earth. The acquisition was significant. Yasha Levine writes that the Keyhole-Google deal marked the moment the company stopped being a purely consumer-facing internet company and began integrating with the US government [From Keyhole, Google] also acquired an In-Q-Tel executive named Rob Painter, who came with deep connections to the world of intelligence and military contracting. By 2006 and 2007, Google was actively seeking government contracts evenly spread among military, intelligence, and civilian agencies, according to the Washington Post.

Apart from Google, several other large technology firms have acquired startups funded by In-Q-Tel, including IBM, which purchased the data storage company Cleversafe; Cisco Systems, which absorbed a conversational AI interface startup called MindMeld; Samsung, which snagged nanotechnology display firm QD Vision; and Amazon, which bought multiscreen video delivery company Elemental Technologies. While these investments have funded relatively mundane technologies, In-Q-Tels portfolio includes firms with futuristic projects such as Cyphy, which manufactures tethered drones that can fly reconnaissance missions for extended periods, thanks to a continuous power source; Atlas Wearables, which produces smart fitness trackers that closely monitor body movements and vital signs; Fuel3d, which sells a handheld device that instantly produces detailed three-dimensional scans of structures or other objects; and Sonitus, which has developed a wireless communication system, part of which fits inside the users mouth. If DIUx has placed its bets with robotics and AI companies, In-Q-Tel has been particularly interested in those creating surveillance technologies  geospatial satellite firms, advanced sensors, biometrics equipment, DNA analyzers, language translation devices, and cyber-defense systems.

More recently, In-Q-Tel has shifted toward firms specializing in data mining social media and other internet platforms. These include Dataminr, which streams Twitter data to spot trends and potential threats; Geofeedia, which collects geographically indexed social media messages related to breaking news events such as protests; PATHAR, a company specializing in social network analysis; and TransVoyant, a data integration firm that collates data from satellites, radar, drones, and other sensors. In-Q-Tel has also created Lab41, a Silicon Valley technology center specializing in big data analysis and machine learning.
The same day Russia began the invasion of Ukraine, another news went largely unnoticed: the decision to double the EUFOR missions personnel to Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), whose forces are now up to 1,100. Though the arrangement was settled before the start of the war, it was fueled by the deterioration of the security situation internationally which has the potential to spread instability to Bosnia-Herzegovina, as per the EUFOR communique. Officially presented as a precautionary measure, the doubling of the international force in BiH is to be intended as a deterrent against further instability amid what has been defined by the High Representative for BiH (OHR), Christian Schmidt, as the great existential threat of the post-war period. Schmidts report refers to the Serb member of the Bosnian tripartite presidency, Milorad Dodiks secessionist moves.

Since last summer, Dodik has jeopardized the integrity of central institutions by transferring exclusive state powers in favor of Republika Srpska (RS)  the Serb-majority entity that makes up part of Bosnia  including the withdrawal from the Bosnian army, security services, the tax system, and the judiciary; ultimately paving the way to the institutional paralysis of an already weak post-war Bosnian state. The fear of secession is also shared by the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, who well before the ongoing war had warned Bosnia was one of Europes two hotspots  the other being Ukraine. Because of his threats to Bosnian stability, Dodik has been sanctioned by the US and the UK, but not the EU. On 12 April, the OHR invoked the so-called Bonn Powers to counteract secessionist policies by striking down a RS law on property, which is a competence of the central state.

IS WAR A REAL OPTION? - Bosnians recently commemorated the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo, the longest in modern history, and of the war that claimed almost 100,000 lives. In spring 1992, many shared a similar perception as today: that a war was  and is  impossible. However, no secessionist threat should be underestimated. It is worth investigating whether, given the Bosnian peoples suffering experienced thirty years ago, a new war might trigger similar impulses and drive one (constitutive) people against each other again. Enquiring into the answer is perhaps a mere political calculation. The threats to Bosnian stability by Milorad Dodik are nothing new in his political career: they follow the path of his climbing over Bosnias multileveled system and, as such, have only grown in intensity.

As a matter of fact, a key factor of Dodiks political success has been the instrumentalization of the prospect of a new ethnic war, a bogeyman he has cultivated for years through a nationalist rhetorical apparatus made up of blaming the Muslims, the menace against Bosnian Serbs and an overall encirclement syndrome that was able to consolidate the RS electoral body around himself, seen as the only possible leader who can guarantee the survival of his national group. In other words, for Dodik, keeping such threats alive has been far more politically convenient than waging a real war. Keeping in check central institutions and reiterating the promise of independence from Sarajevo is more pivotal to Dodiks political survival than Bosnian Serbs. And such a scheme will continue to bear fruit in his upcoming presidential re-election bid. Having said that, Bosnia-Herzegovinas institutional paralysis must not be minimized. Dodik succeeded in radicalizing nationalist demands, unbalancing the fragile Daytonian equilibrium and thus reinforcing the status quo  a predicament that, as post-Yugoslav politics shows, is hard to reverse. A new war is not politically convenient nor economically sustainable; however, it will be hard for Sarajevo to reclaim state powers RS authorities now assert as theirs.

A SPILL-OVER OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE? - If (Bosnia and Herzegovina) decides to be a member of any alliance, that is an internal matter. Our response is a different matter. Ukraines example shows what we expect. Should there be any threat, we will respond, said the Russian ambassador to Bosnia Igor Kalbukhov last March. Russias readiness to respond to the prospect of Bosnia joining NATO could be read as a diplomatic reaction to the EUFOR reinforcement. However, Moscow is already reacting to the West in BiH  and in the Balkans in general  through its longstanding influence. Russia will continue to destabilize the region through its traditional methods, such as misinformation campaigns, anti-Western propaganda, support for local nationalist groups, and diplomatic pressures against NATO and the EU.

However, it is unlikely that Moscow could actively open a new battlefront in the Balkans, especially with forces on the ground. Russias interest is keeping the status quo  that is, supporting Dodiks politics  which is also a guarantee against NATO membership. To do so, a Balkan Transnistria  which Republika Srpska could become  ruled by a puppet leader personified by Milorad Dodik would be Russias best case scenario. However, besides the support from Russia  against which BiH has not imposed sanctions because of Serb and Croat opposition  Dodik must first see how Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic acts. As a matter of fact, RS foreign policy reflects Belgrades, and the ongoing international crisis is seriously challenging Vucics traditional balancing act between the West and Russia.

BETWEEN THE STABILITY FACTOR AND THE SERB WORLD - Thirty years ago, Serbias ruling elite masterfully orchestrated the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Today, Serbia  along with Croatia  is officially a guarantor of peace in the country as a signatory of the Dayton Agreement. However, since Aleksandar Vucic rose to power, Belgrades regional policy has swung between two attitudes: showing the West that Serbia is a stability factor ensuring peace in the Balkans, whilst cultivating the so-called Serb world, a modern version of the outdated great Serbia  extensively supported by a younger, radical Vucic. The Serb world is not as violent as great Serbia used to be: rather, it is an apparatus of rhetorical tools aiming for regional Serb leaders alignment with the motherlands political guidelines. In this scheme, Milorad Dodik is merely the most important pawn, as confirmed by his attendance at Vucics main rallies and public events in Serbia.

Unsurprisingly, Serbias inconsistent political posture has only increased instability in the Balkans beyond Bosnia-Herzegovina, reaching countries with solid Serb minorities, such as Montenegro and Kosovo. Meanwhile, the EU continues to believe President Vucics promise of peace in the Balkans, which was part of his successful campaign slogan in the last elections. However, recent international events have put Vucics strategy at a crossroads. In the same way as his dancing with two partners days are numbered  straddling between commercial ties with the West and Russias political support over the Kosovo issue  he must unambiguously channel his regional policy either in the direction of a nationalist instigator or towards the Serbian international obligation to safeguard peace in Bosnia.

A final choice between these two paths could emerge in the next months, after the formation of the new Serbian government. Vucic is likely to align his Serbian Progressive Party with the EU  maybe even adhering to some sanctions against Moscow  while delegating pro-Russian sentiments to minor, satellite parties. His long-term ally, the Socialist Party, has traditionally overseen links with the Kremlin, though rumors seem to rule them out of the next government. Vucic could then leverage on new, smaller political partners, such as Zavetnici, a far-right formation and new entry (with 10 seats) in the national assembly. Such a move would be mainly perfunctory: a proof the President sacked Milosevics political heirs, while still keeping nationalism under control. A political maneuver with which Belgrade will attempt to retain support from both Brussels and Moscow.

A first attempt of this redrawing diplomatic equidistance took place on the 8 April: at UNGA, Serbia voted for Russias suspension from the Human Rights Council on the grounds of war crimes allegations in Ukraine. Nonetheless, the following day, Vucic claimed on Serbias national broadcaster that he cant accept that someone call him [Putin] Hitler, praising both Vladimir Putin and his supposed special relation with the Serbian people, adding that the vote was the result of hard pressure on the country. Serbian policy towards Bosnia could therefore depend on the success of this ploy, that is, a new way to deceive the European Union. Ten years after acquiring the EU candidate status, Serbia has undermined both its own democratic standards and the Balkan regions stability. As for Bosnia, the longer Sarajevo is subject to its neighbors geopolitical calculation and the EUs delayed action, the more incurable its institutional paralysis.

Who Is Threatening Peace in Bosnia?  Commentary by Giorgio Fruscione  Italian Institute for International Political Studies / ISPI.

The Commentary can be downloaded here
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Former slave Henry Wilcox walked 12 miles from Seguin to Jakes Colony 150 years ago to buy 200 acres of land from a white landowner.

Relatives said the seller didnt believe Wilcox, born in Guinea and only freed a few years prior, could grow crops on the unwanted property. Acreage that African Americans were able to acquire at the time often was on the outskirts of town in flood zones and low-lying areas. These unincorporated sites drew Black landowners together to build communities for safety and independence.

Wilcox would prove his naysayer wrong. Today, his descendants are preserving what they know is sacred land.

Leaves crunched beneath Lola Kelly Wilcox Moore, 56, and her cousin Malcolm Wilcox Moore, 50, as they opened the old double metal gate to Ridley Cemetery and crossed the graveyard where their ancestors and residents of a bygone freedmans settlement lie at rest.

In the distance, bluesman B.B. Kings The Thrill is Gone echoed from the radio of Marlon Wilcox Moores ATV as he parked at the gate.

Marlon, Lolas brother, wore the clothes of his forefathers: a denim shirt, ball cap and blue jeans atop the pull straps of brown leather boots. Hes caretaker of the cemetery, landowner and foreman of their familys 152-year-old Wilcox Ranch.

Joining his sister and cousin at their fathers graves, they remembered the life and times of relatives like their cousin Edna. Born in 1893, she always gave the siblings a silver dollar, cookies and a mushy kiss when they visited.

They stopped at a long, gray concrete slab anchored with a marble headstone. The engraving read: Henry Wilcox - Oct. 9, 1833 - April 17, 1922. It is the final resting place of the family patriarch and founder of the oldest and last African American operating ranch in the freedom colony once known as Jakes Colony.

This is a part of American history most of us never learn, said Lola, the family historian. This is an opening for us to step up and edit American history.

The three of them were children when they first tread upon their familys historic graveyard and spent summers at the Seguin ranch. Now, they are the stewards of their ancestors legacy.

Josie Norris / San Antonio Express-News

Lola created the Wilcox & Moore Legacy Restoration Project as a lens into their familys century-old commitment to hold onto their land in southern Guadalupe County. The venture is part of the ongoing story of Black farmers fighting to overcome obstacles such as encroachment, eminent domain, gentrification and discriminatory laws.

Their work is about more than a story  its a movement, Lola said. Their great-great-grandfather thrived in the face of similar challenges, a journey they know very well.

In the late 1800s, Henry Wilcox was among 70 Black ranchers and farmers in the freedom settlement named for Jacob Rogers, an African American settler. According to the U.S. Census, in 1870 there were 240 residents living in the colony. The settlement was one of several Black communities in Seguin, including Zion Hill, Capote and Sweet Home.

Henry Wilcox, born in 1833, was enslaved until emancipation, when he settled in Seguin. In 1870, he bought the land, where he went on to herd cattle and operated a farm with horses, pigs and chickens. He grew crops and fruit orchards in the sandy hill country.

According to family lore, in the early 1900s, agricultural scientist and inventor George Washington Carver stayed overnight at the Wilcox home during a tour across the South teaching Black farmers about crop rotation and soil erosion.

Carey Latimore, associate professor of history at Trinity University, said having family land that goes back that far is a huge accomplishment and rare.

During reconstruction, he said, there were tremendous impediments toward African Americans as far as land ownership and anything that would approach citizenship. Restrictions included being pushed into work contracts, sharecropping, tenant farming and the ability to be out at certain times.

Josie Norris / San Antonio Express-News

Many people who were white and angry at African Americans for consequences of the (Civil) war sought to restrict Black rights and freedoms to the most narrow frame possible, Latimore said. Sometimes those restrictions included murder. For Blacks who owned land, some of the things they faced would be to be forced off the land.

Latimore, co-director of Trinitys African American Studies program, said the presence of the military in Guadalupe County during reconstruction prevented even worse things that happened elsewhere.

My grandmother was always told by her parents never sell the land, Marlon said. Hold on to what you have because theyre not making any more land.

Andrea Roberts, associate professor of urban planning, documents established settlements through the Texas Freedom Colonies Project. In a 2018 Texas A&M Today article, Roberts said using archival and ethnographic research she found more than 550 freedom colonies formed by nearly 200,000 formerly enslaved African Americans after slavery was abolished.

She said African Americans created intentional communities that included the anchor institutions  cemeteries, churches, schools and lodges.

The Wilcox Moores great-grandfather, Thomas Wilcox, worked the land, built the family home and expanded the ranch. Malcolm said his great-grandfather, a bondsman and master distiller, worked side-by-side with his father and never worked for any other man in his lifetime.

In 1919, their great-grandfather bought six acres for the graveyard from his cousin Daniel Ridley, the namesake of the cemetery, formerly known as Jakes Colony Cemetery.

The oldest burial dates to 1881. In 2021, their cousin Deborah Wilcox was the last person buried in the cemetery.

A year earlier, the descendants applied for an official historical cemetery marker from the Texas Historical Commission, and the cemetery was recorded as a historical landmark of Texas last year.

Its a way to pay respect, protect and honor the burial site of these ancestors, Marlon said. In history, many Black cemeteries are built over, lost and not taken care of. Thats something the family didnt want to see happen.

Thomas and his wife, Tilla, had 11 children. He died in 1941, and family members remembered their great-grandmother as tenacious, industrious and the backbone of the family.

In the 30s and 40s, several of the children moved from the ranch to California and other states for better jobs as part of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South.

We lost that communal spirit, Malcolm said. It was a microcosm of what was going on at the time.

When Tilla died, her daughter, Mary Ann, moved from California and kept the ranch going until her death. She had help from Irvin Thomas Moore; their uncle Brother Henry Wilcox; Malcolms father, Don Wilcox; and the siblings father, John Moore. Irvin, who played a big part in keeping the ranch going, died in 2017. Before he passed, he handed the operational reins to Marlon.

Malcolm said on each visit to the homestead, his older relatives stressed the importance of furthering their legacy. He remembered his grandmother Ella Jay Wilcox Moore always talked about preserving the familys land.

I didnt hear her when I was 16, Malcolm said. Now I hear her. All of us are working to the same goal.

Ella was born in the house, which also served as a gathering place for residents of Jakes Colony and relatives.

The parlor once reserved for guests now is used as a living room, but for decades, its where the settlements deceased would lay at rest. After viewings, pallbearers would carry the coffin to a horse-drawn carriage, followed by a line of mourners on the departeds final journey across scrub-brush terrain to the cemetery.

Inside the home, a white marker board hangs on a living room wall, bearing the branches of the family tree. Black and white framed photos of five generations of Wilcoxs adorn the adjacent wall.

The whir of cars passing the homestead can be heard on the wraparound front porch. Long ago, that sound meant that company was on the way. Malcolm said there were always family reunions and visitors at the home until visits tapered off in the mid-90s.

Josie Norris / San Antonio Express-News

Marlon said keeping the Wilcox homestead going is a blessing.

There are so many ranches that are lost and forgotten, he said. We know how hard our ancestors worked to preserve this land. To have something this long, it means a lot to be able to get it out there that the ranch still exists and going strong.

The family partnered with the San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum to share their story after Marlon saw a cattle branding iron exhibit sponsored by the museum while walking through the San Antonio International Airport two years ago. The cattle brands looked similar to branding irons his family used on their ranch.

Lola called the nonprofits CEO/director, Deborah Omowale Jarmon, who has collaborated with the family to talk about their past. Lola and Marlon took part in a virtual presentation sponsored by the museum titled The Power of Your Story: 150 Years of Legacy at the Wilcox Ranch.

The history of the ranch also was included in the Black Cowboys: An American Story exhibit at the Witte Museum. It all came full circle with The Story of Us, a Wilcox Ranch exhibit sponsored by the museum and on display at the airport.

On March 28, the Wilcox descendants participated in a panel titled Black Cowboys: A Conversation on Restored Legacies at the Witte. Rosalind Alexander-Kasparik of the historic Alexander Farm in Pilot Knob, Texas, also spoke about how her familys land continues to face gentrification and eminent domain by the Texas Department of Transportation.

Jarmon, who moderated the talk, said the two families are anomalies in Texas and the nation. According to the U.S. Census, between 1920 and 1997, African American farms decreased by 98 percent  a decline attributed to post-World War II economics and Jim Crow legislation.

The Wilcox Moore descendants consider their roles a calling.

Were living it, Lola said. Its something thats coursing through our veins.

The trio have several enterprises planned. They plan to refurbish the 110-plus-year-old house. Marlon said hed like to acquire a tractor with a front bucket attachment to work on land improvement and clearing trees. Lola said they want to secure a historical marker to commemorate Jakes Colony as a freedmens settlement.

Each day, Marlon honors the promise he made to his grandmother years ago that he would move from California to keep the ranch going.

He steers his four-wheeled ATV past rusted plows his ancestors used to till the land. He rumbles up to the white one-story home they call the big house, built more than a century ago by his great-grandfather. An old wooden outhouse rests at the edge of a clearing. Cattle graze behind the home.

When the wind blows, it sounds like voices whispering through the trees.

Thats those spirits talking, Marlon said.

vtdavis@express-news.net
The Texas National Guard on Sunday identified the soldier who went missing after trying to rescue two migrants crossing the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass as Spc. Bishop E. Evans.

Meanwhile, the search for Evans continued Sunday afternoon, the guard said.

Evans, 22, of Arlington, was assigned to A Battery, 4-133 Field Artillery Regiment in New Braunfels and joined the Texas Army National Guard in May 2019. He returned in fall 2020 from a mobilization to Operation Spartan Shield in Kuwait.

During this mobilization, his dedication, talents and tactical prowess led his leadership to regularly assign him to operations in Iraq in support of Special Operations Forces for short periods of time, while then rotating back into Kuwait, the guard said in a statement.

On ExpressNews.com: Missing soldier tried to rescue 2 migrants in Rio Grande

The guard said swift currents forced divers to stop working in a muddy, treacherous part of the Rio Grande but that others continued searching for the soldier. It said teams had resumed search and rescue operations early Sunday, with the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and U.S. Border Patrol involved in the effort along with three DPS airboats.

Evans went missing Friday morning in a section of the river in Eagle Pass known for its treacherous currents after rushing to help two migrants. They survived and were placed in Border Patrol custody.

Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber said he believed the soldier had drowned, while the guard initially insisted that reports of his death were inaccurate. The Border Patrol did not return phone calls.

The guard reported that authorities believe that the migrants were involved in the drug trade, saying in a statement issued Saturday that the service member selflessly attempted to help two migrants who appeared to be drowning as they illegally crossed the river from Mexico to the United States.

Initial reports from the Texas Rangers have determined that the two migrants were involved in illicit transnational narcotics trafficking, the statement continued.

The statement said the Rangers are the lead investigating agency. DPS, Parks and Wildlife, and the Border Patrol were assisting in the recovery operation, and Evans family had been notified, the guard said.

The search for our missing soldier continues, a guard tweet said Saturday. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the family of the soldier.

sigc@express-news.net
KIN MAN HUI/SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

A man was found dead, an apparent gunshot victim, in a home on the East Side early Sunday morning, according to the San Antonio Police Department.

A friend of the man found his body and called the police to a home in the 1200 block of Paso Hondo Street at about 4:50 a.m.
National Weather Service

A cold front moving into South Central Texas will bring heavy rainfall and potentially severe thunderstorms Sunday night and Monday, according to the National Weather Service.

Portions of the Southern Edwards Plateau, Hill Country and Rio Grande Plains are most at risk for isolated severe storms Sunday. That risk expands to the majority of South Central Texas Monday.
Ecological resources become immovable property guaranteeing peoples happy life in Tibet

09:11, April 24, 2022 By Shen Lin, Xian Gan ( People's Daily

By utilizing its natural resource endowments, Nyingchi city in southwest Chinas Tibet autonomous region has helped more and more local people increase their income by engaging in eco-friendly planting, gradually transforming its rich ecological resources into local residents proud immovable property that guarantees their happy life.

Photo shows a gastrodia elata planting base in Bome county, Nyingchi city, southwest Chinas Tibet autonomous region.

Nyingchi city, located in the southeast of Tibet, is at the lowest altitude. It has the warmest and wettest climate, the best ecological environment, and the richest biodiversity among all cities in Tibet. It is also one of the three major primitive areas in China and has long been known as the Jiangnan of Tibet (Jiangnan means the fertile and prosperous area in the southern regions of the Yangtze River).

Since the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has a delicate ecological environment, heavy industry and production modes that cause heavy pollution are unsuitable for the region. To conserve the ecological environment while boosting production and improving peoples quality of life, Nyingchi needed to find a right development path first toward modernization featuring harmony between humanity and nature.

The geographical position, favorable climate, healthy ecological environment, and abundant natural resources of Nyingchi have made it a place of great natural endowments for developing understory plants. Based on its advantages, the city has blazed a trail for coordinating ecological protection and appropriate utilization of ecological resources while boosting the eco-friendly growth of industries and realizing the economic value of ecological resources.

Gastrodia elata, a traditional Chinese herb, is one of the understory plants that have changed the life of people in Nyingchi.

Snow-capped mountains, blue sky, and white clouds turn Bome county, Nyingchi city, southwest Chinas Tibet autonomous region, into a fairyland on earth. (Peoples Daily Online/Lu Wenkai)

These five tubers of Tibetan gastrodia elata (a variety of the traditional herb) weigh more than one kilogram and can be sold for over 400 yuan ($61.84) at market price. Compared with gastrodia elata in other regions, the herb in the highlands of Bome county, Nyingchi, has better quality, though with a lower yield, thanks to the sound ecological environment, Qiu Quanlei, executive with a company that engages in the production and sale of Tibetan gastrodia elata, told Peoples Daily in a dense forest on the side of the No. 318 national highway in Nyingchi.

The Tibetan gastrodia elata growing under trees in the forest are marked with signs of different colors in the field.

According to Qiu, who is also dubbed Doctor Gastrodia Elata, although the gastrodia elata produced in Bome county is of high quality, the local Tibetan gastrodia elata industry had trouble finding a good breakthrough point for standing out among competitors.

Just when the company didnt know what to do to change the situation, Zou Yonggang, executive deputy secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Bome county committee came to help.

We invited the company to invest in here, and we have responsibility to help it get on track and run smoothly, Zou said.

Thanks to the support of the local government, in April 2021, the working team of Guangzhou, capital of south Chinas Guangdong province, which was established under the countrys pairing assistance program to help Tibet with its development, reached an agreement with JD Farm, a modern agricultural base project launched by Chinas e-commerce giant JD. com. They decided to build a demonstration base of JD Farm and use it as a breakthrough point to introduce a whole-process information-based management system covering various links of the Tibetan gastrodia elata industry of Bome county, from the production to the storage, transportation, and quality tracing of the herb.

Today, sensors connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) are installed in large numbers in the Tibetan gastrodia elata planting base of Qius company, helping the company realize remote monitoring of the temperature, humidity, and other environmental factors using satellites.

Meanwhile, the intelligent management and control system launched for the industry can realize intelligent decision-making based on data analysis, thus providing science-based guidance on the production of the herb.

Every tuber has a QR code, through which you can get clear information about the product, Qiu said to viewers during a livestreaming sales promotion of the Tibetan gastrodia elata of Bome county.

According to Zhang Hu, party chief of the CPC committee of Zhamog township, Bome county, sci-tech talents like Qiu have effectively motivated local people to join the industry, increasing the planting area of cultivated wild Tibetan gastrodia elata in Zhamog township to 1,653 mu (110.2 hectares).

Photo shows beautiful spring scenery of Peach Blossom Valley in Bome county, Nyingchi city, southwest Chinas Tibet autonomous region. (Peoples Daily Online/Lu Wenkai)

The industrial chain model of the local Tibetan gastrodia elata industrial park, which features benign interactions among enterprises, research institutes, the market and professional growers, is also improving with each passing day, according to Zhang.

The business contributed to a 3.65 million yuan rise in local inhabitants' income, supporting roughly 3,000 farmers and herders, the official added.

While the Tibetan gastrodia elata industry thriving, other characteristic industries of highlands in Nyingchi, such as tea planting, forestry, and fruit and vegetable cultivation, have also experienced rapid development, with tea leaves of Yiong township, apple of Mainling county, kiwi fruit of Zayu county, and vegetables of Bayi district of Nyingchi city enjoying great popularity.

So far, the planting area of characteristic forest and fruits has reached 281,000 mu, and that of vegetables and Tibetan herbal medicine 39,000 mu and 16,000 mu, respectively.

Nyingchi is vigorously promoting the construction of tea planting bases in Yiong township, Medog county and Zayu county, among other parts of the city, trying to improve the quality and production efficiency of tea products and promote tea brands, according to the mayor of Nyingchi city, who disclosed that the planting area of vegetables in the city will be maintained at more than 40,000 mu.

The Tibetan herbal medicine industry, with Tibetan gastrodia elata as a typical representative, is growing steadily, he said, noting that the city is advancing the construction of a Tibetan herbal medicine industrial park at the level of the autonomous region and building a germplasm bank of Tibetan herbal medicine.

The development path of Nyingchi demonstrates that development and ecology are not mutually exclusive. Peoples happy life and continuous improvement in natural environment can be achieved at the same time, and man and nature can coexist in harmony.

A farmer ploughs his farmland in Bome county, Nyingchi city, southwest Chinas Tibet autonomous region, April 3, 2022. (Peoples Daily Online/Lu Jianjian)

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
Early voting starts Monday in the May 7 election, which includes San Antonios record $1.2 billion bond issue, school board races and two statewide constitutional amendments regarding property taxation.

Forty voting location throughout Bexar County will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. Sunday, and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. May 2-3  the last two days of early voting.

On ExpressNews.com: Officials worry voters will confuse the two May elections

Two proposed state constitutional amendments aim to provide tax relief to homeowners. Proposition 1 would authorize tax cuts for elderly and disabled homeowners starting in 2023. Proposition 2 would raise the homestead exemption on school taxes from $25,000 to $40,000.

Voters will decide six propositions as part of the San Antonio bond issue.

Local ballots also include contested board races in the Alamo Colleges District, Alamo Heights Independent School District, Comal ISD, Medina Valley ISD and North East ISD. There are three bond propositions in Harlandale ISD, two in Medina Valley ISD and one in Northside ISD.

Suburban voters will decide contested council races in Castle Hills, Grey Forest, Helotes, Hollywood Park, Kirby, Olmos Park, St. Hedwig and Universal City. Reauthorization of a quarter-cent local sales tax for streets will be decided in Castle Hills, Grey Forest, Hollywood Park, Olmos Park and Terrell Hills. Live Oak also has a bond proposal and seven charter amendments. Shavano Park and Windcrest have bond issues as well.

On ExpressNews.com: County working up update voter data to avoid mail ballot rejections

To avoid uncertainty for voters, election officials have emphasized that party primary runoffs  including a Democratic contest for county judge and races in both parties for statewide, legislative and congressional seats  are not be included on the May 7 ballots. The joint primary runoffs featuring separate Democrat and Republican ballots will be held May 24, with early voting set for May 16-20.

Its going to be confusing for the voters, County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen told county commissioners last week during a discussion of the two elections in May.

For information, visit the Bexar County Elections Department website, bexar.org/elections. Find your polling place here.

shuddleston@express-news.net


The B20 ESC (Energy, Sustainability & Climate) Task Force held the '3rd Task Force Call Meeting' on Tuesday, April 19, 2022. (Antara/HO-Pertamina)

JAKARTA, Apr 23, 2022 - (ACN Newswire) - The B20 ESC (Energy, Sustainability & Climate) Task Force held the 3rd ESC Task Force Call Meeting on Thursday (April 21), to discuss Policy Action that will be recommended at the upcoming G20, as noted in a release issued by PT Pertamina on Friday. The B20, or Business 20, is a G20 outreach group that represents the international business community.The B20 ESG Task Force, led by Pertamina, the largest Energy SOE (State-Owned Enterprise) in Indonesia, and Pertamina President Director & CEO Nicke Widyawati, the ESC Task Force Chair, continued to update policy design and policy actions calling for efforts to maintain energy, sustainability and climate change mitigation.The ESC Task Force Call Meeting was attended by around 140 participants including ESC Task Force Deputy Chair, Agung Wicaksono, ESC Task Force Policy Manager, Oki Muraza, 8 ESC Task Force Co-Chairs, as well as members from 19 industries and 25 countries.Widyawati invited members of the Task Force to discuss policy design and to explore actionable policy initiatives. "To date, we have received more than 300 comments and inputs that are very constructive and helpful for us to drafting policy. Through the active involvement of all participants, I am confident that this task force will provide relevant and actionable policy recommendations to the G20 leaders.".She said that the meeting had gathered recommendations from the B20 Secretariat which would later be added to several new policy actions to be discussed in more depth to suit the focus and collective needs that represent the interests of the G20 Community as a whole."Let's work together to create and deliver the legacy of Indonesia's G20 presidency this year, both through policies and a series of side events on the real action of the task force, so that we can be fruitful and give the best to the G20," said Widyawati.Widyawati also expressed hope that the main objective of the ESC Task Force, ensuring an inclusive process in developing policy recommendations and actions, will be achieved through meetings and discussions.Task Force Policy Manager Oki Muraza explained that there are currently 12 main policy action inputs, from 14 policy actions discussed in the previous call meeting.Task Force Deputy Chair Agung Wicaksono explained that the Task Force was striving to develop partnerships and collaborations, develop technology to carry out capacity building in various countries, and increase values to attract investment and financing access."To achieve these goals, we invite the realization of a corporate agreement and pilot project in the country, and we targeted to have it completed in September or October 2022," he said.The B20 Secretariat offered green energy transition recommendations toward the G20 high-level meeting in Bali in November 2022. The recommendations included accelerating the transition to sustainable energy use, ensuring an adjustable and affordable transition, and welcoming global cooperation on enhancing energy security.Contact: Fajriyah Usman, VP Corporate Communications, PT Pertamina (Persero)M: +62 858 8330 8686, Email: fajriyah.usman@pertamina.com, URL: https://www.pertamina.comWritten by: Yuni Arisandy Sinaga, Editor: Sri Haryati (c) ANTARA 2022Source: PT PertaminaCopyright 2022 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
The health of students and staff at Franklin School K-8 suffered after asbestos was removed from the flooring  considered a routine construction project for many schools in the Corvallis School District  over spring break, leaving behind foul-smelling air in the hallways.

Resulting complaints included headaches, nausea, dizziness, sore throats and runny noses. Some parents pulled their children out of school in response. Even worse, say some parents, was how the district managed the incident.

For their part, district officials say the process was strictly regulated by the Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency, and that people with varying sensitivities may have reacted differently to the chemicals used.

The project

The district contracted Oregon-based PBS Engineering & Environmental to approve the safety plan and NetCompliance of Vancouver, Washington to do the actual abatement, which consisted of removing floor tiles throughout the building and disposing of asbestos materials. The effort cost the district more than $500,000.

On March 28, students, staff and teachers returned from spring break to a work in progress. The new tiles have not yet been installed.

They noticed a strong odor wafting throughout the classrooms and hallways, according to parents, speaking both to the school board at its April 14 meeting and in interviews.

The fumes were a result of the off-gassing  a term used to describe noxious gasses coming from building material  of the Safeguard Low Odor product used to remove the adhesive of the previous flooring, according to the district.

It wasnt long after school resumed that staff and students started to experience symptoms.

Because the schools HVAC system works only in the classrooms but not in the hallways, two commercial exhaust fans were placed in the building to circulate outside air into the hallways and mitigate off-gassing from the product, according to district Director of Facilities and Transportation Kim Patten.

Informing parents

On March 31, concerned third-grade teacher Stacey Reese sent an email to her students parents, informing them of the construction project and the residual odor throughout the building.

Reese wrote that she herself had been impacted  she had virtually no voice left  and that more than half of her students were symptomatic or out sick.

For some parents, her email was the first they heard of the project. Franklin Principal Craig Harlow said he emailed a video message to parents and staff on Feb. 18 informing of the project, but many said they missed it.

A day after the teachers email went out, Patten and the schools custodian team came to Franklin and scrubbed the floors, provided more ventilation and planned a safety response meeting.

On April 3, an industrial hygienist with PBS Engineering & Environmental tested for volatile organic compounds, a very broad set of chemicals, in the hallways and classrooms. The hallways tested 2 to 3 parts per million, while in the classrooms the volatile organic compounds were undetectable.

The Oregon Occupational Safety and Health permissible exposure limit is 50 parts per million, but that is for workers who are around these chemicals all day for their job.

'Degraded air quality'

At the April 14 school board meeting, Franklin School PTA board member Troy Brandt requested a full chemical accounting for the "degraded air quality."

Patten said the district continued to air out the building by keeping doors open between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. every day, in addition to daily testing for volatile organic compounds and cleaning the floors every weekend.

The odor was atypical in our experience, Superintendent Ryan Noss said. Typically when weve removed floor tiles in the past, there hasnt been a residual smell like that.

At this point, the Franklin School PTA began conducting their own research into the air quality situation.

PTA member Rigel Woodside found out the Safeguard Low Odor product had been reformulated in early 2021 by replacing one ingredient with a similar ingredient. This new ingredient, called 2-(2-butoxyethoxy)ethanol, does not yet have established occupational exposure levels by Oregon Occupational Safety and Health.

It is unclear whether the district used the old or new formula in the asbestos abatement project at Franklin.

Brandt told school board members the reformulation was purposefully designed to to address health concerns. The old formula had higher VOC levels.

"Exposing our teachers, staff and students to unknown chemicals and then not taking appropriate measures to understand the exposure is unacceptable and should not require parents to uncover the health risk our students were exposed to," Brandt told the board. He declined an interview.

Meanwhile, the same project was underway at Adams Elementary over spring break, and Adams office manager Theresa Dawley said there were no reported concerns with an odor at that school.

One explanation

Noss said one potential explanation that the odor was experienced only at Franklin is that it is one of the older buildings in the district and that the cement slabs may have absorbed the product in such a way that a smell stuck around.

Although the district made an effort to mitigate the fumes after symptoms and parent concerns were reported, some Franklin parents do not feel the district took responsibility soon enough.

For example, in an April 3 email from Harlow to parents and staff, the principal insinuated that those who were symptomatic may have been experiencing allergies, rather than acknowledging a correlation between the fumes and the illnesses.

As with other pollutants, the extent and nature of the health effect will depend on many factors, including level of exposure and length of time exposed, Harlow stated in the message. Its also important to know that pollen levels in Corvallis last week were high with a pollen count of 8.8 on both Tuesday and Friday.

Eating on the floors

The following week, middle school students ate lunch sitting down on the floors in the very hallway where the asbestos had been removed. Harlow said he made this call because the weather became too cold for the students to sit outside and the cafeteria was for elementary students only throughout the pandemic to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

When parents learned their children were eating in the offensively smelly hallway, they brought their concerns to the principal and district. The students stopped taking their lunch in that spot soon after.

Jonathan Stoll has two daughters at Franklin and said he found the principals communication dismissive and the decision to have lunch in the hallway a poor risk assessment.

Youre going to trust the school, he said. Why would they lie to me?

His confidence shaken, Stoll kept his first- and third-graders out of school for a week.

Communication from the district is damage control at this point, he said.

Rigel Woodside, who has three students at Franklin, took issue with his child eating in an unfinished construction zone.

I havent been vocal until this happened, Woodside said. But this is really wrong because my kid got sick.

He said the fumes triggered migraine headaches for his eighth-grader, who stayed home for an entire week because of the smell. His younger children experienced headaches as well.

Woodside wishes the project had been done over summer break, saying he believes this type of work needs more than a week to settle before kids are brought back into the building.

Noss told Mid-Valley Media that while this is not industry standard, the district will start testing for volatile organic compounds before children enter a building that has just been worked on.

We are really committed to making sure that we continue to move forward and learn from this situation, Noss said. We want our schools to be great places for kids, and we're going to continue to communicate as we move through this.

Joanna Mann (she/her) covers education for Mid-Valley Media. She can be contacted at 541-812-6076 or Joanna.Mann@lee.net. Follow her on Twitter via @joanna_mann_.

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A GOP debate at the Linn County Expo Center in Albany on Friday night proved not all Oregon Republicans see eye to eye in their uphill battle to win back the governors mansion.

What started out as mostly congenial ended up as fiery when a spectator was kicked out for recording the proceedings, which prompted three of the candidates to leave in protest.

Now at the end of her second term and per the state's constitution's rules about term limits, Gov. Kate Brown will step down from the office she inherited from former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber in 2015.

Thirty-three people 19 Republicans and 15 Democrats  are vying to become Oregons 39th governor in 2022.

On Friday, April 22, nine of those Republicans told Linn County voters why they deserve the Oregon GOPs nomination to govern a state Pres. Joe Biden won by some 381,000 votes.

They included political consultant Bridget Barton from West Linn, Baker City entrepreneur Kerry McQuisten, sales analyst Tim McCloud from Salem, chiropractor Amber Richardson from White City and marketing consultant Brandon Merritt from Bend.

Joining them were entrepreneur Nick Hess of Tigard, David Burch of Salem, tax protester Bill Sizemore from Redmond and ex-Alsea School District Superintendent Marc Thielman from Cottage Grove.

Absent from the debate were former Oregon House Minority Leader Christine Drazan of Canby and attorney Bob Tiernan from Lake Oswego.

Talking the talk, walking the walk

The nine candidates did agree on a host of issues, from expanding veterans services to slashing taxes across the board. Many pointed to their own personal qualities as a selling point to voters.

Barton, a charter school advocate who sat on the board of the anti-union Freedom Foundation, said she could sway independent and unaffiliated voters.

Its time for an outsider, Barton said. And what I mean by that is I have no baggage.

Sizemore, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1998, noted his political experience and knowledge of the state tax code he has repeatedly petitioned to amend.

In 2000, the Oregon Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers successfully filed a civil racketeering lawsuit against two of his political action committees in which he was not named as a defendant or party.

Among the more controversial candidates onstage Friday night was Thielman, a vocal anti-vaxxer who pushed his former school district to lift its mask mandate weeks before it was lifted by the state. That cost the district $43,000 in fines from Oregon Occupational Safety and Health.

He is also at the center of multiple complaints and lawsuits against the school district alleging he fostered a hostile work environment and regularly harassed his female colleagues.

Thielman has denied the allegations, calling them lies manufactured to ruin his name and his run for governor.

Im the dangerous candidate, Thielman said in an interview. I tell the truth.

Thielman rallied at the Oregon state capitol building in Salem during his gubernatorial campaign where Neo-fascist groups, including the Proud Boys, attended in support.

In an interview, Thielman said he was unaware the Proud Boys, who were part of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, held any extremist views.

Im not a Proud Boy, so I wouldnt know how to define one, Thielman said. What is a white supremacist? What that may mean to one person may mean something different to someone else.

Free speech or fair speech?

Early into the debate, a woman who appeared to be recording the debate on her smartphone threatened to upend the initial party unity on display.

The woman, who was escorted out of the building by two Linn County Sheriffs deputies without incident, was accused by debate organizers of violating the debates rules against recording and amateur photography.

Everybody knew coming to this event that this was going to be a professionally photographed, professionally (filmed) event, Linn County GOP debate moderator Adam Keaton said. This is a private event open to the public.

The woman, he said, told organizers prior to the event that she planned to attend and violate the rules, even notifying law enforcement and the onsite private security beforehand.

The Linn County Sheriffs Office told Mid-Valley Media it responded to the event and took no one into custody on Friday night.

Merritt and Burch, who disagreed with the handling of the incident, erupted in heated exchanges with Keaton and Ryan Murphy, the owner of Marks in Time Photography and videographer hired to film the debate.

This lady knew ahead of time that we were going to record, and we were going to do something that looks professional for the public, Murphy told the two.

Only audio of the groups brief conversation was captured in Fridays live recording of the debate.

Richardson, Merritt and Burch left the event early thereafter, claiming that debate organizers violated the womans free speech. As he exited, Merritt said: "I'm very sorry if you're taking this personally. ... What just happened, I cannot stand for. And I don't believe as conservatives or as Republicans this is appropriate."

Before he left, Burch called the incident a "severe wake up call" for him. He said he was ashamed of what happened.

The other candidates applauded the GOP organizers response.

I think the candidates should stand up here and be mature and comply with the rules that we agreed to, McQuisten said.

The debate carried on with six candidates remaining.

Using the bully pulpit

The candidates at the debate voiced little interest in pursuing bipartisanship in Salem, promising to roll back as much Democratic legislation as possible on Day One.

Few onstage were willing to pass their agenda by fiat. Executive orders, they said, would have to be a means of last resort.

With emergency powers, you can use it to undo a lot of bad, progressive legislation, Thielman said. You have to have the courage to do it, even if it can be undone.

Hess cautioned that an obstructionist governorship would guarantee the next election would swing Democrats way.

McCloud promised to limit his executive powers to natural disasters or terrorist attacks whereas Barton vowed to pen an order banning critical race theory.

I would prefer to see fewer laws passed with more consensus that helps more people rather than passing laws by circumventing the Constitution, McCloud said.

Immigration

On immigration, several candidates said they would end Oregons sanctuary laws banning law enforcement and state agencies from assisting federal immigration authorities in deportations.

We need legal immigration, Thielman said. Legal immigrants pay taxes. Legal immigrants have merit.

Thielman also said he would send Oregon national guard troops to the Mexican border to help end the countrys pipeline of illicit drugs to America.

The IRS estimates up to 6 million undocumented immigrants file individual income tax returns every year. A 2015 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office indicates that as many as 75% of undocumented immigrants pay federal, state, and local taxes.

In 2016, undocumented immigrants made up 4% of the states workforce, most of whom were employed in manufacturing, health care and food services.

Illegal immigration is a facet of our economy, McCloud said. We need to also ensure people who seek a better life in Oregon have a way to obtain it.

Homelessness

The candidates were in agreement Oregons epidemic of drug addiction is largely to blame for the states growing homelessness crisis.

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ranked Oregon as the worst in the nation for methamphetamine and prescription opioid abuse.

Oregon ranked last nationwide for access to drug counseling in 2020. Nearly 18% of teens and adults unable to get treated that year.

The American Psychological Association reported in 2019 that alcohol abuse affects up to 40% of homeless people. Drug abuse affects about 10 to 15% of unhoused individuals, it found.

Since the passage of Measure 110, possession of illicit drugs in Oregon is punishable by a $100 fine or entry into a drug addiction program.

Barton, a recovering alcoholic now 40 years sober, said she would expand addiction services centered on individualized care rather than one-size-fits-all treatment.

When I see these people on the streets, I know, in my core, in my heart, that what we are doing is not compassionate, Barton said. Its inhumane.

She also proposed creating a database to track emergency shelter bed capacity to help Oregon comply with a 2018 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Martin v Boise, which held cities cannot enforce anti-camping ordinances without a sufficient number of shelter beds.

McCloud proposed turning abandoned buildings into transitional housing and creating more job programs. He agreed with Sizemore that Oregon needs a tough love approach to rein in drug use and the kickbacks of the homeless industry.

If someone chooses not to participate in treatment, then it shouldn't be that they can get away with a $100 fine, McCloud said.

Thielman echoed similar sentiments, saying he would give homeless Oregonians an ultimatum.

Once we have people in designated areas, we have access to them, we have data, we will give them choices, Thielman said. You can be incarcerated or you can go into treatment or you can get a first class bus ticket to Washington, D.C. or Delaware.

The environment

Candidates onstage Friday night had less to say about climate change than they did about reining in government action to mitigate it.

Im not anti-science if someone can prove something to me, Sizemore said. We don't consider the reality that somethings turning up the thermostat or turning it down, and it's not us.

Based on 2017 data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Oregon was 38th in the country for carbon dioxide emissions.

The candidates said they wanted more gasoline in Oregon, not less. Thielman said he would resurrect the Jordan Cove gas pipeline proposed by Pembinal in Coos Bay while Barton vowed to end the state gas tax.

McCloud claimed planting more trees would mitigate excess carbon emissions and went so far as to say reducing carbon pollution could be dangerous to human beings.

We're made of carbon, McCloud said. We have a right to exist.

The candidates all agreed renewable energy should be up to consumers to adopt on their own rather than through public programs, which they claimed would have no positive impact.

To tame Oregons wildfires, the candidates said they would rapidly thin the states forestland to reduce forest fuels and revitalize Oregons timber industry.

Hess said he would have the state put out every forest fire on federal land, shirking the federal governments so-called let it burn policy of allowing fires of natural origin to burn. The U.S. Forest Service has denied such a policy exists.

We will invade federal lands and put out those fires, Hess said. Theres no reason to let it burn.

Looking ahead

Few candidates were comfortable with the idea of defeat. They all agreed the GOP nominee would get their vote, if not their time and money on the campaign trail.

If I were to, by some freak of nature, lose this primary, I would enthusiastically support them, speak for them and donate money, Sizemore said. Even the worst of us would be about 100 times better than Tina Kotek, he said, referencing the former house speaker and one of the leading Democratic candidates.

May 17 is the last day for voters to return their ballots. Mailed ballots must be postmarked by election day. Ballots deposited in an official drop box must be received by 8 p.m. May 17. Residents have until Tuesday, April 26 to register to vote.

Editor's note: This article was edited to list all nine candidates in attendance and to clarify which three walked out mid-debate. Also, to spell Bob Tiernan's name correctly and to correctly identify the numbers of years of Bridget Barton's sobriety. Finally, because of editing, an error was added and has since been removed regarding term limits.

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The IATA is a global airlines body with around 290 members that comprise more than 80 per cent of global air traffic.

New Delhi: India has suspended tourist visas issued to Chinese nationals, global airlines body IATA told its member carriers on April 20.

India has been raising with China the plight of approximately 22,000 Indian students enrolled in Chinese universities who are unable to go back for physical classes. However, the neighbouring country has till date refused to let them enter.

These students had to leave their studies in China and come to India when the COVID-19 pandemic began in the beginning of 2020.

In a circular issued on April 20 regarding India, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said, "Tourist visas issued to nationals of China (People's Republic) are no longer valid."

It said the following passengers are allowed to enter India: nationals of Bhutan, India, Maldives and Nepal; passengers with a residence permit issued by India; passengers with visa or an e-visa issued by India; passengers with an overseas citizen of India (OCI) card or booklet; passengers with a persons of Indian origin (PIO) card; and passengers with a diplomatic passport.

The IATA also said that tourist visas with a validity of 10 years are no longer valid.

The IATA is a global airlines body with around 290 members that comprise more than 80 per cent of global air traffic.

India has urged Beijing to adopt a "congenial stance" in the matter as the continuation of the strict restrictions is putting the academic careers of thousands of Indian students in jeopardy, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had said on March 17.

Bagchi said a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson had stated on February 8 that China was looking into the matter in a coordinated manner and that arrangements for allowing foreign students to return to China were being examined.

"But let me clarify that till date, the Chinese side has not given any categorical response about the return of Indian students. We will continue to urge the Chinese side to adopt a congenial stance in the interest of our students and that they facilitate an early return to China so that our students can pursue their studies," Bagchi said.

He said the issue was also taken up with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar during a meeting in Dushanbe in September last year. The two foreign ministers had held talks in the Tajik capital city on the sidelines of a conclave of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
Even though it is quite sunny, we feel safer during the day with lesser crowds, said many residents from Cyberabad and the citys west zone.(Representational image: PTI)

Hyderabad: Wary of a possible Covid fourth wave, many people from localities outside of Old City, are preferring to do their Ramzan shopping around Charminar in daytime. This is a far cry from the good old days when night time shopping was integral to the spirit of Ramzan.

Even though it is quite sunny, we feel safer during the day with lesser crowds, said many residents from Cyberabad and the citys west zone.

A tragedy is that we are missing out on the charm of beautiful illumination and night decorations, they said.

It has been a tradition whereupon my school friends visit Charminar and shop at bazaars while munching on the famed Old City snacks. This year, we are visiting only during afternoons because of the rise in Covid cases., said Kavita Jaiswal, a software engineer from Kondapur.

Ankit Saha from Kukatpally said You can see how nobody wears a mask anymore and places like Charminar are usually packed, with or without Ramzan. As most Hyderabadis visit in the evenings or late night, I go with my friends and family during the day or early evening.

Hyderabadis thronged numaish as usual. I can only imagine the crowd and the risk involved with relaxed restrictions at such places, said Anuradha Rao, a private employee from Jubilee Hills.
English Lithuanian

On April 5, 2022 Siauliu Bankas established a special purpose vehicle - SB Modernizavimo Fondas UAB, legal entity code: 306057616, registered office address Tilzes st.149, Siauliai, 76348.



The goal of establishment of the SB Modernizavimo Fondas is to manage the Fund to be set up to finance multi-apartment buildings renovation projects, thus entering the final phase of the project. The Bank will inform about the launch of the Fund by a separate announcement.

The aim of the unique multi-apartment building renovation financing Fund is to lend funds raised from private and institutional investors to energy efficiency projects in Lithuania. Siauliu Bankas, as a leader in multi-apartment renovation financing in the country, is the founder of the Fund and the administrator of the renovation loans, while SB Modernizavimo Fondas UAB is the legal manager.
New York, April 11, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Chile General Insurance - Key Trends and Opportunities to 2025" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06011569/?utm_source=GNW





This report provides a detailed outlook by product category for the Chilean general insurance segment.



It provides values for key performance indicators such as gross written premium, loss ratio, premium by line of business, and loss ratio, during the review period (2016-2020) and forecast period (2020-2025).



The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Chilean economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country.



The report brings together research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure.



Key Highlights

- Key insights and dynamics of the Chilean general insurance segment.

- A comprehensive overview of the Chilean economy, government initiatives, and investment opportunities.

- The Chilean insurance regulatory frameworks evolution, key facts, taxation regime, licensing and capital requirements.

- Chiles general insurance reinsurance businesss market structure giving details of premium ceded along with cession rates.

- The Chilean general insurance segment structure giving details of retail and commercial lines of business.

- Distribution channels deployed by the Chilean general insurers.

- Details of the competitive landscape, M&A and competitors profiles.



Scope

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the general insurance segment in Chile -

- It provides historical values for the Chilean general insurance segment for the reports 2016-2020 review period, and projected figures for the 2020-2025 forecast period.

- It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Chilean general insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2025.

- It profiles the top general insurance companies in Chile, and outlines the key regulations affecting them.



Reasons to Buy

- Make strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Chilean general insurance segment, and each category within it.

- Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Chilean general insurance segment.

- Assess the competitive dynamics in the general insurance segment.

- Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories.

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06011569/?utm_source=GNW



About Reportlinker

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



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Max Verstappen will start from pole position at the Imola Grand Prix on Sunday afternoon. Helmut Marko hopes that the Dutchman will manage to finish the race-winning, although he knows that it will be difficult with the current track conditions.

The Formula 1 drivers will face a considerable challenge in Italy because the many raincoats on the track make it difficult to dominate the race. For Verstappen, it is, therefore, to be hoped that he can get away well at the start and in this way create a gap on Leclerc.

The tire strategy is also of crucial importance, as Marko knows. The Red Bull advisor knows that in the current conditions it is better to start with intermediates and then see how the weather develops. "Starting on slicks is too risky," he stressed to Viaplay.

Verstappen and Leclerc battle for victory in Imola

Verstappen will have to watch his rear-view mirrors carefully during the start because Charles Leclerc will be trying hard to pass the Dutchman already on the first lap. Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz will start the race from third and fourth position respectively.

Read more Final starting grid Imola GP | Ferrari and Red Bull back in top four
According to the crime wing of the VSP, the system detects the images of the suspects by just touching the fingerprints with the help of MSCD. (Representational DC Image)

Visakhapatnam: Keeping in view the rush at public places during the summer vacations and the free movement of the public after end of the Covid19 restrictions, the Vizag City Police (VSP) has intensified its vigil via the Mobile Security Check Device (MSCD) to detect people with a criminal history.

In 2021, nearly 10,000 suspects were detected and their fingerprints verified through MSCD devices by the personnel attached with all the 23 police stations in the VSP jurisdiction, covering the nearly 25 lakh population.

This year, 3000 odd numbers of suspects were examined from January till date. However, the number of offenders of various police cases identified through the verification process was negligible, official sources informed Deccan Chronicle.

A senior police officer said, In fact, we paused for a while with the MSCD system for verification of suspects in the city during the third wave of Covid19 from January to February. We resumed doing it in recent days. The criminal background of the suspects offender is immediately known. Their nationality does not matter here. We can get the crime history of the person from any part of the country.

According to the crime wing of the VSP, the system detects the images of the suspects by just touching the fingerprints with the help of MSCD. The device is attached to an Android-based mobile or tablet to detect the images of the suspects just by touch of fingers and shared with the AFIS server for automatic matching against the database for real time identification in the field.

We did not find many numbers of offenders with the help of the MSCD this year, but the number of searches are increasing daily and the verification of numbers of suspects is also increasing due to the summer. During this time, there is the rush of tourists, passengers and visitors in bus stations, parks, beaches, a police officer told DC.
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NEW ORLEANS (AP)  Stinky but handsome and widely popular landscape trees have spawned aggressive invaders, creating thickets that overwhelm native plants and sport nasty four-inch spikes.

Bradford pears and 24 other ornamental trees were developed from Callery pears  a species brought to America a century ago to save ravaged pear orchards. Now, their invasive descendants have been reported in more than 30 states.

Worse than murder hornets! was the tongue-in-cheek title of a U.S. Department of Agriculture webinar in 2020 about Callery pears including the two dozen thornless ornamental varieties sold since the 1960s.

Theyre a real menace, said Jerrod Carlisle, who discovered that four trees in his yard and one at a neighbors had spawned thousands on 50 acres (20 hectares) he was turning from cropland to woods in Otwell, a community of about 400 in southern Indiana.

Indiana is among 12 midwestern and western states that have reported invasions, though most are in the South and Northeast.

Until 2015, Carlisle rented his field to a farmer. Then he enrolled it in a USDA crop reduction program that paid for planting 29,000 trees as wildlife habitat.

Carlisle realized the spiky flowering pears were a problem in 2019. When he cut or mowed them, new sprouts popped up. Trees sprayed with herbicide regrew leaves. Cutting off bark in a circle around the trunk kills most trees. Not these.

He and his 17-year-old son have cut down an estimated 1,400 Callery pears, applying herbicide to the stumps. But he figures there are about 1,000 more to go.

Without regular maintenance, fields near seed-producing trees can be covered with sprouts within a couple of years, said James J.T. Vogt, a scientist at the U.S. Forest Services Southern Research Station in Athens, Georgia.

If you mow it, it sprouts and you get a thicket," he said. If you burn it, it sprouts, too.

Seedlings only a few months old bear spurs that can punch through tractor tires, said David R. Coyle, an assistant professor in Clemson Universitys Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation.

The stench wafting from the tree's billows of white blossoms has been compared to perfume gone wrong, rotting fish, chlorine, and a cheese sandwich left in a car for a week. The trunks branch off in deep Vs, so after 15 to 20 years they tend to break in storms.

But Frank N. Meyer, an agricultural explorer who brought 2,500 species of plants including his namesake Meyer lemon to the USDA in the early 1900s, called the Callery pear wonderful, noting that it survived drought and poor soil.

At the time, a bacterial disease called fire blight was devastating U.S. pear orchards, University of Cincinnati researchers Theresa M. Culley and Nicole A. Hardiman wrote in a 2007 BioScience article about the plants U.S. history.

And, just as researchers had hoped, grafting edible pears onto Callery roots produced blight-resistant fruit trees.

In 1952, USDA workers noticed a spikeless mutant growing among Callery pears started from seed. By grafting its cuttings onto roots of other Callery pears, they cloned an ornamental line they named Bradford pears. That variety was commercially available by 1962, Culley and Hardiman wrote.

Other seedlings grew into 24 more ornamental varieties. All are so pretty, hardy and insect-resistant that they were planted nationwide.

Bradford and other Callery ornamentals are the third most common trees of 132 species planted along New York City streets -- more than 58,000 out of 650,000 as of 2015, the most recent count, said city parks department spokesman Dan Kastanis.

But the city is no longer planting them, Kastanis said. Neither is Newport News, Virginia, which got rid of its Bradford pears in 2005. South Carolina, Ohio and cities including South Bend, Indiana, have banned or are banning all commercial varieties of Callery pears.

Some states, including Missouri and Alabama, are asking homeowners and landowners to stop planting them or to cut existing ones down and apply herbicide to the stumps. Several, such as North Carolina, offer free native trees to landowners who provide photos proving they have cut down Callery pears on their property.

For the USDA, which ordered Meyer to send Callery pear seeds from China, the nasty spurs and marble-sized, inedible fruit were irrelevant. What mattered was that the plant was resistant to fire blight.

Genetically identical pears dont produce seed, so botanists figured the cloned varieties were safe for ornamental use.

In 1971, the USDA even put out a brochure about their care, touting them as trees that bloom several times from spring through fall, thrive in many climates and soils, and don't attract plant pests.

Now, the USDA describes Callery pears as near ubiquitous and has been studying the best way to kill them.

Their adaptability is one reason they're so invasive. And their bug-resistant waxy leaves mean insect-eating birds dont come near them.

Theyre kind of a food desert for a bird, said Coyle, who leads Clemsons annual Bradford pear bounty, providing native saplings to landowners who have felled their Callery ornamentals.

It turned out that, although trees of the same variety cannot produce seeds with each other, two different varieties within a pollinator's range can produce fruit that squishes on sidewalks and feeds starlings and robins, which spread the seeds widely.

In addition, the root stock can send up sprouts. If those arent regularly pruned to prevent them from blossoming, they can cross-pollinate with the grafted-on tree to produce fertile seed, noted University of Cincinnati's Culley.

A wild population can potentially originate from a single landscaping tree that someone plants in their yard, she said in an email.

Carlisle, the Indiana landowner, thinks he's finally getting ahead of his invasion because native trees planted for reforestation, especially six oak species, are casting enough shade to inhibit Callery seedlings.

I truly believe I'm in eradication mode now, he said.

___

This article was originally published April 21, 2022. It has been corrected to state that fire blight is a bacterial disease, not a fungus.
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GREENWICH  The town took a major step toward building a new Central Middle School, but the clock is already ticking on the high-priority project.

The Board of Selectmen unanimously approved creating a building committee to lead the constriction project. Now the race is on to appoint, interview and approve the committees members before the Representative Town Meeting goes into its summer recess.

We want to stay on a very aggressive timeline, Superintendent of Schools Toni Jones told the selectmen at their meeting Friday. We dont want to lose the summer without getting the building committee together.

The committee members are nominated by the Board of Selectmen and approved by the RTM. Potential members are usually suggested by the Selectmens Nominations Advisory Committee and then interviewed by the selectmen.

Establishing a building committee is standard procedure for major town capital projects, especially new schools. The committee, made up of volunteers, oversees the construction process and coordinates among the town, the architects and the construction firm. For the Central project, the committee will also oversee creation of the plans for the new school.

Selectwoman Lauren Rabin, the boards liaison to the nominations advisory committee, agreed that the town must move quickly.

We would need to source and interview to get on June (RTM) call, Rabin said of the nominations. Our deadline would be May 20. We have to operate rather quickly.

First Selectman Fred Camillo said the board has already received some good resumes and said one really good one was on the way. He said the board would start considering possible members next week.

Anyone who wants to serve should step forward and do so quickly, Selectwoman Janet Stone-McGuigan said.

To apply, Rabin said candidates should visit www.greenwichct.gov/719/Selectmens-Nominations-Advisory-Committe and fill out the forms.

Camillo said he also wanted to add liaisons to the committee who would not have voting power but could speak for key groups, with representatives from the neighborhood around Central Middle School, Greenwichs community of people with disabilities and the town Energy Management Advisory Committee.

I want them to be at the table when were doing these things, Camillo said. They wouldnt be voting members, but theyd be at the table to try and help.  I think this could be a template going forward for all building committees.

Jones agreed, saying, Its going to be an enormous project thats so important for the community.

The Board of Estimate and Taxation last Tuesday approved $2.5 million in architecture and engineering funds in the proposed 2022-23 municipal budget. That money would be used to begin drawing up plans for the new school.

The RTM will hold the final vote on the budget on May 9, and it is expected to support the project.

Building a new school became a top priority after the town was forced to close Central for several weeks in February due to structural concerns. The school reopened to students and staff after emergency repairs were made. Additional work will be done over the summer to shore up the building until the replacement is finished.

Under the Board of Educations timeline, plans for the new school would be drawn up this coming fiscal year, leading to a budget request for construction money the next fiscal year and a completed new school by January 2026.

Preliminary estimates put the price tag for a new Central Middle School at $67.5 million.

To keep to the districts aggressive schedule, the selectmen said they will have to act quickly.

We have our work cut out for us starting next week, Camillo said.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
News

featured

Court battles continue for territorial rights

PDN FILE PHOTO A Guam flag is waved during the Fanohge: March for CHamoru Self-Determinations opening ceremony in Adelup on Sept. 2, 2019.

Momentum has been building in the federal courts to address the issue of territorial rights, according to civil rights attorney Neil Weare, who said a petition will be filed with the U.S. Supreme Court this week related to the issue of birthright citizenship in the territory of American Samoa.

Weare said the case, Fitisemanu v. United States, could provide an opportunity for the Supreme Court to overturn the Insular Cases, which are a series of race-based U.S. Supreme Court rulings from the early 1900s that have been used to deny access to federal programs, voting rights and equal rights to people living in U.S. territories.

Overturning the Insular Cases could create the kind of political moment where the president and Congress finally come around to addressing what we call Americas colonies problem, Weare said. And that kind of pressure from the courts to act is long overdue and could help bring about fundamental changes in the relationship between Guam and the United States.

Justices have expressed an interest in addressing the Insular Cases.

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch last week stated the Insular Cases rest on a rotten foundation. And I hope the day comes soon when the court squarely overrules them.

Courtesy of Equally American John Fitisemanu before the Utah Capitol Building.

Weare represents Utah resident John Fitisemanu, who was born in American Samoa, and who sued in March 2018 to be recognized as a U.S. citizen, citing the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Unlike residents of other U.S. territories, those born in American Samoa are considered U.S. nationals instead of U.S. citizens because Congress never authorized birthright citizenship for American Samoa. The American Samoa government opposes birthright U.S. citizenship, citing concerns related to cultural preservation and self-determination.

A federal appeals court in June 2021 ruled against Fitisemanu, but Gorsuch last month gave Fitisemanu more time to appeal to the Supreme Court, extending the petition deadline to April 27.

So Justice Gorsuch is looking ahead to petitions like ours  that squarely present this question of, Do the Insular Cases continue to be good law and should the court continue to stand beside them, or should the court finally dismantle the colonial framework they established in the early 1900s? Weare said.

Weare said the Insular Cases state the U.S. Constitution doesnt necessarily apply in full in the unincorporated U.S. territories. Perhaps even more important, they said these territories arent on the path to full political representation  so its essentially okay for America to have colonies and to never address that situation.

Weare said the Fitisemanu case is directly related to the Insular Cases because the Justice Department expressly relies on the Insular Cases to argue against the right to citizenship in the territories.

So this is the kind of case that requires an answer from the court about what do the Insular Cases mean and should they continue forward, he said.

Weare, who is president of the nonprofit organization Equally American, also is involved with a territorial rights case in Hawaii federal court, Borja v. Nago.

The case is related to former Hawaii residents who lost their ability to vote for U.S. President when they moved to Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands. They sued the chief election officer for the Hawaii Office of Elections, alleging their constitutional rights have been violated.

We represent plaintiffs in Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands who are denied the right to vote because they live in Guam, but could vote actually for president if they moved to the Northern Mariana Islands or a foreign country under these overseas voting laws, Weare said.

He said the case was paused, pending last weeks Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Vaello-Madero, which is related to the rights of territorial residents to participate in federal programs.

Justices last week ruled that Congress can deny U.S. citizens in the territories access to federal programs, provided there is a rational basis for doing so.

Were excited to move forward with the (Hawaii) case now that the Supreme Court has acted. The questions in our case are also equal protection issues, but theyre very different from what the court decided in Vaello-Madero because they actually deal with a fundamental right, the right to vote, Weare said.

So you had a string of cases, both at the Supreme Court and in lower courts addressing these issues, he said. Theres been momentum building through each of these cases, and Im hopeful that in the coming months therell be some opportunities to finally find answers.
Editors note: Travel Bug is an occasional Lifestyle feature that will showcase islanders travels around the world.

When time is of the essence in an urban area like New York City, every single second of your visit counts. In one day, I explored the tourist attractions of Wall Street, Liberty Island and Ellis Island. Join me on to see how I did it.

Early in the morning, my first destination was Wall Street  the second most famous street in the Big Apple, after Broadway.

As you walk down the cobblestone streets, you will soon find yourself in front of the New York Stock Exchange, the worlds largest stock exchange where investors purchase and sell stocks.

Unfortunately, you cant cannot enter the building anymore due to security concerns. You can, however, take a selfie next to it or even a video with the opening bell ringing at 9:30 a.m. on weekdays.

After a 4-minute walk, you will arrive at the Charging Bull  the best representation of Wall Street because it symbolizes financial optimism and prosperity. Thousands of people line up yearly to take a photo or selfie, and some even rub it in the hopes it gives them a successful financial year.

Walk 10 minutes via Broadway and Greenwich, and you will arrive at the somber 9/11 Memorial. The minimalistic design purposefully guides your focus on those who died during the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Next to the memorial is the Oculus  an odd-shaped white edifice with enormous wings. Inside the building, there are retail stores, a food court and multiple subway lines.

You can take the subway or walk 10 minutes to Battery Park to board the ferry to Liberty Island. Before heading there, I recommend purchasing the ticket online only through Statue Cruises, which is the official partner of the ferry that travels to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. You will save time by skipping the line to purchase tickets.

Arrive at Battery Park by noon at the latest if you want to have sufficient time to explore both Liberty Island and Ellis Island.

Before boarding the ferry, you must go through security. Once on board, stay at the right side on the third level to take advantage of the view of the Statue of Liberty as you arrive at Liberty Island.

Once you step foot on ground, you will get to see see Lady Liberty from various angles and its intricate details. In 2019, the Statue of Liberty Museum was opened to the public to provide an overview of the statues history and context. There is no additional fee to enter the museum.

After getting a picture with Lady Liberty and taking in the view of New York City from the island, you can purchase souvenirs from the gift store or eat lunch at The Crown Cafe.

Ride the ferry afterward to Ellis Island to learn more about the history of U.S. immigrants at the Ellis Island National Immigration Museum.

It showcases exhibits from the 1500s until the present day that depict how immigrants interacted and were treated in American society.

By 4 p.m., depart Ellis Island and take the subway to the One World Observatory. Purchasing a $63 ticket will give you flexible arrival and priority access to the New York City skyline 100 stories above the ground.

As the elevator rises to the top floor in 47 seconds, you will see on the walls how New York City transformed from a region filled with forests to skyscrapers. Once you reach the top floor, you will be enthralled by the 360-degree view of the Big Apple.

If you want to dine in with a date, friend or family member, you can purchase an additional ticket per person that costs $105 to watch the sunset and the city lights at night while eating. The deal includes two drinks, one appetizer and one dessert.

The whole day was an expensive pursuit for a college students budget, but it was an unforgettable way to end a night in New York City.
HYDERABAD: The TRS was practicing the politics of vengeance and the day was not far off when the BJP would transform Pragati Bhavan, the official residence of the Chief Minister, to Telangana Praja Bhavan after the next elections when the BJP would come to power, Union minister G. Kishan Reddy said on Saturday.

The TRS government, the Chief Minister and the Kalvakunta family had become intolerant of any criticism and were targeting anyone who spoke on the governments failures, excesses and lies, he said.

As an example, he cited the case of BJP activist S. Sai Ganesh who was targeted by the transport minister, local TRS leaders and district police.

The constant harassment and three-time imprisonment finally drove Sai Ganesh to suicide. There are other cases of TRS leaders driving families to suicide, as in what happened recently in Kamareddy, and earlier in Kothagudem. There are many such instances. Anyone who even posts something on social media is now being victimized, Kishan Reddy said.

He dismissed the contention by TRS ministers, including K.T. Rama Rao, that the BJP government at the Centre had done little for Telangana. Kishan Reddy, addressing a press conference, said the TRS leaders who level such allegations should realise that the Centre doesnt hand over money to the Chief Ministers hands

Will Central aid be recognized only if cash is handed over to the Chief Minister, Kishan Reddy asked. He added that the TRS government, trying to force the Centres hand on aid issues, had even refused to allow the Union government from giving scholarships to Dalit students.

The Centre deposits the scholarships directly into the student accounts. The TRS government wants the money to be given to the colleges instead of to the students. Fee reimbursement is a state programme. The Dalit scholarship scheme is just one among many that are being stymied by the TRS government, he said.

Kishan Reddy, answering a question from a reporter on minister Rama Raos criticism that Kishan Reddy did not get anything for the state, said, I do not respond to challenges from anyone and everyone. If he wants to resign as minister, he is free to do so. Let the Chief Minister come forward for a debate and I will join him in that.

He said the TRS government had much to answer to its people, including how it was not responding to the Centres offers, be it for setting up of medical colleges, textile parks or other facilities.

Does the TRS government have the courage to acknowledge that it only contributes `1 for the `2 a kg rice scheme for the poor while the Centre contributes `32? Let the Chief Minister come forward and I will debate every question he has for the Centre, Kishan Reddy said.

He also took aim at health minister T. Harish Rao saying the minister would will do well to realise that all the basti dawakhanas that are being set up in Telangana were the result of Central funding.
Josephine Moreno and other applicants take the Oath of Allegiance during a naturalization ceremony at the District Court of Guam on April 21, 2022, in Hagatna. Twenty-four applicants from China, Mexico and the Philippines were naturalized as U.S. citizens during a ceremony presided by Magistrate Judge Michael J. Bordallo at the District Court of Guam on April 21, 2022.




Haiti - News : Zapping...





State vehicle in the hands of Gang found

A stolen Toyota Land Cruiser Pick-Up vehicle registered SE-02845 with a "State Service" plate in which the "Collegue" gang leader and his accomplices of the "400 Mawozo" gang were traveling was found and seized in the "Caniere" area by officers from the Departmental Law Enforcement Unit (UDMO), assigned to the Croix-des-Bouquets Police Station.



D-1 : Biggest finance meeting in Haiti

The Group Croissance and its partners the BRH, ProFin announce the holding of the 12 edition of the International Finance Summit which will be held from April 25 to 27, 2022. This year the summit will be organized both online and face-to-face (at Marriott Hotel). The theme chosen this year "Financing Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in Haiti (MSME)".

Contact: hello@haitisommetfinance.com / info@groupcroissancehaiti.com

Phone: (509) 2942 2525 / 2811 7827



Radical Opposition Against Fuel Rise

The radical opposition known as the "Democratic and Popular Sector" (SDP) member of the Government (September 11 Agreement) categorically opposes any new rise in the price of petroleum products on the local market, highlighting the worsening of the socio-economic conditions of population.



Strange behavior

Several individuals, to avoid a routine check by a National Police patrol at Canape-Vert, abandoned their white Nissan Patrol vehicle, registration SE-02601 and fled. The police found and seized on board the vehicle a magazine containing 23 5.56 caliber cartridges, three fluorescent jerseys identified as PNH, three pairs of boots, a blue Dual-Use Item (BDU), and a cell phone.



Closure of the ICAO training seminar

Closing of the 5-day training seminar for inspectors and general quality control supervisors of the National Airport Authority (AAN). This seminar led by instructors from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) aims to increase the level of capacity of these executives and verify compliance with the implementation of ICAO standards and recommendations.



9th edition of Intellectual Property Week

As part of International Book and Copyright Day (April 23), the Haitian Copyright Office (BHDA) announced the 9th edition of Intellectual Property Week, which will begin on Monday, April 25 (Conferences -debates, exhibitions, meetings and awarding of scholarships as well as the celebration of the International Day of Intellectual Property (April 26).



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Hyderabad: In a sudden development, political strategist Prashant Kishor arrived in Pragathi Bhavan, the official residence cum camp office of Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, on Saturday.

Details of his visit were kept a secret. Sources said Kishor arrived at Pragathi Bhavan at 9.30 am and held day-long political deliberations with CM. He stayed at Pragathi Bhavan overnight and will continue his meeting with the CM on Sunday.

Kishor is expected to leave Hyderabad by Sunday evening. Kishors meet assumes political significance against the backdrop of his latest attempts to work with the Congress.
THE Friends of St Andrews Church in Sonning were formed in 2003 by the then vicar, Canon Chris Clarke, in order to provide for the church and to save for a rainy day.

Now they have organised their third grand musical evening in support of church repairs and maintenance. It is aimed at families and children are welcome.

After successful musical evenings at Reading Blue Coat School in November 2016 and at St Andrews in November 2018, the latest concert will again include Ascot Brass along with two choirs from Bulmershe School.

They will be joined by head chorister and soloist Celeste Hexter. Celeste, who is in the sixth form at St Josephs College in Reading, is in three choirs and three orchestras as well as the St Andrews senior choir.

Ascot Brass will feature soloists David Daws (trombone) playing The Blue Bells of Scotland, Stacey Hall (horn) playing A Lark in the Clear Air and Mark Dallas (cornet) playing My Love is Like a Red Red Rose and Fire In the Blood, featuring Kim Hollamby (euphonium).

Years of fundraising by the Friends has enabled the church roof to be replaced and for the heating system to be renewed.

They have also paid for a new sound system and replaced the lights with LED lighting.

 A grand musical evening is at St Andrews Church, Sonning, on Saturday, April 30 at 7.30pm. Tickets cost 10 adults, children free accompanied by an adult. For tickets, call Bob Hine on 0118 969 8653 or email bob.hine@btopenworld.com or call Keith Nichols on 0118 969 4628 or email keith.daphnenichols@

gmail.com
Ahead of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti's (TRS) annual plenary to commemorate the 22nd anniversary of its formation, K.T. Rama Rao, party working president and minister of IT, industry and MA&UD, spoke on a plethora of political, administrative and people issues exclusively with Deccan Chronicle.

Excerpts.

Despite the Assembly elections for Telangana being slated next year-end, politics has heated up. Will the TRS go to the electorate to seek a rare third consecutive term under the same leader  a feat never achieved by any Telugu politician  on the basis of your performance and track record, or the narrative of the Narendra Modi-led BJP government having failed at the Centre?

A: It is true no Telugu leader has won a third consecutive term but in our leader, TRS founder and Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, you have a person who has achieved many things considered unprecedented. When he started the agitation for a separate Telangana, it was considered mission impossible. If a hat-trick is considered impossible, it is very obvious KCR is the leader to achieve it.

When we go to the elections it would be on our own achievements and performance. People across India must know that Telangana since 2014 is the most successful state ever in the history of independent India. Our growth as an economy, our transformation from a dry, drought zone to a water-abundant geosystem, from a power deficit region to becoming a state that gives free round-the-clock power to farmers and quality power to everyone else, our green fields and water-filled blue tanks and canals, the creation of jobs and ability to attract global and national investments, being the preferred destination for migration of capital and manpower, our balanced governance where we have been able to deliver both growth with jobs and welfare with a human face; being the best state in managing Covid pandemic - these are the issues on which we will go to people of Telangana.

And I am not alone saying it, or just the people of Telangana, the reports from World Bank, the RBI, Niti Aayog, every single fair data point shows the success of our state, unmatched by the BJP-ruled, or Congress-ruled states.

There is no reason why we will not be able to win. The reason we will highlight the failures of the BJP is to make people compare, if the TRS is a party under KCR's leadership to deliver on promises, the BJP under Modi has not failed to deliver on its promises, but also given us too many negatives.

You have spoken about taxes  Telangana giving more to the Centre without reciprocal returns. Is regional or geographic tax parity a policy thought?

Not at all. Though we are the youngest state of India, and small, we have delivered to India's growth by emerging as the fourth largest state. We are happy to deliver to India's progress, through jobs, through growth and through the taxes generated here. We are happy to help the less fortunate states. But let the Centre, after giving us the minimum statutory due devolution funds, not talk as if they are doing a favour.

Why does Mr Modi's not take pride in Telangana's success? Why won't he even name or highlight the successful creation of one of the largest irrigation projects of the country that has transformed the lives of millions of farmers and increased multifold the production of foodgrains?

How are your plans to make Hyderabad an electric vehicles (EV) hub shaping up?

The world is heading the EV way. We must understand that the EV is not a variant of a traditional automobile, but more like a computer on wheels. It has more software complexity than hardware. We are in talks with some of the top EV companies in the world, incuding the top three competitors to Tesla.

Fisker, a firm created by a former lead designer of Tesla, an $8 billion dollar firm, is setting up a development centre in Hyderabad. Two other companies are in talks with us and we will have two different positive announcements to make in the next two months.

But our vision is not just about EV but creating a mobility cluster. Vehicles manufacturing, research and development, batteries, software development centres  we want to ensure we create an entire mobility cluster in the next few years.

Why has the relationship with the Governor deteriorated to a point of total avoidance and public acrimony?

We respect the Constitutional position of the Governor and always wish to have a healthy, respectful relationship. But, if a Governor chooses to make a political speech of her own instead of the one created by the state government, which is the precedent and the norm, speaking of how PM Modi gave us central medical educational institutions when he actually gave none  the Governor has chosen to behave like a former state president of the BJP.

You speak of being a progressive and modern government. You speak of environmental concern. Then why revoke GO 111?

We had promised to revoke GO 111 as have both the opposition parties in their manifesto and we have abided by. Let us understand that the primary restriction in those 84 villages in the zone around the two water bodies based as GO 111 in 1996 was during the primacy of Osmansagar and Himayatsagar as water supplying sources for Hyderabad. The TRS has created alternatives to them because of the city's growing needs.

Two things for environmentalists and social activists would be to firstly think of the 3,000-odd lakes and water bodies in the over 7,250 square kilometre (sq. km) area of the HMDA and ask, why focus on only two? Let us create a new policy keeping in mind today's heightened awareness and criticality of the environment for the future?

Second, join us in creating a new city in that area, making it a model green city, matching Lutyens Delhi or Chandigarh and allow the farmers of the area to derive benefits as partners. We are talking of creating another Hyderabad-sized 500-odd sq. km new city, a green role model for the country in coming years.

Coming back to politics, which party is your primary rival  the Congress or the BJP?

Both of those parties are trying to compete with us. But our primary rival is the Congress, I feel, because of their presence across the state. Electorally, they are our principal rival. We are against the BJP for ideological reasons. The BJP is an agenda-driven party, an agenda which is not good for India. They have been a responsibility to take India to greater heights but they have only fuelled hatred, quelled dissent and undermined democracy.

They create communal tension, they arrest people who criticise the government. Why is Aakar Patel (a former Deccan Chronicle journalist) being harassed? Why was Jignesh Mevani arrested  for a tweet? Let me repeat what Mr Mevani tweeted that Mr Modi's party has more Nathuram Godse worshippers than followers of Gandhi. Let me say that Mr Modi keeps quiet when communal tensions break and minorities are targeted.

In contrast, in Telangana we have achieved both development and welfare without any sectarian feeling, ensuring betterment of all sections of people.

You say that, but how do you want the people of Telangana to understand the increasing cases of crimes by leaders and followers of the TRS?

There have been some sporadic cases but the TRS has over 60 lakh primary members. Good governance is the response. We have not shielded any leaders, we have got them arrested. The law is working. Whereas in the BJP-ruled states, they are shielded or quickly get bail. No one in Telangana, even if he belongs to the TRS, will get away unpunished if they do anything wrong.

With the news of Prashant Kishor joining the Congress making rounds, how will you respond regarding your engaging him as a political consultant?

We have engaged I-PAC, a company founded by Prashant Kishor but from which he maintains a professional arms distance. Personally, even if he joins the Congress, the TRS will use the services of I-PAC for the next Assembly elections.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves towards supporters during a rally on Panchayati Raj Day, at Palli in Samba district, Sunday, April 24, 2022. Union Minister Jitendra Singh and J&K Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha is also seen. (PTI Photo)

Srinagar: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that democracy and development were reaching grassroots in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir after constitutional reforms, an obvious reference to the abrogation of Article 370.

This was the Prime Ministers first visit to J&K after the erstwhile state was stripped of its special status and split up in two UTs by the BJP government at the Centre on August 5, 2019.

While seeking to strike a chord with the next generation of J&K, the erstwhile state and especially the Kashmir Valley, which has been through decades of violence, mayhem and political uncertainty, Modi said it would not suffer like their ancestors but see springtime full of life and growth.

I assure, rather promise that the youth of J&K wont see hardships and sufferings as their parents and grandparents did, Modi said. Today, Rs 20,000 crore worth projects related to connectivity and electricity have been inaugurated. The local youth of this place will get jobs, he said.

Modi was, on the National Panchayat Raj Day, speaking at a mammoth rally at Palli Gram Panchayat in Samba district close to the border with Pakistan.

Though the day is celebrated across the country, some political watchers saw in the Prime Minister choosing J&K for addressing the people on the occasion, an attempt to showcase his governments achievements in the UT post August 2019 and send a political message that the historic decision of ending its special status had set off a major positive political as well as social makeover.

The Prime Minister said that be it democracy or development, J&K was setting a new example. New dimensions of development have been created in Jammu and Kashmir in the last 2-3 years, he said adding It is a symbol of change that this year Panchayati Raj Day is being celebrated in J&K.

As a series of laws have been introduced in J&K and several existing ones amended and many Central laws made applicable to the UT, the Prime Minister asserted that these had helped empowering every resident particularly women, children and downtrodden sections.

He said, There were almost 175 laws which were not applicable here. We have implemented those laws in J&K to empower every resident of UT. I feel proud, today after 75 years, Walmiki Samaj people are equal to any other citizen of India. These people suffered a lot. He added, These people got freedom after 75 years of Indias independence.

Be it electricity, water and LPG connections, construction of toilets under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, or any other Central scheme, J&K is receiving benefits of all such schemes, he said. This year, for preservation of lakes and other water bodies of J&K, huge funds were earmarked.

One of the projects inaugurated by the Prime Minister is a 500-KW solar power plant at Palli, which made it the countrys first panchayat to become carbon neutral. Modi while referring to Indias leadership on international environmental and climate change platforms expressed pride that Palli Panchayat had becoming first carbon-neutral panchayat.

He said that the place was not new to him nor was he new to its people. He said that in the past ten days, the people of Palli had been providing free food to guests who were turning up in the village to attend the rally. I salute all the villagers of Pali for their commitment.

As business giants from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong have committed themselves to investing in J&K, the Prime Minister said, I met a Gulf delegation. They are quite enthusiastic about J&K. Post 1947, just Rs 17,000 crore outside investment reached J&K. But in just the past two years, Rs 38,000 crore investment proposals stand cleared for J&K.

He said that corruption is being crushed by the clean administration which has raised the confidence of investors.
PARIS (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macron comfortably won a second term Sunday, triggering relief among allies that the nuclear-armed power won't abruptly shift course in the midst of the war in Ukraine from European Union and NATO efforts to punish and contain Russia's military expansionism.

The second five-year term for the 44-year-old centrist spared France and Europe from the seismic upheaval of having firebrand populist Marine Le Pen at the helm, Macron's presidential runoff challenger who quickly conceded defeat but still scored her best-ever electoral showing.

Acknowledging that numerous voters cast ballots for him simply to keep out the fiercely nationalist far-right Le Pen, Macron pledged to reunite the country that is filled with so many doubts, so many divisions and work to assuage the anger of French voters that fed Le Pen's campaign.

No one will be left by the side of the road," Macron said in a victory speech against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower and a projection of the blue-white-and-red tricolor French flag. He was cheered by several hundred supporters who happily waved French and EU flags.

We have a lot to do and the war in Ukraine reminds us that we are going through tragic times where France must make its voice heard," Macron said.

During her campaign, Le Pen pledged to dilute French ties with the 27-nation EU, NATO and Germany, moves that would have shaken Europes security architecture as the continent deals with its worst conflict since World War II. Le Pen also spoke against EU sanctions on Russian energy supplies and faced scrutiny during the campaign over her previous friendliness with the Kremlin.

A chorus of European leaders hailed Macron's victory, since France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and is supplying weapons to Ukraine.

Democracy wins, Europe wins," said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

Together we will make France and Europe advance," tweeted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi called Macron's victory splendid news for all of Europe and a boost to the EU "being a protagonist in the greatest challenges of our times, starting with the war in Ukraine.

Macron won with 58.5% of the vote to Le Pen's 41.5%  significantly closer than when they first faced off in 2017.

Macron is the first French president in 20 years to win reelection, since incumbent Jacques Chirac trounced Le Pens father in 2002.

Le Pen called her result a shining victory, saying that in this defeat, I can't help but feel a form of hope.

Breaking through the threshold of 40% of the vote is unprecedented for the French far-right. Le Pen was beaten 66% to 34% by Macron in 2017 and her father got less than 20% against Chirac.

She and hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, one of 10 candidates eliminated in the first round on April 10, both quickly pitched forward Sunday night to France's legislative election in June, urging voters to give them a parliamentary majority to hamstring Macron.

Le Pens score this time rewarded her years-long efforts to make her far-right politics more palatable to voters. Campaigning hard on cost-of-living issues, she made deep inroads among blue-collar voters in disaffected rural communities and in former industrial centers.

Le Pen voter Jean-Marie Cornic, 78, said he cast his ballot for her because he wanted a president who would prioritize our daily lives  salaries, taxes, pensions.

The drop in support for Macron compared to five years ago points to a tough battle ahead for the president to rally people behind him in his second term. Many French voters found the 2022 presidential rematch less compelling than in 2017, when Macron was an unknown factor.

Leftist voters  unable to identify with either the centrist president or Le Pen  agonized with Sunday's choice. Some trooped reluctantly to polling stations solely to stop Le Pen, casting joyless votes for Macron.

It was the least worst choice, said Stephanie David, a transport logistics worker who backed a communist candidate in round one.

It was an impossible choice for retiree Jean-Pierre Roux. Having also voted communist in round one, he dropped an empty envelope into the ballot box on Sunday, repelled both by Le Pens politics and what he saw as Macrons arrogance.

I am not against his ideas but I cannot stand the person, Roux said.

In contrast, Marian Arbre, voting in Paris, cast his ballot for Macron to avoid a government that finds itself with fascists, racists.

Theres a real risk, the 29-year-old fretted.

Macron went into the vote as the firm favorite but faced a fractured, anxious and tired electorate. The war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic battered Macrons first term, as did months of violent protests against his economic policies.

In celebrating victory, Macron acknowledged a debt to voters who helped get him over the line, not to support the ideas I hold, but to block those of the extreme right.

I want to thank them and tell them that I am aware that their vote obliges me for the years to come, he said. "I am the custodian of their sense of duty, of their attachment to the Republic.

___

Associated Press journalists Sylvie Corbet, Elaine Ganley, Angela Charlton and Thomas Adamson in Paris, Sam Petrequin in Brussels Michel Spingler in Henin-Beaumont, and Alex Turnbull in Le Touquet, contributed.

___

Follow APs coverage of the French election at https://apnews.com/hub/french-election-2022
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A U.S. Army soldier is facing two felony counts of sexual assault of a child in a Montgomery County case involving two alleged victims.

Bailey Michael Mayfield, 21, of Montgomery, allegedly committed the second-degree felony between 2020 and 2021 and reportedly admitted to knowing his actions were criminal, according to charging documents.

Mayfield had sexual relations with an underage teen girl four times, including once after the childs guardian warned him it would be statutory rape, according to a probable cause affidavit filed March 23 by a Montgomery County Sheriffs detective.

One instance occurred when the sheriffs office contacted him about the girl briefly going missing, according to the affidavit.

The affidavit reveals that during an interrogation conducted by an agent at Fort Benning in Georgia, Mayfield admitted to knowing he was breaking the law by having sexual relations with the teen.

The investigation into Mayfield yielded a second underage teen girl he also allegedly sexually assaulted, court records show.

During a forensic interview, the girl said Mayfield told her he was 17 when he was actually 20. She also said Mayfield continued during one encounter when she told him to stop because he was hurting her.

She described Mayfield physically forcing her in a second sexual encounter, according to a separate probable cause affidavit also filed March 23 by the same sheriffs detective.

Mayfield admitted to knowing during an interrogation by a special agent at Fort Hood that this second teen was underage, according to the affidavit.

Court records show Mayfield was taken into custody March 23 and was released on bond five days later.

Army officials confirmed Mayfield enlisted in September 2020 and is an active duty private first class stationed at Fort Hood.

We are aware of the allegations against this soldier and fully support civilian authorities in their investigation, as allegations such as these are taken seriously as they run counter to Army values, read a statement from an Army 1st Calvary Division spokesperson.

The Montgomery County District Attorneys Office declined to comment, citing the case as pending.

Mayfields defense attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

jose.gonzalez@chron.com

twitter.com/jrgzztx
Over the 20 or so years that he worked at the Conoco gas station in the Heights, Carlos had developed a reputation as a jovial, caring man who treated regular customers like old friends. He watched the neighborhood kids grow up and would gladly spot someone a couple bucks if they were short on cash and needed a soda.

That's why longtime residents showed up over the weekend to pay their respects for the beloved clerk they knew only as "Carlitos," who was gunned down Saturday by two people who came into the store and started a fight with him.

"When my sister would come to the store with my nephews, I knew they were safe because Carlos was here looking out for them. He was always looking out for the kids, and for him to not be here anymore, it's just really hard," said Michael Rodriguez, 37, who has lived across the street from the gas station at 4620 N. Main for most of his life.

Houston police say that at about 3:20 p.m. Saturday, two males walked into the store and got into an altercation with Carlos, whose last name is not known because he has not been publicly identified by the Harris County medical examiner's office. They physically assaulted him and ran into the parking lot, and when Carlos chased after them with a gun in his hand, they turned around and shot him several times, according to police.

Carlos, 51, died in front of the store, police said. The two men were taken into custody. The investigation is ongoing and no charges had been filed as of Sunday.

The gas station store remained closed Sunday morning, but Rodriguez came with a vase full of flowers and some paper, markers and tape, so that people could leave messages for Carlos. Dozens of customers had come to the gas station to grieve Carlos and pay their respects to his family the day before, Rodriguez said.

Choking back tears, Rodriguez wrote "Rest in Peace Carlos" and "We Love You Carlos" on two sheets of paper, and taped them up to the door.

Carlos had known Rodriguez since he was a teenager, and Rodriguez remembers how Carlos would always ask about his family, checking in regularly to comfort him after Rodriguez's cousin was killed several years ago. He recalls seeing Carlos once lend a customer $20, and when the customer came back to pay him back a few days later, Carlos refused to take his money.

"He made you feel like you were at home and I just want to pay respects to his family. Carlos was just a good guy and he worked here for so long, I just don't want his memory to go unnoticed," Rodriguez said.

Amalia Barnetla, another longtime customer, approached soon after with a granite cross and placed it front of the store. She wrote a message for Carlos as well.

"He had respect for everyone who came into his store, and everything he did came from the heart," Barnetla said in Spanish.

Carlos's two sons worked at the station with him briefly last year, but Carlos made them quit because he felt that the job was getting too dangerous.

"He wasn't the type to go looking for trouble, he always tried to defuse it if there was anything happening. You never thought it would happen to Carlos, just a really good man," Rodriguez said.
Jay Jordan

A teenage boy is accused of killing an 18-year-old woman Saturday while playing with a gun in south Harris County.

Zakorion Batiste, 17, was charged with manslaughter in the death of Nariah Champion, 18, Harris County court records show. A judge Sunday set his bond at $50,000.
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HARLINGEN - For months, Melissa Lucio and her family have waited to hear if her scheduled execution, set for Wednesday, will be halted.

That wait could now be over, as the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles is expected to make a recommendation about her request for a stay sometime Monday, according to multiple sources and news reports. If the board stays her planned date for lethal injection, Gov. Greg Abbott could commute the South Texas mothers sentence to life or grant a reprieve to allow the board to consider exculpatory evidence in the death of her toddler daughter.

There are other multiple legal motions pending that could alter her fate, according to her lawyers.

A TROUBLING LIST: How many innocent people are executed in Texas? Melissa Lucio case spotlights a troubling list

If the board rejects Lucios request for a stay, the only other way her life may be spared is if Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz withdraws her death warrant. He has said previously he would let the courts and the board make their determinations but said if no one took steps to slow the process, he would intervene in the execution.

The Harlingen mother of 14 was convicted of capital murder in 2008 for the death of her 2-year-old, Mariah Alvarez.

Courtesy the Innocence Project

Lucio has maintained her innocence  she and her family call Mariah's death a tragic accident caused by a fall down a flight of hazardous stairs. At trial, lawyers painted Lucio as a ruthless child abuser.

Courtesy the Innocence Project

On a hot Friday afternoon in Harlingen, Melissa's mother, Esperanza Correa Trevino, and her sister, Sonya Valencia Alvarez, sat at Correas kitchen table to pray for Melissa.

Texas Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville, who is not related to the family, led the rosary. Continue to allow us to live with hope, he said.

Marie D. De Jesus, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

With the 53-year-old mothers execution two days away, hope is all the family can do. They've spent the past three months holding protests, rallies and press conferences across the state. Theyve attended legislative hearings and pleaded with the public to watch a 2020 documentary that presents a case for Lucios innocence.

Yi-Chin Lee, Photographer / Staff photographer Yi-Chin Lee, Photographer / Staff photographer Yi-Chin Lee, Photographer / Staff photographer Yi-Chin Lee, Photographer / Staff photographer Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

The exhaustion showed on their faces. The condemned womans mother Esperanza, who true to her name has remained unwaveringly hopeful, squinted tightly, head down, clutching her rosary in one hand and a tissue in the other. She looked pained as she prayed intensely for her daughter to return home.

Marie D. De Jesus, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

Solidarity gatherings and rallies calling for clemency were held Saturday in at least 14 cities Saturday, including Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Boston, Los Angeles, and Washington, according to Death Penalty Action, a statewide organization that advocates for the end of executions.

Abbott also has the power to grant inmates a one-time, 30-day stay of execution without needing a recommendation from the board. But he has rarely taken that step.

Abbott said during an April 21 press conference he had not received a report from the board yet, but that if and when one comes, he would consider it and "take whatever action I think is appropriate."

LUCIO CASE: More than half of Texas senators join growing call to stop Melissa Lucio's execution

If the courts, the board, the governor and the local DA dont take action, Lucio would become the first Latina put to death by Texas in the modern era and the first woman since 2014.

So Friday, staving off the afternoon heat in her mothers kitchen, Lucios family prayed.

We love you Melissa Lucio

God have mercy on us

Christ redeem us

Her sister, standing in her SAVE MELISSA LUCIO T-shirt with Lucios photo on it, wiped away tears as she recited the prayer. Alvarez occasionally looked down at her mother, who opened her eyes occasionally to let a few tears escape. She quickly wiped them away.

Pray for us

Pray for us

Pray for us

The smell of carne asada simmering on the stove filled the thick, hot air in the modest home where Lucio once raised her children. A small fan mounted on the wall in the kitchen failed to cool the packed room. As the family continued whispering prayers, gusts of wind made the turquoise windchimes on the front porch sing.

Outside, SAVE MELISSA LUCIO/LIBREN A MELISSA LUCIO signs adorned the front gate and sidewalk. A banner reading SALVEMOS A MELISSA hung from the fence. Uplifting phrases such as LET YOUR FAITH BE BIGGER THAN YOUR FEARS were sprinkled throughout the house.

Marie D. De Jesus, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

On the fridge, a poem on a pink magnet decorated with butterflies begins, "Mom, I love you."

The poem ends with, "Most of all, a mother should be a loving woman who is always there when needed. You are everything that a mother should be and more.

I can't wait to hold my sister, I still have faith she is coming home, Alvarez said.

Her mother's tears started to flow freely.

We are waiting for Melissa to walk through those doors, Alvarez continued.

Later that day, the prayers kept flowing at a vigil for Lucio at the Basilica Of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle in San Juan, an ornately decorated, massive church considered among the states most popular pilgrimage spots. Families took photos on the churchs sprawling grounds, in front of statues and crosses.

Church volunteers passed out flyers asking congregants and supporters to pledge to end the death penalty. Lucios family occupied pews near the front, holding signs that had the words CAPITAL PUNISHMENT crossed out.

Marie D. De JesAs/Staff photographer Marie D. De JesAs/Staff photographer Bishop of Brownsville Daniel Flores shakes hands with the family of Death row prisoner Melissa Lucio during a prayer vigil at the Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle - National Shrine, Friday, April 22, 2022, in San Juan. (Marie D. De Jesus/Staff photographer) Bishop of Brownsville Daniel Flores shakes hands with the family of Death row prisoner Melissa Lucio during a prayer vigil at the Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle - National Shrine, Friday, April 22, 2022, in San Juan. (Marie D. De Jesus/Staff photographer)

At that point, Lucio had five, rather than just three days before she was scheduled to be in the Huntsville death chamber.

Five days away five days away, Alvarez said, her voice breaking. Her adopted son, Elijah, who is Lucios grandson, fidgeted at the podium while she spoke, peeking his head around to look at the crowd every so often.

Marie D. De JesAs/Staff photographer

Were scared, we don't want to wait until the last minute, she said to the small crowd.

Wait and hope was all that was left.

rebecca.hennes@chron.com
Bexar County Sheriff's Office

Several migrants were injured following a high-speed chase that started in Medina County and ended with a crash in Bexar County Sunday morning, according to reports from KENS-5.

The Medina County Sheriff's Office was attempting a traffic stop when the driver of the truck took off. The vehicle eventually rolled over near I35 and Kinney Road, officials said.
Joyce Packey Stein lived in an upper middle class home in a quiet section of Terrell Hills but was planning to move to Austin following her stormy divorce.

The 39-year-old mother of two never got the chance to make that move.

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On April 12, 1976, her ex-husband Stanley Stein and her boyfriend George Hanzi found her on the balcony of her two-story home in the 900 block of Eventide Drive with four .38 caliber bullets in her body.

Stein, clad in a bloody white nightgown, was dead on the second-floor balcony overlooking the pool for 30 hours before she was found, authorities said.

Forty-six years after she was killed, Stein's homicide remains unsolved.

San Antonio Light

The story of Steins untimely death fills hundreds of pages of reports in the Terrell Hills Police Department.

According to the reports, her ex-husband was abusive and was ordered by a judge just weeks before Steins death to stay away from her. The reports also say she was dating two men at the time  one who saw her hours before her death and another who knew how many times she was shot and where, as well as intimate details about her homicide that others questioned by police werent privy to.

The reports, however, don't reveal why authorities never made an arrest. The case is now inactive.

At least six neighbors told police they heard a volley of shots just after 1 a.m.

Related: There are 88 unsolved homicides in San Antonio since 1970. Here are some of the notable cold cases.

One neighbor remembered hearing the shots and thinking that it sounded like someone was really pissed off, according to the police report.

Another neighbor thought she saw a man running north on a nearby street. No one called the police.

Over the years, law enforcement officials have said they had a pretty good idea of who killed Stein but could not prove it.

An ugly divorce

Stein worked for a Ford dealership in Devine, about 35 miles southeast of San Antonio, and was awarded custody of her 11-year-old son, Eric, in an ugly divorce proceeding.

Just months before her death, her oldest son, Stanley Jr., 21, died from injuries he suffered in a motorcycle accident.

It was at the hospital where she met Dr. Gary Ferris, an osteopath and radiologist. Ferris told police and journalists that they were engaged to be married. He said they planned to move to Austin together.

Stein's friends and family told police a different story.

Steins mother described him to police as nutty. Stein allegedly told friends that Ferris was "an inexperienced lover," snored, ate his food too quickly, and burped loudly in public.

San Antonio Express

She preferred George Hanzi, her other boyfriend, friends told police. After a planned brief stint in Austin with Eric, her son, Stein was planning to move her family to Atlanta to live with Hanzi.

Her marriage to Stanley Stein broke up a little over a year before she was supposed to make the move. Stein had filed for divorce in 1971 and again in 1972, but the suit was dropped, records show.

Margaret Packey, Steins mother, told police that Stanley had beaten her several times. In 1972, he broke her nose so badly that she required surgery, Packey told police.

In 1975, she followed through with the divorce. According to court records, she got the Terrell Hills home, valued at what was then $129,000. She was going to receive $15,000 from the sale of the home.

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In the weeks before she died, a judge granted a restraining order against Stanley Stein. She also filed a motion with the district court asking that her ex-husband be found in contempt for allegedly failing to honor the divorce decree.

In her motion, she alleged that Stein had failed to pay child support and that he had allegedly failed to sign any of the instruments necessary to consummate the sale of the property, as required by the divorce decree.

Stanley Stein told investigators he had tried to contact her several times the day before he discovered the body, and became worried when she did not pick up their son, Eric.

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Stanley Stein later took and passed a polygraph test. As did George Hanzi.

After wrapping up a three-day garage sale, she invited Hanzi over for dinner on a Saturday night. Police said less than two hours later, she was dead.

One bullet struck her in the left buttocks and another on her left side. Its possible Stein had been running toward the open second-floor balcony and the safety of the outside, according to the police report.

But the gunman caught up with her and shot her two more times in the head.

Glaring, eating rose petals

Both Hanzi's and Stanley Steins alibis appeared to satisfy police. Ferris was the only person who didnt take a polygraph test. Police said he contradicted himself several times during his interviews with authorities.

En route to a polygraph test in Austin, Ferris told a detective that he had not taken any medications, but then told the polygraph examiner that he had taken medications and was refused the test, records show.

Ferris had been in a Bexar County hospital the night Stein was killed. A nurse told detectives that Ferris was awake all night and looked upset, which he attributed to his lack of sleep. The nurse also told police that he had an IV in his arm and was seen in his bed at 2 a.m.

San Antonio News

On the day Steins body was discovered, Ferris called her home three times, police said. On one occasion, he told Bexar County Sheriff's detective Bill White exactly where she had been shot.

When asked later how he knew about the location of the multiple gunshot wounds, Ferris said he spent time in forensic science work and that these were the most common places to be shot, according to police reports. Ferris lawyer ended the conversation soon after.

Shortly after Ferris learned of Steins death, he told her friend that he went to the scene to look around, according to the police report. He also told the friend that the police were not doing a good enough job.

He also told the friend that Stein's ex-husband had threatened to kill her, police said. When the friend encouraged him to go to the police with the information, he said, What if I get an unfriendly policeman? according to police.

Ferris was also dwelling on whether Stein really liked him, the friend told police.

At Steins funeral, Ferris chewed on rose petals and glared at her ex-husband and her other boyfriend, who sat in the front row, friends told police. Ferris placed the remaining rose on the casket as it was being lowered into the ground.

This case happened 10 years before I was born

In 1977, a year after Stein was killed, Terrell Hills Police Chief W.C. Bill Madison told the San Antonio Light that new evidence had been uncovered and that he hoped to take the case before a Bexar County grand jury shortly.

Madison, who had taken over shortly after several of the major investigators retired or left the department, said they had several prime suspects.

But it appears this attempt, like much of the investigation, came up empty. Its unclear why the case never went before the grand jury.

In 1986, Stanley Stein and his new wife, Sandi, died in a midair airplane collision over Southern California. Ferris moved to Culver City, California, where he ran an osteopathic practice.

In 2005, Terrell Hills police ran a background check on Ferris. Five years later, the department announced that it was reopening the case. However, nothing appears to have come from it.

Eric Stein, her son, died in 2012 at the age of 48. His obit did not say how he died.

The Stein case is now listed as inactive, which means the case is still open but there is a lack of leads or information that would allow the case to be resolved.

Detective Michael Guttierrez, a spokesman for the department, says he doesnt know why the case wasnt solved.

This case happened 10 years before I was born, Guttierrez said. And without knowing the investigators themselves, I couldnt make an educated guess on what happened.

He added: Anyone with information on this case can reach out, and I will reopen it. I am not in the business of letting things go unsolved for no reason.

Information from Hearst Newspaper archives were used in this report.

timothy.fanning@express-news.net
Regarding Editorial: As gun deaths surge, its time to say enough to Second Amendment absolutism, (April 18): As a home-owning citizen with two grown children and a deceased 17-year-old daughter taken by gun violence, I am very concerned for our safety from gun violence. I have come to believe that the best tactic to address the elevated level of gun violence is to create a constitutional amendment to allow stop-and-frisk.

I honestly can't imagine living in a community with even higher levels of gun violence than Houston. I don't understand peace-loving citizens who won't embrace trying to reduce the levels of gun violence through stop-and-frisk, as put into place by then-Mayor Bloomberg, who afterward was castigated for his policy for being discriminatory. Frankly, I now see minorities preferring the risk of gun violence over stop-and-frisk; I think their willingness is probably tainted by their personal fear of being discriminated against when that policy is invoked.

However, I lean toward supporting stop-and-frisk because I think the personal safety and quality of life of Americans would be improved if gun owners were expected to act within the laws regarding gun ownership and gun handling. The current environment of gun violence in this country creates threats to personal safety equivalent to what was found in the Wild West 150 years ago. I really don't understand how a civilized society tolerates this.

I say, add some statistical smarts to the stop-and-frisk process to level the playing field by targeting all people equally and we all would have a real workable solution to tame gun violence. My vote is to try something to hopefully reduce the illegal holding of a gun by fellow citizens. I don't really see any realistic options popping up anywhere else.

Bob Aubrecht, Houston

Regarding Opinion: Ted Cruz is right. Bidens ghost gun ban is a distraction from his crime problem., (April 20): People who argue for absolutism with regard to the Second Amendment should read Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion in the Heller decision:

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose...nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

Jon Parker, Houston

Mayor Turners plan

Regarding Houston may require bars to install outdoor security cameras as part of Turner plan to target crime, (April 13): All politics is local as well as national. What can the mayor and city council do representing a city saturated with lethal weapons and almost daily carnage?

They must first admit that a sizable number of our population consists of too many who have been exposed to decades of underemployment, consistently poor educational opportunities and decades of racially segregated housing with all attendant deprivations.

It is fair to ask, given the mayor's appointed special commission to provide solutions to gun violence: Have we closed the gun show loophole? Who is in charge of the promised gun buyback project and what is their record? And finally has the Houston Police Department deployed the promised threat assessment teams in the known areas of the city where gun violence is prominent and where even children are killing children?

Until we know the answers we can expect nothing but performative gestures for the news cycles that inflame rather than inform.

David Jones, Houston

Regarding Houston council OKs security camera mandate for bars, convenience stores over ACLU objections, (April 20): Its clear the 15 members of the City Council who voted for this have no concept of running a business  and especially so during the times of tight labor and supply issues we are currently experiencing. Forcing hundreds of businesses to simultaneously order and install the same type of product in just 90 days will likely drive prices higher while limiting their options for quality products as supplies dwindle.

While the city mandated the installation of 1080p cameras, thats yesterdays technology trying to solve todays crimes. At a facility I help manage, we are in the process of updating our cameras from older 1080p cameras to 4K cameras as we have had incidents where even the 1080p cameras cant capture quality images that are useful. They can tell you what happened, but not the who nearly as well. The cameras we need are backordered until May/June.

This is a stupid, knee-jerk reaction to the liberal, lax-on-crime attitude that has been infecting major cities across the U.S.

Having cameras may be a good idea in the long run, but businesses need more time to acquire and install quality equipment that will actually add value. Oh, and since this camera requirement is part of Mayor Turners One Safe Houston agenda that will funnel $44 million in federal relief funds (aka our tax dollars) to the city, will the mayor and City Council be giving all these business some of these funds to install these new cameras, or is this just a new regulatory burden (aka tax) forced upon a business?

Tim Graney, Katy
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP)  The Rev. Al Sharpton demanded that authorities publicly identify the Michigan officer who killed Patrick Lyoya, a Black man and native of Congo who was fatally shot in the back of the head after a struggle, saying at Lyoya's funeral Friday: We want his name!"

Sharpton's comments renewed demands by Lyoya's family members and activists. He told the roughly 1,000 people gathered that authorities cannot set a precedent of withholding the names of officers who kill people. Police in Grand Rapids have said they would withhold the officer's name unless he is charged with a crime, which they describe as a long-standing practice that applies to the public as well as city employees.

Every time a young Black man or woman is arrested in this town, you put their name all over the news. Every time were suspected of something, you put our name out there, Sharpton said. "How dare you hold the name of a man that killed this man? We want his name!

Mourners at Renaissance Church of God in Christ, many wearing T-shirts or sweatshirts bearing Lyoyas picture, stood and applauded.

In a statement Friday, City Manager Mark Washington acknowledged the demands and said he would discuss the matter with the police chief and human resources officials.

Police reform requires evaluating many long-standing practices to ensure our actions are consistent with the best interests of the community and the individuals involved, Washington said.

No timeline has been set for the discussions or a decision, spokesman David Green said, adding that Washingtons statement was intended to let city residents know we hear you and were willing to assess that practice and see if it works or not.

Sharpton noted that Lyoya was killed on April 4, the anniversary of the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., putting Lyoya's death in the context of the national civil rights movement. He said Lyoya came to America in search of a better life and ran into an America that we know too well. He urged those gathered to continue to fight for justice, and called for a federal investigation into Lyoya's killing.

"We cant bring Patrick back. But we can bring justice in Patricks name," he said.

Andrew Birge, U.S. attorney for the district that includes Grand Rapids, said in a statement that his office and the FBI had offered help state investigators and local prosecutors and that the Justice Department can provide consultation, mediation or training assistance. He said his office will continue to review the facts to determine whether additional federal response is warranted.

Sharpton and civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the Lyoya family, have frequently joined with mourners to speak at the funerals of Black people killed by police. Sharpton has eulogized George Floyd, whose death in Minneapolis sparked a national reckoning on race; Daunte Wright, who was shot during a traffic stop in suburban Minneapolis; Andre Hill, who was killed in Columbus, Ohio; and Andrew Brown Jr., who was killed in North Carolina.

Crump also called for justice Friday, saying an unnamed police officer escalated a simple misdemeanor traffic stop into a deadly execution. He said the issue is one of humanity, and he called on federal lawmakers to pass reforms aimed at curbing systemic racism in policing.

World leaders cant condemn Russian soldiers shooting unarmed citizens in the back of the head in Ukraine, but then refuse to condemn police officers shooting unarmed Black citizens here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he said. If its wrong that you do it in the Ukraine then its wrong that you do it in Grand Rapids.

After the service, Crump told reporters: We believe the whole world is watching Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Lyoyas body lay in a white, open casket inside the church before the service began. Once the funeral started, the casket was closed and the flag of Congo was draped over it. Below the casket, a sign bearing an image of the American flag and a photo of Lyoya said: Its our right to live, in both English and Swahili.

Lyoya's mother, Dorcas, sobbed as mourners filed in to pay their respects, and tears ran down her cheek as music played and a choir sang.

U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence, Michigans only Black member of Congress, read a proclamation saluting Lyoyas memory, saying he was an American of great distinction, whose life and legacy would not be forgotten.

This is personal to me. This is my family. You are my family. This is my community, she said. And if I dont stand up, who will?

Other elected officials, such as Grand Rapids Mayor Rosalynn Bliss and state Sen. Winnie Brinks, were also in attendance.

The funeral program was printed in English and Swahili, and a portion of the service was led by leaders in the Congolese community. Bethlehem Shekanena, whose parents immigrated from Congo, said the Lyoyas came to the U.S. for life, liberty and the ability to pursue happiness.

We are gathered here today because the promise given to all those who reside on this land, the very foundation of what makes America America  it was broken the moment Patrick Lloya was killed in the streets." she said, adding: He did not deserve to die."

Before the service, mourners were given T-shirts that read Justice For Patrick Lyoya on one side and Its our Right to Live! on the other. Some men removed their suit jackets and slipped the shirt on over their dress shirts.

Lyoya, who was unarmed, was face down on the ground when he was shot April 4. The officer, whose name has not been released, was on top of him and can be heard on video demanding that he take his hand off the officer's Taser.

Earlier, the officer is heard saying Lyoya was stopped because the license plate did not match the car Lyoya was driving. Lyoya, a 26-year-old father of two, declined to get back into the vehicle as ordered, and a short foot chase ensued before the deadly struggle.

How dare you pull your gun about some car tags? Sharpton said during his eulogy.

State police are investigating the shooting. The agency will forward findings to Kent County prosecutor Chris Becker for consideration of any charges. He has told the public to not expect a quick decision.

Attorneys for the Lyoya family have said they believe video collected and released by police shows Lyoya was resisting the officer, not fighting him. His parents have called the shooting an execution.

___

Forliti contributed from Minneapolis. Associated Press reporter John Flesher contributed from Traverse City, Michigan.

___

Find the APs full coverage of the fatal police shooting of Patrick Lyoya: https://apnews.com/hub/patrick-lyoya
Roxy, a pitbull mix found neglected and abuse last year in Adams, had to be euthanized on Friday because of aggressive cancer. The dog had diabetes that affected her eyesight. PreviousNext

Journey Ends for Rescued Pitbull Roxy



Kathy Hynes with Roxy on Friday. Hynes runs a dog rescue, Got Spots. She took Roxy in last year and nursed her back to health. She hopes that the neglect case against Roxy's former owners will finally be heard in court. ADAMS, Mass.  Roxy was supposed to have a happily forever after.

Abused and starved, she was taken in by rescuer Kathy "Skippy" Hynes almost a year ago and nursed back to health.

But a cancer prognosis meant there was no fairytale ending for the cheerful pit bull mix. She "crossed the rainbow bridge" on Friday night.

Hynes choked back tears as she recounted how a cough on Wednesday led to Friday's decision to euthanize Roxy on the advice of her veterinarians at Berkshire Veterinary Hospital.

"I knew when she had that cough Wednesday night, I just knew," she said. Hynes had taken Roxy in to be checked and she had just returned home when the phone rang, with doctor telling her the dog's "lungs are full of cancer."

At best, she might have six to nine months but the cancer is aggressive. Hynes said Roxy was already showing signs of pain, discomfort and irritability. It was a difficult decision, she said, but she promised Roxy she would not died suffering.

Roxy has already suffered enormously. She was discovered by Animal Control Officer Kimberly Witek last July in pitiable condition.

Photos taken at the time show a gaunt tan and white dog, her ribs poking out. She had several health problems, including poor vision, a cancerous tumor that had to be removed and diabetes. Authorities have been working on a case of neglect but said last year that it was complicated because there were multiple involved before Witek rescued her.

Witek contacted Hynes, who runs a small rescue, Got Spots Etc., to see if would take on the challenge. Hynes did, wholeheartedly. She nursed Roxy back to health and has been working to see that Roxy's former owners are called to account.

Maybe Roxy would have gotten the cancer anyways, Hynes said, but if she'd had proper care during her life, it could have been found sooner and she might have been OK.

"If she had gotten veterinary care she would not have been in this serious situation," she said. "I'm so angry ... It's just killing me because you don't know how a sweet a dog she is."

She credited Witek and Dr. John Makuc of Berkshire Veterinary Hospital for working with her to give Roxy the brief months she had in a loving home.

On Friday, a much fattened up and wiggly Roxy was happy to see company. But it was obvious she was having difficulty breathing and she tired quickly.

It's particularly hard for Hynes, who's had to say goodbye to three other aging and ill pets in the last four months -- her two Labradors and, just three weeks ago, her 16 1/2-year-old cat.

Roxy won't live to see her day in court, but Hynes is not giving up on her neglect case and she's considering lobbying for a "Roxy's Bill" to make sure these types cases are adjudicated.

"I want to be able to face them in the courtroom," she said of Roxy's abusers. "I want five minutes to have my say."

Hynes said animal abuse often points to domestic and child abuse, which she'd encountered during her time working as a registered nurse. And she's not afraid to take on abusers, as demonstrated by her efforts on a successfully prosecuted abuse case in North Carolina.

"People have to report it and the courts have to jump on it," she said.

Hynes was making sure Roxy's last hours were peaceful and happy, and imagining her with Hynes' late mother and her dog friends who had preceded her in these past months. Hynes acknowledged that the costs for her small rescue can be difficult to cover.

"I've got a volunteer who offered to pay for her euthanasia and if someone wants to pay for her cremation I'll take it," she said.
Lanesborough Selectmen to Hear Temporary Police Station Plans

LANESBOROUGH, Mass.  The Police Station Committee plans to present its proposal for a temporary police station location to the Board of Selectmen on Monday.

"I think us getting a temporary location set up is huge. It's something that, when the committee was formed, we didn't think that would be something we'd really be doing, but it ended up being something that worked out really well," said Chair Kristen Tool.

The Selectmen will have to approve the committee's proposal to relocate the Police Department to 545 South Main St. before anything can move forward. The American Rescue Plan Act Fund Committee approved a budget on April 20 that includes the $65,000 for a potential two-year lease of the property.

The lease, according to Tool, should already save the town a significant amount of money compared to what was anticipated.

"By moving the officers to this temporary location, once that is able to get approved, we will have already saved $120,000 that we budgeted to have a temporary location," she said "A trailer somewhere, that was going to be closer to $200,000."

Regarding the new station, Tool said she thinks a separate meeting with the Selectmen to discuss details with each potential site would be helpful. The committee discussed the feasibility of several potential sites, including the current police station site at 8 Prospect St., with Brian Humes of Jacunsci & Humes Architects on on April 6.

"It would be irresponsible for us to say, 'Do it and see what happens,' if there are other things here that would rule this site out before that taxpayer money is spent," she said. She noted Humes is willing to work with the town regardless of which site Lanesborough chooses.

The committee discussed the difficulties of getting any accurate estimates for the price of a new station. Tool said the committee is nowhere near a discussion on costs.

"I think there's a lot of fear in town about the money. Then it's like we're not even ready to talk about it because it's just an idea that we will get there. I'm confident that we will be able to lower the costs," she said.




iciHaiti - Croix-des-Bouquets : A gang leader killed by the PNH





Mackenlo Francois, the 3rd gang leader, operating in the "Nan Remy" neighborhood (Croix-des-Bouquets commune), was fatally injured in exchanges of fire with the police.



This powerful gang leader was part of a criminal organization, according to testimonies collected from citizens, and sowed terror in the neighborhood.



Should be noted that for several weeks, the National Police of Haiti (PNH), on the instructions of the Commander-in-Chief ai Frantz Elbe, amplifies its operations, multiplies its patrols and thus establishes an imposing police presence across the country, particularly in the capital whose the objective is to track down the thugs and put them out of harm's way.



Frantz Elbe reiterates his call for synergy between the police and the population in order to allow the police to do an even more effective job.



Read also about the actions of the PNH (Partial) :

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-36490-icihaiti-pnh-3-members-of-the-400-marozo-gang-mortally-wounded.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-36458-icihaiti-pnh-2-new-members-of-the-5-secondes-gang-arrested.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-36446-icihaiti-pnh-in-action-2-members-of-the-5-seconds-gang-killed-several-others-injured.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-36442-icihaiti-security-2-other-bandits-fall-under-the-bullets-of-the-pnh.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-36416-icihaiti-pnh-a-terrifying-bandit-and-one-of-the-trusted-men-of-gang-leader-zian-killed.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-36389-haiti-pnh-10-bandits-killed-a-policewoman-injured.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-36380-haiti-security-the-pnh-scores-points-against-bandits-and-gangs.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-36372-ici-haiti-pnh-kidnapping-defeated-a-kidnapper-killed.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-36276-icihaiti-insecurity-panic-at-saint-boniface-hospital.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-36264-icihaiti-pnh-kidnapping-attempt-foiled.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-36256-icihaiti-pnh-arrest-of-2-members-of-the-400-mawozo-gang.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-36219-haiti-flash-the-police-in-action.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-36216-icihaiti-security-positive-results-for-the-pnh.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-36201-haiti-news-zapping.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-36195-icihaiti-cap-haitien-7-arrests-seizure-of-weapons-and-ammunition.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-36110-icihaiti-turgeau-6-individuals-arrested-8-weapons-seized.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-36098-icihaiti-center-department-4-bandits-arrested-in-24-hours.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-35987-icihaiti-justice-2-haitians-arrested-for-drug-trafficking.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-35651-icihaiti-security-seizure-of-more-than-10kg-of-marijuana-2-haitians-and-a-jamaican-arrested.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-35637-icihaiti-security-the-border-police-increase-its-staff.html



HL/ HaitiLibre


















It is the peak of the sugarcane harvest season in Maharashtra and according to reports, this year the state is eyeing record production. According to estimates, Maharashtra's sugarcane output of 133 lakh tonnes, which is 25 per cent higher than the previous year.

BCCL

This is great news for the farmers of the state who have struggled for years, with crop losses and low prices. The annual sugarcane harvest season in Maharashtra also coincides with the time when leopards give birth to their offspring. This results in a major human animal conflict in the region. Several animals are killed and humans get injured in the process. The authorities have recognised the problem, but there seems to be no solution for this at the moment.

Six cubs rescued this year

An increasing number of these are happening in sugarcane fields, which can lead to undesirable consequences.

BCCL

This year alone so far, in two separate incidents six leopard cubs were found in sugarcane fields and were later reunited with their mothers.

In the first case, four 2-month-old leopard cubs were found by harvesters in a sugarcane field in Kabadwadi village in Junnar. They were rescued by Wildlife SOS and the NGO later reunited them with their mother.

Wildlife SOS

Just days later, two more leopard cubs, estimated to be 7-8 weeks old were found in a sugarcane field in Ale village, situated in Otur forest range on Junnar.

A joint effort of Wildlife SOS and the Maharashtra forest department helped the cubs reunite with their mother. While the two reported incidents this year had happy endings, it is not the case always.

Wildlife SOS

Why leopards prefer sugarcane fields

As the sugarcane fields spread into more and more areas including the peripheries of forests, over the years, the number of leopard cubs being found in fields during harvests has increased.

"Maharashtra is one of the strongholds of leopards in India. With the agricultural land expanding into forests and with the loss of forest cover, they have lost a lot of their natural habitat over the years. But leopards are quick adapters and have learned to live with human settlements. The sugarcane fields provide them with an ideal setting to give birth and keep them safe from predators'," a spokesperson of Wildlife SOS told Indiatimes.

Wildlife SOS

Locals need to be sensitised

As the leopard sightings become more common in the area, the residents have also become used to them and are well aware of the possibility of encountering a big cat in the field.

"The harvesters know that there could be leopard cubs in the stubble and over the years we have trained the villagers and schools to sensitise people on what to do and what not to if they see a leopard or a cub in destress," she said.

BCCL

In 2019, in a shocking incident, five leopard cubs, aged just 10 days were burnt alive in Pune after farmers set fire to a sugarcane farm, unaware of their presence.

Since leopards are nocturnal animals, the mother could be away from the cubs during the day leaving the vulnerable young ones alone in the sugarcane field.

There have been cases where the villagers who spot the cubs in the field take them away. When the mother leopard returns at night and can't find its cubs, it enters the village in search of them.

Wildlife SOS

Open wells become killing grounds

The number of leopards falling into open wells in the villages has also increased.

"We tell the villagers to immediately inform the Forest Department or us if they spot cubs or leopards fallen in the well. In the past few years, we have also trained some villagers to become first responders - to act in case it is taking longer for us to reach the spot. This includes ensuring that the leopards don't drown," she said.

Wildlife SOS

On receiving information of leopard cubs being found, a team is dispatched to the area. The medical team first examines the cubs for any injuries. Once the team is satisfied with the health condition of the cubs, they are kept under observation till night.

Even if the leopard cubs are found in the sugarcane fields in good condition, reuniting them with their mothers is a hard task.

Wildlife SOS

Reuniting lost cubs and mothers

"The mother leopard can identify the cubs from their scent. If the cubs are touched by humans the mother may not be able to locate the cubs easily," she said.

The reunion attempts are made during the night when the mother leopard returns.

"We take the leopard cubs to the same spot where they were found. The cubs are then kept in a box to ensure that they are safe from other predators. Over the years, we have learned that sprinkling urine of the cubs near the area will help the mother reach the babies faster as they can identify the scent. If the mother doesn't show up on the first day, the same exercise is repeated for the next two nights," she said.

Wildlife SOS

Since Wildlife SOS began operating in Maharashtra the NGO has so far done more than 80 successful reunions. In the rare case of the mother leopard getting killed or abandoning the cubs, the orphans are taken to a dedicated Leopard Rescue Center.

Wildlife SOS

"We try to ensure that the cubs are reunited with their mothers, but if that doesn't happen, we keep them under our care. But since they become dependent on humans from a very young age they cannot be released back into the wild. So we try maximum to avoid this," she said.





For more on news, sports and current affairs from around the world, please visit Indiatimes News.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) recently seized assets valued Rs 757 crore from Amway India, a multi-level marketing company, for alleged money laundering.



With its large selection of consumer goods, Amway India seems to have become a household name in recent years. For a long time, the firm was used as a scanner by law enforcement authorities. As part of a crackdown on money launderers, ED investigators called the consumer products company's bluff and seized its assets on Monday.

The company was investigated by the ED for operating a pyramid scam and defrauding clients under the guise of direct selling multi-level marketing systems.

What is a Pyramid scam?

moneycontrol

The pyramid scheme is said to be a deceptive way of 'duping' investors, building a continuous chain of investments. Under this technique, the firm's promoters are constantly on the lookout for new investors. They seek out 'primary' investors, who then seek out more and more. The name Pyramid comes from the fact that additional investors are added at each level, establishing a network.



Simply described, instead of providing a product or service to the general public, a pyramid plan guarantees participants payment or services in exchange for recruiting others to join the plan. Money continues to flow up the chain as new players bring in more recruits, forming an ever-increasing pyramid or hierarchy. Money circulation plans are another name for this type of arrangement.

In Amway's lawsuit, the ED essentially alleges the same point. "The whole thrust of the firm is around promoting how members may get wealthy by being members," the agency added. The emphasis is not on the products. This MLM Pyramid fraud is disguised as a direct selling firm by using commodities."

After a significant number of individuals have been recruited, a pyramid scheme becomes unsustainable since revenues are reduced when the money is distributed among the group rather than profiting from product sales.

In response to past legal issues, Amway contended that the rewards collected by its distributors are not allocated evenly to everyone in the company's sales system. It had denied operating a pyramid system, claiming that it participates in direct selling through its members, whose pyramidal network sells the company's products, extending the network further. Meanwhile, the ED has raised concerns about Amway's "exorbitant" charges.

Amway has retained its multi-level marketing (MLM) business strategy throughout.

How is the Pyramid scheme different from direct selling?

Instead of using a retail model like a store, direct sales organisations employ representatives who purchase commodities from the firm and then directly reach out and sell the products to consumers at their residences or other locations. The proceeds from product sales are split between the direct selling company and the agent. According to industry figures, there are over 60 lakh agents in the country that use direct selling to supplement their income.

According to projections, India's direct sales business is worth Rs 10,000 crore and has grown at a rate of 12-13 percent each year for the past five years. Multivitamins, as well as home and personal care goods, are the top-selling categories through this channel, according to experts.

Why has ED attached Amway Indias assets?

Amway

Amway India, as per the ED's press release, operates a MLM or pyramid system that "induces the general public to participate as members of the firm and purchase items at exorbitant costs."



Most Amway goods are "exorbitant in comparison to alternative popular items from leading manufacturers present on the free market," according to the ED.

As per ED, new members who are invited to join the company are not purchasing things for personal consumption, but rather to become wealthy by becoming members as demonstrated by their upline members.

"The fact is that the rewards earned by upline members play a significant role in the increase in product costs," the ED added.

According to the ED, Amway's practices are akin to a pyramid system, in which current members recruit new members with the promise of acquiring wealth and becoming rich.

According to the agency, Amway earned Rs 27,562 crore during FY2003 and FY2022, with which it distributed Rs 7,588 crore in fees to associate members and distributors in the United States and India.

Multi-level marketing (MLM) model

Between a pyramid scam and an MLM model, there is a fine line. An MLM model differs from a pyramid scam in that it focuses on the sale of more goods as a compensation model instead of incentives for acquiring more members.

Unlike indirect sales organisations that sell their goods through a network of wholesalers, distributors, and retailers, MLM firms offer their goods directly to members of the general public. While not employees of the corporation, these members solicit new people to join the product selling system, thereby establishing a structure that increases the web and revenue.

Amway's independent members are known as Amway Firm Owners, and they profit from the direct sale of items to clients, bonuses based on increasing sales volume, and lastly rewards as the business expands, according to The Business Model Analyst website. At the start, each recruited member must pay a registration fee.

Amways stand on the issue

Navbharat Times

Amway, on the other hand, says that it does not provide any rewards to new members to join the organisation, and that members are only paid if they complete a deal or sell an item, hence it is not a pyramid network.



The firm has issued a letter stating that the officials' move is related to an inquiry that began in 2011 and that Amway has been working with the department since then, sharing all information requested from Amway on a regular basis. Amway stated that it will continue to work with government officials in order to get a fair, lawful, and rational resolution to the unresolved challenges.

"We do not wish to say further because the situation is pending." In a statement to the press, it stated, "We suggest that you take precautions, as a false perception regarding our operation damages the livelihood of over 5.5 lakh direct sellers in the country."

Amway India CEO Anshu Budhraja told Moneycontrol last year that the company never charges its sellers a registration price.

"There are no costs associated with entering the Amway business. Furthermore, to guarantee that customer satisfaction has a positive Amway experience, our goods are supported by a money-back assurance for 100 percent customer satisfaction," Budhraja had stated.

Indian laws governing such schemes

The Consumer Protection Act (Direct Selling) Rules, 2021, were enacted last year, prohibiting direct sales organisations from promoting pyramid or money circulation systems. These fresh regulations make it illegal for direct sales firms to charge their agents registration fees or to charge them for the cost of demonstrating to potential buyers.

Direct selling firms were placed under the Consumer Protection Act for the first instance in 2021 with the Consumer Protection (Direct Selling) Rules. The new Rules were enacted to hold firms like Amway responsible for customer complaints stemming from the selling of goods or services by their direct salespeople.

Direct selling businesses and direct salespeople would be barred from advertising a pyramid scheme, enlisting anyone in such a system, or engaging in such a structure in any way under the guise of undertaking direct selling business, according to the rules. Amway has been criticized for doing just this by the ED.

Following the ED's latest activity, Amway India stated that the inclusion of direct selling firms under the Consumer Protection Act (Direct Selling) rules, 2021, had "brought in much-needed regulatory and legal clarification for the sector, whilst also verifying Amway India's constant adherence with the letter and the spirit of all laws and regulations in India."

TOI

Aside from the laws from last year, the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978, also prohibits such practices. This prohibits the use of "prize chits and money circulation systems, as well as enrolling as participants or membership in such plans."



Section 3 of the Act states, "No person shall promote or operate any prize chit or money circulation programme, or enlist as a member of any such chit or scheme, or otherwise participate in it, or receive or remit any money in pursuit of such chit or scheme." The punitive elements and sanctions for violating the Act are highlighted in Sections 4 and 5.

"Every individual who, at the period the incident occurred, was just in control of, and was able to account to, the firm for the actions of the company's business, as well as the corporation, shall be considered to be guilty of the violation and must therefore be accountable to be progressed against and penalised accordingly," says Section 6.





For more on news and current affairs from around the world please visit Indiatimes News.
Micheal Martin has said that while Ireland has been very helpful in its response to the plight of Ukrainian refugees, we can and have to do more for them.

On a visit to the new refugee centre in Millstreet, Co Cork, the Taoiseach was asked if we can accommodate the 25,000 Ukrainian refugees already here, and how far are we from having to put them up in tents.

He didnt directly answer the question, but instead pointed to the new Millstreet centre describing it as an example of Irelands innovative approach to the refugee housing crisis.

When pressed on the issue again, and asked if Ireland has the capacity to accommodate more refugees, he replied: I want an end to the war and we have to keep the pressure on Putin, not on ourselves.

Thats the fundamental approach of the European Union  the war should end. There is no moral justification for it.

There are growing concerns about Irelands ability to accommodate refugees.

Just last Thursday, the Irish Examiner reported that only 159 Ukrainian refugees had moved into accommodation pledged by the public since the war broke out, although that figure is set to increase to 900 in "days".

Efforts to match beneficiaries from short term and emergency accommodation to suitable pledges is under way and the department expects numbers of moved beneficiaries to increase over the coming days.

Although there have been about 25,000 pledges to the Irish Red Cross since February 25, 3,800  16%  have been withdrawn by families who changed their minds.

This has led to suggestions that people could be paid to house refugees.

When asked if he intends on assigning one person or department to handle Irelands response to the refugee crisis, Mr Martin replied: "This has to be multi-departmental within government. In two months an awful lot has been achieved, its quite unprecedented coming out of the Covid situation as well.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin meets Ukrainian arrivals Diana Ikonnikova and Iryna Brunova and their pet dogs on a visit to the Millstreet centre. Picture: Eamon Ward

Yes, we can do more in terms of coordinating. We are still not out of the emergency phase of this in respect of what has happened.

The Taoiseach was asked if Ireland is going to have to put a cap on the number of refugees it takes from Ukraine.

He replied: "We're not contemplating and I'm not talking about caps."

He gave his reaction to visiting the approximately 100 Ukrainian families being housed in the Green Glens Arena in Millstreet.

Ive been very moved to meet with so many of the Ukrainian residents here, so many families who have flown the war in Ukraine and one cannot but be struck by their basic, simple gratitude articulated so eloquently and sincerely.

The sense of peace and safety and security they have here now for their children  thats very clear in the conversations we had.

Mr Martin said some of his conversations were with mothers of children who had spent weeks living in basements in silence and with the lights off for fear of being found by Russian soldiers.

One woman actually said to me that when they hear planes going over head they get a shudder and they get nervous.

So, in the first instance, Ireland is offering respite from that war, from that trauma," he said.

Mr Martin said one cannot lose sight of the fact that over 25,000 people have come into the country in the space of less than two months.

If you look at historically, since 1999, maybe 100,000 refugees or asylum seekers have come into the country," he added.

So, this is unprecedented, against an unprecedented war in terms of its sheer targeting of civilian residential zones, levelling of towns, creating of terror."

He added: Now we have more to do and there is much to be done but in two months Ireland has responded well and I want to thank the public servants across all of our agencies, across all of our government departments.
Last week, reading a piece about Clare Daly and Mick Wallace, I couldnt help but think of George Best. The footballer loved to retail the anecdote about the occasion, sometime after his premature retirement, when he was holed up in an expensive suite with Miss World.

Following a winning day at the races, the bed was papered with banknotes. Then room service arrived with the champers. The waiter looked around at the money, the bed, Miss World, and then at the man himself, and asked: George, where did it all go wrong?

Where did it all go wrong for Mick and Clare? Where did it all go wrong for John Waters? All three, in their different ways, made notable contributions to public life in this country, each coming from a position outside the mainstream. All of them have since taken off for the hill country way out in the wilds beyond the public square, up there where conspiracy theories roam free and all reason is culled.

At the outset, it should be recognised that, as far as those mentioned are concerned, it hasnt gone wrong at all. Take Mick and Clare. They are lauded by the state media of the biggest, fast becoming the most powerful, country in the world. According to Naomi OLearys excellent investigation in The Irish Times, Wallace has even been given a nickname in China. He is the Golden Lion King.

He and Daly are also stars on state media in Syria and Russia, where their anti-American rhetoric and Nato conspiracy theories are presented as the real deal. As far as media coverage is concerned, these politicians are getting more purchase per capita than most politicians in the world, ready made platforms from which to air their views. You couldnt buy it. And they dont. It is quite obvious that they believe every word they utter.

Last year in the European parliament, Wallace posited the theory that the chemical attacks in Syria by Bashir al Assad were actually the work of Western forces. He blamed the White Helmets, a volunteer group in the country which has documented extensive human rights abuses by Assad and Russian forces. Both he and Daly have accused Nato of being complicit in fomenting war in Ukraine.

What is being unleashed is a really dangerous Russiaphobia, which was under way anyway, but its now accelerating and Russian children are being targeted in European communities, Daly said last month in an interview on YouTube, according to The Irish Times piece.

This conflict in Ukraine is being used to silence dissent, Wallace said.

This is grist to the mill of the Kremlin, but does any of it stack up, beyond its use to those intent on spreading disinformation? Where did it all go wrong?

Some who see how they now conduct themselves like to ignore the fact that, in a previous existence, they were a pair of unorthodox yet highly effective legislators.

Before packing up and heading for Brussels, both were involved in highlighting the case of Maurice McCabe in the Oireachtas. Sometimes, they went perhaps a little too far but, without their input, McCabes plight might never have fully emerged.

Daly was a driving force behind repealing the Eighth Amendment. She was consistently forensic in dealing with issues that arose in Oireachtas committees. If she had ended up in government  either in a party or as an Independent  she would have made a competent minister.

Wallace had his own qualities, not least his ability to probe Nama at a time when the agency had a free rein over property.

Both of them are a loss to national politics. Unfortunately, there are few this side of Damascus or Moscow who would describe them as an addition to European politics.

Where did it all go wrong for John Waters? He arrived on the scene 30 years ago with a groundbreaking book, Jiving At The Crossroad, described at the time by Diarmuid Ferriter as majestic and by Brendan Kennelly as utterly fascinating in its insights and conclusions.

Over the following years, he was often a dissonant, always interesting, voice in the media. In the late 1990s, he began a campaign advocating for fathers of children in broken marriages. He had accurately spotted an institutional injustice, but pretty soon his campaign lost perspective and became what many considered an unhealthy obsession.

Today, he is regarded as a poster boy for the intolerant right. Bryan Fanning, professor of immigration and social policy in UCD, recently wrote of Waters that, more than anyone else, he has articulated the kinds of concerns and anxieties that have been politically exploited by

nativist populists in other countries.

John Waters: Regarded as a poster boy for the intolerant right.

Waters latest foray, with his confederate, Gemma ODoherty, was to challenge the emergency powers enacted during the pandemic. At a recent Supreme Court hearing on the case, ODoherty submitted that the Covid measures were part of an effort to establish a new world order, where citizens will live under a regime similar to communist China.

Maybe she fears the prospect of life under the yoke of the Golden Lion King. As with Daly and Wallace, Waters is lauded among an international subset, which draws comfort from his obvious intellectual abilities.

So where does it all go wrong for people like this?

On a superficial level, Daly and Wallace are considered left wing and Waters of the right, but what unites them is adherence to conspiracy theories of one hue or another.

Their respective world visions are replete with conspiracies, whether they be attributable to Nato, the US military-industrial complex, unseen liberal forces, the Euro state, feminists, media, and whatever youre having yourself. All these views are no doubt genuinely held but for most people they are off the wall.

This is a high time for conspiracy theories, with the prevalence of social media and the fracturing and polarising of political systems. Never have so many been prepared to believe in all manner of conspiracies, mainly designed to do down the believers in one form or another.

Adherents may place their faith in these theories through desperation or anger or simply disappointment at life. All the tools are there to spread disinformation across digital echo chambers and into the real world. What was once dismissed beyond belief is now regularly digested as Gods honest.

The surprising thing about the three public figures mentioned here is that they would, in all likelihood, have once given short shrift to the kind of conspiracies which now command their fidelity.

They knew up close how public life operated, how the world worked.

They knew that there was clear blue water between corruptions of one form or another and theories that ascribe wholesale depravity to certain allegedly nefarious elements.

They knew their onions, but somewhere along the way, they took off for the hill country, possibly never to return.

Lets be careful out there. It could happen to the best of us.
A tour boat with 26 people aboard has been missing for more than seven hours after issuing a distress call and taking on water, Japans coastguard said.

No survivors have been found so far, it added.
This past week, at my husbands request, we flew to Baltimore for a ceremony honoring Congresswoman Helen Bentley and her tireless work for the Port of Baltimore.

Publicly, I stated that I was doing it for Tom. Subconsciously, I knew I was nervous no one would remember either of us and wed be viewed as has-beens. Wow, was I wrong! It was a great event. There were many old friends, all of whom were delighted to see us, as we were them. We were singled out by many, and we left feeling fabulous!

The weekend before, I went to my first concert, all by myself, at the Adrienne Arsht Center. It was a Queen Tribute band, and I love Queens music. The whole day I was a bit nervous about this new adventure, but I got in the car and drove. I had so much fun!!

Queen fans have at least one thing in common: Queen, and everyone had a Queen story. The only people I knew who had tickets had the four seats next to me in the sixth-row orchestra; and in the fifth-row orchestra sat Steve Williamson, our Village Manager, and his girlfriend!

Terrified and terrific are words that start the same way, yet its our action that begets the outcome. Terrified is a little strong to describe how I felt prior to embarking on my new solo journey to a Queen concert. But terrific is certainly how I felt when leaving both the Bentley ceremony and the Queen concert. I realized it was time to take my own advice: I am a boomer, I embrace life and I must move forward!

At both events there was a mix of GenZ (20s) to Boomers. At the Bentley affair, it was the new wanna-be politicians, those running for state office and us, the Elder Boomers  with the wisdom and experience to know who would make it and who wouldnt. Even Marylands Governor (a GenXer) paid tribute to the Boomers who had attended. Congresswoman Bentley was the Greatest Generation and had died five years prior. Many of the same people had been at her memorial service.

At the Queen concert, the same multi-generational cohorts shared the love of great music. If we werent standing and dancing, we were butt-hopping in our seats. (That was in deference to the Elders behind us.) The entire audience knew the words and sang along when prompted. At the end of the concert, no one was sitting! It took me two hours to come down from the high.

I urge you not to sit and watch the world go by. Our generation is living into our 90s, if not longer. Lets make those memories now. I just booked my solo trip to Sweden and Italy. I am a little nervous, but experience tells me Im going to have a terrific time!

About Frances Reaves, ESQ

A graduate of University of Miami Law School, Reaves spent 10 years as a litigator/ lobbyist. She founded Parent Your Parents to assist seniors and their children through the myriad of pitfalls and options of senior care. If you have any questions or comments, contact Reaves at hfrancesr@parentyourparents.com
Today

Partly cloudy. Gusty winds diminishing after midnight. Low 58F. Winds W at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.

Tonight

Partly cloudy. Gusty winds diminishing after midnight. Low 58F. Winds W at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.

Tomorrow

Mostly sunny skies. High 86F. WNW winds at 5 to 10 mph, increasing to 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.
This Week in Review

A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more.
Written by ACM



*Strasbourg/Angelo Marcopolo/- Astonishingly, the Most Important Topical Issue Nowadays : that of the way to face ehe Deadly Virus' Pandemic, was kept ptacticaly Out of the Public Debates pf the Crucial Fnal Round in the current French Presidential Election. But when it did interfere, it trigered a Sharp Criticism against the way that the Incubent Admioistration attempted to Impose a Few Controversial Fake "Vaccines' on the People, to the Detriment of Both its Human Right to Chose, and of Medical Workers' Liberty, as well as of the efficiency of the Health Protection System...

========================

First of all, WHO Announced several Exceptional 'Problems" Hinfering a normal information gathering Nowadays, particularly on Europe.

Moreover, a Special WHO's Web-Page for our Area of the World, revealed that relevant "Data" on European Coutries were now, Suddenly, ..."14 Days" Old (sic !), i.e. a Black Out almost Equivelant and Coicidng with the Crucial Final Round the current Frech Presdental Elections' process, concluding on April 24...

Meanwhile, Challenger Marine Le Pen Complained for Incubent President Macron's Refusal of any Public Debate with him during the 1st Round of the Election. And when he, immediately Afterwards, Vsited Strasbourg's Region, he Skinded any Health-related Issue from a widely Publicized Speech on "Europe'here, by Restrictng the 1st into an Osbur Military Hospital at FarAway Muhlouse City... Last, but not leat; the Only Official Publc Debate between the 2 Finalist Candidates, on April 20, Despite a Log Time Duration, Icluding Various Other Topcal Issues, Surprisingly, did Not Deal with Any "Virus Pandemic" specific Issue, at all. (It Only added a Vague and Short mention about "Hospitals" in general)...

+ Paradoxicaly, an even more Surprizing Fact is that the current Ukranian Conflict, which has practicaly Monopolized the Establishment Medias' Attention during the Letest Weeks, occured almost at the Same Time with a Record-High Augmentation of Virus' Infections, Hospitalisations and Deaths, throughout Many Countries, which Risks to go practicaly UnNoticed, by the Publlic Opinion, particularly ion Europe and the USA, (i.e., by a Coincidence, there where the Copntroversial Fake-'Vaccines" notoriously have a quasi-Monopol)... It's Obvious that, in that way, inter alia, several Recent Developments Revealing various Limts, Imperfections, Counter-Indications, Gaps, Inadequacies, Unefficiencies, or Risks around those Fake-"Vaccines", may Not be percieved by the People fully and/or on time. And rrecent WHO ot other International Developments have, indeed, already started to Reveal maifold Failures in the Contrversial Pseudo-"Vaccines", Affectiong the Human Genome (mRNA + Virus' Vector, etc), Contrary to "Classic" Vaccines, similar to those tested and used Since Louis Pasteur's ionvention, during almost 2 Centuries.

Thus, inter alia, it's also the Growing Controversies on various possibly Negative Side-Effects of such Fake "Vaccines", the Fact that their Recipients are Not Always Protected from Infections, Hospitalisations or even Deaths, while they can even Infect Other People (as "Silent Killers"), added to an Unsustainable Obligation to Add More and more "Doses', 'Bousters", etc., each time, after only 3 or more Months, and/or fori each Variant, etc., (while Some can even be "Individualized" ...sic !), stand inevitably behind their Failure...

Such a curiously Stuborn Insistence to Stick to a Few and Failed Human Genome Affecting Tools goes as Far as to Exclude, in the EU, USA, etc, any Other Kind of Vaccine against COVID, and particularly those "Classic' Vaccines, faithful to Pasteur's well-Tested Idea during 2 Centuries,  (i.e. the Majority of Currently Tested Vaccine Projects against COVID), Even if thy have been Nowadays Authorized by tje WHO, (Already at least 3 of them)...

Moreover, whenever "Eurofora" raised a Question about a Hope to Authorize any "Classic' Vaccine against COVID soon enough, (f.ex. at Video-Press Conferences of EU Heads of State/Governements' Summits, of EU Parliament, or at the French Ministry of Health, etc), there was Never Any concrete Positive Answer... (See, f.ex., at: ... + ... + ..., etc). And a Last-Minute, Delayed Additon of Only 1 Other "Vaccine", Pretexting that it would be "More Classical' than the Others (Comp. Supra), so that it might Ease People's above-mentioned Fears, on the Contrary, in Fact; it concerned an Obscure USA-made tool, using ...Insects' (sic !) Eggs Geneetic Manipulations, and a "Chimera"-like Transpositon to Humans, Earlier presented by its own Inventors as an example of ..."Gene Therapy" Novel Tools, (i.e. Nothng to do with Pasteur"s really "Classic" Vaccnes).

=> So that, in Addition to the so-called "Anti-Vaccine" People, there were, Also, many Other People, who would Like to have a good "Classic" Vaccine against the Pandemic, Pasteur-like, Bt were -and Still are- Deprived from it, Against their wish : I.e., to the "Anti-Vaccine" Movement was added those who were, UnWillingly, Refused any Vaccine of their Free Choice, i.e. "Refusnics"...

>>> Such Strange Blunders incited even the President of the "League for Freedom of Vaccinations", a Long-Time Respectable Huma Rights body, John-Paul Zudier, launch a vibrant call to "Vote for Marine" on 2a22, as the prestigious Newspaper "Le Monde" observed.

- Indeed, Marine Le Pen denounced Emmanuel Macron's part of responsibility for "Bullying the Non-Vaccined People", as she called, inter alia, also an unusual, clumsy and isulting Expression, (related to "Shit !", etc), Exceptionaly abused by Macron in Public, for a large Group of People, Against whom; in Fact, an Unprecedented and Dangerous, wider "Hate Speech" emerged Recently in some Countries' Establishment, amidst various Discriminatory and Oppressive Measures, related to the Deadly Pandemic. -"He (the incumbent President Macron) even called us (the Political Opposition) ...;"UnVaccinators" (Sic !).., further Complained Challenger Marine Le Pen.

-----------------------------------------

+ But the Sharpest Denonciation was that Against the "Absolutely Awful" measure to "Fire more than 15.000 Health Workers, withOut Salaries", under the Pretext that "they were Not Vaccinated, as you Required, at Any Price",... Marine Criticized.

=> In consequence, - "I (if Elected) will ReIntegrate them All, and ReImburse the Salaries tha they were Deprived from !", she clearly Vowed.

Many Victims of such Abuses, by the competent Ministers, Not Only in France, but Also in Other Countries, (as, f.ex., Greece, Italy, USA, etc), have Already lodged various Legal Applications to the Courts, including the ECHR in Strasbourg, while in the USA; the Supreme Court, at Washington DC, Recently OutLawed (with a Big Majority) a Similar Opressive Measure concerning Many Jobs at the Private Sector;, (Clearing anOther one, Limited to Publc Sectors' Hospitals, But Only with just 1 Vote Difference out of 7).

Exceptionaly, Macron did Not even Reply to such a Heavy Accusation, and Loud Announcement, prefering to Speak about Other Matters...

Establishment's Medias had Already Censored recently 3 Times Marine's Announcement on the Fired Health Workers in order to Impse a few Fake "Vaccines", since Marine had spoken about it at a Popular Meeting in Avignon, during this 2nd Round, but it's not sure that they might do the same Even after the Unique Public Debate between the two Finalist Candidates... Meanwhile, it was taken over Also by a Dispute between the National Rally's interim President, MEP Jordan Bardela and Cotroversial Health Minister Olivier Veran, where the First Prognosticated that 'we shall probably Discover Many things (i.e. Scandals) during the Next few Years'...

Controversial Veran seems to be an Interesting lead towards Possible Scandals, since, inter alia, in Addition to his role at the HCQ "Lancet-Gate" Blunder (See f.ex.: ..., etc), he was a Supletif, as MP, of Former "Socialist" Health Minister Mrs Fioraso at Grenoble, Notorious for her Stuborn Insistence to Submit Human Embryos to Genetic Manipulations; under Former "Socialist" President Hollande, (See, f.ex.: ..., etc), and Wife of a Bio-Technocrat. LGBT-Friendly, Speaking English, with an Homonymous Big-Pharma Company in th USA ("Veran Medical" nowadays Focusing on Research about "Pulmonary" Issues, after having got the responsibility on the COVID Pandemy since the Beginning of 202O at the French Ministry of Health since the Beginning of 2020, he appears to be a Key to Macron's failure for France or Europe to "Find the Antidot" to COVID, as he had Dreamed Initialy (See: ...)... As for his Current Claim, that France and tje EU would "Produce and Export the Most Vaccines" against the Virus, it doesN' realy look Better than a Poor Country like ...India, which, Notoriously, Also Simply puts a Liquid, Invented by Others, inside small tubes, Spread across the World, But has Also Invented its own Vaccine, (a "Classic', Pasteur-like product), already Authorized by the WHO ! Compared to that, just Copy and Paste a USA - Turkish "Uhgur" Controversial Fake "Vaccine", probably pushed by the Amerikan Pentagon, as also Controvrsi "Remdesivir" or "Moderna", since the "Ebola" African Crisis, while the Numerous USA-Army linked "Bio-Labos", Notoriously Spread &ccross the World, full of "Bio-Weapons", Near Foreign Borders, surfaced Nowadays up to the UN SC, by Russia, China, a.o., as f.ex. near Mainz, at the Fraco-German Borders, from where comes the Key-part of Pfizer's Human Genome Affecting Controversial Tool, (close to the HQ of USA"s Military in Germany : Comp. f.ex. POTUS GVBush's 1st Visit in Europe on 2005)...

+ And, f.ex., we had to Wait for "the Virus' Crisis, in order for the ill-Treatment of Old People in the EPADs to be Revealed", Deplored further Marine, before Announcng a series of Financial and Organisational Measures, (on a Scandalous Issue, (including abnormal Deaths, Refusals to Admit in Hospitals, Abuse as Guinea Pigs;, in order to Test Fake "Vaccines", etc), tiinitialy Revealed by nearby German Press and CoE's Human Rights' Commissioner, (in France, Sweden, etc, since 2020).

- "But, France could Help Aged People to Live in Their own Home, as Many Wish', suggested Macron, during that same Debate.

=> It looks like a Good Idea... But, isN't it Too Litlle, and Too Late, for Many ?...

___________________
Staff Writer

Jonathan Roberts is a reporter and photographer for the Johnson City Press covering Jonesborough, healthcare and higher education. He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and has been with the Press since 2019.
The office of Shakhwan Abdullah, the second parliamentarian, stated that "the latter attended the meeting of the Presidency of the House of Representatives with Foreign Minister Fouad Hussein and the advanced cadre of the ministry, which was held today in the Constitutional Hall and in the presence of heads of blocs and parliamentary committees and a number of deputies."

Abdullah stressed, according to the statement, "Iraq's rejection of any external aggression by neighboring countries," stressing the position of the Parliament and the Iraqi government to announce its official rejection of the violation of sovereignty and the use of Iraqi lands to conduct military operations on the border strip by Turkey, or the Iranian missile bombing of Hawler province, which I strongly condemn, at the governmental, political and popular level he added, "Iraq is a state of national sovereignty, and there is no pretext or justification to bypass neighboring countries on our lands and airspace, and the continuation of violations is a clear violation of the security and stability of the country, and its repercussions will be negative on diplomatic and economic relations with neighbors."

A

Source: Roj News
Kyiv prepared on Saturday for its first wartime visit from two top US officials, as Ukraine accused Russia of killing eight people, including an infant, in a strike on the southern city of Odessa that all but buried hopes of a truce for Orthodox Easter.

The Sunday visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will come at a symbolic moment  on the day the war enters its third month  and with fierce battles continuing in the countrys east.

It also comes as the situation in the shattered port city of Mariupol remains bleak. The latest of many attempts to evacuate civilians failed Saturday, and the situation facing an embattled unit of Ukrainian fighters sheltering in tunnels under a sprawling steel mill there appeared increasingly desperate.

A series of European leaders have already traveled to Kyiv to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky and underscore their support, but the United States  a leading donor of finances and weaponry  had yet to send any top officials.

Asked by AFP to comment on the highly sensitive trip by two of President Joe Bidens top cabinet members, the State Department declined.

Zelensky, who announced the visit, also issued a new call for a meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to end the war.

I think that whoever started this war will be able to end it, Zelensky said, adding he was not afraid to meet the Russian leader.

But he again stressed that Kyiv would abandon talks with Moscow if its troops in Mariupol were killed.

Zelensky also criticized a decision by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to visit Moscow on Tuesday, before heading to Kyiv.

There is no justice and no logic in this order, he said.

Around 200 residents gathered at a designated evacuation point in Mariupol on Saturday but were dispersed by Russian forces, city official Petro Andryushchenko said on Telegram, adding: The evacuation was thwarted.

He claimed others had been told to board buses headed to places controlled by Russia.

Mariupol, which the Kremlin claims to have liberated, is pivotal to Russias war plans to forge a land bridge to Russian-occupied Crimea  and possibly beyond as far as Moldova.

Ukraine says hundreds of its forces and civilians are holed up inside the Mariupol steel plant. Kyiv has repeatedly called for a ceasefire to allow civilians  many barely surviving with little or no access to food or water  to exit safely.

But on Saturday a Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovich, said Russian forces had resumed air strikes on the factory.

Our defenders hold on regardless of the very difficult situation and even carry out counter-raids, he said.

 Eight dead in Odessa 

Further west, a missile struck a residential building in the Black Sea port of Odessa, killing eight people, including a three-month-old baby, and wounding at least 18, according to Zelensky.

It looks like killing children is Russias new national idea, Zelensky said in his daily address to the nation, vowing to bring those responsible to justice. All those bastards will answer for every death.

And Russias defence ministry also said it had targeted a major depot stocking foreign weapons near Odessa, attacks that upended the relative calm the city has enjoyed since the beginning of the war.

The ministry also charged that Ukrainian special services in Odessa were preparing a provocation with the use of toxic chemical substances that could then be blamed on Russia.

Western powers have accused Russia in the past of making such accusations as a cover or diversion for attacks its own forces are planning.

 Evacuate if you can 

In the Lugansk region in the east, six civilians died Saturday from Russian shelling in the village of Girske, governor Sergiy Gaiday said on Telegram.

Earlier, Gaiday said shelling was round the clock and urged people near the front to evacuate if you have the chance.

The latest fighting came a day after a senior Russian military officer announced the beginning of the second phase of the special operation.

One of the tasks of the Russian army is to establish full control over the Donbas and southern Ukraine, Major General Rustam Minnekaev said.

Russian forces, which withdrew from around Kyiv and the north of Ukraine after being frustrated in their attempts to take the capital, already occupy much of the eastern Donbas region and the south.

Minnekaev said the focus was to provide a land corridor to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and possibly towards Transnistria, a breakaway pro-Russian region of Moldova where the general claimed Russian-speaking people were being oppressed.

 What could be worse 

After changing their strategic focus to southern and eastern Ukraine, Russian forces left behind a trail of indiscriminate destruction around Kyiv, including in the commuter town of Bucha.

A United Nations mission to Bucha documented the unlawful killing, including by summary execution, of some 50 civilians there, the UNs Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

Russian forces had indiscriminately shelled and bombed populated areas, killing civilians and wrecking hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure, actions that may amount to war crimes.

Tania Boikiv, 52, said Russian troops took her husband from their home in Bucha, held him for two weeks, then beat him to death as they retreated.

The most terrible thing in my life is that my husband, my loved one, is gone, she told AFP. I dont know what could be worse.

Also Saturday, Roman Starovoit, the governor of Russias region of Kursk, which borders Ukraine, said on Telegram that a Russian border post had been hit by Ukrainian mortar fire, although there were no casualties.

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The United States top diplomat and defence chief were Sunday set to make their first wartime visits to Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine two months ago, with fierce fighting casting a long shadow over Orthodox Easter.

The trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin comes as the war enters its third month with thousands dead and millions displaced.

A series of European leaders have already travelled to Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky and underscore their support, but the United States  a leading donor of finance and weaponry  had not sent any top officials so far.

Blinken and Lloyds arrival in Ukraine was set to coincide with Easter celebrations in the largely Orthodox country.

Our souls are filled with fierce hatred for the invaders and all that they have done. Dont let rage destroy us from within, said President Volodymyr Zelensky in a statement to mark the holiday.

Hours earlier, the president he was preparing for important talks with American partners. The State Department declined to comment on the highly sensitive trip by two of President Joe Bidens top cabinet members.

Their visit comes as Russian forces show no sign of easing their attacks after a missile strike on the southern city of Odessa that killed eight people, including an infant.

Among those killed was a three-month-old baby girl. How did she threaten Russia? It seems that killing children is just a new national idea of the Russian Federation, Zelensky said.

He also accused Russia of being a terrorist state and of acting like Nazis in the shattered port city of Mariupol, which has been devastated by weeks of intense bombardment.

 Offer to meet Putin 

The latest of many attempts to evacuate civilians from Mariupol failed Saturday, and an embattled unit of Ukrainian fighters holed up in tunnels under the sprawling Azovstal steel mill there appeared in increasingly desperate straits.

Around 200 residents gathered at a designated evacuation point in Mariupol on Saturday, but were dispersed by Russian forces, city official Petro Andryushchenko said on Telegram, adding: The evacuation was thwarted.

He claimed others had been told to board buses headed to places controlled by Russia.

In a message posted on social media Sunday, Sviatoslav Palamar  deputy commander of the far-right Azov Regiment  said Russian forces continued to rain down fire on Azovstal as its troops attempted to breach the plants defences.

The enemy continues air strikes, artillery from the sea enemy tanks continue to strike and infantry is trying to storm, said Palamar.

Mariupol, which the Kremlin claims to have liberated, is pivotal to Russias war plans to forge a land bridge to Russian-occupied Crimea  and possibly beyond, as far as Moldova.

 Easter Sunday 

And even as fighting raged across large swaths of the country, Ukrainians took time to observe a solemn Easter in the largely Orthodox country.

Under the rain at a military position in the eastern town of Lyman, on the frontline, soldiers traded the usual patriotic salutation of Glory to Ukraine! for the ritual Christ has risen!

Truly risen! came the reply.

In the towns small Orthodox church, around 50 civilians had braved possible mortar fire to gather to pray from dawn.

Ukrainian and Russian artillery fire could be heard throughout the singing of the psalms.

If we make the wrong choices then darkness will ruin us, as darkness is destroying us during this war, the priest said in his sermon.

On another part of the frontline, in the eastern city of Severodonetsk, Ukrainian troops had hidden their small stock of supplies under a bridge after they were hit by Russian mortar rounds in the night.

Along with water and Coke bottles, Kalashnikovs and cereal bars, three large Easter breads covered in icing and sprinkled with multicoloured sugar beads awaited them, after a delivery from their commander.

 Odessa missile attack 

The modest Easter celebrations came just a day after missile struck a residential building in the Black Sea port of Odessa, killing eight people and wounding at least 18, according to Zelensky, who said five missiles hit the historic city.

We will identify all those responsible for this strike; those responsible for Russias missile terror, he said.

Russias defence ministry said it had targeted a major depot stocking foreign weapons near Odessa, attacks that upended the relative calm the city has enjoyed since the beginning of the war.

The ministry also charged that Ukrainian special services in Odessa were preparing a provocation with the use of toxic chemical substances that could then be blamed on Russia.

Western powers have accused Russia in the past of making such allegations as a cover or diversion for attacks its own forces are planning.

The latest fighting followed an announcement earlier this week from a senior Russian military officer who said Moscow aimed to take full control over the eastern Donbas region and southern Ukraine.

Russian forces, who withdrew from around Kyiv and the north of Ukraine after being frustrated in their attempts to take the capital, already occupy much of the Donbas and the south.

 What could be worse 

After changing their strategic focus to southern and eastern Ukraine, Russian forces left behind a trail of destruction around Kyiv, including in the commuter town of Bucha.

A United Nations mission to Bucha documented the unlawful killing, including by summary execution, of some 50 civilians there, the UNs Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

Russian forces had indiscriminately shelled and bombed populated areas, killing civilians and wrecking hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure, actions that may amount to war crimes.

Tania Boikiv, 52, said Russian troops took her husband from their home in Bucha, held him for two weeks, then beat him to death as they retreated.

The most terrible thing in my life is that my husband, my loved one, is gone, she told AFP. I dont know what could be worse.

burs-ds/spm
US President Joe Biden used Sundays occasion of Armenian remembrance day to describe past mass atrocities by Ottomans as genocide, repeating his controversial description from a year ago when he ended decades of American equivocation.

The categorization infuriates Turkey, which refuses to recognise the 1915-16 killings of more than a million Armenians as genocide.

But Biden, who earlier this month said Russias atrocities committed during its invasion of Ukraine amounted to genocide, again used the precise term to describe the massacres of Armenians during World War I.

On April 24, 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thus began the Armenian genocide  one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century, the president said in a statement.

Today, we remember the one and a half million Armenians who were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination, and mourn the tragic loss of so many lives.

Biden said people should remain vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all forms, and urged Americans to recommit ourselves to speaking out and stopping atrocities that leave lasting scars on the world.

As many as 1.5 million Armenians are estimated to have been killed from 1915 to 1917 during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, which suspected the Christian minority of conspiring with adversary Russia in World War I.

Armenian populations were rounded up and deported into the desert of Syria on death marches in which many were shot, poisoned or fell victim to disease, according to accounts at the time by foreign diplomats.

Turkey, which emerged as a secular republic from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, acknowledges that 300,000 Armenians may have died but strongly rejects that it was genocide.

Biden infuriated Ankara one year ago when he became the first sitting US president to describe the massacres as genocide. He had informed Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the decision the day before, in a move seeking to limit fury from the NATO ally.

Erdogan in the aftermath denounced the genocide recognition as groundless and destructive, and warned Washington could lose a friend in a key region.

The strained relations gradually steadied, with the two leaders meeting last June and Erdogan hailing a new era of constructive ties with Washington.

They spoke last month about Turkeys mediation over the Russia-Ukraine war.
Oh Han Byeol (Lee Sung Kyung) and Gong Tae Sung (Kim Young Dae) display their love-hate relationship as they work together in "Shooting Stars" episode 2.

Keep on reading to know what went down in the drama.

'Shooting Stars' Episode 2: Gong Tae Sung Pesters Oh Han Byeol at Work

After almost a year, Gong Tae Sung saw Oh Han Byeol again. This also means war for both. The PR head had a smooth-sailing job before the superstar came, but her world turned upside down as Tae Sung began to pester her at work.

He hates to see her in a good mood, and so he made lame excuses to mess with her inside the public relations team office.

Tae Sung's unbearable behavior bothers Han Byeol, but she has to stay composed and patient because he is the company's top star.



She has no choice but to endure his attitude. Their everyday bickering moments are witnessed by the PR team, making them suspicious of their real relationship.

Mistake That Started Oh Han Byeol and Gong Tae Sung's Bickering Moments

A flashback was seen and showed how Oh Han Byeol and Gong Tae Sung's quarreling moments started.

In the past, when Han Byeol was still a newbie, she made a typo in the press release, which affected Tae Sung's image, who was then cast for a movie.

After the legendary moment between the two, the PR team member finally understood the unusual relationship between their team leader and the famous male star.

Gong Tae Sung Shows Genuine Feelings for Oh Han Byeol

Tae Sung slowly exhibited his true affection towards Han Byeol, which stimulated excitement in the viewers. It was revealed that in the past, the celebrity was the one who prevented Han Byeol from being dismissed from work due to an incident that happened in one of their projects. Gong Tae Sung secretly took care of her.

On the other hand, before the drama ends, an intriguing photo circulated online and immediately made a buzz. It was a leaked photo of Han Byeol and Tae Sung, who looked like a couple during their college days.

The unexpected issue alarmed the PR team. Another problem to be solved by Oh Han Byeol is to protect the image of her artist, Gong Tae Sung.

Watch Lee Sung Kung and Kim Young Dae's "Shooting Stars" every Friday and Saturday on tvN at 10:40 p.m. (KST).

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: 'Shooting Stars' Episode 1: Kim Young Dae Looks Forward To Seeing Lee Sung Kyung

Have you watched "Shooting Stars" episode 2? How's the story so far? Share your comments with us!

For more K-Drama, K-Movie, and celebrity news, follow and subscribe to KDramastars!

KDramastars owns this article.

Shai Collins reported this.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced that he will meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Kyiv on Sunday as Russian forces continue their relentless attacks in the city of Mariupol.

In a press conference conducted in a subway station, Zelensky said that the top US officials' visit to Ukraine was not a "secret."

Zelensky added that he expects United States President Joe Biden "to come" and talk to them "when the security allows," per a CNN report.

Biden, who has previously suggested he wanted to go to Ukraine earlier this month, said that he was consulting with his team about sending a key official of his cabinet to the country.

As the Russian occupation enters its third month, Biden stated last week that the US would deliver another $800 million in military aid to Ukraine. However, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stated that there are no arrangements for Biden to visit Ukraine.

Russian Missile Strikes In Mariupol Kills Eight People, Including A Baby

Meanwhile, Russian forces in Ukraine tried to storm a steel plant housing soldiers and civilians in the southern city of Mariupol on Saturday in an attempt to crush the last corner of resistance in a place of deep symbolic and strategic value to Moscow, Ukrainian officials said.

The reported assault on the eve of Orthodox Easter came after the Kremlin claimed its military had seized all of the shattered city except for the Azovstal plant, and as Russian forces pounded other cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine.

According to an Al Jazeera report, Zelensky stated that Russian rocket attacks in Odesa killed eight people, including a three-month-old kid.

As he conveyed the information to the journalists, Zelensky held back tears as he said he shared the anguish of every Ukrainian who had lost children in Russia's assault.

A Ukrainian official reported that Russian forces fired not less than six cruise missiles at Odesa.

Read Also: Russia Enters 'Second Phase' of War, Wants To Take Over Donbas, Southern Ukraine

Last Stronghold

The status of the Ukrainians in Mariupol's massive coastal steel plant remained unclear; early Saturday, a Ukrainian military unit published a video supposedly recorded two days earlier in which women and children were hiding underground, some for as long as two months.

The Associated Press reported that Russia claimed control of several villages in the eastern Donbas region and destroyed 11 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including three artillery storage facilities, while the assault on the port continued. Attacks by the Russians also hit residential areas.

Mariupol has been a primary Russian objective since the invasion began on February 24 and has grown in prominence as the battle progressed. After a nearly two-month siege that reduced much of the city to a smoldering ruin, securing control of the city would be Russia's largest achievement yet.

Ukrainian authorities said that before the war, the population of Mariupol was around 430,000. At present, the number of people remaining there is estimated to be over 100,000, with scarcity in food and water supply. Reportedly, there were more than 20,000 civilians were killed in the city during the Russian invasion.

Related Article: Volodymyr Zelensky Net Worth 2022: How Wealthy Is the Ukraine President?

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B.C. Liberal Party Leader Kevin Falcon during a press conference at legislature in Victoria, Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022. A byelection that could put new British Columbia Liberal leader Kevin Falcon back in the province's legislature is a race about the past and future, say both the candidates and political experts. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito
April is Active Dog Month, so make sure Spot gets a good walk today (and every day). Its good for you, too.

The University of Wisconsin-Parkside is hosting A Sunday at the Rita, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the schools Rita Tallent Picken Regional Center for the Arts and Humanities. The open house is 1 to 7 p.m. Highlights include a performance by the Parkside Range a cappella group at 3 p.m. in Bedford Concert Hall and a reception for the art show Together Again: Racine/Kenosha at 4:30 p.m. in the Fine Arts Gallery. For more information, visit uwp.edu/therita/

The Anderson Arts Center, 6603 Third Ave., is hosting an opening reception from 1 to 4 p.m. for its new exhibits. Solo show artist Mark Weller will speak at 2:30 p.m., and Keys n Kits will be performing throughout the event. Admission is free, and refreshments will be served.

Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Ill. (just off I-94 at Grand Avenue) is now open weekends, with its roller coasters, shows, funnel cakes and long lines for the hottest rides. The theme park is open 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. today. Details are available at sixflags.com.

Lemon Street Gallery, 4601 Sheridan Road, is hosting an exhibit with works by artists Terry Evans (mixed media), Kristie Matteau (acrylic paintings) and George and Ann Rowe (fused glass).The gallery is open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays.

The Pollard Gallery, 518 56th St., is hosting an April show on the gallerys south wall called Spring Fling. The gallery is open noon to 4 p.m. Sundays.

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The inaugural Kenosha Spring Home Expo offered attendees a one-stop shop for home improvement over the weekend, drawing crowds looking for products, services and ideas for their own projects.

Held in the gymnasium of St. Josephs Catholic Academy, 2301 69th St., the two-day expo featured an array of vendors in categories ranging from waterproofing to landscaping. Attendees could test product samples, receive quotes and get advice from professionals from across the Kenosha county area.

There was plenty to see and information to be shared at the event, as more than two dozen vendors took part in the event.

Kevin Thomas, owner of Thomas Outdoor Supply, said events like the Kenosha Spring Home Expo help get their name out to people.

Were not necessarily trying to sell anything at these events. We really want people to know theres another option, Thomas said.

Tom and Kay Fisher were just browsing while attending on Sunday, although they said they had plans.

Were looking to do some home improvements, Tom Fisher said.

Alice and Peter Schwalbe were looking into some work for a stone patio, as well as enjoying the day out while avoiding the weather.

Its a place to go after church, Alice Schwalbe said, laughing.

Among those serving at the event was the food truck Wisconsin Style BBQ, which had a table indoors offering their new Two Fat Guys brand sauces.

A similar event in Racine has run annually for 38 years, said Kelly Wells, marketing coordinator for Wisconn Valley Media Group, which sponsored the event. Were hoping to take that success and grow in Kenosha in the same way, she said.

Wells said the expo was an opportunity for residents to meet home experts face-to-face instead of just online. She said there were plans to make the Kenosha Spring Home Expo an annual event, much like in Racine, where attendance numbers can rise to 1,200.

We look forward to it being a spring staple, Wells said.

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In another shakeup to Wisconsins contested Republican gubernatorial primary, millionaire businessman Tim Michels has filed paperwork creating his own campaign for governor.

Michels entry to the race adds another name to a crowded Aug. 9 primary ballot that already includes former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, Marine Corps veteran Kevin Nicholson and state Rep. Timothy Ramthun, R-Campbellsport. The winner of the primary would go on to face Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who is seeking a second term, in the Nov. 8 general election.

Despite Fridays campaign registration statement filed with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission, which is a necessary step to get on the November ballot, Michels has remained largely silent on his gubernatorial prospects. Michels didnt respond to a request for comment Friday, but several sources said hes expected to formally announce his campaign and launch a high-dollar television ad buy in the coming days.

While Michels entry comes relatively late in the campaign season with the primary less than four months away, the U.S. Army veteran also has the funding to potentially launch a formidable campaign.

Kleefisch has emerged as the odds-on favorite to win the August primary this fall, though some strategists have said the addition of anti-establishment candidates Nicholson and Ramthun underscore that a consensus pick has not yet been decided.

Shes the clear frontrunner, GOP strategist Bill McCoshen, who had previously considered a run for governor before opting out, said of Kleefisch. Tim Michels is going to have to work to catch up to her, but I think thats the plan.

Michels, 59, is co-owner of Michels Corp., a family-owned international energy and infrastructure construction business. He last ran for office in 2004, when he lost to Russ Feingold in the U.S. Senate race.

An invitation to a Waukesha County fundraising event held Thursday for U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, who is also seeking reelection this fall, listed Michels as a host. Johnson has said he does not plan to endorse any gubernatorial candidate.

Met with Trump

Conservative radio host Jay Weber tweeted earlier this week that Michels had recently met with former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Trump has not formally endorsed a candidate in the states upcoming gubernatorial race.

Former Gov. Tommy Thompson, who was considering a gubernatorial run before opting out earlier this week, recently told WISN-12 that he had spoken with Michels on the prospect of running for governor, but the business owner said he would not enter the race if Thompson ultimately ran.

I told him I would call after I made the decision and I called him and said, Im not going to run, and he said, Im running, and I think youre going to hear from him very shortly, Thompson said in the video posted Thursday.

Thompson, who made a recent trip to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump, said the former president had encouraged him to join the gubernatorial race. Thompson, 80, later said he ultimately decided against launching a campaign after his family said they were against it.

Who is Tim Michels and is he ready to run for office? Democratic Party of Wisconsin rapid response director Hannah Menchhoff said in a statement. We have no idea because Tim Michels doesnt appear to have spoken to a single Wisconsinite about his plans  other than Tommy Thompson and Ron Johnson. All that can be said for certain at this point is that the messy Republican primary is about to get much messier.

Other candidates

Kleefisch, a former television journalist who served eight years as lieutenant governor under Scott Walker, has primarily focused her campaign on unseating Evers.

Nicholsons campaign has included a focus on challenging what he has dubbed the Madison machine of established Republicans, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, who earlier this year urged Nicholson not to run while deeming Kleefisch the best choice to defeat Evers.

Nicholson ran for U.S. Senate in 2018, but lost the Republican primary to Leah Vukmir, who went on to lose to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison.

Ramthun, who has falsely claimed that Trump won Wisconsins 2020 election, has drawn praise from the former president, who called the state lawmaker in early December to thank him for his efforts to overturn the election, according to Rolling Stone. Trump has continued to falsely claim he won the 2020 election, despite recounts, audits and court decisions affirming that President Joe Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes.

Other Republicans who had considered a run for governor, but ultimately bowed out, include Madison businessman Eric Hovde and McCoshen, a former chief of staff to Thompson when he served as governor. Trump urged former U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy to run for governor last year, but the former lumberjack athlete later said he would not be entering the race.

Business owner Robert Meyer, who unsuccessfully challenged Walker in the 2018 GOP gubernatorial primary, wrote in a guest column in the Sun Prairie Star earlier this month that he is also running for governor this year as a moderate Republican.

A February Marquette Law School Poll found among likely GOP primary voters 30% support Kleefisch, 8% support Nicholson, 5% support Ramthun, and 54% have no preference. Half of respondents said they havent heard of or have no opinion of Kleefisch, compared with 80% for Nicholson and 86% for Ramthun.

The deadline for gubernatorial candidates to secure the 2,000 signatures needed to get on the ballot is June 1.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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A mortality analysis by experts from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor reveals that more children and adolescents died due to guns than any other reason in 2020.

According to the study, which is based on current mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, guns overtook automobile accidents as the leading cause of death in America for those aged 19 and under in 2020, As per an ABC News report.

This is the first time that guns have been identified as the leading cause of death in this age group, according to the study, which was published as a letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine.

According to Jason E. Goldstick, Rebecca M. Cunningham, and Patrick M. Carter, firearm-related deaths from "suicide, homicide, unintentional, and undetermined" elevated at a rate of 29.5 percent among children and adolescents from 2019 to 2020, which is more than two times higher as the general population.

Gun-related Deaths Among Kids And Teens Rapidly Spiked In The Previous Years

Firearm-related deaths were previously ranked second only to car accidents as the main cause of death among young Americans. Per Reuters report, car deaths, on the other hand, have decreased over time, with roughly 3,900 Americans under the age of 19 dying in car accidents in 2020.

Gun deaths ranked second to motor vehicle accidents as the primary cause of fatality among children and teenagers for the last 21 years. But since 2016, the CDC said that the gap between the two categories has been narrowing.

Overdoses and poisonings caused by drugs surged by 83.6 percent between 2019 and 2020, making them the third leading cause of mortality in that age range. According to a separate study published in April, 954 young people perished from overdoses in 2020, compared to 492 in 2019.

Gun violence in the US has increased since the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020.

Read Also: Orsolya Gaal Case: Handyman Lover Gets Jealous, Says He Killed New York Woman After Discovering Texts to Another Man

Why Did It Happen?

Between January and April 2021, 7.5 million US individuals - just under 3% of the population - became gun owners for the first time, according to a separate study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in February.

As a result, 11 million people, including five million children, were exposed to household guns.

According to the CDC, the jump in gun deaths in America is mostly attributable to an increase in firearm-related homicides, which recorded a 33.4 percent increase in the crude rate from 2019 to 2020. According to CDC data, firearm-related suicides climbed by 1.1 percent in the United States over that period.

The CDC researchers were unable to specify a cause for the rise in gun deaths, as BBC reported, but they did say that the new data are consistent with previous findings indicating gun violence spiked "during the COVID-19 pandemic."

Researchers noted that "it cannot be assumed" that the gun-related mortality will later regress to pre-pandemic levels.

The researchers advocated additional support for groups and initiatives targeted at reducing community violence, citing the rising number of gun-related deaths as evidence of grave concern.

"The increasing firearm-related mortality reflects a longer-term trend and shows that we continue to fail to protect our youth from a preventable cause of death shows that we continue to fail to protect our youth from a preventable cause of death," the experts stated.

Related Article: Joe Biden Children: Who Are the POTUS' Kids? Does He Have a Daughter?

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Traffic travelling from south Kilkenny through Carrick on Suir will be affected by traffic diversions for the next two weeks.

Irish Water, working in partnership with Tipperary County Council, is replacing 980m of problematic watermains in Carrick-On-Suir which will improve water quality for the community.

The project, which commenced in early April, is part of Irish Waters National Leakage Reduction Programme. The works, being carried out by Shareridge Ltd. on behalf of Irish Water, are taking place on the N24 and are expected to take approximately 10 weeks to complete.

The section of works is to be completed between the junction of the N24 and Clairin Close/ Circle K, along the N24 to the junction of the N24 (OMahony Avenue) and the R696 at OConnors Bar.

To facilitate advance watermain rehabilitation works on OMahoney Avenue, there will be a local diversion in place for traffic travelling due west to Clonmel on the N24 for two weeks from Monday 25 April.

Traffic will be directed to make a left onto the R676 along New Street, making a right onto Main Street re-joining the N24 via the R885.

Irish Waters customer care helpline is open 24/7 on 1800 278 278 and customers can also contact us on Twitter @IWCare with any queries. For updates please visit the Water Supply Updates section of the Irish Water website or set your location on our website www.water.ie

Since 2018, Irish Water has invested over 500 million to upgrade the underground water network across the country through the delivery of the Leakage Reduction Programme. We are investing a further 600 million up to the end of 2024 - fixing leaks and replacing pipes to provide a more reliable water supply.

For more information on reducing leaks visit our National Leakage Reduction Programme page.
As Russian forces re-enforced their assault on the Mariupol steel plant, which houses Ukrainian soldiers and residents, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky threatened to call off peace negotiations over Moscow's efforts to smash the port city's final pockets of resistance.

It comes ahead of his meeting with Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, and Lloyd Austin, the US Secretary of Defense, in Kyiv.

Baby Killed in Russia's Missile Attack in Odesa

Zelensky revealed few details about the encounter's arrangements at a press conference but said he expected solid results - "not just presents or some kind of cake, we are expecting certain goods and particular weaponry," he added.

Earlier this month, Russia shelled numerous cities in southern and eastern Ukraine, killing a three-month-old newborn and eight others in Odesa, a Black Sea port city, as per The Independent. According to Ukraine, Russian forces stormed the Azovstal steel facility in Mariupol barely two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed his generals not to raid it.

The steelworks, Ukraine's final stronghold in the city, where hundreds of Ukrainian military and civilians are holed up, is under siege, according to Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Five people, including a three-month-old infant, were killed in a missile assault in the Black Sea port city of Odesa, according to a presidential adviser. On Saturday, Andriy Yermak, Ukraine's president's chief of staff, released the information as video footage uploaded on social media showed smoke pouring from a 14-story apartment building.

Per ABC News via MSN, several emergency vehicles were spotted heading to the location. One woman, who looked to be suffering from facial injuries, was speaking to the local press. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed its forces destroyed a logistics center in Odesa where a big quantity of weapons supplied by the US and European nations were being housed using high-precision missiles.

Read Also: [Report] Democrats Block Republicans' Effort To Upload Hunter Biden's Laptop; Prosecutors Subpoena President's Son's Documents, Tax Records

Russia Renews Mariupol Assault

It also claimed that Russian forces had killed up to 200 Ukrainian troops and damaged more than 30 vehicles, some of which were armored, in an online post. Russian military fired at least six cruise missiles toward the city, according to an adviser to Ukraine's Interior Minister.

Anton Gerashchenko stated in a Telegram message on Saturday local time that Ukrainian forces were able to fire down many missiles, but at least one landed and detonated. Two missiles targeted a military complex and two residential structures in Odesa, according to Ukraine's southern air command.

In early April, there was a large strike in or around Odesa. Russia has denied that its "special military operation," which began on February 24, is targeting people. According to Petro Andriushchenko, an assistant to Mariupol's mayor, another mass grave was uncovered on Friday in the town of Vynohradne near the besieged southern city.

According to the firm's statement, satellite photographs from US defense contractor Maxar revealed numerous parallel ditches totaling around 131 feet that "are/will likely become" additional gravesites. The trenches first appeared in late March, according to Maxar. The allegations elicited no quick response from Russian officials, as per The NBC News.

According to an intelligence briefing from the United Kingdom's defense minister early Saturday, Moscow's attempts to totally take Mariupol have been hampered by Ukrainian opposition.

Related Article: Russia Enters 'Second Phase' of War, Wants To Take Over Donbas, Southern Ukraine

@YouTube

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The headquarters of various securities firms located on Yeouido, Seoul / gettyimagesbank



By Anna J. Park



Local securities firms saw their combined net profits increase by more than 60 percent in 2021 from a year earlier, despite the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the world, data showed Sunday.



According to data released by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), 55 overseas subsidiaries run by 13 Korean brokerage companies logged annual net profits of $305.9 million (362.7 billion won) in 2021, which is a 62.3-percent jump from the previous year.



By country, the brokerage companies raked in net profits from seven countries, including Hong Kong, U.S., India, Thailand, Brazil, Vietnam and Indonesia, and their net profits were mainly attributed to the increases of underwriting and commission fees as well as interest earnings. But the firms suffered losses from operations in other countries, such as China, Singapore, Myanmar and Cambodia, due to pandemic-led business limitations and increases in other maintenance expenses.



"Despite the negative impacts from COVID-19, local brokerage companies' overseas operations posted a year-on-year increase of their net profits thanks to global preferences towards stock investments last year," the FSS said in its analysis statement.



As of the end of 2021, 13 local brokerage firms run a total number of 69 overseas operations  55 overseas subsidiaries and 14 contact offices  in 14 countries.



Out of the 69 operations, 52 are located in Asian countries, followed by 12 in the U.S., four in the U.K., and one in Brazil. Mirae Asset Securities has the largest number of overseas operations at 15, followed by Korea Investment's 11, NH Investment's 8 and Shinhan Financial Investment's 7.



"Mirae Asset Securities' overseas business earned a net pre-tax profit of over $193 million in year 2021. As Korea's representative brokerage house that boasts the largest overseas networks, the company has been extending stable and balanced global business, focusing on region-specific strategic plans," an official from Mirae Asset Securities told The Korea Times. "The company will continue pursuing global business, leading the industry's innovation and change," he added.



Compared to the previous year, the number of overseas operations by the local brokerage companies remained at a similar level; the same 13 companies run 56 overseas subsidiaries and 14 contact offices in 14 countries. Considering the similar number of offices, the significant year-on-year growth rate of net profits is even more impressive.




Traditional handcrafts give impetus to Chinas rural vitalization

09:37, April 24, 2022 By Chen Anying ( People's Daily

Chinas Ministry of Culture and Tourism and five other departments recently issued a guideline on promoting the development of cultural industries in a bid to advance rural vitalization, with traditional handcrafts listed as one of the seven key fields that can help boost rural vitalization.

Long Laoxiang (middle), a master of Miao embroidery, teaches a college graduate apprentice to weave cloth with a handloom in Zila village, Shilan township, Huayuan county, Xiangxi Tujia and Miao autonomous prefecture, central Chinas Hunan province, April 29, 2020. (Peoples Daily Online/Long Enze)

Rural vitalization cannot be achieved without the formation and development of a new type of relations between urban and rural areas.

Chinas urbanization process, during which resources and population have crowded into megacities, has seen a break point of counter-urbanization on its journey toward a moderately prosperous society in all respects. A development pattern featuring urban areas dependence on and support for rural areas and urban-rural integration has been gradually formed.

The resurgence and revitalization of traditional handcraft in rural areas couldnt have been possible without such a macroscopic social development pattern.

Heqing county in southwest Chinas Yunnan province, and villages under its administration give a good example of the point.

The resurgence and revitalization of metal craft in Heqing has undergone four stages. The first stage came at the beginning of Chinas reform and opening-up, when a large batch of tinkers left their hometown Heqing to work in big cities, and learned skills and accumulated capital. In the mid-to-late 1990s, they returned home to start their own businesses, and Xinhua village in the county gradually earned fame because of local silverware. After 2010, Heqing entered the third stage, when it started to exploit Chinas teaware market besides the artware market. Since 2019, the county has attracted and gathered a group of creative people and developed cultural tourism, which signifies the fourth stage.

It can be seen that during the first and second stages, Heqing was mainly developing manufacturing, a development model similar to that of rural industry since the reform and opening-up, except that the former focused on traditional handcraft and the latter modern industry.

After entering the third and fourth stages, the county witnessed a shift of focus in development from rural handcraft industry to high value-added cultural tourism, with new business forms and features similar to those in Jingdezhen city, east Chinas Jiangxi province, Yixing city, east Chinas Jiangsu province, and Longquan city, east Chinas Zhejiang province, all frontrunners in integrating local culture and tourism.

A woman of Miao ethnic group makes embroideries at her home in Zaiyong village, Tashi township, Rongjiang county, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong autonomous prefecture, southwest Chinas Guizhou province, Nov. 11, 2021. (Peoples Daily Online/Li Changhua)

Such a change is in accord with Chinas policy on intangible cultural heritage protection and social development concepts, and was facilitated by Heqings unique advantages in geographical and transportation conditions. The county, which is endowed with spectacular scenery, is situated along a popular tourist route between the Dali Old Town and the Old Town of Lijiang, two well-known tourist destinations in Yunnan, and is 20 minutes drive away from Lijiang Sanyi International Airport.

Heqing is, therefore, not only able to communicate more easily with other regions on the production of silver and bronze ware, but enjoys favorable conditions in drawing creative talents, running homestay business and promoting out all-for-one tourism.

The transformation and upgrading of rural handcraft industry has been guaranteed by the popularization of the ideas of intangible cultural heritage protection and lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets, as well as a series of related natural and cultural ecological protection policies.

China has established national eco-cultural protection zones since 2007, and vigorously advanced the construction of cultural belts, national parks and national cultural parks in recent years, creating a good environment for the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage and preservation of traditional villages.

Intangible cultural heritage inheritance relies on the overall environment and audience as well as on core inheritors, especially the younger generation of inheritors.

Since 2015, the government has made great efforts to implement a training program to cultivate and enhance the inheritance and innovation capabilities of the new generation of intangible cultural heritage inheritors.

In 2016, it began to set up traditional craft work stations to introduce high-quality art design resources into regions with traditional crafts and underdeveloped areas. On the basis of these work stations, it has promoted the establishment of a good number of intangible cultural heritage workshops for poverty alleviation, driving rural residents to make innovations and start businesses to march toward prosperity.

During the process, a host of young and capable traditional craft inheritors and promoters have emerged.

Villagers learn how to make moss paintings in Maoyang township, Jingning She autonomous county, Lishui city, east Chinas Zhejiang province, April 13, 2022. (Peoples Daily Online/Li Suren)

By introducing design teams and commercial orders, a traditional craft work station in Hami city, northwest Chinas Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, which is committed to revitalizing Uygur embroidery, has established a handcraft industry cooperation system that links the vast rural areas in the city. Thanks to the system, many villagers went to big cities including Beijing to share and learn skills.

Kader Rehman, a member of the work station, has grown from a skillful embroiderer to a pattern designer and the work stations liaison to customers, bringing a stream of orders to his hometown.

In Qiandongnan Miao and Dong autonomous prefecture, southwest Chinas Guizhou province, intangible cultural heritage inheritors of various ethnic groups have greatly benefited from the training program, traditional craft work stations and intangible cultural heritage workshops for poverty alleviation.

Yang Xiufang, an inheritor of Miao batik in the prefecture, sharpened her skills at Tsinghua University under the training program in 2016. After that, she returned to her hometown in a mountainous area and has led a group of Miao women in the production of handcrafts using the batik technique.

With the popularization of education and improvement in transportation and communication conditions, more and more rural craftspeople have strengthened communication with the outside world, carrying out cooperation with universities, participating in exhibitions and hosting livestreaming shows.

Besides, many college graduates have chosen to return to their hometown in the countryside to start businesses. They have become the new generation of inheritors or designers and managers, helping fill the gaps in the local industrial chain.

Chen Anying is a professor at Tsinghua University.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
An upcoming book by two New York Times reporters reveals that first lady Jill Biden voiced disappointment that Kamala Harris was the top option for vice president.

The vice-presidential nomination process for Joe Biden's 2020 campaign is described in an extract supplied to Fox News from Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns' new book, 'This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future.'

Book: Jill Biden Opposes Kamala Harris as VP

Meanwhile, several members of Joe Biden's closest circle backed Harris for the ticket. According to the book, Ron Klain, now the White House chief of staff, was in charge of assessing vice presidential candidates and persuaded Joe Biden early on that Kamala Harris was the best candidate for the role because she had run for president herself.

The book also reveals Joe Biden's doubts about choosing Kamala Harris as his running mate. Joe Biden regarded her behavior "as the type of thing that should be beyond bounds," according to the book, citing Kamala Harris' "previous personal involvement with Willie Brown, the former San Francisco mayor who had assigned Harris to a pair of small governmental jobs."

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, as well as activists and members of Congress from throughout the country, were also considered potential Biden running mates, according to the book. Stacey Abrams, who, according to the book, "could not pass the test" and was considered by Biden's advisers as a lost cause after losing the Georgia governor contest in 2018, was another contender who fought hard for the post.

At the first Democratic debate in June 2019, Harris chastised President Joe Biden for opposing federally mandated school busing, citing her personal experiences with busing and desegregation while growing up in Oakland.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer are noted in the book as other potential running makes his campaign considered, as well as other lawmakers and activists, such as Stacey Abrams.

Abrams, the book says, "did not pass the test" for VP candidate after the campaign lost confidence in her ability to rally voters after losing the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election. Biden's team also had concerns about her lack of experience as an elected official. Harris was believed to be Biden's safest best for winning the White House, despite her attacks on Biden, as per The NY Post.

Read Also: White House Releases Joe Biden, Kamala Harris' Tax Returns, Reveals POTUS Earns More Than $600,000 While VP Rakes Over $1.6 Million

Kamala Harris Faces Record-Low Approval Ratings

Kamala Harris has faced declining approval ratings, unfavorable headlines, and a steady departure of key workers since assuming office as Joe Biden's vice president last year, raising doubts about the work atmosphere in her office.

After a succession of allegations concerning internal disagreements, Kamala Harris' chief of staff, Tina Flournoy, became the 12th and most senior member of her team to resign this week. Her deputy chief of staff, speechwriter, chief spokeswoman, security advisor, and other members of her staff are among those who have left.

It all comes at a time when the White House is facing increasing scrutiny ahead of the 2024 election, following reports that Joe Biden told Barack Obama that he intended to run again at the age of 81. Beltway insiders have speculated that Joe Biden is considering switching running partners in 2024, but he has refuted the reports, according to Daily Mail.

According to the book, Kamala Harris' office made a fuss over a Vogue cover depicting the vice president in sneakers before being instructed to back down by President Joe Biden's office, which stated reservations over the image were "first world problems."

Some in Kamala Harris' office grumbled about Biden's "all-white inner circle," and she sent out her chief of staff to chastise Joe Biden's aides for not standing up when she entered the room, as they do for the president.

According to the book, they were upset that Kamala Harris was assigned to work on immigration with Northern Triangle nations. The vice president personally yelled at Joe Biden for dubbing her a "border czar," arguing that she was focused on the "basic causes" of immigration.

Related Article: New Book: Jill Biden Screamed, Kicked Out Priest During President Joe Biden's Suffering From Brain Aneurysm

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Philippine Department of Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat, center, speaks at the panel of the 21st World Travel and Tourism Council Global Summit in Manila, Thursday. From left are Global Rescue Companies CEO Dan Richards, Dubai Airports International CEO Paul Griffiths, Secretary Romulo-Puyat, Marriott International Group President Craig Smith and WTTC Ambassador Katheleen Mathews. Courtesy of World Travel and Tourism Council



One-third of all new jobs worldwide forecast to be within travel and tourism sector: WTTC



By Lee Hae-rin



MANILA, Philippines  The travel and tourism sector is expected to create nearly 126 million new jobs within the next decade and bring the industry's global GDP back to pre-pandemic levels by 2023, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC).



The forecast was announced by the WTTC President and CEO Julia Simpson in her opening speech of the 21st Global Summit at Marriott Hotel in Newport City, Manila, Thursday.



"Over the next decade, travel and tourism will create 126 million new jobs worldwide. In fact, one in three of every new job created will be related to our sector," Simpson said.



Looking to this year and the next, WTTC forecast a bright future with both GDP and employment set to reach pre-pandemic levels by next year.



"The recovery in 2021 was slower than expected due in part to the impact of the Omicron variant but mainly due to an uncoordinated approach by governments who rejected the advice from the World Health Organization (WHO), which maintained that closing borders would not stop the spread of the virus but would only serve to damage economies and livelihoods," Simpson said.



The sector's contribution to global GDP nearly halved due to the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping from 2019's 10.3 percent ($9.6 trillion) to 5.3 percent ($4.8 trillion) in 2020.



However, the WTTC 2022 Economic Impact Research (EIR) report forecasts the travel industry's GDP to drive ahead by an annual average of 5.8 percent over the next 10 years, higher than the global economy's 2.7 percent growth estimated for the same period.



The WTTC predicts that the hard-hit travel and tourism industry will not only come back to life but also foster employment growth by 3.5 percent in 2022, nearing 2019's 10 percent and thereby taking up 9.1 percent of the global job market, the report says.



Referring to itself as the world's most influential event in the industry, this year's WTTC Global Summit was held under the theme of "Rediscovering Travel" from April 20 to 22 in Manila.



The venue was lively and packed with over 1,200 delegates and stakeholders from more than 50 countries, including 20 ministerial delegations and over 200 international media professionals joined the event in person, surpassing the initial estimate of 600. Over 30,000 registered online for virtual attendance, a WTTC official confirmed.



At this year's summit, WTTC's set of criteria for hotels, "Hotel Sustainability Basics," was launched to provide minimum sustainability requirements and guidelines for hotels to meet certain sustainability requirements and improve their environmental impact.



The summit held panel talks on the following topics: seeking the tourism sector's sustainability in protecting the environment and local life and culture, as well as accomplishing diversity, equality and inclusion in the workforce.



Keynote speakers included: former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon; 20-year-old Indonesian-Dutch environmental activist Melati Wijsen, who launched a grassroots campaign to reduce plastic waste on Bali; American film producer Lawrence Bender, a political and environmentalist activist, as well as producer of Al Gore's documentary about climate change, "An Inconvenient Truth;" and British adventurer Bear Grylls.



WTTC President and CEO Simpson argued in her farewell address, Friday, that the summit in Manila showed that "nothing beats" face-to-face interaction.



"We still have a lot of work to bring down post-pandemic barriers, open economies and harmonize health data for seamless travel. But the future looks bright, and the next decade is there for the taking," Simpson said.



According to the Philippines' Secretary of the Department of Tourism Bernadette Romulo-Puyat, Friday, the country successfully hosted the summit with zero cases of COVID-19.



The next summit will take place in Riyadh, the capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, from Nov. 29 to Dec. 2 of this year.


Kim Jong-un is seen at an undisclosed location in North Korea in this undated photo provided by the North Korean government, April 17. AP-Yonhap



North Korea vowed Sunday to continue to expand and develop relations with Russia on the eve of the third anniversary of a summit between leader Kim Jong-un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.



Kim and Putin held the summit in Russia's Far East city of Vladivostok, April 25, 2019. The third anniversary comes as the North stressed its friendly ties with Russia amid deepening tensions between Moscow and Washington in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.



"Today, the DPRK-Russia relations, even in the face of challenges and pressure of the U.S. and its vassal forces, continue to develop and strengthen ... and are contributing to ensuring peace and security in the region and to establishing the international order based on independence and justice," the North's foreign ministry said in an article posted on its website.



"It is an invariable stand of the DPRK government to expand and develop in all fields the friendly and cooperative relations with Russia, our friend and friendly neighbor, according to the agreement reached at the historic DPRK-Russia summit meeting," the ministry said.



DPRK stands for the North's official name, Democratic People's Republic of Korea.



It said that Kim's visit to Russia "was of a historic event that served as a turning point in putting the friendly ties between the two countries onto a new higher stage."



"After the historic Vladivostok DPRK-Russia summit, the long-standing relations of the DPRK-Russia friendship are developing more vigorously thanks to the special care of the leaders of the two countries," the ministry said. (Yonhap)


A conference held in Pyongyang ahead of the 90th founding anniversary of the People's Revolutionary Army, which falls April 25, is seen in this photo, released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency, April 23. Yonhap



South Korea has detected signs of North Korea preparing to hold a massive military parade around midnight Sunday to show off its latest strategic weapons in time for a key anniversary, according to government sources.



The sources said the North was likely to mobilize around 20,000 troops for the parade at Kim Il Sung Square to mark the 90th founding anniversary of the North Korean People's Revolutionary Army (KPRA), that the North claims late national founder Kim Il-sung established in 1932.



During rehearsals, over 250 pieces of military equipment have been paraded, including a hypersonic Hwasong-8 missile, a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), according to the sources.



The North also appears to have built two pontoon bridges across the Taedong River connecting Kim Il Sung Square to the Tower of the Juche Idea, raising possibilities that troops could use the bridges to enter the square amid fireworks so as to boost the festive mood.



The North has held nine military parades so far since leader Kim came to power in 2012 following the death of its late leader and his father Kim Jong-il, but none of them were held to mark the founding anniversary of the KPRA.





A performance held in Pyongyang ahead of the 90th founding anniversary of the People's Revolutionary Army, which falls April 25, is seen in this photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency, April 23. Yonhap
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida /Yonhap



A delegation of President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol carried a letter from Yoon as it left for Tokyo, Sunday, for meetings with top Japanese officials, possibly including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, officials said.



Yoon's spokesperson, Bae Hyun-jin, declined to confirm whether the delegation will be meeting with Kishida during the five-day trip. But chances of a meeting with him appear to be high as another official said the delegation carried a letter from Yoon.



"Coordination is under way for a meeting with the prime minister," Bae said during a daily press briefing. "With regard to the outcome of the visit, the delegation will be making an announcement by itself. I have nothing to confirm or that I know of now."



Sources said a meeting with Kishida is expected to take place Wednesday.



The seven-member delegation, led by Rep. Chung Jin-suk of Yoon's People Power Party, is also expected to meet with Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, Monday, while meetings with former Prime Ministers Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga are also being pushed for, according to the sources.



Upon arrival in Tokyo, the delegation plans to pay tribute at the monument honoring Lee Soo-hyun, a Korean hero who died trying to rescue a drunk Japanese man who had fallen onto the subway tracks in Tokyo in 2001. The late Lee is regarded as a symbol of friendly ties between the two nations.



The delegation could discuss the possibility of Kishida attending Yoon's May 10 inauguration ceremony and ways to improve relations between the two countries frayed badly over issues related to Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, such as wartime sexual slavery and forced labor.



Yoon has stressed the importance of strengthening relations with Japan, as well as trilateral cooperation among Seoul, Washington and Tokyo, saying his focus will be on building a "future-oriented" partnership with the neighboring country.



A day after his election last month, Yoon spoke by phone with Kishida and agreed to work together to promote "friendly cooperation" between their countries. Kishida was the second foreign leader that Yoon spoke to after U.S. President Joe Biden.



The delegation also includes Rep. Kim Seok-ki; Yun Duk-min, former head of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy; Park Cheol-hee, a professor at Seoul National University's Graduate School of International Studies; former Ambassador to Singapore Lee Sang-deok; and former Ambassador to Cambodia Chang Ho-jin. (Yonhap)


People Power Party's Rep. Chung Jin-suk, leader of President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol's delegation to Japan, visits Sunday the site of death of the late Lee Soo-hyun (1974-2001) who died while saving a Japanese citizen who fell on the subway tracks at Shin Okubo Station in Tokyo in January 2001. Yonhap





TOKYO/SEOUL, April 24 (Yonhap)  A delegation of President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol arrived in Tokyo on Sunday for meetings with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and other top officials, carrying a letter from Yoon that outlines his will for "new relations with Japan."







The visit by the seven-member delegation, led by Rep. Chung Jin-suk of Yoon's People Power Party, came as Yoon has stressed the importance of restoring relations with Japan that have been frayed badly over the past few years due to rows over issues like wartime sexual slavery and forced labor.



Japan is the second foreign country that Yoon has sent a delegation to after the United States.







"I think the letter carries President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol's will and expectations for new relations with Japan, as well as his expectations for positive responses from Japan," Chung told reporters after arriving at Narita International Airport.







The delegation is expected to meet with Kishida on Wednesday and hand him the letter from Yoon.







Upon arrival in Tokyo, the delegation visited a railway station to pay tribute at the monument honoring Lee Soo-hyun, a Korean hero who died trying to rescue a drunk Japanese man who had fallen onto the subway tracks in Tokyo in 2001. The late Lee is regarded as a symbol of friendly ties between the two nations.







"As South Korea and Japan are seeking to improve their relations, I hope Lee Soo-hyun's spirit of sacrifice could serve as a new bridge between the two nations for their better future," Chung said, after laying a white chrysanthemum in front of the monument.







On Monday, the delegation is expected to hold a meeting with Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, according to sources. Meetings with former Prime Ministers Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga are also being pushed for, they said.







Yoon has called for strengthening relations with Japan, as well as trilateral cooperation among Seoul, Washington and Tokyo, saying his focus will be on building a "future-oriented" partnership with the neighboring country.







A day after his election last month, Yoon spoke by phone with Kishida and agreed to work together to promote "friendly cooperation" between their countries. Kishida was the second foreign leader that Yoon spoke to after U.S. President Joe Biden.







"We are going on this trip with a mindset that we're fastening the first button of a new Korea-Japan relationship under the Yoon Suk-yeol government," Chung told reporters before departure from Incheon International Airport earlier in the day.







"We will meet with figures from various circles of Japan and convey the president-elect's thought that we need to make efforts for an early improvement and restoration of Korea-Japan relations that have been left unattended for a long period time," he said.







Restoring bilateral cooperation with Japan and trilateral cooperation among South Korea, the United States and Japan will contribute greatly to peace and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula and beyond amid uncertainties in the international order in the wake of a series of North Korean provocations and the war in Ukraine, Chung said.







The delegation could discuss the possibility of Kishida attending Yoon's May 10 inauguration ceremony and ways to improve relations between the two countries frayed badly over issues related to Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, such as wartime sexual slavery and forced labor.



The delegation also includes Rep. Kim Seok-ki; Yun Duk-min, former head of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy; Park Cheol-hee, a professor at Seoul National University's Graduate School of International Studies; former Ambassador to Singapore Lee Sang-deok; former Ambassador to Cambodia Chang Ho-jin; and Woo Jung-yeop, a Sejong Institute expert on the U.S. (Yonhap)


Attendees of the "Congressional Roundtable and Forum on US-ROK Alliance for Free and Unified Korea" watch the pre-recorded keynote speech by Moon Hyun-jin, better known in the United States as Hyun-jin Preston Moon, founder of the Washington D.C.-based non-profit group, Global Peace Foundation, on a screen set up at Lotte Hotel in Seoul on Friday. The event is the 10th edition of the International Forum on One Korea, the first edition of which was in 2016. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk



Lawmakers, experts discuss ways to move ROK-US alliance forward to create conditions for reunification of two Koreas at 2022 International Forum on One Korea



By Kang Hyun-kyung



A nuclear-free North Korea has long been a policy vision that every South Korean president regardless of their political orientation has promised to pursue during their tenure.



It's a shared, bipartisan, yet unfulfilled commitment, although no president has succeeded in actually denuclearizing North Korea. In fact, perhaps the opposite is true. While South Korea, with its democratic system, has had various leaders representing the two main political parties, with policies on the North that often zigzag back and forth with the change of administration, North Korea has had sufficient time to advance its missile and nuclear technologies to intimidate the world.



Now, denuclearization in North Korea seems distant, if not unrealistic.



With President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol's inauguration coming on May 10, some experts, who gathered at a security roundtable held on Friday, called for resetting South Korea's policy vision on the North by shifting its end goal from denuclearization to the reunification of the two Koreas in a manner that intends to benefit both. Some argued for the need for U.S.-led massive economic assistance equivalent to the U.S.-sponsored post World War II program, the Marshall Plan, which successfully helped the war-torn western and southern European economies recover, to persuade North Korea to join talks to build a shared, mutually-beneficial future for the peninsula.



Moon Hyun-jin, the founder of the Washington D.C.-based non-profit group, Global Peace Foundation, has ignited the discussion to advance South Korea-U.S. alliance to create the conditions for a unified Korea.



Moon, better known in the United States by his English name, Hyun-jin Preston Moon, encouraged President-elect Yoon to implement a durable policy for North Korea that can ultimately lead to peace on the Korean Peninsula.



"The United States and Republic of Korea to date have been piecemeal and reactive, with North Korea too often in the driver's seat," he said in a keynote speech for the "Congressional Roundtable and Forum on U.S.-ROK Alliance for Free and Unified Korea" held at Lotte Hotel in Seoul on Friday. "I have long advocated that it be replaced by a broad, forward-looking strategy focused on the end goal of a free and sovereign nation. A unified Korea that upholds fundamental human rights and values, should become the clearly stated and actively pursued policy of (South Korea's) new Yoon administration, as well as of the U.S.' allies and the United Nations."





Rep. Lee Sang-min of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, center in front row, and other participants gesture as they pose for a group photo at Lotte Hotel in Seoul, Friday. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk



The hybrid forum was held both online and in person. U.S. lawmakers, think tank analysts, Moon himself and some South Korean lawmakers participated in the event online via pre-recorded messages, while most of South Korea's participants attended physically.



Moon noted that South Korea's unification strategy must begin with the ideals that have motivated Korean people historically across the peninsula. "Their aspiration was to create a model nation, drawing upon a shared culture and identity that long predates the current division. In particular, it must look to Korea's foundational philosophy of 'Hongik Ingan,' or 'living for the benefit of all mankind,' which aligns with the highest ideals of the principles of democracy," he said. "I call this approach, the 'Korean dream,' and have explained it in my book with that title."



Reunification of the two Koreas would require a complicated process and sophisticated diplomacy necessitating the full support from the United States and neighboring countries of South Korea, as was the case for Germany, which, as a formerly divided European nation, achieved unification following the collapse of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989.



Some who are familiar with German affairs argue the reunification of Germany is the combined result of West Germany's decades of policy consistency toward East Germany and the former's active diplomatic efforts.



In South Korea, the unification discourse seems to have lost momentum currently as regional security has become more unstable than before, with some experts referring to the current global situation as raising concerns of a "new Cold War."



Unstable geopolitics in East Asia, fueled mainly by North Korea's incessant provocations and reliance on brinkmanship as well as the U.S.-China rivalry in the region, have complicated the discourse on the reunification of the two Koreas more than ever before.



In particular, clashes of the United States and China in many issue areas, not to mention the security of the region, have led to growing skepticism about the possibility of a unified Korea, as the United States and China are two of the countries whose full support for the reunification of the two Koreas matters.



Moon, however, stayed hopeful. "It is in the interests of the United States to take the lead in this effort," he said. "Not only would a free and unified Korea diminish the nuclear threat to Korea, Japan and the United States; it will create, in effect, a new nation, which upholds liberty and democratic principles in a region where statist approaches are on the rise."





Edwin Feulner, the founder and chairman emeritus of the Washington D.C.-based conservative think tank, Heritage Foundation, is seen on the screen as he delivers a speech for the hybrid event held both online and in person. U.S. Congress members, think tank researchers and Korean lawmakers participated in the event online. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

Edwin Fulner, the founder and chairman emeritus of the Washington D.C.-based conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, showed his full support for Moon's vision for durable peace in East Asia, stressing the role of civil society as one of the core factors that could make Moon's "Korean dream" happen.



"Advancing freedom and democracy cannot just be left to our governments: it is in fact the work of all of us, working through private organizations collectively, like the sponsors of this forum, to promote those values of freedom around the world," he said.



Nicholas Eberstadt, the Wendt Chair of Political Economy at the Washington D.C.-based conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, concurred with the idea of achieving a free and unified Korea, saying that the continued division of the Korean peninsula comes at "a very real price."



"It is being paid every day by North Korea's captive population. They suffer a human rights nightmare, an oppression exquisitely perfected under three generations of totalitarian rule by the Kim dynasty," he said.



Eberstadt called on South Korean and U.S. officials and politicians to jump-start policy planning to help with North Korea's smooth transition to a post-DPRK Korea. "Those who price the North Korean threat around zero may be making a fateful economic miscalculation. The longer unification is postponed, the greater the potential cost of that particular reckoning."



On top of international support, there is another, more daunting task for South Korea and like-minded countries: persuading North Korea to join the discussion.



Speaking in a pre-recorded message to the roundtable, Rep. Lee Gwang-jae of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) claimed that the ball is in the U.S.' court, calling for a "Marshall Plan for North Korea."



He underscored the "will of the United States" as being a critical factor to convince North Korea to join any such talks on reunification.



"I think the United States needs to have the will and determination to transform North Korea into a country like Vietnam," he said. "Vietnam had a war with the United States in the past. Although Vietnam is close to China, their bilateral ties were once put to the test. Vietnam has introduced a socialist system but adopts some capitalist measures."



Rep. Lee argued that South Korea, and probably the United States as well, need to be specific about a roadmap to make sure North Korea joins the multi-lateral discussion for the reunification of the two Koreas.



"We need to give them (North Korea) trust I'm not saying that we should give them security assurance or vision for economic assistance  such as a promise that South Korea would help the North achieve an economy with per capita income of $5,000 or something  or both in return for their decision to denuclearize," he said. "What I'm saying is that we need to be specific. We should assure them with a detailed plan that says clearly when, how and which countries will help them rehabilitate their economy. We need to prepare a Marshall Plan for North Korea."



The 2022 International Forum on One Korea is the tenth such forum since it was first held in 2016. Friday's event was co-hosted by five organizations, namely Action for Korea United, Global Peace Foundation, One Korea Foundation, Alliance for Korea United and Leaders' Alliance for Korean Unification.



Consisting of two main events  a Congressional roundtable and a forum among think tank experts of Korea and the United States  lawmakers and experts shared their thoughts about the Korea-U.S. alliance and how it should adapt to the changing security environment of East Asia to achieve peace in the region through the reunification of the two Koreas.






By Stefano Graziosi and James Jay Carafano



The level of European solidarity sparked by Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine has surprised even Europeans. Leaders in Russia, China and Iran are perplexed as well. They had assumed the invasion would exacerbate strains in the transatlantic community.



There is not, however, unanimity on every issue. The real question is how Europeans will deal with the consequences of the war and their own differences as they shape future policies. The three key fault lines that threaten to fracture post-war European unity are China, energy and Iran.



Brussels keeps trying to lecture Beijing into condemning the invasion, even as it attempts to mediate between Kyiv and Moscow. During the latest E.U.-China summit, European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen argued that, by not taking a clear stand against the invasion, China is undermining its own international reputation. Michel also told Chinese President Xi Jinping that "positive steps from China to help end the war would be welcome." China won't do either.



Indeed, Beijing reiterated that it has no intention of taking a clear stance against Russia. Moreover, just a few days after the summit, China voted against the U.N. resolution to suspend Moscow from the Human Rights Council of the United Nations.



Brussels seems stuck in trying to deal with the Chinese regime it wants, rather than the one that actually exists. While everyone would like to have a Beijing that is a responsible actor who respects a global, rules-based order that is not the regime we have.



The E.U.'s bigger problem is that, without a consensus approach to China, it has little bargaining power. Countries like Germany and France have close trade ties with the People's Republic and this allows Beijing to easily resist European pressure. Further, it is clear that China does not care about the "reputational damage" mentioned by von der Leyen.



Beijing, in fact, seems determined to continue to try to exploit the Ukrainian crisis to maximize its geopolitical advantage. In the long term, Xi's aim is to establish a Sino-centric international order. That necessitates shattering the cohesion of the transatlantic community and marginalizing the United States. Xi appears hopeful that he can still exploit strains and differences in the alliance to further that aim.



To make the point that Beijing has its own priorities, China recently delivered an HQ-22 anti-aircraft system to Serbia. Belgrade has significantly consolidated its relations with Moscow and Beijing in recent years, and the weapon delivery reminds that China  like Russia  still views the Balkans as a potential theater to penetrate Western Europe and disrupt North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the E.U.



Another clear fault line is energy policy. Europe's continued energy reliance on Russia is a strategic liability. The European bloc remains internally divided over sanctions on Russian oil and gas. The differences are not without merit. In the wake of the war on Ukraine, arguably no European nation wants to remain dependent on Russian energy. That said, they have differing near- and long-term prospects to develop the affordable, reliable, and dependable energy sources they need to ensure their economies are secure and prosperous. In the near term, this makes the prospects for a common European energy policy difficult, if not unreasonable.



Further complicating the difficulty crafting a common future energy policy is the severe politization of the issue. The broad desire for an aggressive "climate action" plan heavily dependent on renewable sources and an uncompromising drive to "net zero" by 2050 runs counter the desire to embrace a broad range of energy sources and environmental mitigation strategies that would more quickly provide responsible alternatives to Russian energy.



A third potential European fault line arises over relations with Iran. Russia's role renegotiating an Iran deal has complicated an already controversial initiative. Despite having called for a "pause" in the talks, Brussels is indeed continuing to support the relaunch of the deeply flawed Obama-era nuclear deal. Josep Borrell, the high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, recently said that the agreement is "very close."



Many argue that a deal is just appeasement to Iran and a backdoor for Russia to evade sanctions. Further, there is concern that a more empowered Tehran will create new troubles that will spill over into Europe, creating problems on both its eastern and southern frontiers at the same time.



In addition to dealing with the aftermath of the war on Ukraine, the transatlantic community will have to resolve these fault lines if it plans to move forward to a safer, more prosperous future. How they will resolve the contradictions in the community will be key. The decisions made, perhaps even more than the actions of Beijing, Moscow and Tehran, will determine how the future unfolds.





Stefano Graziosi is an essayist and a political analyst who writes for the Italian newspaper La Verita and the weekly magazine Panorama. A Heritage Foundation vice president, James Jay Carafano directs the think tank's research on matters of national security and foreign relations. This commentary was produced for the Heritage Foundation and distributed by Tribune Content Agency.






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Shanghai local government takes its lockdown measures to another level by setting up barricades outside residential buildings identified with COVID-19 cases, fuelling another public outcry.

Photos of personnel wearing white hazmat sealing residential structures and setting up blockades on streets with roughly two meter-tall green fencing went viral on social media on Saturday.

The images were criticized by residents. On a social media platform, one user said the move is "so disrespectful of the rights of the people inside" as if the government is treating them "like domestic animals."

Residents shouted at workers erecting fencing from their balconies in one video, but they eventually yielded and took them away. Other recordings showed individuals attempting to tear down the barriers, which some consider "a fire hazard."

The majority of the barricades seemed to have been installed around "sealed areas," with buildings dwelled by at least one individual positive for COVID-19, and whose tenants are not allowed to exit their doors.

It was unclear what caused authorities to put up barriers, but a notice posted online on Saturday from one local authority indicated it was enforcing a "strict quarantine" on specific regions.

The validity of the photographs, videos, and notifications could not be verified, as Reuters said in its report. Shanghai officials have not yet answered the request for response sent by the media outlet.

Chinese Authorites Try To Censor Online Complaints

A viral clip depicting the impact of Shanghai's five-week lockdown on its citizens is being blocked by Chinese internet authorities.

The six-minute video clip highlights audio recordings of citizens complaining about the dire situation they are experiencing, including the lack of access to food and medical service.

The Chinese government's efforts to eliminate the content online have sparked backlash on Chinese websites, according to a report from BBC.

"This virus can't kill us. Starvation can," one person in the clip said.

The video, named The Voice of April, was widely shared on Weibo and WeChat, two major Chinese social networking sites.

However, on Saturday, web officials began attempting to take it down, contending with furious users who were uploading new copies to other platforms.

Read Also: China Plans To Build Future Helicopters With More Advanced Technologies Than Super Choppers Built by the US

Omicron: A Big Challenge To China's COVID-19 Strategy

Shanghai, China's largest metropolis and commercial capital, is fighting the country's largest-ever Covid-19 outbreak with a policy that requires all positive cases to be sent to central quarantine facilities.

The lockdown has sparked anger about issues securing food and medical assistance, Locals also complain of lost earnings, family separation, conditions at quarantine centers, and suppression of protests online, per NBC News.

Following the initial outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019, China generally succeeded in keeping Covid-19 at bay by implementing a "dynamic zero" policy aimed at eradicating all transmission possibilities.

The emergence of the highly contagious but less lethal omicron strain has posed a challenge to this method, prompting a slew of towns to implement varying levels of mobility restrictions, severely stifling the economy.

China reported 20,285 new asymptomatic coronavirus infections on April 23, down from 21,423 the day before, and 1,580 symptomatic cases, down from 2,988 the day before.

In Beijing, there were 22 new Covid-19 cases, all of which were locally transmitted.

Related Article: Xi Jinping: 5 Things To Know About China's President

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Sorn, who is a former member of CLC, has garnered attention for not only her talents as a performer and musician, charming personality, but also for her beauty. Along with the Thai idol's beauty, she has also been praised by many for her stunningly clear skin.

With a K-Pop idol's busy day-to-day life, many are always curious to know more about how they take care of their skin. With that, here is what we know about Sorn's nightly skincare routine that helped her glow on stage!

Keep on reading to know Sorn's skincare know-hows!

Sorn's Skin Concerns

For Sorn's skin condition, she revealed that she has combination skin. Some parts of her face are oily, while some are dry. She also leans more towards products that can help prep her skin for when she has to film for a long time, and looks for products that can alleviate her dry, itchy, and tight skin. Sorn also looks for products that can help with her acne scars, freckles, wrinkles, and fine lines.

Sorn's Skincare Routine

1. Cleanser

Beginning her night time skincare routine, Sorn makes sure to wash her face and clean her face from the day using a cleanser. For this, Sorn likes to use a good amount of Dear Klairs' Gentle Black Facial Cleanser. It is low in pH and mild on the skin to avoid irritation while leaving a hydrating finish. She rubs the product in, rinses it off, and dabs her face dry with a towel afterwards.

2. Calming solution

After cleansing, Sorn likes to use a cleansing solution, such as elmt's Advanced Calming Solution, which works as both a toner and serum! To apply this, Sorn likes to pour a few drops of the product directly her hand and pats it on her face. Sorn adds that she uses the product as a toner in the morning with a cotton pad, and as a serum at night.

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN: TWICE Jeongyeon Skincare Routine: Here's Her Quick Simple Night Regimen

3. Ampoule

For her third step, Sorn applies some ampoule using Wishtrend's Polyphenols in Propolis 15% Ampoule. Sorn reveals that this is a personal favorite as it has helped with her skin's pigmentation. The product contains sebum-controlling and anti-inflammatory properties.

4. Cream

Moving on to her fourth product, Sorn makes sure to moisturize by applying a good amount of cream. For this, Sorn also uses Wishtrend's Vitamin A-mazing Bakuchiol Night Cream. This contains vitamin A to improve the skin's texture and elasticity.

5. Mask

Finishing off her skincare routine for the night, Sorn makes sure to keep her face hydrated by applying a mask, such as Dear Klairs' Freshly Juiced Vitamin E Mask. This product not only helps correct uneven skintone, but with skin regeneration as well!

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN: Lee Hi Skincare Routine: Here's How She Maintains Her Glassy Skin

Do you have a similar skincare routine?

For more K-Pop news and updates, always keep your tabs open here on KpopStarz.

KpopStarz owns this article.

Written by Robyn Joan
It is that time of the week once more where we do a rundown that top five stories here on the site. Welcome to another edition of This Week on iTP!

This week's stories cover a wide range of topics, including the history of one of the famous rides of Disney's theme parks, the decision to roll off the Artemis 1 from its launch pad, and more.

Well, what are we waiting for? Let us get on with it!

We begin our rundown with a smart home company known as Insteon. Insteon made headlines in the past few days for suddenly shutting its business with no warning.

Yes, you read that right. Customers were not given any warning that Insteon was going out of business. Servers were suddenly just shut down and no statement from the company was immediately issued.

Related Article: Insteon Finally Reveals Why It's Going Out of Business

Search engine DuckDuckGo has now blocked Google's AMP as a way of "protecting" users. Because of this, Google cannot track the browsing activities of DuckDuckGo's users.

DuckDuckGo's move follows the similar step taken by another search engine known as Brave. Brave has even released a De-AMP feature for its users.

Planning on buying a new Tesla car? Be sure you are ready to spend extra for a mobile connector.

If you are wondering why, it is because Tesla will now be selling mobile connectors separately. Those interested to purchase one from the EV company will have to be willing to shell out $200 for it as well. The mobile connector used to come free when you purchase a Tesla vehicle.

The moon mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been off to a rocky start, to say the least. After a couple of failed attempts to fuel the Artemis 1 moon rocket, the space agency eventually decided to roll it off its launch pad.

NASA has been hoping to launch the mission this summer. However, given the setbacks they have been experiencing, it is not clear when exactly that will happen.

The top story for the week here on iTech Post centers around a well-known Disneyland and Disney World attraction.

Disney's Splash Mountain has been at the center of controversy for years given its theming. The log flume ride is based on the 1946 film "Song of the South," which has been described by Disney CEO Bob Iger as "not appropriate in today's world."

The company has since decided to re-theme Splash Mountain and picked "Princess and the Frog."

Read Also: #ThisWeekOnITP: Microsoft's April 2022 Patch, NASA's Failed Attempt to Fuel Artemis 1, and More!
Actors Cha Seung-won, left, and Lee Jung-eun in a scene from tvN's series "Our Blues" / Courtesy of tvN





By Kwak Yeon-soo







Fast-paced storytelling, betrayals, suspense and dark twists were once considered key to the success of K-dramas. To satisfy content-hungry viewers, who look for non-conventional stories, TV productions have cycled through zombie, monster and slasher genres.







Now entering the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, shows have turned to slow-paced, feel good dramas to strike a chord with global viewers.







TvN's Multi-starrer series "Our Blues" follows a group of people in a seaside town on Jeju Island going through ups and downs in their lives. The main characters  played by Lee Byung-hun, Shin Min-a, Cha Seung-won, Lee Jung-eun, Han Ji-min and Kim Woo-bin  each carry their own set of problems and deal with personal tragedies. Although they do not directly know each other, all characters are somehow connected to one another as the story unfolds.







The actors echoed the sentiment that the format helps the 20-episode show portray various kinds of people and their lives in a more balanced way, although their parts or roles are relatively short in "Our Blues" compared with their previous works.







Actor Kim Ji-won in a scene from JTBC's series "My Liberation Notes" / Courtesy of JTBC





"It's important for Korean storytellers and producers to come up with series that will appeal to global audiences. However, what's more important is telling a good story that resonates with viewers around the world," said an official at Studio Dragon, a production company under CJ ENM.







"Our stories usually include a number of characters, each with a different role or purpose in the series, and is based on profound appreciation for humans and life. We believe these shared feelings are universal."







JTBC's drama "My Liberation Notes" revolves around three grown-up siblings who are frustrated by and seeking escape from their lives on the outskirts of Seoul.







They are not in life-or-death or tragic situations, but the characters are unhappy with their lives  social pressure to get married by a certain age, be more extroverted and live in Seoul. The series tells of coping and self-care strategies practiced by the misfits. Moments built on emotional bonding or tropes of shared trauma also help balance out melodramatic undertones.







"Block out all external noise and watch this drama when you need rest," actor Kim Ji-won said.







Two new mood-lifting series  KT's "Never Give Up," featuring actors Kwak Do-won and Yoon Du-jun, and Netflix's "The Sound of Magic," fronted by Ji Chang-wook  will hit screens in May.


The focus of a first-year event in the City of Lake Geneva is to highlight shopping at Downtown businesses.

Representatives from the Lake Geneva Business Improvement District are set to host Lake Geneva Fashion Week from April 27 to April 30. The event will feature shopping at the Downtown businesses, sales and demonstrations at participating businesses, selfie station, meet and greet with fashion bloggers and a fashion show.

About 25 Downtown businesses are participating in the event.

Kristina Tarantino, event director for the Business Improvement District, said the purpose of the Fashion Week is to encourage residents and visitors to shop in the Downtown area.

"It's a unique town for shopping, and we never highlighted that," Tarantino said. "So that's what our goal is, to highlight how unique and how fun it is to come to Lake Geneva and go shopping and make a weekend out of it. We're trying to create an event around shopping."

Attendees start the event by obtaining a "passport" at the Landmark building, 772 Main St., which lists the participating businesses. After attendees visit 10 of the participating businesses, they can turn in their "passport" to have their name entered into a drawing for a prize.

"They don't have to go to all of them, but they have to go to 10 stores to be entered into a giveaway," Tarantino said. "The fun part is going around to all the stores, and some of the stores are going to be offering fun exhibits."

Attendees have the option of purchasing three different types of tickets, which include different activities.

Complementary tickets for no cost include shopping and demonstrations at participating businesses, drawing for prizes, VIP lounge and selfie station.

VIP tickets for $25 include shopping and demonstrations, prize drawings, VIP lounge, giveaway bag and meet and greet with fashion bloggers. VIP tickets for $40 include shopping and demonstrations, prize drawings, giveaway bag, meet and greet with fashion bloggers and a fashion show which will be held 6 p.m., April 28 at Edie Boutique, 737 W. Main St.

The fashion show will include shopping, DJ, snacks and complimentary wine.

"There's some fashion bloggers that will be at some of the stores that you can meet," Tarantino said. "But if you really upgrade your ticket to the ultra-VIP ticket, you get to go to the fashion show at Edie Boutique."

Angela Carlson, manager for Edie Boutique, said she is excited about the businesses participating in Fashion week and hosting the fashion show. Carlson said 10% of the store's proceeds for April 28 will be donated to Kisses from Keegan & Friends, a pediatric cancer foundation.

"We're super excited to see the first annual Lake Geneva Fashion Week," Carlson said. "We've done a fashion show before at our Park Ridge, Illinois location, and we're excited to make it an annual event in Lake Geneva."

Carlson said she feels Fashion Week will help to attract shoppers to Downtown Lake Geneva.

"Our hope is to draw in a local crowd to really showcase what they have in their hometown," Carlson said.

Karin Bennett, co-owner of Cornerstone Shop & Gallery, said Fashion Week will help give people an opportunity to visit the different stores in the Downtown area.

"I think it's always great to do an event that will attract people to see what the Downtown has to offer," Bennett said. "Anytime we can have a well-planned and orchestrated event like Fashion Week, it does give people the opportunity and a reason to come to Lake Geneva and experience the Downtown community."

Cornerstone Shop & Gallery, 214 Broad St., will be hosting the Frank Lyman Trunk Show during Fashion Week. The trunk show will feature items from the Frank Lyman clothing line from Montreal.

The trunk show is open to the public, but people can register by sending an email message to events@cornerstoneshoppe.com to receive a "swag" bag, refreshments and to be entered into a drawing for a $50 gift certificate.

"Our reps are coming in to show the whole line during the trunk show, which will take up about half of our store," Bennett said. "It's a special opportunity for people to see a collection out of Montreal."

For a schedule of activities and to obtain a complementary ticket or purchase a VIP ticket, visit www.streetsoflakegeneva.com.

Representatives from the Business Improvement District have been working on the event since January. Tarantino said she is encouraging participating businesses to help with promoting the event.

"I really need everyone to help out and get the word out there," Tarantino said. "It's such a neat event. If everyone does their part out there, the streets will come alive during Fashion Week."

Tarantino said she has been wanting to host a fashion-related event for several years. She said she feels people will enjoy visiting the different types of stores in Downtown Lake Geneva.

"We feel like there's 20 or 30 stores and boutiques that are so unique and have so many great things to offer that you can't get out online," Tarantino said. "We feel this is the best place to come and do all your shopping in one place, and they're closely located. You can make a day out of it. You can make a whole weekend out of it."

Tarantino hopes to make Fashion Week an annual event. She said she plans to expand the event next year to include a centralized fashion show with each participating business being featured.

"I think it can grow to be a place where every spring, all the Chicago area and all the areas we draw from will want to come and spend a week, getting some of their seasonal outfits for the summer season," Tarantino said.

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Washington [US], April 23 (ANI): A new study demonstrates that in utero exposure to mother's antiepileptic or antidepressant medication may affect the development of the newborn brain networks.

In the study by the University of Helsinki, novel mathematical methods were developed to allow future research on how commonly used drugs or other environmental conditions affect the newborn brain.

Also Read | US Scientists Find How Omicron Sub Variants of COVID-19 Escape Immune System, Spread Rapidly.

Pregnant mothers may need treatment for their medical conditions, such as mood disorders or epilepsy. The effects of such drug treatment on newborn brain network functions were examined in a study conducted at the BABA Center, a research unit at the University of Helsinki and New Children's Hospital of HUS Helsinki University Hospital. The study used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure electrical brain activity during sleep, and cortical network properties were calculated using advanced mathematical techniques.

"In prior studies, we have shown that changes in cortical activity across sleep states may provide important information on infants' neurological condition," Senior Researcher Anton Tokariev says.

Also Read | National Banana Day 2022: From Supporting Physical Activity to Protecting Heart and Kidneys, Know Amazing Health Benefits of Bananas.

The study demonstrated that exposure to antiepileptics and antidepressants during the fetal period leads to widespread changes in the cortical networks, and these effects may be specific to the type of drug exposure. In the case of antidepressants, the effect was more pronounced in local cortical networks. In contrast, exposure to antiepileptics had drug-specific effects on brain-wide networks. Both drug types affected brain networks that are reactive to changes in sleep stages.

"What was clinically significant in the findings was that some EEG findings linked to children's subsequent neuropsychological development. Stronger changes in neural networks predicted a greater deviation in development at two years of age," says Mari Videman, a specialist in paediatric neurology at HUS Helsinki University Hospital.

Shedding new light on early brain development

The studies offer an entirely new way of assessing the effects of pharmaceutical agents on the development of a child's brain function.

"The EEG measurement technique developed at the BABA Center and its associated state-of-the-art mathematical assessment of the brain's neural networks constitute breakthroughs in clinical research on early neurodevelopment," Professor Sampsa Vanhatalo says.

Vanhatalo considers it particularly important that these EEG -based measures open a window into mechanisms that operate between neuronal cells. This leads to an opportunity to compare results observed in human children with research conducted using laboratory-animal models. Such translational work is needed to understand the mechanistic underpinnings of the drug effects. For instance, identical animal work is required to study how the amount or timing of maternal drug treatment would affect the brain function of the offspring.

"Our novel methods provide a general analytical framework to support extensive future research on the questions of how fetal brain development is affected by changes in the intrauterine environment. Such studies may go far beyond maternal drug treatment, including also mother's nutrition and overall physical condition, as well as a myriad of further environmental factors," Vanhatalo summarises. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, Apr 24 (PTI) Latching on Kerala minister's denial that no officials from the state visited Delhi to learn about education model of the Kejriwal government, the BJP on Sunday demanded action against AAP MLA Atishi for her "false" claim.

Kerala Education Minister V Sivankutty in a tweet said that no "officials" from the state visited Delhi to learn about the education model of Kejriwal government as was claimed by AAP MLA Atishi on Saturday.

Also Read | Uttar Pradesh Shocker: 19-Year-Old Youth Strangles Pregnant Girlfriend to Death for Pressuring Him for Marriage in Ghaziabad.

Atishi, MLA from Kalkaji constituency in Delhi, had tweeted It was wonderful to host officials from Kerala at one of our schools in Kalkaji. They were keen to understand and implement our education model in their state. This is @ArvindKejriwal Govt's idea of nation building. Development through collaboration.

Sivankutty retweeted Atishi's tweet, commenting Kerala's Dept of Education has not sent anyone to learn about the 'Delhi Model'. At the same time, all assistance was provided to officials who had visited from Delhi to study the 'Kerala Model' last month. We would like to know which 'officials' were welcomed by the AAP MLA.

Also Read | Delhi Police Arrests Wanted Criminal Vikas Malhey for Committing Six Murders.

Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor demanded Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who also holds education portfolio, to clarify whether any official delegation of Kerala had visited a Delhi government school on Saturday or take action against Atishi for her "false" claim.

It is surprising how Atishi can make such false claims violating state protocol for political gimmick, Kapoor said.

Another Delhi BJP spokesperson Harish Khurana said "Delhi model" has been "exposed" with Kerala education minister denying claim of Atishi.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi [India], April 24 (ANI): The Central Bureau of Investigation on Sunday arrested a constable of Delhi Police while demanding and accepting a bribe of Rs 2 lakhs on behalf of an Inspector, EOW, Delhi Police from the complainant at Bhubaneswar.

The accused has been identified as Sajjan Singh Yadav Inspector, Delhi Police and Amit Lahucha Constable, Delhi Police.

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According to an official statement, the CBI has registered a case on complaint against said Inspector and Constable, both of Delhi Police.

"It was alleged that in connection with EOW, Delhi Police Case No. 74/2016, role of the complainant was investigated by said Inspector. The complainant appeared before the IO (Inspector). It was further alleged that a chargesheet was filed by the police in the case and the complainant was made a witness in the said case," it said.

Also Read | Supreme Court Directs Rajasthan, Gujarat Govts To Install Bird Divertors To Protect Endangered Great Indian Bustard, Lesser Florican.

The IO contacted the complainant and demanded a bribe of Rs 4.50 lakh, which was subsequently reduced to Rs 4 lakh and threatened him that they are going to file a supplementary charge-sheet in the said case wherein, they would arraign the complainant as an accused if he doesn't pay the bribe, the CBI said.

The accused allegedly informed the complainant that he would arrive at Bhubaneswar Airport on April 24 to accept the bribe amount. Later, he allegedly informed the complainant that his Constable will be contacting him at Bhubaneswar, who will receive the bribe money.

CBI laid a trap and caught the constable red-handed while accepting the bribe of Rs 2 lakh from the Complainant on behalf of the said Inspector.

Searches are being conducted at the premises of the accused. The arrested accused will be produced before the Competent Court at Bhubaneswar. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], April 24 (ANI): Maharashtra Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president, Chandrakant Patil condemned the attack on BJP leader Kirit Somaiya and warned of retaliation action against the state government on Sunday.

He also emphasised that the attack on Somaiya was done inside the police premises and alleged that the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government was propagating violence.

Also Read | Global AYUSH Summit at Gandhinagar Ends With 9,000 Crore Investment Proposal.

"The attack on Kirit Somaiya was not an attempt to kill him. It happened in the police station premises. Now MVA govt is propagating violence in front of police. Do you want to create Kerala or Bengal like situation in Maharashtra?" asked Patil.

Calling out the attack on Mohit Kamboj, he said," Mohit Kamboj was also attacked a day before. If state administration with the help of police will crumble the law and order situation, then BJP would retaliate in the same way. Our workers won't remain silent."

Also Read | Al Qaeda Commander Killed in Operation in Yemen.

Earlier Somaiya visited Khar Police Station to meet Amravati MP Navneet Rana and her husband MLA Ravi Rana who was arrested on Saturday. As per Somaiya, he was allegedly attacked by Shiv Sena goons. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kulgam (Jammu and Kashmir) [India], April 24 (ANI): The Jammu and Kashmir Police have informed on Saturday that two Pakistan based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorists were eliminated during the encounter in the Mirhama area of Jammu and Kashmir's Kulgam.

A number of arms and ammunition have been recovered from their possession.

Also Read | Global AYUSH Summit at Gandhinagar Ends With 9,000 Crore Investment Proposal.

"Both the killed JeM terrorists are Pakistanis. Incriminating materials, arms and ammunition including 2 AK rifles, 7 AK magazines, 9 grenades were recovered from their possession," said Vijay Kumar, Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir Police.

The encounter began after the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) received input regarding the hiding of three to four JeM terrorists in the area.

Also Read | Al Qaeda Commander Killed in Operation in Yemen.

"Acting on the tip, a small team of Kulgam police and Indian Army had initiated the encounter and killed two terrorists there. Another two terrorists are yet to be found," he added.

IGP also informed that they had stopped the operation at night to remove civilians and would be continuing with the encounter in the morning.

Further details are awaited. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Pulwama (Jammu and Kashmir) [India], April 24 (ANI): An encounter broke out between security forces and terrorists in the Pahoo area of Pulwama district in Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday.

Inspector General of Kashmir, Vijay Kumar said that three Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists are trapped in the area.

Also Read | Reliance Industries Limited Calls Off Rs 24,371 Crore Future Retail Deal.

"An encounter has started in the Pahoo area of Pulwama. Police and security forces are on the job. Further details shall follow," the Kashmir Zone Police said in a tweet.

Further details are awaited.

Also Read | Breakthrough Infection With Delta, Reinfection With Omicron in Individual Vaccinated With Covishield Jab, Says ICMR-NIV.

Earlier on Saturday, the Jammu and Kashmir Police informed that two Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorists were eliminated during the encounter in the Mirhama area of Jammu and Kashmir's Kulgam.

A number of arms and ammunition were also recovered from their possession. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Mumbai, Apr 24 (PTI) The Mumbai police have added the charge of "use of criminal force to deter a public servant from discharge of duty" in the FIR registered against independent MP Navneet Rana and her husband MLA Ravi Rana, an official said on Sunday.

Also Read | India Records 2,593 New COVID-19 Cases, 44 Deaths in Past 24 Hours.

The city police have also registered an FIR against several Shiv Sena workers for protesting outside the residence of Ranas in Mumbai on Saturday, he said.

The police had on Saturday evening arrested the Ranas for allegedly "creating enmity between different groups", after the couple cancelled their plan to recite the Hanuman Chalisa outside Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray's private residence `Matoshree' here.

Also Read | Indonesias Export Ban For Palm Oil May Have Cascade Effect Indias Edible Oil Prices.

According to an official from Khar police station, the couple was shifted to Santacruz police lock-up in the night.

Earlier, Ranas were booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Section 153 (A) (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), and section 135 of the Mumbai Police Act (violation of prohibitory orders of police).

The police later also added IPC section 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty) in the FIR registered against Ranas, the official said.

Meanwhile, based on a written application submitted by Ranas, the Khar police also registered an FIR against Shiv Sena workers, under relevant Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections including rioting and unlawful assembly, for protesting outside the couple's residence here, the official said.

Navneet Rana, who is MP from Amravati in Maharashtra, and Ravi Rana, MLA from Badnera in Amravati district, had submitted a complaint at the Khar police station against Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut, and Sena leader and state Transport Minister Anil Parab, accusing them of instigating people to 'kill' the couple.

Earlier this month, Ravi Rana had demanded that Thackeray, who heads the Shiv Sena, recite the Hanuman Chalisa at his residence on Hanuman Jayanti, and announced that if the CM did not do so, he would go to 'Matoshree' and recite it.

On Friday, Ravi Rana had said he would visit Matoshree on Saturday. But, as his announcement drew a strong reaction from Shiv Sena cadres, on Saturday morning he announced that he and his wife were cancelling their plan so as not to create any law and order situation ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Mumbai on Sunday.

But, despite their backtracking, Sena cadres on Saturday laid a siege to the building in suburban Khar where the couple was staying, and said the Ranas would not be allowed to leave until they apologised for insulting Matoshree, their "temple".

The Sena workers had also tried to break through barricades and enter the building, but were stopped by police.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki answers questions from reporters on his business trip in Washington, D.C., Thursday (local time). Yonhap





By Lee Min-hyung







Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki left an International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) meeting on Thursday ahead of a video address by his Russian counterpart, Anton Siluanov, in a show of protest against the country's invasion of Ukraine.







"I voluntarily walked out of the hall to join the international movement regarding sanctions on Russia," he told reporters in Washington, D.C.







Finance ministers from 12 countries and leaders of four international organizations boycotted the address during the IMFC meeting.







But Hong did not leave a meeting of G20 finance officials held on Wednesday when ranking officials from countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and the European Union left the hall soon after the Russian finance minister started his speech.







"A number of countries did not coordinate such actions beforehand," he said.







Hong underscored the need for more countries to provide financial support to low-income countries as part of efforts to minimize any negative ripple effect from the war in Ukraine.







The Korean finance minister also shared a common ground with his overseas counterparts on the sense of escalating crisis that the Russia-Ukraine war is holding back a global economic recovery.







After the IMFC meeting, Hong also met with S&P Managing Director Roberto Sifon-Arevalo. Hong said the Korean government should make diverse efforts for financial sustainability in consideration of rising national debt.


New Delhi [India], April 24 (ANI): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday quizzed the audience in his monthly radio broadcast 'Mann ki Baat' over various museums in the country while asking the people to visit such galleries to enhance their understanding of the Indian heritage.

The Prime Minister urged the people to send their answers on NaMo App or post them on social media with the hashtag 'MuseumQuiz'.

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The quiz will enhance interest in the museum among people all over the country, the Prime Minister said.

In his first question, PM Modi asked, "Do you know in which city of the country there is a famous Rail Museum where people have been getting a chance to see the heritage of Indian Railways for the last 45 years?" Giving a clue, he said that one can also find here, from the Fairy Queen, the Saloon of Prince of Wales to the Fireless Steam Locomotive."

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"Do you know which museum is there in Mumbai, where we get to see the evolution of currency in a very interesting way?" the Prime Minister floated his second question giving a hint that here coins of the sixth century BC are present and on the other hand, e-Money is also present.

"Virasat-e-Khalsa' is related to this museum. Do you know, in which city of Punjab is this museum located?" was Prime Minister's third question.

In the next question, the PM asked, Where is the country's one and only Kite Museum, adding that the biggest kite displayed here is 22 by 16 feet in size and the city in which it is located has a special connection with "Bapu (Mahatma Gandhi)".

"Do you know where the National Museum related to postage stamps is in India?" the Prime Minister asked.

"Which museum is housed in a building named Gulshan Mahal?" PM Modi asked in another poser, giving a clue that in this museum one can also become the director of a film and can also see the nuances of the camera and editing.

"Do you know of any museum that celebrates India's textile heritage? This museum has miniature paintings, Jaina manuscripts, sculptures and many more. It is also known for its unique display," the Prime Minister said.

PM Modi on Sunday addressed the nation today in his 88th edition of 'Mann ki Baat'.

"Mann ki Baat" is the Prime Minister's monthly radio address, which is broadcast on the last Sunday of every month at 11 am.

The first episode of Mann Ki Baat was broadcast on October 3, 2014. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, April 24: As many as 78,220 people simultaneously waved the national flag in Bihar's Bhojpur district at Dalaur ground on Saturday in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah thereby setting a new record and creating history.

Earlier, a world record was set by Pakistan about 18 years ago wherein 56,000 Pakistanis waved their national flag at an event in Lahore. "Indian national flag was waved at Jagdishpur for a full five minutes on the occasion ofthe birth anniversary of the great freedom fighter Babu Veer Kunwar Singh thereby marking the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav. The flag was waved by people at the 'Vijayotsav program' held at Jagdishpur on April 23," Union Minister for state Home affairs Nityanand Rai told ANI. World's Largest National Flag in Leh: Gujarat Defence PRO Shares Video Of 180 Indian Soldiers Carrying 1400 Kg Tricolour Flag to 2,000 Feet Height.

Record 78,220 National Flags Waved by People at Vijayotsav Program in Jagdishpur

Jagdishpur, Ara in Bihar today with more than 78,000 flags makes the world record for highest number of flags at one place. Proud to be a witness to this majestic sight. Thank you Sh. @AmitShah Ji for motivating all of us.@BJP4Bihar #AzadiKaAmritMahotsav pic.twitter.com/Tdy7BQ2AYW  Guru Prakash Paswan (@IGuruPrakash) April 23, 2022

Rai told ANI, "At the program, as many as 78,220 people waved of the national flag under the leadership of Home Minister Amit Shah. This is a new world record for waving national flags. Waving such huge numbers of flags at one place voluntarily by people of Bihar is commendable. This figure was confirmed by an agency who looks after such world reccords."

On Saturday, Amit Shah said that the Modi government is continuously trying to revive the valour of the forgotten heroes. Shah was speaking at the 'Vijay Utsav' program organized for the honour of freedom fighter Veer Kunwar Singh. "Modi's government is continuously serving to revive the valour of the forgotten heroic heroes of the freedom movement in the memory of the people and give them due respect in history," he stated.

Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav is an initiative of the Government of India to celebrate and commemorate 75 years of Independence and the glorious history of its people, culture and achievements

Veer Kunwar Singh fought his last battle near Jagdishpur on April 23, 1858, and defeated the East India Company in this battle. Kunwar Singh died in service for the nation after taking down the Union Jack flag from Jagdishpur Fort.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Hyderabad (Telangana) [India], April 24 (ANI): Bhartiya Janata Party demanded conditional points to stop the illegal construction around the twin lakes, Osman sagar and Himayath Sagar here, after the chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao issued Government Order (GO) 69 prohibiting the GO 111, which restricted the construction work around the lakes.

BJP leader, Gudur Narayan Reddy, speaking to ANI said, "The scrapping of GO 111 is really very unfortunate and bringing out GO 69 without any conditions or rules or regulations could endanger the reservoir."

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Reddy said that Osman sagar is supplying about five million gallons of water which is catering to Masab tank, Asif Nagar and Vijay Nagar colony up to Narayanguda. Himayath Sagar is supplying around three million gallons per day through Mir Alam filter beds which are catering to that area to the tune of one lakh people. The government is totally interested in real estate rather than protecting the environment.

BJP leader said that the party demands to bring in conditional points after the withdrawal of the order, which will at least stop Illegal construction coming up in GO 111 areas and also come up with a master plan and take Google pictures as on the date of cancellation.

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Reddy said, "If twin lakes become like Hussain Sagar which it will eventually become because all the construction will come up in the absence of rules because the government will take a good amount of time and without putting any conditions for construction, so far anyone constructing one shed or a factory or building or anything outside the grama kantam within this GO111 the authorities have demolished. Many buildings will come and will disrupt the flow of water, the catchment will be blocked. Twin lakes were constructed to avoid flooding flow into the city. Tomorrow if such things are not taken into consideration they will become crap holes."

He further said, "So far wherever STPs are planned, not even 10,% are working to the fullest. They are saying they will put STPs after real-estate development. After scrapping off GO 111, if people have gone to the extent of constructing and blocking the catchment area, imagine what will happen, people will be forced to drink that water because there will be a shortage."

Reddy condemned the government's order to introduce GO69 saying that "Any structure coming illegally is done by TRS real estate Mafia and we condemn such actions."

Besides, many environmentalists are also objecting to the government's decision regarding the twin lakes. According to them, the lakes are not being taken care of in the state and the removal of GO111 will destroy the ecosystem.

The state government on Wednesday issued the GO 69, removing certain restrictions that were imposed under GO Ms 111 in 1996 by the erstwhile government, to protect the catchment area of the Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar reservoirs by prohibiting development or construction works in the catchment area of the lakes up to a radius of 10 km.

The two lakes were the main source of drinking water for Hyderabad at that time. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Champawat (Uttarakhand) [India], April 24 (ANI): The locals of village Dhura, on Sunday, expressed hopes for development knowing that the state Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami will be contesting elections from the Champawat district of Uttarakhand in the upcoming assembly by-polls.

"We are extremely delighted that the district is likely to get the CM after the by-polls. We have to travel a lot for fulfilling the basic requirements as we don't have proper roads, electricity and water in Chamapwat," said a local resident.

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"We hope for the development and availability of facilities for the good of the villagers," he added.

The probability of Dhami contesting by-polls from Champawat arose after the former MLA Kailash Gehtodi resigned from the assembly seat, on Wednesday. The information regarding the vacancy of the seat was sent to the Election Commission on Friday.

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In the recently held assembly elections in February, Dhami lost the Khatima constituency seat to Congress candidate Bhuwan Chandra Kapri from Khatima by a margin of 6,579 votes in the state polls. However, he was given a second term as the Chief Minister of Uttarakhand.

Assembly elections were held in Uttarakhand on February 14 to elect 70 members of the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly. The results were declared on March 10. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, April 24: Special Cell team arrested one person Vikas who was absconding after committing the murder of local Congress leader Vikas Chaudhary in Faridabad in 2019 and had recently killed kabaddi player Sandeep Nangal in Punjab, said Delhi police on Sunday.

Accused Vikas @ Malhey was wanted in six murder cases, Delhi Police said. He was carrying a reward of Rs 50,000 and was hotly wanted in Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Delhi Police Arrests 49-Year-Old Woman With 23 Grams of Heroin, Valued Over 20 Lakh, Says Report.

Last major criminal of Lucky Patial-Bambiha- Kaushal's criminal alliance, was on the run since committing the murder of Congress leader Vikas Chaudhary in Faridabad in 2019; had recently killed international Kabaddi star Sandeep Nangal in Punjab, police statement read.

The criminal was the last leading on-ground commander for the infamous criminal alliance of Punjab and was on radar after being found involved in the sensational murder of Sandeep Nangal in Punjab, the police added.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kabul [Afghanistan], April 24 (ANI): The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has expressed concerns over the series of attacks that led to the deaths of over 50 boys and girls, calling it a "grave rights violations" in Afghanistan.

"In one week alone, more than 50 girls and boys have lost their lives in a series of heinous grave rights violations in Afghanistan," Paloma Escudero, UNICEF Director for Global Communication and Advocacy, was quoted by Tolo News as saying.

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The UN agency also highlighted the delay in reopening of schools for girl students in Afghanistan saying, "It's been one month since Afghanistan's de facto authorities barred teenage girls from returning to school."

The Taliban regime in Afghanistan had barred girls from attending school over grade six after issuing a decree last month.

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"It is our right to go back to school. We cannot take this pain anymore," UNICEF quoted Mariya a 16-year-old as saying.

"We are doing all we can to support education #ForEveryChild in #Afghanistan. @UNICEFis providing: 2 months emergency cash support for teachers School bags & supplies for 1st graders Millions of textbooks But more is needed. We won't give up on the children who need us," UNICEF informed in a tweet.

Meanwhile, the Taliban's Ministry of Education said that the schools for girls in grades 7-12 will be reopened in the near future.

"UNICEF promised to help the Ministry of Education in providing salaries for teachers. Also, the money will flow into accounts which will prevent the existence of fake teachers," Aziz Ahmad Riyan, a Taliban spokesperson was quoted as saying.

"Depriving girls from education and closing their schools have affected the government as well because it has been working on how to reopen the schools, but they are yet to find a solution. We ask the Islamic Emirate to reopen the schools for girls as soon as possible," Omarzada, a teacher said. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kabul [Afghanistan], April 24 (ANI): After the skirmishes between border guards of Iran and Afghanistan, the main crossing point between the two countries in the western province of Herat was closed on Saturday.

This comes after the Taliban in the Islam Qala district of Herat province allegedly wanted to pave a road that was obstructed by the Iranian forces in the border zone, reported Khaama Press.

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Hassan Kazemi Qomi, Iran's special representative for Afghanistan, in a press release, confirmed the issue adding that the Taliban wanted to construct a road at the border zone that breached the border.

Mawlawi Homayoun Hemat, the deputy commissioner of Islam Qala district, said a vehicle belonging to Iranian forces had crossed over to the Afghan side and was seized by local officials.

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Both sides have put their forces on high alert in case of a possible escalation in the situation. As of now, no comments have been made on the issue by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA). Qomi suggested the issue be resolved through the joint border commission.

This is the second time the Taliban and Iranian forces engaged in skirmishes on the border after the Taliban's takeover last August, as per Khaama Press.

Earlier, Iran refused to accept the political representatives of the Taliban government until the Taliban get recognized by the world, said a media report.

"The new government and the new political system in Afghanistan must be recognized so that the Islamic Emirate will be able to send new representatives," Tolonews quoted Saeed Khatibzadeh, a spokesman for the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as saying. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi [India], April 24 (ANI): External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh are set to address the Naval Commanders' Conference, a platform to discuss important maritime matters at the military-strategic level, which is to be held from April 25 to 28.

The Conference serves as a platform for Naval Commanders to discuss important maritime matters at the military-strategic level as well as interact with senior Government functionaries through an institutionalised forum.

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During the Conference, the Defence Minister and EAM will address and interact with the Naval Commanders on matters pertaining to national security.

The Chiefs of Indian Army General Manoj Mukund Naravane and Indian Air Force Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari will also interact with the Naval Commanders to address the convergence of the three Services vis-a-vis a common operational environment, as well as discuss avenues of augmenting Tri-Service synergy and readiness, stated the government in an official statement.

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The Chief of the Naval Staff along with other Naval Commanders will review major operational, materiel, logistics, human resource development, training and administrative activities undertaken by the Indian Navy in the last six months and further deliberate upon future plans for important activities and initiatives.

The conference would also dwell upon the dynamics of the geostrategic situation in the backdrop of the security scenarios in the neighbourhood as well as challenges emerging due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The Indian Navy is focused on being a combat-ready, credible and cohesive force with a future-ready outlook and continues to assiduously execute its mandate. The Navy has witnessed significant growth in its operational tasking over the years in consonance with India's growing maritime interests.

Indian Navy's standing as the 'Preferred Security Partner' has also grown concomitantly in recent times. In 2020-21, Indian navy ships have undertaken multiple COVID related outreach missions to provide food and medical aid to IOR littoral nations and beyond as part of the vision of SAGAR (Security And Growth for All in Region), added the government in the statement. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Islamabad [Pakistan], April 24 (ANI): With speculations running rife about his links with Farah Khan, who left Pakistan for Dubai amid corruption allegations, ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan again refused to answer media queries on the issue on Saturday.

Farah Khan is believed to be a close friend of Imran Khan's first wife Bushra Bibi.

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Imran Khan often entertains only those questions which are of his liking and similar sights were seen in this latest presser when he ducked a question about his relationship with Farah Khan and simply walked away, reported Geo News.

Farah Khan was in the spotlight after the PTI chairman Imran Khan was voted out of power, as allegations were levelled against her that she had been involved in money laundering.

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Another question that the PM left unattended was about his opinion on the campaign that was run against journalists during his tenure. The ousted PM did not entertain any of these questions. Imran Khan's rivals had been accusing him for curbing freedom of expression and independent media.

Farah Khan, whose real name is reported to be Farah Shahzadi, reached Dubai on April 3. She used an international airline with the number EK623 to reach Dubai and used a Pakistani passport to travel to the country, the report said citing officials, privy to the knowledge.

Farah Khan had become controversial as estranged Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Aleem Khan and the Opposition had put forward corruption allegations against the friend of the Prime Minister's wife Bushra Bibi.

Earlier, Pakistan Prime Minister's aide and former federal Information and Broadcasting Minister Fawad Chaudhry lost his cool and heckled a journalist who asked about corruption allegations against Farah Khan.

The showdown took place at a press conference outside the Supreme Court, following which media persons boycotted the meeting that was attended by ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) members Asad Umar, Shahbaz Gill and Ali Muhammad Khan, and demanded an apology from Chaudhry.

Earlier a photograph of Farah Khan seen on a flight with a handbag that is claimed to costs USD 90,000, had gone viral on social media.

According to reports in local Pakistan media, PMLN leader and former finance minister Miftah Ismail alleged that the handbag was worth USD 90,000 (Rs16.5 million).

Ismail alongside former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi alleged that Farah Khan had "taken money" for getting civil servants transferred and posted according to their choices.

"Farah Gujjar, while using a Punjab government's plane, had a bag that was worth USD 90,000," claimed Ismail. Ismail also alleged that Farah Khan was a frontwoman of Usman Buzdar, the former chief minister of Punjab.

Farah Khan reached Dubai the same day when Imran Khan dissolved the National Assembly and the no-trust motion brought by the opposition was dismissed by the speaker. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi [India], April 24 (ANI): Ahead of Raisina Dialogue scheduled to be held on April 25, Foreign Minister of Nigeria Geoffrey Onyeama arrived in New Delhi on Sunday morning on an official visit.

Onyeama will also attend the Raisina Dialogue international conference. Taking to Twitter, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi wrote, "Pleased to welcome FM @GeoffreyOnyeama of Nigeria as he arrives in New Delhi on an official visit. He will also be attending the @raisinadialogue starting tomorrow."

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Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau will also visit India from April 25-27, Poland Foreign Ministry announced in a statement. This will be the first visit of a Polish foreign minister to India in nine years.

Poland FM's visit also includes a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and bilateral talks with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the seventh edition of the Raisina dialogue on April 25, said Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi during the MEA weekly briefing on Thursday.

The dialogue, which will be held over three days from April 25 to April 27, will witness the participation of European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen as the chief guest.

The Raisina Dialogue 2022, based on the theme "Terranova- Impassioned, Impatient, Imperilled", will be modelled along six thematic pillars --Rethinking Democracy: trade, technology and ideology; End of Multilateralism: a networked global order; Water Caucuses: turbulent tides in the Indo-Pacific; Communities Inc: first responders to health, development, and planet; Achieving Green Transitions: common imperative, diverging realities; Samson vs Goliath: the persistent and relentless technology wars.

The Raisina Dialogue, which started in 2016, is India's flagship conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics committed to addressing the most challenging issues facing the global community. The conference is organised by MEA in collaboration with the Observer Research Foundation (ORF).

The dialogue, which was held virtually last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will be held in in-person format this year, informed Bagchi. "Raisina Dialogue 2022 will have around 100 sessions with over 210 speakers from 90 countries. There will be side events that will be hosted in Berlin and Washington. Raisina's young fellows programme will also be conducted on the sidelines of this main conference," said Bagchi.

The MEA spokesperson further said that the conference will most likely be attended by former PM of Sweden Carl Bildt, former Canada PM Stephen Harper, former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed and former Australia PM Anthony Abbott.

"We will also be counting on a pre-recorded message from the President of United Nations General Assembly Abdulla Shahid," added Bagchi.

In terms of the participation of foreign ministers, the MEA spokesperson informed that the foreign ministers of Argentina, Armenia, Guyana, Nigeria, Norway, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia will be attending the event. He further said that the Australian foreign may also join the conference virtually.Bagchi said that the foreign ministers, during their visit to India, will also have official engagements with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)




Korea's daily new COVID-19 cases stayed below 100,000 for the fourth day in a row Saturday as the Omicron wave continues to ebb.







The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 64,725 new infections, including 36 from overseas, bringing the total caseload to 16,895,194.







The Omicron wave has been declining after daily infections reached a peak of 621,178, March 17.







The death toll came to 22,133, up 109 from the previous day for a fatality rate of 0.13 percent; while the number of critically ill patients came to 726, down from 738.







To reflect the weakening pandemic, health authorities will downgrade COVID-19 to the second-highest level of its four-tier infectious disease control system Monday, the KDCA said.







The government lifted major COVID-19 social distancing requirements, except a mask mandate, this past Monday. The removed restrictions included a curfew on the operating hours of restaurants, cafes and other small businesses, as well as the cap on the size of private gatherings.







The eased rules will also allow eating and drinking on public transit, theaters, religious houses and indoor stadiums beginning Monday, the health agency said.







In early May, the government will also determine whether to lift the mask mandate in outdoor places, although it has said requiring masks indoors will be unavoidable for "a considerable time."







Under the changed policy, coronavirus patients will be free of mandatory self-quarantine and can receive treatment at local clinics as early as late May.







Of the locally transmitted infections, Gyeonggi Province added 15,249, Seoul reported 10,375 and the southern city of Daegu identified 3,399.







As of midnight Saturday, 44.54 million, or 86.8 percent of the 52 million population, had been fully vaccinated, and 33.06 million, or 64.4 percent, had received their first COVID-19 booster shots, the KDCA said. (Yonhap)


Singapore, April 24 (ANI): Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Sunday highlighted the Indian diaspora as a 'powerful force' in the country's 'Look East' policy while addressing the Indian community and 'friends of India' in Singapore.

"Indian diaspora is one of the important powerful forces of India's Look East Policy," Birla said, adding, that the diaspora is playing the role of a catalyst to further bridge the gap among countries and improve the bilateral relationships.

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India's 'Look East' policy was adopted in the early 1990s and seeks to deepen India's economic and strategic ties with south-east Asian countries. The 'Look East' policy was followed up by the 'Act East' policy adopted in the 2010s.

"Diaspora's active contribution to the comprehensive economic and social development of Singapore has laid the foundation for strong relations between the two countries," Birla observed.

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The Lok Sabha Speaker has been on an official visit to south-east Asia since April 19 leading a parliamentary delegation.

Speaking in Singapore, Birla said that in the 75 years of India's independence, the country has undergone an extensive political, social and economic transformation and India's democracy and its democratic institutions have set a perfect example of inclusive growth before the whole world.

He further added that from defence to technology, new opportunities are being created in the country listing schemes like Start-Up India, Digital India, Stand Up India and Skill India.

"Today, India is being seen as a symbol of positive change in the whole world. The present era is an era of socio-economic change in India, an era of innovation," Birla said.

Birla further urged the Indian diaspora, particularly the youth, to join hands for the socio-economic transformation in India

He also added that as India evacuated more than 30,000 civilians from Ukraine and neighbouring countries from the war zone, the self-respect, strength and power of present-day India have been recognized by the world.

"India has a strong voice in global fora on issues like climate change, terrorism, and global peace," Birla said.

On Saturday, Birla visited the Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia and appreciated the restoration work of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in the area.

"Blessed to visit Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia. It is one of the great cultural wonders of the world. The architecture of temple reflects shared cultural heritage of India & Cambodia. Happy to note that massive restoration work of temple has been done by ASI," he tweeted.

Lok Sabha Speaker also met the king of Cambodia Preah Bat Samdech Preah Boromneath Norodom Sihamoni and discussed the issues of mutual interest and reiterated India's firm resolve to strengthen the bilateral relationship. Earlier, Om Birla was in Vietnam from April 19 to 21.

The official visit of the parliamentary delegation is scheduled to conclude on April 25. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Islamabad, Apr 24 (PTI) Pakistan's Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah on Saturday tore into Arif Alvi for showing reluctance in administering oaths to cabinet members and not falling in line with the new dispensation, saying the president should unshackle himself from ex-prime minister Imran Khan's "slavery".

The minister's statement comes in response to the delay in administering the oath to the chief minister of Punjab by the governor of the province and also by the failure of President Alvi to appoint a representative for the purpose.

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Sanaullah asserted that Alvi was bound by the Constitution to perform his duty as the president rather than act upon the dictates of Khan, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman, The Express Tribune reported.

He asked the president to stop using the pretext of falling sick and to either discharge his duties or resign from his post.

Also Read | Sri Lanka To Appoint Advisors on Debt Restructuring in Next 20 Days, Says Finance Minister Ali Sabry.

Sanaullah said the president should discharge his constitutional responsibilities and unshackle himself from Khan's slavery, the report said.

The minister stressed that the country would be run according to the Constitution and not at Khan's whims.

"The office of president is a constitutional post which is above politics. When it comes to performing constitutional obligations, the president along with the governors and other PTI associates fall sick, he rued.

Alvi has been reluctant in administering oaths since the ouster of Khan as the prime minister of Pakistan. He first refused to administer the oath to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and later to his cabinet.

Prime Minister Sharif's 34-member Cabinet  a mix of experience and fresh blood  was sworn in on Tuesday after several days of delay, with Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani administering the oath to new ministers after President Alvi once again excused himself from the ceremony.

The ceremony was scheduled to be held on Monday, but President Alvi refused to administer the oath to the lawmakers, compelling the government to postpone it.

Alvi, a member of ousted premier Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, went on sick' leave ahead of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader's inauguration.

President Alvi agreed to administer the oaths to four ministers on Friday following a meeting with the prime minister. He, however, refused to appoint a representative to arrange the oath to the prime minister's son Hamza Shehbaz as the chief minister of Punjab on Saturday, despite an order from the Lahore High Court.

The interior minister also deplored the ongoing constitutional crisis in Punjab.

The president should meet his constitutional obligation and immediately nominate a person to administer the oath to the newly-elected chief minister, he said.

The order of Lahore High Court (LHC) is being continuously violated after defying the Supreme Court directives, the minister said, adding that the provincial government was functioning with the crucial chief ministerial chair lying empty and in the absence of cabinet members for the last 21 days.

The power struggle in Punjab turned acrimonious when the newly-appointed Punjab Governor Omer Sarfraz Cheema on April 17, a day after the election of the chief minister, refused to administer the oath to chief minister-elect Hamza on the grounds that the legality of the election had come under question.

In a move to end the political crisis, Prime minister Sharif immediately sacked the governor, only to face another hindrance as the president allowed the governor to continue in office.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Vatican City, Apr 24 (AP) Pope Francis has renewed his call for an Easter truce as Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter Sunday, when the faithful mark the resurrection of Jesus.

Without naming countries, Francis urged aggressors to stop the attack to help the suffering of the exhausted people.

Also Read | UK PM Boris Johnson Talks to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Says 'Will Provide Ukraine With More Military Equipment'.

Francis told a crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square that two months had passed since Russia's invasion of Ukraine and said that instead of stopping, the war got worse.

It is sad that in these days that are the holiest and most solemn for all Christians, the deadly clamour of arms is louder than the sound of bells announcing the Resurrection. (AP)

Also Read | Sri Lanka To Appoint Advisors on Debt Restructuring in Next 20 Days, Says Finance Minister Ali Sabry.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Moscow [Russia], April 24 (ANI/Sputnik): The International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) on Sunday called for an "immediate and unimpeded" humanitarian access for the evacuation of civilians and the wounded from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

"The ICRC is deeply alarmed by the situation in Mariupol, where the population is in dire need of assistance. Immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access is urgently required to allow for the voluntary safe passage of thousands of civilians and hundreds of wounded out of the city, including from the Azovstal plant area," the ICRC said in a statement on the website.

Also Read | UK PM Boris Johnson Talks to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Says 'Will Provide Ukraine With More Military Equipment'.

The ICRC added that it stands ready "to help the parties to the conflict agree practical and workable arrangements to ensure the voluntary evacuation" and to send its teams to facilitate operations soon after such an agreement is negotiated and security guarantees are provided.

On Saturday, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that the Ukrainian authorities were planning to evacuate women, children, and the elderly from Mariupol. However, DPR People's Militia spokesman Eduard Basurin later said that the evacuation attempt was interrupted by Ukrainian nationalists shelling the gathering place for evacuation with mortars from the territory of the Azovstal steel plant.

Also Read | Sri Lanka To Appoint Advisors on Debt Restructuring in Next 20 Days, Says Finance Minister Ali Sabry.

On February 24, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian provocations.

Moscow and Kyiv made several attempts to organize humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians and the wounded; however, these intentions are often being interrupted by Ukrainian nationalists using civilians as a human shield, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. (ANI/Sputnik)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
London [UK], April 24 (ANI/Sputnik): UK Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove, is supporting plans to launch the first coal mine in the United Kingdom in decades, aiming to curtail the dependence on Russian energy supplies, the Telegraph newspaper reported on Sunday, citing sources in the UK Conservative Party.

According to Telegraph, Gove is backing opening a coal mine in Cumbria County in northwestern England. The pit will focus on extracting coking coal widely used in steel production.

Also Read | ICYMI: Tourists and Natives Admire Blooming Cherry Trees in Bonn in Germany  Latest Tweet by Reuters.

Opening the first pit in the UK in over three decades was endorsed by the UK government back in October 2020. Yet the protests by environmental activists forced the Ministers to revisit this issue. At the same time, the government sources claimed that in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis, the UK cabinet unilaterally stands for putting the mine into operation, the Telegraph said.

Gove must make an ultimate decision until July 7, meanwhile, the sources said that the decision could be pronounced earlier in mid-May, the newspaper added.

Also Read | Russia-Ukraine War: Kyiv To Withdraw From Talks With Russia if Mariupol Forces Killed, Says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The UK's dependence on Russian energy is primarily confined to the coal sector. In 2021, the UK imported over 50 per cent of its all coal supplies, with Russia accounting for 43 per cent of those. Moreover, Russia occupies a leading position in exporting both steam coal and coking coal to the UK, ensuring 46 per cent and 39 per cent of deliveries, respectively.

After Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine, the UK alongside the United States and European allies embarked on the path of completely abandoning Russian energy commodities. On April 6, UK Prime Minister Boris Jonson pledged to halt Russian coal and oil imports by the end of 2022, with UK marginal gas imports to be ceased as soon as possible thereafter. (ANI/Sputnik)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Las Vegas (US), Apr 24 (AP) Maggie Mulligan said her dogs could sense the panic while she and her husband packed them up, agonised over having to leave horses behind and fled a fast-moving wildfire barrelling toward their home in northeast New Mexico.

We don't know what's next, she said. We don't know if we can go back to the horses.

Also Read | Afghanistan: Global Community Concerned Over Resurgence of Terrorism in the Country.

Mulligan and her husband, Bill Gombas, 67, were among the anxious residents who hurriedly packed up and evacuated their homes Friday ahead of ominous Western wildfires fuelled by tinder-dry conditions and ferocious winds.

Over a dozen sizable fires were burning in Arizona and New Mexico, destroying dozens of homes and as of Saturday burning more than 174 square miles (451 square kilometers).

Also Read | China's Support to Russia Alienates Eastern, Central European Countries, Says Report.

Winds that howled Friday remained a concern on Saturday in northern New Mexico where two fires merged and quadrupled in size to a combined 66 square miles (171 square kilometers) in mountains and grassland northwest of Las Vegas.

The merged fires burned some structures but no figures were available, said fire information officer Mike Johnson. They were able to save some structures and we know we lost other structures that we weren't able to defend.

Wind-blown clouds of dust and plumes of smoke obscured the skies near the fires, said Jesus Romero, assistant county manager for San Miguel County. All the ugliness that spring in New Mexico brings  that's what they're dealing in."

An estimated 500 homes in San Miguel were in rural areas of Mora and San Miguel counties covered by evacuation orders or warning notices, Romero said.

Elsewhere in the region, the fire danger in the Denver area on Friday was the highest it had been in over a decade, according to the National Weather Service, because of unseasonable temperatures in the 80s combined with strong winds and very dry conditions.

In Arizona, a Flagstaff-area fire burned 30 homes and numerous other buildings when the flames blew through rural neighbourhoods Tuesday.

A shift in wind had crews working Saturday to keep the fire from moving up mountain slopes or toward homes in rural neighbourhoods near areas that burned Tuesday, fire information officer Dick Fleishman said. It has got us a little concerned."

In northern New Mexico, winds on Friday gusted up to 75 mph (120 kph), shrouding the Rio Grande Valley with dust and pushing flames through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the north.

A wall of smoke stretched from wilderness just east of Santa Fe about 50 miles (80 km) to the northeast where ranchers and other rural inhabitants were abruptly told to leave by law enforcement.

Mulligan, 68, of Ledoux, a dog breeder, said her dog Liam was a nervous wreck when a sheriff came to their house Friday afternoon and told them they had to leave.

They packed nine dogs and five puppies into an SUV and an old blue Cadillac. They considered dropping the horses off at a local fairgrounds, but they decided it was in the same path of the burning fire as their home and more likely to burn.

There's water in their pasture, and there's hay. So we'll see what happens, Mulligan said.

Lena Atencio and her husband, whose family has lived in the nearby Rociada area for five generations, got out Friday as winds kicked up. She said most people were taking the threat seriously.

As a community, as a whole, everybody is just pulling together to support each other and just take care of the things we need to now. And then at that point, it's in God's hands, she said as the wind howled miles away in the community of Las Vegas, New Mexico, where evacuees were gathering.

Areas ordered Saturday to evacuate because of another large fire still growing in northern New Mexico included Philmont Scout Ranch. Meanwhile, the nearby town of Cimarron remained on notice for possible evacuation, according to Colfax County officials.

The scout ranch, owned and operated by the Boy Scouts of America, attracts thousands of summer visitors, but officials said no scouts were on the property and staff were previously evacuated because of poor air quality.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed emergency declarations for four counties over the fires.

Near the Flagstaff-area fire, Kelly Morgan was among neighbours at the edge of the evacuation zone who did not leave. She and her husband have lived through wildfires before, she said, and they are prepared if winds shift and flames race toward the home they moved into three years ago.

Unfortunately, it's not something new to us ... but I hate seeing it when people are affected the way they are right now," she said. "It's sad. It's a very sad time. But as a community, we've really come together. (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Kolkata, April 24: Trinamool Congress leader Anubrata Mandal on Sunday did not appear before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which had summoned him for questioning in connection with its probe into post-poll violence in West Bengal.

The CBI asked him to be present at the agency's office in Kolkata by 2.30 p.m. to face questions pertaining to his alleged involvement in the post-poll violence cases. However, at 1.30 p.m. an email communication from Mandal expressed his inability to be present at the agency's office on health grounds.

Earlier, also Mandal did not go to the CBI office despite getting summons in a cattle and coal smuggling case.

On Saturday, Mandal was supposed to be present at the CBI's office at Nizam Palace in Central Kolkata for questioning in the cattle and coal smuggling case. However, he refused to turn up, citing bad health conditions. West Bengal Post-Poll Violence Case: CBI Summons Anubrata Mandal For Questioning in Ongoing Investigation.

However, his counsels said that if the CBI officers felt it necessary they could question him at his Kolkata residence.

On Friday late evening, Mandal returned to his residence at Chinar Park in Kolkata after spending 17 days at the state-run SSKM Medical College and Hospital, where he was admitted on April 6.

Mandal was supposed to appear for questioning at the CBI office at Nizam Palace in central Kolkata on April 6. A day earlier, he reached Kolkata from his ancestral residence at Bolpur in Birbhum district.

On the morning of April 6, he started from his residence and all perceived that he was heading for the CBI office at Nizam Palace. However, at the last moment he changed his way and reached the state-run SSK Medical College & Hospital. After initial checkup he was admitted to the hospital's Woodburn Ward, meant for the VVIPs.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 24, 2022 03:50 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Two terrorists killed in an ongoing encounter with the security forces in the Mirhama area in South Kashmir's Kulgam district were Pakistani nationals belonging to proscribed outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), officials said on Sunday.
Following #Beijing's reluctance to allow the return of Indians stuck at home since 2020 due to the #COVID19 pandemic, #India has also suspended tourist visas for nationals of China. pic.twitter.com/oGkB8yxO0Z IANS (@ians_india) April 24, 2022

(SocialLY brings you all the latest breaking news, viral trends and information from social media world, including Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. The above post is embeded directly from the user's social media account and LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body. The views and facts appearing in the social media post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY, also LatestLY does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)
 WSJ: Belgium blocks export of 8,000 luxury cars to Russia.



The cars, which include some of the latest models of Lexus, Cadillac, and Mercedes, were stopped in Bruges due to an EU-sanctioned ban on the export of cars to Russia worth over $54,000. The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 24, 2022

(SocialLY brings you all the latest breaking news, viral trends and information from social media world, including Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. The above post is embeded directly from the user's social media account and LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body. The views and facts appearing in the social media post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY, also LatestLY does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)
A delegation of President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, led by Rep. Chung Jin-suk, third from right, of the People Power Party, speaks to reporters at Incheon International Airport, Sunday, before leaving for Japan for policy consultations. Yonhap



President-elect Yoon's delegation carries letter to Japan



By Kang Seung-woo



President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol's delegation for policy consultations with Japan flew to Tokyo, Sunday, to invite Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to his May 10 inauguration ceremony.



It is the second instance of the incoming president sending delegates to Korea's allies and partners after the United States earlier this month, a sign that the new Korean government will focus on thawing frosty ties with Japan over wartime history such as sexual slavery and forced labor. During the campaign, Yoon called for a future-oriented approach to thorny issues between the two sides.



However, it remains to be seen if his fence-mending efforts will prompt the Japanese prime minister to attend the event despite objections from his ruling party, which insists on Seoul taking conciliatory measures first for better bilateral relations, according to diplomatic observers, Sunday.



The seven-member delegation, led by Vice National Assembly Speaker Rep. Chung Jin-suk, is likely to sit down with Kishida, although the two sides are still coordinating the meeting. If arranged, the delegation will deliver Yoon's personal letter to the prime minister and eventually ask him to be present at the inauguration ceremony.



Yoon's chief of staff Rep. Chang Je-won discussed the issue with former Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura in Seoul earlier this month, who delivered the message to Kishida, Tuesday. Kawamura visited Seoul, April 11, on a three-day trip in the capacity of the head of the Korea-Japan Parliamentarians' Union.



The Japanese prime minister reportedly plans to use the envisaged meeting as an opportunity to hear how the Yoon administration will make efforts to improve the frayed ties between the two countries.



"I think Kishida's visit would build great momentum for an improvement in Korea-Japan ties, but considering Japan's internal situation, his attendance is highly unlikely," said Lee Won-deog, a professor of Japanese studies at Kookmin University.



Amid the worsening ties, Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party claims that the Korean government must do its "homework" to get the relationship back on track because they believe the two issues have already been resolved by bilateral agreements decades ago.



"Many members of the ruling party think if Kishida accepts the invitation, it would send the 'wrong' signal to the Korean government. In that situation, it would not be easy for Kishida to attend the inauguration ceremony by putting aside the pending bilateral issues," Lee said.



In the wake of the news, lawmakers in the Japanese ruling party were divided over whether Kishida should go ahead with meeting the delegation, according to Japan's Kyodo News, Friday.



Since former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda last attended former President Lee Myung-bak's inauguration ceremony in February 2008, no Japanese leaders have been present at the event due to diplomatic friction.



While in Japan, the delegation is also expected to hold a series of meetings with former and current government officials, including former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi.


Aden, April 24: A senior commander of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda branch was killed in a shootout with local security forces in Yemen's southeastern province of Hadramout, a security official told Xinhua.

The gun battle took place in the Sudaf area of Hadramout on Saturday when a unit of local security forces conducted an operation on an intelligence tip-off and raided an Al Qaeda hideout in the area, the local security source said on condition of anonymity.

The official confirmed that a senior commander of Al Qaeda wanted by the security forces for his involvement in terror attacks in Hadramout was killed, without revealing the Al Qaeda member's identity.

According to Yemeni officials, the operation has dealt a heavy setback to the terrorist group's apparent attempts to gain ground in the poor Arab country, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) network has been responsible for many high-profile attacks against the security forces in the country's southern provinces. A senior commander of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda branch was killed in a shootout with local security forces in Yemen's southeastern province of Hadramout, a security official told Xinhua.

The gun battle took place in the Sudaf area of Hadramout on Saturday when a unit of local security forces conducted an operation on an intelligence tip-off and raided an Al Qaeda hideout in the area, the local security source said on condition of anonymity.

The official confirmed that a senior commander of Al Qaeda wanted by the security forces for his involvement in terror attacks in Hadramout was killed, without revealing the Al Qaeda member's identity.

According to Yemeni officials, the operation has dealt a heavy setback to the terrorist group's apparent attempts to gain ground in the poor Arab country, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) network has been responsible for many high-profile attacks against the security forces in the country's southern provinces. Al-Qaeda Will Never Understand Importance of Uniform, Says Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma on Karnataka Hijab Row Video.

The AQAP has exploited years of deadly conflict between the Yemeni government and Houthi militia to expand its presence in the war-ravaged Arab country.

The AQAP has exploited years of deadly conflict between the Yemeni government and Houthi militia to expand its presence in the war-ravaged Arab country.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 24, 2022 08:28 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
A Laois Offaly politician who sits at the Government table with Micheal Martin and Leo Varadkar insists people have been scaremongering for different reasons on the issue of turf.

Green Party Minister of State Pippa Hackett has issued a statement in response to recent discussions on turf burning on RTE and online online.

The Geashill-based senator set out our stall about the contradictory messages on the legality of what people can do with turf saved on their plots.

"There has been a lot of scaremongering and misinformation across the Midlands recently, for a variety of purposes.

"To clarify the current situation: There is a DRAFT Clean Air Strategy which is now open for Public Consultation. Draft regulations on the sale of solid fuel are referenced in this strategy - I discuss those related to turf below," she said.

She clarified her own position.

"I am not in favour of a ban on small scale gifting of turf. I have asked Minister Eamon Ryan to clarify the situation re the distribution of small amounts of turf to family members and neighbours, where there are turbary rights. I am in favour of a ban on commercial scale extraction and sale of turf as this contributes to air pollution in the more urban areas.

"I know that many households in the Midlands, and most of all Offaly, rely on turf from these providers and I have asked Minister Ryan and my Government colleagues to consider solutions to this in advance of the coming winter. I will continue to work on this.

"The Clean Air Strategy is a public health measure, necessary to address ill health and death associated with poor air quality. These health impacts are indisputable. For now, it is important to remember this is a DRAFT strategy and regulations are also in draft form," she said.

Her statement said that the draft strategy states Turf cutting by citizens for use in their own homes is a traditional activity [] Measures are required to reduce the emissions associated with burning peat but which respect these traditions.

No ban on its burning will be introduced, but a regulatory provision will be made to prohibit the marketing, sale or distribution of sod peat. This approach will facilitate those with turbary rights to continue to cut and burn sod peat for their own domestic purposes, while also reducing the use of sod peat in urban areas.

She supported this.

"I agree with this approach to include allowances for small scale distribution to family and neighbours in rural areas. Living in Offaly I am fully aware of the impact an all out ban on burning would have on households already to the pin of their collar.

"Right now, I encourage anyone who may be borderline to check relatively new eligibility criteria for fuel allowance (Citizen's Information) . If you qualify for Fuel Allowance and certain other social welfare payments, you also qualify for 100% funded home energy upgrades.

"Look into individual measures for improving the energy efficiency of your home. With grants for insulation of up to 80% (SEAI home energy grants) please don't decide you can't afford it until you have priced it and considered the reduction in costs / bills.

"I say all of the above aware of the necessary and urgent need to conserve and restore or rehabilitate as much of our bogland as possible in our struggle to combat climate change and biodiversity loss," she said.

The Green Party Minister has responsibility for Land Use and Biodiversity at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. While a junior minister she has a seat at the Cabinet under the Government deal between the Greens, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.
Home Stories is a podcast series that offers insights into the lives, hopes and childhood memories of residents of Direct Provision and Emergency Accommodation in Laois.

The writer and broadcaster Manchan Magan has spoken to new members of our community from Africa, Asia and South America about their favourite memories of home, their favourite foods and pastimes, and their hopes for the future.

Manchan believes the new arrivals are welcome.

Ireland is fortunate to have been gifted with this precious influx of people from a range of fascinating and exotic cultures in recent years. Most of them have fled some form of trauma and are currently making their way slowly through the Direct Provision system. These new members of our communities offer us a wonderful opportunity to get to know different parts of the world and different cultural practises that are often full of wisdom and new perspectives, he says.

Home Stories is supported by Creative Ireland Laois as part of the Creative Ireland Programme in partnership with Laois County Council. The episodes will be available on all major podcast platforms, as well as at www.manchan.com and shorter 5-minute episodes will be broadcast on Midlands 103 from week of April 18.

The series contains interviews with Direct Provision residents from The Hibernian DP Centre, Abbeyleix and The Montague DP Centre, Emo was edited by Lauren Varian, with a soundtrack by Brian MacGloinn of Ye Vagabonds and Myles OReilly. It offers a series of evocative glimpses into the lives of refugees and asylum seekers who have fled to Ireland from persecution and danger.

Each ten-minute episode consists of a short chat and amongst the myriad topics under discussion are pagan faiths, ploughing with oxen, rituals of kingship, traditional languages, polygamy, gospel singing, herbal cures, culinary delicacies and the hopes and dreams these new Irish residents have for their future in Ireland, and the part they would like to play in society.

Laois County Council Arts Officer and Creative Ireland Coordinator is Muireann Ni Chonaill .

When we first considered a project about the voices and lives of Direct Provision residents in Laois, we immediately thought of Manchan and were assured that his creative approach would be both sensitive to the needs and context of residents, as well as enabling chat and comhra to engage with a range of themes close to the hearts and in the memories of our new community members. Were delighted that this podcast series is now being launched after delays due to Covid-19, and are so appreciative of the time given by Sandy/Charmaine, Noma, Lwandi and Feza from The Montague DP Centre, Emo and Kemi, Aruna, Ivann, Sie and Pauline from The Hibernian DP Centre, Abbeyleix. Special thanks also to Rosemary Kunene from Dignity Partnership, and Marina Rafter for their support with this project, she said.

Home Stories is an introduction to 10 of our new residents in Laois and will be available on all major podcast platforms, as well as at www.manchan.com, and shorter 5-minute episodes airing on Midlands 103.

Sinead Hubble is Head of News, Sport and Current Affairs, Midlands 103.

The station is delighted to work with Manchan to broadcast the stories of new immigrants who have come to the Midlands. The segments give us a real insight into their lives, hopes and dreams. We will be broadcasting up to three episodes each week - Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays between 9.15am and 12 noon on the Midlands Today show. All information can be found at www.midlands.com, she said.

The full series consists of 18 interviews with an additional 8 direct provision residents from New Horizons, Athlone, Co Westmeath. Home Stories is a podcast supported by the Creative Ireland Programme through Laois County Council Arts Office and Westmeath County Council Arts Office.
Anne Byrne, an award winning writer will launch her book 'The Bottom of the Hourglass' on April 30 in Creighton's Bar, Boyle, Co Roscommon.

Anne was the winner of the New Roscommon Writing Award 2020, with her story, Life, a historical piece which recounts the life of Lady Betty, the infamous 17th - 18th century Hangwoman of Roscommon Gaol.

Most recently Anne was placed third in the Allingham Flash Fiction Competition 2021 with her story, The Weatherman, another historical piece, set in mid-20th century Ireland.

Anne was the winner of the Roscommon Chapbook Bursary Award 2021, resulting in the forthcoming publication of her first collection of short stories, The Bottom of the Hourglass - the book she is launching at the end of the month.

Anne Byrne lives in rural County Sligo, a rugged and historic landscape that inspires her writing. She has close connections to County Leitrim, both through her work with the HSE, being based in the Community Care Offices, Leitrim Road, Carrick-on-Shannon, for over 22 years, and through her mother, who is a native of Aughnasheelin, Ballinamore.

Being an avid reader, she always harboured an ambition to write, occasionally penning the odd poem. The first real encouragement to begin writing more regularly came in 2011 when she entered one of her poems to a poetry competition organised by the Poet Higgins Society, Cloncoose, Co Leitrim, and was chosen as the overall winner.



Following this she continued to write poetry, though the idea of writing fiction was never far from her mind. Having a deep interest in history and the genre of historical fiction, she studied archaeology as a mature student, intent on using her knowledge and love of history to inform her writing.

However, it was the milestone of hitting her fortieth birthday that finally prompted her to pursue her writing ambitions, and in 2017 she submitted her first short story to a local competition, The New Roscommon Writing Award, part of Roscommon County Councils yearly programme of literary events.

Though unsuccessful in the competition she found that she enjoyed the writing process immensely and, determined to improve, she immersed herself completely in the short story form.

Entering the same competition again in 2018 with her second short story, The Brown Leather Case, she was delighted to be chosen as first runner-up, and to see her story published in the subsequent anthology, New Roscommon Writing 2014-18.

Buoyed by this success she continued writing and has since been short and long listed in various competitions, including the Kanturk Flash Fiction Competition 2019, The New Roscommon Writing Award 2020, the Fish Flash Fiction Competition 2021, and the Anthology Short Story Competition 2021.

About the Book

Annes debut collection of short stories, 'The Bottom of the Hourglass', explores the vagaries and frailties of the human condition through the themes of love, loss, sacrifice, and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

Spanning the 16th - 20th centuries this collection of historical short fiction depicts some of the struggles, challenges and motivations common to us all, regardless of time or place; a mother wrestling with her conscience as she tries to save her son; a boy, eager for his fathers approval, thrust into an adult world from which he can never return; an evicted widow taking to the road determined to save her family; a young emigrant reflecting on her journey, having made the ultimate sacrifice for a friend; a Jewish inmate finding peace as her small act of defiance is uncovered; an old man beset with conflicting emotions as his advice is ignored.



Taking us from the dark halls of Dublin Castle to the blood-soaked heather of the Curlew Mountains; from a lonely cell in Roscommon Gaol to the wild sweep of the Atlantic, and beyond, to the horror that was Auschwitz, we meet characters that we ultimately recognise in the struggles, sufferings, hopes and triumphs that characterise the human experience.

This collection of short stories was chosen for the award by Geraldine Mills, Writer and Roscommon Chapbook Bursary Award Judge 2021, commenting as following;

she [Anne] creates a range of believable worlds that carry an equipoise of pace and poetry. She has the ability to paint a scene deftly, capturing atmosphere with a minimum of words. Each story is replete with emotional insight. Her characters come alive on the page and live on in the readers mind long after the final word. It was a great pleasure to read.

The book will be launched by Gerry Boland, Author and Poet, on Saturday, April 30 at 7pm in Creightons Bar, Bridge Street, Boyle, Co. Roscommon. All are welcome to attend.



The book retails at 7 and will be available to purchase at the launch, and afterwards from Una Bhan Craft Shop, Grounds of King House, Boyle; Creightons Bar, and also directly from the author; www.facebook.com/anne

byrnewriter.

The author would like to extend her thanks to Roscommon County Council for the Chapbook Bursary Award 2021 without which the publication of this book would not have been possible.
AN EXHIBITION highlighting the dangers of littering and environmental damage is to take place in Limerick over the next month.

Well-known local taxidermist Donal Mulcahy has put together a collection of almost 80 stuffed animals, many of which have been harmed by dumping or pollution in Irish rivers and seas.

The Peoples Museum at Pery Square in the city will play host to the exhibition, with the exact opening date still to be confirmed.

Its hoped the showcase will educate people as to the dangers of leaving even the smallest bit of litter behind on the beach, or riverside.

Donal, who hails from Cappamore, but now lives in Pallaskenry said: Im working with GMIT and four marine biologists on this. They have six birds and it shows off the plastic pollution. The amount of plastic pollution on our beaches is quite scary. It's heartbreaking and people don't realise the damage, how many birds will actually die from this.

One of the more stark exhibits is a guillemot with oil dripping from its wings, Donal said.

There is also a shearwater bird which died from light pollution, highlighting the danger of this.

Donal has been putting together this collection for two-and-a-half years, taking into consideration a delay due to the pandemic.

Ultimately though, he has been gathering the exhibits for a decade.

He hopes people will be educated around the dangers of dumping, saying: Weve all done it. We've all taken the lazy way out. The amount of litter ending up in the sea is killing things, not just whales, but seabirds.

There are some other rare birds which will be shown as part of the exhibition.

A golden eagle is coming down from Donegal, as well as a puffin, a gannet, a sparrow hawk, kestrel, plus an osprey which is a once-off.

Working with Dublins Natural History Museum, Donal has preserved two other rare birds  a brown booby found on Greystones beach in Wicklow, and another once-off, a short-tail shearwater.

These will all be exhibited in Limerick before going national.

The exhibition has happened after Donal linked up with Corbally woman Lucy OSullivan, who happened upon a rare bird on the side of a road two years ago.

Concerned that its death would not be in vain, she contacted Birdwatch Ireland and then was put in touch with the taxidermist.

The bird turned out to be an incredibly rare water rail. I found him down the Sandy Mall. I'm not sure what he was doing there. They are rarely seen, she explained.

It was after this, she met Donal and saw his collection and persuaded him, for the first time, to put his work on show.
A Place Apart (Revival Press) is Kieran Bevilles latest collection of poems. In this work the author writes in confessional mode. He centres on and is insightful about the self. It would be misleading to think that confessional poets are simply wailing into the void as they are working within the constraints of poetry. Mostly in an autobiographical manner, these poems pry open the distresses unbalancing his inner life.

There are lyric poems of love like Bouquet, an extended analogy of love offered as a bouquet of colourful flowers with the exhortation to accept it before the wind and frost lay bare/ the colour of this world you made/ in the sunshine of your care.

A poem of loss and heart-break such as Requiem presents a series of postcards from the autobiographical self.

For poems about creativity read Hatching and Manna for the Mind they propose apparently different sources of inspiration. Hatching links ideas stimulated by observing nature:

Brooding over the page,

incubating embryonic thoughts,

words are hatching

hungry to be fed

with wriggling rhythms.

While in Manna for the Mind he sometimes strays into the spirit world/ through a portal of the mind. / There I sit still and silent/ waiting... In both instances, the inspiration for poems comes mysteriously, confirming what Muldoon says: If a poem doesn't come from the 'somewhere else' it's not worth reading or writing in the first place.

The idea of being and belonging is confidently asserted in his poem Limerick which is his homage to the City. The poem gathers a momentum of praise in the regularity of its rhyme and in the balancing lines. It begins with, City of bridges and steeples and goes on to describe its historical, architectural and cultural heritage:

Confraternity of dockers and doctors

Clash of the ash, smack of sliotar

Cauldron of rugby and our pub culture.

Its ancient walls, broad and strong.

The peoples hearts full of song!

The poem concludes with the couplet of recognition and the sense of belonging:

This is where Ive come to rest / this is where my soul is blessed.

This collection pries open the poet's inner self for the world to see and reading the poems is equally revealing for the reader, too, who becomes a part of this examined life. A Place Apart is available in Mahoneys Bookshop or online at https://limerickwriterscentre.com/product/a-place-apart/

-Anton Floyd is a West Cork based poet




Park Young-sun, a former minister for smaller and venture firms, has decided not to run for the ruling party's Seoul mayoral primary, party officials said Saturday.







The Democratic Party will now select its nominee for Seoul mayor through a primary that includes former party chief Song Young-gil, Rep. Park Ju-min and Rep. Kim Jin-ae.







"Former Minster Park has sent a message that she will not run for the mayor primary after deep consideration," the party's emergency committee said.







The party earlier reversed itself and decided to select its nominee for Seoul mayor through the primary amid a power struggle between those for or against former presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung.







The Seoul mayoral election will be one of the biggest races, along with the gubernatorial election in Gyeonggi Province, with current Mayor Oh Se-hoon of the main opposition People Power Party expected to seek reelection. (Yonhap)


WHEN Ireland climbed with Charlie many remembered loved ones who passed away from motor neurone disease.

One of whom was Sinead Stafford McGrath. The Wexford lady, who sadly died last November, had close ties to Limerick and was a regular visitor, in particular to Bulgaden. Sinead was remembered at the Ballyhoura Peaks fundraiser which comprised of four walks from 9am to 7.30pm.

Her close friends in Limerick, as well as Tipperary, Kildare, Carlow, Sligo, Dublin and Waterford were involved in organising the day. Her husband Malcolm and son Jordan travelled from Wexford to join the walks.

One of Sineads many close friends is Dara OBrien, of Bulgaden. She says 3,277 has been raised to date for Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association (IMNDA) and Pieta house between online donations and walkers on the day. Donations can be made at www.idonate.ie/BallyhouraPeaksWalks until May 2.

Dara said Sinead and Malcolm were together 25 years in 2020 and had planned a dream holiday to New York and the Dominican Republic to celebrate.

Covid hit and put the holiday in jeopardy but much worse was to come when Sinead got checked for a limp she had and in May she was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. Within a week Sinead registered with IMNDA and they supplied a specialist powered wheelchair, electric bed, IPad with communication software and a fantastic EyeGaze computer that Sinead used to communicate when she lost her voice and hand control.

They also provided home care grants to allow carers come in and help and counseling grants for the whole family. On top of that IMNDA provided access to a specialised nurse. She has an area from Wicklow to Kerry and yet has time to talk, visit and advise when needed. There are only four of those for the entire country, said Dara.

As well as participating in the Ballyhoura Peaks Climb with Charlie, Malcolm has been actively fundraising for the IMNDA since Sineads diagnosis and has raised almost 25,000 to date. Dara said all the Ballyhoura organisers, including Maurice Lyons and Declan Clancy, thanked everyone who took part, donated and helped in any way.

For more see online.
The Securities and Exchange Commission recently proposed new rules that would require public companies to provide information to investors about their exposures to risks stemming from greenhouse-gas emissions and other climate-change-related issues. Institutional investors are now asking for more information, with some requests happening ahead of annual shareholder meetings that often occur in the spring.

Large investors can have a big impact if they vote in favor of shareholder proposals requesting company changes or against board members, which is increasingly happening if a company isnt meeting ESG-related requirements.

The Wall Street Journals Emily Glazer talked to Catherine Winner, global head of stewardship at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, about the SECs new proposed rules, Goldmans proxy voting changes and advice for companies in their sustainability reporting. Edited excerpts of the interview follow.

WSJ: What was your reaction after these long-awaited rules came out?

MS. WINNER: Our voting framework is very supportive of the SECs proposed climate-risk disclosure rules. Both the SEC and the TCFD [Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures] are really pushing for greater emissions disclosures grounded in materiality.

In the U.S. particularly, our policy will support progress on emissions reporting as we get closer to the proposed implementation deadline for the SECs rule. As one of the leading global asset managers, we have $2.5 trillion in assets under supervision. We will use this to help us drive positive change on this topic, both inside and outside of the U.S.

WSJ: When the proposals came out, were you surprised, or did you have a sense of what Goldman Sachs Asset Management would do?

MS. WINNER: We really believe that climate risk is a material investment consideration. Weve been engaging with companies for a number of years around disclosure and the encouraging of disclosure around greenhouse-gas emissions that are material to their business.

Weve been engaging with 271 companies since 2020. We engaged to encourage better disclosure. And 42% of those companies that we engaged have made improvements to their disclosures.

Since we believe this is a material investment consideration, and boards should be held accountable for these climate risks and for disclosure of climate-related data and reporting, we intend to vote against chairs of the committees with oversight of ESG risks at those companies that are still not disclosing or that have made zero improvements on the disclosure of emissions data.

WSJ: What would an improvement be?

MS. WINNER: We use the materiality framework from the nonprofit Sustainability Accounting Standards Board [SASB] when were engaging with companies to encourage them to disclose. We defined and categorized companies according to whether they were fully disclosing, or partially, or nondisclosing companies. We engaged with the nondisclosures or the partial-disclosure companies. And any improvements to that status we are encouraged to see. So 42% of those companies that we engaged with have made some improvements on their disclosures. Of the companies that have not made any progress, theres still less than 100 of them globally.

WSJ: Come the annual shareholder meeting, if there is a vote to replace someone on the audit committee or some kind of director, what will you say to such a company then?

MS. WINNER: We launch our policy publicly in March of each year. And since weve been engaging on the subject with the select companies that are targeted for potential escalation on voting at the director level, we hope that this comes as no surprise.

But that being said, we do make our policy public on our website, and also try to encourage companies to read that and alert them to the upload of the policy each year, to sort of direct them and show them what our expectation is. And its not just audit committees responsibility.

WSJ: Its getting more common for institutional investors to say, If this doesnt happen, we will vote against a director." And that was not common years ago.

MS. WINNER: It is becoming more common practice. We take a very holistic and robust approach to how we evolve our policies over time. We look at the landscape of how we voted over the last year, what new proposals are developing, what are our clients expectations of us in terms of advocating for positive change with companies.

How do we escalate appropriately? We want to be sure that we communicate directly to companies in a dialogue. We are partners with the companies that we are engaging with. We want to be proactive and solutions-driven.

WSJ: Are there certain pieces of information that youre seeing as challenging for companies to produce?

MS. WINNER: Were not prescriptive as to where sustainability reporting goes. We understand there are many different ways to produce this and make this available to your investors. But we do recognize there are different implications. So, for instance, information in a proxy versus an annual filing such as a 10K or an 8K might be subject to different scrutiny. We are aware of those challenges. But we really leave it up to companies best discretion in consideration of where that would be disclosed.

Two pieces of advice on that:

Be consistent in messaging. If a company is discussing climate at an investor day, for instance, and you see slides and metrics and goals, I would encourage that you make that disclosure consistent in whats being reflected in your sustainability report, for instance.

And make it easy to access. We often ask each other, How many clicks did it take you to find that report on a website?" That is important information because its not us seeking it, its a number of stakeholders that are trying to get at this information.

WSJ: Do you feel strongly about the TCFD framework versus SASB? Or does it depend on the company or sector?

MS. WINNER: TCFD is helpful more with a climate focus lens. SASB has a materiality lens on climate as well, but it also incorporates social and governance issues as well. So if youre looking for more climate heavy disclosures, TCFD gives a much deeper dive into the environmental side, whereas SASB can talk about ESG, which is also important when evaluating a company.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text
MUMBAI : The latest Reserve Bank of India (RBI) decision allowing non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) to offer credit cards without a banking partner could spark a scramble for these licences, though only a few are expected to make the cut.

On Thursday, the RBI said in a master circular that a non-deposit taking company looking to issue cards would require a certificate of registration from the regulator and minimum net-owned funds of 100 crore.

Many non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) will be interested, said Vijay Jasuja, director of PNB Cards.

Credit cards are a lucrative business, returns are high, and the Indian market is under-penetrated. There will be many companies which will apply. That said, existing NBFCs will not be able then to maintain the card relationship with their banking partners. They have to choose either one," he added.

So far, the central bank has allowed only two NBFCs to issue credit cards without banking partners: SBI Cards and BoB Cards.

Analysts believe the biggest beneficiary of the change will be Bajaj Finserv Ltd, which already issues a series of co-branded credit cards in partnership with RBL Bank.

As of December 2021, the Bajaj Finserv-RBL co-branded credit card base stood at 2.59 million. In 2021, Bajaj Finserv extended its RBL partnership by another five years till 2026.

RBI will now be more open to granting licences to various large players, and NBFCs like Bajaj Finance, who have a tie-up with RBL Bank currently, could apply, thereby increasing competitive intensity," a Macquarie report said on Friday.

The interpretation is that RBI will be more open for a liberal credit card licensing regime and will be fine with NBFCs retaining risk on the balance sheet," it added.

The Reserve Bank of Indias recent guidelines to allow NBFCs to issue credit cards after prior approval from the central bank is a welcome step. It will provide an opportunity to serve credit-worthy individuals using new-age data analytics, which are being leveraged exponentially by NBFC companies like ours," said Abhay Bhutada, managing director of Poonawalla Fincorp Ltd (previously Magma Fincorp).

Separately, the Reserve Bank also said information relating to revenue sharing between the card-issuer (bank) and the co-branding partner entity (NBFC) should be indicated to the cardholder and also displayed on the website of the card issuer.

Some industry players find this irrational.

Customer is getting X benefit; why should he bother about the revenue-sharing arrangement between the partners is beyond understanding. I dont think it has any meaning. What benefit will the customer get?" a senior industry executive said.

The Reserve Bank circular also stated that the co-branding partner would not have access to information relating to transactions undertaken through the co-branded card.

Post issuance of the card, the co-branding partner, shall not be involved in any of the processes or the controls relating to the co-branded card except for being the initial point of contact in case of grievances," the Reserve Bank added.
India has enough coal stocks to meet more than 30 days of demands and there is no need to panic, Coal Ministry said. It further said 72.5 million tonnes (mt) of coal stocks are lying with Coal India Ltd.

Ample coal is available in the nation which is being refilled regularly with record production and will serve us for another month. Currently, 72.5 MT of coal is present at different sources like stock with Coal IndiaHQ, SCCL, washeries, etc., and 22.01 MT with TPPs," Coal Ministry tweeted.

Ample coal is available in the nation which is being refilled regularly with record production and will serve us for another month. Currently, 72.5 MT of coal is present at different sources like stock with @CoalIndiaHQ, SCCL, washeries, etc., and 22.01 MT with TPPs. pic.twitter.com/RMh7bbmbCi  Coal Ministry (@CoalMinistry) April 24, 2022

Coal companies are dispatching almost 2.0 million tonnes (MT) of coal every day to the power sector through various modes, such as railways, roadways and RCR-mode, said Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi in a tweet.

Additionally, 16.7 MT coal has been offered to power generation companies with an option to lift this quantity through RCR-mode to sufficiently stock up, he added.

Coal companies are dispatching almost 2.0 MT coal every day to power sector through various modes, such as railways, roadways & RCR-mode.

Additionally 16.7 MT coal has been offered to Power Gencos with option to lift this quantity through RCR-mode to sufficiently stock up. pic.twitter.com/3IJIEhoR1H  Pralhad Joshi (@JoshiPralhad) April 24, 2022

This comes as reports have emerged of a shortage of coal stocks at power plants and raised concerns about its effect on the power supply.

Electricity demand has shot up due to the reopening and as the country heads towards the peak summer season, but supply has been disrupted due to the reduced availability of railway rakes to transport coal and lower coal imports.
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The general public may not think of E.T. the Extraterrestrial as a divorce movie, per se  although Dee Wallaces reading of the line He hates Mexico has always been one of its most resonant. But in speaking about the film for its 40th anniversary at the TCM Classic Film Festival Thursday night, Steven Spielberg explored how the split in his own family growing up informed his original story. And, beyond that, the director explained how making the film was the actual trigger that made him suddenly flip a switch from eschewing the prospect of ever being a father to putting parenthood on his vision board.

What happened was, I had been working on an actual literal script about my parents separation and divorce in the late 1970s, Spielberg told host Ben Mankiewicz. That very un-fantastical film idea would have reflected his and his sisters experience with their parents splitting  despite the fact that this idea was percolating during the making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1976.

I was shooting the (climactic) scene and I suddenly thought, Wait a second. What if that little creature never went back to the ship? What if the creature was part of a foreign exchange program? (Richard) Dreyfuss goes and he stays? Or she stays?' It struck him that he could turn his family drama into a story about children and a family trying to fill a great need and great responsibility? Divorce creates great responsibility. If you have siblings, we all take care of each other (in the wake of divorce). And what if Elliott, or the kid  I hadnt quite dreamed up his name yet  for the first time in his life becomes responsible for a life form, to fill the gap in his heart?

The filmmaker told the opening-night crowd at the TLC Chinese Theatre about the devastation he felt as a teen child of divorce. I think when you go through something like that, when any child goes through an episode where your parents who you trust love and trust unconditionally (both) come to you and your sisters and say, We are separating, and were going to be living not just in two different houses but two different states, the world collapses. The sky falls on your head. He sad that children of divorce or those whove been the divorcing parties know the responsibility of how you have to super take care of your kids. Its something that never goes away and it comes out in the wash, and it certainly has come out in a lot of my movies, both indirectly and subconsciously. And in the latest film that Ive just made, it comes out very directly, he added, referring to The Fabelmans, the semi-autobiographical film he co-wrote with Tony Kushner thats set for release in November.

Asked by Mankiewicz if hed ever imagined himself being a father up to that point in his career, Spielberg flatly said, No. I didnt want to have kids because it was not a kind of equation that made sense for me as I went from movie to movie to movie, script to script It never occurred to me till halfway through E.T.: I was a parent on that film. I was literally feeling like I was very protective of Henry (Thomas) and Mike (McNaughton) and my whole cast, and especially Drew (Barrymore), who was only 6 years old. And I started thinking, Well, maybe this could be my real life someday. It was the first time that it occurred to me that maybe I could be a dad. And maybe in a way, a director is a dad, or a mom. From that point on, he said, I really felt that that would be my big production.

When Mankiewicz, in characteristic tongue-in-cheek fashion, asked Did you have children, Steven?, the director answered, I have seven kids and six grandchildren. So E.T. worked for me very well.

In the space of a half-hour preceding the showing of a new IMAX rendering of the 1982 film, Spielberg and Mankiewicz did not make attempts to tackle a complete career overview (and the only mention of the recent West Side Story was the hosts contention that TCM fans had put aside their disinclination toward remakes just for that). But the conversation did at last briefly touch on everything from his Night Gallery pilot and Duel TV movie debut up through E.T.

Spielberg said that Joan Crawford, on Night Gallery, was the first SAG-card-carrying actor he ever worked with, then amended that to say that he shot all the interstitial segments with scriptwriter/host Rod Serling prior to that. Crawford, he said, was no Mommy Dearest on the set, but as a Pepsi products pitchwoman at the time did expect everyone on the set to partake in the ice chests full of Mountain Dew she brought to the soundstage. She forgave me my acne and the Clearasil I used to cover it up, he said of getting his start with the legend at 22. The future-ballcap-wearing filmmaker recalled being surrounded by men in blazers with hats and ties in 1968  below as well as above the line. The gaffers, the elctricians, the grips, they wore ties. it was a changing of the guard.

Mankiewicz brought up Duel, filmed for ABC, to point out that Spielberg belonged to the generation of renegade filmmakers like Martin Scorsese as much as he did the studio system. His first mini-flareup with a studio  and probably one of the last, given his success record  was explained: I had no power except the power to say action, cut, print and set up the camera When it came to releasing it on a major American network, they had a lot of clout, and I was helpless and felt hopeless when the directive got back to me  that they were ordering me to go back out there and blow up the truck, because we cant end a movie that ends with a truck dying a very slow painful death, with the oil dripping down the steering wheel and the tire slowing down and the fan roaring. They hated that. They wanted a pyrotechnic ending. And (producer) George Epstein came to me and said, What do you want to do? I said, I dont want to shoot it, but what can I do? George said, Let me go to work on ABC. And George delivered the good news the next day that they werent going to make me reshoot the ending. He fought the fight, which is whats great about having a producer that has your back. Everybody has to know how important producers are in our lives and in our world, especially when were just starting out. Theyre essential.

Spielberg came close to conceding that maybe 1941 might have benefitted from a bit more studio oversight, something he was happily doing without in the wake of the blockbuster successes of Jaws and Close Encounters. He joked, The explosion that never got made for Duel, I make it fit for 1941. That was the biggest detonation, at that moment in my career.

He remembered, It was my longest schedule  even longer than Jaws, which would have been seemingly hard to beat, since on that we shot 158 days, more than 100 days over schedule. But because we were shooting back to back, the studio just started writing checks, saying Lets see what happens. And they gave me an unlimited celling to make 1941. And it took me 178 days to shoot the picture, because I directed all the miniature work That was the worst mistake you could have made. But I had a great time making the film. And then I showed the picture for the first time in Texas, at my good luck theater, the Medallion Theater in Dallas, where hed experienced thrilling reactions to Jaws and Close Encounters, only to take 1941 there, where you could have heard a pin drop for what he called the first comedy ever made without laughs.

A detailed explanation of the writing of E.T. involved the recollection of how Black Stallion screenwriter Melissa Mathison, then Harrison Fords girlfriend, at first turned down his offer to have her do the screenplay when he pitched it on location for Raiders of the Lost Ark. I went to Harrison and said, Your girlfriend turned me down!' After Ford cajoled her into speaking with the director again, Mathison said, Youve got Harrison so excited about this, what is it that I missed? And I think I hadnt told the story to her very well, because I told her the story again. and she got really emotional hearing the story (for a second time) and she fainted right in the middle of the Tunisian desert. They had story sessions during editing lunch breaks on Raiders, and Spielberg credited her with adding some of the scripts best conceptual ideas, as well as doing the actual writing by herself  resulting in what he called the best first draft ever and Kathleen Kennedy called the best screenplay shed read, period. The director said it was that first draft that got shot.

Actors Dee Wallace and Robert McNaughton were among those in attendance at the Chinese, but Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore, whod been billed as sharing the stage with Spielberg at the re-premiere, were absent for reasons not explained. (They wanted badly to be here, and we thank them for initially accepting, said Mankiewicz in his intro.) Spielberg had plenty to say about both present and absent cast members.

I had never really shot anything in continuity. Well, he said interrupting himself, Sugarland (Express), my first (theatrical) film, I shot in continuity. But I especially shot E.T. in continuity because of the ages of the (kids) and Dee Wallace. The reason I cast Dee was, she had the heart of a child. So in a sense I cast the child in Dee Wallace to be part of it. She wasnt really the adult; Peter Coyote was the adult, but Dee was part of the kids group. And I wanted the kids to know that what we were shooting now, today, is happening today, and the next three pages of the script will happen tomorrow. What we just shot happened yesterday. I wanted them to actually to live the life of the story, which they did. So at the end of the movie  I dont want to give it away, he said, to as if laughter  they were there for every take, because they were saying goodbye for real, because they knew theyd be going home.

Thomas casting story is well known  the video is on YouTube of Spielberg doing an improv that got the introverted child actor to cry, at which point Spielberg tells him he got the part  but he delved more into Barrymores rather more brash first impression at 6. When Drew came into my office, she took over the meeting by storm. She stormed the citadel of my office I said, Do you like acting? She said, Im not in actor. I have a punk-rock band. And she started telling me about this punk-rock band that she had already formed, and she was going to play concerts. I believed her, she has so much inner life. I realized after a while that she didnt really have a punk-rock band, but if she could believe she did, then shed believe this little mechanical creature was a real extraterrestrial, and she was in my movie that day.

What Mankiewicz jokingly called the 11th and also the 13th TCM Classic Film Festival (it took two years off for the pandemic) continues through Sunday. Featured guests have included Lily Tomlin, who spoke before All of Me as well as being the subject of a Hollywood Walk of Fame hand ceremony, and Bruce Dern, who sat for a wildly funny and illuminating session with Mankiewicz in the TCM Club set up in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotels ballroom. Warren Beatty is scheduled to speak Saturday at a screening of Heaven Can Wait, and later in the evening Kevin Bacon, Tim Daly, Steve Guttenberg and Paul Reiser will reunite at a Diner summit. On Sunday, among many other guest appearances, Piper Laurie and Margaret OBrien will sit for Q&As in the TCM Club, and Pam Grier will speak ahead of a screening of 1973s Coffy as the festival draws to a close.

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No one  not a dictator, not a politician, not a celebrity, not an influencer  is in possession of more power than a high school theater director. For a small community of theater kids, the director is the one person whose approval you crave most in the world, above their parents, friends, and even above God. And no decision is more likely to impact the trajectory of the high school theater kids year than what musical the director chooses to do next year.

Marji Eldreth, the music teacher at the Cab Calloway School of the Arts in Wilmington, Delaware, is no doubt well aware of this. Thats why shes keeping her students in daily suspense this semester by revealing, by process of elimination, which musical the school will perform next year. Every day, she takes a logo of a musical off her piano and rips it up in front of her classroom, explaining why it didnt make the cut this year. (I love this show. Its an awesome show. Were just not going to do it at school next year. Im going to disappoint a lot of peopleits Ragtime.) And she documents the whole dramatic elimination process on TikTok, for her 24,000 rapt followers to witness.

The appeal of watching a high school theater director slowly reveal which show her students will stage is difficult to pinpoint. After all, barring having family members or friends enrolled at her school, few of Eldreths followers presumably have any investment in what musical a Delaware performing arts school will be performing next year, nor will most of them be watching the finished production (though Eldreth did put up her schools last production, a rousing rendition of Mamma Mia!, on YouTube).

Eldreths videos appear to strike a chord among current and former theater kids, who are intimately acquainted with the sensation of waiting, with bated breath, to see how their casting fates will play out next year (consider for instance, if youre an alto, and the shows lead is lyric soprano alone  youre SOL, baby). User @mattsilar sums up the appeal thusly: Every day my For You page says: you dont know this lady, you dont know this school, you dont know these students. But you do care what musical theyre doing next year. You care so much, like people cared about the pug with the bones.

The amount of engagement generated by Eldreths videos has also spawned similar trends from other high school musical theater directors, eager to take their power trip  ahem, sorry, the special bond they have with their students  nationwide.

This week on Dont Let This Flop, Rolling Stones podcast about internet news and culture, co-hosts Brittany Spanos and Ej Dickson discuss Eldreth and High School Musical TikTok, as well as Spokane-style pizza, Britney Spearss pregnancy (and Lindsay Lohans rumored pregnancy), and why on Earth Al Pacino carries around a Shrek phone case.
A week has passed since the enhanced Texas Department of Public Safety inspections were lifted for regular trade to continue. However, the full extent of the economic fallout is still being tabulated by economists and companies.

According to the City of Laredo Director for Economic Development Teclo Garcia, a report by Texas Economist Ray Perryman showcased how Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's policy to retain trucks at the border for the enhanced inspections cost $4.2 billion in goods and services and the equivalent of 36,000 jobs.

According to Garcia, no local figures have been calculated yet as he said the industry has been simply trying to catch up to stay afloat amid the relaxing of the policy. He says several events since the relaxing of the policies have focused on how to strengthen border trade, which he says was affected to some extent because of the policies.

We have not been able to do those calculations as, I mean, we are just so tied up in trying to catch up and then we are at this produce show that is so integral to our operations that we have not been able to stop to do that, Garcia said.

According to National Public Radio, one Texas bridge -- the Pharr-Reynosa Bridge -- lost $1 billion per week during the time the governors enhanced inspections were in place.

Modesto Guerra is the sales manager for Sterling Fresh. His company was one of the first reporting the long wait times and he confirmed they faced significant losses because of the policy.

We lost about 10 loads of broccoli, the initial calculator of loss is $150,000, Guerra said. It could be more if we get additional rejections, but at this moment, it is at $150,000.

In total, however, he says the losses were much more significant,. Their product not only didn't get to the warehouses on time, but those warehouses and their workers could also not work because they could not pull the product out for distribution. This caused a domino effect affecting everybody from the transportation companies to those who work in the places where the products are going.

Guerra said their companys losses were low due to the fact the price of broccoli is not very high compared to other companies who might have lost produce such as tomatoes, which often have more loads and whose losses could have been two or three times more. Still, he says he is angered at the fact one governor was able to cause so much economic disruption.

Trade requires as much certainty as possible, but when a state unilaterally decides to disrupt trade, that creates a big deal of uncertainty. Right now the state of Texas and the president of Mexico are exchanging insults, and the state of Texas is promising to reinstate the security procedure, and with that kind of uncertainty, it creates havoc for us, Guerra said. We are dealing with the open market, as we are not a captive supplier of somebody, so if we dont supply on time then the customer will go to California, Georgia or God knows where as they need the product, and they need it on schedule.

Guerra said if the policies were to be reenacted -- which Abbott has already threatened he could do once again -- this could cause companies to not see Mexico anymore as a reliable trade partner as they might turn to other states around the country to trade and cause huge economic backlash on a border that thrives on the trade.

The president and CEO of the Laredo Economic Development Corporation said that it is important for political leaders to consider the input of stakeholders when it comes to issues like these in efforts to mitigate any losses they might experience, because these policies are put in place without a way to safeguard companies losses.

The private sector would urge government leaders and their advisors to consult with stakeholders prior to considering implementing measures that could have negative impacts on the economy, and in our case, international trade," said Gene Lindgren, president and CEO of the Laredo Economic Development Corporation.

Garcia says the delays were not good at all for companies, as they experienced losses some of them were not able to make up for. Many clients might be looking for the product, but it may have gotten spoiled by the time it crossed.

We have to just really work hard to avoid these sort of self-inflicted wounds to the supply chain, as the supply chain is already very challenged, Garcia said. We need to at all costs avoid popping up more problems for the supply chain and let it work, as it benefits all of us.

Garcia worries the enhanced inspections might return, although he remains fully confident all of the four Mexican states that entered an agreement with Abbott last week will fulfill their part to ensure trade is not disrupted again.

Guerra says he only wants the political leaders to ask themselves who will eventually pay for the losses and whether it was legal for the state to disrupt commerce in such a manner, as not only was the state affected but also international trade to Canada. A couple of his loads were going to the United States' northern neighbor, but they never made it on time.

Is it legal for any state -- not Texas, but any state -- to disrupt international commerce? Guerra asked. This is what the Russians are doing, I see a total equivalency between what the action of the state of Texas and the actions that Russia is executing right now as they are disrupting. My question is who is going to pay for those losses?

He equates the disruption equal to the narcos disrupting the trucks as it is the same process, but individuals involved in organized crime are punished for what they do. Yet nothing can be done to a state that is legally causing tremendous losses for companies like Abbott's former policy.
Heng Sinith/AP

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP)  Cambodia on Thursday reduced the required quarantine period from two weeks to one for arriving travelers who are not fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, acting after recording consistently low numbers of new infections in recent days.

The Health Ministry also said that travelers arriving by air who have not been fully vaccinated must take a rapid antigen test on the last day of their quarantine. Arrivals by land -- mostly Cambodian workers in neighboring countries -- are required to take rapid antigen tests on arrival as well as on the last day of quarantine.
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PARIS (AP)  As French voters elect a president Sunday, they are choosing between two visions of France  and two very different people.

Here is a look at the two candidates:

EMMANUEL MACRON

In just five years, incumbent President Emmanuel Macron has gone from a young newbie in politics to a key world player and weighty decision-maker in the European Union who has been deeply involved in efforts to end Russias war in Ukraine.

The outspoken 44-year-old centrist, with his non-stop diplomatic activism, doesnt always get his way but has earned his place on the international scene.

At home, he managed to regain some popularity after the yellow vest protests against social injustice sent his approval to record lows in 2018. Opinion polls show many French praise his presidential stature and consider him up to the job to face major global crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine conflict.

They also show he is often perceived as arrogant and out of touch with ordinary people.

Macron has notably been dubbed president of the rich, especially during the yellow vest crisis. Some critics also denounce a perceived authoritarian attitude, holding him responsible for violent incidents involving police during street protests.

The job of president is his first elected office, though he came with a strong pedigree.

Macron studied at Frances elite school Ecole Nationale dAdministration, and was a senior civil servant, then a banker at Rothschild for a few years, then economic adviser to Socialist President Francois Hollande.

He emerged from that backstage role onto the political scene when he was appointed economy minister in Hollandes government from 2014 to 2016.

A series of political surprises  including a corruption scandal involving a key rival  thrust him toward presidential victory in 2017. He beat Le Pen in that race on promises to free up Frances economy to boost job creation and attract foreign investment.

Macron, who describes himself as a president who believes in Europe, argues the EU is the way for France to be stronger in a global world.

A strong advocate of entrepreneurial spirit, he has eased rules to hire and fire workers and to made it harder to get unemployment benefits. Critics accuse him of destroying worker protections.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and he acknowledged the crucial role of the state in supporting the economy, spending massively and vowing to support employees and business via public aid whatever it costs.

In his biggest campaign rally near Paris earlier this month, Macron paid an emotional tribute to his wife Brigitte, the person I care the most about. They could be seen on the stadiums giant screens sending kisses to each other.

As first lady, Brigitte Macron, 24 years his senior, has been involved in charities and other programs promoting culture, education and health.

Their romance started when he was a student at the high school where she was teaching in northern France. At the time a married mother of three, she was supervising the drama club. Macron, a literature lover, was a member.

Macron moved to Paris for his last year of high school. She eventually moved to the French capital to join him and divorced. They married in 2007.

MARINE LE PEN

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, in her third bid for the French presidency, is nothing if not determined, like her firebrand father who co-founded the anti-immigration party that she now leads.

She is as feisty and gritty as father Jean-Marie, who ran five times for the nations highest office. Since she inherited his National Front party in 2011, she has worked to crack the wall of fear of the far right that so far has barred their path to the presidency.

Polls show her trailing, but closer than ever to victory. If elected, she would seek to transform French politics and society into her French-first vision.

She changed the name of the National Front and booted her father out in 2015, part of her effort to rid the renamed National Rally of the taint of racism and antisemitism that clung to the far right for decades.

Family dramas have long been at the center of the Le Pen dynasty. She has armored herself over the years, and keeps her private life to herself.

When her popular niece, Marion Marechal, a former party lawmaker, quit the National Rally, Marine Le Pen succeeded in keeping it from becoming another public family feud. Marechal  whom Le Pen helped raise  drove the betrayal deeper by supporting far-right rival Eric Zemmour in the first round of the presidential election.

A wily politician, Le Pen has transformed her own image from that of an aggressive, anti-system proponent to a mild-mannered spokeswoman for Frances forgotten.

Le Pen, 53, who has two daughters and one son and is divorced, shares her home with a childhood girlfriend and her beloved cats.

Born Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen in 1968 in a cushy western Paris suburb, she has written that she was raised on honey and the acid of politics.

Her parents' marriage ended in a publicly bitter divorce  after which her mother Pierrete Lalanne posed in 1987 for the French edition of Playboy scantily dressed in a maids outfit. She said she did so after Jean-Marie Le Pen said that if she needed money she should do house cleaning.

Le Pen has successfully kept her own children in the shadows of her political life, sparing them the exposure that she and her sisters endured.

Le Pen is a lawyer by training and among her clients before she switched to politics were immigrants living illegally in France  whom as a politician she wants to expel. It is one of the numerous contradictions that define Le Pen. Another is her relationship with some members of a now-banned extreme right-wing movement whom she met in law school  a relationship she neither denies nor defines.

___

Follow the APs coverage of the French election at https://apnews.com/hub/french-election-2022
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SHARJAH, United Arab Emirates (AP)  Hundreds of Russians and Ukrainians alike crowded into the only Russian Orthodox Church on the Arabian Peninsula on Sunday to celebrate the most important Christian religious festival of the year  far from home and in the shadow of a war that has brought devastation to Ukraine and international isolation to Moscow.

The churchs gold Byzantine crosses rise unexpectedly from the dusty streets of Sharjah  a conservative Muslim emirate just south of skyscraper-studded Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Although the two nationalities, united in language and history, typically celebrate Easter in harmony in this strange corner of the world where theyve forged new lives as expats, this year there was unspoken tension even as children in floral dresses played on the stone steps and priests blessed brimming bread baskets under the blazing sun.

I dont have any problems with Russians as people, said Sergei, a Ukrainian businessman from Kyiv and Dubai resident of five years, who like all those interviewed, declined to give his last name for privacy reasons. But war changes people. Children are dying. The Russians now hate my country.

A few Russians interviewed said they did not support the war and felt sick or guilty about it. But to avoid any confrontation in the pews, they stuck to small talk with Ukrainians about the festivities and warming weather, they said.

We're all the same, weve all come from Russia or Ukraine to seek a better life here, said Kata, who moved from Moscow to Dubai for a marketing job just before the war. It's so weird between us right now. We try as much as possible not to discuss the war.  Its too painful, too difficult.

The vast Russian Orthodox Church in Sharjah, the countrys biggest church, has for over a decade served as a touchstone for Dubais booming Russian and eastern European community.

Dubais glittering skyscrapers, white sand beaches and luxury malls have long attracted Russian visitors, who made up the citys third-largest tourist source market last year. Before the war, the Russian Embassy estimated there were 40,000 Russian nationals in the UAE, along with about 60,000 Russian-speakers from former Soviet states. Cyrillic signs dot the UAEs cavernous malls and airport concourses.

Dubai, one of the few remaining flight corridors out of Moscow, appears to have emerged as a magnet for scores of well-heeled Russians despairing of their countrys future and concerned that their own livelihoods are no longer viable amid a stranglehold of global sanctions.

The UAE has imposed no such sanctions and retains close relations with Russia  a major trade partner and fellow member of OPEC Plus, the group of oil-producing nations and its allies that has rebuffed Western pleas for increased oil supplies to calm energy markets. Russians need no visas to enter the UAE. Any investment of over $200,000 in real estate secures three years residency.

Ordinary Russians say Dubai has become an increasingly rare haven as anti-Russian hostility escalates around the world over the grinding war, which has rocked the stability of Europe, sent oil prices soaring and triggered the continent's worst refugee crisis since World War II.

Dubai is the best place for business and job opportunities because the conditions in our country radically changed, said Leonid, a Russian social media executive who moved to Dubai after the war.

Last week, Leonid joined the UAE's now-thriving expat Jewish community in its celebration of the Passover holiday. He received Passover Seder invitations from over a dozen Russian and Ukrainian Jewish friends who have moved to Dubai since the war.

Professionals and IT specialists are leaving the country. They dont want to live in the new Russia, he said, adding that the Ukrainians and Russians he witnessed sharing the traditional feast last week managed to get along. It's not like on TV.

In Sharjah on Sunday, the Christian faithful filtered into the street full of mosques and Pakistani-owned barbershops after taking communion. The call to prayer sounded out, beckoning Muslim worshippers fasting for the holy month of Ramadan.

This country is more warm to us than Europe, said Maria, a Belarusian real estate broker who lives in Dubai. There is no hate here, it feels natural.




Justice minister nominee Han Dong-hoon expressed concern Saturday about bipartisan bills aimed at reducing and eventually scrapping the prosecution's investigative powers.







The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) agreed Friday to pass compromise legislation proposed by National Assembly Speaker Park Byeong-seug within this month.







"Even the current system brought by the 2020 revision exposed many side effects and loopholes in protecting the common people and tackling corruption," Han said in a statement.







He was referring to the latest law amendments that limited the prosecution's investigation to six types of crime, including corruption and economic offenses.







"If the additional legislation is hastily enacted without a close analysis and social consensus, the problems will worsen severely," he said.







Han, a high-level prosecutor and one of President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol's closest confidants, was nominated to head the justice ministry April 13.







Last week, Han slammed the DPK's move to weaken the prosecution, saying it would hamper the fight against crime and end up hurting ordinary people.







After the two parties reached an agreement Friday, Prosecutor General Kim Oh-soo, his deputy and the chiefs of all six high prosecutors' offices across the nation offered to resign in protest.







Under the compromise deal, the prosecution will temporarily keep its investigative right, with the number of types of crime that it can investigate reduced to two  corruption and economic crimes.







The deal calls for scrapping the prosecution's investigative power after the capabilities of other investigative authorities are improved and the creation of a special judiciary reform committee to discuss the establishment of a major crimes investigative unit like the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. (Yonhap)


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LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP)  An opposition liberal party convincingly won Sunday's parliamentary election in Slovenia, according to early official results, in a major defeat for populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa, who was accused of pushing the small European Union country to the right while in office.

The Freedom Movement won nearly 34% of the votes, compared with around 24% for the governing conservative Slovenian Democratic Party, state election authorities said after counting over 97% of the ballots.

Trailing behind the top two contenders were the New Slovenia party with 7%, followed by the Social Democrats with more than 6% and the Left party with 4%.

The results mean that the Freedom Movement, a newcomer in the election, appears set to form the next government in a coalition with smaller leftist groups. The party leader addressed supporters via a video message from his home because he has COVID-19.

Tonight people dance, Robert Golob told the cheering crowd at the party headquarters. Tomorrow is a new day and serious work lies ahead.

Jansa, an ally of right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, congratulated the relative winner of the election in a speech.

The results are as they are, Jansa said, praising his government's work. Many challenges lie ahead for the new government, whatever it may look like, but the foundations are solid.

A veteran politician, Jansa became prime minister a little over two years ago after the previous liberal premier resigned. An admirer of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Jansa had pushed the country toward right-wing populism since taking over at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reflecting strong interest in Sunday's election, turnout was higher than usual  around 67% of Slovenia's 1.7 million voters cast their ballot, compared with 52% in the previous election in 2018.

Golob, a U.S.-educated former business executive, came out as a frontrunner shortly after entering the political scene. The Freedom Movement party has advocated a green energy transition and sustainable development over Jansa's nation-centered narrative.

Liberals had described Sundays election as a referendum on Slovenias future. They argued that Jansa, if reelected, would push the traditionally moderate nation further away from core EU democratic values and toward other populist regimes.

Opinion polls ahead of the vote had predicted that the leading parties would be locked in a tight race.

Jansa's SDS won the most votes in an election four years ago, but couldn't initially find partners for a coalition government. He took over after lawmakers from centrist and left-leaning groups switched sides following the resignation in 2020 of liberal Prime Minister Marjan Sarec.

Jansa, in power, faced accusations of sliding toward authoritarian rule in the Orban style, drawing EU scrutiny amid reports that he pressured opponents and public media, and installed loyalists in key positions for control over state institutions.

The Freedom House democracy watchdog recently said that while political rights and civil liberties are generally respected (in Slovenia), the current right-wing government has continued attempts to undermine the rule of law and democratic institutions, including the media and judiciary.
President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol /Yonhap



President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol expected to commute to the new presidential office in central Seoul from his private home for about a month after his inauguration while his official residence is renovated, officials said Sunday.



Yoon has decided to remodel what is now the foreign minister's residence into his official residence in line with his plan to move the presidential office and residence out of Cheong Wa Dae in an effort to connect better with the people.



Renovation work on the foreign minister's residence in Hannam-dong will begin on Yoon's inauguration on May 10 and is expected to take around a month, and Yoon plans to commute to his new office from his private home in Seocho-dong in southern Seoul, transition team officials said.



"We will be mainly taking the Banpo Bridge on our commute as it is the closest one to Seocho Ward. ... The route could change depending on the situation," an official told Yonhap News Agency.



Yoon's commute could worsen traffic congestion because roads are blocked for his motorcade.



The official residence of the Army chief of staff had originally been considered a top candidate for Yoon's residence, but the foreign minister's residence emerged as a better option as the Army chief's home, built in the mid-1970s, requires extensive remodeling.



"We chose the foreign minister's residence as the new official residence because the remodeling work will take only a short period of time to finish even if starts May 10, as the previous foreign ministers have consistently renovated the residence during their stays," the official said. (Yonhap)


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Emmanuel Macron is on course to gain 58% of the French presidential election vote and a clear victory over Marine Le Pen of National Rally. This is a dramatic win for Macron and Republic on the Move, as the French electorate hasn't backed a president for two terms for twenty years. He is the first French president to win re-election since Jacques Chirac in 2002, and never before has a president been re-elected with a majority in parliament.

Le Pen told supporters that she respected the verdict of the ballot box and would continue her fight in French politics. She has previously said that she might leave politics if she lost.

France's foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, told Reuters that the public "did not want a France that turns in on itself".

Boris Johnson tweeted his congratulations to Macron, adding: "France is one of our closest and most important allies. I look forward to continuing to work together on the issues which matter most to our two countries and to the world."
On Saturday, Will Smith was spotted out in public for the first time since slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars, landing in India to meet with a spiritual guru.

Smith touched down at a private airport in Mumbai, India and took selfies with some fans and even the flight crew. It's still unclear why Smith is in Mumbai, but some believe he's there to meet with his spiritual guru to learn how to control his anger.

Will Smith travels to India following Oscars slap controversy https://t.co/kFQESoiLf1pic.twitter.com/Lmg58FTWEd ? Page Six (@PageSix) April 23, 2022

Will Smith waves and smiles at paps

He was seemingly on his own as he arrived at the hotel and paparazzi swarmed him. Smith waved and smiled at the paps as he entered the hotel, looking relaxed and joyful while posing for pictures.

Since his apology on March 28, Smith has yet to say anything in person or on social media regarding the Oscars slap. He gracefully accepted a 10-year ban from Academy events and is in the midst of multiple projects getting cancelled.
UN chief welcomes efforts to promote peace in DR Congo, East Africa

Xinhua) 13:06, April 24, 2022

UNITED NATIONS, April 23 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday welcomed the efforts of Eastern African leaders to promote peace, stability and development in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the greater East African region.

The UN chief commended the regional leaders, including Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, for their determination to work toward these objectives, according to a statement by his associate spokesperson Eri Kaneko.

Guterres emphasized the need for "effective coordination" between the regional force and the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC to protect civilians.

He urged all local armed groups in the DRC to "participate unconditionally" in the political process and all foreign armed groups to "disarm and return unconditionally and immediately" to their respective countries of origin.

Stressing the importance of addressing "the root causes of the conflict," including non-military measures, the UN chief called for a continued, frank, and open dialogue among all stakeholders to resolve tensions and strengthen trust and confidence.

He reaffirmed that the United Nations would continue to support the region's countries in longer-term peacebuilding efforts "aimed at achieving accountability and consolidating peace and security gains," the statement said.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Hongyu)
The foreign minister's official residence in Seoul's Yongsan District, Sunday, seen from Mount Nam in downtown Seoul. Yonhap



By Jung Da-min



President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol's transition committee, Sunday, denied media reports indicating his wife Kim Keon-hee had exerted influence on Yoon's decision to use the foreign minister's official residence as the new presidential residence.



"After the committee had reached the decision in consideration of security, costs, construction period and other things, Kim made a visit there," Yoon's spokesperson, Rep. Bae Hyun-jin of the main opposition conservative People Power Party (PPP), said during a press briefing at the committee's headquarters in central Seoul.



"It is a false report that Kim had an influence on changing the venue of their residence. The relocation of the office and the residence is an issue that the relevant subcommittee has placed emphasis on with many alternatives," she said.



After deciding in March to move his presidential office to the defense ministry building in Yongsan, Yoon had said earlier this month that he will use the official residence of the Army chief of staff near the ministry as the new presidential residence.



However, the transition team recently backpedaled on the previous plan, saying that the Army chief of staff's residence, built 47 years ago, requires extensive renovations before it can be used as the presidential residence. The committee explained that they belatedly discovered such problems as the Army chief of staff has been using another residence in South Chungcheong Province most of the time.



The transition team said it was a false report that Yoon's wife, Kim, had visited the foreign minister's residence before it was selected by Yoon as the new presidential residence.



As for questions regarding possible traffic congestion due to the incoming president commuting from the proposed residence in Hannam-dong to the new presidential office at the defense ministry complex in Hangangro-dong in Yongsan District, Bae said the committee is seeking the best ways to prevent causing possible inconveniences to the people.






Amber Heard has seemingly been caught in a lie after her lawyer Elaine Bredehoft claimed the actress used a makeup product by Milani Cosmetics to cover up her bruises that Johnny Depp allegedly gave her.

The only problem with the claim is that Milani's All In One Correcting Kit was not launched until 2017, as explained by the brand itself. Milani Cosmetics posted a TikTok video on Friday explaining that the makeup kit displayed by Heard's lawyer would not have been available before 2017, stressing that the alleged abuse would have occurred any time from 2012 to 2016.

Johnny Depp trial continues Monday

While Heard's attorney did not specifically name Milani Cosmetics in court, she held up the makeup kit and said Heard carried that product every day to hide her bruises. It could be that Bredehoft was just using the product as an example of the type of makeup Heard used, but it's also possible that they're just lying about the abuse.

The trial continues in Virginia on Monday as Depp attempts to prove that the 2018 Washington Post essay written by Heard -- in which she accused him of domestic abuse -- was defamation. Depp has denied Heard's allegations from the beginning and is seeking a minimum of $50 million in compensatory damages plus a punitive award of at least $350,000, along with court costs and attorneys' fees.
A$AP Rocky has made his first public appearance since his arrest, and Rihanna was right by his side.

The expecting parents dined at RiRi's favorite Santa Monica restaurant, Georgio Baldi, on Saturday night.

According to reports, the dinner was a sort of baby shower with family and friends. It appears to be a mix of casual and formal.

TMZ

When Rocky and Rihanna arrived at LAX from Barbados on Wednesday, they were arrested. Cops charged the rapper with assault with a deadly weapon in November after he allegedly fired a shot at a man and grazed his arm during an argument in Hollywood.

At the same time, cops cuffed A$AP and executed a search warrant at his home, presumably in search of a gun similar to the one used in the shooting. Several boxes of belongings were carted away by cops.

Rihanna's pregnancy status is unknown, but she appears to be in her third trimester and looking better than ever.

TMZ

Didn't Rihanna and A$AP Rocky split?

Rihanna and Rocky have not addressed the rumors directly, but multiple sources have told TMZ and Page Six that the cheating allegations are false.

The cheating rumors and breakup claims, according to one source, are "100% false on both counts, one million percent not true," and the couple is "fine."
Officials of the National Assembly set up a meeting room for the hearing of Prime Minister nominee Han Duck-soo at the National Assembly on Seoul's Yeouido, Sunday. Joint Press Corps



DPK, Justice Party threaten to boycott PM nominee hearing



By Jung Da-min



The National Assembly hearings of minister nominees named by President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol are set to begin, Monday, with the ruling party expected to grill them intensely. Starting from the hearing of Prime Minister nominee Han Duck-soo from Monday to Tuesday, those of the other 18 nominees will continue until early May.



The hearings for Defense Minister nominee Lee Jong-sup and Interior Minister nominee Lee Sang-min are slated for April 28. The hearing of Culture Minister nominee Park Bo-gyoon is scheduled to be held the following day.



Then on May 2, hearings of Land Minister nominee Won Hee-ryong, deputy prime minister and Finance Minister nominee Rep. Choo Kyung-ho and Foreign Minister nominee Rep. Park-jin will be held. The hearings of Health Minister nominee Chung Ho-young and Unification Minister nominee Rep. Kwon Young-se are slated for May 3 and May 4, respectively.



Yoon takes office as the new president on May 10.



As the hearings of minister nominees of the upcoming Yoon administration comes amid ongoing conflicts between the current ruling liberal Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and the main opposition conservative People Power Party (PPP) over multiple issues, including their conflicts over the DPK's strong policy drive for prosecutorial reform, further conflicts are expected to continue over the hearing period.



This is especially so when the hearings are held about a month ahead of the June 1 local elections, which is seen as an extension of the competition between the nation's conservative and liberal blocs following the March 9 presidential election



On Sunday, the PPP issued multiple statements where they criticized the DPK for opposing some nominations, claiming such opposition is being made without adequate grounds.



"The hearing of Prime Minister nominee Han Duck-soo is scheduled to be held for two days starting tomorrow. The hearing should not be tainted by false propaganda but be focused on the verification of qualification and ability," said PPP spokeswoman Rep. Her Eun-a in a commentary.



"The DPK has been making opposition for opposition's sake based on ungrounded allegations, stigmatizing some candidates even before their hearings get started," she said, adding that the DPK already concluded that they will not approve some nominations and proceed with the hearings as they arranged.



There had been expectations at first that the confirmation of Prime Minster nominee Han would proceed smoothly as he served in key posts during previous administrations of both the liberal and conservative blocs  the Roo Moo-hyun (2003-2008), Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013) and Park Geun-hye (2013-2017) administration.





Prime Minister nominee Han Duck-soo arrives at his office set up to prepare for his National Assembly hearing, in Seoul's Jongno District, Friday. Newsis
In the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IITM), with 25 more testing positive, the total number of persons infected with COVID-19 has gone up to 55, said Tamil Nadu Health Secretary J.Radhakrishnan.



According to him, the tests are being conducted in the 19 hostels in IITM complex. The infection rate is higher in a hostel that has students from other states.

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Tamil Nadu Health Secretary J.Radhakrishnan said the government will be increasing the number of Covid-19 tests from the current 18,000 to 25,000 per day.
Main opposition conservative People Power Party Chairman Lee Jun-seok delivers congratulatory remarks at a general meeting of senior members of the Korea Medical Association, held at The K Hotel Seoul in Seocho District, Sunday. Joint Press Corps



By Jung Da-min



Main opposition conservative People Power Party (PPP) Chairman Lee Jun-seok said Sunday that the party will review its earlier agreement with the ruling liberal Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) to pass a compromise version of a prosecutorial reform bill aimed at separating the prosecution's powers to lead investigations and indict suspects.



"I respect that (PPP) floor leader Rep. Kweon Seong-dong tried his best to reach a compromise with the DPK, which threatens to push ahead with its policy drive using its supermajority at the National Assembly, but the PPP will review this compromise bill at the Supreme Council meeting tomorrow (Monday)," Lee said on his Facebook.



The PPP leader said the major problem with the parties' agreement was that it failed to reflect the experience and concerns of prosecutors who have been in charge of carrying out investigations in the field.



"Over the weekend, I received detailed opinions from many jurists regarding discussions over the Prosecutors' Office Act and Criminal Procedure Act. I believe that concerns raised by prosecutors who have been on the front lines in carrying out investigations, including Justice Minister nominee Han Dong-hoon, are valid," Lee said, referring to strong opposition from prosecutors against the parties' agreement.



"As the party chairman, I have respected the floor leadership's discussion. Although the compromise version of the DPK's prosecutorial reform bill was passed at the general meeting of PPP lawmakers, it would be impossible for the PPP to push ahead with it when there are critical contradictions," Lee said.



Lee's remarks immediately triggered a strong backlash from the DPK, in what is seen as a prelude to further conflicts between the two major parties.



DPK floor leader Rep. Park Hong-keun said in a phone interview with local broadcaster MBC that the PPP breaking the agreement after just two days is intolerable. Park asked: "On what grounds is the PPP breaking the agreement the ruling and the main opposition parties made in front of the people?"



On Friday, the floor leaders of the PPP and the DPK signed an agreement proposed by National Assembly Speaker Park Byeong-seug. According to the compromise version, the prosecution will have the power to investigative crimes involving the economy and corruption, while the police will be in charge of investigating other crimes.



Park also proposed the establishment of an independent investigative agency similar to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation that can take over the prosecution's investigative responsibility for crimes involving the economy and corruption.



Under the current system, the prosecution has the power to investigate crimes in six categories including corruption, the economy, public officials, election, defense industry projects and major catastrophes.



The current system was introduced starting in 2021 as part of the liberal bloc's push for prosecutorial reform to distribute the prosecution's investigative and prosecutorial powers to the police. The PPP has been opposing the liberal bloc's prosecutorial reform, while the supermajority DPK and the minor opposition Justice Party stood together to push for it.


Rival parties hit for undermining justice system



The rival parties have reached a compromise over the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK)'s push for prosecutorial reform, averting a further confrontation over the contentious issue. On Friday, the DPK and the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) signed a deal to accept a compromise proposal made by National Assembly Speaker Park Byeong-seug.



It is somewhat fortunate that both sides have broken the political deadlock through dialogue and compromise. The DPK has managed to defuse criticism for its unilateral bid to deprive the prosecution of investigative powers. The PPP, for its part, could afford to block the DPK, which dominates the 300-member Assembly with 172 seats, from ramming through the bills. This is raising hopes that the rival parties can move toward bipartisanship, especially when President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol is seeking to form cooperative ties with the DPK.



Nevertheless, both parties are under fire for compromising the justice system for political purposes. The DPK appears to have won what it wanted: It can prevent the prosecution from digging the dirt on the outgoing Moon Jae-in administration by eventually stripping the law enforcement agency of investigative powers.



The deal only calls for a temporary delay in turning the prosecution into a toothless tiger with only the authority to indict. The DPK had initially sought to hand over all of the prosecution's investigative powers to the police immediately. But it made a concession to allow the prosecution to deal with only two of six major crimes  corruption and economic crimes  temporarily until a new investigative unit resembling the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is set up in one year and six months.



Both parties have agreed to pass the compromise bills by the end of this month so that President Moon can sign them into law before his term ends on May 9. If the agreement is put into practice, the prosecution will not have sufficient time to investigate corruption allegations raised against the Moon administration. Those allegations include Moon's suspected involvement in manipulating the economic assessment of the aged Wolsong-1 nuclear reactor to push for his nuclear energy phase-out policy, and his reported implication in interfering in a local election to help his longtime friend become Ulsan mayor.



Undoubtedly the DPK has no reason to oppose the compromise. Neither does the PPP which apparently seeks to protect incoming President Yoon from a possible investigation into allegations that his wife was involved in manipulating the share prices of Deutsch Motors. That's why the compromise deal is seen as political collusion to cover up corruption, abuse of power and other irregularities of the outgoing and incoming governments.



The DPK and the PPP should not collaborate in preventing the prosecution from investigating politicians over corruption, power abuse, election law violations, and other grave crimes. They need to take more time to have sufficient discussions and build a social consensus on the matter. Reckless and hurried legislation push will only disrupt the criminal justice system and the rule of law, one of the key elements of democracy.






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KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  Russian forces in Ukraine tried to storm a steel plant housing soldiers and civilians in the southern city of Mariupol on Saturday in an attempt to crush the last pocket of resistance in a place of deep symbolic and strategic value to Moscow, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, announced he would meet Sunday in his nation's capital with the U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the U.S. secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin. The White House declined to comment.

Speaking at a news conference, Zelenskyy gave little detail about logistics of the encounter but said he expected concrete results  not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons.

It would be the first high-level U.S. trip to Kyiv since the war began Feb. 24. While visiting Poland in March, Blinken stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil to meet with the country's foreign minister. Zelenskyys last face-to-face meeting with a U.S. leader was Feb. 19 with Vice President Kamala Harris.

In attacks on the eve of Orthodox Easter, Russian forces pounded cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine.

A 3-month-old baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa, officials said. Zelenskyy said 18 more were wounded.

The war started when this baby was one month old. Can you imagine what is happening? Zelenskyy said. They are just bastards. ... I dont have any other words for it, just bastards.

The Ukrainian military said Saturday it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.

The command post was hit on Friday, killing two generals and critically wounding another, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said in a statement. The Russian military did not comment on the claim, which could not be confirmed.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a Zelenskyy adviser, said in an online interview that 50 senior Russian officers were in the command center when it was attacked.

The fate of the Ukrainians in the sprawling and besieged seaside steel mill in Mariupol, where Russia says its forces have taken the rest of the city, wasnt immediately clear. Earlier Saturday, a Ukrainian military unit released a video reportedly taken two days earlier in which women and children holed up underground, some for as long as two months, said they longed to see the sun.

We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe in fresh air, one woman in the video said. You have simply no idea what it means for us to simply eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, it is already happiness.

Russia said it took control of several villages elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region and destroyed 11 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including three artillery warehouses. Russian attacks also struck populated areas.

Associated Press journalists observed shelling in residential areas of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city; regional Gov. Oleh Sinehubov said three people were killed. In the Luhansk area of the Donbas, Gov. Serhiy Haidai said six people died during the shelling of a village, Gorskoi.

In Sloviansk, a town in northern Donbas, the AP witnessed two soldiers arriving at a hospital, one of them mortally wounded.

Sitting in a wheelchair outside her damaged Sloviansk apartment, Anna Direnskaya, 70, said, I want peace."

One of many native Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, Direnskaya said she wishes Russians would understand that Ukrainians are not bad people and that there should be no enmity between them.

"Why is this happening?" she said. I dont know.

While British officials said Russian forces had not gained significant new ground, Ukrainian officials announced a nationwide curfew ahead of Easter Sunday, a sign of the wars disruption and threat to the entire country.

Mariupol has been a key Russian objective and has taken on outsize importance in the war. Completing its capture would give Russia its biggest victory yet, after a nearly two-month siege reduced much of the city to a smoking ruin.

It would deprive Ukrainian of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere and establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014. Russia-backed separatists control parts of the Donbas.

An adviser to Ukraine's presidential office, Oleksiy Arestovych, said Russian forces resumed airstrikes on the Azovstal plant and were also trying to storm it, in an apparent reversal of tactics. Two days earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had given an order not to send troops in but instead to blockade the plant.

Ukrainian officials have estimated that about 2,000 of their troops are inside the plant along with civilians sheltering in its underground tunnels.

Earlier Saturday, the Azov Regiment of Ukraines National Guard, which has members holed up in the plant, released the video of about two dozen women and children. Its contents could not be independently verified. But if authentic, it would be the first video testimony of what life has been like for civilians trapped underground there.

The video shows soldiers giving sweets to children who respond with fist-bumps. One young girl says she and her relatives havent seen neither the sky nor the sun since they left home Feb. 27.

The regiments deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, told the AP the video was shot Thursday. The Azov Regiment has its roots in the Azov Battalion, which was formed by far-right activists in 2014 at the start of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine and has elicited criticism for some of its tactics.

More than 100,000 people  down from a prewar population of about 430,000  are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate that over 20,000 civilians have been killed in the city.

Yet another attempt to evacuate women, children and older adults from Mariupol failed Saturday. Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupols mayor, said Russian forces did not allow Ukrainian-organized buses to take residents to Zaporizhzhia, a city 227 kilometers (141 miles) to the northwest.

At 11 oclock, at least 200 Mariupol residents gathered near the Port City shopping center, waiting for evacuation, Andryushchenko posted on the Telegram messaging app. The Russian military drove up to the Mariupol residents and ordered them to disperse, because now there will be shelling.

At the same time, he said, Russian buses assembled about 200 meters (yards) away. Residents who boarded those were told they were being taken to separatist-occupied territory and not allowed to disembark, Andryushchenko said. His account could not be independently verified.

In the attack on Odesa, Russian troops fired at least six missiles, according to Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraines interior minister.

Residents of the city heard explosions in different areas, Gerashchenko said via Telegram. Residential buildings were hit. It is already known about one victim. He burned in his car in a courtyard of one of the buildings.

Zelenskyy's news conference was held in a Kyiv subway station, where he paused at one point as a train noisily passed through. The subway system, which includes the worlds deepest station, attracted widespread attention early in the war when hordes of people took shelter there.

Regarding the expected visit Sunday by U.S. officials, Zelenskyy said: I believe that we will be able to get agreements from the United States or part of that package on arming Ukraine which we agreed on earlier. Besides, we have strategic questions about security guarantees, which it is time to discuss in detail, because the United States will be one of those leaders of security countries for our state.

___

Fisch reported from Sloviansk, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Inna Varenytsia in Kviv and Associated Press staff members around the world contributed to this report.

___

Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  Volunteers and government workers in Shanghai erected metal barriers in multiple districts to block off small streets and entrances to apartment complexes, as China hardens its strict zero-COVID approach in its largest city despite growing complaints from residents.

In the city's financial district, Pudong, the barriers  thin metal sheets or mesh fences  were put up in several neighborhoods under a local government directive, according to Caixin, a Chinese business media outlet. Buildings where cases have been found sealed up their main entrances, with a small opening for pandemic prevention workers to pass through.

In Beijing, authorities announced a mass testing starting Monday of Chaoyang district, home to more than 3 million people in the Chinese capital.

The announcement set off panic buying Sunday evening, with vegetables, eggs, soy sauce and other items wiped off grocery shelves.

A fresh outbreak has infected at least 41 people, including 26 in Chaoyang district, state broadcaster CGTN reported.

China reported 21,796 new community transmitted COVID-19 infections on Sunday, with the vast majority being asymptomatic cases in Shanghai. Across the country, many cities and provinces have enforced some version of a lockdown in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus.

The latest outbreak, driven by the highly contagious omicron variant, has spread nationwide, but has been particularly large in Shanghai. The city, a financial hub with 25 million residents, has counted hundreds of thousands of cases but fewer than 100 deaths since the outbreak began nearly two months ago.

An Associated Press examination of the death toll found that despite a history of narrow criteria for linking deaths to particular diseases, especially COVID-19, authorities have changed how they count positive cases, leading to wiggle room in how they arrive at a final death count. The result is almost certainly an undercount of the true death toll.

On social media, people posted videos of the new barriers being put up Saturday, with some expressing anger over the measures. The barriers are meant to leave main roads unblocked, Caixin reported.

In one video, verified by the AP, residents leaving a building in Shanghai's Xuhui district broke down the mesh fence barricade at their front entrance and went looking for the security guard they believed to be responsible for putting it up.

Shanghai is using a tiered system in which neighborhoods are divided into three categories based on the risk of transmission. Those in the first category face the strictest COVID-19 controls and were the main target of the new heightened measures. In the third category, some buildings allow people to leave their homes and visit public areas.

In Shanghai, authorities reported 39 new COVID-19 deaths, raising the official death toll to 4,725 as of the end of Saturday, the National Health Commission said Sunday.

The city's lockdown has drawn global attention for its strict approach and sometimes dangerous consequences. Many residents in the city have had difficulties getting groceries, resorting to bartering and bulk buying. Others have been unable get adequate medical attention in time, owing to the strict controls on movement.

On Friday, Chinese internet users shared a six-minute video called Voices of April that documents some of the most challenging public moments the city has experienced in the nearly month-long lockdown. One part features audio of residents in one Shanghai community who protested on April 8, screaming: "Send us food! Send us food! Send us food! in unison.

The video blanketed WeChat timelines before it was abruptly removed by censors Saturday.

Chinese authorities have continued to say that the zero-COVID strategy is the best way forward given low vaccination rates in people over age 60, and that omicron would result in many deaths and severe illnesses if the country ended its strict approach.

___

Associated Press journalist Penny Wang in Bangkok contributed to this report.
SANAA, Yemen (AP)  Yemens warring parties failed to operate the first commercial flight in six years from the rebel-held capital on Sunday, dealing a blow to an already fragile truce in the countrys grinding conflict.

The flight to Amman, Jordan, had been planned as part of the U.N.-brokered, 60-day truce agreement that the internationally recognized government and the Houthi rebels struck earlier this month.

The truce, which went into effect on April 2, is the first nationwide cease-fire in Yemen in six years. It came amid concerted international and regional efforts to find a settlement to the conflict that devastated the Arab Worlds poorest country and pushed it to the brink of famine.

Yemens brutal civil war erupted in 2014, when the Iranian-backed Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and forced the government into exile. The Saudi-led coalition entered the war in early 2015 to try restore the government to power.

The conflict has in recent years become a regional proxy war that has killed more than 150,000 people, including over 14.500 civilians. It has also created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

As part of the truce, the two sides agreed to operate two commercial flights a week to and from Sanaa to Jordan and Egypt. Sanaa is blockaded by the Saudi-led coalition.

However, both sides have failed to operate the first flight, over three weeks since the truce took effect. They have traded blame for the failure.

The Houthis accused the Saudi-led coalition of failing to issue needed permits for the flight, without giving further details.

Moammar al-Iryani, information minister of the internationally recognized government, said the Houthis did not adhere to the agreement because they wanted dozens of passengers to board using passports issued by the rebels.

He said the government allowed the travel of 104 passengers on the Sanaa-Amman flight but the Houthis insisted on adding 60 more passengers with unreliable passports.

The internationally recognized government announced in March 2017 that it doesn't recognize documents issued by the rebels.

A spokesman for the Houthis did not respond to a request for comment.

Hans Grundberg, the U.N. special envoy for Yemen, urged both sides to work constructively with the U.N. to address the challenges that delayed the flight.

The Truce is meant to benefit civilians including through reducing violence, making fuel available, and improving their freedom of movement to, from and within their country, he said on Twitter.

The U.N. envoy's office said Grundberg began mediation efforts to address differences between the two sides on flight procedures when a disagreement arose on Thursday. It did not elaborate.

Along with the flights, the truce also included allowing 18 vessels carrying fuel into the port of Hodeida, which is controlled by the Houthis, over a two month period. The internationally recognized government has so far allowed 8 fuel vessels to into Hodedia, the U.N. envoy's office said.

The sides have also yet to convene on a reopening of roads around Taiz and other provinces as part of the truce. The government accused the Houthis of delaying the meeting as they did not send names of their delegation for the talks to the U.N. envoy's office.

The government provided the names of its delegation on April 7, according to the U.N. envoy's office.

Erin Hutchinson, Yemen director at the Norwegian Refugee Council, said she was deeply disappointed by the last-minute cancellation of the flight. She urged both sides to adhere to to their commitments in the truce, including the flights and the reopening of roads in Taiz and elsewhere in Yemen.

The first few weeks of the truce have already allowed us to reach areas that were inaccessible for over three years because of the fighting, she said.

The truce has resulted in a subsiding of ground and air fighting and the rebels have stopped their cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, another pillar of the anti-Houthi coalition.

Both sides, however, have reported almost daily violations of the cease-fire, especially around the government-held central city of Marib, which the Houthis have attempted to seize for over a year.

The Houthis, meanwhile, released 14 foreign detainees. They were a British citizen, his wife and son, as well as seven Indians, and one detainee each from Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar, and Ethiopia, Omans Foreign Ministry said.

The ministry said in a statement the detainees were transferred Saturday on an Omani military flight to Omans capital, Muscat before heading to their home countries. Oman has close ties with the Houthis and has for years played a mediation role in Yemens war.

Luke Symons, a 29-year-old from Cardiff, was apparently detained simply for holding a U.K. passport. He had been arrested at a Houthi-manned checkpoint in April 2017 in the southwestern city of Taiz, Amnesty International said in February.

The rights group said the Houthis tortured him and accused him of spying for the British government.

It was not immediately clear whether the seven Indians are the crew of an Emirati ship the Houthis seized in January in the Red Sea off Hodeida.

___

Magdy reported from Cairo.
WATERTOWN  A child was found dead after being trapped under a farming tractor near Barnes Road on Saturday.

The Watertown Police Department reported that shortly before 3:30 p.m. Saturday, police and fire crews received a report of a child entrapped under a farm tractor, in a field on Barnes Road between Lake Winnemaug and Bunker Hill roads.
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TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP)  Survivors of a doomed migrant boat blamed the Lebanese navy on Sunday for sinking it, saying a naval vessel rammed the packed ship while trying to force it back to shore.

Meanwhile the death toll of Saturday night's disaster rose to seven, with state media reporting the recovery of a body of a man from Tripoli. The incident was the latest in a growing trend involving mostly Lebanese and Syrians trying to travel to Europe from Lebanon in search of better lives.

Survivor Mustafa al-Jundi told The Associated Press that the navy tried to stop the migrant boat but it kept sailing.

They rammed into us and made us sink then moved away, said al-Jundi, whose two sisters are still missing. He said the Lebanese military returned about 90 minutes later and rescued them.

Angry residents attacked a main army checkpoint in Tripoli earlier in the day, throwing stones at troops who responded by firing into the air. Some shops closed as angry men blocked several streets in Tripoli, Lebanons most impoverished city. There were no reports of injuries.

The Lebanese military announced that 47 people were rescued, while seven bodies including one of a young girl had been recovered. They said high waves had submerged the boat, which was carrying more people than it could hold.

Col. Haitham Dinnawi, commander of the Lebanese navy, told reporters the old boat had been packed with nearly 60 people, but could only carry six. No precautionary measures were taken onboard, he added, and no one was wearing life vests.

Dinnawi blamed the captain of the migrant boat for maneuvering to avoid being forced to return back to shore, and blamed him for the collision. He showed photographs of the damage on the side and back of one navy boat, adding that the migrant boat sank within seconds after the accident.

It was a crime to take people on such a boat, Dinnawi said, adding that it was manufactured in 1974 and carrying 15 times its capacity. He said search operations are still ongoing for the missing.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati declared a day of national mourning on Monday.

It is appalling to see deprivation still drives people to take these dangerous trips across the seas, tweeted Lebanons U.N. humanitarian coordinator, Najat Rochdi.

Several of the rescued were treated on the spot while others were taken to nearby hospitals. One person was detained on suspicion of being a smuggler involved in organizing the journey, the military said.

Search operations began Saturday night after the boat, apparently heading to Europe, sank shortly after leaving the coastal Lebanese town of Qalamoun.

For many years Lebanon was a country that took in refugees, but since the countrys economic meltdown began in October 2019, hundreds of people have left on boats hoping for a better life in Europe.

Migrants from Lebanon pay thousands of dollars to smugglers to take them to Europe. Hundreds have made it to European countries, while dozens of others have been stopped and forced to return home by the Lebanese navy. Several people have lost their lives on the way to Europe over the past three years.

Lebanon, a small Mediterranean nation of 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, is in the grip of the worst economic crisis in the countrys modern history. The economic meltdown has put more three-quarters of the countrys population into poverty.

The World Bank describes the crisis as among the worst in the world since the 1850s. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs and the Lebanese pound has lost more than 90% of its value.

_____

Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue contributed to this report from Beirut.
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WASHINGTON (AP)  Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren is slamming Rep. Kevin McCarthy as a liar and a traitor over recordings that show the House Republican leader  despite his denials  placing responsibility on then-President Donald Trump for the Capitol riot and suggesting Trump should resign.

It's unusually strong language to use against the House Republican leader, who is in line to become speaker  second in presidential succession  if Republicans win control of the House in the November elections.

But Warren's statement reflects a swell of Democratic criticism against McCarthy. They point to his recorded comments in January 2021 as proof that GOP lawmakers at the highest levels privately acknowledge Trump's role in the insurrection at the Capitol yet continue to defend him in public.

McCarthy, R-Calif., denied a New York Times report last week that detailed phone conversations with House Republican leadership shortly after the riot that he thought Trump should resign. He called it totally false. But in an audio first posted Thursday by the newspaper and aired on Rachel Maddows MSNBC show, McCarthy is heard discussing the possibility of urging Trump to leave office amid the Democratic push to impeach him.

Asked Sunday about her reaction, Warren, D-Mass., called the circumstances outrageous.

Kevin McCarthy is a liar and a traitor, she told CNN's State of the Union.

That is really the illness that pervades the Republican leadership right now, that they say one thing to the American public and something else in private," Warren said. "They understand that it is wrong what happened, an attempt to overthrow our government and that the Republicans instead want to continue to try to figure out how to make 2020 election different instead of spending their energy on how it is that we go forward in order to build an economy, in order to make this country work better for the people who sent us to Washington.

Shame on Kevin McCarthy, she said.

There was no immediate response Sunday from McCarthy's office to a request for comment.

The crowd that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, marched there from a rally near the White House where Trump had implored them to fight to overturn Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the presidential election, saying falsely the election was stolen. Trump has denied responsibility for the violence.

McCarthy has been a person of interest for the House committee investigating the storming of the Capitol. The committee requested an interview with McCarthy in mid-January, seeking information on his communications with Trump and White House staff in the week after the violence, including a conversation with Trump that was reportedly heated.

McCarthy issued a statement at the time saying he would refuse to cooperate because he saw the investigation as not legitimate and accused the panel of abuse of power.

Trump and McCarthy had a strained relationship after the Capitol attack, but made amends after the GOP leader flew to the former presidents resort in Florida to smooth things over.

Their alliance renewed, McCarthy is now relying on Trump to help Republicans win the House majority in this November's midterm elections.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  Russian forces called in air strikes on a besieged steel factory in the southern city of Mariupol as part of an assault meant to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops holding out in the strategic port, Ukrainian officials said Sunday, while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would meet in Kyiv with two top American officials later in what was the 60th day since the invasion began.

Zelenskyy gave few details about the logistics of his upcoming talks with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, but told reporters he expected results  not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons.

It would be the first high-level U.S. trip to Kyiv since before the war began on Feb. 24. While visiting Poland in March, Blinken stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil to meet with the countrys foreign minister. Zelenskyys last face-to-face meeting with a U.S. leader was Feb. 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Origin APNews

In Mariupol, Russian forces have continued to pummel the besieged Azovstal plant, hitting it with air strikes, including by long-range aircraft, Oleksandr Shtupun, spokesman for the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff, said Sunday.

Russia has been trying to take Mariupol for nearly two months, a city whose capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere, and establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014. Russia-backed separatists control parts of the Donbas region, where Mariupol is located.

Some 2,000 troops have been fighting tenaciously to hold on to the last remaining Ukrainian outpost in the city, the Azovstal steel plant, which also has civilians taking refuge in its labyrinthine tunnel system.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had given an order not to send troops in but instead to blockade the plant last week, but the assault resumed Saturday after the Ukrainian soldiers refused to surrender.

Elsewhere, Shtupun said Russia has pressed its attacks in the eastern Donbas region, intensifying offensive and assault operations toward the cities of Popasna and Siverodonetsk in Luhansk, and Kurakhiv in Donetsk.

Luhansk region Governor Serhiy Haidai said Sunday that eight people were killed and two others were wounded in a Russian barrage Saturday.

Russian military vehicles move in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, April 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov)

The shelling comes as the Russians are pressing their offensive in a bid to gain full control over Ukraines eastern industrial heartland called Donbas.

The Russians also have shelled the Dnipro region west of Donbas, where at least one person was killed by a Russian missile, according to Dnipro regional Governor Valentyn Reznichenko.

Russia has pulled back forces from Kyiv and the north of the country to feed into the Donbas offensive, but the British Ministry of Defense said Sunday that Ukrainian forces had been able to repel numerous assaults in the past week.

Despite Russia making some territorial gains, Ukrainian resistance has been strong across all axes and inflicted significant cost on Russian forces, the ministry said in an intelligence update.

Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganize forces from prior offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness, it said.

The Ukrainian military said Saturday it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.

The command post was hit on Friday, killing two generals and critically wounding another, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said in a statement. The Russian military did not comment on the claim, which could not be confirmed.

If true, at least nine Russian generals have been killed since the start of the invasion, according to Ukrainian reports.

A Joint Honor Guard member holds the Ukrainian flag during an honor cordon ceremony, as Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III welcomes Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal to the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., April 21, 2022. (DoD photo by Lisa Ferdinando)

The fate of the Ukrainians in the sprawling steel mill in Mariupol, where Russia says its forces have taken the rest of the city, wasnt immediately clear.

On Saturday the Azov Regiment of Ukraines National Guard, which has members holed up in the plant, released a video of around two dozen women and children. Its contents could not be independently verified, but if authentic, it would be the first video testimony of what life has been like for civilians trapped underground there.

The video shows soldiers giving sweets to children who respond with fist-bumps. One young girl said she and her relatives had "seen neither the sky nor the sun since they left home Feb. 27.

The regiments deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, told the AP the video was shot Thursday. The Azov Regiment has its roots in the Azov Battalion, which was formed by far-right activists in 2014 at the start of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine and has elicited criticism for some of its tactics.

More than 100,000 people  down from a prewar population of about 430,000  are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate that over 20,000 civilians have been killed in the city.

Yet another attempt to evacuate women, children and older adults from Mariupol failed Saturday. Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupols mayor, said Russian forces did not allow Ukrainian-organized buses to take residents to Zaporizhzhia, a city 141 miles to the northwest.

___

Fisch reported from Sloviansk, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Inna Varenytsia in Kviv and Associated Press staff members around the world contributed to this story.
The British consul heads to the Korean palace in the 1890s. Robert Neff Collection



By Robert Neff



On April 10, 1901, the British representative in Korea presented the Order of the Grand Commander of the Indian Empire to Emperor Gojong. The Korea Review  an English-language magazine published in Seoul  declared in a very short article that the document accompanying the decoration was one of the last signed by the late Queen Victoria with her own hand.



For such an amazing honor, it seems somewhat disappointing the Korea Review deigned to celebrate it with such a short article. Fortunately, soldiers and sailors love to complain and moan and often lack the tact of their diplomatic counterparts.



A British sailor  his identity is not given  accompanied his captain along with three other officers to Seoul in order to confer the award, which he described as "a somewhat magnificent order, badge, and collar, evidently instituted to a great extent as suitable for dusky potentates, &c." All arrangements had been made for the award to be bestowed upon the emperor but at the last moment the ceremony was postponed by a day.



The following day, the five sailors  in their dress uniforms  proceeded from the British consulate to the palace in chairs borne by six coolies. A large Korean military guard preceded them and they were accompanied by two Korean officers who rode alongside them in their own chairs.



According to our witness:



"The palace appeared to me to be a collection of low rambling buildings, commanded by walls and large gates, all very Chinese style of architecture. Soldiers guard all entrances, and everybody entering is greeted at once by shrill whistles, repeated at different portions of the palace, to announce to the Emperor and his attendants a stranger on the scene. The fear of assassination is ever with this monarch. It is not so very long ago that his Queen was cut down within the palace walls, and he takes the utmost precautions and is guarded in every way. We duly passed the guards, were announced by the whistles, and then, stopping at a fairly large building, were received on the steps of it by the Minister of the Household, to whom we were presented by our Consul."



Afterwards they were led into a large reception room that "was furnished according to supposed Western ideas." His criticism is especially telling as Antoinette Sontag seems to have been responsible for the selection of furniture and cuisine.





Deoksu Palace circa 1900s Robert Neff Collection



According to our sailor:



"It rather gave me the idea of a cheap boarding house or something of the kind, carpeted with bright flaring carpet, the windows hung with the ordinary net or imitation lace curtains common in England. A heavy glass chandelier hung from the ceiling over a small table covered by a red cloth. Many plush-upholstered chairs were arranged round the room, and beyond a small clock and a screen of [Korean] work (the only decent thing in the room by the way), which screened off a corner of the room devoted to a small table of refreshments, and one or two attendants, there was no other furniture."



It was here that they met the Korean courtiers, "dressed in dark green gowns and wearing the horsehair netted head-dress of the country." The sailor seems to have found some interest in the accessories of the uniforms  "buttons worn behind the ears, either made of jade or gold, and a very comical belt, many sizes too large for them, of metal and stone, stiff as a barrel hoop, and evidently slug to their gowns somehow, for it is useless as a belt."



It is interesting to note that instead of coffee (which the Americans were generally provided) they were offered "tea (European fashion, milk and sugar) and cigars and cigarettes and biscuits."



Like any good military man, our commentator was annoyed with the delay:



"We had a long wait here, as, with the procrastination peculiar to Eastern Courts, no arrangements had been made by the Korean authorities, no details of procedure had been demanded, and, beyond the bare day being fixed, they had done nothing, despite vigorous efforts on the part of our Consul, to get everything arranged beforehand. It took quite an hour to arrange the preliminaries of our being presented, some slight flaw in a Chinese character in the document announcing investiture had to be gone into, then it had to be arranged that the order and insignia should be presented to, and not placed on, his Majesty  as his sacred person cannot be touched  the method of wearing the sash and collar had to be shown, and so on ad lib. until we got very tired indeed."





An overview of Deoksu Palace in the 1900s Robert Neff Collection
HONOLULU (AP)  The U.S. government on Friday dropped its appeals of a Hawaii order requiring it to remove fuel from a massive military fuel storage facility that leaked petroleum into the Navy's water system at Pearl Harbor last year.

Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Defense notified the state and federal courts of its decision. The move comes more than a month after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the military would permanently shut down the tanks and drain all of their fuel.

The Hawaii Department of Health, which issued the order, said the decision regarding the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility was a step forward.

While todays announcement is good news, the work continues, the department said in a statement. It said it would "continue to act expeditiously and proactively to oversee the safe defueling and decommissioning of Red Hill and restoration of the aquifer.

David Henkin, an attorney for Earthjustice which is representing the Sierra Club of Hawaii as an interested party in the case said his clients would remain vigilant to make sure the tanks are promptly defueled.

Its a wonderful Earth Day gift to the people of Hawaii and in particular to all the residents of Oahu who depend on safe, clean drinking water when they turn on their tap, Henkin said.

The Navy and the Hawaii Department of Health did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Henkin said even if Austin were to change his mind and try to keep the tanks open, the military will now face an enforceable, unimpeachable, unchallengeable order from the Department of Health that they need to follow.

The order from the Hawaii Department of Health requires the military to remove fuel from the tanks 30 days after its safe to do so. The military will have to stick to this deadline now that its dropping the appeal, Henkin said.

The military, with oversight from the state health department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is currently developing plans to safely remove the fuel. Its uncertain how long this will take.

Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, said in a statement that the dropping of the lawsuit "paves the way for us to shut down Red Hill this year.

The legal challenge made it hard for the state to work cooperatively with the Defense Department, Schatz said. He said he pushed hard for the military to make this decision.

Petroleum leaked from the Red Hill tanks into a Navy drinking water well late last year, sickening 6,000 people mostly living in military housing. Medical teams treated people complaining of nausea, headaches, rashes and other symptoms. The military put about 4,000 families in hotels for several months while it cleaned its water pipes.

The tanks also pose a threat to water consumed by 400,000 on Oahu. Thats because they sit 100 feet above an aquifer that serves the Honolulu Board of Water Supply, the citys water utility, in addition to the Navy's water system.

The city utility has suspended use of three of its wells until it can be sure petroleum wont migrate through the aquifer from the area by the Navys well to its own wells.

The water utility and local leaders are also worried another spill could poison the citys water system.
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Majority Chief Whip and Member of Parliament for Nsawam-Adoagyiri, Frank Annoh-Dompreh is appealing to Ghanaians to rally behind the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia-led government to enjoy a consistent power supply in the country.

According to Mr Annoh-Dompreh, its only the NPP government that can end the era of dumsor, adding that our stable power supply is as a result of a conscious effort by an efficient and competent leadership. You are assured of a stable power supply while the NPP remains in office.

The Majority Chief Whip made this known on his Twitter page after a visit to the Sunon Asogli Thermal Power Station.

He said Ghanaians can enjoy stable power because the government paid 30% of the debt inherited in 2018 and 66% in 2019.

He explained further that, the ruling NPP since assuming power in 2017, has taken many initiatives to address the challenges facing the energy sector including the payment of 87% of the legacy debt.

In 2020 the NPP govt settled a legacy debt amount of $203 million between SAP, ECG & VRA. The NPP govt had struck a better working relationship with all the IPPs in this country.

Mr. Annoh-Dompreh also explains that the NPP has implemented the Cash Waterfall Mechanism (CWM), Natural Gas Clearing House (NGCH), restrategized, and renegotiated the Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs).

Additionally, the Ministry of Energy in 2019 instituted the Cash Waterfall Mechanism to prevent the growth of sector-wide indebtedness.

The waterfall payment is a payment system that allows debtors to pay higher-tiered creditors their full interest and principal first before lower-tiered creditors receive their principal and interest payment.

Annoh-Dompreh explained that the NPP knows and understands what should be deemed as a priority and has therefore put in place the necessary measures to avoid dumsor.

In recent times, Ghanaians have been concerned about the return of dumsor. This follows intermittent power supply witnessed across the country.

But Energy Minister, Matthew Opoku Prempreh has disclosed that the recent power outages are a result of some unfavorable load imbalance in the systems used in the delivery of power.

A couple of days ago, we had the Aboadze Switch Yard burnt and that has led to a lot of intermittent power curtailment in parts of Western Region, Central Region, and even the Greater Accra Region. Because what GRIDCo is doing is to put all the networks in a circuit such that energy can be wheeled wherever with automatic meters.

But that also meant that they will increasingly have trip-off if the load imbalance is unfavorable to the system. So the system decides to shut itself down to prevent machine and equipment damage

So it's true that parts of the country are experiencing intermittent power surges because of a combination of factors, which are the works that we are doing and the light going off by itself, he said .

He, therefore, urged Ghanaians to bear with the Ministry as it strives to resolve the situation.

DGN online
Mr, Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN FAO

23.04.2022 LISTEN

A promising transformation has already started in Africas farmlands. Family farmers are increasingly using innovative approaches and scientific research, combined with traditional knowledge, to increase the productivity of their fields, diversify their crops, boost their nutrition, and build climate resilience.

This shift can go much further with the addition of digital tools, increased links to markets, and greater efficiency along agrifood chains, especially if the private sector and national policies also support the effort.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), along with a broad range of partners, is working to promote the African continent to make Africas agrifood systems more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient, and more sustainable.

For this transformation to be achieved, African countries must be in the drivers seat.

From 11 to 14 April 2022, representatives from more than 50 African countries will come together at the 32nd Session of the FAO Regional Conference for Africa in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, to define regional priorities for agrifood systems transformation on the continent.

The conference comes at a time when 281 million people in Africa do not have enough food to eat each day, nearly three-quarters of the African population cannot afford nutritious food, and drought threatens lives and livelihoods in the Horn of Africa. Meanwhile, countries are still grappling with the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like the tall ceiba tree on Equatorial Guineas national flag, which grows around the island of Malabo, we too must stand tall in the face of Africas many simultaneous and overlapping challenges. We will hold the four-day high-level meeting in the same venue where leaders of the African Union member countries first committed to transform the African agriculture sector to end hunger in Africa by 2025.

Time is running out. Without extraordinary efforts by every African country, it will be difficult to meet these aspirations and the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Digitalization and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) can be game changers in this extraordinary effort. At FAO, we see digitalization as a core element of rural development. Our 1000 Digital Villages initiative is currently being piloted in seven African countries. It aims to equip communities with digital tools and services to fast-track rural transformation and wellbeing. Through this initiative, FAO has already supported countries in using digital tools to create electronic land registries and apps for pest and disease management, including extension services reaching the last mile farmers.

In the same way, the AfCFTA can radically transform Africas rural prosperity. This regional single market, covering 1.2 billion consumers, is a major opportunity to boost economic growth, reduce poverty, and broaden economic inclusion. Swift national implementation, taking into account women and youth, will see this opportunity benefit all.

Indeed, African countries already have a suite of instruments to speed up transformation of agrifood systems and rural development. Chief among them is the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP)  the continent-wide initiative led by African countries to end hunger and reduce poverty through agricultural development.

I welcome the African countries recent renewed commitment to accelerate CAADP implementation towards achieving the Malabo commitments. FAO stands ready to support this work, including strengthening the quality of data used to measure progress as part of the CAADP biennial review.

Other existing instruments to accelerate progress include the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), which provides a common framework for African stakeholders to build integrated infrastructure to boost trade and jobs; the African Union Climate Change Strategy that aims at achieving the Agenda 2063 Vision by building the resilience of the continent to the negative impacts of climate change; the Science Technology Innovation Strategy for Africa (STISA), which can have enormous benefits for agriculture; and Boosting Intra African Trade to make trade a development driver.

African ownership and African leadership in all of these is vital.

These issues and more will be at the core of the 32nd Session of the FAO Regional Conference for Africa. Ministerial roundtables will focus on the policy priorities needed to address and mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on African agrifood systems; investing in ecosystem restoration in Africa for agrifood systems transformation; promoting trade and investment under the AfCFTA; and ensuring that women, youth, and rural farmers are included in the continents agrifood systems.

I invite policy makers, civil society organizations, research institutions, the private sector, donor partners, and all stakeholders interested in Africas transformation by innovation in agriculture to follow the proceedings.

Underpinning the discussions will be the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-31, which supports the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and sets out our roadmap for achieving the Four Betters: better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life for all, leaving no one behind.

Central to delivering on these objectives are FAOs flagship initiatives, such as the Hand-in-Hand Initiative, which identifies gaps in rural transformation and matches countries with partners to deliver tangible results. It is supported by a geospatial data platform powered by FAOs wealth of data on key sectors.

So far, 27 African countries have joined this global initiative. I encourage more countries in Africa to take part and benefit from this unique opportunity.

FAO also has recently launched the One Country One Priority Product initiative in Africa to support countries in developing sustainable value chains and reaching new markets.

Our new Green Cities Initiative, which integrates urban forestry and agriculture into local planning, is underway in several African cities. This makes for more sustainable cities and shorter routes for nutritious food to reach markets. All these initiatives are country-driven and country-owned, highlighting that action at the country level is critical.

Together we can transform Africas agriculture to achieve The Africa We Want.

Mr. Qu Dongyu is the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Follow the conference at FAOs webcast portal: www.fao.org/webcast

For more information on COVID-19, visit www.un.org/coronavirus

Africa Renewal
Survivors of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, at the Mwurire Genocide Site, during a visit to Rwanda by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1998.

Last year, I visited Rwanda as United Nations Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, to honour and pay respect to the victims and survivors of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. My visit was also aimed at contributing to advancing national reconciliation and trust-building efforts across the country, including by supporting initiatives at the local and community level.

This year as we mark, the anniversary and the beginning of the mourning period, Kwibuka, I remember too that Rwanda is a country of historical significance to my office. The mandate of my office was created largely because of the failures of the United Nations and the international community to prevent and respond to the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994 and the Srebrenica genocide in 1995.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres often states that acknowledging the past is a vital step towards rebuilding trust, and that reconciliation means rejecting denial of genocide and war crimes and of any effort to glorify convicted war criminals. It also means recognizing the suffering of all victims and not attributing collective guilt.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) determined conclusively that a genocide was committed against the Tutsi in Rwanda. This constitutes an important step towards re-establishing peace and security in Rwanda and promoting reconciliation among Rwandans.

I came to Rwanda from an earlier visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where another genocide, the Srebrenica Genocide happened. My visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina was due to growing concerns around persistent patterns of denial of the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, glorification of war criminals, hate speech, and rhetoric of division.

There is a pattern to denial of not just the Srebrenica Genocide, but also the Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsi, and the Holocaust. Those who deny these atrocities also celebrate the criminals who committed these atrocity crimes. The arguments for denying all three of these most tragic of human experiences, genocide - the crime of crimes - are similar and without merit. The deniers ignore historical facts and judicial decisions.

Ms. Alice Wairimu Nderitu, Under-Secretary-General and the United Nations Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide

Yet justice continues to be done. In Germany, a man in his 90s was recently found guilty of complicity in more than 5,200 murders during the Holocaust. A 96-year-old woman, who prosecutors say worked as a secretary to the commandant of a concentration camp, will face trial for alleged complicity in the killings of more than 11,000 people; a 100-year-old man who allegedly served as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp will stand trial for alleged complicity in the killings of more than 3,500 people. Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb commander, lost his appeal before the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (UNIRMCT) on the convictions for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity as well as his sentence of life imprisonment. An alleged financier of the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi, Felicien Kabuga who is in his 80s, was arrested and is facing trial after more than 20 years on the run.

Genocide denial

The denial of genocide is an affront to the victims. It aims to deny the right of remembrance to those who died. I consider it important to take specific steps and a structured approach to prevent genocide. This includes promotion of education and remembrance as key tools against denial of past crimes, criminal accountability and adjudication of criminal allegations, trust building and reconciliation.

We must teach each new generation that genocide signifies a coordinated plan of action defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.

We must never forget the victims and we must never forget the crime of genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Twenty-eight years after the genocide, significant steps towards justice and accountability for past crimes have been achieved in Rwandan courts and before the ICTR, but more remains to be done.

As is common knowledge, many indicted people are still at large, with some reportedly living normal lives without fear of being brought to justice in Member States of the UN. Undoubtedly, this impunity undermines what my office stands for. As the Under-Secretary-General for the Prevention of Genocide, it is incumbent on my Office to join hands with all parties seeking accountability for perpetrators of atrocity crimes as well as to help provide a strong deterrence to would-be perpetrators of atrocity crimes.

It is important that all UN member states extend cooperation to the Office of the Prosecutor of the IRMCT and Rwanda Judiciary to apprehend and bring to justice genocide perpetrators and fugitives living in their territories while acknowledging the good efforts of the Member States who have done so.

On transitional justice, the world has learnt a lot from the role locally led initiatives such as the Gacaca courts played and contributed, not only to hold accountable low-level perpetrators, but also in promoting truth and reconciliation in Rwanda.

Accountability for atrocity crimes is important to obtain justice for the victims and rebuild public trust in justice and security institutions; prevent future crimes and through transitional justice, promote reconciliation and contribute to sustainable peace.

As the UN system-wide Focal Point on the implementation of the UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech, my office shall work with Rwanda and other countries, which have experienced genocide or face the risk of commission of that crime to combat hate speech.

It is critically important to continue working to raise awareness about the lessons of the past to protect all populations from the crime of genocide and other atrocities. It is not until we achieve this objective that we can ensure that everyone lives in peace and dignity everywhere.

Ms. Alice Wairimu Nderitu is Under-Secretary-General and the United Nations Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide @WairimuANderitu

For more information on COVID-19, visit www.un.org/coronavirus

Africa Renewal
Article 94(2)(a) provides that a person is not qualified to be a member of Parliament if he owes allegiance to a country other than Ghana. This article did not and could not have aimed at disqualifying a group of Ghanaians, numbering in the millions.

Modern Constitutions are not drafted that way and should not be interpreted to devalue citizenship or create fractional citizenship. Considering that the values of equal citizenship, inclusiveness, and representativeness animated the Constitution, the article could certainly not have disqualified Ghanaians based on their status

Rather, article 94(2) was targeted at a Ghanaian who has been adjudged to engage in certain prohibited acts that are inimical to the interests of the country.

One only has to look at the other prohibited acts in article 94(2) to get an appreciation of the character of the allegiance related disqualification.

For instance, the article disqualifies a Ghanaian who has been adjudged

bankrupt;

detained as a criminal lunatic;

convicted for high crime, high treason, treason or for an offence involving the security of the State, fraud, dishonesty or moral turpitude;

found by the report of a commission of inquiry to be incompetent to hold public office or that while being a public officer he acquired assets unlawfully or defrauded the State or misused or abused his office, or willfully acted in a manner prejudicial to the interest of the State;

is under sentence of death or other sentence of imprisonment imposed on him by any court;

is not qualified to be registered as a voter under any law relating to public elections;

It is obvious that article 94(2) goes after a Ghanaian who has engaged in a prohibited act, that is clearly inimical or prejudicial to the interests or security of the country, or that raises questions about their trustworthiness, and who has been adjudged culpable after going through some due process, and who cannot do penance by merely disavowing or renouncing his actions.

The article imposes a penalty (i.e., the disqualification) for palpable, prohibited, and egregious misconduct.

To add a person who hold the citizenship of another country to this list of criminal and serious infractions is to reduce interpretation to silliness and to completely ignore the spirit of the Constitution.

Article 94(2)(a) imposes other crippling disabilities that should aid in its interpretation. For instance, not only does it disqualify a person from serving in the legislature, but also from serving in the executive, constitutional commissions (such as EC or NCCE) or from forming, leading or even serving in the executive of any political parties.

If the misinterpretation that is imposed on article 94(2)(a) for purposes of parliamentary elections is consistently applied, dual citizens who hold offices in the overseas branches should be disqualified and prosecuted. That, of course, is sheer absurdity as NPP found out when some illiberal members of the party attempted to import article 94(2)(a) into the partys constitution.

The sheer breadth of office-holding exclusions under article 94(2)(a) suggests that it should be construed narrowly rather than broadly, as has historically been done. It should be good for thought for every progressive that we interpret the national Constitution in a way that makes it abhorrent for parties to adopt in their constitution.

Owing allegiance to a country other Ghana, as used in article 94(2)(a), has nothing to do with being the citizen of another country. In fact, the Constitution, as promulgated, did not even permit Ghanafuo to hold the citizenship of another country. So how does it make sense to think that it relates to something that did not exist, let alone for the judiciary to punish people based on this clearly and facially flawed basis?

Owing allegiance, as used in article 94(2)(a) means having an obligation to be loyal to or a duty to obey a country other than Ghana, arising out of transactions unrelated to citizenship of the country.

Such an allegiance extends beyond the mere acknowledgement, bearing, or declaring an allegiance to a foreign country that are incident to residing in another country, working in some professions (such as practicing law in Maryland or working for the State in California), or becoming the citizen of another country.

Ghanaian lawyers in Maryland, like those naturalizing in the United States, make oath as follows  that I will bear true allegiance to the United States, and that I will support, protect and defend the Constitution, laws and government thereof as the supreme law of the land; 

To reason that this bearing of allegiance to the United States is equivalent to the owing of allegiance in article 94(2)(a) is to just abandon analytical reasoning.

Owing of allegiance, as envisaged in article 94(2)(a), imposes certain enforceable duties arising because of some financial or contractual considerations.

The prohibited acts envisaged by article 94(2)(a) include

a duty to spy for another country (e.g., the Soussodis case and the swap of citizens that occurred in 1985)

service in the military of an enemy country

provision of comfort or adherence to the countrys enemies

serving as a mercenary

or otherwise accepting a binding debt of allegiance to other countries for non-citizenship related reasons that is inimical or prejudicial to the countrys interest or security.

In spite of the clarity of what Im saying, some are likely to misunderstand and infer that I am saying citizenship has no implication for allegiance. For the avoidance of doubt, Im not saying that. Im saying allegiance as used in article 94(2)(a) is not related to citizenship. Therefore, if there is an intent to disqualify dual citizens, it must be done lawfully, as indeed it has been done by article 8(2) and section 16(2) of the citizenship act. But dual citizenship does not belong to and cannot be roped under article 94(2)(a).

The Nigerian Constitution explicitly disqualifies persons from the countrys legislature on grounds of both dual citizenship or acknowledgment of allegiance. Nevertheless their courts have properly reasoned that no natural born Nigerian can be disqualified from holding any public office.

The Sierra Leone courts have not allowed their politicians to use dual citizenship as a sword against dual citizens following the passage of a law that allowed for dual citizenship.

One of their Justices said It could not surely have been the intent of Parliament to give to some of its citizens a right whilst leaving in place provisions which deprived them of the benefits of that same right. On the occasions where parliament does not act, this court must step in to ensure that the Constitution or any enactment is interpreted to reflect societys evolution and progressive attitudes particularly towards gender, tribe, religion, race or citizenship, so that no one group or part of a group is left out of an inclusive society.

The judge is right in understanding that citizenship is not just a status but also a bundle of rights and a key to full and equal participation in the political community and the democratic space.

It is preposterous to apply article 94(2)(a) to dual citizens, thereby disqualifying millions of Ghanaians from full participation in the political space. Act 527 did not grant a mere status to Ghanaians who hold citizenship of other countries. It did not make them fractional Ghanaians. It made them Ghanaians, with all the rights attaching to the status.

Considering the citizenship jurisprudence in our neighboring countries, one wonders why our judiciary seem not to be aware of the importance of an inclusive society, or attuned to more modern views on citizenship, or even to take the time to work through the meaning and effect of article 94(2)(a).

It is time to end the politico-judicial persecution of dual citizens.

#SALL is the cardinal sin of the 8th Parliament.

Da Yie!

By Professor S. Kwaku Asare
24.04.2022 LISTEN

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Savannah Regional Secretary, Salisu Be-Awurbe has escaped an armed robbery attack along the Damongo-Sawla- Fulfulso stretch of road enroute Tamale.

The incident which occurred about 3km to Fulfulso-Damongo Junction near Janikura had one of the armed robbers gunned down with the help of a team of Damongo Junction community members and the police stationed at Janikura.

The secretary and the entire team escaped the robbery incident unhurt thanks to the vigilance of the police and community members.

A Pump Action or Slide Action shotgun was retrieved from the now lifeless yet-to-be identified armed robber whose accomplishes are currently on the run.

According to information gathered by Blogger, Ananpansah Bartholomew Abraham,the secretary and his entourage were returning from a handing over ceremony of the Damongo Nurses' Training College wing of the Tertiary Education Institution Network (TEIN)....

More soon.....

Source: Ananpansah Bartholomew Abraham
Paris Saint-Germain claimed a record-equalling 10th French top flight title on Saturday night following a 1-1 draw with Lens.

Lionel Messi scored the opener at the Parc des Princes midway through the second-half after Lens had gone down to 10 men following the dismissal of Kevin Danso for a second bookable offence.

Even though Corentin Jean equalised in the 88th minute, the draw was enough to take PSG onto 77 points, 16 more than second-placed Marseille who have five games remaining.

"We didn't win the league last season, that hurt us a lot, said PSG skipper Marquinhos. "So we must enjoy this title as much as we can.

The triumph - PSG's eighth in 10 years - takes them level with Saint-Etienne who last won the crown in 1981.

Feat

"It's my eighth league title, that's something I would have never imagined when I was little, said PSG midfielder Marco Verratti. "That will always stay in my heart.

PSG's players left the field at half-time to the accompaniment of boos from fans keen to see a goal fest for the coronation party.

But even though PSG boss Mauricio Pochettino deployed his star troika of Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe, Lens refused to play the sacrificial lamb.

PSG's supporters also declined to follow the traditional script. They continued their protests against the club's management by celebrating the victory outside the Parc des Princes.

Trouble

"We are having some difficult moments in the relationship with our supporters," said Pochettino.

"We are in a democracy and all protests must be heard. However, a title is a title and it is deserved. We give it the value it has. It is 10th in the history of the club.

"The staff and the players celebrated as it should be done. We can't be sad."

With PSG crowned, the intrigue will fall on the race for the places in next season's European competitions.

On Sunday evening, Marseille play at Reims aiming to restore a six-point advantage over the chasing pack.

Monaco moved into third on 59 points following a 4-1 win at relegation-threatened Saint-Etienne.

However, Rennes will recover the slot - which leads to the play-offs for the group stages of next season's Champions League - if they win the Breton derby against Lorient.
More than 500 UN peacekeepers from Ethiopia's war-torn Tigray region have refused to return home, citing fears for their safety and highlighting deepening ethnic fissures as they request political asylum in Sudan.

Until last year, Ethiopian forces accounted for the vast majority of the around 4,000-member peacekeeping mission in Abyei (UNISFA), a disputed border region between Sudan and South Sudan.

The Ethiopian contingent was replaced by a multinational force as ties between Addis Ababa and Khartoum deteriorate over a territorial dispute and Ethiopia's mega-dam on the Blue Nile, which Sudan fears will threaten its access to water.

Most of the Ethiopian forces have returned home, but some have now requested asylum, a UN peacekeeping spokesperson told AFP in New York.

"A number of peacekeepers have chosen not to return and are seeking international protection. They are being protected by the UN in a secure location," the spokesperson said.

Most of the Ethiopian forces have returned home, but some have now requested asylum. By ALBERT GONZALEZ FARRAN AFPFile

"The responsibility to grant asylum lies with the Sudanese authorities who are being assisted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in receiving these individuals."

A total of 528 Ethiopian soldiers from Tigray have requested asylum in Sudan, according to Major Gebre Kidane, a Tigrayan ex-peacekeeper -- a figure confirmed by two of his comrades also contacted by AFP.

"It's not secure to go back to Ethiopia and we want to be the voice of the people of Tigray" before the international community, the 40-year-old told AFP in a telephone interview from Abyei, explaining his decision to apply for asylum in early March.

Since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray in November 2020 in response to what he said were rebel attacks on army camps, the conflict has divided the multi-ethnic nation.

Aid is trickling in at a snail's pace in Tigray. By Yasuyoshi CHIBA AFPFile

An early victory against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) -- which ruled Ethiopia for nearly 30 years until 2018 -- was followed by a rebel comeback last June, when they took back control of Tigray and expanded into neighbouring regions.

Since then the war has dragged on, with essential services shut in Tigray for several months while aid trickles in at a snail's pace after both sides agreed to a conditional humanitarian truce in late March.

The region of six million people -- around six percent of Ethiopia's population -- has been under a de facto blockade, according to the UN.

'Living in darkness'

Tigrayan officers were purged from federal army ranks soon after the war erupted while ordinary Tigrayans have described being subjected to arbitrary arrests in Addis Ababa.

"Peacekeepers from Tigray previously went back to Ethiopia. Some of them were arrested, some killed," said Gebre Kidane, who has been based in Abyei since July 2020.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray in November 2020. By EDUARDO SOTERAS AFPFile

"The people of Tigray have been living in darkness and the international community is watching in silence. We want to make the international community... pay attention."

The Ethiopian government has not responded to AFP's calls for comment on the troops' request for asylum.

A second Tigrayan officer told AFP that he too had asked for asylum like his comrades but refused to say anything further for fear of reprisals against his family.

A third soldier, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity for similar reasons, said he had asked for asylum "to express my strong opposition" to the federal government's treatment of Tigrayans.

Furthermore, he said senior officers like him "have a military background and knowledge... therefore we are considered as a main challenging force by the government."

"So we are being targeted to be eliminated," he said.

His children understood his reasons for staying out of Ethiopia, he explained: "If I go there, they know what will happen (to me)."

"We are now in the good hands of UNHCR," he said, adding: "I hope for the better tomorrow to come."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses a press conference with international media in an underground metro station in Kyiv, April 23. AFP-Yonhap



Russian forces in Ukraine tried to storm a steel plant housing soldiers and civilians in the southern city of Mariupol, Saturday, in an attempt to crush the last pocket of resistance in a place of deep symbolic and strategic value to Moscow, Ukrainian officials said.



Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, announced he would meet Sunday in his nation's capital with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. The White House declined to comment.



Speaking in a news conference, Zelenskyy gave little detail about logistics of the encounter but said he expected concrete results  "not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons."



It would be the first high-level U.S. trip to Kyiv since the war began Feb. 24. While visiting Poland in March, Blinken stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil to meet with the country's foreign minister. Zelenskyy's last face-to-face meeting with a U.S. leader was Feb. 19 with Vice President Kamala Harris.



In attacks on the eve of Orthodox Easter, Russian forces pounded cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine.



A 3-month-old baby was among six people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa, officials said.



"The war started when this baby was one month old. Can you imagine what is happening?" Zelenskyy said. "They are just bastards. ... I don't have any other words for it, just bastards."



The fate of the Ukrainians in the sprawling and besieged seaside steel mill in Mariupol, where Russia says its forces have taken the rest of the city, wasn't immediately clear. Earlier Saturday, a Ukrainian military unit released a video reportedly taken two days earlier in which women and children holed up underground, some for as long as two months, said they longed to see the sun.



"We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe in fresh air," one woman in the video said. "You have simply no idea what it means for us to simply eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, it is already happiness."



Russia said it took control of several villages elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region and destroyed 11 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including three artillery warehouses. Russian attacks also struck populated areas.



Associated Press journalists observed shelling in residential areas of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city; regional Gov. Oleh Sinehubov said three people were killed. In the Luhansk area of the Donbas, Gov. Serhiy Haidai said six people died during the shelling of a village, Gorskoi.



In Sloviansk, a town in northern Donbas, AP witnessed two soldiers arriving at a hospital, one of them mortally wounded. Nearby, a small group of people gathered outside a church where a priest blessed them with holy water on Holy Saturday.



Sitting in a wheelchair outside her damaged apartment, Anna Direnskaya, 70, said, "I want peace."



One of many native Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, Direnskaya said she wishes Russians would understand that Ukrainians are not bad people and that there should be no enmity between them.



"Why is this happening?" she said. "I don't know."









While British officials said Russian forces had not gained significant new ground, Ukrainian officials announced a nationwide curfew ahead of Easter Sunday, a sign of the war's disruption and threat to the entire country.



Mariupol has been a key Russian objective and has taken on outsize importance in the war. Completing its capture would give Russia its biggest victory yet, after a nearly two-month siege reduced much of the city to a smoking ruin.



It would deprive Ukrainian of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere and establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014. Russia-backed separatists control parts of Donbas.





Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during his meeting with Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal at the State Department in Washington, Jan. 27. AP-Yonhap
French voters began casting their ballots on Sunday in the presidential run-off between centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. Most commentators suggest the level of abstention will have a crucial impact on the outcome.

Macron went into the election with a stable lead in opinion polls, an advantage he consolidated in the frenetic final days of campaigning, including a no-holds-barred performance in the pre-election debate.

But analysts have cautioned that Macron, who rose to power in 2017 aged 39 as the country's youngest-ever modern leader, can take nothing for granted given forecasts of low turnout that could sway the result in either direction.

He must above all hope that left-wing voters who backed other candidates in the first round on 10 April will this time vote for him and his pro-business, reformist agenda to stop Le Pen and her populist programme.

Voting stations will close at 8:00 pm this evening, when preliminary results will be released that usually predict the final result with a high degree of accuracy.

Some 48.7 million French are eligible to vote.

Abstention could reach 28 percent

Macron himself repeatedly made clear that the complacency of stay-at-home voters precipitated the shocks of the 2016 elections that led to Brexit in Britain and Donald Trump's election in the United States.

Analysts say abstention rates could reach 26 to 28 percent, though the 1969 record for a second-round abstention rate of 31.1 percent is not expected to be beaten.

Far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who finished a close third in the first-round vote, has pointedly refused to urge his millions of followers to back Macron, while insisting they should not vote for Le Pen.

Another factor is that elections are being held in the midst of the Easter school break in much of France.

According to Martial Foucault, director of the CEVIPOF political studies centre, a high abstention rate will narrow the gap between Macron and Le Pen, describing this as a "real risk" for the president.

Crucial vote for France and Europe

The stakes are huge for both France and Europe, with Macron pledging reform and tighter EU integration while Le Pen insists on a greater level ofFrench autonomy, a poloicy which her opponents describe as "Frexit" by another name.

Macron has also opposed Le Pen's plan to make it illegal to wear the Muslim headscarf in public, though her team has stepped back on the proposal ahead of the vote, saying it was no longer a "priority."

They have also clashed on Russia, with Macron seeking to portray Le Pen as incapable of dealing with the invasion of Ukraine due to a loan her party took from a Russian-Czech bank.

Macron would be the first French president to win re-election in two decades since Jacques Chirac in 2002.

If elected, he is expected to address supporters on the Champ de Mars in central Paris at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

Polls have shown Macron with a lead of around 10 percentage points, a much closer outcome than in 2017, when the same two candidates faced off and Macron carried the day with 66 percent of the vote.
Kelly Reichardt will be awarded the Carrosse d'Or award on 18 May in Cannes, during the Directors' Fortnight's opening ceremony. The American filmmaker's latest opus "Showing Up" is also running in the main competition.

"Political, humanistic and grounded in American land, her seven feature films tell an intimate counter  history of her country, attached to territories and underdogs," the French Director's Guild SRF (Societe des realisateurs de films) said in its statement on Tuesday.

From "River of Grass" (1994) to "First Cow" (2019), the guild said it admired Reinhardt's "spirit of freedom" and her "handcrafted" approach to making cinema.

"Your unique approach to the characters that fill your stories  sensitive, critical and compassionate all at once  takes root in our imagination," they wrote.

"This specificity, so different from the many cliched views of America, is inscribed in the geography of your films, and is a great source of inspiration for us."

Born in 1964 in Florida, Reichardt is known for her minimalist filming style, often focusing on characters who are living in the margins of society, who are not usually represented on screen.

The majority of her films are shot with small budgets on location and many of her lead characters are women.

Her debut film "River of Grass", about a couple on the run in South Florida after an accidental shooting incident, was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards, as well as the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

She recorded an interview about her work during a Retrospective at Le Centre Pompidou in Paris in October 2021.

Politics, environment

Reichardt's films often also contain references to social issues and political events.

She drew parallels to the Iraq War and George Bush in the 2010 "Meek's Cutoff", a Western starring Michelle Williams, which won the Signis Award at the Venice Film Festival in 2010.

Reichardt's 2013 film "Night Moves" follows the story of radical environmentalists who plan to blow up a dam in Oregon.

She won Best film for "Certain Women" (2016) at the London Film Festival and "First Cow" (2019) filmed in Oregon, was nominated for best director at the Independent Spirit Awards in 2021.

The Carrosse d'Or prize has been awarded since 2002 by the filmmakers of the SRF to honor one of their own during Directors' Fortnight opening ceremony in Cannes.

The recipient is chosen from the international filmmaking community for their innovative qualities, courage and intransigence in directing and production.

Some recent recipients include Frederick Wiseman in 2021, John Carpenter in 2019, Martin Scorsese in 2018 and French director Agnes Varda in 2010.

Strong French representation

Eleven women directors appear in the Directors' Fortnight line-up this year, with 23 films selected from across the globe.

"We are recreating the beauty and wealth of the world's contemporary cinema," director Paolo Moretti told journalists.

The opening film is "Scarlet" (L'Envol) by Italien director Pietro Marcello, his first film in French starring Louis Garrel.

Among the other French entries, the first steps as a filmmaker for 81-year-old writer Annie Ernaux, with "The Super 8 Years" (Les Annees Super 8), a documentary made with her son David using family film archives from 1976-1981.

Mia Hansen-Love is back at Cannes this year (her film "Bergman Island" was screened in competition in 2021) with "One Fine Morning" (Un beau matin), with Melvil Poupaud and Lea Seydoux.

Philippe Faucon brings the Algerian war into focus 60 years on with his film "Harkis", while Lea Mysius presents her second film "The Five Devils" (Les cinq diables) with Adele Exarchopoulos.

Alice Winocour has chosen to look at the question of terrorism with her film "Paris memories" (Revoir Paris) starring Virginie Efira (who is also chief MC for the opening and closing ceremonies) and Gregoire Colin.

Political themes are well represented this year, with "Pamfir", by Ukrainian director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, "1976" by Manuela Martelli looking at Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile, as well as films from Tunisia and Lebanon.

DIRECTORS' FORTNIGHT: FEATURES FILMS
The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) in 2021 secured GHS5,778,379.20 as compensation for consumers of electricity and water.

The Commission said the amount was paid to both households and industrial consumers of electricity and water across the country after it investigated complaints on the quality of service, largely, power outages and water cuts.

It also recouped GHS548,383 within the same period for the utility service providers  Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) over illegal connections and non-payment of utility bills.

Alhaji Abukari Jabaru, Director, Regional Operations, PURC, said this on Saturday at the Commission's media fellowship training at Prampram in the Greater Accra Region.

He noted that the non-payment of bills was largely observed in Government agencies.

The fellowship is to make the media abreast of the operations of PURC, including tariff setting, complaint resolution and database management.

It is also to get support from key stakeholders in balancing the interest between utility service providers and consumers to ensure that while service providers were profitable, consumers were also given quality services.

Alhaji Jabaru indicated that the Commission in 2021 received 10,987 complaints and had resolved 10,701, representing 97.3 per cent, with the remaining 286 in the process of being resolved.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency on the sidelines of the programme, Dr Ishmael Ackah, the Executive Secretary of PURC, encouraged journalists to work closely with the Commission for the benefit of all stakeholders.

GNA
24.04.2022 LISTEN

Dr Kingsley Nyarko, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Kwadaso, has called on the constituents to support the police to weed out criminals from the community by offering vital information that will lead to their arrest.

He said it was important for the people to collaborate effectively with the police to enhance social order and peace at all times.

Dr Nyarko made the call at a sod-cutting ceremony for the construction of an ultra-modern police station at Pokukrom, a community in the Kwadaso Municipality of the Ashanti Region.

The project, estimated to cost GHC 500,000.00, is being funded by the MP from his share of the Common Fund and expected to be completed in six months.

It will have a male and female cells, washrooms, as well as offices for police officers.

Nana Banahene Company Limited, a local contractor in the Kwadaso Municipality, is handling the construction.

Dr Nyarko said complaints from community members gave the indication of rampant robbery attacks in the area but getting the police to intervene on time was a challenge.

The police station would, therefore, ensure proper security in the community and its environs, he said, to enhance the welfare of inhabitants, which was his major focus.

Speaking on the project being awarded to a local contractor, the MP said a local contractor would employ people from the community, thereby creating jobs for the residents, and also speed up work through constant monitoring.

He urged the people to cooperate with the contractor to ensure the project was completed on schedule.

Superintendent Vitus Napen, the Abuakwa District Police Commander, said it was time the community got its own police station to save the people from traveling long distances to report cases.

The choice of Pokukrom for the police station was strategic since the area had, in recent times, reported an upsurge in criminal activities, he said.

With the construction of the station, it would help bring relief to the Command, which had been burdened with the task of overseeing a very large area in its operations, Supt. Napen said.

He commended the MP for the initiative, which would help strengthen police operations to reduce criminal activities in the area.

He called for public support in volunteering information to the police to help weed out criminals.

GNA
24.04.2022 LISTEN

I have been following the conversations very closely. I would like to say that, I love the zeal you people are putting in mounting pressure on the government. I say Ayekoo.

All the members of this Coalition should notice this.

1. No one is above the Law including the President himself. The 1992 constitution is only the Supreme law of Ghana and everybody is under it.

2. All the Fundamental Human rights entrenched in the Constitution must be enjoyable by everyone in the country Ghana.

3. All the Article 71 holders are employed by we the citizens. In this case we the citizens needs to determine their salary.

4. No human born of a woman can deny us of our Fundamental Human right.

Recommendations

1. Currently we are almost 13000 Ghanaians on this platform. This include all kinds of workers which services are most important to the country. Our numbers alone is encouraging. This shows that we have now realized our rights.

2. We need to demand a total overhaul of our salaries. This should include all the attached allowances and conditions of service. Sometimes I cry that our article 71 holders even take belt, flying tyre allowance.

3. I want our leaders of our Noble Coalition should gather momentum to tell the whole group members should go on sit down strike for only one week. This means that we go to work but we will not work. Let us bare in mind that no one in this country including the President can fire or sack any worker. We are backed by law. This strike will shake the country. The government will declare a state of emergency about our salaries.

4. These are the following demands we will demand from the government.

a. All the article 71 holders with exception of the President, Vice President, Speaker of Parliament, Chief Justice and all Heads of Security agencies should use public transport to work. This is backed by the 1992 constitution.

2. Our salaries should be 50% of the Article 71 holders with all the allowances and conditions of service.

3. Until they meet our demand we will proceed to total strike.

4. Court is not an option because all the Judges from the High Court up to Supreme Court is part of the Article 71 holders.

Gyagri Fighton Baalaah

[email protected]

A Concern Citizen.
Take a bow, Ghana. No less than 696 of your finest sons (594) and daughters (102) have received UN medals for their outstanding service while serving for the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), based in the notoriously challenging environment of Unity State.

Whoever will see this medal will know that we made a contribution to building lives and peace in South Sudan, declared Captain Emmanuel Abugri Salifu with ill-concealed, justified pride and excitement.

The Ghanaian troops, who arrived in Unity State in July 2021, have surely had ample opportunities to prove their undisputed worth, not least during the worst floods the region has experienced over the last 60 years.

Apart from their traditional protection of civilians duties, the contingent has often worked in tandem with Pakistani engineering colleagues by ensuring their safety while essential infrastructure maintenance work has been conducted. Their combined efforts saved the Rubkhona airstrip, a lifeline for the state capital Bentiu, and thousands of civilians from being submerged in water.

I am proud of my work as chief logistics officer of the Ghanaian Battalion, said Major Georgina Asabea Asare. Ensuring that we are present where and when needed through the timely and effective deployment of personnel and equipment is key when it comes to protecting civilians, she added.

Always keen to build bridges with host communities in South Sudan, the Ghanaian Blue Helmets have also undertaken several capacity buildings and vocational trainings on skills ranging from computer literacy to tailoring, thus greatly improving the likelihood of participants becoming gainfully employed.

Your diversified outreach activities have had a significant impact on the local community and to the peacekeeping mission as well, said Major General Main Ullah Chowdhury, the UNMISS Acting Force Commander. The extensive medical services and donations of essential medical supplies that you have provided have also gone a long way to assist those in need, he continued, as he listed the countless virtues of the contingent.

In recent times, the Ghanaian troops have been at the forefront of protecting civilians in the frequently volatile southern part of Unity State, where their robust presence, including day and night patrols in violence-plagued areas, have greatly benefitted local communities and humanitarian workers alike.

It is certainly challenging, but it is also exciting to work with and for the people of South Sudan, said 25-year-old Aircraftman Class I Irene Larbi, the youngest of the medalists. This is my first time to serve in a UN peacekeeping mission. This medal means a lot, it is a big source of motivation to me.

Hiroko Hirahara, Head of the peacekeeping missions Field Office in Bentiu, heaped more praise over the West African contingent.

They are well known for their proactiveness and braveness. We are very lucky to have them here with us, she said.

And in Unity State they shall remain for another couple of months, doing what they do best: working tirelessly, or, as the battalions Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Mfum, expressed the sentiment:

There is still lots of important work to be done, and until the last day of our service with UNMISS, we shall not rest.
Dr Keziah Malm, the Programme Manager, National Malaria Control Programme, has cautioned Ghanaians against treating malaria as a "normal disease," because it still kills.

She, therefore, emphasised the need for all to use the preventive tools available to eliminate the disease in the country.

The preventive tools include indoor residual spraying, sleeping under an insecticide-treated bednet, and getting rid of stagnant water.

Dr Malm gave the advice during a health walk organised by the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) in collaboration with the Ghana Health Service to commemorate the 2022 World Malaria Day, which falls on April 25 every year.

She stated that though Ghana had made strides in reducing malaria deaths from 599 in 2017 to 275 in 2022, more needed to be done to bring the number to zero.

The Programme Manager said the need for increased investment and commitment from the Government, public and the private sector was critical to revitalising the progress against malaria and other health challenges.

The exercise, which started at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, went through James Town, Ussher Forte, Bank of Ghana, Makola, and ended at the premises of the NMCP.

Participants carried placards, which read, "Invest in the Future Defeat Malaria," and "Many Lives Can be Saved by Preventing Malaria," "Treating Early," "Visit the nearest health facility when unwell," "Yes, let's do it together," and "We can end malaria."

Dr Dacosta Aboagye, the Director of Health Promotion, commended the various partners for their support to eliminate malaria in the country.

He said malaria remained a significant public health concern in Ghana and asked for the support of all to achieve total elimination.

Oheneyere Gifty Anti, the National Malaria Advocate, encouraged participants of the health walk to in their own small ways send the message across to completely eliminate the disease from the country.

She said achieving zero malaria by 2030 was possible but could only be achieved if everyone played their part.

The National Malaria Advocate urged Ghanaians to always ensure they tested for malaria before taking medications, adding that that was important because not every fever ended up as malaria.

"When you finally test positive for malaria please ensure to finish the course for effective treatment," Oheneyere added.

Some partners at the event were: Shalina Pharmacological Limited, USAID Vector Link, and US President's Malaria Initiative (PMI).

The 2022 World Malaria Day will be celebrated in Hohoe in the Volta Region on the theme, "Advanced Equity, Build Resilience, End Malaria."

The Day is celebrated annually to recognise global efforts to control malaria. It also seeks to increase public awareness of the need to fight against the disease.

GNA
Intelligent Ghanaians shouldnt depend on baseless and fact-less predictions that certain organizations often make for them to change their attitudes and vote rights against John Mahama. Nobody at the moment poses a threat to the NPP government more than John Mahama because they know what he is capable of.

According to the Economic Intelligence Unit, "the current situation in Ghana will most likely favor the opposition NDC but not with former President John Dramani Mahama as the flagbearer. I can challenge the EIU that their prediction is not true. These are my facts.

The Ex-President of Ghana, John Mahama, made this statement on December 3, 2020, just find out the cost of one gallon of petrol in Ghana today.

If you line up all the NDC politicians eligible to contest as the partys presidential candidate, none of them have impacted Ghanas political scene more, taking developments into consideration, than John Mahama. The NPP government knows perfectly well that no NDC presidential candidate can win more votes massively in Ghana than Mahama.

I detected the campaigning against Mahama as the unfavorable presidential candidate for the NDC party about two years ago, when tribal bigots, including writers in favor of the NPP government, started their false propaganda writings, articles, and campaigns against Mahama as not the right presidential candidate.

Before you ever disqualify Mahama as the right candidate, you must take into consideration his popularity on Ghanas political scene. Even thousands of NPP supporters are disappointed in Akufo Addo as someone who has no respect for his promises and doesnt care about anything.

If you put Ghanas first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, aside, no Ghanaian president has taken the country at heart to build schools, hospitals, markets, housing units, etc. than John Mahama, so why do you have to believe in the lies of any organization that predicts that Mahama is not the right person for the NDCs presidential flagbearer?

Why do the NPP politicians keep blaming Mahama for the governments incompetence? More importantly, why did Gabby Otchere Darko go to Mahamas residence, to do what? The NPP knows that without any difficulty. Mahama can win and this has been a nightmare.

The witnesses of Mahama are the uncompleted projects surrounded by weeds, Akufo Addo's witnesses are debts, reckless spending, depressed currency, and a collapsed economy.

Let us ask those Ghanaians that say the NDC can't come to power with Mahama, who won the 2020 presidential race? It was the same Mahama, but deceitful enemies, Jean Mensah and Kwasi Anin-Yeboah stole the presidential victory for Akufo Addo.

Therefore, I will advise Ghanaians who consider Mahama as a great president, based on what he has accomplished in comparison to Akufo Addo, who has incurred so much debt on Ghana without accountability, not to be distracted by any useless predictions but to focus on voting for Mahama in 2024.
The deferment of over 6000 students of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) for nonpayment of fees has brought out a lot of revelations and has generated interesting discussions on University Education in Ghana over the past few days.

One of such revelations is the sad story of a parent who, out of shock, passed out in the Dean of Students office during the university's graduation ceremony.

Dr. Norris Bekoe, the University Relations Officer (URO) told this sad story on Media General's 3FM as an advice to other parents and guardians.

According to him, the parent had come for the ward's graduation after a supposed successful completion of his four years undergraduate studies only to realise that the son was in the second year.

I remember somewhere last year or so, a student had lied to the parent that he was part of the graduating class and the parent had come for his graduation on campus only to find out that the ward was in second year after being in the school for four years. That parent collapsed in the office of the Dean of Students. We had to call the ambulance to resuscitate that parent he told 3FM.

Dr. Bekoe told parents that these are the kinds of shocks they may receive when they sit down for four years without knowing how their wards are faring in school.

He revealed that there are students who play with their studies and end up having their Cumulative Grade Points Average (CGPA) at level 300 below the minimum, hence they end up reapplying for fresh admission to start anew from level 100 instead of progressing to level 400.

It has also come to light that some students have cars on campus but are not able to send them home because they can't explain how they bought the cars to their parents.

We have received a lot of text messages and audio voices from parents and some pastors telling us the church had given the fees to students who are members of their church but have realized that the students have squandered the money Dr. Bekoe told Alfred Ocansey who was shocked by the revelation.

One of the 6000 students at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) who have been deferred for delayed payment of their fees, told TV 3's Ibrahim Abubakar he had invested his fees into a business and needed time to pay.

Parents and guardians are being admonished to follow up on their wards education to ascertain what they do with their money, check on their academic performances and their behaviour in school.

Parents should demand proof of payment fees from their wards and also check on their academics. We want parents to collaborate with school authorities to ensure that their wards behave appropriately as students the University Relations Officer appealed.

Meanwhile, the management has agreed to extend the deadline for payment of fees for deferred students by one month.

This follows a meeting with the Minister of Education Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum.

The management of the KNUST on Wednesday announced that 6000 students have been deferred for non-payment of their fees.

3news.com
Tunisian authorities have recovered the bodies of 17 migrants after four boats trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea heading for Europe capsized, a court official said on Sunday.

"The makeshift boats were in a bad condition" and had set sail overnight Friday to Saturday from the Mediterranean port city of Sfax, said Mourad Turki, spokesman for the court there.

The victims included a woman and "at least one baby", he said, adding that he feared the death toll could rise.

Survivors have said "there were between 30 and 32 people on board each boat", said Turki.

The majority of those who attempted the latest deadly crossing were sub-Saharan Africans, including citizens of Ivory Coast, Mali and Somalia, he added.

Tunisia and neighbouring Libya are key departure points for migrants seeking to reach European shores, often in vessels that are barely seaworthy.

The Italian island of Lampedusa is only about 130 kilometres (80 miles) from Tunisia's coast.

Libyan authorities on Sunday arrested 542 would-be migrants preparing to depart for Europe in inflatable boats, a security source said.

An AFP photographer said most were originally from Bangladesh.

The International Organization for Migration has said that nearly 2,000 migrants drowned or went missing in the Mediterranean in 2021, compared to 1,401 the previous year.

It is the world's deadliest migration route, but people hoping to build a better life in Europe increasingly risk it.

On Saturday, an overloaded migrant boat capsized off north Lebanon with a least six people dead, including a little girl.

The boat carried nearly 60 people and Lebanese naval forces were able to rescue 48 of them, the military has said.

Lebanon is in the grips of an unprecedented financial crisis, with the currency losing more than 90 percent of its value and the majority of the population living below the poverty line.
Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, speaks during a meeting of the UN Security Council, April 5. AP-Yonhap





U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is set to meet separately with the presidents of Russia and Ukraine next week to make urgent, face-to-face pleas for peace, the world body said Friday.







Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Guterres is to meet Tuesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and that Putin will also host the U.N. chief.







The U.N. later said that Guterres will head Thursday to Ukraine to see President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.







In both visits, Guterres aims to discuss "steps that can be taken right now" to stop the fighting and help people get to safety, U.N. spokesperson Eri Kaneko said.






Worshippers light candles at the Saint Volodymyr's Cathedral during Orthodox Eastern celebrations in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday. The sun came out as Ukrainians marked Orthodox Easter in the capital, Kyiv, on Sunday with prayers for those fighting on the front lines and others trapped beyond them in places like Mariupol. AP-Yonhap



Ukraine has proposed a special set of negotiations in the interest of finding a way to get a trapped group of resistance fighters and civilians out of the city of Mariupol, which has nearly been rubbed out of existence by Russian assaults.



Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak suggested the special session in a tweet. The two countries have had multiple rounds of talks since Russia's invasion started on February 24, but little progress has emerged, with both accusing the other of negotiating in bad faith.



Podolyak's proposal comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is awaiting the arrival of the top U.S. diplomat and top U.S. defense official in Kiev, with plans to discuss further U.S. military aid to help Ukraine fight off the Russian invaders.



Mariupol has been one of the cities most heavily hit by the Russian assault, since control of the city is necessary for Russia's hoped-for land connection between the Donbass region, which is controlled by pro-Russian groups, and the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.



Most of the city has been levelled, with fears that there have been mass killings of those who did not escape. A group of about 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers and foreign fighters remains dug in at the Azovstal steelworks, but their supplies are dwindling. They say they have about 1,000 civilians with them.



The vice commander of the Azov regiments, the group bunkered down in Mariupol, accused the Russians of heartlessness, in a newly released video. "In Mariupol, the enemy is throwing bombs over the heads of absolutely innocent children while Easter is being celebrated," said Svyatoslav Palamar. (dpa)


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For three days, Johnny Depp has been testifying in a libel trial that, at least in theory, is about whether Amber Heard defamed him in a 2018 newspaper op-ed.

The trial has turned into a spectacle in which Depp has testified about everything from taking pills as a child to a near mental breakdown in which the actor said he used his severed finger to write on the walls in his own blood to recount his ex-wifes alleged lies.

WHY IS DEPP DOING THIS?

Heards lawyers had warned that the trial would be a mudslinging soap opera that would expose the real Johnny Depp. Depp denies ever abusing Heard and, despite the public attention brought to his drug use and his violent text messages, he said he's obsessed with revealing the truth and doesn't want to disappoint those who'd looked up to him.

My goal is the truth because it killed me that all these people I had met over the years ... that these people would think that I was a fraud, Depp testified Tuesday.

The actor has said that his movie career suffered after Heard wrote a 2018 op-ed piece in The Washington Post in which she referred to herself as a public figure representing domestic abuse.

Heard never mentioned Depp by name, but Depps lawyers said it was a clear reference to accusations Heard made when she sought a 2016 restraining order against him.

Depp said the accusations and the article made him a Hollywood outcast and cost him his role in the lucrative Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise.

Heards lawyers have argued that Heards opinion piece was accurate and didn't defame him. They've said Depps ruined reputation was due to his own bad behavior and have argued that The Walt Disney Co. had already decided to ax Depp from Pirates of the Caribbean months before the articles publication.

WHAT ARE HEARDS ALLEGATIONS?

Heard has accused Depp of physically and sexually assaulting her on multiple occasions before and during their brief marriage, often in situations where she said he drank so much he later blacked out.

Depp said Heards allegations of his substance abuse have been grossly embellished and that he was never out of control during that time period. The two met in 2009, got married in 2015 and Heard filed for divorce a year later.

Heards attorneys have highlighted many text messages Depp sent to friends recounting the copious amount of alcohol and drugs he had taken at a time in which he claims he wasn't a problematic drinker.

Depp filed a similar lawsuit in England against a newspaper there and lost. The judge there found that Depp assaulted Heard on a dozen occasions and put her in fear for her life multiple times.

Heard is expected to testify later in the trial.

HOW DID DEPP AND HEARD MEET?

Depp and Heard met through the filming of The Rum Diary, a 2011 Depp-produced movie based upon an initially unpublished novel by the late Hunter S. Thompson that Depp discovered while going through the gonzo journalists papers with Thompson, his friend.

Depp said Heard was the perfect embodiment of the books femme fatale character named Chenault. Thats the Chenault that Hunter wants, Depp recalled. Yep, she could definitely kill me."

They started dating a few years later, with Depp portraying the early part of their relationship as a classic Hollywood romance. Depp would call Heard Slim, while she called him Steve, nicknames used by the Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall characters in the 1944 film To Have and Have Not.

Depp, 58, said he was also cognizant of the age difference between himself and Heard, 36, and compared it to the 25-year gap between Bogart and Bacall.

I acknowledge the fact I was the old, craggy fogey and she was this beautiful creature, he said.

HOW DID THEIR MARRIAGE FALL APART?

Depp said things began to change in his marriage when he felt that he was suddenly just wrong about everything in Heards eyes.

Depp said Heard made little digs at him, demeaned and berated him. The insults escalated into full-fledged circular arguments from which there was no way in or out, Depp said. It was sort of a rapid-fire, sort of endless parade of insults, Depp said.

Soon after, Heard began physically attacking him, Depp said. He said she once threw two bottles of vodka at him, the second of which exploded and severed his finger to the point where bone was exposed. Depp said he used the resulting blood to write on his walls and recount lies in which he had caught Heard. At the hospital, Depp said he lied to protect Heard and told the doctors that he had injured himself. Heard's lawyers contend he cut his own finger.

WHAT HAPPENED ON THE BOSTON FLIGHT?

One of the chief points in contention is what occurred on a 2014 private flight from Boston to Los Angeles that Depp and Heard took while he was filming the gangster film Black Mass.

Heard has said Depp assaulted her on the flight while he was blackout drunk.

Depp testified he took two oxycodone pills  an opiate to which he admits he was addicted at the time  and locked himself in the plane bathroom and fell asleep to avoid her badgering.

He told the court that he drank only a glass of Champagne while boarding the flight. But texts he sent to the actor Paul Bettany at the time referenced drinking half a bottle of whiskey, a thousand Red Bull vodkas and two bottles of Champagne before the flight.

Heard's attorneys have also pointed to text messages Depp sent to Heard after the flight, saying, Once again I find myself in a place of shame and regret.  I must get better."

WHAT ELSE DID DEPP TEXT?

Heard's attorneys have focused on text messages Depp sent to Bettany in which he expressed a desire to kill and defile Heard.

After saying he wanted to burn her, Depp wrote, Lets drown her before we burn her!!! I will (expletive) her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure shes dead.

Depp has apologized to the jury for the vulgar language and said that in the heat of the pain I was feeling, I went to dark places. He also compared his writing to Thompson's gonzo style, which often incorporated brash language and embellished thoughts.

MOMENTS OF LEVITY

Despite the dark accusations and profane text messages being read to the court, Depps testimony has on occasion featured humorous moments.

Asked whether he would sometimes drink whiskey in the morning, Depp responded, I mean, isnt happy hour any time?

And asked whether he had ever given pills to musician Marilyn Manson, Depp conceded that he once gave Manson a pill to get him to stop talking so much.

Depp also admitted that he's never watched Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, the 2003 megahit in which he played the unhinged Captain Jack Sparrow. Asked how the film fared, Depp smiled and said, I didn't see it, but ... well, the film did pretty well, apparently.

And then there's the bizarre matter of the alleged penis vandalism. Heard's attorney repeatedly asked Depp whether he was responsible for drawing a penis on a painting inside his home shortly after the actor said Heard severed his finger. Drawing a penis on a painting was not the first thing on my mind, Depp testified.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING IN VIRGINIA?

The trial is taking place in Fairfax County Circuit Court in Fairfax, Virginia.

Heards lawyers had sought to have the case tried in California, where the actors reside. But a judge ruled that Depp was within his rights to bring the case in Virginia because The Washington Posts computer servers for its online edition are located in the county.

Depps lawyers have said they brought the case in Virginia in part because the laws here are more favorable to their case.
SPARKS, Nev. (AP)  The Generator has a new space and a new mission.

The arts and maker space reopened earlier this month after signing a 10-year lease with Foothill Partners, developer of the much anticipated Oddie District  a 187,000-square-foot mixed use space just east of U.S. 395 in Sparks, next to Goodwill.

The Generator currently takes up about 70,000 square feet, about twice the size of its former home on Icehouse Avenue in industrial Sparks. Eventually, about half the space will be given to another tenant.

Any time theres a lot of people in a space making art, it makes us all feel better, right? Jessi Sprocket Janusee, communications director for the Generator, told the Reno Gazette Journal.

Since 2013, the Generator, also lovingly known as The Genny, has been lauded as a headquarters for Burning Man artists. Local and international artists alike have assembled colossal sculptures, from temples to whales to ships, before sending the installations into the desert to burn.

While continuing to be a magnet for Burning Man creations, staff at the Generator say the goals of the space are now more community-driven. Still run by a cast of established Burners, the team is placing a much heavier emphasis on community outreach year-round.

(Burning Man) is a huge part of where we come from and its a huge part of our culture here in Reno, said the Generators education coordinator, Alysia Dynamik Crissman. The downside of (focusing too much on Burning Man) is that the space is underutilized during the rest of the year, and we want to change that.

Kids play on a train during the Maker Family Meetup at The Generators new location at the Oddie District on April 15, 2022. The Maker Family Meetup is a social creative time for families at the Generator.

Welcome to the new Genny

Theres no loss of flair since the Generators move to new digs, a warehouse formerly used as a storage space by Renown Regional Medical Center. Before that, it was a Lowes home improvement store.

Visitors are greeted with a coal-black train at the entry, a recycled wood library filled with DIY books, and bright murals stretching across the back walls. Nooks and crannies are stuffed with circus art, steel horses and rows of sewing machines. Rainbow ribbons dangle from a cloud that hangs from the ceiling and reads, Make stuff.

The building is a little sparse of projects at the moment since actor Jeremy Renner, best known for his role as Hawkeye, and his crew recently wrapped up a filming project. The crew used the Generator to overhaul decommissioned vehicles to be used again by charities. Renner visited the set a handful of times, staff said.

The space is divided into a wood shop, metal shop, textile center and tech lab, among other sections. The maker space will also eventually have a glass blowing area, according to Janusee. Memberships give artists access to all the resources on-site. Monthly memberships costs $50 a month, and annual memberships cost $500.

About 55 studio artists are soon expected to fill the space, but only after the Generator hosts the Reno Punk Rock Flea Markets fifth year anniversary at months end. About seven Burning Man projects also are signed on to build at the site as the nearly 80,000-person arts festival officially returns later this summer after a two-year hiatus.

Staff are looking forward to the sounds of sawing, welding, laughing and blasting music come summer, peak build time for those headed to Black Rock City in August. While artists design their works at home, they often ship the materials to the Generator and gather there a month or two before Burning Man for construction of the pieces.

The mechanical horse, Wings of Glory, by New York metal sculptor Adrian Landon is presently stored at The Generator. The mechanical horse actually gallops and was at Burning Man in 2019. Many of the most memorable Burning Man art sculptures were built at the Generator.

There are lots of times too that you come in and youd hear four or five different languages. It felt like you were in a hostel, said Crissman of her experiences in the past.

The music heard during work time is often eclectic. Sometimes you hear punk, other times you hear classic country, and at least once a symphony of loon calls echoed throughout the Generator on Icehouse Avenue.

And, once the space starts to really get going, the air will fill with the perfume of fresh sawdust and hot metal, said Crissman.

Kid-friendly, community-driven

The Generators staff used to think their greatest asset as an organization was unparalleled room and resources to build and create.

That all changed when their previous landlord, Tolles Development Co., ended the lease at their previous location and the Generator was left without a long-term home. Then the pandemic hit and isolated everyone. While the staff found a temporary home near downtown Reno, it couldnt accommodate all the equipment that comes with the Generator.

Without that, we had to get a little more creative about what we could offer, said Crissman.

Autumn Cassidy, 7, front, and her sister Melynna Cassidy, 12, work on crafts during the Maker Family Meetup at The Generators new location at the Oddie District on April 15, 2022. The Maker Family Meetup is a social creative time for families at the Generator.

The Generator began more efforts to partner with community groups and started creating lessons for K-12 schools and workshops for patrons at local homeless shelters.

The outreach model is taking shape in new ways as the Generator moves into yet another home. It will continue to offer classes to members and non-members. The type of classes will be based on requests from the public and its membership, Crissman said.

Because many of the Generators staff are parents, that too has influenced the direction that the arts and maker space is headed in.

We really believe that if were not serving the children of the community, then were missing a huge segment of the population, not only the children but the caretakers, primarily women, said Crissman.

The Generators education manager Alysia Dynamik stands at entrance of The Generators new location at the Oddie District in Sparks.

The Generator provides a place where artists from around the world collaborate and where community art workshops are offered throughout the year. Some of Burning Mans most memorable sculptures were built at the Generator.

Every Thursday, the Generator hosts Maker Family Meet-ups, where caretakers and children can create together and the space is also opening up to local childrens groups. Summer camp classes are around the corner too.

In an effort to diversify income, its also allowing other organizations to use the facility for events such as fundraisers and weddings.

After spending several years trying to find a permanent home, the Generator still hopes that someday it will be able to find a space that will offer a longer-term lease or an affordable purchase option. There are few places, however, that are affordable and large enough to accommodate the builds at the Generator.

For now, though, the Oddie District feels like a fitting place for a new beginning.

The Truckee Meadows Community College theater also is moving into The Oddie District, as well as an Idaho-based venture called the Innovation Collective.

The Collective helps mentor and incubate promising technology companies while turning smaller communities into hubs for research and development.
Col. Haitham Dinnawi, commander of the Lebanese navy, speaks during a press conference about a migrant boat that sank overnight after the navy tried to force it to return to shore, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday. AP-Yonhap



At least six people died, including a little girl, and almost 50 others were rescued after an overloaded migrant boat capsized off north Lebanon during a chase by naval forces, Lebanese officials said.



The boat carrying nearly 60 people capsized on Saturday night near the port city of Tripoli, the departure point for a growing number of people attempting a potentially lethal sea escape.



The deadly accident, weeks ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for May 15, is not the first of its kind for the crisis-hit country grappling with its worst-ever financial crash.



But it marks a grim reminder of the suffering behind a growing number of people, including Lebanese nationals and Syrian refugees, risking their lives at sea in search of a future abroad.



"The army's naval forces managed to rescue 48 people and retrieve the body of a dead girl... from a boat that sank while trying to illegally smuggle them out," the army said in a statement, adding that a suspect had been arrested for alleged involvement in the smuggling operation.



"Most people on board were rescued," the army said, without specifying their nationalities. The army retrieved five corpses off Tripoli's coast on Sunday, the state-run National News Agency reported, hours after the body of a little girl was returned to shore.



"My nephew, he has five children and his wife is pregnant with twins. He was trying to escape hunger and poverty," one man told AFP at Tripoli's port, where he was waiting to hear news of his missing relative.





Col. Haitham Dinnawi, commander of the Lebanese navy, stands in front of a map to explain where a Lebanese navy boat attempted to force a small boat with migrants to return to the shore before it sank while carrying nearly 60 people overnight, during a press conference at the control room of the Lebanese navy headquarters, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday. AP-Yonhap



Sunk in seconds



Haissam Dannaoui, the head of Lebanon's naval forces, said the 10-meter (33-foot) boat built in 1974 was crammed with nearly 60 would-be migrants and took to sea without any safety precautions.



He told a news conference that the army tried to thwart the smuggling operation before the ship sailed out of the Qalamoun region, south of Tripoli, but could not reach the departure point in time.



An ensuing sea chase saw two naval patrols trying to force the migrant boat to turn back.



"Unfortunately, the captain (of the migrant boat) decided to carry out manoeuvres to escape," leading to the vessel crashing into the patrol ships, Dannaoui said.



The impact cracked the hull of the migrant boat, which quickly submerged, he said.



"In less than five seconds, the boat was under water," Dannaoui said, adding that passengers were quickly handed life jackets.



But one of the survivors said a naval ship had deliberately crashed into the migrant boat to force them to return.



"Tho patrol boat crashed into us twice...to drown us," the man told AFP at the port, before he was silenced and carried off by a crowd of survivors' relatives.



Last November, a boat carrying dozens of would-be migrants also sank off Tripoli's coast after being chased by the Lebanese army.



The passengers were rescued and towed back to shore.





Lebanese soldiers and onlookers stand at the entrance of the port of Tripoli, as an ambulace carrying survivors from a boat that sank off the coast of the northern city, leaves during the night of Saturday. AFP-Yonhap
STR/AP

WARSAW, Poland (AP)  The death toll from accidents in recent days at two coal mines in southern Poland has increased to nine after four miners were brought to the surface and pronounced dead, authorities said Sunday.

The miners were among 10 missing since an underground tremor and methane gas discharge at the Borynia-Zofiowka mine early Saturday. Six miners there remain missing, but there is no contact with them, and rescuers continue their search.




At least 10 people are dead after a tour boat with 26 people on board capsized off Japan's northern coast, according to the country's coastguard.







The bodies of seven men and three women were found floating in the water on Sunday and were brought to hospital, where the deaths were confirmed. Seven passengers remain unaccounted for, after nine were rescued earlier.







The nine were found unconscious in water around Hokkaido's Shiretoko Peninsula and taken to hospital, broadcaster NHK reported.







Rescue efforts continue despite high waves, to find the remaining passengers, including two children, and the boat.







The accident happened while the boat was in waters off Kashuni Falls, a popular scenic site near the tip of the peninsula, the Kyodo news agency reported.







The area is famous for its drift ice and is home to many rare plants and animals; it was declared world natural heritage in 2005.







On Saturday, after getting caught in high waves, the crew of the KAZU I issued a distress signal to the coastguard, reporting that water was entering the ship.







Contact with the boat was lost a few hours later, and the coastguard launched a search operation involving a helicopter and several boats.







Twenty-two adult passengers and two children were aboard along with two crew. Their identities, apart from the 54-year-old captain and a second crew member, are unknown. Japan has currently shut its borders to foreign tourists due to the pandemic.







Water temperatures in the area have been about 3 degrees Celsius, with high waves and strong winds reported on Saturday. Fishing boats returned to port on Saturday because of bad weather, Kyodo reported. (dpa)


Shanghai erects metal barriers in fight against COVID-19 View Photo

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  Volunteers and government workers in Shanghai erected metal barriers in multiple districts to block off small streets and entrances to apartment complexes, as China hardens its strict zero-COVID approach in its largest city despite growing complaints from residents.

In the citys financial district, Pudong, the barriers  thin metal sheets or mesh fences  were put up in several neighborhoods under a local government directive, according to Caixin, a Chinese business media outlet. Buildings where cases have been found sealed up their main entrances, with a small opening for pandemic prevention workers to pass through.

In Beijing, authorities announced a mass testing starting Monday of Chaoyang district, home to more than 3 million people in the Chinese capital.

The announcement set off panic buying Sunday evening, with vegetables, eggs, soy sauce and other items wiped off grocery shelves.

A fresh outbreak has infected at least 41 people, including 26 in Chaoyang district, state broadcaster CGTN reported.

China reported 21,796 new community transmitted COVID-19 infections on Sunday, with the vast majority being asymptomatic cases in Shanghai. Across the country, many cities and provinces have enforced some version of a lockdown in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus.

The latest outbreak, driven by the highly contagious omicron variant, has spread nationwide, but has been particularly large in Shanghai. The city, a financial hub with 25 million residents, has counted hundreds of thousands of cases but fewer than 100 deaths since the outbreak began nearly two months ago.

An Associated Press examination of the death toll found that despite a history of narrow criteria for linking deaths to particular diseases, especially COVID-19, authorities have changed how they count positive cases, leading to wiggle room in how they arrive at a final death count. The result is almost certainly an undercount of the true death toll.

On social media, people posted videos of the new barriers being put up Saturday, with some expressing anger over the measures. The barriers are meant to leave main roads unblocked, Caixin reported.

In one video, verified by the AP, residents leaving a building in Shanghais Xuhui district broke down the mesh fence barricade at their front entrance and went looking for the security guard they believed to be responsible for putting it up.

Shanghai is using a tiered system in which neighborhoods are divided into three categories based on the risk of transmission. Those in the first category face the strictest COVID-19 controls and were the main target of the new heightened measures. In the third category, some buildings allow people to leave their homes and visit public areas.

In Shanghai, authorities reported 39 new COVID-19 deaths, raising the official death toll to 4,725 as of the end of Saturday, the National Health Commission said Sunday.

The citys lockdown has drawn global attention for its strict approach and sometimes dangerous consequences. Many residents in the city have had difficulties getting groceries, resorting to bartering and bulk buying. Others have been unable get adequate medical attention in time, owing to the strict controls on movement.

On Friday, Chinese internet users shared a six-minute video called Voices of April that documents some of the most challenging public moments the city has experienced in the nearly month-long lockdown. One part features audio of residents in one Shanghai community who protested on April 8, screaming: Send us food! Send us food! Send us food! in unison.

The video blanketed WeChat timelines before it was abruptly removed by censors Saturday.

Chinese authorities have continued to say that the zero-COVID strategy is the best way forward given low vaccination rates in people over age 60, and that omicron would result in many deaths and severe illnesses if the country ended its strict approach.

___

Associated Press journalist Penny Wang in Bangkok contributed to this report.

By HUIZHONG WU

Associated Press
Zelenskyy meets top-level US delegation, gets aid promises View Photo

KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  The U.S. secretaries of state and defense met Sunday night with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the highest-level visit to the countrys capital by an American delegation since the start of Russias invasion.

The secretive meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin came as Ukraine pressed the West for more powerful weapons against Russias campaign in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where Moscows forces sought to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops in the battered port of Mariupol.

Blinken and Austin told Ukraines president, Volodomyr Zelenskyy, and his advisers that the United States would provide more than $300 million in foreign military financing and had approved a $165 million sale of ammunition.

They also said that U.S. President Joe Biden would soon announce his nominee for ambassador to Ukraine and that American diplomats who left Ukraine before the war would start returning to the country this coming week

Reporters who accompanied Austin and Blinken to Poland were barred by Pentagon and State Department officials from reporting the Kyiv visit until the two men physically left Ukraine. U.S. officials cited security concerns.

Before the session with Blinken and Austin, Zelenskyy said he was looking for the Americans to produce results, both in arms and security guarantees.

You cant come to us empty-handed today, and we are expecting not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons, he said.

Zelenskyys last face-to-face meeting with a top U.S. official was Feb. 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris, five days before Russias invasion. While the West has funneled military equipment to Ukraine, Zelenskyy has stressed repeatedly that his country needs more heavy weapons, including long-range air defense systems and warplanes.

In an apparent boost for Ukraine, polling agencies said French President Emmanuel Macron would win reelection over far right candidate Marine Le Pen, who has faced questions about her ties to Moscow.

The result was hailed by Frances allies in the European Union as a reassuring sign of stability and continued support for Ukraine. France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and is supplying weapons systems to Ukraine.

Zelenskyys meeting with U.S. officials took place as Ukrainians and Russians observed Orthodox Easter. Speaking from Kyivs ancient St. Sophia Cathedral, Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, highlighted its significance to a nation wracked by nearly two months of war.

The great holiday today gives us great hope and unwavering faith that light will overcome darkness, good will overcome evil, life will overcome death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win! he said.

Still, the war cast a shadow over celebrations. In the northern village of Ivanivka, where Russian tanks still littered the roads, Olena Koptyl said the Easter holiday doesnt bring any joy. Im crying a lot. We cannot forget how we lived.

The Russian military reported hitting 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, including fortified positions and troop concentrations, while its warplanes destroyed 26 Ukrainian military sites, including an explosives factory and several artillery depots.

Since failing to capture Kyiv, the Russians have aimed to gain full control over the eastern industrial heartland, where Moscow-backed separatists controlled some territory before the war.

Russian forces launched fresh airstrikes on a Mariupol steel plant where an estimated 1,000 civilians are sheltering along with about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters. The Azovstal steel mill where the defenders are holed up is the last corner of resistance in the city, otherwise occupied by the Russians.

Zelenskyy said he stressed the need to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, including from the steel plant, in a Sunday call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is scheduled to speak later with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Arestovych, the Zelenskyy adviser, said Ukraine has proposed holding talks with Russia next to the sprawling steel mill. Arestovych said on the Telegram messaging app that Russia has not responded to the proposal that would include establishing humanitarian corridors and the exchange of Russian war prisoners for the fighters still in the plant.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is scheduled to travel to Turkey on Monday and then Moscow and Kyiv. Zelenskyy said it was a mistake for Guterres to visit Russia before Ukraine.

Why? To hand over signals from Russia? What should we look for? Zelenskyy said Saturday. There are no corpses scattered on the Kutuzovsky Prospect, he said, referring to one of Moscows main avenues.

Mariupol has endured fierce fighting since the start of the war because of its location on the Sea of Azov. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere, and allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

More than 100,000 people  down from a prewar population of about 430,000  are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate over 20,000 civilians have been killed. Recent satellite images showed what appeared to be mass graves to the west and east of Mariupol.

Children in an underground bunker were seen receiving Easter presents in a video released Sunday by the far-right Azov Battalion, which is among the Ukrainian forces at the steel plant in Mariupol. The groups deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, said the video was shot at the plant.

One toddler is seen wearing homemade diapers made of cellophane and people are seen hanging laundry on makeshift hangers.

Please help us, one woman in the video said through tears, appealing to world leaders. We want to live in our city, in our country. We are tired of these bombings, constant air strikes on our land. How much longer will this continue?

Mykhailo Podolyak, another presidential adviser, tweeted that the Russian military was attacking the plant with heavy bombs and artillery while accumulating forces and equipment for a direct assault.

Zelenskyy over the weekend accused Russians of committing war crimes by killing civilians and of setting up filtration camps near Mariupol for people trying to leave the city. He said the Ukrainians  many of them children  are then sent to areas under Russian occupation or to Russia itself, often as far as Siberia or the Far East. The claims could not be independently verified.

Zelenskyy highlighted the death of a 3-month old girl in a Russian missile strike Saturday on the Black Sea port of Odesa. The baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at Odesa, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, citing social media, reported that the infants mother, Valeria Glodan, and grandmother also died when a missile hit a residential area. Zelenskyy promised to find and punish those responsible.

The war started when this baby was 1 month old, Zelenskyy said. Can you imagine what is happening? They are filthy scum; there are no other words for it.

For the Donbas offensive, Russia has reassembled troops who fought around Kyiv and in northern Ukraine. The British Ministry of Defense said Ukrainian forces had repelled numerous assaults in the past week and inflicted significant cost on Russian forces.

A fire erupted early Monday at an oil depot in Russia near its border with Ukraine, but Russias Tass news agency gave no immediate cause for the blaze in oil storage tanks.

NASA satellites that track fires showed something burning at coordinates that corresponded to a Rosneft facility some 110 kilometers (70 miles) north of the Ukrainian border. Moscow previously has blamed Ukraine for attacks on the Russian region of Bryansk, which borders Ukraine.

The spiritual leaders of the worlds Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics on Sunday appealed for relief for Ukraines suffering population.

___

Associated Press journalists Yesica Fisch in Sloviansk, Ukraine, Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Cara Anna, Inna Varenytsia and Oleksandr Stashevskyi in Kviv and AP staff around the world contributed.

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Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

By DAVID KEYTON

Associated Press
Survivors blame Lebanon navy for deadly migrant boat sinking View Photo

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP)  Survivors of a doomed migrant boat blamed the Lebanese navy on Sunday for sinking it, saying a naval vessel rammed the packed ship while trying to force it back to shore.

Meanwhile the death toll of Saturday nights disaster rose to seven, with state media reporting the recovery of a body of a man from Tripoli. The incident was the latest in a growing trend involving mostly Lebanese and Syrians trying to travel to Europe from Lebanon in search of better lives.

Survivor Mustafa al-Jundi told The Associated Press that the navy tried to stop the migrant boat but it kept sailing.

They rammed into us and made us sink then moved away, said al-Jundi, whose two sisters are still missing. He said the Lebanese military returned about 90 minutes later and rescued them.

Angry residents attacked a main army checkpoint in Tripoli earlier in the day, throwing stones at troops who responded by firing into the air. Some shops closed as angry men blocked several streets in Tripoli, Lebanons most impoverished city. There were no reports of injuries.

The Lebanese military announced that 47 people were rescued, while seven bodies including one of a young girl had been recovered. They said high waves had submerged the boat, which was carrying more people than it could hold.

Col. Haitham Dinnawi, commander of the Lebanese navy, told reporters the old boat had been packed with nearly 60 people, but could only carry six. No precautionary measures were taken onboard, he added, and no one was wearing life vests.

Dinnawi blamed the captain of the migrant boat for maneuvering to avoid being forced to return back to shore, and blamed him for the collision. He showed photographs of the damage on the side and back of one navy boat, adding that the migrant boat sank within seconds after the accident.

It was a crime to take people on such a boat, Dinnawi said, adding that it was manufactured in 1974 and carrying 15 times its capacity. He said search operations are still ongoing for the missing.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati declared a day of national mourning on Monday.

It is appalling to see deprivation still drives people to take these dangerous trips across the seas, tweeted Lebanons U.N. humanitarian coordinator, Najat Rochdi.

Several of the rescued were treated on the spot while others were taken to nearby hospitals. One person was detained on suspicion of being a smuggler involved in organizing the journey, the military said.

Search operations began Saturday night after the boat, apparently heading to Europe, sank shortly after leaving the coastal Lebanese town of Qalamoun.

For many years Lebanon was a country that took in refugees, but since the countrys economic meltdown began in October 2019, hundreds of people have left on boats hoping for a better life in Europe.

Migrants from Lebanon pay thousands of dollars to smugglers to take them to Europe. Hundreds have made it to European countries, while dozens of others have been stopped and forced to return home by the Lebanese navy. Several people have lost their lives on the way to Europe over the past three years.

Lebanon, a small Mediterranean nation of 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, is in the grip of the worst economic crisis in the countrys modern history. The economic meltdown has put more three-quarters of the countrys population into poverty.

The World Bank describes the crisis as among the worst in the world since the 1850s. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs and the Lebanese pound has lost more than 90% of its value.

_____

Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue contributed to this report from Beirut.

By FADI TAWIL

Associated Press
To Europes relief, Frances Macron wins but far-right gains View Photo

PARIS (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macron comfortably won a second term Sunday, triggering relief among allies that the nuclear-armed power wont abruptly shift course in the midst of the war in Ukraine from European Union and NATO efforts to punish and contain Russias military expansionism.

The second five-year term for the 44-year-old centrist spared France and Europe from the seismic upheaval of having firebrand populist Marine Le Pen at the helm, Macrons presidential runoff challenger who quickly conceded defeat but still scored her best-ever electoral showing.

Acknowledging that numerous voters cast ballots for him simply to keep out the fiercely nationalist far-right Le Pen, Macron pledged to reunite the country that is filled with so many doubts, so many divisions and work to assuage the anger of French voters that fed Le Pens campaign.

No one will be left by the side of the road, Macron said in a victory speech against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower and a projection of the blue-white-and-red tricolor French flag. He was cheered by several hundred supporters who happily waved French and EU flags.

We have a lot to do and the war in Ukraine reminds us that we are going through tragic times where France must make its voice heard, Macron said.

During her campaign, Le Pen pledged to dilute French ties with the 27-nation EU, NATO and Germany, moves that would have shaken Europes security architecture as the continent deals with its worst conflict since World War II. Le Pen also spoke against EU sanctions on Russian energy supplies and faced scrutiny during the campaign over her previous friendliness with the Kremlin.

A chorus of European leaders hailed Macrons victory, since France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and is supplying weapons to Ukraine.

Democracy wins, Europe wins, said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

Together we will make France and Europe advance, tweeted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi called Macrons victory splendid news for all of Europe and a boost to the EU being a protagonist in the greatest challenges of our times, starting with the war in Ukraine.

Macron won with 58.5% of the vote to Le Pens 41.5%  significantly closer than when they first faced off in 2017.

Macron is the first French president in 20 years to win reelection, since incumbent Jacques Chirac trounced Le Pens father in 2002.

Le Pen called her result a shining victory, saying that in this defeat, I cant help but feel a form of hope.

Breaking through the threshold of 40% of the vote is unprecedented for the French far-right. Le Pen was beaten 66% to 34% by Macron in 2017 and her father got less than 20% against Chirac.

She and hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, one of 10 candidates eliminated in the first round on April 10, both quickly pitched forward Sunday night to Frances legislative election in June, urging voters to give them a parliamentary majority to hamstring Macron.

Le Pens score this time rewarded her years-long efforts to make her far-right politics more palatable to voters. Campaigning hard on cost-of-living issues, she made deep inroads among blue-collar voters in disaffected rural communities and in former industrial centers.

Le Pen voter Jean-Marie Cornic, 78, said he cast his ballot for her because he wanted a president who would prioritize our daily lives  salaries, taxes, pensions.

The drop in support for Macron compared to five years ago points to a tough battle ahead for the president to rally people behind him in his second term. Many French voters found the 2022 presidential rematch less compelling than in 2017, when Macron was an unknown factor.

Leftist voters  unable to identify with either the centrist president or Le Pen  agonized with Sundays choice. Some trooped reluctantly to polling stations solely to stop Le Pen, casting joyless votes for Macron.

It was the least worst choice, said Stephanie David, a transport logistics worker who backed a communist candidate in round one.

It was an impossible choice for retiree Jean-Pierre Roux. Having also voted communist in round one, he dropped an empty envelope into the ballot box on Sunday, repelled both by Le Pens politics and what he saw as Macrons arrogance.

I am not against his ideas but I cannot stand the person, Roux said.

In contrast, Marian Arbre, voting in Paris, cast his ballot for Macron to avoid a government that finds itself with fascists, racists.

Theres a real risk, the 29-year-old fretted.

Macron went into the vote as the firm favorite but faced a fractured, anxious and tired electorate. The war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic battered Macrons first term, as did months of violent protests against his economic policies.

In celebrating victory, Macron acknowledged a debt to voters who helped get him over the line, not to support the ideas I hold, but to block those of the extreme right.

I want to thank them and tell them that I am aware that their vote obliges me for the years to come, he said. I am the custodian of their sense of duty, of their attachment to the Republic.

___

Associated Press journalists Sylvie Corbet, Elaine Ganley, Angela Charlton and Thomas Adamson in Paris, Sam Petrequin in Brussels Michel Spingler in Henin-Beaumont, and Alex Turnbull in Le Touquet, contributed.

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Follow APs coverage of the French election at https://apnews.com/hub/french-election-2022

By JOHN LEICESTER

Associated Press
Facts about Russia-Ukraine conflict: UN chief to meet with Putin in Moscow on Tuesday

Xinhua) 13:33, April 24, 2022

BEIJING, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The Russia-Ukraine conflict continued on Saturday as Russia's forces destroyed a logistics terminal at a military airfield near Ukraine's Odessa. The following are the latest developments:

"This afternoon, high-precision, long-range air-based missiles fired by the Russian Aerospace Forces disabled a logistics terminal at a military airfield near Odessa, where a large batch of foreign weapons received from the U.S. and European countries were stored," said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov on Saturday.

The Russian Defense Ministry also said the Russian military has destroyed 141 aircraft and 110 helicopters, 264 anti-aircraft missile systems, 541 unmanned aerial vehicles, 2,479 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 278 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,081 field artillery and mortars, and 2,321 special military vehicles.

- - - -

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on April 26 and 28, respectively, a UN spokesman said Friday.

Guterres will visit Moscow on April 26 and have "a working meeting and lunch" with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for Guterres.

- - - -

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday he supports a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Russia, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported.

"There is a diplomatic path. There is a military one," Zelensky told a press conference in Kiev, adding he wants to end the conflict.

- - - -

Turkey has closed its airspace to Russian civilian and military aircraft that carry soldiers to Syria, state-run TRT broadcaster reported on Saturday, quoting Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu as saying.

"It was agreed to suspend the use of the airspace for Russian military aircraft and even civilian aircraft carrying soldiers to Syria," Cavusoglu told TRT on his flight to Uruguay.

- - - -

Ukraine will continue the evacuation of civilians from the besieged city of Mariupol on Saturday, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

Women, children and the elderly will be evacuated from Mariupol to the city of Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, Vereshchuk wrote on Telegram.

- - - -

One of the tasks of the Russian Armed Forces during the second stage of the special military operation is to "establish full control over Donbass and southern Ukraine," Deputy Commander of Russia's Central Military District Rustam Minnekaev said Friday.

The control of Donbass would make it possible for Russia to create a land corridor to Crimea and influence Ukraine's vital facilities, including Black Sea ports where agricultural and metallurgical products are delivered to other countries, Minnekaev said at a defense industries meeting.

- - - -

On Friday, Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said that Kiev will complete the talks on security guarantees with partner countries within a week, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported.

"Weapons supplies, closure of the sky, military consultations and means for the rapid purchase of additional weapons are important for us. I think that these issues can be completed within a week," Podolyak said.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Bianji)
DeSantis tests limits of his combative style in Disney feud View Photo

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP)  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis  deepening feud with Walt Disney World is testing the limits of his combative leadership style while sending an unmistakable message to his rivals that virtually nothing is off limits as he plots his political future.

The 43-year-old Republican has repeatedly demonstrated an acute willingness to fight over the course of his decadelong political career. He has turned against former aides and rejected the GOP Legislatures rewrite of congressional maps, forcing lawmakers to accept a version more to his liking and prompting voting rights groups to sue. Hes also leaned into simmering tensions with Donald Trump, which is notable for someone seeking to lead a party where loyalty to the former president is a requirement.

But DeSantis decision to punish Disney World, one of the worlds most popular tourist destinations and one of Floridas biggest private employers, took his fighter mentality to a new level. In retribution for Disneys criticism of a new state law condemned by critics as Dont Say Gay, DeSantis signed legislation on Friday stripping the theme park of a decades-old special agreement that allowed it to govern itself.

To critics, including some in his own party, such a raw exercise of power suggests DeSantis is operating with a sense of invincibility that could come back to haunt him. Others see an ambitious politician emboldened by strong support in his state and a mountain of campaign cash grabbing an opportunity to further stoke the nations culture wars, turning himself into a hero among Republican voters in the process.

When you listen to Ron DeSantis, its righteous indignation: Heres why youre wrong and heres why Im right, said Florida Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, a former state GOP chairman. And it is that righteous indignation and that willingness to fight back that endears people to Ron DeSantis message. As long as he keeps on showing that hes willing to fight, people are going to continue to keep flocking to him.

DeSantis is up for reelection in November. But in the wake of his scrap with Disney, he will introduce himself to a key group of presidential primary voters this week when he campaigns for Nevada Senate candidate Adam Laxalt. The appearance marks his first of the year in a state featured prominently on the presidential calendar, although DeSantis aides insist it is simply a trip to help out a longtime friend.

Disney drew DeSantis wrath for opposing a new state law that bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. The DeSantis-backed bill has been condemned by LGBTQ activists nationwide as homophobic, although the measure, like others dealing with transgender athletes and racial history in schools, has emerged as a core piece of the GOPs political strategy.

The Disney legislation, which does not take effect until June 2023, could cause massive economic fallout for the company, the surrounding communities and the millions who visit the Orlando amusement park every year.

There are risks to DeSantis embrace of the legislation, particularly if his antagonism towards Disney threatens the GOPs standing with independents and women, who could play crucial roles in the fall campaign. Jenna Ellis, a former Trump administration attorney, called the DeSantis-backed legislation vengeful.

Democrats who are facing a tough election year are eager to highlight DeSantis moves as a way to portray the GOP as a party of extremists. In an interview, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison described DeSantis attack on Disney as a continuation of a divisive agenda geared toward booking interviews on conservative media at the expense of his constituents.

The people of Florida deserve a governor whose first priority is them, not his own political ambition, Harrison said.

President Joe Biden said at a party fundraiser in Seattle that this is not your fathers Republican Party.

I respect conservatives, Biden told donors on Thursday. Theres nothing conservative about deciding youre going to throw Disney out of its present posture because  you think we should be not be able to say, gay.

In a statement, DeSantis spokesperson Taryn Fenske, called the governor a principled and driven leader who accomplishes exactly what he says he will do.

Indeed, DeSantis friends and foes in the GOP agree that his crackdown on Disney is a major political victory among Republican base voters already enamored by his pushback against pandemic-related public health measures over the past two years. They suggest it also taps into a growing Republican embrace of anti-corporate populism and parental control of education that resonates with a wider swath of voters.

Republican pollsters have been privately testing DeSantis political strength beyond Florida for several months, finding that the only Republican consistently with more support than DeSantis among GOP voters is Trump himself. At the same time, DeSantis is sitting on more than $100 million in campaign funds.

Hes a very smart guy in what hes doing and how hes doing it, Republican strategist David Urban, a close Trump ally, said of DeSantis.

Those close to the Florida governor say there is one message above all to take away from the Disney fight: that DeSantis, one of the few high-profile Republicans who has not ruled out running against Trump in a 2024 presidential primary, is not afraid of anybody, anything or any fight.

Tensions between the two men have been building for months.

In a Washington Post interview last month, Trump took credit for DeSantis rise. And last weekend, longtime Trump loyalist Roger Stone released a video clip in which Stone calls DeSantis an expletive while greeting Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club.

So far, Florida voters seem to be on DeSantis side.

Nearly 6 in 10 Florida voters approved of DeSantis job performance in a February poll conducted by the University of North Florida. The poll also asked registered Republicans about a hypothetical presidential primary between Trump and DeSantis. The result? Trump and DeSantis were about even.

Brian Ballard, a Florida lobbyist and a major Republican fundraiser, said DeSantis has a combination of popularity and instincts that is shaping the modern-day GOP.

No other elected official, maybe in the country, has the Republican base support that Ron DeSantis has. So hes incredibly powerful, not only a powerful politician, but a powerful government leader, Ballard said. The guy really has the reins of power in his hands.

___

Peoples reported from New York. Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this report.

By STEVE PEOPLES and BRENDAN FARRINGTON

Associated Press
TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP)  Survivors of a doomed migrant boat blamed the Lebanese navy on Sunday for sinking it, saying a naval vessel rammed the packed ship while trying to force it back to shore.

Meanwhile the death toll of Saturday night's disaster rose to seven, with state media reporting the recovery of a body of a man from Tripoli. The incident was the latest in a growing trend involving mostly Lebanese and Syrians trying to travel to Europe from Lebanon in search of better lives.

Survivor Mustafa al-Jundi told The Associated Press that the navy tried to stop the migrant boat but it kept sailing.

They rammed into us and made us sink then moved away, said al-Jundi, whose two sisters are still missing. He said the Lebanese military returned about 90 minutes later and rescued them.

Angry residents attacked a main army checkpoint in Tripoli earlier in the day, throwing stones at troops who responded by firing into the air. Some shops closed as angry men blocked several streets in Tripoli, Lebanons most impoverished city. There were no reports of injuries.

The Lebanese military announced that 47 people were rescued, while seven bodies including one of a young girl had been recovered. They said high waves had submerged the boat, which was carrying more people than it could hold.

Col. Haitham Dinnawi, commander of the Lebanese navy, told reporters the old boat had been packed with nearly 60 people, but could only carry six. No precautionary measures were taken onboard, he added, and no one was wearing life vests.

Dinnawi blamed the captain of the migrant boat for maneuvering to avoid being forced to return back to shore, and blamed him for the collision. He showed photographs of the damage on the side and back of one navy boat, adding that the migrant boat sank within seconds after the accident.

It was a crime to take people on such a boat, Dinnawi said, adding that it was manufactured in 1974 and carrying 15 times its capacity. He said search operations are still ongoing for the missing.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati declared a day of national mourning on Monday.

It is appalling to see deprivation still drives people to take these dangerous trips across the seas, tweeted Lebanons U.N. humanitarian coordinator, Najat Rochdi.

Several of the rescued were treated on the spot while others were taken to nearby hospitals. One person was detained on suspicion of being a smuggler involved in organizing the journey, the military said.

Search operations began Saturday night after the boat, apparently heading to Europe, sank shortly after leaving the coastal Lebanese town of Qalamoun.

For many years Lebanon was a country that took in refugees, but since the countrys economic meltdown began in October 2019, hundreds of people have left on boats hoping for a better life in Europe.

Migrants from Lebanon pay thousands of dollars to smugglers to take them to Europe. Hundreds have made it to European countries, while dozens of others have been stopped and forced to return home by the Lebanese navy. Several people have lost their lives on the way to Europe over the past three years.

Lebanon, a small Mediterranean nation of 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, is in the grip of the worst economic crisis in the countrys modern history. The economic meltdown has put more three-quarters of the countrys population into poverty.

The World Bank describes the crisis as among the worst in the world since the 1850s. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs and the Lebanese pound has lost more than 90% of its value.

_____

Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue contributed to this report from Beirut.
TOKYO  Japan welcomed the reelection of French President Emmanuel Macron as key to the unity of Group of Seven at a time when its members need to work together to end Russias invasion of Ukraine as soon as possible.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida congratulated Macron in his Twitter messages in both Japanese and French, saying, I hope to closely work with President Macron in a wide range of issues, including Russias invasion of Ukraine and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihiko Isozaki on Monday extended heartfelt congratulations to Macron on his reelection.

As we face a critical moment to end Russias outrageous aggression and defend the peaceful world order, the G-7 unity is required more than ever, and we plan to continue working closely with France led by President Macron, Isozaki said.

Japan, worried about the impact of Russian invasion of Ukraine in the East Asia where China is increasingly taking assertive military actions, has tried to play a greater role as part of G-7 and has joined in sanctions against Moscow and provided support for Ukraine in line with other members.

Isozaki called France an important, special partner for Japan that shares universal values including freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. He said Tokyo intends to strengthen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

___

CANBERRA, Australia  Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is welcoming President Emmanuel Macrons reelection to a second term in France as a great expression of liberal democracy.

Macron was scathing of Morrison after Australias conservative government canceled a 90 billion Australian dollar ($66 billion) submarine contract in September.

Macron accused Morrison of lying to him about the state of the French contract before a deal was announced for the United States and Britain to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. Morrison denied misleading Macron, who refused to take the Australian leaders phone calls.

On Monday, Morrison tweeted: Congratulations Emmanuel Macron on your reelection as President. Another great expression of liberal democracy in action in uncertain times.

We wish you & France every success, in particular your leadership in Europe and as an important partner to Australia in the Indo-Pacific, Morrison added.

___

KYIV, Ukraine  Ukraines leader has congratulated Emmanuel Macron on winning a second term as president of France  and beating a far-right rival seen as close to Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelenskyy called Macron a true friend of Ukraineon Sunday and expressed appreciation for his support.

Tweeting in French, Zelenskyy said: Im convinced that we will advance together toward new joint victories. Toward a strong and united Europe!

Macron has sought a diplomatic solution to Russias war in Ukraine. France has also sent significant weapons to Ukraine and Macron is planning more.

In a TV debate ahead of Sundays runoff, Macron assailed challenger Marine Le Pens past ties to Russia, notably a loan her party got from a Russian-Czech bank in 2014.

___

PARIS  Watching Frances presidential election results was especially stressful for Yasmina Aksas.

The 19-year-old law student could have been forced to remove her headscarf if far-right leader Marine Le Pen had won instead of incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

Speaking to AP as the first projections came in showing Macron in the lead, Aksas was visible relieved  but far from overjoyed.

Its still 40% of people voting for Le Pen. Its reassuring that its Macron but its not a victory, said Aksas, who is active in feminist and social justice organizations. It reflects nothing of what I think and what I identify with.

She expressed concern about extremist language and ideas that used to be limited to militant far-right groups but have now entered the mainstream.

Under Macrons presidency, she described encroaching limits on Muslims in the name of fighting extremism. They made it a problem for everyone while remaining vague about who the menace is.

So if you feel concerned about what theyre doing, like closing mosques, associations, when they say theyre targeting jihadists, you shouldnt feel targeted, otherwise you are suspected of not being part of the republic.

___

MORE STORIES:

 Macron vs Le Pen: France votes in tense presidential runoff

 Frances presidential rivals: Key moments, private lives

 EXPLAINER: How Frances old-school voting system works

 Follow all AP stories on France's 2022 presidential election at https://apnews.com/hub/france-election-2022

___

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

LONDON  A European economist says that if exit polls hold true and Emmanuel Macron wins the election against his right-wing challenger Marine Le Pen, France will most likely remain an engine of growth and progress in Europe for the next five years.

Economist Holger Schmieding says France has outperformed Germany for the past five years. He says France under Macron would likely remain on track for a sustained period of faster gains in employment and per-capita GDP. He says a dynamic France next to a still somewhat strong Germany is a major positive for Europe.

The economist says Macron has strengthened the French economy by more than any of his predecessors since Charles de Gaulle.

___

BERLIN  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was the first foreign leader to call President Emmanuel Macron and congratulate him on his reelection, Scholz office said.

The Federal Chancellor and the President confirmed their intention to continue the close and trusting relationship between Germany and France, not least in view of the current challenges such as the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, Scholz office said in a statement.

It also said the result signified a clear commitment to Europe and the European unification process, adding that Scholz and Macron agreed to meet as soon as possible.

The Czech prime minister also sent his congratulations to Macron.

France is our vital partner, we are keen on developing our great relationship further, Petr Fiala tweeted.

___

PARIS  Rights groups have breathed a sigh of relief at Marine Le Pens failure to become French president, but warned against complacency and urged the victor, Emmanuel Macron, to fight racial profiling and discrimination against Muslims, and better protect migrants.

Cecile Coudriou, head of Amnesty International France, cited egregious human rights failings under Macrons presidency including Frances treatment of refugees and asylum at its borders, systemic discrimination in the form of ethnic profiling by police, disproportionate and dangerously vague counter-terror laws, curbs to the right to protest, intrusive surveillance that impacts the right to privacy, failing to uphold climate commitments and selling arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Antiracism group SOS Racisme said : This victory, which might look large in a cursory analysis, is not so much a victory as a relief. The reality is that Marine Le Pen ... has progressed by about eight points in five years.

It criticized Macrons law against so-called separatism by radical Muslims and government ministers criticism of wokeism or Islamo-leftism. It blamed Macrons arrogance, (economic) liberalism, brutalization of the social movement and nods to the far right for worsening tensions in France. It is definitely not neutral to help trivialize the far right by choosing it as its opposition and winking at it, it said.

___

PARIS  President Emmanuel Macron said a simple Thank you! after winning reelection, and praised the majority who gave him five more years at the helm of France.

Macron also thanked people who voted for him not because they embrace his ideas but because they wanted to reject far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

Im not the candidate of one camp anymore, but the president of all of us, he said.

Macron comfortably won reelection to a second term Sunday, according to polling agencies projections.

He arrived on the plaza where his supporters gathered, beneath the Eiffel Tower, to the sound of the Ode to Joy, the European Unions anthem, hand in hand with his wife, Brigitte.

___

PARIS  Supporters of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen gathered at her election-night even in Paris Bois de Boulogne booed loudly as provisional results were announced.

But they quickly looked ahead to June legislative elections  as did Le Pen in her concession speech.

Francois Denormand, a retired dentist planning to run for a seat as a lawmaker for Le Pens National Rally party in Junes legislative elections said that what he called the third round starts tomorrow.

We must continue to fight, he said. We can lose the battle but not the war.

Nineteen-year-old Paul Renkert, waving a French flag, admitted that Im sad.

Renkert, who had traveled from the eastern Alsace region, said he had invested time in Le Pens campaign because I believe in the future of France.

He is looking ahead to the legislative elections and five years in the future when a new president is elected. Le Pen has not made known her intentions, but I dont think shell abandon us, he said.

Guests from abroad were among those invited to the soiree. Among them was Tom Lamont, with Belgiums far-right Vlaams Belang party, an ally of Le Pens National Rally. He, too, sent out a message of hope. Its a disappointment she lost but we see the right-wing movements is growing in France  and maybe in five years we will have a right-wing president here, he said.

___

MADRID  Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says that with the victory of Emmanuel Macron as projected by polling agencies, Democracy wins, Europe wins.

Citizens have chosen a France committed to a free, strong and fair EU, Sanchez, who is also leader of Spains Socialist Party, wrote, referring to the 27-nation European Union.

Sanchez, Portugals Antonio Costa and Germanys Olaf Scholz had published a joint open letter ahead of Sundays election presenting the vote as a choice between Macron, a defender of democracy in a strong European Union, and Marine Le Pen, an extreme-right candidate who openly sides with those who attack our freedom and democracy, values based on the French ideas of Enlightenment.

___

PARIS  French far-right figure Eric Zemmour, who failed to reach the runoff in the presidential election, has called for a nationalist coalition to be created in France's parliament.

Zemmour spoke after polling agencies projected that far-right leader Marine Le Pen, head of the National Rally party, had lost the presidential election to centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

Zemmour, who created his own party, Reconquest, in recent months, said the national bloc must get united.

He suggested such a coalition ahead of Junes parliamentary elections, with the aim to fight both Macrons party and the left.

Zemmour received 7% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election on April 10.

___

European leaders have been quick to congratulate French President Emmanuel Macron on his re-election.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has often sparred with Macron over Brexit and other issues, swiftly congratulated the re-elected president.

Calling France one of our closest and most important allies, Johnson said he looked forward to continuing to work together on the issues which matter most to our two countries and to the world.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi said that Macrons victory is splendid news for all of Europe.

He said France and Italy are working side by side, along with the other European partners, to construct a stronger, more cohesive, more just European Union, capable of being a protagonist in the greatest challenges of our times, starting with the war in Ukraine.

Portugals Prime Minister Antonio Costa says that, by voting for Emmanuel Macron, French people have demonstrated once again their commitment to the European project.

Costa, a socialist who was re-elected earlier this year in a landslide victory, wrote Sunday in a tweet that he was enthusiastic about working together with the centrist politician during the next four years.

The Portuguese prime minister made a case for voting to elect Macron in an open letter also signed by his Spanish and German counterparts, Pedro Sanchez and Olaf Scholz.

___

PARIS  Leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said Sunday that Marine Le Pens defeat in the French election is very good news for the unity of our people, and vowed to lead the fight against Emmanuel Macrons party in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Melenchon, who failed to reach the second round by a few hundred thousand votes and had urged his supporters not to vote for Le Pen, said Macrons presidential monarchy survives by default and under the constraint of a biased choice.

In his address, Melenchon exhorted Macrons opponents to vote in Junes parliamentary elections to choose a different path and elect a majority of leftist lawmakers. Melenchon said he would be prepared to lead an opposition government.

Courage, action, determination, always refusing fatality and resignation, Melenchon said.

___

BRUSSELS  Several European leaders and politicians have swiftly congratulated French President Emmanuel Macron for his reelection, as his far-right rival Marine Le Pen conceded defeat in Sundays presidential election.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted in French, together we will make France and Europe advance.

The Dutch prime minister also tweeted in French his hope to continue our extensive and constructive cooperation in EU and NATO.

In Germany, politicians around the political spectrum offered support, including from the pro-business Free Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and conservative Christian Social Union.

Many in Europe had worried Le Pen would undermine European unity and its post-war order.

___

PARIS  French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has conceded defeat in the presidential runoff, handing victory to incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

She said her unprecedented score in a presidential election represents a shining victory in itself.

The ideas we represent are reaching summits, she said.

French polling agencies are projecting that centrist Macron has won the runoff against Le Pen that took place Sunday.

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PARIS  French polling agencies are projecting that centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron will win Frances presidential runoff Sunday, beating far right rival Marine Le Pen in a tight race that was clouded by the Ukraine war and saw a surge in support for extremist ideas.

If the projections are borne out by official results, Macron would be the first French president in a generation to win a second term, since Jacques Chirac in 2002. But he would face a divided nation and a battle to keep his parliamentary majority in legislative elections in June.

Five years ago, Macron won a sweeping victory over Le Pen to become the youngest French president. The margin is expected to be way smaller this time: Polling agencies Opinionway, Harris and Ifop-Fiducial projected that Macron would win between 57% and 58.5% of the vote, with Le Pen getting between 41.5% and 43%.

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PARIS  Voter turnout is lower than usual in Frances presidential runoff Sunday, apparently reflecting voter frustration with both candidates, centrist President Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen.

Turnout at 5 p.m. Paris time (1500 GMT) stood at 63%, the Interior Ministry said. That was below the 65% at the same time in the last presidential runoff in 2017, when Macron overwhelmingly beat Le Pen, and the 72% in when Socialist Francois Hollande won the presidency in 2012.

Polls before Sundays election gave Macron a solid lead over Le Pen, but to keep it he needs the support of many left-wing voters who shunned both him and Le Pen in the first-round election on April 10. Many of those voters may choose to stay home this time instead.

Polling agency projections and early official results are expected after final voting stations close in France at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT).

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LE TOUQUET, France  The two candidates for Frances presidential runoff have cast their ballots  and basked in adoring crowds outside their polling stations.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen went first, cheerily greeting election workers in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, in Frances struggling former industrial heartland. She emerged from the ballot booth beaming to drop it in a transparent box. Outside, she took selfies with supporters.

Then came incumbent Emmanuel Macron, who shook dozens of hands  and was handed a small child to hold up  on his journey from his family home in the resort town of Le Touquet on the English Channel to his voting station.

Inside, he greeted yet more people, posed for photographs with his wife Brigitte, and cast his ballot with a wink for the cameras. The voting booths were shielded by curtains in the red-white-and-blue of the French flag.

About 48.8 million voters are eligible to take part in the runoff, which is being watched around Europe. Early results are expected Sunday night.

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PARIS  France began voting in a presidential runoff election Sunday with repercussions for Europes future.

Centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron is the front-runner, but he's fighting a tough challenge from far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

The centrist Macron is asking voters to trust him for a second five-year term despite a presidency troubled by protests, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. A Macron victory in this vote would make him the first French president in 20 years to win a second term.

The result of voting in France, a nuclear-armed nation with one of the worlds biggest economies, could also impact the conflict in Ukraine, as France has played a key role in diplomatic efforts and support for sanctions against Russia.
Burdened by mountains of debt, Nicolas Cage spent much of the last 15 years saying yes to just about any offer. He appeared in some 50 films, at least half of which were low-budget, direct-to-video schlock that typically vanished into the single digits of Rotten Tomatoes reviews.

Yet Cage remained Cage, outrageous and outsize, strutting or staggering, howling or baying through some of cinema's most memorable but occasionally perplexing performances, often acting as though he was seeing the movie through a funhouse built in his brain.

But there was one role he was extremely reluctant to take on: Nicolas Cage.

In "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent," Tom Gormican's rollicking comedy out Friday, he does just that. Cage plays Nick Cage, a movie star with a cratering career. Desperate for money and affirmation, he makes a personal appearance for a hefty payday, leading to new friendship, wild adventures and all kinds of trouble.

The director said he and Kevin Etten wrote the script with Cage in mind, even as people who knew the actor warned them there was "not a chance in hell" he'd sign on. But Gormican knew there was no one else whom audiences would buy as deeply down on his luck, who was also admired as a serious, award-winning thespian and beloved as a mainstream action star.

Cage's eclectic filmography and "nouveau shamanic" performances - as he has dubbed his stylized approach - have made him a pop culture icon whose acting choices are fodder for internet memes and montages. (Google "Nicolas Cage freaking out" and note the wide selection of video options.) And while that's the Cage most people expect to encounter, it's often not who they meet.

"I'm a huge fan of him as an actor, but my impression was that he's an extraordinarily talented madman," said Sharon Horgan, his "Massive Talent" co-star, who instead found Cage to be rigorous and professional. "His level of commitment is just different. He can transcend the character and even the film he's in."

Though quite pleased with the finished film, Cage, 58, is clear that he "did not want to make the movie" - at least not initially. He worried it would merely be an extended sketch that played for cheap laughs at his expense. "I knew I had to send myself up quite a bit but didn't want it to lapse into just mockery," he said during an interview in a New York hotel.

While the Oscar winner "was terrified the whole time" they filmed, he was persuaded by Gormican's sincerity and willingness to create deeper human relationships for his character. Most important was rewriting the role so it was no longer that of a stereotypical absentee dad, but one who is perhaps too enthusiastic about sharing his passions, especially movies. (Cage's fictional daughter definitely does not share his passion for the 1920 German film, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.")

Relieved of much of his debt, Cage had already begun a return to his "independent roots," earning raves last year for Michael Karnoski's "Pig," about a former superstar chef who has fled his past life. "People associate him with bombastic performances, which is not totally untrue, but he had the presence to carry this quiet movie without many lines, and with a lot of soul," Karnoski said. "We all know Nic Cage has amazing range, but it got lost in forgettable movies."

"Massive Talent" also posed the opportunity to return to another skill set. "I'd been scratching my head - I did 'Raising Arizona,' 'Moonstruck' and 'Honeymoon in Vegas,' but somewhere along the way Hollywood forgot I do comedy. So I was happy to be invited back to the comedic table," Cage said.

And once he was in, he was - as only Cage can be - all in. He tackled the "high-wire act" by both playing and parodying himself, and also embraced a second role as Nicky, a younger, leather-jacketed, egomaniacal version who haunts Cage. When the script called for Nicky to kiss Nic on the cheek, Cage told Gormican he should French kiss himself. "I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to go totally cubist," Cage said. "Playing two versions of myself is as narcissistic as it can get, so having them make out is really ridiculous and that makes it funny."

And while he is known for leaning into the ridiculous, it's his most naturalistic performances that stand out to both audiences and actor. Though he has previously said that kind of work "can be really boring," he now admits that his most real-to-life performances, like "Leaving Las Vegas," "Joe" and "Pig," are his favorites.

In the past, he has criticized mash-ups of his most over-the-top scenes. They are often "out of context," said Cage, who researches and meticulously develops his roles, no matter the movie. "You're not seeing what led my character up to that moment." But there's an upside: "Hopefully the videos get people interested in seeing my movies."

What bothered him more were directors who came in specifically seeking a showstopping Cage moment. "It has to come from a place of genuine emotion, so it makes me nervous when they expect me to go wild or scream and it's not organic to the character," he said.

Still, he doesn't regret those B-movies. "I like doing my job," he said, adding that even as he said yes to those roles, he was rejecting lucrative Super Bowl ads because he doesn't want to be a pitchman. (He admitted he wished he hadn't done those commercials in Japan years ago.) "Working helps me get closer to my instrument and keeps me practicing - even if a movie only has one or two scenes that really work. I did some stuff in 'Grand Isle,' for example, that I thought was terrific." (The 2019 film has a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.)

Karnoski and Gormican said that with scripts and directors he trusts, Cage is every bit the actor they'd long admired. "'Pig' was my first feature and he very easily could have said, 'This is the Nic Cage show and I'm going to do it my way,' but he was extremely respectful and collaborative," Karnoski said. "He's a pro. And he'd also sit and share his lunch with the production assistants."

Gormican said Cage was the best-prepared actor he'd ever seen; he and Horgan were both in awe that the actor was completely off-book at a table read before shooting. During filming, the director said, he'd "wake up to new ideas each morning" from Cage, who would review the script daily on an elliptical machine at 3 a.m. Cage said he couldn't sleep and, as a producer, he was "making sure the scenes were hitting the right notes." (Which, if you think about it, is nothing for a man so committed he not only learned the titular instrument for "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" but had teeth pulled for his role in "Birdy.")

And while Cage always gave Gormican the naturalistic takes he desired, he often asked to riff with his more expressionistic approach. "I would say, 'Nic, I need the reality here,' and he would say, 'It's all real, Tom.'" Cage's way usually worked better for the character.

"Sometimes the reality is in the stylization," Cage said, emphasizing that naturalism and truthfulness are not always identical. "There's a guy who lives in Las Vegas who wears leather jackets and jewelry and he thinks the character of Nic would say that line this way,'" he'd joke with Gormican. "It was my comedic way of saying, 'I am this person so trust me.'"

Cage is happy analyzing his craft but gets more excited as a cinephile, a trait he shares with his "Massive Talent" character. In conversation, his varied interests span the gamut as he sings the praises of James Cagney's dynamism, Tony Curtis's range, "The Sound of Metal's" ambitious and realistic storytelling and Gene Wilder's comedic prowess.

His one acting affectation also comes from being a film buff: "The film stars I enjoyed the most all had inimitable voices - Bogart, Brando, Cagney and Walken - so I thought if I had a voice that people would correlate with me as an actor, that would be my signature," he said. "I did make a choice to try and work with my voice, enhancing what I would call the California draaawl."

In "Massive Talent," Cage asks his new BFF, Javy (Pedro Pascal), what his three favorite films are. Ask real-life Cage the same and, well, that's when his passion is most clearly evident. "The list goes on and on," he said, rattling off a mix of classics that included the likes of "400 Blows," "East of Eden," "Enter the Dragon" and, of course, his uncle Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now."

"When I was in quarantine all I was doing was watching movies and I made some lists," he said, pulling a few of them out of his suit pocket. He went through the films of Akira Kurosowa, falling for "Drunken Angel" and "The Bad Sleep Well," and then discovered Ingmar Bergman's "Hour of the Wolf" and "Summer with Monica."

But Cage is no highbrow snob. There's a running bit in "Massive Talent" about the cinematic achievement of "Paddington 2," the sequel to the live-action and animated film adaptation of a children's story about a raincoat-wearing bear. Cage, who naturally watched the film in preparation, said that's no joke, his famous draaawl growing excited one last time: "It's really a terrific movie."
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NEW YORK (AP)  CNN is shutting down its CNN+ streaming service less than a month after its launch, a spectacular flameout for a venture that had attracted stars like Chris Wallace and Alison Roman and was seen as a way to attract a new generation of news consumers.

It had started March 29, shortly before CNN was taken over by new corporate parents. The new leaders of Warner Bros. Discovery quickly let it be known they considered CNN+ an ill-conceived idea.

The subscription-based service will be shut down at the end of April. Executives said some CNN+ programming and employees will be absorbed into the television network and website but there will be layoffs. The head of CNN+, Andrew Morse, is leaving the company.

In a memo to employees on Thursday, incoming CNN Chief Executive Chris Licht said consumers wanted simplicity and an all-in service rather than stand-alone offerings. Discovery had previously suggested that it wanted to merge the new companys separate streaming services, which include Discovery+ and HBO Max, into a single app.

In a Thursday town hall, executives also said that the service's inability to show live breaking news was a crucial failing. Because of contracts with cable and satellite companies, CNN+ could not stream the CNN television network.

It's a little bit like The New York Times subscription without The New York Times, said J.B. Perrette, head of Discovery's streaming services.

Perrette said Discovery had learned from trying to launch its own news service in Poland, and in seeing the experiences of other paid streaming services in the United States like Fox Nation, that CNN+ could not expect to get near one million subscribers. Unlike CNN+, which was charging customers $5.99 a month, broadcast networks like ABC, CBS and NBC offer free news-streaming services.

Those are the facts, Perrette said. We've learned from painful history, financially costly history.

If the company is going to go in a different direction than CNN+, we can't let it go on one second more than it needs to, he said.

There had been skepticism from outside CNN about whether the streaming service could succeed, particularly given the glut of streaming services already available. Even Netflix, the streaming pioneer, is feeling the competitive pressure.

This is a service leveraging the CNN brand that is not delivering the type of content that the CNN brand is known for, the live impactful news content, said Parks Associates research director Paul Erickson. It was already a bit of a tricky proposition to begin with  even without the change in corporate ownership.

Under AT&T, there were $100 million in development costs and some 500 employees assigned to building out CNN+. Perrette told the employees they would have first dibs on some 100 jobs currently open at CNN. Licht's memo said there would be at least six months of severance pay for departing staffers.

In the meeting, a CNN staff member wondered why AT&T, CNN's previous corporate owner, was allowed to develop and start the service with new management coming in that clearly had its reservations about it. But executives said they were not allowed, until the takeover was formally approved weeks ago, to be involved in meetings about the service.

The executives said accountability for the rapid failure lies squarely with previous management.

Would we have preferred to have this discussion six months ago, nine months ago? Perrette said. Couldnt do it.

The CNN+ service's flagship was arguably Wallace's daily interview show, for which he left his previous job as Fox News Sunday host. Wallace did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

It also featured programming from food-media star Roman, former NPR host Audie Cornish, ex-NBC News host Kasie Hunt, Jemele Hill, Rex Chapman and current CNN personalities Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, Jake Tapper, Sara Sidner and Kate Bolduan. Some of the shows hadn't even started yet.

Warner Bros. Discovery is led by Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who has his own vision for CNN and its Warner siblings.

Licht said in his memo that the incredibly difficult decision to shutter CNN+ is the right one for the long-term success of CNN. It will allow leaders to refocus resources on the core products that drive our singular focus: further enhancing CNN's journalism and its reputation as a global news leader.

On the television network, Licht is expected to increase CNN's emphasis on news coverage with less commentary.

He told staff members that the decision was no reflection on the service that they had built.

Licht acknowledged in the staff meeting that the experience with CNN+, at least initially, will have repercussions with personnel and those who might want to come there.

We have to own the erosion of trust and build it back, he said.

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Arbel reported from Phoenix.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  Kris Jenner became emotional while recalling a volatile 2016 argument she heard about between her son Rob Kardashian and his then-girlfriend Blac Chyna that traumatized him.

Jenner testified for the second day from the witness stand in a Los Angeles courtroom on Friday that she believed Chyna attempted to murder her son. At the time, she said she was told that Chyna pointed a gun at Kardashians head, tried to strangle him with a phone cord and hit him with a metal pole while intoxicated.

It was complete chaos. It was scary, said Jenner, the 66-year-old Keeping Up with the Kardashians matriarch. Shes the first of four defendants - a group that also includes her daughters Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian and Kylie Jenner - to testify in Blac Chynas $100 million lawsuit alleging the women conspired to have her reality show Rob & Chyna canceled and damage her celebrity status.

Earlier this week, much of Chynas testimony dealt with the fight, and the celebration of the shows renewal the night before. Chyna testified that she was joking with her fiance when she wrapped a phone cord around his neck and grabbed his unloaded gun off a nightstand.

But Kris Jenner said putting a gun to her sons head was not a joke.

He was a mess, she recalled while talking to her son after the incident on Dec. 15, 2016. I could only imagine how he felt.  This was a horrible situation. I was heartbroken.

Kris Jenner began to shed tears while remembering the Rob Kardashian-Chyna spat, which happened months after Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint in Paris. She said knowing that both her children had a gun pointed at them within the same year was traumatizing for her.

While Robs situation was going on, Kim had just been dealing with Paris, she said. He had a gun put at his head, and she was held at gunpoint and thrown into a bathtub. Thats a lot to take as a mother.

While on stand, Kris Jenner said her boyfriend Corey Gamble separated her son and Chyna - who she says smashed an expensive television in the master bedroom. But after Gamble pulled them apart and asked Rob Kardashian to leave, she was told that Chyna smashed a chair on the windshield of her son's car.

In her questioning, Chynas lawyer, Lynne Ciani, asked why Jenner or anyone else did not call the police. Jenner said her security team  former Los Angeles Police Department officers  helped diffuse the intense ordeal.

Kris Jenner claims she wanted to help Chyna. She said arguments between the couple were an ongoing theme in their relationship that included alcoholic beverages and drugs.

We didnt put Chyna on the show and give her this fabulous life to be taken away, she said. We created other opportunities. I was hopeful that it would be OK. Thats why I didnt call (the police).

Ciani tried to gain clarity about a text message sent from Kris Jenner to Rob & Chyna showrunner that read Chyna beat the (expletive) out of Robs face. She said the phrase was used as a figure of speech.

Kris Jenner compared her reference to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock during the recent Oscars.

Its like youre at an awards show and you get slapped, she said while drawing some laughter from jurors and some others in the courtroom while her daughters facial expressions remained stoic.

Ciani asked about another text she sent to the showrunner that read We need to ditch this (expletive) after her sons altercation with the Chyna. Jenner said she was very angry and upset at the time, but she claims she never had any involvement in hampering Chynas time on the show.

Its not my proudest moment, but it was how I felt at the time, she said.

Chynas lawsuit, filed in 2017, alleges defamation and interference with contracts. It accuses Kris Jenner of being a ringleader who used her daughters in a campaign to defame Chyna as abusive to Rob Kardashian.

Kris Jenner would be an executive producer on the couples Keeping Up with the Kardashians spinoff, Rob & Chyna, which premiered on the E! Network later in September of 2016. She said she had nothing to do with the network deciding to not pick up the reality show for a second season.

With Kris Jenner being her sons manager, she said she would receive a letter saying the show was green lit. But she says they never got a letter exercising the option.

Chyna and Rob Kardashian share a daughter named Dream.
BEIRUT (AP)  A boat carrying about 60 migrants capsized Saturday night off the Lebanese coast, and 45 people were rescued, while a young girl was confirmed dead and the rest were missing, officials said.

Transportation Minister Ali Hamieh told The Associated Press that 17 people had been brought to shore along with the body of the young girl. He said 28 others were rescued later by Lebanon's navy.

Search operations are ongoing for the rest, Hamieh, who is supervising the rescue operations, said by telephone.

He said authorities had no exact numbers of the migrants because they left the country illegally. But the Lebanese Red Cross said the boat was carrying about 60 migrants.

The Red Cross said it had sent ambulances to the port of the northern city of Tripoli in case there were injuries.

For many years Lebanon was a country that took in refugees, but since the countrys economic meltdown began in October 2019, hundreds of people have left on boats heading to Europe.

Migrants have been paying thousands of dollars to smugglers to take them to Europe hoping for a better life. Hundreds have made it to European countries, while dozens of others were stopped and forced to return home by the Lebanese navy. Several people lost their lives on the way to Europe over the past three years.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati's office said the boast capsized shortly after leaving the northern coastal town of Qalamoun near Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city. Tripoli is Lebanon's most impoverished city.

Mikati's office said the Lebanese army and authorities were on high alert following the case.

Lebanon, a small Mediterranean nation of 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, is in the grip of the worst economic crisis in the country's modern history. The economic meltdown has put more three-quarters of the country's population into poverty.

The World Bank describes the crisis as among the worst in the world since the 1850s. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs and the Lebanese pound has lost more than 90% of its value.
Jessica Phelps /Staff photographer

There is plenty voters have to decide for the general election on May 7, including billions in multiple bond elections. San Antonio and Bexar County residents can soon cast their vote when early voting opens up this week. Here's what you should know.

Early voting begins on Monday, April 25 and end on May 3, according to the Bexar County Elections Department, which will facilitate voting at numerous locations across San Antonio and the county. Aside from school board and city council elections, the notable item on this year's ballot is San Antonio's largest bond yet at $1.2 billion.
If you voted in March, you remain registered, but make sure your address is up to date.

If you didnt vote in the March primaries this year, you can choose to vote in either the Democratic or Republican runoffs but must be registered to vote 30 days before the election, which is by the April 25 deadline.

If you vote in, say, the Democratic Party primary, you have to vote in the Democratic Party's primary runoff. You can't switch to the Republican runoff, said Sam Taylor, a spokesperson for the Texas secretary of states office.

If you voted in the March 1 primary, you can cast your vote only in runoff races for the same party.

Voters may also see runoff elections for representatives for their districts in the Texas House, Texas Senate, State Board of Education and Congress. Find the races on your ballot here .

This year, 50 primary races are headed to runoffs. This includes statewide races for the elected offices of Texas attorney general, lieutenant governor, land commissioner, comptroller and railroad commissioner.

The runoff winners will become their partys pick for the November general election, during which theyll face the candidate from the opposing party and possible Libertarian , Green Party and independent candidates.

In crowded primary elections in which no candidate won more than 50% of votes, the two candidates with the most votes will appear on the ballot for the runoff.

Voters will make the final call in Democratic and Republican primary races that were left undecided after the March 1 election.

What dates do I need to know? April 25 is the last day to register to vote and to submit an address change for the runoff election. You can report an address or name change online. How do I check if Im registered to vote? You can check to see if youre registered and verify your information through the Texas secretary of states website. Youll need one of the following three combinations to log in: Providing your Texas drivers license number and date of birth.

Providing your first and last names, date of birth and what county you reside in.

Providing your date of birth and Voter Unique Identifier, which appears on your voter registration certificate. How do I register to vote? Youll need to fill out and submit a paper voter registration application at least 30 days before the election, which is by the April 25 deadline. You can request a postage-paid application through the mail or find one at county voter registrars offices and some post offices, government offices or high schools. You can also print out the online application and mail it to the voter registrar in your county. Applications must be postmarked by the April 25 deadline. Download your application here. Additionally, you can register to vote through the Texas Department of Public Safety while renewing your drivers license, even if youre doing so online. This is the only form of online registration in the state. May 13 is the last day to apply to vote by mail. May 24 is the deadline to return a mail-in ballot. If youre looking to vote by mail, give yourself as much leeway as possible. Youll need to budget for the time it may take your county to get your ballot to you in the mail after you apply. When do I need to drop off or mail an application? Applications must be received  not postmarked  by the early voting clerk in your county by May 13. Applications also can be submitted by fax or email, but the county must receive a hard copy within four business days. They can also be dropped off in person. You can download an application here or request an application to be mailed to you here. By when do I need to mail my ballot? The deadline for mail-in ballots to be returned to the county is election day, which is May 24. If theyre postmarked by 7 p.m. that day, theyll be counted if theyre received by the county by 5 p.m. May 25. Absentee ballots also can be delivered to the county elections office in person with a valid form of ID while polls are open on election day. Completed ballots from military or overseas voters are accepted if theyre received by May 31. (Military and overseas voters can go through a different ballot request and return process.) Early voting in person runs from May 16-20. Where am I allowed to vote early? Voters can cast ballots at any polling location in the county where they are registered to vote. Check your county elections offices website for early voting locations. Who is eligible to vote early? Anyone who is registered to vote may vote early, but it must be done in person unless you qualify to vote by mail. Election day is May 24. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on election day. Are polling locations the same on election day as they are during early voting? Not always. Its recommended to check the open polling locations in your area before you head out to cast your ballot. In some counties, election day voting may be restricted to locations in your designated precinct. Other counties allow voters to cast their ballot at any polling place on election day.

What do I need to know about going to the polls? How does primary voting work? Primary elections are used to designate who will be a partys candidate in the general election in each race, so youll be selecting among members of the same party in casting your vote. At the polls, youll have to choose whether you want to vote in the Republican or Democratic primary if you didnt vote in the March 1 election. If you did, you have to stick to the same party. Some counties will host whats known as a joint primary, which means everyone checks in at the same desk and uses the same voting machines. In other counties, there will be separate check-in stations and lines for either party. How can I find which polling places are near me? County election offices are supposed to post on their websites information on polling locations for election day and during the early voting period by May 3. The secretary of states website will also have information on polling locations closer to the start of voting. However, polling locations may change, so be sure to check your countys election website before going to vote. What form of ID do I need to bring? Youll need one of seven types of valid photo ID to vote in Texas: A state drivers license (issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety).

A Texas election identification certificate (issued by DPS).

A Texas personal identification card (issued by DPS).

A Texas license to carry a handgun (issued by DPS).

A U.S. military ID card with a personal photo.

A U.S. citizenship certificate with a personal photo.

A U.S. passport. Check out this story for more details. What if I dont have a valid photo ID? Voters can still cast votes if they sign a form swearing that they have a reasonable impediment from obtaining a proper photo ID. However, those voters will also have to present one of the following types of identification: A valid voter registration certificate.

A certified birth certificate.

A document confirming birth admissible in a court of law that establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document).

A copy of or an original current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck or other document that shows the voters name and address. (Any government document that contains a voters photo must be an original.) What does the pandemic mean for voting in this election? Youll likely see many of the same precautions weve grown accustomed to over the last few years, including guidelines for social distancing, plastic barriers and regular cleaning. Poll workers may be wearing face masks and other protective equipment, but masks are not required for voters, though health officials still recommend wearing masks in indoor public places in areas with high transmission rates. What if I was planning to vote in person, but I have been diagnosed with COVID-19? If you have contracted COVID-19 or are exhibiting symptoms, consider requesting an emergency early voting ballot or using curbside voting. Emergency ballot: These ballots can be requested if you become sick or disabled close to an election and are unable to go to a polling place on election day. To qualify, you must designate a representative to submit an application in person on your behalf and have a certified doctors note. The application must be received by your countys early voting clerk before 5 p.m. on election day. Your ballot must be returned by the same designated representative before 7 p.m. on election day to be counted. Contact your county elections office for more details about an emergency early voting ballot due to sickness or disability. Curbside voting: You can also contact your county elections office to determine if youre eligible for curbside voting, which must be made available at every polling place. Some counties have designated parking spots for curbside voters, while others use a doorbell-like system so poll workers know to bring out a portable voting machine.

What do I need to know about mail-in voting? How do I know if Im eligible to vote by mail? This option is fairly limited in Texas. Youre allowed to vote by mail only if: You will be 65 years old or older by election day.

You will not be in your county for the entire span of voting, including early voting.

You cite a sickness or disability that prevents you from voting in person without needing personal assistance or without the likelihood of injuring your health.

Youre expected to give birth within three weeks before or after election day.

You are confined in jail but otherwise eligible (i.e., not convicted of a felony). What identification do I need to vote by mail? The Texas Legislature last year created new identification requirements for voting by mail that require voters to provide their drivers license or state ID number or, if they havent been assigned those, the last four digits of their Social Security number on both the application for a ballot and the envelope used to return a completed ballot. If they dont have either, voters can also indicate they have not been issued that identification. More than 24,000 Texans lost their votes in the March primary because roughly 12.4% of mail-in ballots were rejected under the new voting law. The secretary of states office said its critical for voters to remember to add a license or ID number to their ballots. The issue that we saw was a lot of people just left that number off on the mailing ballots, Taylor said. Ahead of the March primary, hundreds of voters applications for mail-in ballots were also rejected, in some cases because they provided a license number that the state didnt have on file. As of Dec. 20, a reported 493,823 registered voters didnt have a drivers license on file, which is the first number voters are asked to provide on both applications to register to vote and applications to vote by mail. The secretary of state has suggested contacting your local voter registrar to ask about how to add one of the required numbers to your voter registration record. Other voting advocates suggest voters include both their drivers license or state ID number and the last four digits of their Social Security number, if they have both, to avoid issues. Does lack of immunity to COVID-19 qualify as a disability during the pandemic? While a lack of immunity to COVID-19 alone does not allow a voter to request a ballot based on disability, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that it was up to voters to decide if that lack of immunity, combined with their medical history, allows them to meet the states eligibility criteria. Take note that the Texas election codes definition for disability is broader than other federal definitions. A voter is eligible to vote by mail if they have a sickness or physical condition that prevents them from voting in person without the likelihood of needing personal assistance or of injuring the voters health. Its up to the voter to decide this, and election officials dont have the authority to question a voters reasoning. What kind of postage do I need to return my mail-in ballot? It depends on where you live. Postage for mail-in ballots will vary by county because the style and size of the ballot could be vastly different from county to county  and some counties may pay postage for you. Local elections offices should have the specifics once ballots are finalized. That said, if you dont have enough postage, your ballot is not supposed to be returned to you. Instead, the Postal Service is supposed to deliver the ballot and bill the county for the insufficient or missing postage. What if theres an issue with my mail-in ballot? This will be the first major election in which Texas will allow voters to correct their mail-in ballots if they are at risk of being rejected for a technical error, including missing information or signatures. This also applies to issues with the applications for those ballots. County officials are responsible for alerting voters if there is a defect with their application or ballot. Voters can use a new online ballot tracker to check the status of both their application to vote by mail and their ballot. The tracker can also be used to make corrections. You can access the tracker here. Disclosure: The Texas Secretary of State has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Lambert: If youre exposed to Russian energy, more volatility for you.

By Raphael Lafrogne-Joussier, PhD candidate in Economics, CREST-Ecole Polytechnique and Economist, INSEE, Andrei Levchenko, Professor of Economics, University of Michigan; CEPR Research Fellow, Julien Martin, Professor of economics ESG UQAM, and Isabelle Mejean Professor of Economics, Sciences Po. Originally published at VoxEU.

What are the potential costs of cutting Russian energy imports as a further tightening of the sanction regime? One of the many uncertainties regarding the size of these costs is related to the diffusion and amplification of the shock in production networks. This column discusses what can be learned on this topic from the analysis of firm-level data. Micro-level evidence suggests that some firms adjust, mitigating the effects of the shock. However, exposure to these shocks is heterogenous across firms. This has distributional consequences, with less exposed firms gaining market shares over more exposed ones.

Imports from Russia are largely made up of energy inputs, most notably oil, coal, and natural gas. The centrality of these inputs in production networks implies that shocks affecting the price of energy have the potential to propagate downstream, leading to sizeable amplification of the shock. However, recent estimates, recovered from calibrated multi-sector, multi-country models with input-output linkages (Bachmann et al. 2022, Baqaee et al. 2022), suggest that the effect of an import ban on Russian oil and gas would generate a relatively limited GDP contraction.1 Even in a country like Germany, cutting Russian energy imports  which represent 30% of German energy consumption  would induce a 0.5-3% decline in GDP, a sizeable but manageable economic cost.

In sector-level models such as those used in Bachmann et al. (2022) or Baqaee et al. (2022), such a relatively small effect results from a non-zero elasticity of substitution among firms inputs. If Russian oil and gas were perfect complements to other inputs (a zero elasticity), GDP would fall one-to-one with energy imports. Some of the firms in sectors dependent on Russian energy are assumed to be able to switch to other suppliers and the same is true of firms in downstream sectors, which need to cope with the reduced production of their suppliers. In particular, the open-economy structure of the model implies that some of the inputs that can no longer be produced domestically due to energy rationing can be substituted by foreign goods.2

The assumption that there exist some substitution opportunities in production networks may seem controversial, as they are typically thought to be rigid structures shaped by relationship-specific investments. Is it more appropriate to instead be conservative and assume a pure Leontief production structure? Addressing this question is tricky in the absence of direct evidence on how technologies adjust to energy shocks.

Is Technology Leontief at the Firm Level?

In a recent paper (Lafrogne-Joussier et al. 2022), we tackle a related question using the early stage of the Covid crisis as a quasi-natural experiment. In this empirical study, we use monthly panel data on French firms and investigate the dynamics of their sales in the first semester of 2020. Our strategy exploits firms early exposure to supply chain disruptions induced by the lockdown in China in January 2020. By comparing firms that were exposed to the productivity slowdown in China through their value chain with comparable firms that were not, we can quantify the extent of the propagation of shocks, at the root of the amplification formalised in models of production networks. By March 2020, when the virus was just beginning to spread in Europe and France, firms exposed to supply chain disruptions from China were already reporting 7% lower export sales than their unexposed counterparts.

The exercise also makes it possible to examine heterogeneous adjustments of exposed firms to input disruptions. A first finding is that exposed firms holding inventories managed to absorb the shock better. Whether managed at the firm level, as in our example, or by public authorities, strategic inventories (in particular of gas and oil) appear to be essential to help exposed firms mitigate the shock. A second, more surprising result is that firms that were most dependent on Chinese inputs absorbed some of the shock by diversifying their supply chain following the early lockdown. Among the treatment group, firms that had a non-diversified supply chain have a significantly higher probability to start importing their inputs from elsewhere just after the disruption induced by the Chinese lockdown, in February and March 2020 (Figure 1). Whereas such evidence does not directly address the question of the possibilities of substitution away from Russian gas, it does support the view that, even in the very short run, firms that face important disruptions in their input purchases do adjust.

Figure 1 Impact of the early lockdown in China on exposed firms number of foreign partners.

Source: Lafrogne et al. (2022).

Notes: The figure shows the result of an event study design that compares firms exposed to Chinese inputs prior to the lockdown in China (treated firms) and firms that were not (control firms). The treatment group is further split into diversified firms that were connected with at least one other sourcing country for the input sourced in China and non-diversified firms that solely relied on China prior to the shock. The estimated equation explains the number of source countries, before and after January 2020, in the group of treated firms in comparison with control firms, using a Poisson estimator. The difference is normalised to zero in January 2020.

DistriButional Effects of the Shock

Another margin of adjustment, which textbook sector-level models do not directly incorporate, is substitution within a sector across firms. Since firms in the same sector produce output that is probably more highly substitutable than inputs within the firm, heterogeneity in who uses Russian gas provides another shock attenuation mechanism (di Giovanni et al. 2020). As discussed in this paper, heterogeneity in exposure to a foreign shock has significant aggregate consequences on the overall impact of the shock. The heterogeneity in exposure to Russia from the import side is illustrated in Figure 2. Out of 150,000 French importers, less than 2,500 directly imported from Russia in 2019. However, these firms are substantially larger than the average and their total imports account for one-third of Frances overall imports. Providing exposed firms are large and connected to other domestic producers, their sensitivity to the shock has aggregate consequences. But the heterogeneity also has distributional consequences: non-exposed firms gain market shares over exposed firms. To account for these substitution opportunities, the analysis in di Giovanni et al. (2020) maps firm-level data for France with the sector-level input-output data used in Bachmann et al. (2022) or Baqaee et al. (2022).

Figure 2 Exposure of French firms to Russian imports

Source: French customs data for 2019.

Notes: The figure shows the number (left panel) and share in aggregate imports (right panel) of firms that i) import from Russia (dark grey bar), ii) import one of their inputs solely from Russia (light grey bars) and iii) import one of their main inputs solely from Russia (blue bars). In the third case, statistics are based on the sub-sample of a firms imports that account for at least 1% of the firms overall imports in 2019.

Figure 3 illustrates how heterogeneity in exposure and substitution opportunities affects the response of French firms to a 10% drop in Russian productivity. Under our baseline calibration, the aggregate impact of such shock is a 0.9% decrease in Frances real GDP (the red line in Figure 3). Blue circles display the average firm-level responses depending on the firms size. Whereas firms in the top two percentiles of the size distribution experience a sizeable 4% adjustment, some firms in lower percentiles expand as they gain market share over the most exposed firms. These substitution opportunities are not accounted for in textbook models with input-output linkages but they could be important in the context of a possible ban on Russian gas if there is heterogeneity across firms within a sector in their dependence on Russian gas.3

Figure 3 Heterogeneity in the response of firms to a 10% productivity drop in Russia

Source: Authors calculation using the model in di Giovanni et al. (2020).

Notes: The figure shows the mean elasticity of firms real value added to a simulated 10% drop in the aggregate productivity of the Russian economy. Average elasticities are computed for 50 bins of individual firms, grouped by their (value added) size.

Concluding Remarks

Existing evidence recovered from detailed firm-level data thus supports the view that foreign shocks do diffuse in production networks. Despite the rigidity of modern production networks, some firms adjust their technology, even in the very short run, when confronted with a disruption in their value chain. Moreover, the heterogeneous exposure to the shock has distributional consequences: less exposed firms gain market shares over the more exposed ones. Assuming some substitution across inputs in models of production networks is consistent with this micro-level evidence. But what the discussion also shows is that a ban on Russian imports will have very heterogeneous consequences. Some well-known firms and some iconic products will be strongly affected by the sanctions. Beyond GDP figures, huge but concentrated losses may have a stronger impact on public opinion than small diffused losses.

References available at original.
(Natural News) It could soon be mandatory for doctors in America to perform abortions, even if their religious beliefs prohibit them from taking innocent human life.

A new mandate being put together by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as an anti-sex discrimination provision within the Affordable Care Act would force doctors to murder unborn children or else risk losing their medical license.

The plan for this mandate was discovered in a memorandum attached to a 74-page court filing from last November. Catholic News Service (CNS) reported that the memo:

 revealed that HHS has promised to revise its mandates on health plan coverage and performance to include surgical abortion, cross-sex hormones, gender-transition surgeries, gender-affirming cosmetic surgeries and voice modification  along with a host of expanded services dealing with fertility treatments, contraception, abortifacients and sterilizations.

Doug Wilson, CEO of the Colorado-based Catholic Benefits Association, announced that the mandate is written to end Catholic health care.

The requirements are so far beyond Catholic teaching that Catholic employers of every sort would be faced with complying or shutting down, he further said. The general public has almost no awareness of what may be coming.

Planned Parenthood executive expresses joy over possibility of forcing doctors to murder children

Back in 2019, then-President Donald Trumps administration added a conscience protection rule to the law that prevents doctors, nurses, and other health care providers from being forced to offer or participate in any medical procedure that violates conscience or religious belief.

The Biden regime (aka Barack Hussein Obama) is seeking to overturn this clause and make it a requirement for everyone in the medical profession to rip an unborn child limb from limb and toss it in the trash can or else lose their job and livelihood.

Added weight was given to the measure by allowing the federal government to withdraw taxpayer money from any institution that violated the conscience rights of its workers, LifeSiteNews reported. The rule was blocked by a federal judge after abortion advocates sued the Trump administration.

According to CNS, the new mandate would likely apply to all health care providers, clinics, nursing homes, hospitals, group health insurers, and third-party administrators of self-funded plans.

If the new regulation applies to all of those groups, it will effectively apply to all employers with a health plan, says attorney Martin Nussbaum from the legal firm Nussbaum Speir Gleason, which advises the Colorado-based Catholic Benefits Association.

The proposed regulation would also apply to all contractors of the previous groups, including my law firm. For Catholic hospital chains, it is hard to imagine how broad that group is.

Nussbaum added further in a statement that the forthcoming HHS regulation presents an existential threat to Catholic health care because the penalties for non-compliance with it will likely include private enforcement, class-action lawsuits, and qui tam actions where individuals can file lawsuits as if they were the United States itself.

The penalties could also include loss of Medicare and Medicaid funding, or even imprisonment for health care executives who refuse to comply.

Such sanctions can shut down any hospital network, Nussbaum further warned.

Meanwhile, Jacqueline Ayers, senior vice president of policy, organizing, and campaigns at Planned Parenthood, is excited about the possibility that this new mandate comes into effect.

She is quoted as praising the Biden regime for seeking to revoke this discriminatory policy and help ensure people can access the health care and information they need when they need it.

Wilson says there will be lawsuits if the mandate comes into effect.

We are preparing for what we anticipate will be a significant lawsuit, he says. I dont think the administration will make material changes or that the public comment period will have enough (or) much effect.

More related news can be found at Abortions.news.

Sources include:

LifeSiteNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) The more we learn about the backgrounds of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy prime minister, Christia Freeland, the more it becomes clear why they are turning their country into a socialist authoritarian nation under the false guise of protecting citizens from the pandemic.

In recent days, Freeland came out in support of making permanent certain aspects of the Emergencies Act invoked earlier this month by Trudeau to crackdown on the Freedom Convoy truckers. Specifically, Freeland wants the government to be able to use financial pressure  freezing bank accounts  against political opponents.

That seems awfully tyrannical, given that Canada is, or was, a model Western democracy. What would compel her to push for that?

Her background, perhaps?

According to multiple reports, Freelands maternal Ukrainian grandfather was the editor of a pro-Nazi newspaper that regularly vilified Jews, per The Globe and Mail:

Ms. Freelands family history has become a target for Russian forces seeking to discredit one of Canadas highly placed defenders of Ukraine.

Ms. Freeland, who has paid tribute to her maternal grandparents in articles and books, helped edit a scholarly article in the Journal of Ukrainian Studies in 1996 that revealed her grandfather, Michael Chomiak, was a Nazi propagandist for Krakivski Visti (Krakow News).

Krakivski Visti was set up in 1940 by the German army and supervised by German intelligence officer Emil Gassert. Its printing presses and offices were confiscated by the Germans from a Jewish publisher, who was later murdered at the Belzec concentration camp.

The article was titled, Kravivski Visti and the Jews, 1943: A contribution of Ukrainian Jewish Relations during the Second World War, and it was written by John-Paul Himka, Freelands uncle, who is now a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta.

The forward to the article features Himka crediting Freeland for pointing out problems and clarifications.

But Freeland has never publicly acknowledged that her grandfather was a Nazi collaborator, and on Monday during a news conference, suggested that such claims were part of a Russian disinformation campaign, the same fallback excuse used by Democrats anytime proof surfaces that Hillary Clinton created the Trump-Russia collusion narrative out of thin air.

American officials have publicly said, and even Angela Merkel has publicly said, that there were efforts on the Russian side to destabilize Western democracies, and I think it shouldnt come as a surprise if these same efforts were used against Canada, Freeland told reporters after they raised questions about the articles regarding her grandfather.

Others have also used the Russian disinfo explanation.

It is the continued Russian modus operandi that they have, Paul Grod, president of the Canadian Ukrainian Congress, told the Globe and Mail. Fake news, disinformation and targeting different individuals. It is just so outlandish when you hear some of these allegations  whether they are directed at minister Freeland or others.

But, according to The Ottawa Citizen:

The Ukraine Archival Records held by the Province of Alberta. It has a whole file on Chomiak, including his own details about his days editing the newspaper Krakivski Visti. Chomiak noted he edited the paper first in Crakow (Kracow), Poland and then in Vienna. The reason he edited the paper in Vienna was because he had to flee with his Nazi colleagues as the Russians advanced into Poland. (The Russians tended to execute collaborators well as SS members).

Also, Himka wrote about Chomiaks work in 1996, noting that the Ukrainian-language paper often published anti-Semitic garbage including certain passages in some of the articles that expressed approval of what the Nazis were doing to the Jews.

And by the way, its not as if Ukraines leadership today isnt authoritarian; political opponents are detained there, as they have been in Canada in recent days, thanks to the trucker crackdown.

Canada is being led by would-be dictators, and their history and heritage prove as much.

Sources include:

OttawaCitizen.com

TheGlobeAndMail.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) There can be little doubt among reasonable Americans at this point that Joe Biden is one of the most corrupt, compromised presidents in the history of America, and it is long past time for him to be removed from office because he and his family are wholly owned by the Communist Chinese.

The latest link was uncovered by a government watchdog group that is now demanding that the U.S. attorney investigating Hunter Biden in Delaware also look into tens of millions of dollars in anonymous donations from China to the Ivy League institution, the University of Pennsylvania, where there is an academic center named for Joe Biden.

According to the New York Post, which has been all over the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden/corruption story since before the 2020 election, UPenn took in some $54.6 million from 2014 through June 2019 from the ChiComs, including $23.1 million in anonymous gifts beginning in 2016, before then-Vice President Joe Biden left office and while his son was scooping up millions in corrupt deals in Ukraine, Russia and China, public records indicate.

Most of the anonymous donations came after the university announced in February 2017 that it would create the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Joe Biden, whose term as vice president had just ended, was to lead the center and was also named a professor at the university, The Post reported.

The center, which is located in Washington, DC, opened its doors in February 2018. Antony Blinken, whom Biden named as secretary of state, briefly served as its managing director, the paper continued.

The institution is formally called the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which is hilarious, actually, considering that Joe Bidens reputation for being a foreign policy expert is a joke. According to one of Barack Obamas defense secretaries, Robert Gates, Biden hasnt gotten a single major foreign policy issue right throughout his 50-plus years in politics.

Gates called Biden a man of integrity but wrote in a 2014 book that he believes Bidens been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.

It seems, however, that Gates may have just been trying to be civil by calling Biden a man of integrity, based on all of the information we are now learning about his and his sons nefarious business arrangements with competitor governments.

The flood of donations to the Biden Center is likely related to Hunter Bidens business dealings with the ChiComs, the National Legal and Policy Center, a Virginia-based government watchdog group, said in complaints lodged in May and October 2020 to the Departments of Justice and Education, The Post reported.

The group asked U.S. Attorney David Weiss last week to step up and add the Chinese donations to UPenn as part of his ongoing federal tax investigation of Hunter Biden.

Weve asked  Weiss to pursue the larger network of individuals and institutions who benefited from millions doled out by foreign interests connected to Hunter Bidens work in China and Ukraine, Tom Anderson, director of the NLPCs Government Integrity Project, said, according to The Post.

In a 12-page complaint, the government watchdog referenced text found on Hunter Bidens laptop that CEFC China Energy Co., now defunct but one of the firms that Hunter Biden held a financial stake in, sought to lobby American political leaders but did not want to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, which is a requirement for all foreign lobbyists.

We dont want to have to register as foreign agents under the FCPA [sic] which  is much more expansive than people who should know choose not to know, says the May 1, 2017, text sent from Hunter Biden to his former business partner, Tony Bobulinski.

According to a UPenn spokesperson, there have been no anonymous Chinese donations made to the Biden Center.

The Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity. In fact, the University has never solicited any gifts for the Center, Stephen MacCarthy said.

But he also refused to say how the massive above-board Chinese donations were used.

The Bidens are dirty and have no business within 1,000 miles of the White House.

Sources include:

NYPost.com

FoxNews.com
(Natural News) Democrats routinely practice Saul Alinskys Rules For Radicals, which includes this one: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

That is how they often manage such tremendous societal shifts over the course of years; they also practice another rule, which is, Keep the pressure on.

The Democrat left has, for years, focused on chipping away at the Second Amendment because as Marxists, they know they cannot gain full control over an armed populous so the goal is to disarm as many Americans as possible while keeping the government as heavily armed as it can be. And the movement got a huge boost earlier this week when its current puppet, Joe Biden, declared that some gun parts are actually firearms and thus can be regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Breitbart News reports:

The White House released a fact sheet early Monday indicating that President Joe Biden intends to announce that his Department of Justice (DOJ) is prepared to label gun parts kits as firearms in an effort to ban so-called ghost guns.

Democrats use the phrase ghost guns to describe firearms that Americans can build themselves. The firearms are often built from an 80 percent receiver in the case of a rifle, or 80 percent frame, in the case of a pistol. Building such guns has long been an American hobby. The new rules from Bidens DOJ refer to the 80 percent parts kits as buy, build, shoot kits and label the kits themselves as firearms.

In May 2021, the outlet reported that Bidens Justice Department was also pushing new rules requiring persons to undergo a background check in order to acquire gun parts kits to build firearms at home while also requiring that Federal Firearms License (FFLs) holders add a serial number to previously built or 3-D printed guns that they take into inventory.

We are committed to taking commonsense steps to address the epidemic of gun violence that takes the lives of too many people in our communities. Criminals and others barred from owning a gun should not be able to exploit a loophole to evade background checks and to escape detection by law enforcement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said at the time.

This proposed rule would help keep guns out of the wrong hands and make it easier for law enforcement to trace guns used to commit violent crimes, while protecting the rights of law-abiding Americans. Although this rulemaking will solve only one aspect of the problem, we have an obligation to do our part to keep our families and our neighborhoods safe from gun violence, he added.

According to a White House Fact Sheet, the new rules announced by Biden and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco follow through on the 2021 proposal mandating that FFL holders add serial numbers to any firearm that comes into their possession that doesnt have one:

The Justice Department is requiring federally licensed dealers and gunsmiths taking any unserialized firearm into inventory to serialize that weapon. For example, if an individual builds a firearm at home and then sells it to a pawn broker or another federally licensed dealer, that dealer must put a serial number on the weapon before selling it to a customer. This requirement will apply regardless of how the firearm was made, meaning it includes ghost guns made from individual parts, kits, or by 3D-printers.

Biden also lied last spring when he claimed that the Second Amendment was never intended to allow Americans to buy any gun they wanted or things like cannons, but in fact, thats not true. In the earliest days of our republic, private individuals and companies most certainly were allowed to purchase cannons and did. Also, private companies could buy some of the first Gatlin guns, some of which were put aboard trains carrying valuable cargo to help defend it from bandits.

Only in the more modern era with Democrat tyrants have Americans gun rights been taken away. Our founders would be ashamed.

Sources include:

Breitbart.com

WhiteHouse.gov
(Natural News) A group of former intelligence and national security officials on Monday issued a jointly signed letter warning that pending legislative attempts to restrict or break up the power of Big Tech monopolies  Facebook, Google, and Amazon  would jeopardize national security because, they argue, their centralized censorship power is crucial to advancing U.S. foreign policy. The majority of this letter is devoted to repeatedly invoking the grave threat allegedly posed to the U.S. by Russia as illustrated by the invasion of Ukraine, and it repeatedly points to the dangers of Putin and the Kremlin to justify the need to preserve Big Techs power in its maximalist form. Any attempts to restrict Big Techs monopolistic power would therefore undermine the U.S. fight against Moscow.

(Article republished from Greenwald.Substack.com)

While one of their central claims is that Big Tech monopoly power is necessary to combat (i.e., censor) foreign disinformation, several of these officials are themselves leading disinformation agents: many were the same former intelligence officials who signed the now-infamous-and-debunked pre-election letter fraudulently claiming that the authentic Hunter Biden emails had the hallmarks of Russia disinformation (former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Obama CIA Director Michael Morrell, former Obama CIA/Pentagon chief Leon Panetta). Others who signed this new letter have strong financial ties to the Big Tech corporations whose power they are defending in the name of national security (Morrell, Panetta, former Bush National Security Adviser Fran Townsend).

The ostensible purpose of the letter is to warn of the national security dangers from two different bipartisan bills  one pending in the Senate, the other in the House  that would prohibit Big Tech monopolies from using their vertical power to discriminate against competitors (the way Google, for instance, uses its search engine business to bury the videos of competitors to its YouTube property, such as Rumble, or the way Google and Apple use their stores and Amazon uses its domination over hosting services to destroy competitors).

One bill in the Senate is co-sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), and has attracted ample support in both parties, as has a similar House bill co-sponsored by House Antitrust Committee Chair David Cicilline (D-RI) and ranking member Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO). The amount of bipartisan support each bill has garnered  and the widespread animosity toward Big Tech reflected by this Congressional support  has shocked Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook lobbyists, who are accustomed to getting their way in Washington with lavish donations to the key politicians in each party.

This letter by former national security officials is, in one sense, an act of desperation. The bills have received the support of the key committees with jurisdiction over antitrust and Big Tech. In the Senate, five conservative Republican Committee members who have been outspoken critics of Big Tech power  Grassley, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Josh Hawley (R-MI), Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA)  joined with Democrats to ensure the passage of one bill out of the Judiciary Committee by a 16-6 vote, with a companion bill passing that Committee with the support of 20 of twenty-two Senators. As The Intercepts Sara Sirota and Ryan Grim report: Both bills have Big Tech reeling since a floor vote would likely be a blowout for Big Tech.

The extreme animus harbored by large parts of the left and right toward Big Tech make it very difficult for any lawmaker to go on record in opposition to these proposed bills if they are forced to publicly take a position in a floor vote. Many Senators with financial ties to Big Tech  including the two California Senate Democrats who represent Silicon Valley and are recipients of their largesse (Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla)  have expressed reservations about these reform efforts and have refused to co-sponsor the bill, yet still voted YES when forced to vote in Committee. This shows that public pressure to rein in Big Tech is becoming too large to enable Silicon Valley to force lawmakers to ignore their constituents wishes with lobbyist donations. These politicians will work behind the scenes to kill efforts to rein in Big Tech, but will not vote against such efforts if forced to take a public position.

As a result, Big Techs last hope is to keep the bill from reaching the floor where Senators would be forced to go on record, a goal they hope will be advanced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York due to his close ties to Silicon Valley. Both [Schumers] children are on the payroll of companies the proposals would seek to rein in, reported The New York Post: Jessica Schumer is a registered lobbyist at Amazon, according to New York state records. Alison Schumer works at Facebook as a product marketing manager. Despite that, Schumer claimed to The Intercept that he supports both bills and will vote in favor of them, even though he has engaged in maneuvers to impede the bills from getting a full floor vote.

This is where these former intelligence and national security officials come in. While these former CIA, Homeland Security and Pentagon operatives have little sway in the Senate Judiciary and House Antitrust Committees, they command great loyalty from Congressional national security committees. Those committees, created to exert oversight of the U.S. intelligence and military agencies, are notoriously captive to the U.S. National Security State. The ostensible purpose of this new letter is to insist that Big Tech monopoly power is vital to U.S. national security  because it is necessary for them to censor disinformation from the internet, especially now with the grave Russian threat reflected by the war in Ukraine  and they thus demand that the anti-Big-Tech bills first be reviewed not only by the Judiciary and Antitrust Committees, but also the national security committees where they wield power and influence, which have traditionally played no role in regulating the technology sector:

We call on the congressional committees with national security jurisdiction  including the Armed Services Committees, Intelligence Committees, and Homeland Security Committees in both the House and Senate  to conduct a review of any legislation that could hinder Americas key technology companies in the fight against cyber and national security risks emanating from Russias and Chinas growing digital authoritarianism.

Why would these former national security and intelligence officials be so devoted to preserving the unfettered power of Big Tech to control and censor the internet? One obvious explanation is the standard one that always runs Washington: several of them have a financial interest in serving Big Techs agenda.

Unsurprisingly, Apple CEO Tim Cook has himself pushed the claim that undermining Big Techs power in any way would threaten U.S national security. And there is now an army of well-compensated-by-Silicon-Valley former national security officials echoing his message. A well-researched Politico article from September  headlined: 12 former security officials who warned against antitrust crackdown have tech ties  detailed how many of these former officials who invoke national security claims to protect Big Tech are on the take from the key tech monopolies:

The warning last week from a dozen former national security leaders was stark: An antitrust crackdown on Silicon Valley could threaten the nations economy and cede U.S. tech leadership to China. But the group was united by more than their histories of holding senior defense and intelligence roles in the Trump, Obama and George W. Bush administrations: All 12 have ties to major tech companies, either from working with them directly or serving with organizations that get money from them, according to a POLITICO analysis. Seven of the 12, including Panetta, hold roles at Beacon Global Strategies, a public relations firm that according to a person familiar with the matter counts Google as a clientFive of the former officials, including former director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Robert Cardillo and former National Security Agency deputy director Richard Ledgett, serve as advisory board members at Beacon. Panetta and Michael Morell, a former acting CIA director under President Barack Obama, are senior counselors for the firm. Frances Townsend, who was a counterterrorism and homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, is on the national security advisory board for American Edge, a Facebook-funded group that opposes changes to strengthen antitrust laws.Townsend is also on the board of directors of the Atlantic Council, which counts Facebook and Google as funders; the board of trustees for Center for Strategic and International Studies, which counts Apple and Google as funders; and the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, which receives money from Microsoft and counts Facebook and Google in its highest membership category.

As Rep. Buck, the Colorado House Republican who favors reform, put it: It is not surprising that individuals who receive money from Big Tech are defending Big Tech. At the end of the day, Big Tech is harming U.S. competition and innovation through anticompetitive practices. In other words, these former intelligence officials are exploiting their national security credentials to protect an industry in which they have a deep financial interest.

The view that preservation of Big Tech is vital for national security is by no means a unanimous view even in that world. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark and others have vehemently argued that this claim is a myth. As veteran internet security expert Bruce Schneier observed: These bills will encourage competition, prevent monopolist extortion, and guarantee users a new right to digital self-determination. But the National Security State has enough True Believers combined with paid shills to make it appear as if Americans should be desperate to preserve and protect Big Techs power because this power is crucial to keeping America safe and, particularly, fighting Russia.

There are indeed valid and rational reasons for these officials to view Big Tech monopoly power as a vital weapon in advancing their national security agenda. As I documented last week when reporting on the unprecedented censorship regime imposed in the West regarding the war in Ukraine, Big Tech censorship of political speech is not random. Domestically, it is virtually always devoted to silencing any meaningful dissent from liberal orthodoxy or official pieties on key political controversies. But in terms of foreign policy, the censorship patterns of tech monopolies virtually always align with U.S. foreign policy, and for understandable reasons: Big Tech and the U.S. security state are in a virtually complete union, with all sorts of overlapping, mutual financial interests:

Needless to say, the U.S. security state wants to maintain a stranglehold on political discourse in the U.S. and the world more broadly. They want to be able to impose propagandistic narratives without challenge and advocate for militarism without dissent. To accomplish that, they need a small handful of corporations which are subservient to them to hold in their hands as much concentrated power over the internet as possible.

If a free and fair competitive market were to arise whereby social media platforms more devoted to free speech could fairly compete with Google and Facebook as the various pending bills in Congress are partially designed to foster  then that new diversity of influence, that diffusion of power, would genuinely threaten the ability of the CIA and the Pentagon and the White House to police political discourse and suppress dissent from their policies and assertions. By contrast, by maintaining all power in the hands of the small coterie of tech monopolies which control the internet and which have long proven their loyalty to the U.S. security state, the ability of the U.S. national security state to maintain a closed propaganda system around questions of war and militarism is guaranteed.

In this new letter, these national security operatives barely bother to hide their intention to exploit the strong animosity toward Russia that they have cultivated, and the accompanying intense emotions from the ubiquitous, unprecedented media coverage of the war in Ukraine, to prop up their goals. Over and over, they cite the grave Russian threat  a theme they have been disseminating and manufacturing since the Russiagate fraud of 2016  to manipulate Americans to support the preservation of Big Techs concentrated power, and to imply that anyone seeking to limit Big Tech power or make the market more competitive is a threat to U.S. national security:

This is a pivotal moment in modern history. There is a battle brewing between authoritarianism and democracy, and the former is using all the tools at its disposal, including a broad disinformation campaign and the threat of cyber-attacks, to bring about a change in the global order. We must confront these global challenges. . . . U.S. technology platforms have given the world the chance to see the real story of the Russian militarys horrific human rights abuses in Ukraine. . . . At the same time, President Putin and his regime have sought to twist facts in order to show Russia as a liberator instead of an aggressor. . . . The Russian government is seeking to alter the information landscape by blocking Russian citizens from receiving content that would show the true facts on the ground. .. . . . Indeed, it is telling that among the Kremlins first actions of the war was blocking U.S. platforms in Russia. Putin knows that U.S. digital platforms can provide Russian citizens valuable views and facts about the war that he tries to distort through lies and disinformation. U.S. technology platforms have already taken concrete steps to shine a light on Russias actions to brutalize Ukraine. . . . Providing timely and accurate on-the-ground information  and disrupting the scourge of disinformation from Russian state media  is essential for allowing the world (including the Russian people) to see the human toll of Russias aggression. . . . [T]he United States is facing an extraordinary threat from Russian cyber-attacks . . . In the face of these growing threats, U.S. policymakers must not inadvertently hamper the ability of U.S. technology platforms to counter increasing disinformation and cybersecurity risks, particularly as the West continues to rely on the scale and reach of these firms to push back on the Kremlin . . . . Russias invasion of Ukraine marks the start of a new chapter in global history, one in which the ideals of democracy will be put to the test. The United States will need to rely on the power of its technology sector to ensure that the safety of its citizens and the narrative of events continues to be shaped by facts, not by foreign adversaries.

It is hardly controversial or novel to observe that the U.S. security state always wants and needs a hated foreign enemy precisely because it allows them to claim whatever powers and whatever budgets they want in the name of stopping that foreign villain. And every war and every new enemy ushers in new authoritarian powers and the trampling of civil liberties: both the First War on Terror, justified by 9/11, and the New Domestic War on Terror, justified by 1/6, should have taught us that lesson permanently. Usually, though, U.S. security state propagandists are a bit more subtle about how they manipulate anger and fear of foreign villains to manipulate public opinion for their own authoritarian ends.

Perhaps because of their current desperation about the support these bills have attracted, they are now just nakedly and shamelessly trying to channel the anger and hatred that they have successfully stoked toward Russia to demand that Big Tech not be weakened, regulated or restricted in any way. The cynical exploitation could hardly be more overt: if you hate Putin the way any loyal and patriotic American should, then you must devote yourself to full preservation of the power of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.

Read more at: Greenwald.Substack.com
(Natural News) If youre tired of censorship, cancel culture, and the erosion of civil liberties subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

(Article by Tom Parker republished from ReclaimTheNet.org)

Twitter took down a tweet quoting English playwright William Shakespeares well-known lets kill all the lawyers line from Henry VI Part 2 for violating its abuse and harassment rules.

Peter Kirwan, an associate professor at the University of Nottingham, tweeted out the quote as part of a message of support to the Nottingham Shakespeare Rebels acting group.

Really excited for @NottsRebels taking the stage with the @TheRSC for todays Henry VI press performances, Kirwan tweeted. Break a leg everyone, and do kill all the lawyers.

The original quote is spoken by Dick the Butcher in Act 4 Scene 2 of the play as part of his response to rebel leader Jack Cades musings about what he would do if he were king. Some have interpreted the quote as a statement that opposes bureaucracy (which is represented by the lawyers) whereas others argue that the quote is a compliment to lawyers because theyre presented as maintaining justice in society.

But Twitter claimed that Kirwans tweet violated its rules on abuse and harassment, removed the tweet, and locked Kirwan out of his account.

You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so, Twitter told Kirwan. This includes wishing or hoping that someone experiences physical harm.

Twitter later said that the enforcement action on Kirwans account was an error and reversed it. However, the tweet hasnt been restored.

Shakespeare Bulletin, a quarterly journal that Kirwan works for, mocked the tech giants censorship of Shakespeares famous quote.

Careful what you quote, Shakespeare Bulletin tweeted. Make sure you go and see @TheRSC [Royal Shakespeare Company] and @NottsRebels in this apparently inflammatory production of the Henry VI plays which Must Not Be Discussed on the bird app.

Twitter has a track record of removing this famous Shakespeare quote. Just over a week before Kirwans tweet was censored, the popular @Wwm_Shakespeare account, which tweets out Shakespeare quotes and has over 214,000 followers, had its tweet of this quote removed. Twitter cited the same abuse and harassment rules when taking down this tweet and rejected the accounts appeal.

This isnt the only famous quote that has been censored under the tech giants vague and subjective censorship rules. Facebook and Instagram previously censored numerous posts containing the famous Thomas Paine quote: He who dares not offend cannot be honest. Facebook also scrubbed a post containing a historical quote from the early Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo.

Outside of quotes, the tech giants have erased many other iconic historical references including historical Papua New Guinea photos, a famous photo of the 1970 Kent State shooting (which was censored on its anniversary), a photo of the Soviet flag raised over Reichstag on Victory in Europe (VE) day, and image search results for tank man on the anniversary of the Tiananmen square massacre.

Read more at: ReclaimTheNet.org
(Natural News) In recent weeks, big pharma giant Pfizer, with an assist from the Biden Justice Department, went to court to shield certain safety data from the general public for at least 55 years, a shocking attempt at secrecy the likes that Americans havent seen since the JFK cover-up.

Fortunately for advocates of transparency, a federal judge saw through Pfizer and ordered the company to begin releasing its data by the tens of thousands of pages per week.

An analysis of the first batch of data released shows exactly why Pfizer wanted to keep it hidden for decades (or longer): It is devastating and, frankly, should be grounds for massive lawsuits.

As noted by Celeste McGovern at LifeSite News, among the first documents turned over to the public is a Cumulative Analysis of Post-authorization Adverse Event Reports describing events reported to Pfizer up until February 2021.

She adds:

It reveals that the drug behemoth received more than 150,000 serious adverse event reports within three months of rolling out its COVID shot, but here we will focus on Table 6 of the data on pregnant and lactating women who received the shots in the first few months of the rollout, which began December 11. Most of these women would have been healthcare workers because that was who the first rounds of shots went to. As the clinical trials preceding the rollout excluded pregnant women, these would have been the first pregnant and lactating women to have ever received the vaccines.

According to Table 6, 270 unique pregnancies were exposed to the vaccine, and of those, no outcome was provided for 238 pregnancies, leaving 32 with known outcomes. According to Pfizers report, there were 23 spontaneous abortions, a term for miscarriage, along with two premature births with neonatal death, two miscarriages with intrauterine death, one spontaneous abortion with neonatal death, and a single pregnancy with a normal outcome.

As McGovern notes: That means that of 32 pregnancies with known outcome, 28 resulted in fetal death.

The vaccine makers report also noted that there were five other pregnancies with outcome pending in addition to the 238 with no outcome provided. However, 32 minus 28 equals four, not five.

McGovern said she contacted Pfizers media representative to ask about the figures: Were 28 of 32 known pregnancy outcomes actually fatal in the first 10 weeks that the vaccine became available, as their report suggests? Thats an 87.5% pregnancy loss rate? And only one pregnancy outcome was normal? Please correct me if Im wrong about this.

She says she never got a reply to emailed questions or to phone calls.

Noting that the Food and Drug Administration would have had the information by the end of April, McGovern was left to conclude it wasnt any wonder why Pfizer wanted to hide its safety data for at least five-and-a-half decades, and maybe more.

The spike in adverse vaccine-related miscarriage and stillborn births are not just limited to the United States, they are increasing wherever the Pfizer vax is used, including Canada.

A retired doctor in British Columbia, Dr. Mel Bruchet, noted in November that he was informed by doulas that there were 13 stillbirths over a 24-hour period at the Lions Gate Hospital in Vancouver (according to definitions online, a doula is a trained companion who is not a healthcare professional and who supports another person through a significant health-related experience, such as childbirth, miscarriage, induced abortion or stillbirth, or non-reproductive experiences such as dying).

One grandmother whose grandbaby was stillborn at the hospital claimed on Twitter: My daughter got that damned poison vaccine one month ago because she couldnt go to a restaurant, and people were freaking out because that she was unvaxxed. I want to sue the government.

The platform removed the message because Twitter is just a propaganda outlet for the global tyrannical regime.

But what is clear, just based on the early information Pfizer has been forced to release, the vaccine should not be given to pregnant women, period.

Sources include:

LifeSiteNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Just like what happened in the beginning of 2020 before the first phase of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) plandemic was launched, strange reports are emerging out of China about the extreme measures that are supposedly being taken to combat the all-new BA.2 subvariant of the omicron (moronic) variant of the Chinese Virus.

The Epoch Times reported an alleged SOS letter, claiming that the city of Shanghai, or at least parts of it, are in chaos amid the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) new lockdown. Not only are residents suffering under the heavy boot of tyranny, but so is the supply chain.

The letter depicts chaos in the writers community amid the absence of management, a China in Focus news report explained about the situation. The letter says that positive COVID-19 cases have erupted, and the area is at the brink of collapse.

We already know that a positive case means absolutely nothing since the PCR tests are fraudulent. But apparently the government and media are testing the waters to see just how dumbed down people are to fall for this ridiculous ruse a second time.

Someone named Mr. Huang, who was interviewed by the Epoch Times, said 90 percent of the buildings in his area of Shanghai supposedly now house virus patients.

Our community has been on lockdown since April the 1st, Huang is quoted as saying, revealing April Fools Day as the day when all of this came down the pike in Shanghai.

And on the 3rd, there were only one or two positive cases. However, four days later, the positive cases rose to 36. Whats the significance here?

Some of the positive cases have been taken from their homes and relocated somewhere, though nobody seems to know where. There is suspicion that these cases are now being housed in quarantine facilities, but no proof to back it.

Nobody knows where they will be taken to, Huang added. Its like the lottery. The regular people have no idea where these people are sent.

Shanghai refusing to collect garbage from homes of positive cases

Shanghai appears to have halted many public services throughout the community, though the full extent of this remains unknown.

We never had any official release, the number of positive cases, Huang went on to claim. And the community service staff seem to have disappeared. They totally ignored our existence.

Calling the citys helpline or community services leads nowhere now because residents never hear anything back, reports said. So some people are now just trying to help each other out in lieu of government intervention.

Just now, Huang claimed, an old woman was suffering from high fever, and residents from other buildings delivered medication to her at their own risk.

The SOS letter further claims that Shanghai residents who test negative for the Fauci Flu are being instructed to deliver supplies to those who test positive without any personal protective gear. So much for stopping the spread (assuming you buy into the official narrative about COVID spread, which in and of itself is bunk).

Garbage collection has also supposedly become a problem for COVID-positive residents of Shanghai, who are no longer receiving normal pickups and are having to live with waste piling up inside their homes.

If a household has positive cases, they wont collect their garbage for days, Huang said. They asked what to do, saying, my house stinks, but they cannot put garbage outside their doors because they need to be responsible to others.

The latest news about this new wave of COVID in Shanghai can be found at Propaganda.news.

Sources include:

NTD.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) The NYPD has arrested the man believed to be the one who shot up a New York City subway station earlier this week and have charged him with terrorism after he wounded more than a dozen people.

The suspect, Frank James, reportedly set off a smoke bomb before he began firing at early morning commuters and had a bag full of additional smoke bombs, more ammo and some fireworks. Hes been charged with terrorism.

But the real story is this: James, a black man, is a stone-cold racist who hates white people and Hispanics, and has for quite some time.

How do we know? Because he showed us who he was  for years  by posting vile, disgusting, racist rants and messages on social media.

Yes, thats right, Frank James was allowed to put his hate-filled garbage on social media, while conservatives get censored and banned for pushing back on fake news or misleading data about COVID-19. Platforms even banned then-President Donald Trump for life after fabricating an insurrection charge related to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol Building that was an obvious false flag.

This is Frank James who is a person of interest in this investigation. Any information can be directed to @NYPDTips at 800-577-TIPS. pic.twitter.com/yBpenmsX67  NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) April 12, 2022

O black Jesus, please kill all the whiteys, said one meme he posted, as reported by the New York Posts Miranda Devine, adding that he also was not friendly about Hispanics, Asians and his own race, in many cases.

These white motherfers, this is what they do, he said in a video posted to YouTube. Ultimately at the end of the day, they kill and commit genocide against each other. What do you think they gonna do to your black ass?

Its just a matter of time before these white motherfers decide, Hey listen. Enough is enough. These ners got to go, he added.

Fox News provides some additional background:

A magistrate judge granted federal prosecutors request that accused Brooklyn subway shooter Frank R. James be held in permanent detention pending his trial during the suspects brief initial appearance in a Brooklyn court on Thursday.

Magistrate Judge Roanne Mann ordered James, 62, held without bail pending any future requests that the defense team is entitled to make. The suspect, who has been charged with one count of committing a terrorist or other violent attack against a mass transportation system, is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, records show.

The defendant committed a premediated (sic) mass shooting on the New York City subway system and then fled the scene, with a stockpile of ammunition and other dangerous items stowed in his storage unit, says a detention memo that prosecutors filed in federal court in Brooklyn on Thursday, a few minutes before James was set to appear. The defendant presents a severe and ongoing danger to the community, as well as a serious risk of flight, that no set of release conditions can mitigate.

The defendants criminal conduct was extraordinarily serious. The victims who boarded the defendants subway car on the morning of April 12 could not have predicted the horror that would await them on their morning commute, the memo states.

He faces up to life in prison if convicted, and frankly, if that happens, he earned it.

Before he conducted his attack, the defendant posted videos online in which he criticized the New York subway system and discussed killing people, including with a gun, Assistant U.S Attorney Sara Winik wrote. And law enforcement officers located ammunition for multiple firearms, as well as other weapons and tools for conducting an attack, in properties rented by the defendant.

She also called James a danger to the community, who had a stockpile of weapons and other dangerous items stored in various locations that he controls.

Social media algorithms could have identified this enraged racist long ago, and likely did  but because of politically correct wokeness, a black man gets to rant while white, Hispanic and Asian conservatives get the boot.

Sources include:

NYPost.com

NaturalNews.com

FoxNews.com
(Natural News) Joshua Yoder, an airline pilot and co-founder of the U.S. Freedom Flyers said during an interview Wednesday that a cardiologist told him that if the airlines were conducting certain health screenings, 30 percent of the pilots currently flying would probably be disqualified due to vaccine-induced heart conditions.

(Article by Debra Heine republished from AMGreatness.com)

Yoder told tech millionaire and Vaccine Safety Research Foundation founder Steve Kirsch that his group has received hundreds of reports about pilots flying planes while suffering from adverse side effects from the COVID vaccines.

The most prominent health issues being reported, the pilot noted, include chest pains, myocarditis, and pericarditis. Yoder said that three vaccinated pilot called him yesterday and said that theyre currently flying with chest pains, and another one said he is being treated by a cardiologist. He noted that the pilots want to remain anonymous because they dont want to lose their jobs.

Yoder said the U.S. Freedom Flyers would like to find a solution for these pilots, and work with doctors, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), airlines, and unions to come up with a protocol so they have some kind of immunity that would allow the pilots to talk openly about what is happening to them.

The USFF formed last fall to help employees in the transportation industry oppose the federal laws surrounding vaccinations.

Im afraid if we keep going down this path, at some point its going to end in catastrophe, he said.

If passengers actually knew what was going on at the airlines and the FAA, they would be livid, and everyone would be jumping on a class action suit against all of them, he said.

Yoder said that world renowned cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told him that if the pilots were regularly tested, a significant number of them would probably have to be grounded.

He [McCullough] said that if every vaccinated pilot were to be screened, there would be somewhere around a 30 percent loss in manpower, Yoder told Kirsch.

McCullough, along with Idaho pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole, Robert Kennedy Jr, Lt. Col Teresa Long M.D., Lt. Col. Peter Chambers D.O. and other experts signed letter to the Federal Aviation Administration and the major airlines on Dec. 15, 2021, urging them to flag all vaccinated pilots, and administer EKGs, D-dimer tests, troponin tests, and cardiac MRIs to assess their health.

The doctors warned that adverse events from vaccination could cause a pilot (to lose) control of his aircraft and lead to untold devastation.

As American Greatness reported on Wednesday, an American Airlines pilot recently suffered a cardiac arrest six minutes after landing his airbus at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.

Captain Robert Snow nearly died when his heart stopped on April 9, according to Yoder. They had to shock him three times with the AED [automated external defibrillator] to bring him back, he said.

Yoder noted that Snow was taken to Baylor, Scott and White Health Center, which is only ten minutes from both American Airlines, and the union (the Allied Pilots Association), yet no one from the airline or union called Snow while he was in the hospital, or stopped by to visit him. The only thing the airline did was fly his family to the hospital to meet with him.

Snow called the U.S. Freedom Fliers for help, and the group assembled a world-class team of doctors and lawyers to assist him. Snow is now recuperating at home, Yoder said.

Yoder acknowledged that it is pretty clear that Snows cardiac arrest was caused by the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, but the pilot has been undergoing a series of tests to confirm it.

Yoder told Kirsch that the airline industry does not seem to want to deal with the potentially dangerous incident.

American Airlines is trying to create as much distance between themselves and this incident as humanely possible, he said. So is the FAA, and so are the unions. We cant even get a response.

Yoder said that Snow would be speaking out soon, and when he does youre going to hear some very interesting details that are going to be very damning for American Airlines, the Allied Pilots Association, the FAA, and everyone else involved.

Yoder also mentioned two other pilots who have bravely come forward to talk about their vaccine injuries.

Pilot Greg Pierson has spoken out against the COVID vaccines ever since he suffered a stroke after getting the jab under duress, last year. Pierson said during an interview last December that if he had had his stroke while piloting a plane, he could have caused a crash.

Cody Flint was an agricultural pilot up until he was vaccinated in February of 2021. A couple of days after his jab, he suffered a mid-flight blackout, landing safely only by the grace of God, he says.

Flint was diagnosed with a neurological disorder that caused him to have severe headaches and vertigo.

Since then, his career has collapsed, hes had multiple surgeries and countless doctor visits. And so far, nobody responsible for vaccine development or roll out has been willing to talk to him, or others like him.

Read more at: AMGreatness.com
A nine-foot-long gigantic squid was spotted adrift on a beach in Japan on April 20 in what local officials characterized as an unusual occurrence.

At 10 a.m., a local person noticed the squid at Ugu beach in Obama, Fukui Prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast.

As per the Obama Municipal Government, the squid remained awake when it was located.

Giant squid found in Japan

According to the National Geographic, a larger squid, measuring 24 feet, was caught by experts at Japan's National Science Museum and brought to the surface in 2006.

The first photographs of that female squid were taken in 2004.

According to Science Focus, the largest well-preserved human has been objectively measured to be 39 to 40ft tall.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published rare footage of a juvenile giant squid estimated to be 10 to 12 feet long in June 2019.

The squid was heading toward the camera in the Gulf of Mexico in the 28-second footage.

Before swimming away, the squid seemed to wrap its lengthy tentacles around NOAA's cameras.

"The giant squid is big and undoubtedly strange from our human standpoint," the researchers said, "but if the video shows anything of the animal's persona, it demonstrates an animal shocked by its blunder, backing off and after trying to strike at something that at first must have appeared enticing but was not food," as per Express.

Also Read: Giant Squid Carcass: Could World's Most Elusive 'Kraken' be Monogamous?

Giant squid strength

Regrettably, claims of their size are sometimes exaggerated since discovering a live giant squid is an incredibly unusual occurrence.

Almost what we know about gigantic squids comes from beached individuals, as per the Smithsonian Ocean.

While afloat in the ocean, their tentacles or limbs have occasionally fallen off or been devoured by other species.

Squids, on the other hand, can get bloated with water when they wash ashore, making them look larger than they are.

Scientists frequently use mantle length as the best indication of a squid's real size because tentacles and arms fall off or can be extended out.

The greatest recorded mantle length is 7.4 feet (2.25 meters); the length from the tip of the top fin toward the end of the arms seldom surpasses 16 feet (5 meters), and the highest overall length (including tentacles) of a squid is 43 feet (13 meters).

A novel approach for determining how big a squid may grow involves utilizing beak size to predict total body length, which is a useful tool given that hard beaks are frequently discovered in the bellies of sperm whales.

According to Smithsonian squid specialist Clyde Roper, the huge squid would be VERY powerful if they were proportionately as strong as their smaller cousins, the Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas).

Their muscle structure, density, and fluid composition, however, show that they are not nearly as powerful, he claimed.

However, this does not imply that they are lazy weaklings.

They have thousands of suckers working together on eight arms and two tentacles, as well as a quickly constricting mantle, to aid capture and killing prey.

Some experts believed the genus Architeuthis (Greek for "chief squid") has up to eight species, each of which is a different type of gigantic squid.

Other experts, however, believed that there is just one Architeuthis swimming throughout the world's oceans.

There is no agreement since squid are difficult to follow and there are few samples available for consideration.

Related article: Giant Squid Washes Ashore in Spain
Uzbekistan is ravaged again by deadly floods and mudflows following heavy rain, causing several casualties and widespread damage.

Latest reports suggested that the amount of rainfall that occurred in just two hours was equivalent to a month's worth of downpour.

The country is still recovering following related natural hazards over the past two years, which also resulted in fatalities and evacuations.

The Uzbek government reportedly considers the latest flooding as one of the worst natural disasters witnessed in 80 years

Floods and Landslides

At least four people were killed as a result of the flash floods and rockfalls in the Samarkand and Jizzakh regions following a short yet intense torrential rain on Wednesday, 20 April, according to the country's Ministry of Emergency Situations (MES), as cited by the natural disaster monitoring site Floodlist.com.

In Jizzakh, crops, houses, schools, and other infrastructures were damaged in the Bakhmal, Farish, Sallaaral, and Sharof Rashidov districts.

An unspecified number of people have been evacuated in the said areas with more than 100 being displaced.

At least 260 buildings and farms were damaged.

In Samarkand, the MES apparently received almost 300 calls, requesting assistance as buildings and roads were damaged, notably in its regional capital city of the same name.

Related floodings were also reported in the regions of Navoi and Qashqadaryo with no further details provided at this time.

Uzbekistan's Hydrometeorological Service said additional rainfall is expected in the coming days, as per Floodlist.com.

Also Read: Heavy Rain and Massive Flooding Affects over 20,000 Homes in Southern Thailand

Central Asia Natural Disasters

Uzbekistan and its surrounding countries are prone not only to earthquakes but also to extreme weather conditions, such as torrential rain, flash floods, and mudslides

Natural disasters affect an estimated 3 million people in Central Asia, including almost 50% living in Uzbekistan each year, according to the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), as cited by the World Bank.

According to the World Bank, 1.4 million people are being affected by these catastrophic events in Uzbekistan annually with approximately $2.8 million worth of economic losses.

In addition, the organization cited that avalanches, mudflows, droughts, and extreme temperatures are also prevalent in the region.

Uzbekistan Climate

The climate in Uzbekistan is almost the same countrywide that has various seasons from summer, spring, autumn, and winter.

The summer season spans from June to August and is marked by hot and dry weather with temperatures that can reach up to 40 degrees Celsius, as per the Uzbekistan-based travel agency Uzbegim Tour.

The country is currently under its spring season which is between March 15 and June 15.

During this period, there is a high risk of occurrence of moderate to heavy rainfall which peaks until April.

Meanwhile, autumn lasts from September to November and is associated with rain and frosts.

Lastly, the Central Asian nation's winter is from December to February with unstable snowfall and freezing temperatures.

2020 and 2021 Flooding

The latest flooding in Uzbekistan this April came two years after a devastating heavy rain triggered major flooding that occurred in the country and its neighboring Kazakhstan, which prompted tens of thousands of people to evacuate.

In May 2020, a reservoir dam on the Uzbek side overflowed, prompting around 70,000 people from 22 villages in Uzbekistan to flee, flooding larges areas along the Uzbek-Tajik border, as per Reuters.

The Uzbek government reportedly managed to mitigate the situation by reducing the flow of water and diverting it to a nearby lake.

Meanwhile, in July 2021, a total of 15 people were killed and several others were injured in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan due to flash floods and mudslides which swept away houses following heavy rain.

Related Article: South Africa: Torrential Rain Causes Flash Floods and Landslides in KwaZulu-Natal Province
A 35 year old woman from Marondera has appeared in court on allegations of human trafficking.

Farisai Mupeti appeared before a Harare magistrate this Friday to answer to allegations of human trafficking after luring unsuspecting Zimbabweans to Oman where they were subjected to exploitation and work without pay.

It is the states case that the complainant, Murriam Zihumo reportedly left Harare in November last year under the impression that she has secured a lucrative job in Dubai, but was shocked to find herself in Oman, where she was subjected to three months of exploitation by unknown people who had literally bought her.

In a separate incident, Mupeti is said to have tricked another woman identified as Isabel Mushoriwa using the same modus operandi in January this year.

The two women are said to have escaped after claiming that they needed to attend to urgent family issues, with one of them lying that her mother had died.

Mupeti was arrested after the two women returned home and reported the matter to the police.

She was remanded out of custody to the 1st of June since she is breastfeeding.

Her suspected accomplice, Nyasha Allioms, is still at large and believed to be in Oman. zbc
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

A few clouds. Low near 65F. Winds SSE at 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low near 65F. Winds SSE at 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun with gusty winds. High 77F. Winds SSE at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Partly cloudy. Low around 65F. Winds SSE at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.


OPPOSITION Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) may diminish its image as a vanguard of democracy if it maintains its stance on not holding an elective congress before 2023 general elections, analysts have indicated.

CCC has said it will not succumb to external pressure to hold a congress although it says consultations with citizens about the issue were still in progress.

Analysts insist that CCC will be handicapped in challenging Zanu PF on democracy if it continues to be run by an interim executive.

Political analyst Methuseli Moyo said: A congress is what constitutes a party, appoints persons into position to exercise power and administration of party affairs. One wonders how CCC will constitute itself and delegate authority to office bearers.

Without a congress, CCC remains a collection of friends deploying each other into positions. As such, they would be handicapped to challenge Zanu PF on any issue to do with democracy and procedure.

In a nutshell, CCC must go to congress before elections to legitimise itself. It cant take over power when it has not been mandated by anyone. As things stand, CCC is a party in-the-making, and only a congress can constitute a party.

Another political analyst Vivid Gwede said holding a congress was important for democracy and nothing should override that.

It is true that a congress may be divisive for CCC ahead of the 2023 elections. But the quest for political change should not trump the imperative for elected leadership as the cornerstone of representative democracy, Gwede said.

CCC interim spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere, however, said the party was carrying out nationwide consultations, the results of which will be made available to the public at the appropriate time.

Said Mahere: Our priority at the moment is making sure we do the work to win Zimbabwe for change in 2023 and form the next government  not the pursuit of internal positions. We are all change champions who have been tasked with working to mobilise the masses to register to vote, vote and defend the vote next year.

The CCC is a citizens movement that is introducing a new way of doing politics in Zimbabwe with a specific focus on putting the citizens first in all decisionmaking. The citizens are being consulted about the next steps concerning our internal processes and the outcome of these deliberations will be communicated at the appropriate time.

She added that the party would not be pushed into a corner by those who have different priorities.

Zimbabweans have suffered enough and all citizens hands must be on deck to fight for lasting change and transformation for the nation, she said.

Exiled former minister Jonathan Moyo challenged CCC to hold an elective congress as this was according to the dictates of the countrys supreme law.

The CCC is saying no vacancies and no congress of any kind. CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation) wants to infiltrate us; maybe a peoples convention, get the nomenclature right. But a citizens convention is better nomenclature. Wait, CIO can only infiltrate a congress; not a convention since its American, right, Moyo tweeted.

CCC deputy spokesperson Gift Siziba last week said CCC had no plans of holding a congress as Zanu PF plotted to infiltrate their movement.

Let me clear this once and for all, there are people who are motivated by Zanu PF, to imagine and think that we are going for a congress. Look we are a new political organisation, we do not hold congresses and we have no intention to hold congress.

In CCC, the congress does not exist it is in the headquarters of Zanu PF and CIO, who in their imagination think we are going to have a congress and they can deploy their people, Siziba said.

Zanu PF director of communications Tafadzwa Mugwadi said the infiltration claims by the opposition were an indicator that Zanu PF is everywhere.

Are they suggesting that with that claim they are also Zanu PF? Zanu PF will be glad to hear that the organisation which claims to be the biggest opposition is now claiming that it has Zanu PF membership within it, Magwadi said.

But most importantly, it is their fear of leadership acrimony which continues to dog the organisation, the leadership acrimony which they carried from their old party MDC. They are clueless. They dont have a constitution, and they claim that the citizens are the structures, but surprisingly they carry the titles which they had when they were in the MDC Alliance. Newsday
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed vast disparities in how the virus impacted people of color, with inequalities in exposure and treatment that persist two years later, said New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett in her Population Health Sciences Grand Rounds address, hosted virtually on April 20 by Weill Cornell Medicine.

"COVID made racism visible and pulled back the curtain on issues we've confronted as a nation not just over decades, but centuries," said Dr. Bassett, who began her role in January. "I argue that these disparities are not only harming communities that are most marginalized, but harming our entire country."

Dr. Bassett's speech helped kick off events marking Weill Cornell Medicine's fourth annual Diversity Week, running April 25-29. With a sweeping career largely focused on public health across the globe, while tackling structural racism and racial, ethnic and economic health inequities, Dr. Bassett recounted data demonstrating how Black, Latinx and Indigenous populations suffered disproportionately from COVID-19 since the earliest days of the pandemic.

In urban Milwaukee, all eight of the first COVID deaths in March 2020 were among Black Americans, she said. As the global health crisis continued, national data revealed the risk of premature death from COVID-19 was 5 to 9 times higher among Blacks than whites.

"Go-to explanations" from U.S. public health officials for these virus outcomes gaps hypothesized that people of color were predisposed due to higher rates of comorbidities such as diabetes and high blood pressure, Dr. Bassett said.

"But I'm convinced the initial driver of these huge disparities had more to do with exposure to COVID than susceptibility to it," she added, noting that data indicated minorities were more likely to hold essential-worker jobs requiring them to be in close proximity to others.

Even with the advent of COVID vaccines and effective treatments, such as monoclonal antibodies, systemic factors such as limited access to testing and care, inadequate insurance coverage, and transportation challenges have added to the disparities. "As the pandemic has progressed, it has not shed its racially disparate impact," said Dr. Bassett, who previously served as director of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

A clear example of structural racism is the "redlining" that occurred in more than 200 U.S. cities, including New York, as part of the federal mortgage program established in the 1930s to increase home ownership, which deprived Black Americans of low-cost mortgages. Nine decades later, hospitals serving these communities are "less likely to be able to offer what we consider the standard of care," she explained.

In his introductory remarks, Dr. Augustine M.K. Choi, the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medicine, detailed a variety of institutional initiatives addressing health disparities. Among others, these include the Cornell Center for Health Equity and the Weill Cornell Medicine Diversity Center of Excellence, which have promoted vaccine training and community outreach.

This pandemic has been challenging, but our diverse community of health care workers, faculty, staff and students have made so many important contributions to Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian and the City of New York. We're not done with this pandemic, but we're in a much better place than we were two years ago." Dr. Augustine M.K. Choi, the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medicine

Dr. Steven J. Corwin, president and chief executive officer of NewYork-Presbyterian, praised Dr. Bassett for addressing a "critical topic" and for her health advocacy efforts over the course of the pandemic and beyond.

"We all know the pandemic exposed things we were perhaps well aware of but not paying sufficient attention to regarding disparities and outcomes," Dr. Corwin said. "A place like ours has represented the full continuum, the full diversity of this city. It's our responsibility to provide health justice and equitable care."

Dr. Bassett emphasized that everyone should stay alert "to the racism that penetrates our daily lives and institutions and talk about this ideology that has such an enduring effect on our country."

"As we all talk about the pursuit of health equity, we need to think though our narrative about what drives these differences in outcomes and access," she said, "and stop blaming it on our patients."
Sri Lanka's acute economic crisis has begun to tell on its health care system with critical medicines running out for want of hard currency to import supplies, experts say.

"The limited access to US dollars, import regulations and fuel shortages have stalled supply chains and distribution systems so that the health ministry may not be able to order regular medicines and items needed to supply all the hospitals and service providers as during normal times," says Kumari Vinodhani Navaratne, a Colombo-based public health specialist formerly affiliated with the World Bank and currently with the Asian Development Bank.

Navaratne tells SciDev.Net that serious shortages of critical items needed to maintain health services are worrying health care providers and those who need health services. She said that owing to Sri Lanka's current economic crisis, routine non-emergency surgeries, medical procedures and some laboratory tests have been placed on hold to conserve stocks.

The Ministry of Health procures, stores and distributes all required medicines, vaccines, consumables, reagents and commodities to all hospitals managed by the government, Navaratne explains.

An international appeal by the Government Medical Officers' Association (GMOA) asks for "generous support at this crucial time to continue the patient care services in Sri Lanka". The GMOA says it has undertaken to ensure "transparent coordination and direction of your donations of medicines and equipment to hospitals for the patient care within the quality assurance mechanism for drugs and equipment of the Ministry of Health".

The GMOA has published a list of items such as antibiotics and consumables that are running out and can be replenished by donations.

A UK government travel advice warns that "basic necessities" such as medicines, food and fuel are in short supply due to lack of hard currency required to pay for imports. "There may be long queues at grocery stores, gas stations, and pharmacies. Local authorities may impose the rationing of electricity, resulting in power outages," the advice says.

The travel advice also warns about dengue fever, possible terrorist activities and monsoon rains. Dengue fever has long been endemic in Sri Lanka.

According to the World Bank, Sri Lanka faces unsustainable debt and challenges with balance of payments (the difference in value between payments into and out of a country). "Urgent policy measures are needed to address the high levels of debt and debt service, reduce the fiscal deficit, restore external stability, and mitigate the adverse impacts on the poor and vulnerable."

Until last year, Sri Lanka's health care system was considered "strong" by the WHO-hosted Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. A country with a population of 21.8 million people, Sri Lanka has eliminated important infectious diseases such as neonatal tetanus, malaria, and filariasis while also substantially increasing life expectancy.

In July 2021, the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia said that the public sector in Sri Lanka provided most of the health care services including inpatient care (95 per cent) and outpatient care (50 per cent) at public health facilities. Government expenditure in Sri Lankan health care as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) was 1.7 per cent during 20132016.

According to the WHO, the "[household] contribution to current health expenditure is significant, but catastrophic health expenditure remains low as the government remains a key provider of inpatient care. Medication and investigations are provided free of charge".

To improve Sri Lanka's healthcare situation, Navaratne recommends that the supply chain be restored through the award of tenders for essential items. "This requires urgent and immediate access to US dollar resources, as most required items [related to health care] are imported."
A third of healthcare workers took sick leave after being vaccinated against COVID-19, a German study presented at this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Lisbon, Portugal, (23-26 April) has found.

A healthy healthcare workforce is vital to cope with COVID-19, as well as with the pandemic's wider effects on public health. As a result, many countries have prioritized the vaccination of healthcare workers.

Little information is available, however, on the incidence of side-effects in healthcare workers. This is important because, if it leads to them taking time off, it could put already under-pressure healthcare systems under extra strain.

To find out more, Julia Reusch, of the University Hospital Wurzburg, Wurzburg, Germany and her colleagues Isabell Wagenhauser, Dr Alexander Gabel, Dr Manuel Krone and Dr Nils Petri evaluated healthcare workers given at least one dose of the four following COVID-19 vaccines: BioNTech/Pfizer (Comirnaty), Moderna (Spikevax), Oxford/AstraZeneca (VaxZevria) and Janssen.

An electronic questionnaire was used to gather information about sick leave and side effects from the 1,797 healthcare workers (aged 18-plus) in the study. Side-effects included in the questionnaire included local vaccination reactions (swelling, redness or pain around injection site), headaches, aching limbs, fever and/or chills and fatigue.

588 healthcare workers (32.72%) took sick leave overall, amounting to 1,777 sick days. Average length of sick leave was two days.

Workers were most likely to take sick leave after the third dose of the vaccine. While only 5.65% of the participants took a sick leave after their first administration (mostly after receiving a vector vaccine), 20.66% took a sick leave after the second dose and 27.31% after the third one. Median length of sick leave was 2 days and lasted up to 47 days.

Most of the 5.65% of the participants took sick leave after their first dose of the vaccine. Most of these had been given the viral vector vaccines (Oxford/AstraZeneca and Janssen).

(Changes to the vaccine regimen in Germany meant that not enough healthcare workers had second or third doses of vector vaccines for the information to be included in the study.)

Those given the mRNA jabs (BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna) were most likely to take sick leave after their second or third dose.

Sick leave after the third dose was significantly longer after the Moderna vaccine than the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine.

The relative number of self-reported side effects decreased from first to second to third vaccination.

There were significant differences in the number of side effects reported by those who received the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Significantly higher rates of side effects were reported after the second and third dose of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine compared to the Moderna vaccine.

A considerable number of healthcare workers took sick days after vaccination. The timing of the side effects varied according to the vaccine used. Those given viral vector vaccines were most likely to take sick leave after their first dose and there were higher rates of sick leave after the third dose of the Moderna vaccine than the BioNTech vaccine. The number of side effects and consequent time off after COVID-19 vaccination of healthcare workers is not negligible and should be further investigated." Julia Reusch, University Hospital Wurzburg, Wurzburg, Germany

The participants were members of the CoVacSer study, which is examining the course of COVID-19 antibodies, quality of life and ability to work over time.
(Newser)  A California man is accused of sending repeated death threats to Merriam-Webster because he was upset with their definitions on gender identity. Authorities say 34-year-old Jeremy Hanson of Rossmoor made the threats anonymously through the company's "contact us" page online and in its comments section, reports CNN. An example: There is no such thing as gender identity,'" he allegedly wrote in regard to the definition of "female," per the New York Times. The imbecile who wrote this entry should be hunted down and shot. In another, he allegedly wrote that it "would be poetic justice to have someone storm your offices and shoot up the place."

The dictionary has been tweaking its definitions on gender in recent years to be more inclusive, notes USA Today. For example, it added "they" as a non-binary singular pronoun. Authorities say they tracked the online threats to a computer at Hanson's home. His mother describes her son as autistic and says he has a fixation with gender identity issues, per the Times. Authorities say he sent similar threats to entities including the American Civil Liberties Union, Hasbro, Land O'Lakes, and Amnesty International, often accusing them of "Marxist" behavior.

"Everyone has a right to express their opinion, but repeatedly threatening to kill people, as has been alleged, takes it to a new level," says Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Division Joseph R. Bonavolonta. Hanson is charged with interstate communication of threats to commit violence. (Merriam-Webster is based in Massachusetts.) If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. (Read more Merriam-Webster stories.)
(Newser)  The voting is underway in France, where President Emmanuel Macron hopes to become the first French leader in 20 years to win reelection. The vote, however, is seen as one with potentially huge global implications as well should far-right challenger Marine Le Pen pull off an upset, given her longtime support of Vladimir Putin.

Polls: Going into Sunday's vote, Macron led all the major polls, though the lead varied from 6 to 15 points, reports the AP. That is much closer than when the two previously squared off.

Going into Sunday's vote, Macron led all the major polls, though the lead varied from 6 to 15 points, reports the AP. That is much closer than when the two previously squared off. Stat to watch: The general consensus is that Macron should prevail unless turnout is low. As of noon in France, turnout (26.4%) was about 2 points lower than in the last French election at midday, per France24. Whether that's enough to sway the results is unclear. The first exit polls are due about 2pm Eastern.

Shorthand: The BBC sums up the race, one in which it finds that many voters are not happy with either candidate: "Macron's detractors call him arrogant and a president of the rich, while the far-right leader has been accused of having ties" to Putin. The AP has a more in-depth look at each candidate and their political and personal backgrounds.

(Read more France stories.)
(Newser)  The sun came out Sunday as Ukrainians marked Orthodox Easter in the capital, Kyiv, with prayers for those fighting on the front lines and others trapped beyond them in places like Mariupol. St. Volodymyr's Cathedral in Kyiv was ringed by hundreds of worshippers with baskets to be blessed, the AP reports. Inside, a woman clutched the arm of a soldier, turning briefly to kiss his elbow. Other soldiers prayed, holding handfuls of candles, then crossed themselves. An older woman slowly made her way through the crowd and stands of flickering candles. One young woman held daffodils. Outside, a soldier used his helmet as an Easter basket. "I hope I'll only have to use the helmet for this," he said.

At a service elsewhere in Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Ukrainians not to let anger at the war overwhelm them. "All of us believe our sunrise will come soon," he said. In Istanbul, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, called for the opening of humanitarian corridors in Ukraine, saying a "human tragedy" was unfolding. With the church split by tensions between Russia and Ukraine, some worshippers hoped the holy day could inspire gestures of peacemaking. "The church can help," said one man at a church in Kyiv under the Moscow Patriarchate. He and others brought baskets to be blessed by priests, with flicks of a brush sprinkling holy water over offerings of home-dyed eggs, lighted candles and even bottles of Jack Daniel's.

Residents of rural areas battered by the war approached the day with some defiance. "We'll celebrate Easter no matter what, no matter much horror," said Kateryna Lazarenko, 68, in the northern village of Ivanivka outside Chernihiv, where ruined Russian tanks litter the roads. "The Easter holiday doesn't bring any joy," said Olena Koptyl as she prepared her Easter bread. "I'm crying a lot. We cannot forget how we lived." She and 12 others spent a month sheltering from Russian soldiers in her basement before the soldiers withdrew. In eastern Ukraine, worshippers expressed unease along with hope for negotiations. "God will make them understand and they will reach an agreement, because this should be stopped," said Aleksandra Papravkina in Bakhmut. "Otherwise, Ukraine will not exist."

(Read more Russia-Ukraine conflict stories.)


A FEW years after he thought he had seen the last of a hospital ward when he was discharged after suffering from a meningitis-related spinal illness, comedian Clive Chigubu once again finds himself in a battle for his life, after he was diagnosed with Diffuse Large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), a type of cancer that has left him bedridden.

DLBCL is a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), a cancer of the lymphatic system which, according to some medical research, is said to be more common in men than it is in women. It develops when the body makes abnormal B lymphocytes.

These lymphocytes are a type of white blood cells that normally help to fight infections.

At the onset of the Covid-19-inspired lockdowns two years ago, Chigubu seemed to be regaining his mojo, with video skits that were once again reminding people that he is one of Zimbabwes most gifted comedic minds and actors. Those skits followed a lengthy layoff that had seen the 2015 National Arts Merit Awards Outstanding Comedian award winner vanish off stages and screens alike.

However, just as he was seemingly on track and picking up steam, the Chigubu train has once been derailed, with a diagnosis that has once again turned his life upside down.

In late September, my nose got blocked after a suffered from a really painful ear. At the time I thought it was the usual flue. I steamed but I couldnt clear the blocked nasal passage.

In November, I had a sore throat which affected my voice and because of that I ended up doing fewer wedding performances due to the strain in my vocal and nasal areas.

In January, someone advised me to go to an ENT physician (ear, nose, and throat doctor) who can be found in at United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH) and can only be seen on Fridays.

The process of having an appointment with him was time consuming and it took a considerable amount of time to finally see him and begin the process of diagnosis.

I was admitted at the hospital for sample extraction. The first test detected cancer and further tests were recommended and after some considerable time the final tests came out and I was diagnosed with DLBCL.

Up to now Im still in the process of seeking treatment of which Im deeply worried because I havent received any treatment due to the slow processes in the system and also financial constraints. This is happening while this cancer is still spreading.

The comedian, who in the past spoke fondly about his relationship with his five-year-old daughter, said his battle with cancer had driven a wedge on their father-daughter bond, as he was now unable to carry out simple tasks like walking and talking.

My child has been my inspiration and my pain throughout this ordeal. The truth of the matter is I cannot control these things. Sometimes, especially of late, she has started adjusting to what I can now say is her new normal.

I went from spending most of the time with her, being a playful and providing dad to a state where she sees me unable to communicate with her due to my deteriorating health. She tries by all means to take it like an adult but the five-year-old being in her also reminds her to express herself in a way that pains me within.

She would sometimes ignore me as if Im not present and I would feel her disappointment. It is not like I asked for this. Questions like Daddy youve been ill for so long why cant you just drink a magic portion like some cartoons on Television and get well once? She even insists on helping me when Im struggling to do simple things.

However, I dont feel like Im cursed and the fact is that Im a victim to this condition. Im actually failing to walk, talk or breathe without a lot of effort but my mental state is in my strong point and I believe that I cannot be pulled down by the negative, he said.

Chigubu as he had largely lost his voice, he was now using hand signs to communicate with his family.

The idea of lengthy booking dates and a number of required tests done privately has been my nightmare and a drawback to my treatment and recovery and interaction with my family has also been a challenge since my voice hardly projects and therefore, a lot of hand signs have to be used.

Also, my siblings have a hard time coping with my condition and the thought of them watching me fighting for my life is a knock down on its own. So, in brief I can say the whole experience is unbearable but my spirit cannot be broken by what I see with my physical eye, he said.

Chigubu said what particularly saddened him was that the cancer had struck when he was on the verge of a reviving a comedy career that had already previously been affected by illness.

The worst thing is I had just signed a contract with Zwangendaba Productions Company, a film company that is still establishing here in Bulawayo. They were willing to lend me whatever equipment I needed to shoot my skits and in future we would shoot films.

The two guys are based in United States and one member stays in Zimbabwe. After all that, the devil gives me a Will Smith smack in face with this . . . so if people, companies could help me out I would be grateful.

All I have is faith and with God by my side I will fight it and get back to the top. I want to continue and fulfil my destiny, he said.

Despite his trials and tribulations, Chigubu said he was still upbeat and wanted his fight against cancer to be a beacon guiding others in their own battles with the ailment.

While he has been the man delivering hope and cheer to the grief-stricken with jokes over the years, he believes now is the time he needs to deliver healing through inspiration and a never-say-die attitude.

At first I slightly thought of that and then I said to myself, maybe I am supposed to bring hope to the hopeless from the kind of job I do, laughter on its own is a medicine for stress relief. What Im going through is a path, a simple test from God. Im going through it so someone else can take inspiration from me.

When the devil sees greatness in you, he will fight you more. So, its not a curse really, the world is full of ups and downs.

I feel no pressure to be the Chigubu people know all the time. I have always been that and I will remain that way. When the nurses delivered the bad news and said, You have cancer, its incurable, we are moving you to Mpilo for you to at least try I said sh*t and a tear dropped down my eye.

I was with my uncle, who is also my director, and I said lets fight it, we can beat it. We started researching ways of beating this thing. When the body is weak, the mind and soul need to be the strongest. You have to look at the future beyond your current circumstances. You can win any battle, he said.

Chigubu said he was appealing for help to the wider public as the cost of treatment had been hard on his pocket, particularly after he had spent years fighting another ailment. According to a medical journal, Cancer Research UK, DLBCL grows quickly and treatment should start soon after diagnosis.

I was then booked for today (15 April) so that the doctor sees me and then refers me to Mpilo for cancer treatment but unfortunately, we found them closed although we were booked. So, I guess the doctor wasnt aware that today is a holiday and theyre not going to be there.

Now I have to wait for the next Friday to see the doctor and then possibly get referred to Mpilo of which they will also then book me for another day to see the doctor. Thats my challenge my brother and finance is also the major drawback in this whole thing.

So, my plea is on the opening of a platform where I might make a public outcry to any well-wishers out there throughout the country and also outside if they can assist me with these medical bills maybe the treatment process can be fast and might have a chance of fighting this condition because through research it seems urgency is also crucial in treating it, he said. Sunday Mail
Fairbanks, AK (99707)

Today

Cloudy with rain and snow this evening. Snow showers overnight. Low 31F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precip 60%..

Tonight

Cloudy with rain and snow this evening. Snow showers overnight. Low 31F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precip 60%.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers  Alaska District worked with the Alaska Army National Guard, state and local community to divest this facility in Koyukuk, Alaska. Real estate specialists researched information about the building from 1983 to properly terminate the leases and transfer ownership of the property to the local village. Currently, USACE is partnering with the National Guard to divest buildings that are no longer used by the Army to benefit the communities in which they reside. (Photo courtesy of USACE-Alaska District)
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Moodys Investors Service revised Bahrains outlook to stable from negative yesterday, citing a rebound in oil prices, reducing debt and borrowing requirements and a relatively diverse economy compared to the rest of the GCC.

The change in outlook reflects an easing of downside risks to Bahrains ratings. The rating agency also affirmed Bahrains B2 longterm and senior unsecured rating, thanks to high income per capita and diverse economy, which it said: are a source of economic resilience and strengthen Bahrains shock absorption capacity.

The B2 issuer rating also reflects Bahrains large, well-capitalized and liquid domestic banking system, which supports a large portion of government liquidity needs through the annual rollover of domestic debt equivalent to nearly 20% of GDP in 2021 (including short-term T-bills).

The stable outlook further highlights the governments renewed commitment to its medium-term fiscal adjustment programme, which Moodys says, increases the likelihood that additional financial assistance from the neighbouring Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) sovereigns will be forthcoming in a timely manner if and when needed.

In the longer term, Moodys said the increased hydrocarbon production from the new very large oil and gas reservoir discovery in the Khaleej Al-Bahrain Basin announced in April 2018 could structurally improve fiscal and external balances.

Moodys expects the large increases in oil prices since early 2021 to remain elevated for the next few years, improving the outlook for sovereigns fiscal and external balances, reducing the rate of government debt accumulation and lowering government liquidity and external vulnerability pressures.

Moodys estimates that the government fiscal deficit (including off-budget transactions) narrowed to less than 12% of GDP in 2021 from nearly 18% of GDP in 2020 and will likely decline to less than 4% of GDP, on average.

The projection assumes that oil prices will remain elevated in the next few years, averaging $113/barrel in 2022 and $97/barrel in 2023. Brent crude was down $2, or 1.85% yesterday, at $106.32 a barrel by 1:40 p.m. ET (1740 GMT).

US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude declined $2.01, or 1.94%, to $101.80. Brent hit $139 a barrel last month, its highest since 2008. Moodys projects that Bahrain will maintain its robust current account surpluses during the next two years, mainly due to higher oil prices but also due to an equally significant rebound in prices of aluminium, which accounted for more than 25% of Bahrains merchandise exports in 2020.

Moodys expects that current account surpluses will lead to a further rebuilding of central bank foreign-currency reserves, which rose to $4 billion in January 2022 from the 30-year low of less than $800 million in April 2020.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

A young Bahraini boy who underwent three major surgeries after suffering a haemorrhage in the head has been discharged from King Hamad University Hospital (KHUH) and is on a path to recovery, the boys family said.

The boy, Ali Hussein Ali, was admitted to the hospital two months ago and his family had appealed to the Ministry of Health to expedite the import of drugs from abroad as part of the medical treatment here. Alis family thanked the Ministry of Health, doctors and other staff at KHUH for the timely support offered.

They expressed gratitude to Major General Dr Shaikh Salman bin Ateyatalla Al Khalifa, the Commander of KHUH, for his generous guidance and continuous follow-up on the childs condition. The family also thanked Captain Ahmed Ali Al Tamimi, Head of Public Relations and Marketing at KHUH, for offering timely support by facilitating the high quality medical service.

The entire medical team at the hospital were thanked for the great efforts and high professionalism coupled with humane approach, which saved the life of their son. The Ministry of Health bore the complete expenses of the treatment.


BUS operators have accused the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc) of arresting soft targets in their blitz against smuggling in an operation that has so far netted nine buses.

Some operators say the anti-graft body is failing to tackle bigger cases of corruption that have shattered the economy.

They can argue in court, Zacc spokesperson John Makamure said.

One of the affected operators, who declined to be named, said one of the buses netted in the blitz was an inter-city bus operating between Beitbridge and Harare.

My bus caught in that blitz operates from Dulivhadzimo bus terminus in Beitbridge and not across the border. Obviously, most of our clients are people from South African trips, but it is not my duty to ask for a declaration form, the operator said.

We simply load the goods on the bus and whether these people have gone through the border to declare their goods is not our business as bus operators. After all, we hear these people pay soldiers and police to cross with their stuff.

Zacc is coming to the soft target; it should be dealing with soldiers, police and other security agents who are facilitating this smuggling. How do the goods cross where these officers are patrolling? That is where Zacc should be probing, the operator added.

Some of the goods found on the buses included an assortment of alcoholic drinks, blankets, bags containing new clothes, shoes, washing powder and energy drinks worth hundreds of thousands of United States dollars. Newsday
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The Ministry of Industry, Commerce, and Tourism (MOICT) has issued an order to ban selling, manufacturing, circulating and importing single-use plastic bags, which are less than 35 microns in thickness. The order will be effective on September 18. Minister Zayed bin Rashid Al Zayani said that the decision aims to support environmental protection initiatives and limit the spread of plastic waste.

He highlighted that the ban is in line with the governments plans of securing an environment that supports sustainability and reduces pollution. The ban will exclude single-use plastic bags that are more than 35 microns in thickness, single-use plastic bags that are used for medical purposes and bags that are used for exports, he said.

Al Zayani said that the MOICT held stakeholder engagement sessions especially with the private sector through the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

He added that the conducted surveys showed that all local factories intend to manufacture multi-use plastic bags that are more than 35 microns in thickness. The survey also showed that 86% of these local factories would continue to manufacture plastic products that are exempt from the new regulation or alternatives to the banned single-use bags.

The minister noted that several neighboring and developed countries have applied similar regulations to limit the spread of plastic waste, which poses a great danger to the environment and wildlife.

He stressed that the ministry will continue to take measures that contribute to environmental systems protection, calling on the need for everyones cooperation to move forward in enforcing these efforts to preserve environmental safety.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Four men on their run with spoils worth BD 23,000 after hitting a gold store in the Capital Governorate landed in the police net in less than four hours. The jewellery heist, pulled off as planned by the suspects, went awry when police jumped into action after receiving an alert.

Police officers, who immediately started investigating the robbery, also started scouring through security camera footage, hoping to find a clue to catching the suspects who were already on the run. The efforts paid off well, with officers spotting the suspects and finding their identities. Soon police patrols were given alerts to look out for the suspects. Meanwhile, two of the suspects, unsuspecting of the trap set, reached the Bahrain International Airport in a bid to flee the country.

However, airport police waiting there swooped on the suspects and took them into custody. After interrogating the suspects, police also managed to spot the two others involved in the heist and record their arrest. Officers also retrieved the stolen jewellery from their possession. The arrests were in cooperation with the Bahrain International Airport Police directorate. The suspects -all Asian nationals- were aged between 28 and 53 years. The Capital Governorate Police Directorate announced taking legal measures in preparation for referring the case to the Public Prosecution.
Agencies | Cairo

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Every year, the people of Egypt welcome Ramadan with colourful fanous  intricate lanterns that symbolise unity and joy throughout the holy month. Although this tradition is more cultural than it is religious, it has come to be strongly associated with the holy month of Ramadan, taking on a spiritual significance.

The tales of its origin differ, but a prominent account dates the birth of the fanous to one night during the Fatimid dynasty, when Egyptians greeted Caliphate Al-Muizz li-Din Allah as he arrived in Cairo on the first day of Ramadan. In order to provide an illuminated entrance for the imam, military officials ordered locals to hold candles in the dark streets, sheltering them in wooden frames to prevent them from blowing out.

Over time, these wooden structures emerged into patterned lanterns, and are now displayed across the entire country, spreading light during the holy month. Today, the fanous are often integrated into other local traditions. For example, during the holy month, children walk the streets with their lanterns, singing merrily while asking for gifts and sweets.
Japan's foreign minister promised his country would bolster its military to help the United States maintain regional security during a visit on Saturday to a U.S. aircraft carrier patrolling Asian waters.

"Today I was able to experience first hand the frontline of national security," Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters in the hangar deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln sailing in waters south of Tokyo. Japan will "significantly strengthen" its defence capabilities and work closely with the United States, he added.

Hayashi spoke amid concern in Japan that Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which it sees as an affront to international diplomatic norms, could encourage neighbouring China to use military muscle to win control of Taiwan and threaten nearby Japanese islands.

Japan has also expressed concern about Beijing's deepening security ties with Moscow, that have included joint drills in waters surrounding Japan.

China has said its intentions in Asia are peaceful.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  Two North Dakota Army National Guard soldiers are being recognized for saving migrants from drowning at the southern border of the United States last month.

Spc. Luis Alvarado, of Bismarck, and Spc. Gracin Clem, of Dickinson, were conducting surveillance for U.S. Customs and Border Protection on March 22 when they observed five migrants attempting to cross the Rio Grande River, the National Guard said.


Fifty-year-old Rosemary Chiadzwa of Ward 30 in Chiadzwa village was in the company of her niece at a business centre widely known as maSugar Sugar in Marange in Manicaland where she sells vegetables to support her family when the horror unfolded.

What appeared like any normal working day one afternoon in 2015 soon became a traumatic lifetime experience for the two.

Chiadzwa and her niece were about to head home when a joint army and police reaction team descended on the business centre to arrest suspected diamond dealers.

The two were caught up in the melee and were apprehended by a soldier who ordered Chiadzwa to go, leaving behind her niece in his custody.

I thought my niece was also going to be set free so I went straight home. She eventually got home, only to tell me that she had been sexually abused by the soldier without her consent or protection in exchange of her freedom, Chiadzwa recalls the ordeal.

Rosemary Chiadzwa said she is living in fear of being raped by state security in Marange that constantly sexually harass her.

This incident may have happened nearly seven years ago, but the sexual abuses have intensified over the years says Chiadzwa who now lives in constant fear of being raped herself.

Chiadzwa, who lost her husband in 2005, said her marital status has made her a soft target of soldiers, who have been making sexual advances towards her.

She says her children and grandchildren are now being used as hostages as they are arbitrarily arrested as a way to force her into giving in to the sexual advances.

What we are going through in Chiadzwa as women is very painful, especially now that they know that Im a widow, Chiadzwa said.

They come at my house even in the middle of the night asking whether there are any diamond dealers inside.

But they know its just me, my three children and three grandchildren.

I now live in constant fear of being raped at any moment.

Chiadzwas case characterises the experiences of many women in the vast diamond concession who are either into vending or run small shops to support their families as job opportunities from diamond companies are hard to come by.

Soldiers are not doing their core business, said Marvelous Mawoyo of Tinoengana village, who sells fruits and vegetables.

They are supposed to protect the community and not harass us. If they propose to you and you reject the proposal they will make your life difficult. And they dont care whether you are married or not.

Ellen Nyadongo of Chiadzwa village who also sells vegetables, recalled one night when she got arrested and ended up being physically assaulted after she refused to submit to sexual advances made by a soldier, who had arrested her.

Queen Mutamba of Chirasika village, who sells eggs and clothes, said at times the security agents forcefully take away their wares if we cant pay the fine.

It emerged that when the soldiers assist female villagers climb into the military or police trucks, they indecently touch their private parts and force them to interlock legs with men who would have also been apprehended.

The villagers said their daughters were also being impregnated by members of the security forces.

Investigations supported by Information for Development Trust (IDT)  a non-profit making outfit probing bad governance  showed that Marange women were subjected to an array of gross human rights violations and crimes.

Marange business centres and the raids they suffer

These ranged from arbitrary arrests, detentions, extortion, bribes and sexual abuses.

While cases of sexual abuses were mainly attributed to military personnel, it was also found that police officers were working in cahoots with their army counterparts to abuse their authority by arbitrarily arresting bona fide Marange villagers during raids meant to clamp down on diamond dealers.

Police and army are equally involved in corruption where they order arrested villagers to pay

$2 000 in bribes (at the time of the investigation) to secure their release or risk detention at a security base for three nights where they are made to sing continuously without food and are subjected to manual labour.

Moreover, state security personnel demand bribes of between US$5 to US$10 from small business owners operating at various business centres in Marange.

Bars are made to pay as much as US$50.

We are told that the money is for shop licences, said Irene Sithole, who runs a shop at maSugar Sugar business centre.

Sithole said the Mutare Rural District Council (RDC), which oversees the area, has not been issuing shop licenses to Marange businesses since it is a protected area.

This, she added has created an environment conducive for corruption.

Generally, they charge between US$5 to US$10 per raid but no receipts are given, Sithole said.

At one point I paid US$80 for a shop license valid for one month, which is too much.

Recently I was arrested on allegations that I was keeping gwejas (diamond dealers) at my shop.

The charges are absurd, how can I tell whether people who hang around or frequent my shop are diamond dealers or not? she wondered.

Investigations indicated that Mutare RDC is not accepting any new applications for shop licences.

New licences are only accepted under stringent conditions where the authority receives written recommendations from the diamond concession holders.

Mutare RDC has the sole responsibility to issue shop licences to all legal businesses in the eastern border district comprising Marange and Zimunya communal lands after paying the relevant fees and adherence to planning and health requirements.

The annual fees paid by operators in Marange could not be established as the council indicated that they vary according to business classes.

Community led audits identified up to 11 army and police bases broken down as three each in Chiadzwa and Tonhorai villages; one each in Tinoengana, Tarindwa, Chishingwi, Mkwada and Kusena villages.

The audits also identified up to six business centres, namely maSugar Sugar, maCrush, Chingome, Machangwa, Chimbiya, and Tenda with a population of over 300 small and big shops.

It was gathered through these community led audits that the various army and police bases, including ZRP Bambazonke take turns to raid the centres at least twice a week where they net up to US$6 000 in bribes.

Bambazonke police say that they are sent by Mutare RDC to collect money for shop licences, said Sithole. We are being abused by State security in Marange, says Irene Sithole

However, inquiries with Mutare RDC chief executive officer Shepherd Chinaka indicated otherwise.

Council has no knowledge of bribes being paid to police or army.

We recommend those who have encountered such situations to report to the relevant authorities, said Chinaka.

Zimbabwe National Army spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Alfios Makotore said any allegations with a criminal element levelled against soldiers must be directed to the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP).

ZRP spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi issued a stern warning against rogue officers.

ZRP is not aware, Nyathi said.

We appeal for people to come and report those cases either in Mutare or directly to our headquarters, so that investigations are conducted.

If there are any members of the forces involved in any cases of corruption or (sexual) abuse, I assure you they will be dealt with accordingly.

But firstly, we encourage those making the allegations to make formal reports.

However, it was gathered that reports have previously been made without any arrests being made as the security agents devise means to protect the perpetrators.

They remove or hide their force numbers when they are committing the crimes.

If you go to report, the superiors at the bases simply remove the officer from the parade and the matter ends there.

I think they also take advantage of us. They see us as mere villagers, who are ignorant of their rights, said Otilia Chipise (59) of Muedzengwa village.

The villagers appealed to President Emmerson Mnangagwas government to intervene and put an end to the series of sexual abuses and extortion cases in Marange involving security agents.

I think they should be able to clearly differentiate between gwejas and bona fide villagers, said Rosemary Changadzi of Muedzengwa village, who sells fruits and vegetables.

Rosemary Changadzi appealed for the protection of Marange villagers from arbitrary arrests during raids to nab diamond dealers

We need to be protected by way of law, and IDs can be used to prove that. But the problem are the soldiers.

They pretend to be illiterate and order you to show their bosses at the bases only for you to spend three nights there.

So, they should be instructed that their business is not to harass members of the community before they are deployed,

Records from the Mines ministry indicate that there is a total of 4 300 families that were up for relocation in the vast diamond concessions.

However, additional records from the Mutare district administrators office indicated that only 1 100 families were relocated to Arda Transau Relocation Area.

Technically, this leaves out a total of 3 200 families still trapped in the diamond fields and undergoing untold challenges at the hands of state security agents.

The Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC) is on record acknowledging human rights violations by security forces.

ZCDCs private security has undergone several human rights trainings spearheaded by the Zimbabwe Environmental Lawyers Association to better their conduct within communities.

Over the years, state security agents have been accused of gross human rights violations and fuelling organised diamond pilferage.

When ZCDC took over the former diamond fields, its former acting chief executive officer Roberto De Pretto also said while there were no security problems under their claims, serious security breaches were emanating from areas protected by state security. Standard
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More than two decades ago, scientists with the Lake George Association in New York reported the first colony of adult male zebra mussels located in the popular tourist destination in the southern section of the Adirondacks Mountains.

Across the Great Lakes region in the U.S., the largest freshwater ecosystem in the world, zebra mussels had spread 20 years before that, creating widespread damage to the underwater environment causing $3 billion to $5 billion in estimated economic losses each year by 2002, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Against that backdrop, the strong reproductive sign in the male colony found at Lake George in 1999 signaled a major threshold for the spread of the species there  but the impact would not take the same toll as it did in the Great Lakes region.

Instead, according to Candlewood Watershed Initiative Chair Jim McAlister, a well-documented measure of success would be found in controlling and monitoring the spread of the zebra mussels in the ensuing decades there  becoming a potential model for efforts currently underway locally.

New York State has more of priority on its environment than we do and they set up the mechanisms over the years to support that, he said. Connecticut is woefully behind in terms of investment and preventing these problems.

Roughly three hours south of Lake George and covering 65 miles of shoreline, and spreading out over 8.5 square miles of water area, Candlewood Lake is a human-made water body that holds about 46 billion gallons of water surrounded by 1,600 waterfront residences, three public boat launches, and five resident beaches.

It is the largest lake in Connecticut and, as of 2020 with the discovery of nearly 50 juvenile zebra mussels, officially a known-home to the invasive species that is notorious for its ability to rapidly dominate a water body.

To learn about the model at work at Lake George and how their success might be adapted to Candlewood, McAlister said he has made frequent trips to the area, including one recently with more than 20 local municipal and lake authority officials in tow, and shared several observations he gathered.

One simple example is when they discovered they were faced with zebras, they brought in volunteers that hand caught the zebras off the rocks to the extent that they could get to them, which sounds like sort of a crazy idea, but they have been quite successful in doing things like that, he said.

More broadly, he added: They have got buy in from the commercial enterprise ways across the lake and most of the access ways to the lake such that they have required inspections on all entering vessels and that way they have been able to fend off the problem  not so in Connecticut.

The invasive fresh-water mollusks have no natural predators in North America and wreak havoc on water bodies, spreading primarily through boat activity. Filtering up to one liter of freshwater daily, they are sharp to touch and feed on tiny organisms that support fish populations and other organisms that create entire ecosystems.

Under state and local regulations, any invasive species inspection station found at one of the two state boat launches at Candlewood Lake, or at any lakes across Connecticut, is totally voluntary for boat owners  meaning no rules or regulations exist to ensure boat owners take steps to check and clear their vessels of zebra mussels before putting them into the water.

Neil Stalter, the Candlewood Lake Authoritys director of ecology and environmental education, admitted that stopping the spread of zebra mussels is extremely difficult because there are currently no proven effective methods for controlling their population.

Stalter said the lake authority is, still assessing whether that population is going to be able to effectively grow and reproduce in Candlewood, but he noted officials are, also optimistic we're making progress on invasive species prevention at the launches.

Last summer, funding from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection stood up a pilot program last summer to provide voluntary inspections and provide education at the lakes public boat ramps.

We're encouraged by the results of last year's program and hope to expand it in the future, he added.

McAlister commended the volunteer effort but said more needs to be done.

We arent close to inspecting any significant portion of the total boats entering the lake and not getting anywhere near the progress that we have to make, particularly on the state operating ramps which are grossly understaffed and very little inspections [are performed]  and thats the principal way this stuff spreads, he said.

Addressing the issue

State Rep. Steve Harding, R-Brookfield, said he supported the volunteer inspection measures put in place in recent years, but noted any movement on regulations over boat inspections at the state level during the current legislative session would not be happening.

He hopes, however, that a bill he supports will pass, adding 10 Environmental Conservation Police Officers across the state.

The hope would be is that by increasing the number ofofficers within our inland waterways, particularly within Candlewood Lake, that would increase the ability of DEEP to inspect the boats or keep an eye on the boat launches as boats are being placed into the lake, Harding said.

Created in 1928, Candlewood Lake is technically designated as a hydro-dam facility owned by FirstLight Power Company and regulated by the Federal Energy Regulation Commission.

As a result of federal regulator oversight, McAlister said it is at least fortunate enough to have its waters dropped each year resulting in the exposure of any zebra mussels caught above the waterline. Their discovery confirms they are there, he explained, but their number and location can be clues to how the spread might be progressing.

In early 2021, volunteers searching portions of exposed lake bed during the draw-down found roughly 70 juvenile zebra mussels spread randomly in different locations, according to the Candlewood Lake Authority, the regional body tasked with being the steward of the lake and funded by equal appropriations from the five surrounding municipalities  Brookfield, Danbury, New Fairfield, New Milford and Sherman.

This past winter, McAlister added, more rain and snow meant the FirstLight drawdown had little effect in exposing, and killing, zebra mussels compared to what he and other local officials hoped for  but the small win would only be one push compared to the widespread momentum needed to counter what is all but an impossible opponent.

To stop invasives is nearly impossible, McAlister said. But to hopefully keep their numbers small so they dont colonize and spread should become sort of a practical objective.

The Candlewood Lake Authority has that issue and is now trying to figure out to what degree zebras have been able to move toward the colonization  once that happens, at some point, its game over  and we have been sliding that way for years without the money and the backing and the concern that is essential, he added.

While Stalter said Candlewood Lake Authority officials are optimistic about the inherent challenge in stopping the spread of zebra mussels, he asserted that stronger regulation at the state level could provide additional momentum.

We have advocated to the state for clearer regulations that require invasive species inspections before boats launch in the lake, but there haven't been substantial changes to the regulations yet, wrote Stalter.
President Ursula von der Leyen arrived in India on a two-day official visit to enhance the strategic partnership between India and the EU

On Sunday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrived in India on a two-day official visit to enhance the strategic partnership between India and the EU. As President of the European Commission, she will be making her maiden trip to India.

Climate change and biodiversity loss, energy and digital transition, connectivity, security and defense, and Indo-Pacific cooperation will be at the forefront of the discussions in Delhi.

The broad economic agenda between the EU and India will be discussed, with a focus on the free trade deal, the Investment Protection Agreement, and the Geographical Indications Agreement.

During her visit, President von der Leyen will visit TERI Gram, a campus of The Energy and Resources Institute, where she will speak with students about the existential threat of climate change and the need to collaborate for a green, digital, and resilient future.

However, President of the European Commission has been invited as this years Raisina Dialogues Chief Guest and will speak during the opening session on April 25.

Warm and cordial welcome to President of the @EU_Commission @vonderleyen to India. She will be the Chief Guest at @raisinadialogue starting April 25. pic.twitter.com/dZ0zL4V1yT  Arindam Bagchi (@MEAIndia) April 23, 2022

Meanwhile, earlier on Saturday, Jaishankar met Bjoern Seibert, Head of Cabinet of the President of the European Commission to discuss India-EU partnership and the global strategic scenario.
Amidst the terror activities and security issues in Jammu and Kashmir, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Jammu and Kashmir today to address gram sabhas throughout the country in honour of National Panchayati Raj Day.

He will lay the foundation stone for a number of development projects totaling around Rs 20,000 crore. In the Samba district, the Prime Minister will pay a visit to Palli Panchayat.

During his visit to Jammu and Kashmir, the Prime Minister will also launch a new programme called Amrit Sarovar to ensure the regeneration of water bodies. It aims to develop and revitalize 75 water bodies in each of the countrys districts.

However, Kashmir security agencies are on high alert with more deployment of forces. As per the security setup, vehicles entering Srinagar are being checked.

Narendra Modi twitted his programmme for todays visit The works being inaugurated include the Banihal Qazigund Road Tunnel which is a landmark infra project aimed at ensuring all-weather connectivity between the Jammu and Kashmir regions. Jan Aushadi Kendras spread across J&K will also be inaugurated.

According to the Prime Ministers Office, the 8.45-kilometer tunnel costs approximately Rs 3,100 crore to construct. The tunnel would cut the distance between Banihal and Qazigund by 16 kilometres and cut travel time in half. Its a two-tube tunnel, one for each direction of travel, with a cross passage every 500 metres for maintenance and emergency evacuation.

The tunnel will aid in the establishment of an all-weather link between Jammu and Kashmir, bringing the two regions closer together.

Further, PM Modis visit is also marked by some other programmes including, laying of foundation stone of three road packages of the Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Expressway, laying the foundation stone of Ratle and Kwar Hydroelectric projects, expanding the network of Jan Aushadi Kendras in Jammu and Kashmir.

Further, PM Modi will also present SVAMITVA cards to the schemes recipients and visit INTACH photo gallery to witness the cultural heritage of the region.
According to the Jammu & Kashmir police, the encountered terrorists were found to be in possession of a number of weapons and ammo

Two Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorists were killed in an encounter in the Mirhama area of Jammu and Kashmirs Kulgam district on Saturday.

According to the Jammu & Kashmir police, they were found to be in possession of a number of arms and ammunition.

Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir Police, Vijay Kumar said, Both of the terrorists murdered by the JeM are Pakistanis. Incriminating materials, weapons, and ammunition were recovered from their possession, including two AK rifles, seven AK magazines, and nine grenades.

The encounter began after the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) received input regarding the hiding of three to four JeM terrorists in the area.

Acting on the tip, a small team of Kulgam police and Indian Army had initiated the encounter and killed two terrorists there. Another two terrorists are yet to be found, he added.

The IGP further stated that the operation was halted at night to remove people and that the fight would resume in the morning.
During the Civil War, when someone who was drafted didnt feel like fighting, there were some simple, legal remedies. You could find a substitute to take your place, or just pay $300 and get out of it altogether.

It was not a perfect system. Three hundred dollars was a lot of money, which meant only well-off people could take advantage of the loopholes. But more than that, it was just morally corrupt.

Still, the idea stuck around, and rich people simply writing a check to get out of their obligations is a time-honored tradition.

All of which brings us to the housing question in 2022 Connecticut.

The state, you may have heard, has a housing shortage. More people want to live here than there are homes available, which is leading to bidding wars and big price increases for existing homes, as well as unfilled jobs in businesses across the state. What homes are available often price out all but the top rungs of the income ladder, leaving the deficit of affordable housing even more acute.

Since individual municipalities have been mostly unwilling to open up zoning and otherwise allow more development, action has been sought at the state level, where Democrats are in firm control of all levers of power. It hasnt been easy, though, as proposed reforms last year were significantly watered down before passage, and little is likely to emerge in this years short session.

One reform that did pass a few years ago was a requirement for each community to at least have a plan for addressing its housing needs going forward. A draft plan from the Western Connecticut Council of Governments, which includes cities such as Norwalk and Danbury as well as some of the toniest addresses around in places such as Darien, Greenwich and New Canaan, has raised some hackles.

This gets a little in the weeds, but its important. Theres no requirement for any town to have a certain level of affordable housing. But, if a town has less than 10 percent of its housing deemed affordable, its subject to the notorious 8-30g, which provides that a town cant just flat out reject a housing proposal with an affordable component without a reason regarding safety or something equally serious. You cant just say no.

These arent theoretical obligations. The states Zoning Enabling Act requires regulations to promote housing choice and economic diversity in housing, including housing for both low and moderate income households.

Most towns dont hit the 10 percent mark, and without 8-30g, thered be little if any affordable housing development in these communities. Even with the law, theres not nearly enough to satisfy demand. If these towns built more housing, people would live there.

Despite the laws effectiveness, and necessity, a lot of people dont like it. They appear to take the attitude that towns are doing just fine on their own without state interference, and we should let local control handle any perceived problems. All that is belied by the aforementioned housing crisis, which towns have done little to alleviate.

In any event, WestCOG, as that group representing 18 towns is known, has hit upon a unique solution  instead of each town having to hit its own 10 percent mark to be exempt from 8-30g, why not think regionally? Since some cities have a surplus of affordable units, the state should let communities share the wealth. One solution to the affordable housing mismatch would be to allow municipalities with an affordable housing shortfall to pay a neighboring municipality with an affordable housing surplus for the right to apply designated housing units to their Section 8-30g quota, the draft plan reads.

Let the rich towns pay their way out.

To be clear, this wouldnt work. As noted by Sean Ghio, policy director at the Partnership for Strong Communities, 8-30g applies at the municipal level, not regionally, so unless someone changes the law, towns would still be subject to suits stemming from zoning denials.

But the problem goes deeper than that. Its about how towns continue to see housing, especially affordable housing, as a burden rather than an opportunity. If more people can live in your community, thats a benefit. If people can afford to spend at local businesses rather than dedicate up to 50 percent of their income toward housing alone, that helps everyone. Your children would get to go to school with more people from different backgrounds, and peoples lives would be enriched.

It would be foolish to think race doesnt play a role. Many of these towns are overwhelmingly white, and the term affordable housing is associated with people of color. Just the word apartment can get people riled up. Its rarely stated explicitly, but it undergirds nearly every discussion on housing youll ever hear.

At some point, we could stop thinking of suburbs as open only to those lucky enough to get in before the gates slammed shut behind them. Whether residents admit it or not, the whole state would benefit from changing that mindset.

Hugh Bailey is editorial page editor of the Connecticut Post and New Haven Register. He can be reached at hbbailey@hearstmediact.com.
HAMDEN  Should candidates applying to be Hamden police officers be allowed to retake polygraph tests with a new vendor? And under what circumstances is it appropriate for the town to switch polygraph companies?

Those questions came up at a recent Hamden Police Commission meeting, when board members learned the town is seeking a new company to perform polygraph tests after a batch of applicants exhibited a high failure rate.

The candidates, who already were certified police officers, retested with a different vendor and passed, said Andrea Lobo, chairwoman of the Civil Service Commission.

Some police commissioners worried the failures could have pertained to the applicant pool, not the company. But Chief of Police John Sullivan said the towns longtime vendor recently switched polygraphing methods, a change that corresponded with the spike in failed tests.

That company, PDD Solutions, has performed polygraph testing for Hamden since 2006, according to Brigitte Cogswell, who heads the personnel department.

Additionally, when candidates tested with PDD Solutions several months ago, Lobo said, some complained about the company.

Bill Wesche, owner of PDD Solutions, said the problem had nothing to do with his business. Instead, he said, his company and many others across Connecticut have switched to a polygraphing method that is more sensitive to deception.

That method is known as the directed lie screening test, according to Wesche, who said it has led to a higher failure rate statewide.

Wesche also said PDD Solutions retested the Hamden applicants, but declined to disclose the results of the retest, citing confidentiality agreements.

Which candidates should qualify?

Normally, the Civil Service Commission removes applicants who fail polygraphs from the certified list of candidates, Lobo said.

Because of unusual circumstances, the Civil Service Commission did not disqualify the group of applicants with the failed polygraphs, Lobo said, noting they already were certified police officers.

We had to make a decision that, because of the high fail rate and because we had the (candidates) complaining about the professionalism of this particular vendor, the commission would keep them on the list Lobo said.

If a candidate stays on the certified list, they can go before the police commission for an interview.

Lobo said she was not aware the candidates had retested with PDD Solutions, but that they did retest with a different vendor  and passed.

The second vendor was called Secure Investigations, according to Cogswell, the personnel director.

Inquiries to Secure Investigations were not immediately returned.

Letting candidates retake polygraphs is not unusual, according to Sullivan.

If you reach out to other agencies, you will find out that (allowing candidates to retake a polygraph test) is a common practice, he said.

Asked whether the candidates retested with PDD Solutions, Sullivan declined to provide details and said he could not comment on personnel matters.

Im just trying to be fair to the people who were involved in this process, he said.

Police commission chimes in

Police Commission Chairwoman Rhonda Caldwell does not think the town should get rid of a company just because of a high failure rate, she said, wondering whether the problem was with the test or the applicant pool.

We need to get to the bottom of what that is, because if this is a valid company, then lets keep using them and look at the applicant pool, Caldwell said.

Commissioner Daniel Dunn shared similar concerns.

It concerns me if there is a sort of shopping around of polygraph companies based on a high pass rate, he said.

But not every commissioner feels the same. Commissioner Vaughn Willis noted polygraph tests are not always reliable, according to a meeting recording on the town website.

The polygraph is not the end all, be all. Sometimes people pass the polygraph, but theyre still not a good candidate, and a lot of times if you really know what youre doing you can easily pass a polygraph, he said.

Willis did not want problems with a vendor to hold up the hiring process, he said.

Commissioner Frank LaDore, who was unable to attend that meeting but later spoke with a reporter, thought it might well be reasonable to hire a new vendor.

If you have a polygraph company that is failing everybody, do you really want to use the company? he asked.

Unless a polygraph test turns up an earth-shattering revelation about a candidate, LaDore said, he does not believe the commission should put too much weight on it. Like Willis, he noted the potential for inaccuracies.

He also feels it is urgent to hire more officers, as the department currently is down about 15 officers, he said.

Concerns about process

Ultimately, the Civil Service Commission is supposed to approve which polygraph vendor to use, according to Lobo.

When the vendor switch occurred in the last batch of candidates, she said, commissioners were not informed until after the fact.

Longstanding practices may have left the commissions role in the matter unclear, according to Lobo, who said she thinks the situation simply did not get communicated from town departments to the commission.

Now, the town is working to come up with clearer protocols going forward, she said.

I dont believe that anyone was trying to pull the wool over anyones eyes.  I just think that this was a miscommunication, Lobo said. Were just trying to protect our processes a little bit better.

We work in conjunction with personnel on this polygraph portion of the process, said Sullivan. We look forward to working with them and civil service going forward and hopefully make sure theres no issues in the future.

Future applicant pools are likely to have a brand-new vendor. To ameliorate past issues with the selection process, Lobo said, the Civil Service Commission is selecting a new company to perform polygraphs.

To do so, the town will get quotes from several different companies, speak with representatives and assess the vendors pass/fail rates, she said.

When we pick our new vendor, that is going to be the vendor, and the result is going to be the result, Lobo said. Were not going to pick another one if (candidates) fail.

meghan.friedmann@hearstmediact.com
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NEW HAVEN  Funding for New Haven public schools and the citys libraries drew support at the final public hearing on Mayor Justin Elickers proposed $633.17 million budget for fiscal 2022-23, which would raise spending Tuesday by $26.82 million, or 4.42 percent, over the current years $606.34 million budget.

But only seven people spoke to the Board of Alders Finance Committee  and just about 20 people, including city staffers who came to discuss their individual department budgets, attended the meeting in the cavernous Hillhouse High School auditorium.

The speakers were easily outnumbered by the 11 Finance Committee members sitting behind tables on the auditorium stage.

The alders took no action. Finance Committee Chairman Adam Marchand, D-25, said theyll deliberate on the budget in subsequent meetings before voting on a budget in late May.

Lee Cruz, a member of the New Haven Free Public Library Board who also is the Fair Haven Community Management Team co-chair  and husband of Alder Sarah Miller, D-14  made a pitch for additional funds for libaries in Mayor Justin Elickers budget that will let the four branch libraries once again be open Sundays.

Public libraries are a temple of democracy and a key to a free society, Cruz said. I was happy to see that funding for extended hours have become more, and not less, necessary ... Extended hours are needed and hours are the key barrier to greater library usage, Cruz said.

Elickers proposed $633.17 million budget, posted on the citys website at https://bit.ly/3vpKFiG, includes $195.76 million for the Board of Education and $437.4 million for city services.

The city is using $10 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to pay for allowable expenditures and make up for revenue lost because of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to keep from raising taxes further, Elicker has said.

To adjust for the citys five-year revaluation, the city would lower the tax rate to 42.75 mills from the current 43.88 mills, but because of revaluation and the corresponding rise in property valuations, the average taxpayer would see a slight increase in their total tax bills, Elicker has said.

To prevent taxpayers from feeling the full brunt of property valuation increases all at once, the city has opted to phase in the revaluations by 20 percent per a year over five years, which is allowed under state law. That will allow property owners who have seen their property values go up time to adjust to their new higher values and the corresponding higher taxes, Elicker said.

Metropolitan Business Academy Science Teacher Chris Willems asked the Finance Committee to fully fund the Board of Education budget.

The constant drum beat of budget cuts is a barrier to learning, Willems said. Meaningful, project-based learning requires adequate funding, he said.

We need more staff so we can have smaller class sizes... and so we can have authentic partnerships, Williams said. The stress caused by constant austerity messaging is demoralizing, he said.

New Haven should be a destination school system for talented teachers, not a place they leave to go to another district where theyll be more highly paid, Willems said.

Isabelle Geller, a former New Haven Public Schools student who now is a substitute teacher  and hopes to be a future NHPS teacher, told the alders, I ask you to fully fund our school system.

Im tired of being underpaid, as a long-term subsitute teacher, Geller said. Im tired of seeing our students underfunded and maligned.

Next year, I will be a certified teacher and Id love to teach in our school system but I know Im likely to be recruited by other districts, she said.

Jonathan Q. Berryman, who lives in the citys 8th Ward, also made a plea for adequate education funding, asking the alders to approve the full $5 million increase.

Weve got about $90 million in PILOT funding. Were no longer struggling to make ends meet the way the city has been in recent years, Berryman said. Were back!

Berryman then broke into an impromptu chorus of the classic OJays soul number, For the Love of Money, singing, Money, money, money, money (Money) several times into the microphone.

Shana Schneider, also a member of the library board, echoed Cruz plea for adequate library funding, asking the alders to approve the full $100,000 proposed increase and saying, We all need and deserve a clean, safe place to sit and read.

New Haven Democracy Fund board member Aaron Goode urged the alders to support the proposed contribution to the fund, which provides money to publicly fund election campaigns and lessen the impact of big contributions from wealthy people, which he called the only such program in the entire state and a source of pride for the city.

Finally, Clinton Avenue resident and Democratic Town Committee Ward 15 Chair Robert Roberts urged the alders to do what they can to blunt the tax increases built into the revaluation, saying, A lot of my residents and constituents are very upset with the new budget for the houses.

Everybodys hurting, he said. Right now, its causing us to lose people in the houses.

mark.zaretsky@hearstmediact.com
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MAYFIELD, Ky. (AP)  Sundays at the Bullock home in rural Kentucky were filled with lasting memories: big family dinners, cornhole, basketball and karaoke.

Those gatherings ended the night of Dec. 10, when a massive tornado obliterated their Dawson Springs house, trapping Chris Bullock, 17-year-old son Stevie and miniature poodle Dewey under a crumbled brick wall in the basement. Her husband pulled them from the rubble with minor injuries, but the house where she and her family lived for 26 years was gone.

There were things we were never able to find, Bullock told The Associated Press recently. Our neighbor's dryer was in our yard. We found our ketchup but we couldn't find our refrigerator.

Four months after the tornado upended her family's lives, Chris Bullock and hundreds of other Kentuckians are arduously reconstructing their pre-storm existence. Thanks to a vast network of municipal workers, contractors, churches, charities and volunteers, communities like Dawson Springs, Mayfield and Bowling Green are edging toward recovery.

The storm system that spawned the deadly tornado tore through a handful of states. The National Weather Service recorded 41 tornadoes on Dec. 10 and 11, including 16 in Tennessee and eight in Kentucky. Eighty-one people died in Kentucky alone, state officials said. Thousands found shelter with relatives and friends, or in emergency facilities, hotels and state parks.

In Mayfield, a candle factory, a nursing home and government buildings were destroyed. Homes were ripped from foundations and splintered by fierce winds. Crews worked day and night to clear debris and restore power.

Audible evidence of rebuilding in Mayfield has been difficult to miss: the cracking and crashing of excavators breaking apart wood and glass, the beep-beep-beep of heavy machinery reversing, the popping of roofers' nail guns.

In an AP interview, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said removing debris and finding temporary housing were early priorities after the tornado. More recently, attention has turned to keeping residents in Kentucky.

These are towns that have almost been wiped off the map, Beshear said. We will continue to be concerned about getting people back on their feet and concerned about not losing the population of these towns.

Some have moved to more permanent shelter, including travel trailers, the governor said. In Graves County, tiny homes were approved for displaced residents, and several larger homes are being built in Mayfield, emergency management Director Tracy Warner said.

We really hold the future of Mayfield and Graves County in our hands, Warner said. And that is scary, yet exciting."

Although there's cause for optimism, progress remains slow in places. In Dawson Springs, where Bullock and her family now live in a camper, the 54-year-old registered nurse said she has seen just a few houses being rebuilt, and some friends say they won't stay.

Bullock and her husband had paid off their home but didnt have insurance. A disaster-response charity is helping them build a new house on their property, and Bullock hopes to see a day when their family gatherings resume.

Sundays were fun days. ... I just want to have that again, she said.

Beshear, a Democrat, said millions in housing assistance payments from a state relief fund are being distributed. About $64 million in federal assistance has been approved for storm victims in Kentucky, with some aid targeting temporary housing, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said.

Recovery will take a couple of years, but it shouldnt take any longer, Beshear said. There are days that its a little more frustrating, ... but we are going to get this done.

After the storm, bottled water, diapers and other supplies poured in from across the country. Heartland Church in Paducah became a collection point as volunteers with trucks and trailers made deliveries. The Rev. Marc Glass and volunteers loaded a church outbuilding and a donated warehouse with everything from paper towels to toys.

Herschel Evans, a driver for the American Trucking Associations Share the Road program, volunteered to drive a bright blue, 53-foot-long semitrailer full of supplies from Atlanta to Paducah.

I dont have a lot of money, but Ive got skills," Evans said. "Ive got the ability to move that truck around the country.

Heartlands relief efforts have shifted to rebuilding, with donated furniture and beds for those who have found new places to live. But Glass said the churchs community spirit goes further than that.

We don't simply care about your physical needs, but we care about you as a whole person. We care about your soul, he said.

In Dawson Springs, charity group Gods Pit Crew is rebuilding Chris Bullocks home free of charge.

The nonprofit, based in Danville, Virginia, uses donated equipment and volunteer workers to rebuild houses after disasters ranging from hurricanes to forest fires, said Chris Chiles, a staff member with the group.

Chiles led a convoy carrying about $1 million worth of heavy machinery, tree removal tools and a shower to Kentucky in January. Gods Pit Crew also brings volunteers who counsel victims.

Theres more healing that goes on with that than putting a tarp on their roof. They can sit with someone and let them know that somebody cares about them, Chiles said.

Bullock and her husband thought briefly about leaving Dawson Springs or finding an existing home rather than rebuild on their property, but we lived in that house for 26 years and we raised five children there.

It's just home, she said. It just didn't feel right to be anywhere else.

___

Schreiner reported from Frankfort, Kentucky.
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MILFORD  Apartment projects continue to pour into the city, but real estate professionals do not yet see the local market being over saturated by any means.

Milford has become a hotbed for apartment developments. Most recently, the Planning and Zoning Board approved 36 units at 67 Prospect St. and another 180 apartments at the former Kmart location located at 589 Bridgeport Ave.

I think that we have the ability to support more, especially that market-rate style apartment that is coming in, said Kevin Wiersman, owner and broker of Total Realty Services, LLC.

It can have a positive or negative effect, Wiersman said, But the overall opportunity right now is still very good for Milford. I honestly think it will be a while before we see any kind of an adjustment down in apartment values.

He added that he doesnt see any of the new developments leading to a drop in the market rate because demand is very high.

They will fill, and they will stay full, Wiersman said.

A big reason why the market is strong in Milford is because of the age group that is renting in the city, said real estate broker Al Melotto, who also works at Total.

You are getting the younger professionals coming in that are looking for a more centralized location, Melotto said. Walking distance to the downtown and the train is attractive.

The lack of inventory in the housing market also plays a role, Melotto said.

I think the younger age group is getting squeezed out. I think the first-time home buyers are having a harder time getting their foot in the door, he said.

The age of the home buyer is on the rise, according to both Melotto and Wiersman, which they said is due to a number of circumstances.

The millennial generation in the marketplace is buying homes at a much older age than has historically been typical, said Weirsman.

The progression of how each of the three core generations bought houses has been interesting, Wiersman said. He pointed out that the baby-boom generation bought houses when they were in their 20s, and Generation X, those born between about 1965 and 1980, bought their homes when they were in their 30s.

But we are seeing a lot of this millennial generation, some of them are in their 40s, but thats when theyre conceptually going to be settling down, looking for more of that single-family (home) life, he said. A lot of the younger folks are waiting longer to have kids. They are experiencing more of their young adult life and living instead of immediately starting a family and waiting until retirement.

So I think that is a major, major influence on housing stock and apartment demand, Melotto said.

Like Milford, the duo has seen other places approve a substantial amount of apartment development, one of those being New Haven.

Over the past five years, they have seen higher-end, market-rate apartments being built in New Haven, and the apartment owners have had no trouble filling them.

Theres a lot of multi-family available in New Haven, but what there hasnt been is solid, stable market rate, desirable apartments in the center of New Haven, said Wiersman. Over the past couple of years several thousand units came online and theyve all filled up. And not only that, theyve sold at some of the highest prices to secondary investors.

In the New Haven market, neither the developers nor the long-term passive investors are seeing any kind of drop in values coming in the next 10 years, said Wiersman.

The demand has been so great for this particular type of development that the sky is the limit. Anywhere will eventually come up with a saturation point, but we havent seen it yet, he added.

However, Wiersman said the most frequent request Paredim Communities  a company that owns several rental properties in Milford  receives has been for two-bedroom units. As opposed to the apartment market in New Haven, where the company is seeing a shift to slightly smaller units in the condensed city setting because there is a high demand for apartment units.

But we are also seeing a major trend in these facilities that there is a live, work and play component, said Weirsman.

One of those apartment styles is at 4 Oxford Road, Milfords first live-work units, which Melotto said more of the same kind will start to be proposed and built.

The other town that has started to see downtown growth in apartments is Shelton.

Its great because theyve essentially changed that town from having a quiet, almost forgotten downtown setting, to having an incredibly vibrant downtown, said Melotto.

The only negative to the Shelton developments the duo sees is a lack of parking in the downtown environment.

One of the negatives Shelton has always had was there was a deficit of parking spaces for people out of that area to frequent those downtown restaurants and businesses, said Melotto. So now they have a built-in clientele because they are living across the street or above that building.

Like the complexes in Shelton and New Haven, Milfords apartment market is showing no sign of slowing.

A lot of the developers weve spoken to tell us they are running north of 95 percent occupancy right now, said Weirsman. That tells us that theres a demand.

Some of the approved apartment projects are near the downtown area such as 44-64 River St., a 50-apartment project, which Melotto said will help the local businesses in the downtown area.

Local businesses are going to see a big benefit of people moving in, he said. We see some development happening in the downtown area. Once those are completed, you are going to see restaurants get busier, these mom and pop boutiques are going to see more foot traffic, and its going to create more hustle and bustle downtown. Thats what we need down here.

Both Weirsman and Melotto said the market-rate desirable apartments are a necessity for communities to survive going forward.

Market rate apartments are necessary for towns to stay competitive and for business to stay competitive and thrive, said Weirsman.

Businesses need it, said Melotto. Cities need development, and we need the people.
WATERTOWN  The community is reeling after the death of a child who police say became trapped under a farm tractor on a local field this weekend.

Watertown police said the 4-year-old child died after becoming trapped under a farm tractor on a field on Barnes Road between Lake Winnemaug and Bunker Hill roads on Saturday. The child had died by the time first responders arrived, police said.

Police did not respond Sunday to questions about the childs death. The childs name has not been released and police have not said whether any charges will be filed.

On Monday, officials said the child's death was due to "blunt force trauma" and ruled the death an accident.

Town Manager Mark Raimo said Sunday the Watertown community is in shock following the incident, with condolences for the family pouring in over social media.

No townwide vigil has been planned yet, Raimo said.

Incidents involving children are far and few between (in Watertown), Raimo said. This hits home for everybody.

He said he is also concerned for the towns first responders who witnessed the aftermath of the incident. First responders will meet with a trained officer to discuss how they are processing the incident, Raimo said.

Its everybody sitting down and kind of baring their souls, how they are feeling, Raimo said. Everybody does differently with these things.

The scene at the farm has been cleared and all evidence gathered, Raimo said, adding that officials will likely have more updates Monday.
One of the presidential aspirants of the Peoples Democratic Party and former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, has said the consensu...

One of the presidential aspirants of the Peoples Democratic Party and former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, has said the consensus arrangement being promulgated by some aspirants was not what Nigeria needs at the present time, adding that the country needs someone that would work to rescue the country to get out of its challenges as the next president.

He also said Nigerians should not allow the All Progressive Congress government to continue, stating the government has drawn the country backward.

Obi stated this while speaking at a meeting with chieftains of the PDP in Ondo State, at the party secretariat in Akure, the state capital, on Sunday, ahead the forthcoming primaries of the party.

He said, The children can no longer eat, we are at high level of misery, we cannot allow them to continue.

If nothing is done to Nigerias problem, it will consume all of us. It will consume our children too.

We must not talk about the consensus now, we must talk about who will work. Nigerians want consensus that will solve the Nigerian problem.

We want someone that will take Nigeria from consumption to production level. We must elect somebody that can do the work. We are not talking about who will become the next president of Nigeria but who will start working for this country called Nigeria.

In his remarks, a leader of the PDP in Ondo and former governor of the state , Olusegun Mimiko, said the PDP was lucky to have competent and credible persons as aspirants to contest for the post of president.
Bukola Saraki, former president of the senate, says there will be no more banditry and kidnapping in the country if he is elected presiden...

Bukola Saraki, former president of the senate, says there will be no more banditry and kidnapping in the country if he is elected president.

Speaking on Sunday at a meeting with delegates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Minna, Niger state, Saraki said the country needs a president that is bold.

The presidential hopeful also said if elected, he would appoint more youths and women in his cabinet.

Nigeria needs a president that is bold, energetic and dynamic; a president that can bring people together. I am the kind of president Nigeria needs. After I become president, there will be no more banditry and kidnapping in this country. I assure you that I will do more as president, he said.

I will include more women in my cabinet and make sure that my cabinet has youths as ministers of state.

[The year] 2023 is the time of the north-central. We will make history to have a democratically-elected president from the zone. We can fix, rescue and rebuild the country.

The former senate president also said he is in support of the exercise that produced him and Bala Mohammed, Bauchi governor, as northern consensus candidates.

We voluntarily went to our elder statesmen to seek their participation. They did not seek or ask that they should be involved in it, and neither were we forced into doing it, he said.

We decided on our own to go seek their involvement for a northern consensus candidate. For the decision, we appreciate our elder statesmen for their role in the process and their patriotism and desire for the unity of the country.

To abide by the decision is an individual choice. Everyone has to make his own decision. With all humility, I have accepted the recommendations and recognised them and have decided to forge ahead.

On his part, Babangida Aliyu, former governor of Niger, said Saraki is someone that can be depended on.

We need to articulate our positions and make our demands known. Saraki is a dependable person that we can rely on, Aliyu said.
The installation of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, as the Aare Baasofin of Yorubaland (the Supreme Lawm...

The installation of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, as the Aare Baasofin of Yorubaland (the Supreme Lawmaker of Yorubaland) has been suspended.

This was announced in a statement by the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the Speaker, Lanre Lasisi, on Sunday.

Lasisi said the event, which was planned to take place on Friday, May 27, 2022, was postponed over the death of the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III.

Alaafin died 35 days to Gbajabiamilas chieftaincy conferment ceremony, which was part of activities to mark the lawmakers 60th birthday.

Gbajabiamila was conferred with the traditional title of Aare Baasofin of Yorubaland (the Supreme Lawmaker of Yorubaland) by the late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, in September 2021.

An invitation card of the event that surfaced online shows that the installation is slated to take place on Friday, May 27, 2022, with the All Progressives Congress presidential aspirant, Bola Tinubu, named as the Chairman of the occasion.

Also, the Ooni of Ife, Adeyeye Ogunwusi, was slated to be the Royal Father of the Day while Chief Commander, Ebenezer Obey and K1 De Ultimate have been named as the musicians to entertain guests at the event.

Lasisi in the statement explained that the monarch died before the distribution of invitation cards for the event.

The statement read, You will recall that his Royal Highness, the late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III communicated the conferment of the title of Aare Baasofin of Yoruba Land to Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila through an appointment letter dated September 7, 2021, and presented to the Speaker on Thursday, September 30, 2021, at the National Assembly, Abuja, by members of the Oyomesi Council led by the Bashorun of Oyo Kingdom, High Chief Olayinka Ayoola, who is the traditional Prime Minister of Oyo Kingdom and Bishop Ayo Ladigbolu.

Upon which the Speaker, in turn, accepted the appointment with gratitude to God. However, due to the tight work schedule of the Speaker, the Chieftaincy ceremony could not hold throughout 2021, until this year when the date of May 27, 2022, was agreed with the palace but as God in his majesty will have it the revered monarch passed on Friday night before the distribution of Invitation cards for the event (May Allah grant him Aljanah Firdaus).

Naturally, the event can no longer hold as the Speaker, the entire Yoruba race, Nigerians home and abroad mourn the demise of the widely respected Monarch.
Uti Nwachukwu, former winner of Big Brother Africa, has opened up on how he dealt with the r@pe allegation against him by a Twitter user i...

Uti Nwachukwu, former winner of Big Brother Africa, has opened up on how he dealt with the r@pe allegation against him by a Twitter user identified as Kambili Korie.

In 2020, Korie had in a thread accused the reality TV star  whom she claimed to have met in 2017  of abusing her s3e..xually.

But in a recent chat with Chude Jideonwo, the media personality, Nwachukwu said seeking the opinions of lawyers and involving the police helped him to address the case.

The model said he initially wanted to ignore the allegations but was forced to take action after it became viral on blogs.

The luck I had was that it was a troll account. When I saw it, I just say Im not taking this because I have learned to ignore all those things but I was so disappointed when I saw blogs feasting on it, he said.

I hated the fact that I had to go those length to prove it was a lie. Thats one of the ills of the social media now. I would have ignored if it were to be other things but because rape is such a huge allegation, I went about it in a legal way.

It was one of the moments where I have to consult my very good friends. With my trusted circle, I was able to get different takes. I spoke with my lawyer and at every point, he would tell me what to say.

Nwachukwu also said the r@pe allegation taught him to always exercise caution when associating with people.

That experience is like God telling me: you need to be careful with who you associate with. That was just an internet robot, imagine if it was a real human being. We tried to find the person, but the person closed the account and ran away, he added.

The minute I filed a police report and they started working on itthe person was using VPN, so locating the face behind the account was a task. Im glad it turned out that way because it made it easy for me to proof my innocence.
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) says it arrested one Pascal Okolo for alleged possession of cocaine. In a statement i...





The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) says it arrested one Pascal Okolo for alleged possession of cocaine.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Femi Babafemi, NDLEA spokesman, said the cocaine weighed 4.1kilograms and was hidden inside teabags.

He said it was discovered during an inward clearance of a Qatar Airways flight that arrived in Nigeria from Sao Paulo via Doha on April 17.

Babafemi said another cargo weighing 950grams of Heroin concealed in the soles of lady footwears was intercepted at MMIA and the suspects arrested.





At least, four traffickers involved in the attempts to import and export illicit drugs through the country in the last week are now in the custody of the Agency, the statement reads.

One of them is 33-year-old Pascal Ekene Okolo, an indigene of Ihe in Ogwu Local Government Area of Enugu state, who was arrested during an inward clearance of Qatar Airways flight from Sao Paulo via Doha at the arrival hall of the NAIA on Sunday 17th April.

Okolo who claimed to be into wine business in Brazil was arrested with a travelling bag containing different medicinal teabags, which were used to conceal 4.1kilograms of cocaine.

Same day, a Canada based Nigerian, Anigo Christian Godspower was intercepted at the D-Arrival Hall of the MMIA, Ikeja, during an inward clearance of passengers on Qatar Airways from Sao Paolo via Doha to Lagos. When his luggage was searched, two blocks of Cocaine with a total weight of 2.10kg were discovered.

The 52-year-old Anigo who hails from Udi local council area of Enugu state claimed he operated an unregistered Bureau De Change business before delving into the illicit drug trade.

The bid by another cartel to export 950grams of Heroin concealed in the soles of ladys footwears through the MMIA cargo shed was equally foiled by anti-narcotic officers who have so far arrested two suspects linked to the crime. Those arrested between 16th and 17th April in connection with attempt to export the drug to Monrovia, Liberia include: Idokoja Solomon Chukwurah and Patrick John Tochukwu.

The NDLEA spokesman added that operatives arrested other suspects in separate raids across the country.

Meanwhile, NDLEA operatives in raids in Kano, Kaduna, Benue and Akwa Ibom state have seized no less than 88,734 doses of Tramadol, Pentazocine, Diazepam and Swinol, he said.

In Kano, Aliyu Usman, 28, was arrested at Railway area of the state capital with 47,000 capsules of Tramadol and 2,000 ampules of pentazocine injection on Tuesday 19th April while Saminu Usman, 28, was nabbed with 24,710 Tramadol tablets at Gadar Tamburawa area of Kano two days earlier.





In Benue, another dealer, Emeka Eze was arrested at an NDLEA checkpoint at Adikpo, Kwande Local Government area of the state with 10,000 Tramadol capsules and 900 tablets of swinol, while in Kaduna state, the duo of Raphael Daniel and David Musa were arrested at Mando park, Kaduna with 1kg of Cocaine on Thursday 21st April.

A week after Muhammad Sani Ibrahim sent 12.1kg of cannabis from Lagos to Kaduna, operatives were able to trace and arrest him last Thursday and brought him to Kaduna after his consignment was intercepted. Another dealer, Kamilu Ibrahim was also arrested same day at Kargi village in Kubau LGA, Kaduna State with 10.6kg Cannabis Sativa, while Bashir Ibrahim was arrested on Friday 22nd April after his four consignments containing Cannabis Sativa weighing 44.6kg were intercepted three days earlier along Abuja-Kaduna express road.

In Akwa Ibom state, operatives arrested two female drug dealers: Eno-Obong Edet, 36, and Hossana Esema Ukpong, 28, with various quantities of Rohypnol, Diazepam, Tramadol and Cannabis, while a suspected fake security agent was arrested on Saturday 23rd April in Abuja while moving 23.8kg cannabis from Lagos to Maiduguri, Borno state.
Routine procedures done to catch cancer and other serious illnesses early in their progression were not front of mind for patients navigating the pandemic. Tero Vesalainen/Dreamstime/TNS
RTHK: Ukraine wants talks with Russia near Mariupol plant

Ukraine has invited Russia to talks near the Azovstal plant in Mariupol, where Ukrainian fighters and civilians are holding out in a city largely under Moscow's control, Kyiv said on Sunday.

Talks near the sprawling steelworks would provide a dramatic and symbolic backdrop because the site is the last stronghold of Ukrainian forces in the strategic port.

"We invited Russians to hold a special round of talks on the spot right next to the walls of Azovstal," said Oleksiy Arestovych, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Earlier in the day, Kyiv called for a truce in battered Mariupol for Orthodox Easter, celebrated in both Russia and Ukraine.

"Russia is continuously attacking the Mariupol Azovstal. The place where our civilians and military are located is shelled with heavy bombs and artillery," Zelensky advisor Mikhaylo Podolyak, said on Twitter.

The nationalist Azov regiment, at the forefront of the battles with Russian forces, has confirmed that civilians are also trapped in the plant.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces not to assault the plant this week, but to keep it under siege instead. (AFP)

This story has been published on: 2022-04-24. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
East Chinas Anhui province has launched a weeklong campaign to raise public awareness of copyright protection and to step up efforts to build itself into a province strong on copyright.

The Publicity Department of the Anhui Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) invited Song Wei, professor at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), to lecture on copyright protection and cultural innovation on April 22, a few days ahead of the World Intellectual Property Day, which falls on April 26 every year. Guo Qiang, head of the department, attended the lecture.

During the weeklong campaign, a series of online and offline events will be held in areas such as news coverage, culture fostering and awareness increasing to make the idea of copyright more embraced by people.

The province has made remarkable progress in building a copyright-protecting system and advancing copyright-related work like copyright registration, protection and administration in recent years.

Up to 333,000 copyrighted works have been registered in Anhui and 1,533 items of copyright have been exported over the past three years, official data showed.

The province is home to 15 copyright demonstration sites at the national level. In addition, Anhui Cultural Equity Exchange has been selected for the national pilot program featuring blockchain + copyright.




Only 5% to 6% of the 46 million tons of plastic waste generated annually in the U.S. gets recycled, a big dip from the last estimate of nearly 9% just a few years ago, according to a new study by Beyond Plastics and the Last Beach Cleanup, two environmental groups.

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The Big 6 Brass Band is celebrating its fifth birthday this weekend by putting feet into motion.

The young but celebrated New Orleans sextet started Saturday playing a jazz funeral procession, then closed the third day of the 2022 French Quarter Festival in front of a sprawling, fast-dancing crowd at the Louisiana Fish Fry Stage. Afterward, the band was set to play four more gigs into the wee hours of the night.

The musicians wake up Sunday to face five straight gigs, winding up with a stage performance at Josies Playhouse in the 7th Ward, on the corner landmark formerly known as Tony's Historical Parakeet Bar & Lounge.

Were going to sleep good once the weekend is over, said trombonist Lamar Heard Sr., 35.

The Josies gig is a fitting capstone to a busy weekend. Its where the fledgling band got its start when the six original members - most of them new graduates from Texas Southern University - hurriedly coined the name Big 6 because the venue needed a name to print on a promotional flyer.

Since the band last played the French Quarter Fest, in 2019, it has made a few headlines.

Early in the pandemic, in 2020, the band was cited for playing a funeral procession despite rules against public gatherings, although the gig was not an act of defiance.

We didnt know how serious the situation was, Heard said, recalling a time when less was known about the novel coronavirus and music clubs were shutting down, threatening the livelihood of musicians. We were just trying to make a little change to support our families.

But as the small parade rolled, neighbors called 311, prompting the New Orleans Police Department to show up, halt the procession and cite the band. City Hall ended up fining the band the amount it would have earned for the gig, Heard said.

About a year later, Heards car was stolen while parked at a pump at a gasoline station on Elysian Fields, with two instruments inside: his trombone and the sousaphone belonging to Clifton Spug Smith. The car was found wrecked, but without the instruments. As the theft went viral on social media, New Orleans Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson heard about the loss and replaced the instruments.

The Big 6 got its first break five years ago, when the Family Ties Social Aid and Pleasure Club gave the band a Sunday parade gig. It was the ultimate litmus test for a group of young brass musicians: Could they keep thousands of second-liners dancing for four hours? We had to make our own statement, Heard said.

Since then, the band has played all but a handful of New Orleans familiar well-known social aid and pleasure club parades. These days, the Big 6 is a prominent part of New Orleans overall music landscape, said Derrick Tabb, Rebirth Brass Band snare drummer who hires the Big 6 regularly to play at his nightclub, the Treme Hideway.

Theyre very talented, one of the most talented group of cats from this era, Tabb said.

Big 6 members penned 13 original numbers for the bands self-titled CD, released in 2019, and are busy recording another CD of originals. The 2019 debut yielded several numbers to which fans sang along Saturday, including the hit Legs and Thighs with the rhyme Your legs and thighs  got me hypnotized. Like the Rebirth hit Do Whatcha Wanna and the Soul Rebels Let Your Mind Be Free, the Big 6 song Haters, has also become a contemporary brass band standard, with lyrics about staying focused amid struggle and criticism: I walk past my haters. I got tunnel vision. I walk past my haters. Im trying to get ahead, not behind.

For every performance, the band members mix originals with cover tunes, which they record and release on uploaded digital mixtapes. They are also known as a band that specializes in popup parades, posted on social media 24 hours in advance.

Their style, the mix of covers and originals, has evolved to the point where other young bands attempt to mimic it, said longtime jazz drummer Jerry Anderson, 57, whose family has played jazz for five generations. Its a groove, a different energy, he said.

It is a different form of jazz from Andersons younger days. But he feels the traditional jazz within it.

Me, this is what I breathe, he said. It gives New Orleans its oxygen.

And on Saturday, with festival season moving forward and the Big 6s calendar filling up, the band arrived at the French Quarter Fest ready to celebrate. Smith put the sousaphone over his shoulders and walked onto stage. The set was intended to get the crowd moving.

We want people to get loose, be free, he said.
A Coast Guard vessel plied the murky waters of the Mississippi River Sunday searching for three Algiers children who fell into the water the evening before and were apparently swept away in the current.

UPDATE: Coast Guard suspends search for three children swept into Mississippi River

Family members said one of the three, 14-year-old Brandy Wilson, slipped on a piling at the waters edge near Lamarque Street at about 5 p.m. Saturday and entered the water. Her 8-year-old sister, Ally Berry Wilson, and Wilsons 15-year-old boyfriend went over to help her but they fell in as well.

The boys family is not releasing his name while the search is still underway.

Gathered on the levee near the spot where the children went in, relatives of Brandy and Ally answered the questions of investigators and hoped for a miracle.

"My babies are in there," the girls father, Allen Berry, said, gesturing out toward the river as tears ran down his cheeks.

The Coast Guard was aided in its search by New Orleans police and fire department personnel. A St. Charles Parish Dive Team Water Rescue van was seen parked atop the levee under the Crescent City Connection as dusk began to fall Sunday.

The ferry had already halted service Saturday shortly after the ordeal began.

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Berry said Saturday was the first time his girls were allowed to venture away from home on their own. They had been allowed to go out with the older, now missing boy and other children because their mother, who suffers from a heart condition, had to go to the hospital, said Berrys sister, Nedra Berry.

"I'm at a loss for words," she said. "That's the most painful thing I ever heard was a man cry out for his kids.

A friend speaking on behalf of the missing boy's family said earlier Sunday that the boy's 6-year-old brother had been with them and went to get help after the three children entered the water. The boy returned with their mother, who had some swimming training in the military and entered the water but had to turn back due to rocks and debris in the river.

Jameka Watts, Ally and Brandy's older sister, said Ally was a student at Harriet Tubman Elementary School and Brandy was a freshman at L.B. Landry High School. Brandy's boyfriend was a sophomore there.

Family members said Ally loves to dance and post TikTok videos. Brandy sings in the choir at L.B. Landry, family said.

The Coast Guard does not take part in recovery missions, so as long as the agency is searching the waters, it is looking to find the children alive.

Right now, our focus is searching for these kids, Coast Guard spokesperson Jonathan Lally said. When we go out to search, it's always our hope that we can reunite people with their friends and family.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the high school the missing boy attended.

Reporter Katy Reckdahl contributed to this report.
Fire erupted Saturday at the Valero Energy Corp. oil refinery in Meraux, sending two workers to a hospital and closing nearby St. Bernard Highway, St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis said.

The condition of the two injured workers was not given. They were taken to University Medical Center in New Orleans.

St. Bernard Parish firefighters and Valero's own firefighters were on the scene, WDSU television reported.

Some residents said they heard an explosion at the plant then saw black smoke there, WWL television reported. A photo and video from residents showed what appeared to be a mix of black and white smoke.
The search continues for three children last seen entering the Mississippi River in New Orleans on Saturday evening, the Coast Guard says.

Update: Coast Guard suspends search for missing children

A 15-year-old boy, a 14-year-old girl and an 8-year-old girl were seen entering the water near the Crescent City Connection Bridge just before sunset.

Angela Chalk, a friend speaking on behalf of the family, which does not want to release any names to the media while the search is ongoing, said the three children and the boy's 6-year-old brother were at the river near Lamarque Street when the 8-year-old girl entered the water and was carried away by the current.

The older boy, a sophomore at L.B. Landry High School, and the older girl jumped in to try and save her and the younger boy ran for help, returning with the two boys' mother. The mother, who was trained in water rescue during her military service, entered the water briefly but had to come back onshore because of rocks and debris, Chalk said.

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The RTA suspended the Algiers-Canal Street Ferry overnight as authorities searched the water.

The New Orleans Police and Fire Departments are helping the Coast Guard in the search.

Editor's note: This story was corrected to reflect the correct high school the missing boy attended.
New Orleans firefighters battled a three-alarm blaze Saturday that started with car parked inside a Carrollton Avenue storage facility and quickly spread into other units in the building.

No injuries were reported.

The New Orleans Fire Department said firefighters responded to an alarm at 8:11 p.m. and arrived to find a vehicle burning inside the Public Storage facility at 5440 South Carrollton Avenue. The fire had spread into both adjacent units and the one above it, prompting a second alarm at 8:32 p.m.

Firefighters forced their way into those units with axes and circular saws as the fire continued to spread through the walls and ceilings. The NOFD said the furniture, vehicles and other household items "made for both heavy and unpredictable fire loads in these densely packed units."

A third alarm was issued at 9:50 p.m. and South Carrollton was closed to southbound traffic at the 3300 block, and firefighters were able to get the blaze under control by 10:46 p.m.

Afterward, the department scoured the units with thermal imaging cameras to make sure any smoldering fires were extinguished.

Ultimately, 19 vehicles supported by 55 NOFD personnel were called out for the fire.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, the NOFD said.
A man was hospitalized after being shot in the backside at Pritchard Place and Dante Street (map) in Hollygrove at 6:46 p.m. Saturday, the New Orleans Police Department said.

The shooting was one of several violent crimes reported by the NOPD since Saturday morning.

On Sunday morning, police reported a man was shot on Touro Street and died after being taken to the hospital.

Here's what else we know about the other overnight crimes via preliminary information from the NOPD:

Man kidnapped near Central City

A man was kidnapped at Poydras Street and South Claiborne Avenue (map) near Central City Saturday at 7:13 a.m.

A man got into the victim's car with a gun, demanded he drive to multiple places, made him get out of his car and then drove away.

Man burglarized in home in Algiers

A woman's ex-boyfriend broke into her home armed with the knife in the 1200 block of Shirley Drive (map) in Algiers Saturday at 3:36 p.m., police said.

The man threatened the woman, took a key and ran away from the house.

Woman robbed in Tulane-Gravier

A woman was robbed at gunpoint at the South Claiborne Avenue overpass and Gravier Street (map) in Tulane-Gravier Saturday at 10:25 p.m.

Someone went up to her, pointed a gun at her and ran away with her purse.

Woman robbed in Holy Cross

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Two armed women attacked another woman at 3:02 a.m. Sunday in the 1200 block of Tupelo Street (map) in Holy Cross, beating her and taking her cash and credit cards.

The victim ran to the 5th district station for help. Police went with her back to the house where they arrested one of the women, Brione Cousan, 25.

Woman's home burglarized in New Orleans East

A man burglarized a home in the 14700 block of Chef Menteur Highway (map) near Venetian Isles at 3:02 a.m. Sunday.

The man, armed with a gun, used a key to get inside of the house, police said. He hit a woman on the back of the head with the gun before the victim's boyfriend intervened and made the man drop the gun. The woman picked the gun up and ran out of the apartment. The man who broke in ran away as well.

Man robbed in the CBD

A man was robbed in the 200 block of Camp Street (map) in the Central Business District at 3:42 a.m. Sunday.

The man tried to buy drugs from another man, but when he pulled out his wallet, the man grabbed it and ran away.

Woman robbed in the French Quarter

A woman was robbed in the 300 block of Bourbon Street (map) in the French Quarter Sunday at 4:09 a.m.

A man grabbed the woman's bag as she tried pushing him away. The man punched the woman in the face, took her bag and fled.

No other details on these crimes were immediately available.

Anyone with information regarding these crimes is asked to call Crimestoppers at (504) 822- 1111. Tipsters may be eligible for a cash reward.
Twitter is prohibiting advertisers from running ads that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change, the company announced on April 22.

The clampdown on such ads aligns with the companys policy on inappropriate content, which bans ads using misleading content, two Twitter officials said in a blog post.

We believe that climate denialism shouldnt be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldnt detract from important conversations about the climate crisis, Sean Boyle, Twitters director of sustainability, and Casey Junod, the companys global sustainability manager, said.

The new approach was said to be informed by authoritative sources. The only source cited was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body.

The announcement was made on Earth Day, a holiday aimed at promoting awareness of the environment.

Climate change refers to the shift in temperatures and other changes in weather over time. According to the IPCC, global temperatures rose about 1.98 degrees Fahrenheit from 1901 to 2020.

Scientists and others who have studied the climate diverge over how much of an impact humans have had on the changing climate.

Twitters new policy drew support from some, and criticism from others.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, for instance, called the move good news.

Ryan Maue, a meteorologist, though, in a nod to how many predictions of climate change have been wrong, wondered whether doomerism or apocalyptic info would also be banned.

Google and Pinterest previously imposed bans on certain content, including posts that refer to climate change as a hoax or a scam.

Twitters new policy comes as it tries to fend off a takeover bid from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has said his goal in buying the company and taking it private is to fulfill its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe.

Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it, he said at the time.

Musk has not commented yet on the climate change policy.

Twitter, launched in 2006, originally performed only light moderation of posts, but has increasingly censored content and ads concerning a variety of topics, including President Joe Bidens son Hunter Biden, election irregularities, and biology.

From The Epoch Times
Over the last two years, Porter Township School Corp. has provided summer meals and free lunches to students. But this year, it will not be able to.

Federal waivers that allowed school districts around the country the ability to offer free lunch to all students and to provide grab-and-go meals are set to expire June 30.

Tonia Batesole, director of food service for Porter Township School Corp., is worried. She said that in the last two years, they have served 400 students a week. The total enrollment in the district is 1,494 as of the 2021-22 academic year, meaning they served over a quarter of students weekly.

However, only approximately 24% of students qualify for free or reduced meals, meaning those students will no longer be able to make use of the program.

Theres so many people who currently arent employed, who were looking forward to (summer meals), Batesole said. Im still getting applications for free and reduced, needing help with book assistance and stuff like that, despite less than 20 days left in the semester.

Lake Central School Corp. will operate how it did prior to COVID-19 once the academic year ends. Approximately 26% of students at Lake Central qualify for free or reduced meal status. During the 2021-22 school year, all LCSC students were able to receive breakfast and lunch for free, regardless of income.

Crown Point Community School Corp. sponsored free summer meal sites in 2021, despite only 20% of students qualifying for free or reduced meal status. According to its website, the district also offered free lunch for the 2021-22 school year.

Batesole said an additional issue in Porter Township is that families did not turn in forms to let the school know that they would qualify for free or reduced meal status due to the availability of free meals for everybody. She said that numbers could be lower and that she would like it to be a required form for all families.

In school districts where a majority of students are qualified for free and reduced meal status, they will continue to offer summer meals, but it will look different. One major change is students must eat at the feeding site rather than take meals home.

For the School City of Hammond, summer meals will continue. Approximately 73% of students are eligible, and Christine Clarahan, director of food and nutrition services, said 50% of students needed to be eligible for summer meals to be offered prior to the pandemic. But she said she thinks the district will miss so many kids.

There are still plenty of people who are not comfortable eating in group settings, Clarahan said. Why do we have to physically watch a child eat the food?

Hammond is planning to try to make summer meals entertaining by having games and events going on while meals are offered. She hopes that will attract students who are in need.

It breaks my heart to know that kids who need our meals probably will not get them, Clarahan said.

In addition, Clarahan said she sees students come from towns farther away, such as Dyer or St. John, due to the lack of summer meal programs offered. She does not understand why children should be denied free meals, even if their family can afford them.

Despite income levels, she said, it is never clear what a students home situation is, and they could be struggling despite their parents' supposed wealth.

Clarahan and Batesole are among many food service directors promoting the Support Kids Not Red Tape Act, which would allow schools flexibility to maintain child nutrition programs for another year.

The bill was introduced by U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and would give the U.S. Department of Agriculture the authority to issue nationwide child nutrition waivers, which would allow schools to feed children despite pandemic challenges such as supply chain issues and school closures.

To find summer meals, text Summer Meals to 914-342-7744 or call 1-866-348-6479 to find a site. Summer meal site information is also available on the Indiana Department of Educations website, but 2022 sites are not yet released.

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HOBART  The Northwest Regional SWAT team and officers responded to a Hobart neighborhood following a domestic disturbance involving an armed man Saturday afternoon.

At 4:09 p.m. officers responded to a call from a woman who said her estranged husband was in her home with a handgun in the 0 block of North Wilson Street, said Hobart Police Department Capt. James Gonzales.

Hobart police were able to assist the woman and several small children out of the residence safely; however the man barricaded himself inside.

Shortly after, Northwest Regional SWAT was requested by Hobart police to assist officers at the residence, said Northwest Regional SWAT Team Commander Matt Djukic, who is a detective for Schererville.

Squad cars from several agencies gathered nearby in the 1600 block of West Old Ridge Road in Hobart.

Upon arrival, the SWAT Crisis Negotiation Team made contact with an armed male in the house, who had barricaded himself inside.

After about two hours of negotiating with the man, he surrendered peacefully to police at 6:32 p.m. Northwest Regional SWAT secured the residence and then turned the scene over to the Hobart Police Department.

The man, a 34-year-old Hobart resident, was taken into custody and charges will be presented to the Lake County prosecutor's office.

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GARY  A toddler was flown to a Chicago hospital after a crash Saturday night in the 3000 block of Broadway, police said.

Gary police were dispatched about 10 p.m. for a crash involving a 2001 GMC Yukon and a 2015 Nissan Altima, Lt. Dawn Westerfield said.

The driver of the Yukon, a 40-year-old woman from Hammond, was traveling south when she failed to yield to northbound traffic as she turned into a gas station on the east side of the street, police said.

As a result, a 59-year-old Gary man driving the Altima hit the Yukon.

Both drivers required medical attention, and the toddler was flown by helicopter from the scene to a Chicago hospital, police said.

The crash remained under investigation.

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Area Orthodox Christians with ethnic ties to Ukraine are sending out special prayers as the faithful celebrate Easter, or Pascha, Sunday.

One of those churches, the Descent of the Holy Spirit Orthodox Church in Schererville, is offering up a special petition for peace in Ukraine which will be read during services on Sunday, said parish priest, the Rev. Lev Holowaty.

"It's a terrible time," Holowaty said in regard to the war ravaging Ukraine.

Pascha for Eastern Orthodox Christians is held a week after other Christians, because Orthodox faithful follow the Julian calendar rather than the more modern Gregorian calendar, said the Rev. David Bissias, priest at St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Hammond.

Holowaty, whose parents were born in Ukraine and has parishioners with ties to the country, said special prayers have been said for those in Ukraine as well as refugees fleeing the country.

In the special petition for peace in Ukraine, the message is in part: "O God, you are our refuge and strength, and a very present help in trouble. Hear our heartfelt supplication on behalf of the people of the country of Ukraine. Protect those in danger with your holy angels and grant them courage."

Holowaty is also directing money to be sent to the International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) based in Baltimore, Maryland and to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, based in South Bound Brook, New Jersey.

"This is a cause that's on everyone's mind," said the Rev. Jacob Van Sickle.

Van Sickle is parish priest at the Protection of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church in Merrillville.

His parish is hosting a trivia night from 6-10 p.m. April 29 at the church center with all profits going to IOCC.

The event includes food and fun.

"For the last few months we've added a prayer about the war and I've also been serving a 30-minute supplication of praying every Tuesday," Van Sickle said.

The Protection of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church has ethnic ties with those in Ukraine, including a third generation deacon and a couple with family in Ukraine.

"We've been trying to get the word out," Van Sickle said.

The Rev. Raymond Sunland, priest at St. Michael Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Hammond, said his church has been offering up special prayers for those in Ukraine during Holy Week.

Sunland has even asked families with any ties to Ukraine to stop and provide names of those they want special prayers said.

"We say a prayer for those in the Ukraine," Sundland said.

Rebecca Loumiotis, manager of communications for the IOCC, said her organization is working with Orthodox parishes in Ukraine to distribute thousands of food parcels to displaced families during the Orthodox Christian Holy Week.

The parcels, dubbed "Easter baskets," contain a small Easter cake, eggs, sausage, cheese and a bottle of sunflower oil  staples that not only provide essential nourishment but also, perhaps, offer hope amid tremendous loss.

Through the parishes, some 2,800 parcels will reach families in need, including elderly persons, people with disabilities, and orphans, Loumiotis said.

The Easter distribution is just one part of broad programming through which IOCC is addressing the pressing needs of people who have fled their homes seeking safety. Across the region, initiatives in Poland and Romania are serving both Ukrainian refugees and the families and organizations that are hosting them.

Working with local partners, IOCC is providing emergency supplies such as food, water, bedding, and hygiene items, plus laptops to support remote education, Loumiotis said.

Supporters and friends of IOCC are asked to continue praying for everyone affected by this emergency and for the people on the ground serving them partners, volunteers, and IOCCs own staff. To donate to IOCCs Ukraine response fund, please visit iocc.org/ukraine22 or call 877-803-4622.

Those wanting to donate to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA can go to: www.uocofusa.org.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just recommended that seniors get a second COVID-19 booster shot. But there are plenty of people over the age of 65  one-third, according to the latest data  who have not yet gotten their first booster.

Perhaps that's because it took until the omicron variant emerged last fall for the CDC to get behind booster shots for all adults. Or maybe it's because public health officials have been peddling confusing and contradictory messaging on COVID-19 for months.

Consider the infighting between the Biden administration's top public health officials. President Biden promised all Americans last August that they'd be able to get booster shots starting Sept. 20. At the time, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky signed onto the approach.

But during an advisory panel meeting less than two weeks later, CDC leaders argued that only frontline health care workers and nursing home residents needed boosters. They cited a lack of evidence underpinning the case for boosters  even though data from Israel and the CDC itself showed waning efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines over time.

By mid-September, the advisory panel had changed course. It recommended boosters for older adults and those at risk of severe disease but refused to endorse boosters for frontline workers  a decision Walensky overturned. Her recommendation aligned the CDC with the Food and Drug Administration advisory panel, which had just endorsed boosters for Americans 65 and older, those at risk of severe disease, and frontline workers days earlier.

In late November, the CDC and FDA finally recommended boosters for all adults. The agencies' decisions came after states like California and Arkansas had already decided to flout federal guidelines and extend booster shots to all adults.

Public health officials wondering why the public has been skeptical of boosters might want to look in the mirror. Fewer than 40% of eligible but unboosted Americans said they wanted to get the shot as soon as possible, according to a February poll. One in four said they definitely wouldn't get a booster.

At the beginning of April, fewer than 70,000 Americans were getting boosted each day  the lowest number since regulators recommended the extra shots.

Consequently, the U.S. booster campaign has lagged behind other nations. Just half the U.S. population is boosted  a much smaller share than our peers in Western Europe.

That can help explain the many more COVID-19 deaths per capita in the United States amid the omicron wave. Between December and February, the share of Americans killed by COVID-19 was more than 60% higher than in other wealthy nations, according to the New York Times.

How many of those deaths could have been prevented, had federal public health officials acted more swiftly and communicated more effectively?

A December analysis from the University of Texas-Austin offers a clue. Researchers modeled various scenarios of omicron's spread, starting with a baseline of 57% of Americans boosted by the beginning of March. They found that if 80% of Americans eligible for boosters got the jab instead, there would be up to 1.3 million fewer COVID-19 cases, 168,000 fewer hospitalizations, and 39,000 fewer deaths between December and May.

The CDC's stated goal is to improve health. Throughout the pandemic, the agency's actions have communicated just the opposite.

Sally Pipes is president, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is "False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All". Follow her on Twitter @sallypipes. The opinions are the writer's.

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History isnt short of people to blame. You could say of the present world crisis that it was former president Barack Obamas fault for not getting tougher with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Syria. You could blame former president Donald Trump for giving Putin a sense of entitlement and for undermining NATO, seeing it as a financial play. You could blame former German chancellor Angela Merkel for encouraging Russian gas imports, shutting out the nuclear energy option.

You could, of course, blame President Biden for explicitly telling Putin, and the world, what the United States wouldnt do if he invaded Ukraine. And you could blame Biden and NATO for dribbling vital military aid to Ukraine over the first devastating months of the Russian invasion.

If you want to continue, you could blame the worlds military strategists for believing that Russia, after the fall of communism, had changed. You could, perhaps, blame NATO itself, for expanding its reach to the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.

Putin is unequivocally the one to blame. He is the one who wants to remake Russia in the image of the imperial tsars. It is a flawed scheme but a real one.

As the world grapples with the reality of Putin, the past informs but it doesnt instruct. If NATO were to engage Russia with conventional forces, it would triumph. That is one lesson of Ukraine. Russian military forces are woefully inefficient, even incompetent.

Would it were that simple.

The beast in the room, the feared monster, the threat that hangs over the whole world is nuclear war. It is the clear-and-present danger. It shapes our handling of Russia and will shape our response to China, if and when it invades Taiwan.

Nuclear war avoidance is again dominating the world in ways we had nearly forgotten. Will Russia  a caged, fierce bear  resort to nuclear, and how much nuclear to what effect against which targets?

The United States and the Soviet Union reached a modus vivendi: mutual assured destruction (MAD), which kept the peace even as nuclear armaments proliferated and stockpiles grew exponentially. Is that still the option? Is MAD  so long after the collapse of the Soviet Union  still the underlying realpolitik, the restraining factor between nuclear powers?

Does that mean that anyone with nuclear weapons can wage conventional warfare in the belief that they wont face NATO or any other serious restraining military action because they can unleash terrifying global destruction?

Or is there, as some believe, the prospect of limited nuclear engagement, using area tactical nuclear weapons? This has never been tested. There hasnt been a limited nuclear ground war. Could it be contained? Should it be contemplated outside the deeper reaches of the defense establishment?

But it is what keeps the leaders of Europe, the United States and Canada awake at night. If you favor limited nuclear war, just look to the effects of a nuclear disaster, Chernobyl, and start multiplying.

It is the unthinkable scenario that must be thought about. It is the reality that holds back NATO and makes the West a spectator to the carnage in Ukraine.

Russia isnt a rich country. It has a large, poorly trained and equipped military. But it bristles with nuclear weapons aimed at North American and European cities. Its ability to threaten us with nuclear horror changes the balance between nations: an indelible change to future foreign policy.

In the short term, when contemplating the return of MAD in international relations, the question is: How mad  as in insane  is Putin, and how ready is Biden?

The pieces on the world chess board have moved and they wont be moved back. The intelligentsia has yet to grasp the extent to which Ukraine has changed the world  and made it a more dangerous place. They need to catch up fast.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle on PBS. He wrote this for InsideSources.com. The opinions are the writer's.

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One day last spring, Jett Hawkins, 5, asked his mom to braid his hair for him. He loved the way it looked: I was so proud and happy, says Jett, who lives in Chicago. But when he got to school, his mother says, an administrator called her and told her that his hairstyle had broken a school policy that banned students from wearing braids, locs and twists.

Jett is not the only kid who has been singled out at school for wearing natural Black styles. Hair-based discrimination can be official, like when a school handbook states that students cant wear braids, or unofficial, like when a teacher tells a student that their Afro is too distracting. Either way, it sends the message that your culture and your identity is not accepted, says Danielle Apugo, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies Black women and girls experiences at school.
Imagine if wine existed and we just didnt know what we know on a sommelier level, he said. Customers will eventually be able to really understand what they want. Like, I want an edible and I want it to keep me awake, or I like to smoke because it hits me faster.

A basic level of comfort and confidence with weed is what helped Heidi Keyes, 36, found Puff, Pass and Paint in 2014 in Denver, after Colorado legalized recreational marijuana. The school now has locations in five cities across the country, including the studio in Brooklyn.

And though many lounges and other cannabis-friendly consumption spaces are waiting to get licenses before throwing their doors open publicly, Ms. Keyes said Puff, Pass and Paint has been comfortably operating in New York City for the last three years, when it started inviting medical patients to bring their own cannabis.

We do all B.Y.O.C., so were not providing any cannabis and were not acting as a dispensary in any way, she said. Every different location we go into, we have our lawyers look at it just to make sure, because theres different regulations per state, county, city sometimes neighborhood, sometimes street.

The week of 4/20, Ms. Keyes said, is one of the painting classs busiest times.

Its about community, she said. It used to be that so many people had to consume in private, and sometimes couldnt even tell their friends and family about it because they were worried about getting into trouble with work or people judging them.

Fernando Terrero, 29, had come to Brooklyn from Jersey City to go on a date with his boyfriend, Mr. Santos. A single red rose sat on the table next to their paintings.
Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who crusaded for conservative causes and outlasted six presidents in a seven-term Senate career that corresponded to the rise of a right-wing movement in America, died on Saturday in Salt Lake City. He was 88.

The cause was complications of a stroke suffered on April 15, Mr. Hatchs son Brent said.

Born into poverty in the Great Depression, one of nine children of a Pittsburgh metal worker, Mr. Hatch, who briefly aspired to the presidency and to a seat on the Supreme Court, had a grim Dickensian childhood. He went to school in bib overalls, lost siblings in infancy and in World War II, and grew up in a crowded, ramshackle house without indoor plumbing.

In law school, he, his wife and children lived in a chicken coop that he and his father rebuilt behind his parents home.

We turned it into a tiny two-room bungalow, with a toilet and small stove, that we nicknamed the cottage, a description that would have made even the most aggressive real estate agent cringe, he said in a memoir, Square Peg: Confessions of a Citizen Senator (2002).
Macron wins re-election in France

President Emmanuel Macron of France has won a second term, defeating the far-right leader Marine Le Pen in a close competition and becoming the first French president to be re-elected in 20 years.

Early projections showed Macron, a centrist, gaining 58.5 percent of the vote to Le Pens 41.5 percent. His victory was much narrower than in 2017, when the margin was 66.1 percent to 33.9 percent for Le Pen, but wider than appeared likely two weeks ago.

The contest hinged on economic issues, and Macron, distracted by his fruitless Russia diplomacy, seldom showed real concern for the financial difficulties many French have faced during the pandemic and the war.

But his promise of stability and his effective stewardship over the Covid-19 crisis appear to have prevailed over the strong temptation of an extremist lurch toward nationalism.
Jim Hartz, the low-key, folksy newsman who hosted the Today show with Barbara Walters in the mid-1970s, less than halfway through his three-decade television career, died on April 17 in Fairfax County, Va. He was 82.

The cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his wife, Alexandra Dickson Hartz, said, adding that he had chosen to be removed from the ventilator that was keeping him alive.

Mr. Hartz may have looked boyish when he started the Today show job, at 34, succeeding Frank McGee, who had died a few months before at 52, but he was no beginner. He had already spent a decade in New York at WNBC, covering local stories, from John V. Lindsays mayoralty through Robert F. Kennedys funeral and well into the Watergate scandal.

The news stories he covered while on Today included President Richard M. Nixons resignation, the end of the Vietnam War and the American Bicentennial. But his Today career wound up lasting only two years.
In fact, the industrys anti-competitive practices actually inhibit innovation. Neither new patents nor new drugs necessarily equal real innovation. Worse, in too many cases manufacturers are gaming Americas patent system to prevent competition and block affordable generic and biosimilar drugs from coming to market.

We can  and should  bring down monopoly prices by empowering Medicare to negotiate, but we must also reform our patent system to address the drivers that lead to unjustified monopolies in the first place.

David Mitchell

Bethesda, Md.

The writer is the founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs Now.

To the Editor:

Americas biopharmaceutical research companies support solutions that will lower health care costs, while some of the policies outlined in the editorial would simply harm patients.

Biopharmaceutical innovation is difficult and risky, with only 12 percent of medicines in the pipeline entering clinical trials ever achieving F.D.A. approval. Patents play an essential role in encouraging innovation by helping fuel the investments that result in new treatments and cures.

Patents do not establish a monopoly on treating a condition. Instead, they propel progress. A new patent on a product provides protection only for the invention it protects  it does not provide additional exclusivity for underlying products. Contrary to the editorial boards assertion, the Patent and Trademark Office is not issuing sham patents.

Drugmakers should continue researching ways their medicines can help tackle different diseases, treat new patient populations, like children, and make lifesaving treatments, like chemotherapy, more tolerable for patients. Progress is a good thing, and it should be encouraged, not punished.

The Restoring the America Invents Act would benefit big patent infringers, like many big technology companies, and make the legal landscape more uncertain for researchers focused on bringing forward new medical advances for patients.
The identity of the National Guard member who went missing on Friday near the Rio Grande has been released by the Texas Military Department. The guardsman, Specialist Bishop E. Evans, 22, is feared to have drowned, though the authorities are still searching for him.

Specialist Evans is believed to have gone missing following his selfless efforts to rescue two migrants who appeared to be drowning while crossing the river from Mexico into the U.S., the department said in a statement on Sunday.

Specialist Evans is a field artilleryman from Arlington, Texas, who was part of a regiment in New Braunfels, the department said. His career includes service in Kuwait and in Iraq, where he supported Special Operations Forces for a time. He joined the National Guard three years ago, according to the statement.

Officials said that Specialist Evans had been near the Rio Grande as part of a mission, Operation Lone Star, that was ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott with the aim of reducing illegal border crossings. The Texas Military Department said on Saturday that the two migrants Specialist Evans was trying to rescue were drug traffickers and had survived. They were being held in custody by the U.S. Border Patrol, the department said.
GIG HARBOR, Wash.  Christopher Rufo appears on Fox News so often that he converted a room in his Pacific Northwest house to a television studio, complete with professional lighting, an uplink to Fox in New York and an On Air light in the hall so his wife and two children dont barge in during broadcasts.

Ill do Tucker and then pop out and have dinner, Mr. Rufo said recently at his home in Gig Harbor, Wash., thousands of miles from the nations media and political capitals.

Mr. Rufo is the conservative activist who probably more than any other person made critical race theory a rallying cry on the right  and who has become, to some on the left, an agitator of intolerance. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a right-leaning think tank, he has emerged at the front of another explosive cultural clash, one that he sees as even more politically potent and that the left views as just as dangerous: the battle over L.G.B.T.Q. restrictions in schools.

Mr. Rufo has taken aim at opponents of a new Florida law that prohibits teachers in some grades from discussing L.G.B.T.Q. issues and that critics call Dont Say Gay. He declared moral war against the statutes most prominent adversary, the Walt Disney Company. And he has used the same playbook that proved effective in his crusade on racial issues: a leak of insider documents.
She later added in an interview that she was not completely certain of his intentions, but that people are being driven to extreme amounts of climate grief and despair and that what I do not want to happen is that young people start thinking about self-immolation.

Mr. Bruce had set himself on fire at the plaza in front of the Supreme Court at about 6:30 p.m. on Friday, police and court officials said. A video posted to Twitter by a Fox News reporter showed a National Park Service helicopter landing in the plaza to airlift Mr. Bruce to a nearby hospital.

The court had heard arguments in late February on an important environmental case that could restrict or even eliminate the Environmental Protection Agencys authority to control pollution. The courts conservative majority had voiced skepticism of the agencys authority to regulate carbon emissions, suggesting that a decision by the justices could deal a sharp blow to the Biden administrations efforts to address climate change.

Mr. Bruce, who identified as Buddhist, set himself on fire in an apparent imitation of Vietnamese monks who burned themselves to death in protest during the Vietnam War. A Facebook account that Dr. Kritee identified as Mr. Bruces had commemorated the death of Thich Nhat Hanh, an influential Zen Buddhist master and antiwar activist who died in January.

Thich Nhat Hanh, in a letter he wrote in 1965 to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had idolized those monks. Dr. Kritee cited that letter in another tweet on Mr. Bruces death on Sunday morning.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.  The 11 a.m. service at Church for All Nations, a large nondenominational evangelical church in Colorados second-largest city, began as such services usually do. The congregation of young families and older couples swayed and sang along to live music. Mark Cowart, the churchs senior pastor, delivered an update on a church mission project.

Then Mr. Cowart turned the pulpit over to a guest speaker, William J. Federer.

An evangelical commentator and one-time Republican congressional candidate, Mr. Federer led the congregation through an hourlong PowerPoint presentation based on his 2020 book, Socialism  The Real History from Plato to the Present: How the Deep State Capitalizes on Crises to Consolidate Control. Many congregants scribbled in the notebooks they had brought from home.

I believe God is pushing the world to a decision-making moment, Mr. Federer said, building toward his conclusion. We used to have national politicians that held back the floodgates of hell. The umbrellas been ripped after Jan. 6, and now its raining down upon every one of us. We had politicians that were supposed to certify that  and instead they just accepted it. And, lo and behold, an anti-Christian spirits been released across the country and the world.

Evangelical churches have long been powerful vehicles for grass-roots activism and influence on the American right, mobilized around issues like abortion and gay marriage. Now, some of those churches have embraced a new cause: promoting Donald J. Trumps false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
McKenna Thompson, 30, was not too worried when she learned last week that she was among thousands of people across Arizona, Nebraska and New Mexico who would be forced to leave as wildfires approached.

She had been driving back home to Flagstaff, Ariz., when she heard about the evacuation order. As smoke swirled around her car and the skies darkened, she soon felt as if she were looking at hell, she said on Sunday. She picked up her 2-year-old son and her mother and drove to a cafe to wait out the fire.

A few hours later, she learned that her home had burned down.

Ms. Thompson was caught up in the Tunnel Fire, which officials estimate has damaged or destroyed 30 homes. Displaced families have been left with rubble, ashes and a harrowing reminder of what theyve lost.

Everything is gone, Ms. Thompson said.

The Tunnel Fire was one of many wildfires this past week that have collectively scorched more than 150,000 acres and forced the evacuations of at least 4,000 homes, officials said. The fires, which have been blamed for at least one death, are part of an early and active season across the country, as wildfires have also plagued California, Colorado and Texas.
Europes once surging movement of nationalist populists suffered a significant setback in Slovenia on Sunday, in the formerly communist east, on the same day French voters rejected the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in their presidential election.

In parliamentary elections in Slovenia, a noteworthy test for the appeal of right-wing populism, preliminary results indicated that the prime minister, Janez Jansa, an ardent admirer of former President Donald J. Trump, lost to centrist rivals. Liberal democracy has come under particularly intense pressure in the region over the past decade.

With 95 percent of the vote counted in an election that the opposition called a referendum on democracy, results indicated that Mr. Jansas Slovenian Democratic Party, competing against 19 rival parties, had won around 24 percent of the vote. That is far behind the 34 percent of its main rival, the centrist Freedom Movement, meaning that Mr. Jansa is highly unlikely to keep his post as prime minister.

The results, showing that no single party won a clear majority, presage a period of political haggling as rival groups try to stitch together a stable coalition in parliament. That should be within reach of the Freedom Movement, led by a political newcomer, Robert Golob, a former energy company executive, with help from the Social Democrats and other smaller parties.
Once proxy battlegrounds for superpowers, swaths of Africa, Asia and Latin America are staking their independence. The return of a bloc of nonaligned nations harks back to a period in which leaders of the post-colonial movement resisted having their destinies shaped by imperialism. It also points to the confidence of smaller countries, no longer dependent on a single ideological or economic patron, to go their own way.

Without a doubt, the countries of Southeast Asia dont want to be pulled into a new Cold War or be forced to take sides in any great power competition, said Zachary Abuza, a security specialist at the National War College in Washington. As they say in Southeast Asia, when the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.

Having to align themselves with one power or another, Mr. Abuza added, left many nations around the world desperately poor and underdeveloped at the end of the Cold War.

As a result, even the United States, the Cold Wars victor, cannot count on the support of some of its traditional partners in vocally condemning Russia for its attack on a sovereign, democratic nation. The NATO-led intervention in Libya in 2011 and the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 have only heightened mistrust of the West. Both military actions left countries in those regions struggling with the political fallout for years after.
TOKYO  At least 10 people who had been on a sightseeing boat that sank off the Japanese island of Hokkaido on Saturday have died, Japans coast guard said on Sunday. Sixteen other people were still missing.

The vessel had 24 passengers aboard when its two crew members sent a distress call on Saturday afternoon, saying the boat was taking on water. Another call came less than an hour after that, reporting that the vessel was now tilting by 30 degrees.

That was the last message from the Kazu 1, as the boat was called. On Sunday afternoon, after more than 24 hours of searching for survivors, the coast guard said 10 of the 26 missing people had been recovered, all of whom were later declared dead.

It was not immediately clear what had caused the disaster. But NHK, the Japanese public broadcaster, said there had been warnings of high winds and waves of up to 10 feet in the area of Kashuni Falls, a well-known sightseeing spot on Hokkaidos Shiretoko Peninsula, where the boat had been when the first distress call was sent. Reefs are just below the surface of the waters there.
PALLI, Kashmir  Prime Minister Narendra Modi dedicated a solar plant in the village of Palli in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir on Sunday, holding the project up as an example of his governments plans to convert a disputed, conflict-ridden region into an engine of green development.

Security was tight for what was Mr. Modis first public meeting in Jammu and Kashmir since his government stripped the region of its long-held semiautonomous status in 2019, splitting it into two federally controlled enclaves. Mr. Modi said then that the territorys special status had encouraged separatism and stood in the way of economic development.

The way your parents and your grandparents have suffered, Mr. Modi said Sunday, addressing the regions youth, you will never have to endure those hardships. I will make sure, and I have come to assure you that.

The message of development and integration with India has long found resonance here in Jammu, a Hindu-majority region, in contrast to mostly Muslim Kashmir, where people say they have yet to see any signs of development and resentment is growing.
Those goals would include leaving NATOs integrated military command, reinstating border controls and affirming the superiority of French law over European law, which would challenge one of the bases of the European Union and put France in the same boat with Hungary and Poland in questioning the primacy of European law.

Should Le Pen be elected, the European Union and NATO would instantly become weaker  some even speak of collapse  and it would represent the culmination of Russian support to Frances extreme right, Marc Pierini, a former E.U. diplomat, wrote for Carnegie Europe. It would also represent Putins biggest strategic victory against NATO and the E.U., along with Russias expanded military deployment in the Mediterranean area since 2015 and its delivery of S-400 missiles to Turkey in 2019.

Her victory would also be a counterreaction to one of Mr. Macrons most important policy goals: to increase European integration, in terms of finance and defense. And it would damage both.

Given the need for unanimity in the European Union, she would also undermine, if not end, Europes ability to create and sustain economic sanctions against Russia.

The prospect of a Le Pen victory, however unlikely, is real enough that the leaders of Germany, Portugal and Spain  Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Prime Minister Antonio Costa and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez  took the highly unusual and undiplomatic step in an opinion article in Le Monde of implicitly urging French voters to reject Ms. Le Pen.
NEUILLY-SUR-SEINE, France  Marine Le Pen has never set her sights on the increasingly affluent Paris region when it comes to rallying voters, preferring instead to focus on poorer areas with a high concentration of working-class voters. But there is one enclave where she may enjoy an unexpectedly high number of votes this Sunday: Neuilly-sur-Seine, an upscale city west of Paris, and one of the countrys wealthiest.

Two weeks ago, in Frances first-round presidential vote, far-right candidates won an unusual quarter of the vote there. Much of this breakthrough was because of support for Eric Zemmour, an upstart far-right candidate, who received only 7 percent of the vote nationally, but garnered nearly 19 percent of the ballots in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Mr. Zemmours calls for reborn glory for France  as well as his fame as a prolific conservative writer and his championing of pro-business policies  appealed to the citys bourgeois residents.

But now that Mr. Zemmour is out of the race, some locals may vote for a candidate who once seemed alien to the citys electoral sociology: Ms. Le Pen.

We need to do everything we can to save France, said Caroline Martin, 49, who was leaving a polling station near the Neo-Renaissance City Hall building. An avowed Zemmour supporter, she said she had cast her vote for Ms. Le Pen, though she regretted her lack of charisma and intellectual standing.
But there was a price to pay for all this. The old structure of French politics has collapsed, and it is less clear how the violent conflicts of society can be mediated.

Those conflicts have become more acute as anger has grown in the parts of France that have felt neglected, even forgotten, by the elites in major cities. By addressing these concerns, and promising a series of tax cuts to help people cope with rising prices for gas and electricity, Ms. Le Pen built an effective campaign.

Her message, for some voters, was that she would care for and protect them while their president seemed to have other concerns. But her nationalist message also resonated among people angered by undocumented immigrants entering the country and seeking scapegoats for the countrys problems.

The presidents problems have reflected both his personality and political choices. His highly personalized top-down style of government owed more to Bonaparte than to the democratic opening he had said he would bring to the French presidential system. His attempts to force march Europe toward a vision of strategic autonomy backed by its own integrated military has met resistance in the countries like Poland that are most attached to America as a European power.

Emerging from the moderate left of the political system, and supported by many Socialists five years ago, Mr. Macron veered to the right both in his initial economic policy and in a much-criticized decision to confront what he called Islamist separatism by shutting down several mosques and Islamic associations  often on flimsy legal grounds.

He judged that he had more to gain on the right than to fear on the fragmented left of the political spectrum in a country whose psyche has been deeply marked by several Islamist terrorist attacks since 2015. In a sense, his victory proved him correct, the master of a broad web of adjustable allegiances that left his opponents floundering.

Aida Alami , Daphne Angles , Aurelien Breeden , Adele Cordonnier and Constant Meheut contributed reporting.
A few weeks earlier, Ms. Glodan had called Ms. Iliashenko to tell her that she was starting to feel uneasy about the mounting violence. She said she had moved her family from their high-rise apartment, close to Odesas airport, to her mothers home in the Tairove district, which is further from the city center.

The two friends talked and agreed that if the apartment the family abandoned was hit, it would be time to leave Odesa. Instead, the mothers home was destroyed.

The two women met while studying journalism at the University of Odesa, and since then their lives ran in tandem. After college they started their first jobs at the same time and found husbands who became good friends. They bought neighboring apartments and were always rotating through each others front doors, planning parties, exchanging pets, looking after plants and later, children.

We were planning on raising our families together. She was always telling me that we were in our prime, with such amazing opportunities  she believed we had great lives, Ms. Iliashenko said, between sobs. She spoke in a phone interview from Warsaw, where she has been staying for the past few weeks.

She described her friend as strong-willed and industrious with a warm sense of humor. She loved her work in public relations, but had a talent for painting and an ear for poetry. She built everything that she had. I admired her very much, Ms. Iliashenko said.

In the weeks following the invasion, the two friends told each other they doubted the war would come to Odesa, and they believed the conflict would be over in three weeks, Ms. Iliashenko said. They tried to distract each other by cooking meals together and dreaming up vacations their families could take when the war ended.

Ms. Glodans husband, Uri, who survived the attack, was around the corner at a shop when the missile struck, Ms. Iliashenko said.
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine  Ukrainian forces are still in full control of the Azovstal steel plant in the war-battered port city of Mariupol and have repelled continuous assaults by Russian infantry even while weathering steadily intensifying air and artillery attacks, a commander of one of the Ukrainian units defending the plant said in an interview on Sunday.

Ukrainian forces are willing to leave the factory and evacuate the city if given guarantees of safe passage for themselves and hundreds of civilians, said Capt. Svyatoslav Palamar, the deputy commander of the Azov Battalion, whose fighters have been holed up at the plant since March 1.

We are prepared to leave the city because there is nothing left to defend, Captain Palamar said by phone from inside the plant. We consider that weve fulfilled our mission. But we will continue to defend it until there is an order to retreat from our military leadership. And if we are going to leave, we are going to leave with our weapons.

On Thursday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia issued an order to halt the assault of the Azovstal factory. He called for a blockade instead, but the fighting continued, drawing crucial resources from Russian forces, even as preparations were underway for a significant offensive in eastern Ukraine.
The United States top diplomat and top defense official arrived in Kyiv on Sunday, a Ukrainian official said, following other world leaders who have visited the embattled capital over two months of war to signal their support for Ukraine.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III met with President Volodymyr Zelensky, becoming the first senior U.S. officials known to have visited Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24. The visit was confirmed by Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to Mr. Zelensky, in an interview with a Russian lawyer and activist on YouTube.

Theyre right now in Kyiv, talking to the president, Mr. Arestovich said. Maybe something will be decided regarding how they can help.

The Biden administration has backed Ukraine with aid and weaponry, and has helped lead an international campaign of sanctions against Russia. But it had been under growing pressure to send a high-level official to Kyiv after recent visits there by several European officials, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, who walked the streets with Mr. Zelensky, and the prime ministers of Spain and Denmark.
A Ferbane man has just returned from Ukraine where he helped to rescue 53 dogs, bringing them across the border to safety in Poland.

Darren Bracken, who volunteers with the Laois based Husky Rescue Ireland regularly transports rescued dogs from Ireland to good homes in Sweden.

He had been watching what was happening in Ukraine and thought Husky Rescue should travel there to take care of the pets who had been abandoned in the war through no fault of their owners.

''I have 4 dogs of my own and I would feed them before I would feed myself,'' said Darren.

''Myself and Andy Cullen, the founder of Husky Rescue Ireland were talking about it and we agreed to go. We put up the appeal online and we were overwhelmed. We got 10 to 15 tons of supplies. We got food for dogs, cats, hamsters and rabbits plus people donated food for the people of Ukraine as well, along with toiletries and other things, added Darren.

We were overloaded with stuff and a little bit overweight, but we got through customs and we drove from Dublin to France. to Germany and Poland. We crossed the border three times to rescue the dogs.

Darren and Andy were only allowed to bring 10 dogs at a time which they found frustrating as the van can hold a number of large dogs, but they were the rules so it required them to make the hazardous journey three times.

We passed through an army barracks the same night as it was blown up. We didn't know until we came out, said Darren.

The dogs were being cared for in a small family run rescue centre in Ukraine. Many of the buses crossing the border with refugees dont allow dogs on board so people left their dogs with the rescue centre.

Darren and Andy off loaded their supplies at this particular centre which meant that people who were dropping off their pets were able to pick up vital supplies.

''We know the stuff got to the people and to some of the soldiers as well. The people who were picking it up knew the area. They knew which roads to travel to avoid being bombed.''

Darren and Andy were able to reunite three of the dogs with their owners. The owners of the other dogs will know their pets are in a safe place and being well looked after, until the day they can be reunited.

''One dog gave birth to 7 pups just days after she was brought across the border. She waited until she was in a warm and safe place.'' said Darren.

Darren said he and Andy couldnt have made the journey without the support of the team at Husky Rescue Ireland. They looked after the centre while they were abroad, feeding and walking the dogs in their care. He also gave a big thanks to Star Rescue for all their help.

To make a donation to Husky Rescue Ireland log onto https://www.huskyrescueireland.ie/donation-options
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa is being challenged by the Freedom Movement party in an election today seen as a barometer for democracy in the EU.
It would be the highest-level visit by an American delegation since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine two months ago. Follow DW for the latest.
French voters are casting their ballots in the second round of the presidential election. They will choose between centrist President Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. Follow DW for the latest.
When Russia launched its attack on Ukraine, some of the troops invaded from Belarus in the north to occupy the areas around Kyiv and Chernihiv. They have now withdrawn  but are they still in Belarus?
A senior negotiator on the Ukrainian side, Mykhailo Podolyak, urged "a real Easter truce" and asked Russia to consider "the remnants of its reputation." Follow DW for the latest.
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, an admirer of Donald Trump, is battling a challenge from his green-liberal rival, Robert Golob. The opposition has cast the vote as a "referendum on democracy."
A senior negotiator on the Ukrainian side, Mykhailo Podoliak, urged "a real Easter truce" and asked Russia to consider "the remnants of its reputation." Follow DW for the latest.
An adviser to President Zelenskyy says the US secretaries of state and defense are holding talks with the Ukrainian leader. Meanwhile, Kyiv blames Russia for Mariupol evacuation failure. Follow DW for the latest.
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Protesters demanded an end to colonialism as the Earl and Countess of Wessex entered the second leg of their Caribbean tour.
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An intimate short documentary about the growing crisis of Americans held hostage by foreign governments, "Bring Them Home" follows one family's desperate effort to free their loved one from being used as a geopolitical pawn by Iran.
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Russian forces called in airstrikes on a besieged steel factory in the southern city of Mariupol, while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would meet in Kyiv with two top American officials.
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Agrolytics Corp has been recognized as the 2021 Midland SmartZone Business of the Year, honoring its technology solution for indoor farming.

Established July 2020, Agrolytics Corp is an agri-tech solution provider of indoor farming technology and data analytics for commercial farmers, nonprofit organizations, and boutique farmers. Their Recipe-based Ecosystem for Agricultural Processes (REAP) technology will help eliminate food shortages by allowing growers to operate closer to the consumer, in secured locations, urban food deserts and extreme climate with a vision to enable any crop to be grown anywhere.

Agrolytics Corp will receive their recognition at the Michigan Celebrates Small Business gala in early May alongside three other Midland County small businesses.

Agrolytics is dedicated to improving Michigans economic landscape by accelerating their innovative technologies, said President + CEO of CMURC Erin Strang. The team really utilized all of the resources available through the MEDC SmartZone network to support the growth of their company - including space, programs and investment."

In 2021, Agrolytics partnered with the Saginaw Youth Development Corporation (YDC) to build an automated indoor farm pilot. The pilot will be the basis for a future, and much larger scale indoor farm, to be built for YDC's Food Scarcity Initiative.

Securing a three-year agreement with YDC was huge for us, said Bob Cummer, President and CEO of Agrolytics. The agreement, valued at greater than $1.2 million, is an opportunity for Agrolytics to install our revolutionary REAP indoor farming ecosystem in several underserved Michigan communities; thus, helping to eliminate food deserts by providing these communities with pesticide-free produce year-round.

The design of the scaled farm demonstration is made possible through SmartZone support services provided by CMURC in partnership with the Midland Business Alliance (MBA). CMURC and the MBA were awarded Business Accelerator Funds (BAF) to provide additional professional services on behalf of client company Agrolytics. The Michigan Celebrates Small Business program is administered by the Michigan Small Business Development Center in partnership with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

Agrolytics work directly ties in with the YDCs socially focused efforts to impact food insecurity in their community, and is a wonderful opportunity to contribute to solving a critical issue both locally and across the globe! said Nicole Wilson, MBA Vice President of Economic Development.
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP)  President Joe Biden on Sunday commemorated the 107th anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide, issuing a statement in memory of the 1.5 million Armenians who were deported, massacred or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination by Ottoman Empire forces. Turkey said Biden's declaration was incompatible with historical facts and international law."

Biden's statement did not reference the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which Biden has called a genocide. Yet Biden used the anniversary to lay down a set of principles for foreign policy as the United States and its allies arm Ukrainians and impose sanctions on Russia.

We renew our pledge to remain vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms, the president said. We recommit ourselves to speaking out and stopping atrocities that leave lasting scars on the world."

In 1915, Ottoman officials arrested Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople, now Istanbul. The Biden statement notes that this event on April 24 marked the beginning of the genocide.

Fulfilling a campaign promise, Biden used the term genocide for the first time during last year's anniversary. Past White Houses had avoided that word for decades out of a concern that Turkey  a NATO member  could be offended.

Turkey's government was angered by Biden's declaration on Sunday, just as it was last year.

Statements that are incompatible with historical facts and international law regarding the events of 1915 are not valid, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Turkey acknowledges that many died in that era, but it says that the death toll is inflated, that the deaths resulted from civil unrest and that Muslim Turks were also killed.

Separately, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Twitter accused some Western leaders of hypocrisy for arguing in relation to Russias actions in Ukraine that the term genocide can only be determined by court decisions.

While Biden has said it would be up to lawyers to decide if Russias conduct met the international standard of genocide, Biden has not been shy about condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin for pursuing genocide.

It sure seems that way to me, Biden said earlier this month.

___

Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.
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SRINAGAR, India (AP)  Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Himalayan Kashmir on Sunday for his first public event since New Delhi stripped the disputed regions semi-autonomy and took direct control in 2019.

Modi remotely inaugurated a tunnel and work on two hydropower projects before delivering a speech that was punctuated by his government's developmental achievements. He said that the territory was put on a path of unprecedented development since 2019 but made no political commitments to the regions people, who have been without an elected local government for four years.

Let me assure the youth of the valley that they will not face difficulties and tribulations that their parents and grandparents faced, Modi said, referring to the Kashmir Valley, the heartland of anti-India sentiment. His speech was a part of a function to commemorate the annual Panchayati Raj, or grassroots democracy, Day.

One of the power projects he laid foundation to on Sunday was first commissioned by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2013.

Tens of thousands of people and elected officials from local councils across the region assembled in Palli village near Jammu city for the speech, which was held amid amid tight security. The area visited by Modi generally welcomed the Indian governments changes of Kashmir's status nearly three years ago.

Officials say the councils represent grassroots governance but its members have no legislative powers.

Government forces fanned out across Kashmir to thwart any violence. On Friday, two suspected militants and a paramilitary officer were killed in a gunfight some 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Palli.

Police chief Dilbag Singh said the slain militants were a suicide squad from Pakistan likely sent to sabotage Modis visit. He did not offer any evidence to back up his claim.

Modis two previous visits after Kashmirs status was changed were to military camps to celebrate a Hindu festival with soldiers. I n 2019, Modis government revoked the regions semi-autonomous status, annulled its separate constitution, split the area into two federal territories  Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir  and removed inherited protections on land and jobs amid unprecedented lockdown.

The region has remained on edge since, as authorities put in place a slew of new laws that critics and many residents fear could change majority-Muslim Kashmirs demographics.

Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and both rivals claim the region in its entirety. Rebels have been fighting against Indian rule since 1989. Most Muslim Kashmiris support the rebel goal that the territory be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and most Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.
The First National Conference on Reading was held in Beijing on Saturday. Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, sent a congratulatory letter to the conference. Reading is an important avenue for humans to acquire knowledge, expand wisdom and cultivate virtues, Xi noted. It enlightens us and helps us aim high and stand upright. Since ancient times, the Chinese people have advocated reading and stressed the acquisition of knowledge through studying the nature of things and rectification of mind through thinking with sincerity. Reading helps the Chinese people to carry on the traditional spirit of perseverance and shape their character of self-confidence and self-reliance. Xi called on Party members and officials to take the lead in reading and learning, foster virtues and ideals and improve abilities. He hoped that all children will have a habit of reading, enjoy reading and grow up in a healthy way. He also expressed a wish that all Chinese people are engaged in reading and contribute to an atmosphere where everyone loves reading, has good books to read and knows how to gain from reading. Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, read Xi's congratulatory letter and delivered a speech at the conference. He said the letter fully demonstrated that the CPC Central Committee attaches great importance to fostering people's love of reading and a culture of reading in the country. We must study Xi's important instructions conscientiously and put them into practice, Huang said. He called for efforts to encourage reading, create a trend of reading, and set up a system to promote reading in both urban and rural areas. The reading campaign should be extended to cover as many people as possible, while reading should help people learn and improve themselves, said Huang, who added that fostering a culture of reading will help strengthen and enrich the Chinese culture, so as to inject strong impetus into the new journey to fully build a modern socialist China in the new era. The conference was hosted by the Publishing Bureau under the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee and the Publicity Department of the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee. The National Press and Publication Administration (the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee), the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee and the Beijing Municipal Government oversaw it. Its theme is "promoting reading in the new era and forging ahead on the new journey." The conference includes a series of forums, exhibitions, book launch events and themed activities. Officials from relevant departments as well as representatives of publishers, social organizations, experts, scholars, writers and readers participated in the conference.


REED CITY  Reed City Area Public Schools recently honored a former graduate and Veteran with the districts Distinguished Alumnus Award.

James George, a 1963 Reed City High School graduate, was Salutatorian of his class. During his high school career, he played football, was on the track team, and worked as a carrier for The Grand Rapids Press.

As an Eagle Scout he earned the God and Country Award and received a competitive nomination to the United States Air Force Academy.

Finishing in the top quarter of his class of 1967, George attended USAF pilot training after graduating; he finished there in the top 10 percent of his class.

George said he is thankful to have grown up in a small close-knit town.

I think as I look back on the careers that I've had and on my life from this vantage point, I think I was just fortunate in so many ways, George said. I had great grandparents, great neighbors and friends, some really good and caring teachers at Reed City. At the time though, I didn't really appreciate it as much as I could have. It was actually a blessing to grow up in a small town in West Michigan, be it Big Rapids, Reed City, or any of the little areas that surrounded it. I think that was a big factor in my life.

Boy Scouts was another really big factor in terms of building character," he added. "The great volunteers that we had, in addition to my dad that we had a Scoutmaster that volunteered for so many years. Some of the neighbors and friends who participated in that helped shape a lot of us. Early development in the areas of character integrity, work ethic, respect for others, those that have been influential factors in my life.

As a first lieutenant flying in combat, he flew over 200 combat missions and 700 combat hours and was highly decorated, being awarded the Silver Star and six Distinguished Flying Crosses.

Among his many Air Force accomplishments, he was the commander of an F-16 Fighter Squadron, and he served in the Pentagon in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management.

'VERY HUMBLED'

Now residing in Peachtree, Georgia, George has traveled extensively and said his time at RCAPS was influential in his later life.

All the way through from elementary school on up some of my high school teachers were great, George said. Lauren Kilmer was the chemistry and physics teacher, and an English teacher by the name of Dorothy Wolfinger, who was somebody you didn't want to cross, she came across as harsh but she taught us a lot.

"Of course, my dad was a teacher there for 40 years, and I learned a lot from him also," he added. "He was a big factor in trying to do what we would call vocational education. He taught classes in architectural drafting and metalworking, repairing small engines, and a whole variety of different things that that I think gave some of the kids ideas about where to go. He helped some of them get jobs and some of the local manufacturing businesses that were there. That was important to me to see his approach and to recognize that a lot of people are smart in different ways.

Following service in the Air Force, George was chosen as one of the first retired military pilots to fly for Delta Air Lines. He flew over 17 years without an accident or incident, retiring as a Boeing 767 captain based in Los Angeles.

While George is predominantly retired, he continues to offer investment guidance and financial advice as a Financial Consultant Emeritus.

Upon receiving word that he had been awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from his alma mater, George said he was honored by the surprise.

I was very humbled by being nominated, and then being chosen for that award, George said. I'm sure there are a lot of other deserving individuals. It was very meaningful.

I came back (to Reed City) regularly while my parents were alive and visited the town and kept up with some of my classmates, he added. That's declined a bit over the years as we've all gotten older and, and lost a number of her classmates.

While serving in Vietnam, George lost three fellow classmates in combat. He said commemorating their lives at the school in some way is a hope of his.

They were shortly out of out of high school, in their early 20s, George said. I served there, of course, and as you've seen, could very easily have been the fourth. It was a big, big price that Reed City paid. The Vietnam War was not a very popular war, and a lot of people thought it was a mistake. Those of us who were there, doing what we saw as our duty and fighting for our country, saw it completely differently.

Its a little chapter in Reed City's history that is not well known, he added. "I had talked with folks in the city about trying to do something. They have a memorial trail and things like that, but I would like to do something to honor my three classmates that were killed in Vietnam and gave their lives prematurely serving the country. I hope that it could be some form of inspiration to the kids at Reed City, and at least be a memory that doesn't get lost over time.

George will be a keynote speaker at the class of 2022s graduation ceremony May 15. He is in the process of planning out his speech, which he hopes will have some inspiration for the students as they move on with the rest of their lives.
File photo

Two Beech Grove, Indiana men arrested on Thursday by Midland County Sheriff's deputies are each being lodged in the Midland County Jail on $1 million cash/surety no 10% bonds.

The men, ages 37 and 20, allegedly fired weapons while they were driving at about 10:30 a.m. on US-10 from Coleman. They led deputies on a brief chase. Deputies report that the men were toting a large amount of drugs.
Photo: (Photo : Getty images )

Children dressed in hazmat suits in Shanghai and COVID-infected babies and toddlers being forcibly separated from their parents as China implements its Zero-COVID policy received international condemnation and calls to end its brutal policies.

Chinese authorities have justified its extremely strict lockdown as a record number of COVID-19 positive cases surged among Shanghai's 26 million residents in the past five weeks. However, the world finds the clips on how authorities have been implementing its Zero-COVID policy unsettling and heartbreaking, prompting international leaders to call for China to stop the brutality.

Shangai is struggling to contain the outbreak as it records 20,000 Covid cases per day, Windobi reports.

Footages of chilling lockdown measures

A video clip showed a group of youngsters covered from head to toe and heading for school during the strict lockdown. The kids of primary age were noted to have worn face masks, leaving only their eyes visible.

Scenes of toddlers screaming after they were forcibly removed from their parents and kept in cages. According to the Sun, Shanghai resident, Esther Zhao, brought her two-year-old daughter, Esther Zhao, to the hospital with a fever on March 26. They both tested positive for COVID-19 three days later. The doctors attempted to take Zhao's child away to a quarantine center. She was threatened when she did not comply.

Zhao said she and her husband had not seen her daughter since or had not received a single photo of their child. She told Reuters that there were no pictures, and she was anxious about not knowing how her daughter was doing. The worried mom also said they had been deprived of information, with doctors only giving them one brief update despite their desperate plea, as per The Sun.

Read Also: 3 Toddlers Hospitalized After Eating THC-Laced Goldfish Crackers, Daycare Owner Arrested

Under China's policy, anyone found positive, even if it is asymptomatic or with a mild infection, must be isolated from non-infected people. Children under seven years old are taken away from their parents and placed in health centers. Meanwhile, older children are locked in quarantine facilities to stop them from spreading the virus.

The cruel policy has shocked the city of 25 million residents to its core. Several video footage showed mass panic, anxiety, and outrage among horrified residents. Despite the growing frustration and heartbreaking scenes, health officials of Shanghai defended the brutal separation policy.

On Monday, Wu Qianyu, an official from the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, confirmed the policy. She added that the policy was integral to virus "prevention and control." She also said that they allowed positive parents to isolate their kids.

However, parents and guardians are enraged and have taken their anger to social media.

International condemnation

The brutal policies prompted diplomats from more than 30 countries to write Chinese foreign ministry to demand an immediate end to the policies.

In Beijing, the British embassy said it was concerned about instances when local authorities sought to separate COVID-19 minors from their parents.

Related Article: WHO Investigates Cases of Perfectly Healthy Kids Getting Rare and Severe Liver Damage
Photo: (Photo : LUCA SOLA/AFP via Getty Images)

A couple from Washington found their dreams of becoming parents crushed after a Colorado fertility clinic destroyed their embryos when laboratory workers were conducting genetic tests.

Kara Seldin-Howell and Kolton Howell told People they have been trying for almost a year to have a baby. However, within a matter of days, CNY Fertility Colorado managed to "rob their hopes, dreams" when they were told their embryos died in the laboratory.

One of the workers at the fertility clinic forgot to add an oil medium to the Petri dishes during the genetic testing; thus, their embryos dried out. This took place two days after the couple was informed that they had retrieved seven viable embryos from a previous IVF procedure.

Kara and Kolton immediately went to lawyer Adam Wolf, who filed the lawsuit on their behalf. Wolf said that this was an "utterly preventable" tragedy, especially after the fertility clinic owned up to their mistake and stated they would "start double-checking laboratory work" only after this incident.

Read Also: Woman Needing IVF Chooses No Paycheck for Starbucks Job in Exchange for Top Quality Fertility Benefits

Regretting their Choice

The Howells wanted to have two or three kids and explored their options with IVF. They settled with CNY Fertility Colorado after looking for a facility that would help them with their plans to expand their family.

Kara and Kolton have been through several procedures of blood drawn out of their arms, invasive tests, injections, and a surgical procedure for egg retrieval. They chose to have pre-implantation testing for the genetics of the embryos before freezing. In hindsight, the couple told The Washington Post they regret that choice.

The oil medium required for the embryos was supposed to provide nourishment that mimics the environment in the fallopian tube. This was needed to facilitate the healthy growth and preservation of the embryos while waiting for the transfer procedure.

The couple claims that the fertility clinic breached their contract when it failed to deliver the promised genetic material. The Howells are seeking compensation for the damages for an undetermined amount.

Oversight in IVF Clinics

This is not the first lawsuit for Wolf against an IVF clinic. Three years ago, the lawyer also pursued a case highlighting the oversight occurring in fertility facilities because the industry is hardly regulated. The lawyer said that while states have their own laws to protect hopeful parents like the Howells, there must be guidelines on the federal level.

"When we're dealing with something that's as important as [the] basics of human life, we need to have meaningful federal oversight," Wolf said, per Law & Crime.

CNY Fertility Center has four other facilities in the U.S. It's one of America's busiest clinics because it's also the most affordable. In its over 20 years of operation, the clinic had another medical malpractice lawsuit involving a couple who said that the clinic failed to do proper genetic screening of their egg donor as their daughter was born with cystic fibrosis.

Meanwhile, Kara and Kolt said they are still considering IVF to realize their dreams. However, they have some fears about going through the process again due to their traumatizing experience.

Related Article: Fertility Clinic Implants Wrong Embryo Forcing Couple to Terminate Pregnancy to Avoid Messy Custody Battle
Photo: (Photo : Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Tax season has officially ended Monday, April 18, 2022, but the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said some taxpayers may still file their tax declaration, including their child tax credit claims, for the recent fiscal year until 2025.

Per the IRS, taxpayers who do not owe the government any taxes or non-filers who have not yet filed for child tax credit claims may still submit their tax returns without getting any penalty for late filing. Parents may still file a claim to get the expanded child tax credit of $3,600 per child. The IRS also said that Puerto Rico taxpayers might also claim their child tax credit for the first time.

In 2021, eligible taxpayers who did not opt out of the monthly enhanced child tax credit payments disbursed between July and December should have already received their benefits. However, these payments, amounting to $1,800, were only half of the full amount of $3,600 that parents could claim. The remaining claim was supposed to be done when they filed for their recent tax returns.

Read Also: $1,000 Monthly Payment Planned for Austin Families Through Universal Basic Income

However, not all taxpayers chose to receive the monthly enhanced child tax credit because they didn't earn enough to file any taxes. Some families, who have never filed their tax returns and are known as non-filers, never got to sign up for the child tax credit claims as well. These individuals may now follow up on the payments by submitting their records to the IRS.

Check out the #IRS special tips for the advance #ChildTaxCredit and filing your 2021 tax return. See: https://t.co/XwD6bHqbx5

*Thank you for allowing us to share your artwork, Layla* pic.twitter.com/stQQ7ETlHC  IRSnews (@IRSnews) April 17, 2022

No Penalty for Refunds

Regardless of their status as a taxpayer or non-filer, the only way to get tax refunds is to file with the IRS. The agency said that refunds do not incur any penalties despite the end of the tax season. However, there is a three-year time limit to collect the refunds, thus the 2025 deadline. Nina Olson of the Center for Taxpayer Rights advises parents not to wait too long to get their refunds.

"Even if you had a refund from one year that you could apply to another [year when you owe taxes], if you wait too long to file that return, you won't have that refund to apply to the back-tax debt," she told CBS News.

Subsequently, parents may also file for even larger refunds on top of the child tax credit claims.

The Child and Dependent Care Credit allows parents to receive $3,600 per child or older dependent they need to look after.

The Earned Income Tax Credit, on the other hand, allows for families with low to moderate-income to claim $1,502 to $6,728, depending on their declared taxes.

The Economic Impact Payment provides $1,400 for families with a new member in their household for 2021.

If you had a baby in 2021, you may not have received the third Economic Impact Payment. You may be eligible to get this money now by claiming the Recovery Rebate Credit on your #IRS tax return: https://t.co/x73kjrPBwj pic.twitter.com/YFsdMcfG4R  IRSnews (@IRSnews) April 17, 2022

Parents may check the Free File section on the IRS portal to complete the process of claiming refunds. This section has all the necessary forms and a guided tax preparation form, which will be of great help to first-time filers. The Free File service will be accessible until Oct. 17, 2022.

Late Filers Eligible for No Penalties

Meanwhile, the IRS also announced that some individuals would automatically qualify for no penalties or no interest if they file their income tax beyond the April 18 deadline. An extension of 180 days will apply to members of the military service who are in a combat zone, including the support personnel of the Armed Forces.

Taxpayers who are currently outside of the U.S., but are not in the military, will also get at least two months of extension. Disaster victims are also given leeway to file late without penalties.

Meanwhile, individuals who do not have refunds, like the child tax credit claims, but owe the government money after reconciling their tax returns for the recent fiscal year have options to settle their payment. The IRS offers an installment agreement or could agree to a compromise. Erin Collins of the National Taxpayer Advocate told CNBC that asking for an installment or compromise is a quick and easy process and could be done online or through the phone.

Related Article: Last Chance of Getting $1,400 Stimulus Check! Over 600,00 to Receive Benefits, What to Do If Deadline Has Lapsed?
Photo: (Photo : CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

A son who murdered his elderly father just days before his 80th birthday has been jailed for life. David Lavender attacked his 79-year-old dad Anthony Lavender at their Old Swan home on December 29, 2021.

Police were called to Lavender's house located in Woodhall Street shortly before midnight and found the pensioner down with a serious head injury. Paramedics from North West Ambulance Service tried their hardest to save Lavender's life and performed CPR on him, but he, unfortunately, died at the scene.

His 37-year-old son David was later arrested by police and charged with murder. David, a digital marketing specialist, accepted responsibility for causing his dad's head injuries during a court hearing at the start of February. The Liverpool Echo reported that Lavender was yet to enter a formal plea to the murder charge.

Lavender enters guilty plea to murder charge

The Liverpool Crown Court was notified at the time that psychiatrists would have to evaluate whether Lavender was fit to enter a plea and whether the 37-year-old might potentially have a partial defense of diminished responsibility. However, Lavender ended that notion, pleading guilty to the murder charge at a court hearing this afternoon.

According to a report by the Daily Record, Lavender was emotionless when he entered his guilty plea with several of his family members watching on from the public gallery. Lavender, who spoke only to enter his plea, then sat in silence in the dock for the remainder of the court hearing.

Michael O'Brien, defending Lavender, revealed that discussions had taken place in the morning until lunchtime with his client about the plea. Lavender then gave instructions that he wished to plead guilty to the murder charge. O'Brien and Gordon Cole, QC, prosecuting, both said that they would provide submissions on sentencing guidelines ahead of Lavender's sentencing.

Read Also: Tennessee Mom Loretta Clayton Charged With Threat of Mass Violence on School Property

Lavender's sentencing scheduled to take place on May 11

Because of Lavender's guilty plea, Judge Neil Flewitt, QC, announced that a provisional murder trial listed for June 27 this year would be vacated. Flewitt said that Lavender would receive his sentencing on May 11, with the judge remanding him in custody until that date.

During the hearing, the judge spoke to the killer, saying, "As you know, there is only one sentence that will follow, that is a sentence of life imprisonment. I will have to set a minimum term and that term will depend on what I hear in the sentencing hearing."

Anthony Lavender's family previously paid tribute to him on Wednesday, January 5, on what would have been his 80th birthday. According to a BBC report, the family said in a statement that their beloved brother and uncle Tony should have celebrated his 80th birthday today, but tragically, it was not to be. The family added that he was a kind and generous man who lived his life to the full, and Tony Lavender will be missed by all those who knew him.

Related Article: Indiana State Police Asks Public to Help Identify Boy Found Dead in Woods in Washington County
Photo: (Photo : Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

Baton Rouge Police announced that four-year-old girl China Record has died after her grandmother allegedly forced her to drink a bottle of whiskey while her mother just watched. Police spokesperson Sgt. L'Jean McKneely told news outlets that the young child's grandmother, Roxanne Record, and mother, Kadjah Record, were both arrested on Friday, April 22.

According to a report by the Associated Press, the 53-year-old grandma and 29-year-old mom were each charged with first-degree murder. It was unknown if either one of them had an attorney who could speak on their behalf. Police officers were sent to a home in Baton Rouge around 11 a.m. on Thursday, April 21, after reports emerged of an unresponsive child. Police revealed that the 4-year-old girl was pronounced dead at the scene.

According to the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office, China Record's autopsy showed that her cause of death was acute alcohol poisoning. Authorities said that the little girl had a blood-alcohol level of .680 percent when first responders arrived at the house. That is more than eight times the .08 percent driving limit for an adult.

Roxanne Record forced grandchild China to drink 80-proof whiskey

According to a report by The Advocate, McKneely said that China's mother, Kadjah, and her grandmother, Roxanne, allegedly got mad at her because they thought she drank their 80-proof Canadian Mist whiskey out of the bottle. Roxanne allegedly forced her granddaughter to kneel in the hallway and drink the rest of the contents of the bottle, which was still over half full with whiskey.

Baton Rouge Police said in their arrest report that Kadjah "failed to stop" her own mother, Roxanne, "from providing the alcohol" to young China. Kadjah also reportedly put her daughter's body in the bathtub when she became unresponsive after drinking the whiskey.

Police alleged in booking documents that neither woman sought medical care for China until after the little child had stopped breathing. The whiskey that China Record drank was at 80 proof which is 40 percent alcohol. Dr. Ernest P. Chiodo, a toxicologist, physician, and attorney based in Chicago, said that even if this was a full-grown adult, that is a fatal amount of alcohol.

Read Also: Orsolya Gaal Murder Mystery Deepens as Sources Say Killer Texted Her Husband After Brutal Killing

Child killings rising in Baton Rouge

True Crime Daily reported that the young girl's siblings were the ones who told police that their grandmother forced China to drink the whiskey as their mother watched, according to the affidavit. Roxanne and Kadjah Record were both booked into the East Baton Rouge Parish prison on first-degree murder charges early Friday morning.

China Record's death was the second killing of a kid younger than the age of 5 in East Baton Rouge in nine days. It was the city's fourth such killing in 2022, a worrying figure that far outpaces the number of killings in that age bracket by this time last year.

Roxanne reportedly told Baton Rouge Police that she "ruined everyone's lives" and that the punishment "went too far." According to East Baton Rouge Parish Prison records, both women are being held without bond on first-degree murder charges.

Related Article: Convicted 'Mom Killer' Ike Nicholas Souzer Recaptured By Police After Fleeing California Halfway House
Roger Daltrey is "glad" Ed Sheeran won his 'Shape of You' copyright case.

The 31-year-old pop star was taken to court by grime artist Sami Chokri, who claimed that the melody of the 2017 smash hit is "strikingly similar" to that of his 2015 song 'Oh Why', but a judge ruled earlier this month that Ed and his collaborators, Johnny McDaid and Steven McCutcheon, had not plagiarised the earlier hit.

Judge Antony Zacaroli acknowledged there were "similarities between the one-bar phrase" in 'Shape of You' and 'Oh Why' but said "such similarities are only a starting point for a possible infringement" of copyright.

The Who frontman, 78, has branded the accusations "ridiculous" and says anyone taking another artist to court over similar "patterns" in their music is on the make.

In an interview with The Independent, Roger said: When you listen to music, there are patterns of music that are always going to be there. So you write a few different lyrics on top of it, dont mean to say youve stolen it... Its ridiculous. It's just people trying to make money out of success and Im glad Ed won.

In fact, the 'Pinball Wizard' hitmaker believes the entire music industry has been "stolen" by streaming platforms, while he lambasted record labels for doing very little despite earning megabucks from their artists.

He bemoaned: "Musicians cannot earn a living in the record industry anymore.

That is ridiculous, and theyre being robbed blind by streaming and the record companies, because the old deals with record companies that existed in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, theyre still working on the same percentage breaks. And of course, they dont do any work. They just press a button and it goes out on digital, whereas before they had to manufacture, they had to distribute, they had to do all that stuff. Theyre doing bugger all and taking all the money, and the musicians are getting nothing.

Roger added: Our music industry, I think, has been stolen. I think we really do have to be concerned when young musicians cant earn a living writing music. The streaming companies pay so little in the beginning and then the record companies take 85, 90 per cent of that. You need a billion streams to earn 200 quid. Thats the reality. Weve given our music industry to a lot of foreign-owned companies, and the moneys not coming here anymore. We used to lead the world in that, pay an awful lot of tax. Its terrible.
Francis-Xavier Sosu, Member of Parliament for Medina Constituency, has cautioned the Attorney-General, Godfred Yeboah Dame to desist from any involvement with the Judicial arm of government.



The MP in an open letter asserted that the recent public statements from the Attorney General suggest that the AG is in bed with the Judiciary.



Rule of Law is seriously endangered under this administration and unfortunately the posturing and public statements of the Attorney-General who is the Principal Legal Advisor to Government, only feeds into the perception that the AG is in bed with the Judiciary.



Let me advise the A-G to stay away from the Judiciary. Judicial power and administration of Justice must be independent and impartial and definitely not subject to the public advice of the AG, a portion of the letter reads.



For this reason, the Deputy Ranking Member of the Constitutional Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee of Parliament is calling for the decoupling of the Office of Attorney General from the Ministry of Justice to be fast-tracked.



Sosu believes this will also reduce the tendency of secret and illegal conspiracy between the AG and the Judiciary.



As Deputy Ranking Member of the Constitutional Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee of Parliament, I am more convinced that we must fast-track the decoupling of the Office of Attorney General and Ministry of Justice. While this will not necessarily completely remove the tendency of collusions, it will be the most reasonably probable way of reducing such duplicity, he noted in his letter.



To him, lawyers owe a duty to be loyal to the rule of law and the Constitution of Ghana and not the Judiciary.



The NDC legislator argued, for there to be effective justice and confidence in the justice system, we must rather be advising all institutions of the state, particularly institutions of Justice such as The Ghana Police Service, Attorney-General and Ministry of Justice and the Judiciary to assert and reaffirm their constitutional independence not only in words but also in actions.



He observed the fundamental human right to hold the judiciary accountable through whatever applicable means deemed fit.



Justice emanates from the people and the people have fundamental rights under the 1992 Constitution to hold the Judiciary accountable through mainstream media and social media, whichever may be applicable. The people do that through strict scrutiny of judgments and actions of the Judiciary, Francis-Xavier Sosu noted.





Source: Ghanaweb









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The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has launched the second National COVID-19 mass vaccination campaign with a caution that the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet over.



It said the effort is to help boost the national vaccination drive.



Launching the campaign in Somanya in the Yilo Krobo Municipality in the Eastern Region last Thursday, the Director-General of the GHS, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, asked the people not to shirk the safety measures in the face of eased restrictions until the battle was completely won.



We need to completely win this fight and it is in view of this that we have gathered here to roll out a series of vaccinations against COVID-19, Dr Aboagye stressed.



The exercise is on the theme, Protect yourself, protect your family, get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Vaccine types



He said currently five COVID-19 vaccine types had been authorized for use by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) namely: AstraZeneca, Sputnik-V, Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson.



Dr Kuma-Aboagye noted that as of last Monday, the country had received over 30 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines and distributed most of them to all regions and districts.



He said to ensure that the vaccines remained safe as they were being deployed the country had strengthened its robust vaccine safety monitoring system that was being managed by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) with the support of the GHS Expanded Programme on Immunisation.



To ensure real-time management, Dr Kuma-Aboagye said the GHS had deployed a well-integrated information technology and data management system that ensured successful vaccine distribution, tracking, monitoring, and reporting in near-real-time.



He said with the support from partners, the service was ardently working to ensure all paper-based data were uploaded electronically for easy retrieval and use for decision making.



Dr Kuma-Aboagye said vaccine and cold chain management were critical for a successful immunisation activity and in view of that, the government, with support from the World Bank, the Government of Japan and other partners, had supported the GHS with ultra-low freezers to store Pfizer vaccines to enhance the COVID-19 vaccine deployment.



The Eastern Regional Minister, Seth Kwame Acheampong, commended the Ministry of Health, GHS and all other stakeholders for their dedicated service to the nation to ensure that we all survived the pandemic since it struck.



We still have the pandemic with us as a country and therefore I plead with municipal and district chief executives, religious and opinion leaders not forgetting the media to support all the efforts by the health workers to ensure that we are safe through vaccination, the regional minister added.

Source: graphic.com.gh









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Ghanaian business mogul, Sir Sam Jonah, has narrated an experience he once had in a mine at Obuasi that shook him so much, that he momentarily passed out.



According to him, during one Easter season, he led a team beneath one of the mines in an attempt to locate a man who had illegally gone in there during the break.



Speaking to GTV Breakfast Show and monitored by GhanaWeb, Sam Jonah, who is the current Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, said that looking back on the incident today, makes him laugh at the same time makes him sad.



One incident comes to mind, and if it wasnt serious, it would be funny. One Easter, our local security picked up intelligence that Obuasi was such a rich area that whenever the gold so people would take chances, go underground illegally and try and mine and of course, we had good security. So, one fateful Easter morning, I was yanked from my sleep that the security had picked up local intelligence that some people had gone underground in the evening, and one of them had not been accounted for.



So, because he had not been accounted for, and it was illegal, therefore, nobody knew they had gone underground, but of course talk in the village got to the security that one guy had not been accounted for  nobody owned up but they went. So, we went asking which level, or which floor in the building he probably would have gone to and which area because they knew there were areas that were very very rich, he said.



He added that being the captain at the Obuasi mine at the time, he had to lead the delegation and what they found shook him in a really unusual way.



And so, I was the mine captain in charge of the area so they said I had to go with the team to go and look for him. So, we looked everywhere and then we looked at one particular area and when we went there, strange but theres a hole which is about 100 feet in depth and so we noticed that some (sic) is coming from the hole, which is about 80 feet or so down and then there was a (sic).



So, we had to go down and I had to lead by example I had never had such an experience before. Id never experienced such a stench: the smell of what the skin or flesh smelt like. The guy had been there since Friday. He was surviving on trickles of water coming down as dirty water. He was looking in good shape but he had not eaten since Friday, he had not had proper water, he had not had his wash, and the smell was just overpowering. And, I have to confess, for a moment, I passed out  id never smelt such rotten stench before, he said.



Sir Sam Jonah also explained that while it was a great relief to find the young man alive, it turned out his supposed missing tale was rather a cooked-up plan by some of his friends as a payback to him for previously cheating them.



The good thing is that all he was saying was Dzato aden? Dzato why? We brought him up and it was Dzato who gave us the lead and so we went to the place and all of that and arrested the Dzato guy. It turned out they said he had cheated on them on previous occasions, so they actually pinned him down and they left him there for dead and came back and dropped the hint, thinking that he was dead. Mercifully, it ended well in the sense that he did not die, he said.



Sir Sam Jonah is the executive chairman of Jonah Capital, an equity fund based in Johannesburg, and is considered one of Ghana's richest men.





Source: Ghanaweb









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Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia Saturday paid an unannounced visit to the National Chief Imam, Sheikh Osman Nuhu Sharubutu, at the Old Fadama residence, to wish him well on his 103rd Birthday.



The Vice President prayed for long life and good health for the Chief Imam so that the nation would continue to drink from his fountain of wisdom.



Dr Bawumia said Ghana was enjoying peace and harmony in the West African Sub-region because of the cordial relations between Muslims and Christians, noting that the Chief Imam was an embodiment of peace that resonated through his relationships with all religious faiths in the country.



Also in a post on his social media handles, Dr Bawumia wrote: Happy 103rd Birthday to my father, the National Chief Imam, His Eminence Sheikh Osman Nuhu Sharubutu.



"Mallam, as he is affectionately referred to, is an epitome of Allahs amazing Grace, and we thank Allah for the life of this great man, who continues to inspire millions. He has been a driving force for religious harmony and peace in Ghana.



"May the Almighty Allah continue to grant him good health and long life. Happy Birthday Mallam!



The Chief Imam, through his Spokesperson Sheikh Aremeyaw Shaib, commended the Vice President for the surprise visit and prayed for continued peace and stability for the nation.



He prayed for Allah's wisdom and guidance for the President, Vice President and the entire members of the Government.

Source: GNA









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Under the newly introduced Police Emergency Medical Intervention Fund (PEMIF), an injured Police Chief Inspector has been provided with a new prosthetic leg to aid his mobility.



Chief Inspector Mac-Victor Anako became the first beneficiary under the new GHc6.1million fund when he was flown to Germany for the prosthetic leg.



Chief Inspector Mac-Victor Anako was shot by armed robbers in May 2007 during an anti-robbery operation at Nsawam.



He sustained a gunshot wound to his left thigh leading to the amputation of his leg.



In 2010, the Chief Inspector underwent some surgical procedures but suffered some complications necessitating further medical attention.



PEMIF



The PEMIF is an initiative of the Police Administration aimed at providing financial assistance for the medical care of Police officers who get injured in the line of duty.



The Fund was approved and launched in January 2022 by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo- Addo who made a personal donation at the launch to support it.



After the introduction of the PEMIF, Chief Inspector Mac-Victor Anako was flown to Hamburg, Germany to fix a new prosthetic leg to aid his mobility.



He was accompanied on the trip by his wife to give him the needed support.



The total cost of the trip and treatment were fully paid for by the Police Administration from the PEMIF.



The Chief Inspector returned to Ghana on March 30, 2022, with his wife by his side, wearing his new prosthetic leg and could be seen walking with ease.

Source: graphic.com.gh









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Former President John Dramani Mahama at the weekend joined the family, well-wishers, and mourners at a one-week commemorative service for the late former First Lady, Mrs Emily Akuffo.



A statement issued by the Office of the Former President said Emily Akuffo was the wife of Lieutenant General Fred Akuffo (deceased), Ghana's former Head of State, who led the Supreme Military Council from 1978 to 1979.



It said the one week service was held at the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (Christ Church) at Akropong in the Eastern Region.



Accompanying Former President Mahama was Mr Julius Debrah, a former Chief of Staff, Mr Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, the Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr George Opare Addo, National Youth Organiser, NDC, and Mr Victor Smith, a former High Commissioner.

Source: GNA









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An Accra District Court has granted a GHC10,000.00 bail with two sureties to a businessman who allegedly insulted Mr Carlos Ahenkorah, Member of Parliament (MP) for the Tema West Constituency.



Nana Yaw Ntim pleaded not guilty to offensive conduct.



Meanwhile, the case has been referred to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for an Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR).



The parties are expected to be back in court on May 24, 2022, to give a report on the settlement.



The Defense Counsel in praying for bail said the Party had existing structures to settle the matter and that the accused had people of substance to stand as sureties, adding that the case did not warrant public resources for him to be remanded.



He then prayed for the Court to refer the matter to the ADR.



The prosecution told the Court presided over by Madam Ama Adomako Kwakye that the accused person was a resident of Dwahenya near Tema and a member of NP P in the same Constituency.



It said on February 03, 2022, the complainant petitioned the Director General of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana Police Service against the accused for constantly raining insults on him on Party WhatsApp platforms called, Vibrant 2024 NPP, and speak your mind NPP, without any provocation.



The Court heard that the MP also submitted a pen drive containing the voice recordings of the accused person to the police as evidence.

In the recording, the accused person was heard uttering abusive words against the MP.



The prosecution said the accused person was arrested on February 7, 2022, for investigation, where he admitted some of the voice recordings and claimed that some of them were doctored.











Source: GNA









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Former Member of Parliament for Ledzokuku, Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye, has reacted to his appointment as the Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA).



A letter issued and signed by the Chief of Staff, Akosua Frema Osei-Opare said that President Akufo-Addo has appointed the former Deputy Minister, as the CEO of NHIA, pursuant to ''Section 14(1) of the National Health Insurance Act, 2021 (Act 852)''.



The letter read: Pursuant to Section 14 (1) of National Health Insurance Act, 2012 (Act 852), I am pleased to inform you that the President has appointed you to act as the Chief Executive of the National Health Insurance Authority (the Authority)), pending the receipt of the constitutionally required advice of the governing board of the Authority, given in consultation with the Public Services Commission,



The appointment takes effect Tuesday, 3rd May 2022.



Dr Bernard Okoe Boye, in a reaction on Facebook wrote: In His own time, He makes all things beautiful. I thank God Almighty for remembering me. I remain eternally grateful to His Excellency, President Akufo-Addo for doing me this honor. Finally, I would like to thank all of you for your love, well wishes and prayers. To God be the glory, a great thing he has done



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Source: Peacefmonline.com









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The Kettle Valley Rail Trail between Penticton and Little Tunnel was busy on the Easter weekend so photographers had to wait between groups of hikers and cyclists to capture panoramic views Okanagan Lake and Summerland off in the distance, above.
PokerNews Is Reporting on the Biggest 2022 EPT Monte Carlo Events

April 24, 2022 Matthew Pitt Editor

The European Poker Tour (EPT) returns to the world-famous Monte-Carlo Casino for the first time since 2019 and PokerNews live reporting team will be on the ground from April 28 through to May 7, bringing you live and exclusive updates from six of the schedules biggest events.

Our coverage starts with the 10,200 Mystery Bounty and 1,100 FPS Main Event from April 28.The FPS Monte Carlo Main Event last ran in 2016 and saw Stephane Dossetto defeat Niall Farrell heads-up for the title. Dossetto walked away with 218,000 ($245,958) that day, and we would expect similar numbers on the FPS long-awaited return.

PokerNews is also bringing you all the action from the 100,000 Super High Roller, 50,000 No-Limit Holdem, and the 25,000 High Roller events. Of course, no EPT coverage would be complete without the 5,300 Main Event.

10,200 Mystery Bounty from April 28

1,100 FPS Main Event from April 28

100,000 Super High Roller from May 1

5,300 EPT Monte Carlo Main Event from May 2

50,000 No-Limit Holdem from May 3

25,000 High Roller from May 5

Former EPT Monte Carlo Main Event Champions

The past winners of the EPT Monte-Carlo Main Event read like a whos who of the poker world. Some of the biggest-ever EPT prizes stem from this glamorous stop and we expect some big numbers for the Main Events long-awaited return.

Manig Loeser is the reigning EPT Monte-Carlo Main Event champion, having outlasted 921 opponents in 2019. Loeser reeled in a 603,777 payout on that occasion. Everything was shaping up for the 2020 edition to be huge, but the COVID-19 pandemic put paid to those plans, and again in 2021. Players are itching to return to the iconic Monte-Carlo Casino, and we cannot wait to be in the thick of it either.

EPT Returns to Barcelona After Three-Year Hiatus

*EPT Monte Carlo served as the EPT Grand Final from Season 1-12 with the exception of Season 7 which took place in Madrid

2022 EPT Monte Carlo Schedule
Family, friends and fellow Aiken County firefighters are grieving the loss of a Monetta Fire Department captain who was killed in the line of duty in Cayce early Sunday morning.

Officer Roy Andrew Drew Barr, 27, of Monetta, was shot and killed while responding to a domestic dispute, according to a release from the Cayce Police Department.

At approximately 2:48 a.m., the department received a call about a domestic disturbance, according to the release. The suspect opened fire and shot one of the Cayce police officers, who has now been identified as Barr.

Sunday evening, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) released a statement saying agents from SLED are investigating the incident.

The suspect, identified as 36-year-old Austin Leigh Henderson, "barricaded himself inside a residence where a 7-hour standoff ensued," according to the release. "The subject died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound."

"He'd do anything for the community"

Barr started volunteering with the Monetta Fire Department in 2014 and commuted to Cayce for police shifts, according to Monetta Fire Department Chief Nathan Shuler.

"We saw somebody shared a post on Facebook about a Cayce officer being shot and I tried to call him because I had a sick feeling," Shuler said. "I went home and called everybody after I found out and everybody's just shocked."

Before volunteering at Monetta Fire Department, Barr volunteered with a number of other volunteer fire departments in the area. He was also an EMT in Lexington County before attending the police academy.

"Drew goes above and beyond, he'd do anything for the community," Shuler said.

Lt. Bryan Rudd, a fellow firefighter and close friend, said Barr's outgoing personality captured the hearts of everyone he came in contact with.

"Drew and I grew up together - we played ball together from tee-ball up to minor league, went to school together and graduated together." Rudd said. "Drew was an outgoing person, there wasn't a day you didn't see Drew with a smile on his face. You could call him at any time of the night and he'd be there."

Rudd said Barr started fighting fires when he was just 15 years old and described him as a "go getter."

"He works a 12 hour night shift [in Cayce], drives an hour home, goes to bed - and then when that tone drops, he goes to that," Rudd said. "There's not a time that you did not see Drew in bunker gear and air pack fighting fire."

Barr was about to be nominated for Assistant Chief of Monetta Fire Department, Rudd said. He leaves behind his family, two roommates - "who are like brothers to him," and his beloved K-9, Molly.

"We didn't only lose a firefighter - we lost a best friend, we lost our brother, we lost a hero," Rudd said. "He got killed doing something that he loved. He wouldn't want us to back down, he would not want us to grieve - I know he's looking down on us right now and smiling."

Several Aiken County fire departments ran their sirens and lowered their flags at half staff Sunday morning in honor of Barr.

Shuler said Monetta firefighters are grieving, but they're still putting their lives on the line for people in the community on days like this.

"A lot of other departments in the county said they'd be willing to cover today while we mourn," Shuler said. "I know we'll get through this, it's just going to take some time."

Breaking news. This story will be updated as new information becomes available. (Last updated: Monday at 11:15 a.m.)
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This photo provided by the South Carolina Dept. of Corrections shows the states death chamber in Columbia, including the electric chair (right) and a firing squad chair (left).
A small South Carolina technology firm that helped usher in the age of instant messaging has been tangling with the biggest kid on the playground for the better part of the past decade.

Zipit Wireless even hauled Apple, the world's most valuable business, into court a couple of years ago in Georgia to protect its patents.

The tables were turned last week, when Tim Cook & Co. scored a victory on the far side of the country, likely assuring that any future litigation will play out in its back yard, where it knows the legal terrain.

The two companies  one with 14 employees, the other with more than 100,000  have been sparring over intellectual property claims since for more than eight years, according to court documents.

Zipit has sued numerous other household-name companies over the same issues, including Google, Microsoft and Nokia. A complaint it bought in South Carolina against the maker of the once-beloved BlackBerry phone in 2013 took more than three years to settle.

In each instance, the Upstate company was aiming to protect two patented inventions that enable smartphones and other wireless devices to transmit instant messages over an internet connection, including standard characters and emojis.

Zipit has said the market shift was tectonic-like, partly because the breakthrough helped eliminate the pesky texting fees that carriers once charged for sending data the old-fashioned way.

"Thanks to Wi-Fi based instant messaging, however, consumers no longer had to pay for individual instant messages or monthly service plans," it said in a court filing that pegged the savings at about $54 billion through 2016.

The company further argued that instant messaging "continues to be the single most important" wireless device feature and "that many potential customers are unlikely to purchase a smartphone that is not able to generate an instant message comprising an emoji/graphical symbol."

Zipit lawyers also have pointed out that "Oxford Dictionary's 'word' of the year for 2015 . . . was the 'face with tears of joy' emoji" and that "'World Emoji Day' . . . is held annually on July 17."

"Using a handheld device, such as a smartphone, to send instant messages that contain emojis is a major and growing form of communication among an incredibly large demographic," they said.

At loggerheads

The dispute with Apple Inc. began to fester in December 2013, according to court documents. Over the next three years, the companies exchanged written correspondence and met face-to-face at the iPhone maker's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters in search of a settlement.

While they kicked around proposals to either license or transfer ownership of the patents, no deal ever materialized.

Both sides had dug in their heels.

"Zipit maintained throughout these conversations that Apple required a license to the Zipit patents," the $2.7 trillion Big Tech behemoth said in a court filing. "Apple maintains that it does not infringe any claims of the Zipit patents."

Zipit turned up the heat in mid-2020. It filed a federal lawsuit in Atlanta, alleging Apple was "stealing" its technology "to illegally make money" in Georgia and the rest of the U.S. by selling smartphones and other wireless devices equipped with instant messaging capabilities.

Less than two week later, the complaint was withdrawn, without warning.

Apple pounced. It brought its own federal lawsuit in short order in San Jose, about 10 miles from its Silicon Valley campus. It sought an order stating that it didn't violate the patents while also jockeying to keep Zipit from resurrecting its previous claims.

'Shoot, don't talk'

The Upstate company asked to dismiss the case, saying the Golden State wasn't the proper legal jurisdiction.

"Zipit has no physical presence, employees or records of any kind in California," CEO and co-founder Frank Greer said in an affidavit.

Another argument was that the case would be an inconvenience for a small business headquartered across the country. Greer said it would be significantly more burdensome to litigate the case in California than in Zipits home state of South Carolina due to the added expense of travel and time away from work.

The judge was persuaded. The case was tossed out in early 2021.

Apple challenged the ruling, and it prevailed Monday. The U.S. Court of Appeals found that the correspondence, meetings and other forms of "contact" between the companies from 2013 to 2016 were more than sufficient to hang the complaint on and reinstate it. The judges also noted that they weren't convinced that keeping the case in a California courtroom "would be so unreasonably burdensome as to be unconstitutional."

Zipit's appeal options are unclear. The company and its attorneys didn't respond to a request for comment last week.

The reversal attracted a fair bit of coverage in the tech and legal media last week. In a blog post on IPBiz, a New Jersey patent lawyer on Tuesday likened the sequence of events to a line from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." In a famous scene from the 1966 Western epic, a bandit named Tuco is soaking in a tub when confronted by a one-armed, gun-toting revenge seeker who makes a fatal mistake: He makes a speech of sorts rather than deal with the task at hand, unaware that his seemingly compromised adversary is about to empty a revolver concealed by the bath bubbles.

The lesson, per Tuco: "When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk."
COLUMBIA  Deana Brown has a wedding to attend this summer, and that means she needs a new dress. For the Orangeburg resident, there's one place to do that shopping: Columbiana Centre.

Brown made the hour-long trip to Columbia to do her shopping on April 21, less than a week after a shootout in the mall's hallway left nine people wounded and another six people trampled in the chaos.

Three men are in custody facing attempted murder and other charges.

Brown did not hesitate to make the trip despite the events of April 16. She classified what happened as a one-day event, not a continuing concern about the safety of Columbiana.

"This is the mall that I come to," Brown said.

For many in the Midlands, that seems to have been the overwhelming response to the mass shooting that made international news and closed the mall for the weekend.

In the days since Columbiana reopened, the mall quickly moved back to a state of normalcy, so much so that shoppers would hardly notice anything amiss.

A slow but steady stream of shoppers visited Columbiana on April 18, the first day the mall reopened after the shootout, amid added presence from mall security in the halls and parking areas. Extra police also were at the mall 10 miles northwest of downtown Columbia.

The attendance on that first day back open was about normal for a Monday, said Lindsay Kahn, spokeswoman for the mall's New York-based parent company, Brookfield Properties.

At least three businesses in the area of the shootout, including clothing stores The Gap and Francescas, did not reopen for the day. Clothing retailer Edge, which had one window boarded up in the wake of the incident, also was closed.

By April 20, the mall seemed very much back to normal with closed stores reopening and visitors returning.

Like many afternoons, numerous shoppers were visiting and eating in the food court, including groups of teens and families pushing strollers.

Daryl Jones from Union passed the mall on the day of the shooting, seeing the area closed off amid a massive police response. That did not keep him from coming on April 21 for a little shopping.

"None whatsoever," Jones said when asked about concerns over visiting Columbiana.

Also at the mall April 21 was Carlos, a dog trained to sniff out firearms brought in by mall operators.

Guns are strictly forbidden at the shopping center, Kahn said, and anyone carrying a firearm detected by the dog will be asked to leave.

Mall management is taking steps, such as bringing in Carlos and adding private security, to reassure visitors.

"Safety is our priority," Kahn said.

Making that reassurance is key to Columbiana being able to put this incident behind it, said Carl Blackstone, chief executive of the Columbia Chamber.

"The onus is in them to make people feel safe and comfortable when shopping," Blackstone said.

Columbiana and the adjacent Harbison retail corridor are important for the region's business, supplying vital sales and accommodations tax revenue for Midlands governments, Blackstone noted.

Sadly, Blackstone said, people have seen this kind of violence too often before.

"In this country, we are too numb when it comes to gun violence," he said.

In America, such shootings have been happening so often that fatigue has set in, said Mathieu Deflem, a professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina.

People might feel comfortable coming back to the mall, perhaps with the assumption that security will be higher than normal, he said.

"Though not a daily event, sadly such incidents are indeed not as noteworthy or exceptional as they once were," Deflem said. "As to going to malls and public spaces in general, indeed, one cannot assume that every place is dangerous because we couldnt go out at all anymore."

While shoppers seemed to return without concerns, the return to Columbiana may have been harder for employees.

Coming back to Columbiana early April 18 for reopening was eerie, according to Aimee Pawlick, an assistant manager at women's wear and accessories store Altar'd State.

During the shooting's aftermath, police had broken all locked store gates to make sure no one was in the shops, she said.

Some glass storefronts still were marked with an "X," a remnant of law enforcement's move to clear the mall.

Some of her shop staff members were shaken and even tearful to come back to work, Pawlick said.

Still, all the Altar'd State staff showed up to work in the ensuring week, which she considers a positive given the stress that they went through on the day of the shooting.
Some parents of children with disabilities in South Carolina are struggling to navigate special needs services in school districts across the state.

While these services look different for every child, many parents are expressing similar concerns regarding access to individual education programs, or IEPs, that help to meet their students' needs. Others say it takes years to see necessary improvements in their child's education experience.

According to the S.C. Department of Education, nearly 100,000 students with disabilities from ages 6 to 21 are currently enrolled in public schools throughout the state.

And thousands of these students use IEPs, which include customized goals and learning objectives developed by a team of teachers, parents and representatives from local educational agencies.

This was the case for Susan Cafferty, a Lexington mother of four whose 15 year old daughter, Maggie, has a degenerative neuromuscular disorder. The condition makes it difficult to do classwork in traditional forms, like completing worksheets and PDF documents.

"School is the only thing that (Maggie) gets to participate in like any other kid," Cafferty said. "I think that's why I hold on to it."

Lexington County School District One, where Maggie attends school, suggests parents who believe their child needs more rigorous instruction should first call a meeting to discuss any potential adjustments to a student's goals or other parts of the IEP.

Exceeding expectations

Maggie has had the degenerative disorder amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, since birth.

She is an eighth grade student, and has so far surpassed her expected life expectancy by 14 years. She has also exceeded many of the learning objectives and coursework that are part of her IEP.

Maggie requires a ventilator at least 15 hours per day, is non-verbal and confined to a bed or wheelchair most of the day.

Maggie is extremely intelligent, said Linda Pooley, Maggies at-home teacher for over two years. We just have to figure out what we need to show her so that we see what she's accomplishing.

Pooley has been a special education instructor in the state for 38 years and said she has seen much success working with Maggie since middle school, but does notice that more can be done to support her educationally.

I have to think outside the box and go and look for other things that will help her because I know how smart she is and that she can do (the work), Pooley added.

Over the past year, Cafferty said her daughter grew irritable and disinterested in the work teachers and instructors were providing, oftentimes pushing the work to the side and refusing to complete assignments.

There are kids that are very well served in some of these programs, Cafferty said. But when you're like my child, and you don't fit neatly in that package, there's a resistance to creativity.

Many times Cafferty said instructors would send the same worksheets over and over again for Maggie to complete. She recalled learning to count change and tell time for at least two years.

Dr. Nicole Adams, special services director for Lexington County School District One, told The Post and Courier, non-verbal students often use alternate augmented communication devices which effect their ability to communicate with members of their IEP team.

"This group of students have a convergence of multiple needs across multiple areas, which makes determining needs complex," Adams said.

Since meeting with Maggie's IEP team, LCSD1 has provided Cafferty and her daughter an alternative program, IXL Learning, that allows Maggie to complete classwork using her touchscreen tablet. The program reads the questions aloud and allows her to choose the best answer using her tablet.

According to Cafferty, shes already noticing increased engagement with class material and she seems to be moving along pretty quickly. But it took a long time to get the accommodation.

Ive been asking for this for years, Cafferty said.

Different roadblocks

Another parent, Elizabeth Murray, told The Post and Courier she has been fighting for Berkeley County School District to take her sons autism diagnosis seriously since he was diagnosed in 2019. So far, she has applied for an IEP for her son twice but the district has yet to grant one.

Academically, hes perfect, Murray said. It actually hurt us when trying to get him an IEP because the school district was looking at his academic performance instead of his behavioral needs.

William has trouble coping when he is overstimulated, mainly by loud sounds and occasional rule-breaking classmates. Hes also known to disrupt the classroom when overwhelmed. On a few occasions, hes become aggressive with other students and instructors.

As hes getting older, it's getting more dangerous for both him and the other students, Murray said. Its why weve been fighting so hard to get them to take his autism seriously.

According to Murray, BCSD has agreed to conduct another behavioral evaluation this year.

Its been three years in the making, Murray said.

Berkeley County School District did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

A group effort

According to officials from the Family Resource Center for Disabilities and Special Needs, a nonprofit group, parents are major players on any IEP team.

Beverly McCarty, executive director of FRC, said it's important for parents to know that a school cannot use "lack of resources or funding" to prevent a child from receiving the necessary services agreed upon by the IEP team.

If the team decides they need it, then they must find the money to deliver it, McCarty said.

But according to Cafferty, it's easy to feel in opposition to other members of the IEP team, especially if needs go unmet years on end.

Cafferty also considers herself privileged, having worked in the Lexington school district for 29 years. Yet she still endured numerous battles for the betterment of her daughter's education.

In almost every meeting of her entire school career, there have been tears, Cafferty said.

But for parents in different circumstances, possibly working more than one job or who arent aware of the resources available to special needs families, the outcomes could be much worse.

I think about how difficult this journey has been for us to get what our child needs, and then I think about parents that are less equipped, Cafferty said.

There is help for parents of kids with disabilities, in accordance with the Individuals with Disabilities and Education Act. The act requires every state to have at least one Community Parent Resource Center that can assist families in understanding their rights and responsibilities.

South Carolina has two Community Parent Resource Centers, Family Connection in Columbia and FRC in the Lowcountry.

"All students are general education students first, and the whole purpose of an IEP is to provide access to the general curriculum for all students," said Rebecca Davis, director of the office of special education services for the S.C. Department of Education.

"We're hoping that they're getting better and better access to the gen-ed curriculum, and there may be a point where they don't need as much support," Davis added.

Parents can go to www.parentcenterhub.org/find-your-center/ to find a Community Parent Resource Center near them.
Almost four years after Maurice Prioleau was arrested, three women filed among the benches of a windowless, humid Charleston County courtroom to watch their suspected attacker plead guilty to their rapes.

It was the first time Lee Ansaldo, 60, Cindy Hunt, 58, and Katie McCarthy, 35, saw Prioleau since he had been charged in their assault cases. The survivors thought it best to sit together that March 28 afternoon, collapsing onto one another as the hearing began to unfold.

There is much more strength in having these two women by my side in this, McCarthy said at the hearing. There is strength in numbers.

Prioleau, 46, sat at a desk surrounded by attorneys and bailiffs with his wrists shackled and a chain around his waist. The defendant was scheduled to plead to all three cases and be sentenced to 30 years in prison as part of an agreement with the 9th Circuit Solicitor's Office.

But the defense stopped the hearing about three minutes in. Prioleau changed his mind and decided to move forward with a trial, which began the next day.

Jurors weighed a complex web of evidence over the next four days that connected Prioleau to McCarthy's sexual assaults in August 2018 near a North Charleston shopping center. They were responsible for deciding whether the seemingly mild-mannered man wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses, a dark suit and a wispy mustache was guilty of the heinous crimes.

Ultimately, Prioleau left the courtroom in handcuffs. The jury found him guilty for two counts of criminal sexual conduct and armed robbery. He was found not guilty of kidnapping and a weapon offense.

Judge Kirk Griffin sentenced him to 60 years in prison.

It was the first of three trials for a man authorities say preyed on women in the tri-county area for years, luring them with offers of drugs into a secluded place before assaulting them.

As The Post and Courier previously reported, Prioleau's DNA was first discovered to be linked to Ansaldo's sexual assault in 2006, but Charleston County sheriff's detectives did not follow up on the investigation for more than a decade. McCarthy and Hunt would be sexually assaulted before his arrest in the three women's cases.

The Post and Courier does not typically identify sex assault victims, but all three women agreed to speak on the record about their experiences.

The defendant still awaits trial in Hunt's case, which dates back to June 2018, and Ansaldos assault.

McCarthy could not lean on the other two survivors for strength during the four-day trial. The 12 jurors who reached a guilty verdict did not know about Hunt or Ansaldo  the two women did not attend.

The jury was only privy to the information about what happened to McCarthy shared inside the four walls of a courtroom. She faced them alone.

The jury deliberated the charges for more than 10 hours over the span of two days.

In the midst of debate and discussion, some jurors circled one pertinent question: How much evidence is necessary for a jury to believe a woman alleging rape?

A hollowing testimony

McCarthy looked jurors straight in the eye during five hours of testimony on the first day of the trial  Wednesday, March 30. Marshall Willis, a jury member, told The Post and Courier in an interview after the trial that it made him feel connected to her.

She looked right at us when she talked, Willis said. It was such a hollowing experience.

Where to get help Tri-County S.P.E.A.K.S.: Sexual assault services for Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester Phone 843-577-9882 Hotline 843-745-0144 Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network Hotline 800-656-HOPE (4673)

McCarthy was grilled during those hours on the stand about every detail of what happened that night.

The survivor talked through the moments she was with Prioleau, from the minute he first approached her and through each assault, which began in her car and continued behind a building adjacent to the lot.

McCarthy, who was choking on sobs and attempting to tame tremors, demonstrated to a 9th Circuit deputy solicitor how she remembered the defendant grabbing her and dragging her out of the car.

She was a lion of a person, Willis said. She was a very powerful person.

There was an audio recording of McCarthy begging Prioleau for her life. It was recorded by McCarthys ex-boyfriend, whom she dialed while in the car.

I am Katie, she said in the recording. What is your name? Can you please tell me your name before you kill me?

Nurses who helped McCarthy that August night spoke before the jury, identifying pictures depicting the damage done to her body. So did an analyst from State Law Enforcement Division, who testified Prioleaus DNA was found in McCarthys car after the rape.

The jurors saw police body-camera video of McCarthy at a gas station after the assault, wearing her dress inside out. An officer filmed her dropping to the floor, pressing herself up against the gas stations counter and crying into her knees. There was another video of McCarthy with a nurse at the hospital.

A criminal trial pits two competing stories  one told by the prosecutor and the other from the defense attorney  against each other. The men and women in the jury box are then asked to pick a side.

In one version of the story, McCarthy was sexually assaulted twice by Prioleau at knifepoint after a chance encounter at the shopping center. Prioleau, in an unusual move, took the stand himself, claiming he had consensual, albeit rough, sex with McCarthy in exchange for drugs.

Willis believed McCarthy.

The juror went into the deliberation process at about 5 p.m. April 1 thinking everyone would agree, predicting the jurys discussion would take no longer than an hour. He thought he could make it home in time for dinner.

Willis soon realized he was wrong.

Some jurors were wary that McCarthys testimony alone would be enough proof to find Prioleau guilty. One juror initially did not believe McCarthy at all, he said.

Some people did not want to strictly go on her testimony, Willis said. If those recordings hadnt existed  it is not my place to say how the other jurors would have felt, but I think they wouldve had a much more difficult time.

He said. She said.

The jurors weighed Prioleaus testimony, which contradicted McCarthy.

Everything that happened that night was consensual, Prioleau asserted  he recalled McCarthy agreed to have sex with him in exchange for ecstasy and crack cocaine.

Prioleau admitted it was his voice on the audio recording of McCarthy in the car. The jurors heard him shout at McCarthy: Be quiet. You need to be quiet.

Prioleau claimed the sex was rough, but it was not rape.

It was forceful, it was, Prioleau said. And that is what had her all scared.

Ninth Circuit Assistant Solicitor Jennifer Shealy played the recording for Prioleau, pausing the tape every moment or so.

Did she say here, Promise me you wont bury me? Shealy asked Prioleau after pausing the recording.

I dont remember her saying that, he said.

Some jurors did not know who to believe, Willis said. They would reference the case as a he said, she said, situation. No one knew for certain, besides McCarthy and Prioleau, the truth of what happened that night.

Sex crimes cases, in general, are difficult to prosecute because of conflicting testimony, said Anne Coughlin, a University of Virginia law professor who focuses on sex crimes.

Studies show womens stories are often not believed when they say they had been assaulted. Only 50 out of every 1,000 sexual assault cases lead to an arrest. Of those 50 arrests, 28 cases lead to felony convictions, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

Coughlin said sex crimes are significant accusations juries should take seriously, though doubts about womens testimony can also be reflective of systemic gender inequity.

The reliability of the accusation is huge, Coughlin said. For the accused person, their liberty is at stake. But why do we have special concerns about the reliability of women when it comes to our testimony about rape and sexual assault?

An unenviable bond The Post and Courier reported March 20 that Prioleaus DNA was linked to Lee Ansaldos sexual assault, which occurred in 2006. But the Charleston County Sheriffs Office did not follow-up on the DNA evidence until 2018. Prioleau was charged in her rape that December. Both Cindy Hunt and Katie McCarthy were assaulted in that 11-year span. Prioleau also faced a bevy of charges during that decade. He was found twice not guilty in two different sexual assault cases that went to trial between 2010 and 2014. In December 2007, Prioleau was charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct in an April 2006 case. He pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and battery in 2010 and was sentenced to about three years in prison, concurrent to time he had already served. He did not have to register as a sex offender as part of the plea deal. Ansaldo broke down crying when saw Prioleau enter the courtroom at the March 28 plea hearing. She leaned on the shoulders of McCarthy and Hunt, shaking. Those tears just came out from somewhere deep, Ansaldo said to Hunt and McCarthy after the hearing. I didn't even know I had that in me. And I dont know what I would have done without you two. Hunt and McCarthy get it, they said. Being in that courtroom brings back memories that haunt them  painful moments that have lingered since they were assaulted. I just know this is starting to finally be over, Hunt said as she left the courtroom. Something is finally shaking.  Olivia Diaz

The jury returned the following Monday and listened once more to recordings of McCarthy and Prioleau. They also listened again to hours-long testimony from the DNA analyst, scribbling in their notebooks what they heard.

McCarthys consistency during questioning was important, Willis said. If she were lying, she would have made up certain details in her story within 15 to 20 minutes between when Prioleau left her and when she went to the gas station, he believed.

If she was able to put on an act all of that night and all of the next day, then going forward three and a half years later at the courts now, then she is the best actress that ever existed, he said.

A juror must believe that a person committed a crime "beyond a reasonable doubt," meaning the evidence establishes the defendant's guilt so clearly that any rational person would accept it as fact.

After agonizing over the evidence, jurors reached an agreement: Prioleau was guilty of both criminal sexual assault charges and kidnapping.

But the jury did not reach consensus on whether Prioleau had a knife during the attack, despite McCarthy's testimony. Without a weapon, he also couldn't be convicted of armed robbery.

The 12 jurors filed into the court. McCarthy sat on the very bench where she and two other survivors huddled a week prior. She was this time surrounded by victims advocates and family.

McCarthy heard the word 'guilty.' She felt an instant relief.

A changed life

McCarthy waited in the courthouse during the lengthy deliberation, wondering what they were thinking.

She worried about a mistrial or, worse, a not-guilty verdict, but she remained hopeful: It had been nearly four years since her rape and this part of her life would soon end. Closure was near.

But in the weeks since the verdict, McCarthy finds this chapter remains open.

Even though he is going to be in prison for 60 years, it is still not over for me, McCarthy said. I am always wondering why.  It is very maddening.

McCarthy wonders why it took a recording of an assault or videos of the aftermath to prove she was raped. She often thinks about other women who have been raped and whose cases do not have substantial evidence.

She also thinks of Ansaldo and Hunt  the two women who initially sat beside her and are still awaiting trial in their rapes.

The worst night of McCarthys life was put on trial. She had to relive every moment of that evening, even those her memory blocked out. The experience changed her life.

It is unclear what lies ahead, though McCarthy remains confident.

She has come this far. McCarthy knows she will survive no matter the outcome.
Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations.
One of the smallest boats in the 2022 South Carolina Wahoo Series came home with the tournament's top prize of $35,000. Fish Sticks, a 23-foot Seacraft captained by Gifford Scott of John's Island, was the winning boat in the tournament that wrapped up April 17.

Virtually assured of a top-five finish after using two of their three fishing days, Scott and his crew headed offshore on April 11 for their final fishing day and caught a 71.6-pound wahoo that catapulted them to the top spot.

Fish Sticks' winning weight was 177.4 pounds in the tournament in which a team's two heaviest fish out of three days of fishing count toward the aggregate total. The crew landed a 105.8-pound wahoo on March 28, caught a 42.7-pound catch on April 3 before adding the fish that moved them ahead of Kalli Kat, captained by Larry Mullis or Ridgeville. Kalli Kat finished its' fishing on March 14 with 167.0 pounds, landing a 99.7-pound wahoo on its final day.

"You have to pick your days, and that's what this tournament is designed for. It worked out well this year," Scott said of being a small boat participant.

Scott, a 34-year-old fishing guide (scflatsfishing.com), has fished the S.C. Wahoo Series a number of years but only the last three in his 23 Seacraft. His crew members who rotated days on the boat during the competition included Drew DeMasi, Cotes Simons Jr., Joe Benton, Ethan Frye, Palmer Freshly and Kinley Durant.

"I thought this was one of the great heavyweight battles. They were fighting to the end. We had an outstanding year with some really nice fish," said S.C. Wahoo Series chairman Marc Pincus. The tournament had 162 entries.

Scott knew his team was in position to do well after their first fish day, March 28, when they boated the 105.8-pound wahoo, one of two hundred-pound wahoo caught during the tournament.

"It was not the nicest day in the world. I would call it moderate but tolerable," he said. "We got out there and had one hit trolling but didn't get it and then that one hit on a lure.

"The fish took a good bit of line so we had an idea it would be a nice fish. We haven't caught one that big ever, but we've caught some decent fish. Cotes was on the rod when we gaffed it and got it onboard," Scott continued.

"When that fish came up to the surface and we saw it, the whole boat went real quiet. Drew did a good job leadering the fish and Joe gaffed it. When we got it onboard, I think there was an additional 10 seconds or so of quiet disbelief, then excitement. It was pretty wild. We came right in and weighed it."

Scott said he had caught a 96-pound wahoo last year and knew it was in that size range "but to have it break 100 pounds was a real treat."

The second fish, a 42.7-pound catch on April 3, moved Fish Sticks into third place and Scott said he felt confident they would stay in the top 11 (who earned checks) but their total was still beatable.

April 11, Fish Sticks' final fishing day, started out windy with lots of competition.

"There were 69 boats that were fishing the tournament that day and that doesn't include other boats that were out there fishing, so it was pretty crowded," Scott said. "It was real busy with a lot of people trying to catch fish in a pretty small area. And the bite didn't last long for us."

They lost a fish early, checked their rig and then went back over the spot and got another hit which turned out to be the 71.6-pound fish. They fished a little longer and caught one more fish before heading to Toler's Cove to weigh their catch.

"It wasn't a super long fish, but a really fat fish, so it was kind of hard to judge. We were confident we would move up but weren't sure how high," Scott said. And, he added, even after finding out they had move into the top spot there still were other boats with an opportunity to catch them.

"I love the format. It's super competitive with different sized boats. We were in pretty good shape, but it's a pretty nerve-wracking tournament," Scott said.

Scott said one of the good things about fishing a smaller boat was they didn't burn as much expensive fuel as some of their bigger competitors.

In addition to the $35,000 grand prize, Fish Sticks earned an additional $4,000 for finishing second in the heaviest wahoo TWT (tournament within a tournament).

Second-place Kallie Kat won a total of $17,700.

The biggest winner was third-place finisher Reel Labor, captained by Mark Pate of Chapin, with 162.3 pounds, including the the largest wahoo in series history, 119.3 pounds. Reel Labor won a total of $45,500  $10,000 for finishing third; $22,000 for winning the High Roller TWT (biggest fish in the tournament); $6,900 for winning the Wahoo TWT; and $6,600 for winning the First Day TWT.

Also finishing in the money were: It Ain't Easy, Jon Cameron, Murrells Inlet, 143.5, $7,000; Midnight Rider, Adam Brown, Murrells Inlet, 128.5, $5,500; The Cure, Clinton Beck, John's Island, 127.0, $4,000; Stranglehold, Chas Shiels, Statesboro, Ga., 119.1, $2,500; Riff Raff, Rob Holmes, Mount Pleasant, 113.1, $2,000; No Name, Ted Joye, Charleston, 108.2, $1,500; Stocks and Blonds, Michael Schiess, Pawleys Island, 107.5, $1,200; Fish Meister, Russell Spathold, Calabash, 107.4, $1,000.

Full Hookups out of Beaufort won the Mahi TWT and $7,900 with a 35.5-pound catch; High Yield took home $8,700 with a 31.9-pound blackfin in the Tuna TWT; and Mas Pescado won the Amberjack TWT and $3,000 with a 56.2-pound catch.

Kalli Mullis, aboard Kalli Kat out of Ridgeville, was the top youth (167.0 pounds) and top lady angler (99.7 pounds). Jack Walker, aboard Vitamin Sea, was the top senior with a 43.6-pound wahoo.

Daily big fish winners included: Day 1, Reel Labor, 119.3; Day 2, The Cure, 88.4; and Day 3, Swedish Fish, 71.4.

S.C. Mahi Series

The captain's meeting for the 2022 S.C. Mahi Series (scmahiseries.com) will be held from 1-4 p.m. April 30 at the Pioneer Boat Factory, located at 208 Upchurch Lane in Walterboro.

Fish days are May 1-28, with boats allowed to choose two fishing days and weigh two mahi (dolphinfish) each day. A boat's two heaviest dolphin count toward the $15,000 winner's prize.

Charleston Inshore Anglers

The Charleston Inshore Anglers' 29th annual "Big Ed" Sheepshead Tournament will be fished April 30. The captain's meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. April 28 at American Legion Post 147, located at 968 Folly Road. The weigh-in also will take place at Post 147 from 4-5 p.m. April 30. The entry fee for the tournament is $40. Contact Kevin Mischke at 843-324-1006; Nick Kvestad at 843-557-2811 or Gene Broderick at 843-224-6826.

America's Boating Club

America's Boating Club Charleston will hold boating safety classes April 30 and May 14 at 1376 Orange Grove Road, Charleston. Classes begin at 9 a.m. and end around 4 p.m. Successful participants earn the S.C. Department of Natural Resources Boater Education Card. The cost is $25 for adults and youth 12-18 are free. Call 843-312-2876 or email dauntlessness.
There have been contradictions about our local government's strategy on COVID-19 testing and limitations for those who have come in close cont Read more
In 1973, Time magazine famously praised Minnesota as the state that works. Its cover photo of Governor Wendell Anderson holding a Northern made Minnesota politicians, especially Democrats, delirious with joy.

The Time article praised Minnesotas political leadership for, among other things, having the courage to enact substantial tax increases. Unfortunately, in succeeding years our politicians have rarely lacked for courage, and things have not turned out as Time foretold in the early 70s.

If you ask what states are working today, there are several obvious answers: Texas, Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, Utah. But dont forget South Dakota, my home state. Yesterday Governor Kristi Noem posted a series of graphics on Instagram touting South Dakotas economic successes. They are impressive; here are some of them:

In her Instagram post, Noem wrote:

Two years ago, when the pandemic made its way to America, states across this country shut their doors out of fear. All but one. South Dakota built opportunity out of that difficulty, and the result is a booming economy  the strongest in the nation.

The states that acted least hysterically during the covid epidemicFlorida, Texas, South Dakotaare naturally doing the best coming out of that era. But of course that isnt the whole story. Those states were already doing well, and the most oppressive statesfor example California, New York, Illinois and Minnesotawere already in relative decline before the epidemic began.

It is no coincidence that some of our most prosperous states, like Texas, Florida, Tennessee and South Dakota, have no personal income tax. They accomplish this in part through spending restraint. When I heard Ron DeSantis talk to a group in Naples in February, he said that Floridas state budget is half that of New York, despite having three million more people. I thought, that cant possibly be right. But I looked it up; it is. In the 21st century, too much government is the great destroyer of social and economic progress. Not to mention liberty.
When the sun comes up in France a few hours from now, the polls will open for the runoff election between President Emanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. All of the pre-election surveys show Macron with a comfortable 10-point lead over Le Pen, but if the election comes out this way it will be a major narrowing from the last election in 2017, which Macron won over Le Pen by a 66  33% margin. In other words, while 2017 was a landslide, this election shows the shift in momentum in French opinion.

The media and the establishment are very nervous about the election tomorrow, despite Macrons consistent lead in the polls. The media and the establishment are still suffering PTSD from Brexit and Trump. A Le Pen win cant be ruled out. The biggest question mark is whether turnout by the young, which skewed sharply to Le Pen in the first round, will be higher than the survey models expect. The establishment is nearly hysterical in warnings about how Le Pen is a Putin puppet, and Macron has even been trying to learn rap music to relate to the youts of Paris.

Think talk of the establishment is overdone cliche? Behold The Hill:

The U.S. establishment is clearly hoping for a Macron victory, though the Biden administration publicly has said it is watching the election closely and emphasized the contest is a decision for the French people.

CNN reports that a Le Pen victory could crash the economy:

Investors remain on edge. With polls indicating the presidential election is narrower than when the two candidates faced off in 2017, traders are girding for a surprise Le Pen win, which would rattle Europes second biggest economy as fears of a recession in the region grow.

It could be bigger than Brexit. It could be bigger than Trump, if Le Pen prevails, said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets. In research published on Tuesday, strategists at Citi put the probability of a Le Pen win at 35%. Still, they encouraged clients to hedge their bets on French government bonds, and cautioned that a Le Pen win would hurt stocks.

I expect Macron will prevail, but nice to see the establishment sweat a little.

UPDATE, Sunday, 11 am EDT. This is interesting:

UPDATE 2: The polls are closed, and exit polls show an easy Macron win, probably 59  41.
Over the last few days I have wasted spent some time watching the cross-examination of Johnny Depp in his libel suit against ex-wife Amber Heard. I come to the case without preconceptions, having never seen a movie in which either appeared, and not, to my recollection, having heard of Ms. Heard prior to the lawsuit. Here are some observations, based on what I have seen so far.

* The trial is being conducted in a remarkably old-fashioned manner. They are laying foundation for exhibits and redacting documents in front of the jury. Nowadays, exhibits are normally ruled on before trial begins and jury time is not wasted on foundation. The way they are doing it not only wastes time, it leads to a slow pace in which it is hard for the examiner to gain any momentum.

* This is aggravated by the fact that the lawyer cross-examining Depp has not exactly sparkled. Did I read that correctly? is not the most effective mode of cross-examination.

* The impression one gets of both Mr. Depp and Ms. Heard is appalling. Depp is apparently a hopeless drunk and drug addict, and Ms. Heard seems only marginally better, although I might modify that view when she testifies. It is hard to imagine bringing a defamation case when the question of who defecated in the bed inevitably becomes an issue. These people are way below average in every way.

* The trial gallery consists almost entirely of rather young women. I take it that they are Depp fans. As best I can gather, he seems to be the popular favorite in the trial.

* Ms. Heard might actually be a good actress. In any event, she makes a positive impression in court. To begin with, she is very pretty. She dresses primly and looks pained, often on the verge of crying, as she watches Depp testify. Of course, those feelings could well be genuine, too.

* The case arises out of an op-ed that Heard wrote (or signed, anyway, reportedly it was written by someone from the ACLU). In the op-ed, Heard described herself as a victim of domestic abuse without naming Depp. So the case seems to turn on whether Depp ever hit Heard. It appears to be conceded that on occasion, she hit him. Based on the evidence so far, I dont blame her.

* The key evidence includes several audio and video recordings of the two engaged in argumentsa sign of the times, I guess. One video is rather horrifying: it shows Depp, high on drugs and likely drunk, rampaging around a kitchen, smashing cabinets, screaming at Heard, and so on. He is in what one could describe as a violent rage, something that apparently was not unusual.

* These recordings strike me as ambiguous in an interesting way. On one hand, they make it easy to imagine the out-of-control Depp slugging his wife. On the other hand, in the recordings he never actually hits her. They might incline the jury to conclude that even at his worst, while he may be a terrible human being, Depp was not a wife-beater.

* Depp is missing the tip of one middle finger. He claims that Heard cut it off by throwing a vodka bottle at him, a seemingly implausible scenario. I believe her story is that he cut it off with a knife. In any event, after losing his finger tip Depp went around the place where they were staying in Australia, writing messages with his finger in blood and later in paint. A charming anecdote.

* In this case, Depp alleges that Heards op-ed destroyed his career along with his reputation. This could be true. As the trial proceeds there will be more testimony on this point. An obvious question is whether Depp, by the end of 2018 when the op-ed was published, was in any condition to be employable as an actor.

* Depp has already lost a defamation case in the U.K., where he sued the Sun for calling him a wife-beater. In that case, a court trial, the judge found the Suns characterization to be true. Pursuing a second case in which he makes the same allegations seems almost to manifest a death wish.

* But then, who knows, he might win. Based on what I have seen so far, my guess is that the jury will send the parties away in the same condition they found them. It is hard to imagine awarding damages to someone as degenerate as Depp, as manifested most of all in his text messages about his then-wife, which cant be printed on a family web site. Depp and Heard had an appallingly awful, self-destructive marriage, and happily they ended it some years ago. That seems like a reasonable place to let the story rest.

Depp vs. Heard has somewhat the appeal of watching a slow-motion car accident, and I probably will tune in periodically. If I have any further impressions I will post them here.
I havent been a fan of Glenn Greenwald. I disagreed with his take on the war on terror and I have found his views on Israel repulsive, to say the least.

Since he left the practice of law to pursue journalism, however, Greenwald has become a renowned journalist. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his role in the Snowden affair, about which much is to be learned from Edward Jay Epsteins How America Lost Its Secrets. He also went onstage to pick up an Academy Award with Laura Poitras et al. in 2015 for the Snowden documentary Citizenfour. Greenwald is his own man, but I think they told the story as Snowden wanted it told.

It might nevertheless be noted, as I take it from Eds book, that the vast majority of documents Snowden stole (including military secrets) had nothing to do with government misdeeds and were not given to journalists. In light of current events, Eds concluding chapters on Snowdens refuge in Russia take on heightened interest along with his account of his research in Russia. I recommend Eds book to anyone interested in the Snowden story beyond the headlines.

If I may borrow Glenn Reynoldss formulation, I would like to say that weve descended into some sort of bizarre hellworld in which Greenwald has become the voice of reason. He quit the Intercept, the site he co-founded with Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, when it declined to publish his article on Joe and Hunter Biden in connection with Hunter Bidens infamous laptop (TITLE: THE REAL SCANDAL: U.S. MEDIA USES FALSEHOODS TO DEFEND JOE BIDEN FROM HUNTERS EMAILS). Greenwald provided an account of his resignation on Substack here.

Denouncing what he calls corporate journalism, Greenwald has become a powerful voice calling for fairness and accountability. In the video below posted on his Substack site, Greenwald criticizes the doxing of the Libs of TikTok Twitter tweeter by Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz. Greenwalds account in the first 20 minutes of the video is excellent and thorough, even if my take on the Pentagon Papers case, subsequent exposures of highly classified intelligence, and the neocon led war on terror, as Greenwald puts it in what follows, doesnt exactly jibe with his.

We dont really need Greenwalds review of his career in journalism to understand his critique of Taylor Lorenz, the Washington Post, and the corporate journalism they represent. However, he establishes his own thesis about the journalism he respects and the whole thing is illuminating in its own way.
A lot of leftists are claiming that the move of Florida Republicans to strip Disneys favorable tax treatment and local governance prerogatives is a hypocritical attack on free speech, but it is nothing of the sort. There is no attempt to curtail the speech or political activism of Disney or any other corporation, though the irony is that the left wants corporate political speech banned or regulated by the government, so whats their problem?

The message of the Florida bill is simple: if you want to wade into politics, fine. Just dont expect us to protect your corporate welfare. This is good policy, as well as good politics. Let Democrats be the party of Wall Street and big business.

Meanwhile, there are other signs that perhaps corporate America is rethinking its capitulation to wokery. From the Houston Chronicle:

Exxons ban on LGBTQ, Black Lives Matter flags at Houston headquarters sparks employee backlash Exxon Mobil Corp. plans to prohibit the LGBTQ-rights flag from being flown outside its offices during Pride month in June, prompting a furious backlash from Houston-based employees. Exxon updated company guidance on what flags can be displayed outside its offices, banning external position flags such as PRIDE and Black Lives Matter, according to the policy seen by Bloomberg News. In response, members of Exxons PRIDE Houston Chapter are refusing to represent the company at the citys June 25 Pride celebration, according to an employee group email also seen by Bloomberg.

Also comes news that the former CEO of McDonalds is starting a new organization to fight against corporate wokery:

Ex-McDonalds CEO Ed Rensi: Companies have no business being in politics Former McDonalds CEO Ed Rensi said companies have no business being in politics  and has launched a conservative initiative to fight woke corporate policies. The 78-year-old  who led the Golden Arches from 1991 to 1997  spearheaded The Boardroom Initiative to push back against boardrooms of American corporations that have become too politicized, Fox Business reported. Corporations have no business being on the right or the left because they represent everybody there and their sole job is to build equity for their investors, the man who thought up Chicken McNuggets told Fox Business.

Fox Business reports that the first initiative of The Boardroom Initiative will be a resolution at upcoming annual meeting of Bank of America:
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), experts in the academia, the public sector and enthusiasts of technology for development, have deliberated on the benefits derivable from emerging technologies such as blockchain, to advance the growth of the Nigerian economy.

At a recently-organised two-day workshop by the Commission, in collaboration with the Bureau of Public Sector Reforms (BPSR), attendees were in accord that through effective implementation of policies as expressed in guidelines, regulations and directions driven by the NCC, blockchain could be a bedrock of economic innovation and growth.

The workshop, which took place in Abuja and focused on Distributed Ledger Technology (Blockchain) Ecosystem, Decentralisation and Adoption Methods, drew participants from financial institutions, Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), the academia, the Nigerian military, and paramilitary forces, the Nigerian Cyberwarfare Command, and the private sector.

The attendees, who spoke in turn at the workshop, acknowledged and appreciated the role of NCC in engendering a dynamic digital regulatory environment, the remarkable contribution to the growth and development of novel and emerging technologies, and NCCs adoption of adaptive mechanisms that have enhanced emerging technologies in Nigeria.

Addressing the audience at the event, NCCs Director, New Media and Information Security, Haru Al-Hassan, who delivered the opening speech at the event, on behalf of the Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission, Umar Danbatta, said existing national digital economy frameworks such as the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS), 2020-2030 instituted by the Federal Government as well as regulatory initiatives by the Commission, have been significant enablers of Blockchain and emerging technologies in the country.

According to Mr Al- Hassan, good regulatory policies are the bedrock of innovation and growth and it is the aspiration of the Commission that Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) otherwise known as Blockchain and other innovative technologies and services would continue to thrive and contribute to the growth and development of Nigeria.

In the same vein, the Director-General, BPSR, Dasuki Arabi, informed the audience that the Nigerian government was already making efforts, through a number of initiatives, to harmonizing emerging technologies with the contemporary public service sector in a way that strengthens the efficiency of the public sector. He also affirmed that Blockchain would be central in the implementation of the National e-Govt Masterplan.

The BPSR Chief Executive equally listed the introduction of the Treasury Single Account (TSA), the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), the Bank Verification Number (BVN), automation of enforcement activities of some agencies of the government, including the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), as well as automated performance measurement systems for public sector employees, as concrete examples of the utilisation of technology in the public sector.

Mr Arabi asserted that Nigeria ranks third in Africa, in the use of telecommunications for public service delivery, coming behind South Africa and Egypt. Arabi called on policymakers to ensure robust policy formulation that ensures improved digital literacy and increased automation in public service delivery.

Other speakers at the event included Abdul-kareem Oloyede of University of Ilorin, Kwara State; Amaka Ukwueze and Vivian Okonkwo, both of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Enugu State, and Romi Legha of the Indian High Commission.

Mr Oloyede, who clarified the difference between Blockchain and Bitcoin, stated that the former is the underlying technology used for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. He also stated that Blockchain could be utilised to minimise expenditure and expenses, speed up transactions, and improve data security for financial institutions, health care, and businesses.

Ms Ukwueze particularly applauded the Commission for taking the lead in discussions on DLTs considering the fact that Nigeria does not have a clear-cut Blockchain policy yet, even though countries worldwide had begun integrating DLT as a central part of their business practices.

Republic of Malta, a southern European island country, located in the south central region of the Mediterranean Sea, incorporated Blockchain into its digital and economic ecosystem. Also, China, Abu Dhabi, and Japan are also instituting DLT-friendly regulations in their governance processes, Ms Ukwueze said.

Accordingly, Ms Ukwueze urged the Federal Government to adopt Blockchain deployment actively, promote legal certainty for Blockchain applications, and provide a flexible and adaptive regulatory environment that fosters innovation. Conclusively, Ukwueze stated that governments regulatory enforcement processes must seek to encourage companies to be consumer-centric and ensure compliance.

In her contribution to the discourse, Ms Okonkwo said adoption of Blockchain technology would be essential in documentation, archiving, cloud storage, identity management, and online education. Additionally, Okonkwo declared that blockchain is a cost-effective method of optimising the quality of the educational administrative processes, and equally a cost-effective application that could improve service delivery across the nation.

The DLT, such as Blockchain, DAG; Hashgraph; Holochain; Tempo (Radix), is a digital system for recording transactions of assets at multiple places simultaneously. The key features of DLT include: immutability (once written, it is extremely difficult to alter), and peer-to-peer sharing, in the sense that ledger is shared among peers while there is no central ownership.

SIGNED

Dr. Ikechukwu Adinde

Director, Public Affairs

April 23, 2022
Eniola Adenuga is a businessman with interests in power, real estate and e-commerce technology. In this interview, he speaks to PREMIUM TIMES on how Nigeria can address its energy crisis, boost economic growth and encourage productivity.



PT: The frequency of grid collapse and its effect on the real sector of the economy has been quite troubling, especially in recent weeks. Whats your take about these ugly developments?

Adenuga: It is worrisome, to put it mildly. Nigerias national electricity grid has collapsed more than 200 times in the last nine years. The economic implications due to blackouts caused by poor infrastructure and determination to fix Nigerias power problem, is alarming. It is said that in sub-Saharan Africa, every one per cent increase in power outages (in terms of hours) has been associated with a 2.86% decrease in gross domestic product (GDP). This translates to a loss of about US$28 billion in GDP. Generally, businesses are stifled, socio-economic development is impacted and the cost of living just keeps going up. We are at a critical point now, where it is imperative for us to fix power once and for all in Nigeria. The rest of the world has moved on to tackle more advanced problems and preparing for the possibilities of the future, while we are still stuck grappling with a problem that many have moved on from decades ago.

PT: Why exactly do you think Nigeria has failed to address its power crisis over the years?

Adenuga: I really cant say that it is one thing that is responsible. Nigeria currently has an installed capacity of 12,522 MW of power, but it is only able to generate around 4,000 MW, which is nowhere sufficient to meet the needs of a country as big as Nigeria. The GenCos will say its because of the debt they are owed by the government. The government will tell you that lack of supply of gas is the reason power supply is limited. While the operators and the government agencies continue to point fingers, power supply has remained abysmally low. However, from my little experience as an investor in the power sector so far, the sheer lack of vision and support available to well-meaning private individuals does not inspire much positive outcome for a sector that the government has repeatedly shown to be either incapable or uninterested in addressing appropriately. For example, a power project I am familiar with, which is a solar power generation plant, is currently being stalled by undue government agency bureaucracy and lack of vision. We have lost three years of ample time we could have used to boost power generation in the country because of an ineffective government agency and restrictive policies.

PT: The privatisation efforts put in place in recent years have achieved little in repositioning the power sector. What do you think are the underlying issues?

Adenuga: It is surely not for lack of interest or passion from private entrepreneurs and corporations. For privatization efforts to yield substantive results, there is much that the government needs to do to create an enabling environment for privatization endeavours to thrive and flourish. To shed some light on this, in July 2016, the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trader (NBET) signed a Front-Runner Solar Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) worth US$1.75 billion with 14 companies to build 1.125 Megawatts (MW) capacity of renewable power in Nigeria at the cost of $2.5billion. However, in 2018, the government reportedly cancelled the Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) signed with these solar project developers.

Recall also that in 2020, the World Bank announced a plan to invest $750 million in Nigerias power sector. This was to ensure that at least 4,500 megawatts-hour/hour of electricity is supplied to the distribution grid from 2022. It was however gathered that only about $94.6 million out of the $750 million intervention fund had been disbursed so far.

These promising projects have been impacted by the deep-seated and multi-faceted problems facing the value chain of Nigerias electricity sector.

If the relevant agencies and bodies do not work closely with the investors, or apply forward-thinking approaches to fixing power, there is little or nothing that privatization can do, everyones hands are pretty tied and waiting on the government to do the right thing.

PT: What then is the place of renewables in pursuit of solutions to the Nigerian power sector crisis?

Adenuga: A 2019 report by the director-general of the Energy Commission of Nigeria estimated that if one per cent of Nigerias land area were to be covered with a solar technology of five percent efficiency, about 333,480 megawatts of electricity could be generated, which is believed to be more than enough for the country. It is definitely the angle we should be going for as a country. All over the world, nations are taking steps to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels for power generation. They are more sustainable and beneficial to the environment. In Nigeria however, it is a case of us still learning to crawl before we can fly. My investment in the power sector is a solar energy solution, and more solutions like these need to be supported and promoted by the government and their sectoral agencies.

PT: How can government and private investors come in, especially in the area of renewable energy solutions?

Adenuga: The private investors are readily available, both homegrown and foreign investments.

PT: So whats the problem, really?

Adenuga: It is the harmony between the private investors and the government that yet needs to be worked on. There are a lot of brilliant ideas out there looking to tackle the power issues in Nigeria by leveraging renewable energy solutions, but a lot of them are faced with situations and an environment that is not enabling enough for them to thrive, while some never even see the light of day. For starters, the electricity market would need to be reviewed to allow for more energy trading. How this can play out is that an autonomous energy producer will be able to sell excess power to a residential estate, for example, at a price the buyer and seller agree on.

The current structure is such that, anyone generating over 1MW of electricity needs a power generation licence to legally trade energy. A more realistic benchmark would be about 10MW, so that licensing doesnt become a bureaucratic stumbling block, just like I experienced with acquiring my own license.

PT: Any other policy suggestions on the way forward?

Adenuga: In general, effective energy policies and regulatory frameworks would be needed to allow for more private investments into the industry. So, whether it is tax breaks, reduced bureaucracy or favourable policies, the governments end is surely where the bulk of the necessary adjustments need to be done.
About seven weeks to the deadline for the submission of the lists of candidates for next years General Election to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the two major political parties are yet to decide on two niggling issues that may shape the presidential race.

From which parts of Nigeria will the presidential candidates of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) come from, and how will they be nominated?

These are the elephants in the room as the PDP concluded the sales of expression of interest and nomination forms, and the APC began its own.

Section 29(1) of the Electoral Act states that political parties shall hold a primary and submit the list of candidates no later than 180 days before the general election. INEC has fixed June 3 as that deadline.

In response, the PDP will conclude its primaries with the nomination of its presidential candidate at its national convention scheduled for May 28 and 29, while the APC will hold its own convention from May 30 to June 1.

Mode of Primaries

Neither of the parties has confirmed which of the three options allowed under the electoral law it would use in nominating its presidential candidate.

Section 84 (2) of the Electoral Act states that: The procedure for the nomination of candidates by political parties for the various elective positions shall be by direct, indirect primaries or consensus.

Consensus

Over a few weeks, four PDP northern presidential aspirants went around the country urging party leaders to support the choice of the presidential candidate by consensus. After being largely rebuffed, they settled on choosing a consensus candidate for the North.

On Friday, a former vice-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Ango Abdullahi, curiously announced in Minna, Niger State that northern elders had chosen Bauchi Governor Bala Mohammed and former Senate President Bukola Saraki as the consensus candidates. One of the four, Sokoto Governor Aminu Tamuwal, promptly rejected the decision, saying the aspirants had earlier agreed to drop the campaign, having realised that it could not work. Even before the consensus campaign of the four ended in fiasco, aspirants appeared to have all accepted the inevitability of a contest at the end of May in an indirect primary.

In the APC, the issue is not that straightforward. There, the word consensus is a euphemism for the imposition of a candidate by President Muhammadu Buhari or those who can use his name to do so. The party had last month selected its national chairman deploying the mode, after which it emerged that other candidates were coerced by some government officials and a security agency to step down for Abdullahi Adamu, a latecomer into the race.

But on Wednesday, the president warned against imposition of candidates, reiterating remarks he made in an interview with Channels Television in January where he said he has no interest in who succeeds him.

Yet, at the meeting of the partys NEC where Mr Buhari gave the warning, the APC neglected to end the suspense on the mode it would choose for the presidential primary. Instead, the NEC delegated its powers, including the power to make that decision, to the National Working Committee of the party. The governor of Kebbi State, Abubakar Bagudu, who is the chairman of the forum of APC governors, later said party leaders were leaning towards indirect primaries but were yet to decide.

Zoning

The other issue on which suspense remains is whether the presidential tickets of the two parties would be zoned to aspirants from any particular section of the country or not.

There has been a clamour for the rotation of the presidency to the South, as the North would have held the position for eight years at the end of President Buharis second term in 2023. Prominent among those who have made the calls are the Southern Governors Forum, which members cut across three parties; regional associations like Afenifere of the South-west, Ohanaeze Ndigbo of the South-east, PANDEF of the South-south and the Middle Belt Forum, and the Christian Association of Nigeria.

The South-east is particularly demanding the position because the Igbo are the remaining of Nigerias three largest ethnic groups yet to produce the president.

Indications in the APC suggest the party has conceded the presidential ticket to the South. All the aspirants that have declared, except Kogi Governor Yahaya Bello, are from the region, supporting a claim by Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai in February that party leaders had agreed on an arrangement in which North and South would swap the national offices they currently hold.

We have agreed on a zoning formula for all the six geopolitical zones and essentially, we swapped, northern zones will take positions that southern zones had in the last eight years and vice versa. So very simple, equitable and fair formula, the governor said, although with specific reference to party offices.

Ortom Committee

On its part, the PDP may have quietly thrown open its presidential primaries to aspirants from all parts of the country. The party had set up a 37-member committee headed by Benue Governor Samuel Ortom to recommend a position on the issue, but several weeks after the committee submitted its report to the NEC, the party has not said a word about it.

This is probably because the issue has become a hot potato in the party, one that party leaders fear could mar the partys chances in the presidential election if not carefully handled. After the Ortom committee submitted its report with the media initially reporting that it recommended open primaries, governors of the party from the southern states again met and insisted on zoning the presidency to their region. The partys leadership has not responded to their demand, and aspirants like former vice president Atiku Abubakar, who was the partys candidate in the last election, and the consensus-seeking four have refused to accept the zoning proposal.

Seventeen aspirants from across the country eventually picked the PDPs presidential expression of interest and nomination forms before the sales closed on Saturday.

As things stand, the main opposition party may present a northern candidate against the candidate of the APC from the South, thus reenacting the scenario in the June 12, 1993 election that General Ibrahim Babangida whimsically annulled. A good point from that ill-fated election though was that Nigerians voted across regional and religious lines, with both Moshood Abiola and Bashir Tofa, winning states outside their hemispheres.

The Aspirants

At the close of the sale of the expression of interest and nomination forms of the PDP on Thursday, 18 aspirants had picked the forms, including 17 men who paid N40 million each, and a woman who paid only for the expression of interest fees.

The aspirants who took the forms are Mr Abubakar; former Senate President, Bukola Saraki; Sokoto Governor Aminu Tambuwal and a former President of the Senate, Pius Anyim.

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They also include Governors Bala Mohammed of Bauchi, Nyesom Wike of Rivers and Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom; former Anambra State Governor Peter Obi; and former Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose.

The others are a United States-based medical doctor, Nwachukwu Anakwenze; a journalist, Dele Momodu; a banker, Mohammed Hayatu-Deen; a pharmacist, Sam Ohuabunwa; a former Speaker of Abia State House of Assembly, Cosmos Ndukwe, Charles Ugwu, and the only female aspirant in the race, Tareila Diana.

In the APC, at least 10 aspirants have declared their intention to seek its presidential ticket. They include Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, former Lagos Governor Bola Tinubu, Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi, Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi, and a former Governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha. Others are a businessman, Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, and Ihechukwu Chima.

Reports said Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, will declare after the Ramadan fast, while a former Governor of Ogun State, Ibikunle Amosun, is also planning to declare for the race.

Jonathan may join contest

On Friday, former President Goodluck Jonathan seemed to confirm a stubborn rumour that he had been wooed to join the race for the APC ticket. A day earlier, he had received supporters in his home in Abuja urging him to run. The Punch in a report on Friday said his condition for accepting to run for the APC ticket is that President Buhari should assure him of his support.

Minor Parties

Not much is in the open in the other parties. These parties usually play a patience game, waiting to feed on disputes within the two major parties by selling their tickets to implacable losers in their primaries.

Among the minor parties are those positioning themselves as the Third Force, the viable alternative to the big two. The New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) seems to have stolen a march on its rivals in that respect. NNPP has been receiving new members, including prominent politicians, since a former Kano governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, left the PDP for the party. Most of this is happening in the North, sending observers excited about the impact the party could have on the presidential poll with Mr Kwankwaso as its candidate.

2023 election

INEC has fixed the presidential and federal legislative elections for February 25. That means the presidential candidates face a gruelling nine months on the hustings, during which governance at the state and federal levels would take a back seat for those of them who are incumbents.

The election will be the sixth in the Fourth Republic, but the tenth overall, including the 1993 poll whose winner the military threw into jail. It will also be the second election in this dispensation where an incumbent president will not be a candidate.

At the end of his final term on May 29, 2023, President Buhari will become the second president in Nigeria to complete two terms, after becoming the third to be reelected. President Shehu Shagari was overthrown by the military three months into his second term in December 1983 while President Olusegun Obasanjo completed his two terms in 2007.

Improving electoral process

Nigeria is in its longest period of regular elections. One of the main benefits of this is the progressive improvement in the electoral process that has made elections conducted by INEC more transparent and largely competitive, even though only two of the 18 registered parties are considered to stand a chance of winning the presidential poll.

Although the two main candidates are widely expected to be former or incumbent elective officeholders who have been around from the beginning of the Fourth Republic, due to the high cost of electioneering, the youths are increasingly asserting themselves in the process. The internet has given them louder voices and enhanced their visibility and capacity to mobilise among themselves for political actions.

In 2020, the #EndSARS protests, which were launched and coordinated by Nigerian youth on social media, shut many parts of the country down and forced the government to scrap a controversial police unit among other concessions. The Not Too Young to Rule Act, assented to by President Buhari in May 2018, has reduced the age of eligibility for political offices while parties are seeing the need to encourage their participation.

For instance, the APC has offered aspirants below 40 years a 40 per cent discount on the costs of the expression of interest and nomination forms for all offices.

Elections for the moneybags?

However, Nigerians on social media during the week widely condemned the high costs of the nomination forms of the parties. Aside from the APC and PDP that asked presidential aspirants to pay N100 million and 40 million respectively for the forms, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) also fixed N35 million for its forms.
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has filed a lawsuit against President Muhammadu Buhari over the failure to unblock the phone lines of over 72 million telecommunication subscribers barred from making calls on their SIMs.

The suit followed the recent directive by the Federal Government to telecommunications companies to block outgoing calls on all unlinked lines, as the deadline for the verification expired on March 31. Following the directive, over 72 million subscribers have now been barred from making calls.

In the suit number FHC/L/CS/711/2022 filed last week at the Federal High Court in Lagos, SERAP is seeking: an order setting aside the directive by President Buhari to telecommunications companies to block outgoing calls on all unlinked lines without due process of law, and for being inconsistent with the requirements of legality, necessity and proportionality.

SERAP is also seeking an order of perpetual injunction restraining President Buhari and the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami from unlawfully directing telecommunications companies to block outgoing calls on all unlinked lines, without due process and in violation of Nigerians human rights.

SERAP is further seeking an order directing and compelling President Buhari to ensure adequate infrastructure and logistics to allow Nigerians including persons with disabilities, older persons, and persons living in remote areas, to capture their data and conclude registration to obtain National Identity Number (NIN).

In the suit, SERAP is arguing that directing and compelling the Federal Government to unblock the phone lines unlawfully barred would be entirely consistent with the Nigerian Constitution 1999 [as amended], and the countrys international obligations to respect, protect, and promote socio-economic rights.

SERAP is also arguing that Where agencies of government are allowed to operate at large and at their whims and caprices in the guise of performing their statutory duties, the end result will be anarchy, and authoritarianism, leading to the loss of the much cherished and constitutionally guaranteed freedom and liberty.

According to SERAP, It is in the interest of justice to grant this application. Access to telecommunications services is a condition sine qua non for the effective exercise of human rights. Therefore, the decision to block people from making calls is discriminatory, and a travesty.

SERAP is also arguing that The blocking of phone lines of Nigerians without due process of law has disproportionately affected those on the margins of society. This has resulted in the discrimination of marginalized or vulnerable groups.

Joined in the suit as Respondents are Abubakar Malami, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, and Isa Pantami.

The suit filed on behalf of SERAP by its lawyers Kolawole Oluwadare and Opeyemi Owolabi, read in part: While Nigerian authorities have a legal responsibility to protect, ensure and secure the rights to life and property, any such responsibility ought to be discharged in conformity with human rights standards.

Fundamental rights are regarded as part of human rights and are protected to enhance human dignity and liberty.

Unblocking the phone lines unlawfully barred from making calls would improve respect for the rule of law, and ensure peoples right to freedom of expression, and access to information, as well as their right to associate with others.

The blocking of people from making calls constitutes impermissible restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, information, and association.

The rights to freedom of opinion and expression and access to information are protected under section 39 of the Nigerian Constitution, article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act.

These rights must be protected online as they are protected offline. Any restriction on these rights must be provided by law, be necessary in a democratic society and serve a legitimate aim.

The blocking of people from making calls on their SIMs also amounts to an arbitrary or unlawful interference with their right to family life, and socio-economic rights, as it unnecessarily or disproportionately interferes with these fundamental human rights.

The decision to block the phone lines also appears to be arbitrary and lacks any legal framework, independent and judicial oversight. This may allow authorities to act in an unfettered and potentially arbitrary or unlawful manner.

Under international human rights law, States including Nigeria shall not engage in or condone any disruption of access to digital technologies for segments of the public or an entire population. States must refrain from cutting off access to telecommunications services.

Millions of Nigerians including persons with disabilities, elderly citizens, persons living in remote areas have been unable to capture their biometrics, and obtain their NINs due to logistical challenges, administrative and bureaucratic burdens, as well as the persistent collapse of the national grid.

The rights to freedom of expression, access to information, and freedom of association, whether offline or online, promote the democratic ideal by allowing citizens to voice their concerns, challenge governmental institutions, and hold the government accountable for its actions.

Kolawole Oluwadare

SERAP Deputy Director

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A presidential aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, has listed the qualities anyone aspiring to be Nigerias President in 2023 must possess.

Mr Ohuabunwa listed the qualities on Saturday while speaking to Edo PDP delegates.

Addressing the delegates, Mr Ohuabunwa said anybody who wanted to be president must be enlightened, visionary, competent, and possess a positive character, be a man of integrity and must be courageous. These are the criteria for assessing leadership in Nigeria at the Presidential level.

He decried the injustice and insecurity in the country, arguing that they are all correlated.

According to him, he would deal with the economy if he becomes the President come 2023, to make sure all is working well

He added that the government does not create jobs but the enabling environment that will create private-sector jobs.

He affirmed that Nigeria is an investment haven and he intends to make this manifest by creating programmes and projects that could create jobs which will drive away poverty, including making business proposals part of final year students in tertiary institutions projects and establishing what he called the Small Business Development Authority, to assist the students financially on a partnership basis.

The aspirant promised to mechanise agriculture, and introduce reversal tourism where Nigerian cultural performances would be showcased overseas for financial gains to cut the nations dependence on oil revenues.

Mr Ohuabunwa had earlier paid a courtesy visit to the state chairman of the party, Tony Aziegbemi.

Aside from Mr Ohuabunwa, other PDP presidential hopefuls who have visited Edo State to woo PDP delegates include Nyesom Wike and Peter Obi.

Other aspirants like Bukola Saraki, Bala Mohammed and Aminu Tambuwal had some weeks back visited the state Gov, Godwin Obaseki, on the need for the PDP to adopt a consensus presidential candidate.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is to hold its 96th National Executive Committee (NEC) on May 4.

The party disclosed this in a notice issued by its National Secretary, Samuel Anyanwu, in Abuja on Saturday.

Mr Anyanwu urged all members of the NEC to attend the meeting.

He said the meeting would start by 2 p.m. and would hold at the NEC Hall, PDP National Secretariat, Wadata Plaza, Abuja.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that though the agenda of the meeting was not disclosed, it is expected that the party would among other things discuss the issue of zoning of the presidential ticket, the partys primary and other issues related to 2023 general elections.

According to the schedule of activities for the 2023 general elections released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), parties have up till June 3 to conclude their primaries and produce their candidates.

There are altogether 17 presidential aspirants contending for the partys ticket. The aspirants are from both northern and southern parts of the country.

The opposition party is yet to zone the presidency to any particular part of the country in line with its tradition since its formation in 1998.

It recently set up a 37-member committee headed by Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State, to work out an acceptable zoning formula ahead of the primary election.

There are speculations that the committee recommended that the ticket should be thrown open to all parts of the country.

The PDP has fixed its national convention for May 28 and 29.

(NAN)
Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State has ascribed his endorsement as northern presidential consensus candidate of the PDP alongside former President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, as the work of God.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Northern PDP Elders Forum led by Ango Abdullahi, on Friday, endorsed Messrs Saraki and Mohammed as the consensus candidates ahead of the 2023 presidential primaries of the party.

The Forum said its decision was based on certain criteria adopted in assessing the four presidential hopeful from the north who presented themselves for the exercise.

Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State, who is also one of the candidates, rejected the endorsement of Messrs Saraki and Mohammed as consensus candidates of the region.

Another aspirant, Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, also rejected the decision of NEF, saying it was not based on the principle of equity and transparency.

However, the Bauchi governor told journalists on Saturday that he was not aware on how the Forum arrived at its decision.

He lauded the Forum for a thorough and tremendous job, adding that, Just yesterday, I was elected as one of the consensus candidates for the next presidential election.

People may take it as something influenced or that we have gone to ask people to give us the recognition, far from that, it is a mark of recognition and the work of God that I will not take for granted.

This recognition on my humble self and Sen. Bukola Saraki after we decided to do consensus with two others, and came on bracket after due consultations with other elders in the north.

We have been asked to further consult within ourselves and other aspirants within the country so that we can minimise rancour, division and any unpleasantries for us to come out with a candidate that would win the election for the PDP.

We have taken it as a responsibility and we are calling on others even those who didnt make it in the consensus to come and join hands with us and our southern compatriots so as to do it with minimal rancour and come out of the primaries and selection that would produce the best in terms of leadership recruitment in the country.

He said the best candidate in the party might not have bought the form or stepped out to indicate his interest, noting that he was one of the best that had so far stepped out and shown interest, hence, the recognition by the northern elders forum.

This is part of politicking, we are not the only ones. There is also the Waziri Adamawa who has not even participated in the consensus. It is part of political engineering.

There are other aspirants from the South but we must work through and make sure that we come to a converging point including the group of Alhaji Sule Lamido.

We will make sure that we get their endorsement and confidence, and I assure you that we are going to come out of this.

(NAN)
The governors of the states in South-west Nigeria have paid tributes to the Alaafin of Oyo, Lamidi Adeyemi III, who died on April 22.

The late monarch was 83.

The third from the Alowolodu Ruling House, Alaafin Adeyemi died at the Afe Babalola University Teaching Hospital, Ado Ekiti.

He was the longest-serving Alaafin, having spent 51 years on the throne.

Ogun  Last man standing

Governor Seyi Makinde officially announced the passing of Mr Adeyemi on Saturday

The governor, according to a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Taiwo Adisa, described the monarchs death as a personal loss to him.

He also said the Alaafins words of advice and guidance were always golden and helpful to him.

Oba Adeyemi was our last man standing in the rank of most eminent royal fathers with long years of leadership.

He became a golden king, an institution and an authority rolled into one by virtue of his immense experience, wisdom, and understanding of Yoruba history, royalty, and politics.

Oba Adeyemi not only elevated the Alaafin throne with his knowledge and wisdom, but he also became a worthy exemplar for royal leadership in Africa and brought glory to Oyo State and Nigeria.

Kabiyesi never spared anything in his strive to make Oyo State greater and to bring about the Nigeria of everyones collective dream.

It is my prayer that God accepts Kabiyesis soul into Aljanah Firdaus and upholds everyone and everything he left behind.

Good night, Iku Baba Yeye!

Lagos  Immortalise him

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State described the Alaafins demise as a great loss to Nigeria.

In a condolence message by Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, he commiserated with the Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State and the entire Yoruba race both at home and in the diaspora

The late monarchs service to the people of the ancient town, Oyo State and Nigeria, especially in the area of promotion of Yoruba culture and tradition, will remain his enduring legacy, Mr Sanwo-Olu said in the message by his Chief Press Secretary, Gboyega Akosile.

Mr Sanwo-Olu urged the family, friends, and associates, as well as the entire people of Oyo Kingdom, to immortalise him and ensured the late Alaafin of Oyos legacies were sustained.

The death of Oba Adeyemi is a great loss not only to the people of Oyo State but the entire Yoruba sons and daughters at home and in the diaspora.

This is because of the unique position the Alaafin of Oyo holds as a descendant of Oduduwa. He will be greatly missed.

Ekiti  A bridge-builder

Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti described the late monarch as a bridge-builder, patriot, and courageous leader who contributed to Nigerias unity during his lifetime.

Mr Fayemi made the assertions in a statement signed by his Chief Press Secretary, Yinka Oyebode, on Saturday in Ado-Ekiti.

He said the departure of the revered traditional ruler had created a big vacuum in the traditional institution in Oyo State, in particular, and Yorubaland in general.

According to him, the late monarch was an authority in history and blessed with a sharp memory that added value and class to his royal duties and day-to-day interaction with people from different walks of life.

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Mr Fayemi, also the Chairman, Nigeria Governors Forum, described the deceased as a distinguished first-class Oba, who brought dignity, respect, and glamour to the traditional institution and made it relevant in the quest for a better society.

He said the late royal father operated an open door policy and always made his wise counsel available to political leaders, irrespective of their party affiliations.

Mr Fayemi, while describing the late traditional ruler as a man of many parts, said he never disappointed in performing his royal duties and other roles he was privileged to have played, which spanned sectors like administration, politics, education, religion, sports, among others.

He said the late monarch earned much respect and accolade for his ability to speak the truth to those in power, without playing to the gallery.

Osun  End of an era

Governor Adegboyega Oyetola of Osun said the Alaafins death signified the end of an era.

The governor in a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Ismail Omipidan, on Saturday in Osogbo, said the death of the first class traditional ruler was a personal loss to him.

According to him, the late monarch was a good friend of Osun, who was always ready to identify with our government and celebrate our humble accomplishments and achievements.

Mr Oyetola said the late traditional ruler was a firm believer in progressive ideals, and that he remained true to his convictions over the years until his demise.

He further described Iku Baba Yeye, as he was fondly called, as a humble and an amiable traditional ruler, despite his revered position.

He said that the Yoruba race had lost a quintessential intellectual, whose knowledge and commitment to the cause of the Yoruba race were unrivaled.

Oba Adeyemi was a visionary and an exemplary leader whose 52-year reign brought tremendous attention, peace, stability, and unprecedented development to the ancient Oyo town and its people.

Baba was a strong believer in progressive ideals, and he remained true to his convictions over the years until he breathed his last.

He will be long remembered for his impacts, achievements, outstanding legacies, and remarkable service as a custodian of the rich Yoruba cultural heritage and traditions.

Ondo  Fall of a great iroko

Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State described the Alaafins death as the fall of a great iroko.

Mr Akeredolu, who is the chairman of the Southwest Governors Forum, said the Obas death was a rude shock.

This is contained in a statement signed by his Chief Press Secretary, Richard Olatunde, on Saturday in Akure.

Mr Akeredolu described the transition of the highly revered monarch to the world beyond as an enormous blow to the Oyo Kingdom, Yoruba race, and the country at large.

We have lost a quintessential traditional ruler and custodian of the Yoruba culture. His contributions to the development and advancement of the country and Yoruba land, in particular, are unquantifiable.

He was a great pillar. A great giant who did not only represent our cultural values but also preserved and promoted the Yoruba culture. He was a repository of knowledge.

With over five decades on the throne of his fathers, Oba Lamidi III was the longest-reigning Alaafin whose reign has been the most remarkable for the entire Oyo Kingdom. He was a symbol of Yoruba Unity.

His commitment toward ensuring the unity of the Yoruba can not be forgotten in a hurry. He lived a life invariably imbued with candour and resplendence. He was royal to the end. the governor said.

He added that the efforts of the late Alaafin toward the unity and progress of the Yoruba would not be forgotten in a hurry.

Ogun  A huge vacuum

Governor Dapo Abiodun in a statement on Saturday said the monarchs demise has created a huge vacuum in traditional and historical societies.

It is unfortunate that Kabiyesi had to take his leave of us at this period when we need his wisdom the most, as we approach the 2023 general elections, a critical period in our political landmarks, the governor said.

His death is a great loss because Nigeria will miss the services of a great reservoir of knowledge and historical narrations.
As part of its mandate to build the capacity of the media to become a more informed, innovative, and competitive institution, the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) is partnering with the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR), on human rights violations reporting project.

The centre, known for its practice of advocacy, capacity building, and investigative reporting using open data and civic technology, would be working with the institute for a five-month period with the aim of creating public awareness of human rights violations across the country.

According to a statement by the Institute, a call will be instituted for the project for applications for training and investigative reporting grants in Nigeria.

It said: This call aims to enable journalists to investigate human rights violations in order to promote the realisation of human rights and social justice as reflected in global norms, national policies, and local practice.

The Institute noted that the purpose of the project is to give voice to the most marginalized and vulnerable Nigerian communities, including women, children, people with disabilities, and people affected by armed conflict and mass atrocities, while equally supporting advocacy and the ability of people to hold governments and other powerful institutions and individuals accountable to the rule of law.

IWPR said it is particularly interested in exposing disappearances and incarceration without due process perpetrated by security forces or other authorities of marginalized groups.

The Criteria

According to the call, interested candidates should be practising Abuja-based Nigerian journalists with three years plus of professional experience, and should be able to demonstrate an interest in exposing human rights abuses and investigative journalism.

After the selection process, successful applicants will undertake one week of training which will cover international humanitarian and human rights law; human rights crimes reporting and minority rights; conflict-sensitive reporting; ethical issues, challenges, and practical testing dilemmas in this type of reporting; upskilling in investigative reporting including disinformation; story development and editorial; personal and digital security, risk management and safeguarding.

The training is expected to take place from May 16 to 20 in Abuja. Thereafter, participants will be supported with a $750 small grant to pursue story ideas. Following the training, journalists will be matched with editorial mentors who will give them one-to-one support throughout their investigation, the statement stated.

CJID and IWPR emphasized the need for proposals from applicants who can ensure their investigative reports would be published on media platforms with significant reach. We also encourage the publication of these reports by independent media outlets. Please note Media organizations are not eligible to apply the Institute said.

Speaking on the training, Akintunde Babatunde, Deputy Director at CJID said this partnership with IWPR is coming at the right time in Nigeria.

He said: Looking at recurring human rights abuses in Nigeria even by agents of states, we hope participants are able to identify such issues of abuses and through the training, get the right skills and support needed to tell these stories.

Interested journalists can apply to attend the training here.
Rwanda is set to host members of the Commonwealth at the 26th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). It is the first to be held in Africa in over a decade.

The 26th CHOGM will be held in Kigali between June 20 and 26, under the theme Delivering a Common Future: Connecting, Innovating, Transforming.

Leaders of the Commonwealth countries meet every two years with each CHOGM holding in a different member country whose Prime Minister or President would be the Commonwealth Chair-in-Office.

Since 1971, a total of 25 meetings have been held, with the most recent held in London in 2018.

Rwandas president, Paul Kagame, while announcing the new date for the meeting, said Rwanda is pleased to welcome all delegates and participants to Kigali for a safe and productive CHOGM Rwanda 2022.

The last two years have made it clear to us that we are more connected than ever before and we must work together to achieve the tangible and sustainable results we want, he said.

He added that the long-awaited meeting will be an important occasion to come together to address the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and to build on innovative technological and economic opportunities to solve other key problems facing citizens.

CHOGM was due to take place in Kigali in June 2020 but was postponed twice due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is the Commonwealths highest consultative and policy-making gathering. Rwanda was selected, the last meeting in London, to host the next CHOGM.

The Commonwealth Secretary-General, Patricia Scotland, said the upcoming meetings in Rwanda will provide the opportunity to reaffirm the values that bind the Commonwealth together and focus on vital issues, including the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, tackling climate change and poverty, boosting trade and promoting sustainable development  all issues that can only be dealt with decisively through multilateral cooperation and mutual support.

Also, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall will attend the meeting in Kigali.

As the world works to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, and in this Jubilee year, it is more important than ever that the countries of the Commonwealth come together, the prince was quoted as saying in a statement. by the Commonwealth secretariat.

As a family of some 2.6 billion people from fifty-four nations across six continents, the Commonwealth represents a rich diversity of traditions, experience and talents which can help to build a more equal, sustainable and prosperous future.

With this shared sense of common purpose, and in view of recent, enforced postponements, my wife and I are delighted to be attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, in June, he announced.

The prince has attended CHOGM on five previous occasions  Edinburgh in 1997, Uganda in 2007, Sri Lanka in 2013 (representing the Queen), Malta in 2015 and in the U.K in 2018.

About the Commonwealth

Formed in 1949, the Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 54 independent and equal sovereign states.

It is home to 2.5 billion people and includes both advanced economies and developing countries. Thirty-two of its members are small states, many of which are island nations.

Member countries are supported by a network of more than 80 intergovernmental, civil society, cultural and professional organisations.

Rwanda became the last country to join the commonwealth in 2009.
At least 29 persons were killed by non-state actors across Nigeria last week between April 17 and 23.

More than half of the victims were killed in the North-eastern region by suspected Boko Haram/ISWAP terrorists.

Unlike previous weeks, there were less killings in the North-west which has been under attacks by bandits.

The figure last week signifies a massive decline when compared to the previous week where over 200 were killed.

At least one incident was recorded in each of the six geopolitical zones except the South-west and South-east. The latter has seen more frequent attacks on police facilities in the past weeks.

PREMIUM TIMES compiled the incidents from media reports. Thus, unreported cases are not included.

Below are the recorded incidents:

Niger

Armed men on Sunday attacked Kaduna and Naknuwape, suburbs of Gwada in Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State, killing at least two people including a police officer.

Residents said a group of gunmen invaded their communities shooting indiscriminately while residents were breaking their Ramadan fast.

Kogi

Gunmen killed three police officers on Sunday in Kogi as they launched an attack on Adavi Police Divisional headquarters in the early hours.

Commissioner of Police, Edward Egbuka confirmed the attack in a statement issued in Lokoja by the police spokesperson in Kogi, William Ovye-Aya.

He described the attack as callous and painful.

Taraba

At least six were killed in an attack on bar at Iware Community in Ardo Kola Local Government Area of Taraba State.

The community is about 22 kilometres from Jalingo, the state capital.

The police spokesperson, Usman Abdullahi, told reporters Wednesday morning that the death toll from the attack has risen to six.

Yobe

Gunmen suspected to be Boko Haram insurgents on Wednesday night attacked Geidam, a town in Yobe, the capital city of Yobe State, killing 12 people.

Residents said the insurgents attacked a popular bar in the town around 10 p.m.

Witnesses told PREMIUM TIMES that the suspected insurgents also burned the staff quarters of the nearby Government Science and Technical College Geidam.

Katsina

In a simultaneous attack on three communities in Malumfashi Local Government Area of Katsina State, on Wednesday morning, gunmen killed three people including a councillor, Nasir Magaji.

Residents of the communities also claimed that the gunmen abducted several people including two women during the attacks on Dutsen Reme Low-Cost Funtua, Gozaki Village in Kafur and Dan Rimi community of Malumfashi local government areas.

Edo

Three persons were reportedly killed at Uselu-Nahor community in Uhunmwonde Local Government Area of Edo State on Wednesday following a leadership tussle.

The police spokesman, Katongs Bello, confirmed the incident, but said he had yet to get further details.

Buhari talks tough

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In a bid to improve the security situation in the country, President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday directed security agencies to immediately rescue all the people kidnapped by armed persons across Nigeria.

Mr Buhari stated this while addressing security chiefs at a meeting in Abuja Thursday.

The presidents position was disclosed by the National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno, who briefed State House correspondents at the end of the meeting.

The President spoke about his sadness in respect of recent security challenges and developments we have had in the country, in particular the incident in which several Nigerians lost their lives with many more taken into captivity by criminals and bandits, Mr Monguno said.

Not just those that were captured during the last Kaduna bound train incident but those that have been in captivity in other parts of the country.

The President has directed all the operational and intelligence elements to rescue all of these innocent people immediately and unhurt. This is the basis on which other issues were discussed.

The Chief of Defence Staff, the Service Chiefs and the Inspector General of Police all briefed the president on occurrences in their respective organizations, the retired major-general said.
A presidential aspirant on the platform of the PDP, Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, has faulted the process that produced Nigerias former Senate President, Bukola Saraki and governor of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed, as northern consensus candidates.

Mr Hayatu-Deens campaign office, in a statement on Saturday, said the process that led to the adoption of the duo lacked principles of equity and transparency.

Messrs Saraki and Mohammed were shortlisted on Friday by the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), following the recommendations of a committee set up by the forum.

The Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Tambuwal, had earlier dismissed the report on consensus agreement as false.

He said they had unanimously agreed that the consensus arrangement was not working, a position Mr Hayatu-Deen has further reiterated.

For the record, we would like to state that the process of arriving at a consensus candidate te had collapsed. The candidates involved could not reach a compromise amongst themselves, resulting in the decision of our principal, Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, and Governor Aminu Tambuwal to discontinue the process.

The announcement we witnessed yesterday (Friday) was not based on the principles of equity and transparency, which we believe should lead the country and the party into the future. The committee constituted by Prof. Ango Abdullahi is completely faceless and the evaluation criteria is totally subjective.

It seems to us that this entire charade was designed to achieve a preconceived outcome, Mr Hayatu-Deen said in the statement signed by his campaign DG, Lamis Dikko.

The DG said his principal has decided to pursue his presidential independently.

He also expressed his principals desire to proceed in his steps to achieve a truly democratic process and election victory for the PDP in the coming elections.

Altogether, there are 17 aspirants jostling for the PDP presidential ticket ahead of its primary election scheduled for next month.

The aspirants from both the north and the south include Nigerias former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, a former Anambra governor, P 17 aspirants are jostling, Pius Anyim, Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, former Ekiti governor, Ayo Fayose, renowned pharmacist, Sam Ohuabunwa, and Ovation Magazine publisher, Dele Momodu.

Although, the PDP has fixed May 28 and 29 to elect its presidential candidate, the party has yet to zone the position to any section of the country.

The party has also not taken a position on the mode of primaries to adopt in electing its candidate for the February 2023 presidential election.
Why would a state government be bothered about the burial rites of a king?, he asked, incredulously. When the man dies, he doesnt know what is done after his departure. He is gone; whether they remove his body parts or not. In my own case, I have picked the place where I will be buried in the palace. At my age, I am already at the departure lounge. The plane is on the ground and I am just waiting for the boarding pass. The Oyomesi know what to do with my corpse and they will do it.

How was I to know that meeting I had with the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, on March 2, was the last between a father and his son? In the last couple of hours of hearing of his passing, I have scrutinised, without success, memories of anything unusual in the sky on that day that probably spoke of the looming calamity that would befall the Oyo palace. The sky was the usual grey, without a foreboding countenance; the palace courtiers were the usual ensemble, spraying entrants with deodorised courtesies. The palace bard perhaps gave inkling of the queer day. His effusion of praise songs to me on that day was unusual: Adedayo, mo wole, awo Alowolodu he chanted his welcome endlessly in a poetic cadence that is the stuff of Yoruba palaces. Aside this, there were no tell-tale sign for me suggesting that would be the last time I would see Oba Adeyemi alive, in a palace I had visited for over two decades.

The Alaafin sat in his regal best on that day. A highly sartorially conscious monarch, each time you saw the Alaafin, he mirrored class and the panache of culture in his dressing. He was dressed in a blue Ankara, done as agbada, with an abetiaja cap to match and a slip-on pair of shoes as a fitting accoutrement. With me was ace broadcaster, Yemi Sonde, ex-Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS) staff; Bunmi Labiyi; and another female guest. We had gone to invite the foremost monarch to the official commissioning of Sondes new radio station in Ibadan, Oyo State. As usual, as the glass door was pulled aside for us to enter Kabiyesis inner sacristy, we men went down on all fours and the females, on their knees. As its the tradition in the palace, we had peeled our shoes from our feet at the main entrance.

Out of the blues, Kabiyesi just veered into a conversation about death. His grouse was with the recently promulgated Ogun State Traditional Rulers (Installation and Burial Rites) Act, which had, by then, just scaled second reading in the State House of Assembly. In the Act, which claims to be bothered about the need for respect for human dignity and promotion of modernity in the installation and burial of traditional rulers, lawmakers proposed a legal framework that was to curb practices of idolatry in the installation, as well as burial, of traditional rulers. The purport of the Act was to guide the religious beliefs of deceased monarchs in Ogun State jealously, by according them burial rites in conformity with their beliefs and religions.

In Yorubaland, though an issue that was a taboo scarcely discussed, it is a notorious fact that upon the demise of an Oba, traditional worshippers hijack the bodies of the Oba from his family, and superintend over burial rites that include the gouging out the heart of the deceased, which is preserved to be eaten by his successor.

Oba Adeyemi told me he had conveyed his disagreement with the law to his fellow Oba, the Awujale of Ijebu land, Oba Sikiru Adetona, a monarch he had tremendous respects for. The law didnt make any sense, he said.

Why would a state government be bothered about the burial rites of a king?, he asked, incredulously. When the man dies, he doesnt know what is done after his departure. He is gone; whether they remove his body parts or not. In my own case, I have picked the place where I will be buried in the palace. At my age, I am already at the departure lounge. The plane is on the ground and I am just waiting for the boarding pass. The Oyomesi know what to do with my corpse and they will do it.

Alaafin was also not happy with how the corpse of the immediate past Olubadan of Ibadan was put on display on social media and he commended the example of the Soun of Ogbomosos burial, which was made a strictly palace affair. I dont know how Baba would have felt yesterday if he had the opportunity of seeing his remains in the hands of clerics, floating across social media.

Alaafin was a federalist to the core. He canvassed for Nigerias practice of federalism till his last day on earth. He was also one of those who believed that the 1914 Lugardian amalgamation was a disaster to the wellbeing of Nigeria. His forebear, Oba Ladigbolu 1, he said, told the colonialists to their faces that, by soldering unlike people together to form a single whole, what Britain was doing was analogous to bringing the lion, impala and other preys together in a common zoo. This is a reflection of the Yoruba peoples travails in Nigerias pseudo federalism.

Veteran journalist and ex-Tribune political editor, Baba Agboola Sanni, took me to the Alaafin in 1998 or thereabout and since then, our relationship was akin to that of a father and a son. To illustrate the level of the relationship, in 2020 Oba Adeyemi had invited the late rights activist, Yinka Odumakin and I to his palace. It was when we got to there that we realised that we had been invited to the meeting individually. It was a Sunday. Hyper-passionate about the fate and lot of the Yoruba people, Alaafin called us to discuss nagging Yoruba national issues, chief of which was the invasion of the South-West by Fulani herders and the kidnapping and killings that had become commonplace thereafter. After the meeting, in his usual sotto voce, Alaafin had faced Odumakin and said, In this palace, Festus and I have fought several battles. We never lost one. Odumakin looked at me. I looked away. He apparently could not match what he just heard with the person sitting beside him. When ace Tribune columnist, Dr Lasisi Olagunju eventually met him in the palace, pointing at me, he repeated the same line.

With the passing of the Alaafin, I wish Yorubas know the calamity that has just befallen them. The Yorubas are now naked to their bare skins, more than ever before, and in the hands of forest demons and reptiles who are baying for blood. I have had opportunities of meeting monarchs in my few years on earth and interrogating their commitments and dedication to the land, but none  apologies to no one  answered to the tripartite calling of kingship  armour-bearer of the people, cultural icon and languistic encyclopedia  all of which the Alaafin personified. The majority of these monarchs are scammers in search of green grass to pillage and who are bereft of the avant-garde role the ancestors have in store for them. Alaafin Adeyemi loved Yoruba to the level of an obsession and lamented the regression of the peoples fate in the hands of Nigeria and her slavish rulers. Unbeknown to many, Alaafin, to my knowledge, invested millions of his personal funds in fighting the enemies of Yorubaland, at the risk of his person and office. He made files of these interventions, copies of which he handed over to me, apparently mindful of a day, which has just arrived.

For reasons that I still find difficult to decode, which perhaps I will have insight into at a later tete-a-tete with him in the hereafter, Alaafin confided topnotch secrets in me and believed in the ability of a resolution to any difficult impasse once he and I gave it mental interrogation. He would call me early in the morning to ask how convenient meeting up in the day was for me, while set out from the ancient town of Oyo for Ibadan. His Idi-Ishin, Jericho Quarters apartment offered a convenient ground for the granular chewing of challenges that he might need resolutions to. Once we were done, he would head back to his palace, telling me that it was the only reason why he had come.

Alaafin got attracted to cerebral people like bees do hives. He worshipped Professor Wole Soyinka like a god and venerated Professor Adebayo Williams. Along the line, Kabiyesi got inebriated with the intellectual depth of Dr Olagunju too and asked that he be brought to the palace. Since then, Alaafin never hid his fascination with Olagunjus weekly mental contributions. Whenever I go to functions, I would deploy a medley of Olagunju, Adebayo Williams and Adedayos works and pontificate with them in the public, he once said in a rare humility from a foremost monarch also with a first class brain. He also said that with the Eripa-born media intellectual, Olagunjus mediations, his artillery had increased. When Olagunju and I went to the palace to invite him to the launch of his book, Cowries of Blood and he knelt to hand the Alaafin a letter of invitation, the monarch prayed so intently for him that you would think it was a fathers last minute prayers for his son.

Alaafin was in the know of every of Sunday Igbohos movements and war against haters of the Yoruba people, and provided pieces of advice to him on how to fight his traducers. He called him many times in my presence. He never hid his resolve to protect Yoruba people and cleanse their forests of invaders, particularly Oke-Ogun and Ibarapa land of Oyo State.

Alaafin had challenges with Governors Lam Adesina, Rasidi Ladoja and Adebayo Alao-Akala. He gave me the most granular information of the roles he performed in the tiffs with these governors. By 2015, especially in the moments leading to the general elections, Alaafin and Governor Abiola Ajimobis relationship went sour. Goodluck Jonathan had begun to make overtures to traditional rulers. Ajimobi had gone to the U.K. when Alaafin called me, demanding that we have a mutual resolve on where he was heading politically. I called Governor Ajimobi to intimate him of Alaafins quest, careful to beat the possibility of tale-bearers parroting my clandestine visit to the palace to him. Ajimobi gave me the go-ahead to meet the monarch.

At the meeting in the palace, Alaafin articulated his list of grouses against Ajimobi to me. He told me that, in company of his late friend, Azeez Arisekola-Alao, he had launched one of the most penetrating artilleries against Alao-Akala, even selling his house in the U.K. in the process. Ajimobi, he alleged, took all these for granted and never reciprocated the gesture.

When it was time to address him, I prostrated. I told him that my loyalty was to him, as it was to Ajimobi, but I owed him the need to tell him the absolute truth. I told Alaafin that Ajimobi had the greatest regard for him. I proceeded further to tell the king that the governor, at many fora, told me that but for Alaafin, he wouldnt probably have emerged governor in 2011. Alaafin went beyond the ken of his traditional role in his support for Ajimobi in 2011, so much that if Alao-Akala had won that election, he would have deposed him, so said Ajimobi to me, which he expressed as, Alaafin taa tan ni! I reminded Alaafin that I was privy to conversations between the king and his aides  late Prince Fehintola and Hon Kamil  during the 2011 elections when, at the thick of the announcement of the gubernatorial results, and he wasnt sure where the pendulum was swinging, he asked his aides to tell him the truth, giving them indications that he could commit suicide if Alao-Akala won.

Kabiyesi, you are the king of the Yoruba people, you cannot work against your people, both at the state and national levels I concluded. That settled the matter between Alaafin and Ajimobi. From that moment on, they became the best of friends.

Alaafin, despite his average schooling, was a profound intellectual. He could flawlessly recite by rote speeches read by foremost politicians of the First Republic, especially S. L. Akintola. During our last meeting in the palace, where he articulated some legal permutations, I reminded him of how I always called him the SAN that we never had. Perhaps due to the several litigations he was involved in and his quest to apprise himself with the details of judicial decisions, Alaafin gobbled up knowledge of law in a manner that was non-pareil. He was a restless fighter who sought for war in a time of peace. Once, Professor Wale Adebanwi had taken University of Cambridges Africanist scholar, Professor D. Y. Peel to the palace. During the discussion, Alaafin arrested Peels attention with his flawless rendition of British history, so much that Peel shouted, Kabiyesi, you are telling me my history!

In 2019 again, it was time to pitch his tent with a gubernatorial candidate in Oyo State. Alaafin invited me from Lagos where I was a student at the Nigerian Law School. He then took me to a section of the palace that I had never been to before. Donning his pyjamas that morning, he confided in me that he had made his personal investigations and concluded that Seyi Makinde would win the election and he was ready to support him. I was shocked to learn thereafter that some persons persuaded him otherwise. It affected his relationship with the governor, which he lamented, till his death.

In my over two decades of relationship with the Alaafin, the testimonial that I always wear on my lapel was given to me by his first son, Aremo. It was a Sunday as well. Alaafin had asked me to meet him in the palace. On getting there, I called him on the phone that I was in the waiting hall. A few minutes after, palace courtiers asked me to advance to Kabiyesis sitting room. There, I met the Alaafin, his first son, called Aremo in Yorubaland, and the Aremos wife, then a Magistrate in an Oyo court, sitting in wait. As I sat down, the Aremo pointed at me and said:

Whatever you do for my father that earns you the kind of respect and midas touch you have on him, please keep it up. I lived here in the palace as a young boy and I understand the tone and tenor of every of Kabiyesis answers to his being told of the presence of his guests. Aa ri, mo nbo, o da were suggestive of several of his dispositions and palace courtiers understood what each of them meant. This evening, immediately he learnt of your presence, he said, let us leave immediately; I cannot keep Festus waiting! That, to me, means a lot.

From where I sat, I looked into Kabiyesis face. What I beheld, for the very first time, was a coy-looking Kabiyesi, a childlike smile glued to his face, looking at his tangled fingers. His son had apparently shot at his Achilles heels.

The tragedy of Alaafins passing for the Yoruba is immense. Of all their Obas, none had Kabiyesis stubbornness, mental alacrity, patriotism, panache and native intelligence to fight the battle of the peoples appropriate positioning in the national scheme of things. He often joked of how Kabiyesi Olubuse, the late Ooni of Ife, would tell people that he could not withstand Alaafins stubbornness. While others go cap in hand to pick crumbs from enemies of the Yoruba, Alaafin was too proud of the numero uno Yoruba stool he sat on to subject it to the whims of Yoruba suppressors. No Yoruba Oba living possessed Alaafins brilliance, commitment and love for the Yoruba people; perhaps next to him is the Orangun of Oke-Ila, Oba Dokun Abolarin.

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Alaafin never suffered fools gladly and would stand by his Yoruba people, no matter the persuasions to do otherwise. In our last meeting at the Jericho Quarters, we both agreed that he should embark on a diplomatic shuttle among his colleague Obas on who the Yoruba should support for the 2023 presidential election. He was to embark on this shuttle, first to the palace of the Awujale, and then to others. I told the Alaafin who I felt the Yoruba should not support, neglecting to suggest who the Yoruba should queue behind. He seemed to agree with me. Though he never told me in unmistakable language, I could hazard a guess about the Yoruba man he would have supported.

Alaafin was one of the most brilliant men I knew. Imbued with native intelligence and articulation that was borne of steeping himself in reading and the gathering of knowledge. While others slept, Alaafin was in his library. He was a step ahead of his traducers mentally, steeping himself in intellectual exercises at every opportunity. One day, at about 8 a.m. on a Sunday, I told some friends that Alaafin must have read the days dailies by then, but they disputed my claim. When I called him and put the phone on speaker, he analysed what I wrote in the days newspaper and all the issues on display in the public sphere. Alaafin was also very principled and followed all the laid-down ancient precepts of the traditional Yoruba monarchy. He would never eat in public and abhorred alcohol. His meals were amala, eko and other foods he inherited from his forebears. He frowned at the emerging crop of Obas who were bereft of the mental and physical insignia of a king and who got themselves polluted with modern fripperies.

As I write this, I confess that the full implication of Alaafins death hasnt dawned on me. I am yet to internalise the eternal truth that I will never see my father, the Alaafin of Oyo, again. An apt analogy that can explain Oba Adeyemis passing is a huge library being burnt down. Another is a fitting analogy that Ayinla Omowura gave in description of the sudden passing of his brother, composer and friend, Akanni Fatai, also known as Bolodeoku, which he labeled, agbojugbanu. Alaafins passing is an agbojugbanu, a jolting news heard that provokes the sudden fall of the calabash held in ones hand.

Festus Adedayo is an Ibadan-based journalist.
Oba Abolarins initiative has redefined the essence of traditional monarchy in Nigeria. Reactions on social media to the many stories about Abolarin College indicate that many people are of the opinion that the Obas conduct recommends itself to many of his colleagues nationwide. Traditional rulers, say the commentators, ought to be focussed on the plight of the poor people and the development of the younger generation.

Kabiyesi, Im told you want my daughter to enrol in your school so that you can convert her to Christianity, said Imam Oyefolahan, Chief Imam of Eripa Central Mosque. He was addressing the Orangun of Oke-Ila Orangun and founder of Abolarin College, Oba Dr Adedokun Omoniyi Abolarin, Aroyinkeye I. The Imams daughter, Aminat, had won a competitive scholarship award to Abolarin College but her cleric father was not quite sure of the motives of an institution that educates children from indigent homes free of charge.

Imam, if that is your concern, then you dont have any cause to worry at all. We are not interested in converting anybody to any religion. Our focus is education. We want to ensure that your daughter achieves her highest potential, replied the royal father.

Now Amina has graduated from Abolarin College and has secured admission into the University of Ilorin. Her father, now deceased, must be blessing her from above that she is on the way to fulfilling her destiny.

Abolarin College is a silent revolution in which educational acorns are being planted today so that the society may bask in the shade of intellectual Iroko trees tomorrow. Oba Abolarin shares Henry Peter Broughams conviction that, Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.

Evidence of his subscription to the educational philosophy of the former premier of the Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, abounds in his school, where a beautiful bust of the sage adorns the front yard of the institution. It was Awolowo that warned us to cater for the poor in our own interest: The rich, and the highly placed in business, public life, and government, are running a dreadful risk in their callous neglect of the poor and down-trodden.

But for the immediacy of social media and the encyclopaedic richness of the internet, many people would have found it difficult to believe that a school that caters to the needs of brilliant but financially handicapped children exists in Oke-Ila Orangun, Nigeria. But a physical visit to the town could be an excursion of sorts.

The philosophy behind the establishment of Abolarin College is based on the conviction of Oba Abolarin that education is a tool for liberating families from poverty. According to the schools official website, It is a desire fuelled by the desire to ensure that the rights of a child to education irrespective of the social status of the child is met. A childs future should not be determined by where the child is born but by the ability of the child to put into maximum use the talents that God gives. Therefore every child born into this world should be empowered through effective, functional and quality education.

The school does not charge fees. It relies on the resources of its founder and the generosity of public spirited people who share Oba Abolarins passion for helping children of the poor achieve their utmost potential. It is the only educational institution in Nigeria where poverty is one of the major requirements for qualification.

Where else would Bulus and Harsabala, poor children of refugees displaced from Borno State by Boko Haram, have had the privilege of free education, if not at Abolarin College? Their fathers were eking out a living as maiguards in Lagos when the opportunity of secondary education came. And they have grabbed it with both hands. Now, Oke-Ila is their home because they even spend the holidays in the school and enjoy the hospitality of the locals.

Coming from the hustle and bustle of Lagos or Abuja, an incredible sense of calm descends on you as you enter the idyllic environment of Oke-Ila, the ancient Igbomina-Yoruba town directly descended from the progenitor of the Yoruba race, Oduduwa. The town is located on one of the several mountains adjoining the eastern flanks of the Oke-Ila Ridge, a part of the Yoruba Hills, about 190 kilometres directly west of the confluence of the Rivers Niger and Benue at Lokoja and about 55 kilometres northeast of Osogbo, the capital of Osun State.

Tourists will be interested in the fact that the ancient town boasts of the breathtaking Ayikun-nugba Waterfalls, located southwest of the town, along the north-trending ridge-and-gorge series of the Oke-Ila Ridge complex in a cliff gorge, and its associated caves with mythical underground passages.

Another equally breathtaking tourist attraction is the Omi-Ogan Waterfalls, located in the valley off the northern road into the town, at the bottom of very steep slopes. The waterfall flows down two mail mounds and collects into a pool at the bottom, feeding the westward flowing Omi-Ogan River.

There is also the Oke Lanfo Peak located southeast of Oke-Ila Orangun, from the top of which a panoramic view of the surrounding towns within 50 kilometres can be seen. The ridges and gorges consist of the geologically defined Oke-Ila Quartzite, a series of metamorphic rocks about 550 million years old.

Abolarin College is a manifestation of the truism in Richard Meads famous declaration that, The greatest and most powerful revolutions often start very quietly, hidden in the shadows. A revolution is afoot in Oke-Ila, and it recommends itself to all societies desirous of development all over the world.

Where else would Bulus and Harsabala, poor children of refugees displaced from Borno State by Boko Haram, have had the privilege of free education, if not at Abolarin College? Their fathers were eking out a living as maiguards in Lagos when the opportunity of secondary education came. And they have grabbed it with both hands. Now, Oke-Ila is their home because they even spend the holidays in the school and enjoy the hospitality of the locals.

The students come from all directions of the compass. Chidozie from Ebonyi State has graduated. Gabriel Erosen from Delta is now in the Federal University of Technology, Akure. Okebe and Esther are from the Igede-speaking area of Benue State, while Nathan is from Plateau State. Miracle is from Enugu State, while Chisom is an Anambra indigene. Some of the students have their parents in surrounding towns and other places all over the South-West, but all are treated equally.

Abolarin College has the potential of becoming a mini united nations of secondary education in terms of national spread. In these days of all-systems-go in Nigerian society, the college insists on the highest standards. Admission into the school is not automatic but regulated under a strict process, in line with the core objectives of the royal father, who is one of the most highly educated monarchs in Nigeria.

When a king is a change agent, when a royal father is himself the ultimate ally of the poor, when a paramount monarch has made the development of human resources for the future his lifes work, a chronicler will say, blessed be the land whose king is compassionate and futuristic for it shall see better tomorrows.

The future of Nigeria is extremely important to us, says Kabiyesi, Lord bless Nigeria and use these children mightily. I am indeed an incurable optimist.

They are taught to be self-reliant and confident. Their self-confidence is further bolstered by the fact that the Oba himself finds time to teach in the school. This has enabled him to know all the students by name and monitor their academic progress. In addition to first class education, the students are exposed to farming. They plant cassava, plantain, yam, corn and other food items to augment their feeding.

A first time visitor to Abolarin College cannot but be impressed by the cultured behaviour of the students. They are immersed in cultural norms and respectful behaviour. The combination of good upbringing in the midst of first class instruction and facilities has produced excellent academic records.

About 21 products of the school have now gained admission into several Nigerian universities, out of the 28 presented for public examinations  Adeleke University, Ede; Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife; and University of Ilorin. Oba Abolarin personally attended the matriculation ceremonies to further inspire the students.

Oba Abolarins initiative has redefined the essence of traditional monarchy in Nigeria. Reactions on social media to the many stories about Abolarin College indicate that many people are of the opinion that the Obas conduct recommends itself to many of his colleagues nationwide. Traditional rulers, say the commentators, ought to be focussed on the plight of the poor people and the development of the younger generation.

When a king is a change agent, when a royal father is himself the ultimate ally of the poor, when a paramount monarch has made the development of human resources for the future his lifes work, a chronicler will say, blessed be the land whose king is compassionate and futuristic for it shall see better tomorrows.

Last week, in the presence of several invited kings, family, chiefs, friends from within and outside academia and industry, I was inducted into the illustrious heritage of this ancient town with the conferment of the title of Aare Agbaakin, while the better half was installed as Yeye Aare Agbaakin. Ad Dei gloriam.

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Thank you, Oba Dr Adedokun Omoniyi Abolarin, Aroyinkeye I, the poor peoples revolutionary king. Thank you Oke-Ila Orangun. We shall be back.

Wole Olaoye is a public relations consultant and veteran journalist. He can be reached on wole.olaoye@gmail.com, Twitter: @wole_olaoye; Instagram: woleola2021.
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INDIANAPOLIS, April 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- American Legion National Commander Paul E. Dillard issued the following statement today concerning the passing of former Sen. Orrin Hatch:

"The American Legion is saddened about the passing of Sen. Hatch. He was a true champion for veterans and an ardent supporter of a constitutional amendment to protect our American flag. His willingness to put patriotism ahead of partisan politics earned him friends across the political aisle. In 2000, The American Legion proudly presented him with our organization's Distinguished Service Medal, our highest honor. His voice is already missed."

As a presidential candidate during the primaries of 2000, the longtime Utah senator expressed dismay at those who disrespected the American flag. "I really believe that if we don't protect the values that we have, if we can't stand up for the flag of the United States, our national symbol, what can we stand up for?" Hatch told The American Legion Magazine.

About The American Legion

The American Legion, the nation's largest veterans organization, is dedicated to the motto of "Veterans Strengthening America." Chartered by Congress in 1919, The American Legion is committed to mentoring youth and sponsoring wholesome community programs, advocating patriotism and honor, promoting a strong national security and continued devotion to servicemembers and veterans. Nearly 2 million members in more than 12,500 posts across the nation and regions overseas serve their communities with a devotion to mutual helpfulness.

Contact: John Raughter, Media Relations

[email protected] or 317-630-1350

SOURCE The American Legion
GUANGZHOU, China, April 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Ingenuity helps to create a quality life. On 19 April, the fifth trade promotion activity of "Discover Canton Fair with Bee and Honey" was successfully held on Canton Fair's official Facebook account, attracting more than 175,000 viewers online. In the virtual event, Bee and Honey, Canton Fair's mascots, interacted actively with three consumer goods exhibitors, including Hanbang Glass, IKOO Glass and Meridian GHE. Especially, Bee visited WEIDI Tech in person as a correspondent, giving viewers an immersive experience of China's newly designed and innovative consumer goods.

"Discover Cantor Fair with Bee and Honey" is a series of online activities launched at the 131st Canton Fair, aiming to connect exhibitors and buyers. Hosted by Bee and Honey, Canton Fair's mascots, the virtual event includes corporate interviews, product presentations, factory demonstrations, process and craftsmanship introductions and lucky draws to showcase China's businesses and intelligent manufacturing in a diversified and comprehensive way. In the webcast for consumer goods, Hanbang Glass demonstrated a variety of soda-lime or borosilicate glass kitchenware, with the goal of promoting "Living in Kitchen"  a lifestyle that embraces quality kitchen time. IKOO Glass showcased their innovative food container, which features an original airtight glass lid. The product is portable and microwave-safe. Meridian MGH highlighted its glassware collection, which includes multipurpose glass candle holders, ribbed wine glasses and colored-dots drinking glasses. WEIDI Tech introduced a two-sided shaver with a classic butterfly twist-open design for easy blade changing. The selection of distinctive and high-quality merchandise has gained popularity among Canton Fair's social media followers.

Canton Fair's Consumer Goods section has usually been a favorite of foreign buyers. In this session, around 33,000 consumer goods products, including household items, kitchenware and tableware and personal care products, have been shown by 3,400 exhibitors. Alan Liu, Deputy Director General of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Canton Fair, told reporters that with consumption upgrading, people were more willing to pay for high-quality products and tended to buy high-end, personalized and niche brands and products with premium services. He added that the Canton Fair would continue to work with exhibitors to promote safe and healthy lifestyle for people all around the world through high-quality products.

Visit https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLzbB921_Z8K-q2l_padNIZur15hIwVow for more details.

SOURCE Canton Fair
GUANGZHOU, China, April 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On 20 April, with the theme of "Limited Clean Space, Unlimited Enjoyment", the sixth trade promotion activity of "Discover Canton Fair with Bee and Honey" was successfully held on Canton Fair's official Facebook account and well received with more than 192 thousand global fans watching online.

The virtual event was hosted by Bee and Honey, Canton Fair's mascots, who interacted actively with representatives from Tengzhou Yoway Electronic Technology., Zhejiang Tona Sanitary Ware. and Huida sanitary ware. Bee, in the meantime, conducted a field trip to Guangzhou SELAQUA Sanitary Ware.

Closely keeping up with the global fashion trend, China's sanitary wares have embarked on a high-end development road with the application of sound design and future science and technology. Enterprises participating in the activity have all played their ace. Tengzhou Yoway Electronic Technology revealed its signature product, the bathroom mirror cabinet, which is elegantly and simply designed and allows Bluetooth connection for music play. It also has an inductive touch panel for temperature, humidity, time and other information displaying. Rock plate series bathroom cabinet, the signature product of Zhejiang Tona Sanitary Ware is featured with elegant appearance, green material application and excellent waterproof and antibacterial properties. Full range of sanitary products, such as bathroom cabinet, bathtub, intelligent toilet and ceramic tile displayed by Huida sanitary ware, cater to multiple demands of global customers. Guangzhou SELAQUA Sanitary Ware promoted its flagship sanitary series which is accessible and friendly to the aged. With safe, useful, nice-looking and comfortable attributes, the series has won Canton Fair Design Awards for many times.

Around 40 thousand products are showcased in the sanitary ware section by 630 enterprises. Numerous latest releases outstanding in visual attraction, intelligent operation, comfortable and convenient use were introduced at the Fair.

Alan Liu, Deputy Director General of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Canton Fair, said that the sanitary ware section has always been popular at previous Canton Fairs. As China's largest B2B international trade platform, the Canton Fair has launched a number of promotion activities, including "Discover Canton Fair with Bee and Honey" to facilitate exhibitors across industries to expand market, gain orders online, and help keep industry chain and trade stable.

Visit https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLzbB921_Z8K-q2l_padNIZur15hIwVow for more details.

SOURCE Canton Fair
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Table of Content

Executive Summary

Market Insights

Category Pricing Insights

Cost-saving Opportunities

Best Practices

Category Ecosystem

Category Management Strategy

Category Management Enablers

Suppliers Selection

Suppliers under Coverage

US Market Insights

Category scope

Appendix

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"The (G20) presidency concluded that the World Bank should start exploring the process for developing and establishing FIF," Indrawati remarked at the second meeting of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Banks Governors (FMCBG) press conference here on Thursday.

According to the minister, G20 members view FIF as being the most effective choice for new financial mechanisms, especially in preparing for other potential pandemics in future.

Indrawati believes this is because the establishment of FIF is viewed as being able to overcome the financing gap in the health sector as what had occurred during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

"Most (G20) members agree on the need for a new financial mechanism dedicated to addressing the financing gap in PPR," she stated.

Hence, she explained that G20 members hope that the establishment of FIF would mitigate the health financing needs in line with the World Health Organization's (WHO's) expectations.

Moreover, G20 members called on the World Bank to explore discussions on the governance and operational regulations of FIF by involving the WHO.

"There is widespread support for WHO and the World Bank regarding the assessment of significant financing gaps that need to be addressed," Indrawati remarked.

Earlier, on April 1, the Indonesian finance and health ministries resumed the third G20 Joint Finance and Health Task Force (JFHTF).

At the meeting, JFHTF co-chair Wempi Saputra invited G20 member countries to draw up a financing action plan for pandemic preparedness and response (PPR).

"The third JFHTF meeting is an important step for all member countries in drafting the financing strategies for prevention, preparedness, and response to the pandemic or PPR," Saputra stated.

Meanwhile, one of the main agendas of Indonesia's G20 Presidency is global health architecture.

SOURCE Ministry of Communication and Informatics
Jerusalem, April 24 : Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett held a phone conversation with United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the recent development of Israeli-Palestinian tensions, the Prime Minister's Office said.

Bennett on Saturday told the UN chief that Israel is "the stabilising force" in the conflicts, Xinhua news agency reported.

"If we did not uphold order, tens of thousands of Muslims would not be able to pray," a premier office's statement quoted him as saying.

His remarks came after weeks of tension in Jerusalem, where the Palestinians and the Israeli police clashed again at the holy site of the Al-Aqsa mosque.

The Israeli Prime Minister also expressed his disappointment "at the absence of condemnation by the UN for the firing of rockets at Israel," said the statement.

Several rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza in the past week after months of quiet. In response, Israel announced the temporary closure of the sole pedestrian crossing from Gaza to Israel, though thousands of Gazans cross into Israel on a daily basis to make a living.

In 2021, clashes at the holy site led to an 11-day war between Israel and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Saharanpur : , April 24 (IANS) The body of a 42-year-old farmer was allegedly found hanging from a tree in Sona Arjunpur village of Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur district while the mutilated body of his 35-year-old servant was found stuffed in a sack nearby.

Both the bodies have been sent for post-mortem and the report is awaited.

The body of the servant is reportedly decomposed.

Suraj Rai, Superintendent of Police (Rural), Saharanpur, on Sunday said, "Prima facie it seems that the farmer identified as Pramod Rana had died by suicide while his servant had been murdered. It is not yet clear if Rana had murdered his servant Praveen who had been missing since April 19 and his relatives had even filed a missing person report. Forensic teams are investigating the matter and thoroughly checking the call detail reports of the deceased." The family of the victim said Rana had left home on Friday evening under the pretext of watering the crops but he did not return.

A day later, his body was allegedly found hanging from a mango tree.

Rana is survived by his wife and two daughters. His elder brother's wife and their 20-year-old daughter also stay in the same house.

The police said they were also investigating a possible love angle in the case.
Kiev, April 24 : Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he supports a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Russia, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported.

"There is a diplomatic path. There is a military one," Zelensky told a press conference in Kiev on Saturday, adding he wants to stop the conflict and put an end to it.

At the same time, he stressed that Kiev would withdraw from peace negotiations with Moscow if Russian forces kill Ukrainians trapped in Mariupol or hold pseudo-referendums in the areas they captured in Ukraine, Xinhua news agency reported.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Moscow, April 24 : Russia's forces have destroyed a logistics terminal at a military airfield near Ukraine's Odessa, where foreign weapons were stored, said the Russian Defence Ministry.

"This afternoon, high-precision, long-range air-based missiles fired by the Russian Aerospace Forces disabled a logistics terminal at a military airfield near Odessa, where a large batch of foreign weapons received from the US and European countries were stored," said Russian Defence Ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov on Saturday.

However, Russia is continuing its special military operation in Ukraine, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Russian military has destroyed 141 aircraft and 110 helicopters, 264 anti-aircraft missile systems, 541 unmanned aerial vehicles, 2,479 tanks and other armoured combat vehicles, 278 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,081 field artillery and mortars, and 2,321 special military vehicles.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Panaji, April 24 : No, bulldozers aren't hogging the limelight in Goa, but old communal scars left behind by early Portuguese colonists appear to be resurfacing in the peaceful holiday state.

A proposal by Chief Minister Pramod Sawant in his budget speech this year, proposing to earmark Rs 20 crore for restoration of temples destroyed during the Portuguese colonial regime has triggered a debate in the state about a subject, which its residents had more often than not shrugged aside as an unfortunate savagery of a past age.

Catholics, most of whom are descendents of Hindus converted centuries ago, account for nearly 26 per cent of the state's population, but both communities have been living in relative harmony over the years.

While the state government is yet to formulate a clear policy for identification of the temples damaged during the early and especially brutal part of Portuguese occupation of Goa, the first major Portuguese conquest in Goa was the 1510 defeat of the Adil Shah of Bijapur who ruled the region, according to Goa's Archives and Archaeology Minister Subhash Phaldesai, only sites which are not disputed would be considered by his Ministry for restoration.

"What is the objection in carrying out such restoration in areas where there is no controversy, where there is no disputed area. If there is a dispute it can be addressed, there is the judiciary, there are mechanisms to maintain law and order," Phaldesai said.

Temples in Goa came under a series of assaults, which date back to an era before the Portuguese, when the region which was once a prosperous port town known for its flourishing trade, was under the reign of the Adil Shah kingdom of Bijapur.

"During the 14th and 15th centuries C.E., Goa's earliest mosques were built, sometimes on the sites of demolished Hindu temples in and around Old Goa, as a consequence of Muslim occupations of this key trade port. Thus, when the Portuguese arrived in Goa, they came to a land long used to conflict and the fluctuation of religious power," says scholar Timothy Walker in his research paper 'Contesting Sacred Space in the Estado da India: Asserting Cultural Dominance over Religious Sites in Goa'.

"With each new oscillation, the victors would assert their religious ascendance by supplanting religious edifices. Of course, temple destruction is nothing new in the Indian context; as a tool of conquest and dominance it began long before European arrival to South Asia, and such acts continue to be politically charged and culturally relevant in modern India.

"Because of their prior experiences with sacred site destruction by invaders for political ends, the local Goan population may have immediately understood the Portuguese destruction of mosques and temples as constituting just another example of a 'legible grammar' of cultural/political domination as practiced in South Asia," he added.

More than nearly 300 temples were destroyed by the Portuguese during their early forays into Goa, forcing the relocation of temples away from the reach of the Portuguese colonists in present day Maharashtra and Karnataka.

The drumming of the temple restoration rhetoric has however been criticised by the Opposition, at a time when the state also witnessed a clash between two religious groups on the occasion of Ram Navami this month.

"There is a systemic pattern in which communal hate and venom is being spread amongst communities. Goa is no exception, the recent statements of Goa Chief Minister are only indicative of the direction given by the party high command," Rahul Mhambre, former state convenor of the Aam Aadmi Party, said.
Agartala, April 24 : The northeastern states of India may have tamed the decades old insurgencies but now the state governments in the region have had to launch a war against the rampant illegal drug trade, which flourished after the 1,643 km long India-Myanmar unfenced international borders turned into a hub of cross-border smuggling.

Besides various harmful drugs, especially heroin, highly-addictive methamphetamine tablets, also commonly known as 'Yaba', poppy seeds, opium, ganja (marijuana), morphine, bottles of cough syrup valued at hundreds of crores, various other contraband like gold, foreign cigarette as well as arms and ammunition are often smuggled from Myanmar to the northeastern states specially Mizoram and Manipur.

In addition to the illegal drug trade, illicit poppy cultivation in the mountainous and bordering areas to produce opium drugs has also become a very lucrative affair in Manipur and a few other northeastern states.

Experts said that there is a huge demand for opium, an extract of the poppy, in the pharmaceutical industry.

While the cultivators illegally procure poppy seeds from Myanmar, the climatic condition in the northeastern states is congenial for its cultivation.

Former and surrendered militants, unemployed and misguided youths are involved in this unlawful trade as it provides a big source of income for them.

Officials of the state and central governments said that the smuggling of poppy seeds is a major cause of concern for Mizoram and Manipur, especially along the India-Myanmar border.

In India, opium poppy cultivation is prohibited under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, except under a license issued by the Central Bureau of Narcotics under NDPS Rules, 1985.

Smuggling of poppy seeds from Myanmar is a new item in the illegal trade in various drugs.

The Central and state security forces and various other law enforcing agencies during the past three-four years have intercepted drugs and various other contraband worth thousands of crores of rupees in different northeastern states including Mizoram, Manipur, Assam, Nagaland and Tripura.

During the past one year, around 2,375 cases related to the illegal drug trade have been registered in police stations across Assam alone.

Around 4,100 people have been arrested and drugs with an estimated value of Rs 450 crore, including heroin, ganja, opium, methamphetamine tablets, approximately two lakh bottles of codeine based cough syrup, 40 lakh tablets and capsules have been seized in Assam since May last year.

Drugs, gold and other contraband worth over Rs 1,500 crore, mostly smuggled from Myanmar, were seized in Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.

To check this menace, the authorities in these states have taken various steps.

In a first of its kind initiative by any Indian state, Arunachal Pradesh earlier this month launched an online certificate course on prevention of drug abuse, with the aim to eradicate narcotics' abuse.

The four-month online course will consist of modules on understanding drug abuse, types and harmful effects of drugs, signs and symptoms, myths and facts, counselling and intervention, management of alcohol, cannabis, opioid use and related disorders, behavioural change, communication and family role, workplace prevention and law enforcement.

The course has been developed by the Department of Social Justice, Empowerment and Tribal Affairs (SJETA) in collaboration with New Delhi based National Institute of Social Defence, under the National Action Plan for Drug Demand Reduction of the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

To begin with, all Group 'A' and 'B' employees of the state government will have to mandatorily undergo the course, which would be coordinated by the Arunachal Pradesh Psychoactive Substance Control Authority.

Assam, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura, while providing suitable training to the personnel of the law enforcing agencies, are burning the seized drugs publicly while a massive campaign is going on to make the people aware about the detrimental effect of drug abuse.

The Assam and Nagaland governments have recently launched an 'App' for easy communication between the people and the law enforcing agencies against the abuse and illegal trade in drugs.

These Apps will help the citizens to inform the police about the sale, storage, shipment, usage of psychotropic substances instantly.

Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) Director General Satya Narayan Pradhan at a workshop-cum-training programme in Guwahati recently had said that the NCB would work closely with the agencies of the northeastern states and the Central para-military forces to curb the drug trade in the region.

Pradhan had said that with better coordination between the state and central law enforcing agencies, drug smuggling would be curbed to a large extent.

Security expert and social analyst Apurba Kumar Dey said that even though the terror activities have been largely curbed in the past few years, a few militant outfits, some surrendered extremists, and jobless youths are getting involved in the smuggling of drugs and other contraband.

"More stringent action, stricter vigil along the India-Myanmar and other borders, providing jobs and alternative income, vigorous campaign about the harmful effects of abuse of drugs, engagement of NGOs against the drug menace must be undertaken otherwise the future of a large number of youths will be spoiled," Dey told IANS.

According to security and customs officials, the northeastern states are being used as a corridor for the illegal drug trade between Myanmar and other Indian states and the neighbouring countries.

(Sujit Chakraborty can be contacted at sujit.c@ians.in)
New Delhi, April 24 : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is gearing up for the Assembly elections scheduled to be held in Himachal Pradesh by the end of 2023.

Preparing to repeat its poll performance of 2018 Assembly elections, the saffron party's high command is planning "Mission Repeat" in the hilly state which can be gauged from the fact that BJP National President, J.P. Nadda has visited the state twice in April.

The 2023 Assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh will be contested under the leadership of current Chief Minister and BJP leader, Jairam Thakur but it will also be a prestige battle for Nadda's political presence in his own native state.

The main opposition Congress seems to be engrossed in holding discussions regarding the selection of the party's National President, party's policy, poll strategy, Chief Ministerial candidate and role of poll strategist Prashant Kishor for the future elections.

Buoyed by the emphatic victory in Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has decided to contest the forthcoming Assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh.

During his two-day visit to Himachal Pradesh, BJP National Chief held a massive roadshow in Kangra on Friday and addressed a public rally there. He also held a meeting with party leaders to review the preparations ahead of the Assembly polls.

On Saturday, Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party Chief Arvind Kejriwal, while addressing public rallies in Mandi and Kangra, slammed the ruling BJP government as well as the Congress.

Of the total 68 Assembly seats in 12 districts of Himachal Pradesh, a maximum 15 seats are from Kangra district and therefore it will decide which party will win the elections.

Launching a scathing attack at the BJP government in the state, Kejriwal said Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister was impersonating all the schemes being implemented by the Delhi government, adding that the latter would never succeed in doing so.

Responding to the Delhi Chief Minister's statement, Jairam Thakur urged him to speak in a restrained language and said Himachal Pradesh has its own culture and traditions and the former will be given a befitting reply after elections.

The AAP is trying to take full advantage of the Congress' weakness in the state. Given the current poll situation, the BJP too feels it has a direct political fight with the AAP. This is the reason that in order to weaken AAP's political prospects in the state, the BJP has inducted state AAP President Anup Kesari and other big AAP leaders into its party fold.

The BJP is confident that all the state welfare schemes being implemented by it will help the party form the government for the second time in the state and reverse the record of alternate governments elected in the state after every five years.

After contesting Assembly polls in Delhi, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Goa, including all other states, the AAP fought elections on the poll promise of providing free electricity, healthcare and education.

However in Himachal Pradesh, the AAP is fully aware of the impact of the state welfare schemes being implemented by the Jairam Thakur-led BJP government. Therefore, instead of making poll promises, Kejriwal has accused Thakur of copying the Delhi government's schemes in the hilly state.

As the poll campaign in Himachal Pradesh nears, the political slugfest will intensify between the BJP and AAP regarding the implementation and achievement of several welfare schemes concerning the people of the hilly state.

On the issue of electricity, the BJP-led state government claims that on the 52nd Complete Statehood Day on January 25, it provided relief to rural sections of the state by announcing free electricity up to 60 units. No metre rent, fixed charges and energy charges will be paid by domestic consumers consuming up to 60 units of electricity every month.

Apart from this, 11 lakh domestic electricity consumers of the state are receiving benefits of the state government's move to pay electricity bills at Rs 1 per unit even after consuming 125 units of electricity.

On the issue of receiving free treatment in hospitals, the Himachal Pradesh government claims that under the Central government's Ayushman Bharat scheme, 1.16 lakh patients were treated free of cost till November 2021 on which an amount of Rs 139.16 crore has been spent. Along with this 5.13 lakh families of the state are registered under the Mukhyamantri Himachal Healthcare (HIMCARE) Yojana.

Up to November 2021, 2.17 lakh patients received free treatment up to Rs 5 lakh on which the state government spent an amount of Rs 196.16 crore.

More than Rs 335 crore has been spent on free treatment of people under both the healthcare (Central and state) schemes. The BJP-led state government has decided to conduct X-ray, ultrasound, including 56 types of other tests, completely free of cost in all government hospitals.

Nearly, 1,374 medicines are being provided free of cost in all government hospitals across the state on which nearly Rs 216 crore has been spent till November 2021.

Under the Mukhyamantri Himachal Pradesh Sahara Yojana, nearly Rs 3,000 are being transferred every month to the bank accounts of more than 20,000 beneficiaries of the state.

The BJP is confident that the beneficiaries of nearly a dozen schemes implemented by the double- engine Himachal Pradesh government will help it defeat both the AAP and Congress to form the government for the second time. Ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections, the saffron party is well prepared with a poll strategy.
Srinagar, April 24 : The two terrorists killed in a gunfight with the security forces in the Mirhama area of South Kashmir's Kulgam district have been identified as Pakistani nationals belonging to the proscribed Jaish-e-Mohammed, officials said on Sunday.

"The killed JeM terrorists have been identified as Sultan Pathan and Zabiullah, both residents of Pakistan.

"They were categorised terrorists and active since year 2018 in the areas of Kulgam-Shopian districts," the Jammu and Kashmir Police quoting Inspector General Police Kashmir zone Vijay Kumar tweeted.

Police said based on specific input generated by the Kulgam police regarding the presence of terrorists in the Mirhama area of Kulgam, a joint cordon and search operation was launched by the police and Army.

During the search operation, as the security team proceeded towards the suspected spot, the hiding terrorists fired indiscriminately upon them which was retaliated effectively leading to the encounter.

Incriminating materials, arms and ammunition, including two AK rifles, seven AK magazines and nine grenades were recovered from their possession.
Chennai, April 24 : The Tamil Nadu government has approached legal experts to provide refugee status to the Sri Lankan Tamils who have reached the state in the wake of the ongoing economic crisis in the island nation.

Till date, 60 Sri Lankan Tamils have reached Dhanushkodi and Rameswaram.

Most of them sold all their belongings to reach the Indian shores in fishing boats paying huge money.

Tamil Nadu has accommodated all the refugees at the Mandapam refugee camp but the accommodation is temporary as the state would have to get a green signal from the Central to provide full-scale refugee status to those who reach Indian shores.

Sources in the Tamil Nadu government told IANS that it has used the services of some senior lawyers in New Delhi over granting of the refugee status.

More than 1 lakh Sri Lankan Tamils are in India currently, with a majority of them in Tamil Nadu and accommodated in 67 refugee camps.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK. Stalin had recently increased the cash support to the refugees who are lodged in rehabilitation and refugee camps in various parts of the state.

According to the revised budget, the head of a family will now receive Rs 1,500 from the earlier Rs 1,000. An adult member of the family will now get Rs 1,000 while a child will receive Rs 500.

Presently the Tamil Nadu government consider those who arrive from Sri Lanka as illegal migrants but provide them with food and lodging and is awaiting a green signal from the Centre to provide them refugee status.

The legal experts engaged by the Tamil Nadu government are providing the necessary legal support for providing refugee status to these people.

A senior official with the Tamil Nadu government told IANS: "The state government is keen that all of them are provided refugee status and is awaiting clearance from the Central government. We have already engaged senior lawyers to remove all the legal tangles regarding granting refugee status to these people. However, the final clearance will be provided by the Central government."
Kolkata, April 24 : The recent inauguration session of the Bengal Global Business Summit, 2022, on April 20 became a focal point of political debate following the central probe agency jibe by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from the dais.

After Governor Jagdeep Dhankar reminded the Chief Minister that "Centre-state development bonhomie" and "stable law and order situation" are prerequisites for attracting investors, the Chief Minister, from the dais requested the governor to take it up with the Union government so that "industrialists are not disturbed through any central agency".

This jibe by the Chief Minister from the summit dais has provoked political mud-slinging with the ruling Trinamool Congress on the one side and the opposition parties like the BJP, the Left Front and the Congress on the other side.

IANS talked to a number of experts in the field including economists, industry observers and financial analysts among others. The majority of them stated that such a jibe was undesirable from a business summit dais where several business delegates from the country and abroad were present and said that this development would prove to be a major image dampener for the state. However, a small section also felt that lack of restraint by the chief minister in her speeches is such a talked about subject that it will not add further to the damage already done.

Former chief economic advisor to the Union government, Ashok Kumar Lahiri, told IANS that what the chief minister has done was not right. "That was not the ideal platform for such a comment. This will take her nowhere in her attempts to attract investments to the state. Rather such comments will bring greater harm both for the state as well as for her," Lahiri said.

Professor of economics, Santanu Basu said that it has become a habit of the chief minister to raise political issues at any platform. According to him, the chief minister often forgets that the dais of a business summit is not an ideal platform to raise political issues. "Probably, the governor's reminder of strong Centre-state relations and law and order stability as pre- requisites for attracting investor confidence was the trigger- point for the chief minister to raise the central agency issue," Basu said.

Veteran financial columnist R.N. Sinha felt that lack of restraint by the chief minister in her speeches or comments is such a talked about subject that it will not add further to the damage already done for years.

"In my opinion she raised the issue of central agencies on a lighter note. But that gave a wrong signal since the central agencies have the liberty to take action against anyone including industrialists who adopt unfair practices. The chief minister would have been politically correct had she said that the industrialists or rather anyone should not be harassed without any reason," Sinha told IANS.

The founder of a city-based real estate company, who was present at the opening session of the BGBS-2022 summit, told IANS on condition of anonymity that the chief minister opened her speech brilliantly as she said that the West Bengal government was the first state government in the country to organise such a business summit after a gap of two years because of the Covid-19 pandemic. "The Chief Minister even said that this will encourage other state governments now to organise similar summits. These words were really applauded by the delegates. She should have maintained this note of positivity throughout," he said.

State BJP president Sukanta Majumdar said the Chief Minister's comments were totally unwarranted.

"In my opinion her constant worry about the ongoing central agency probes against her own party leaders and even some of her own family members, was reflected in her reference about industrialists being disturbed about central agencies. Her comments are enough to get the investors more worried, at a point of time when the existing law and order situation in the state is already a cause of concern for all concerned," Majumdar said.

IANS tried to talk to a couple of senior Trinamool MPs for their reactions. But both of them refused any sort of interaction on this issue out of the fear of getting censored.
London, April 24 : In a phone conversation with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that his country is set to provide the war-torn nation with more military equipment.

In a statement, the Downing Street said that during the conversation between the two leaders on Saturday, Johnson told Zelensky more armoured vehicles, drones and anti-tank weapons would be sent to Ukraine, reports the BBC.

The Prime Minister also confirmed that the UK will reopen its embassy in Kive next week, a move first announced on Friday.

According to a Downing Street, this was a demonstration of "our support and solidarity with the Ukrainian people".

Zelenksy also apprised Johnson on the situation in the Donbas, where Russia has been concentrating its military efforts in recent days, while b leaders condemned ongoing attacks by Russian forces against civilian targets, including in Mariupol, Odessa and Lviv.

The Downing Street said Johnson told Zelensky that Russia would be held to account for its actions and that the UK government was helping to collect evidence of war crimes.

He also updated the President on new UK sanctions against members of the Russian military.

Zelensky also thanked the Prime Minister for the training of more than 20 Ukrainian troops who arrived in the UK last week, the BBC reported.

According to the British government, the Ukrainian soldiers receiving training in the UK are being instructed on how to use 120 armoured vehicles that will be supplied to the resistance effort against Moscow.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
Chennai, April 24 : The Tamil Nadu Police have beefed up the security in the Nilgiris as Governor R.N. Ravi is at the Raj Bhavan in Nilgiris to attend a two-day conference of the University Vice-Chancellors to be held on April 25 and 26.

Several political parties, including the ruling DMK and its allies are on a confrontation path with the Tamil Nadu Governor, who is yet to forward the Bill passed by the state Assembly seeking exemption for the Tamil Nadu students to appear in NEET exam to the President of India.

The protest against the Governor at Myladuthurai on April 19 had turned violent with the DMK ally Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), the ideological body of the DMK, the Dravidar Kazhagam (DK), and the Left parties resorting to black flag demonstrations. The incident led to criticism from the opposition AIADMK and the BJP. State BJP president K. Annamalai shot off a letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah to ensure security for the Governor.

The Tamil Nadu government and the state home department do not want any repeat of such a security lapse or intelligence failure in Nilgiris and, hence the heavy security deployment around the Raj Bhavan.

Sources in the state police told IANS that the security is being monitored by an officer in the rank of Additional Director General of Police and have two Deputy Inspector Generals and three Superintendents of Police leading the security ring. Police officers said that more than 500 policemen, including Deputy Superintendents and Inspectors are also deployed other than the constabulary to provide security to the Governor.

While the DMK wanted to convey the message that it is not happy with the Governor over the NEET issue, it does not want to get flak over the security failure to the most important person in the state and has provided heavy security.

Governor R.N. Ravi reached Nilgiris on Saturday landing at Coimbatore airport from the airport and a heavy police force was found on both sides of the road providing security to him. He will leave Nilgiris on Tuesday for Chennai after attending the two-day Vice Chancellor's conference.
Colombo, April 24 : Sri Lanka is looking for investors that can bring in more than $2 billion into the central bank, Finance Minister Ali Sabry said.

Sabry said that the next few months will be difficult for Sri Lankans, reports Xinhua news agency.

"There is a need to attract investments in U.S. dollars into Sri Lanka's central bank," he said.

The Minister said that the government is talking with several countries to get funds as soon as possible.

"If that effort is successful and money comes to the central bank, it will help stop the depreciation and stabilise the rupee," he said.

Amid the ongoing economic crisis, the Sri Lankan government decided last week to suspend repayment for all debts for an interim period till it has an orderly and consensual debt restructuring programme supported by the International Monetary Fund.
Bengaluru, April 24 : The mood in Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is upbeat in Karnataka after its initiative to engage with the farmers enabled it to reach out to every village in the state. The major parties in the state -- BJP, Congress and regional party JD(S) -- are worried over the development and political moves of the emerging party.

The AAP is now all set to expand its base further. After the pact with Karnataka Farmers Association headed by Kodihalli Chandrashekar, the party leaders are forging alliances with other farming organisations to consolidate the base further in the state. The AAP is going to give the call for farmers to become lawmakers and make suitable laws to address their age-old grievances.

The AAP's announcement on free education, healthcare, power, water, free transport for women is expected to consolidate its base in urban and as well as rural Karnataka. Sources in the AAP say the reach out to farmers is going to work magic for the party.

AAP National Convener and New Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was overwhelmed with the first massive convention with a 30,000 strong crowd attending the convention in Karnataka. The response he got when he urged the crowd to bring AAP to power, has made everyone turn around in political corridors.

Leaders of the major political parties reveal that AAP has arrived in the political scenario as a serious player in the state. After the pact with the Karnataka Farmers Association, which has lakhs of volunteers across Karnataka, AAP has matched the network of major political parties, making the competition tougher for the upcoming Assembly elections of 2023.

Talking to IANS, Kodihalli Chandrashekar, President of Karnataka Farmers Association explained that the AAP is going to win a majority of seats in the upcoming Assembly elections. "The farmer community is facing the challenge of life and livelihood in Karnataka. They will overcome the hurdles of politics of caste and religion, which has played a major role so far in the state," he said.

"The farmers are taken for granted. To give an example, Ragi crop is being purchased for Rs 1,600, whereas the Minimum Support Price (MSP) fixed is Rs 3,370. This is a huge difference. Things like this have to be communicated to every voter. They won't bother much about Rs 1,000 that is going to be dangled by the national parties during elections for their vote," he explains.

The assurance to farmers will be worked out with the statistics regarding their produce, including vegetables and various crops. "The farmers will overthrow national and regional parties who have used them as vote banks all these days," he said.

Explaining about the network of the association, Kodihalli Chandrashekar said the association has a well-organised committee in every hobli and taluk levels of the state. There are more than 10,000 village committees across the state. Through the association, AAP has reached every booth in the state.

He further stated that the 30,000 strong crowd which gathered for the convention in Bengaluru, attended voluntarily. They were not given any money. The crowd poured in by public transport, no transport arrangements were made like the national parties. "We have not arranged for 'biryani'. This is the momentum which will go down the history of the country, mark my words," he stated.

"On the sidelines of the convention, I spoke personally with Arvind Kejriwal and explained that we need to keep the assurance for the farmers which is crucial. He assured to emulate the Punjab model where seeds and fertilizers are given by the government and minimum support price (MSP) for produce is also given to them, which will make farmer's life at ease," he said.

When asked if the delivery of these assurances are practical, he said that these things could be done in a very simple way, he said.

Darshan Jain, State Joint Secretary of AAP told IANS that there is a huge anti-incumbency factor against the BJP in the state. They are going to be whitewashed. The regional party JD(S), which is powered by farmers, does not have a clear political stand. The AAP has started preparations for the upcoming Assembly elections. The presence of AAP is strong in Bengaluru as well as in Hyderabad-Karnataka region. The party is contesting in all 224 Assembly seats, he explains.

Jagadish V. Sadam, the State Media Convener of AAP in Karnataka said the party, which has been branded as urban centric, has reached every doorstep now. The party is going to call upon farmers to become lawmakers. That is what happened in Punjab. They can address their grievances better than anyone, he says.
Islamabad, April 24 : Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari will take oath as the country's new Foreign Minister in a day or two, a top official said.

Bilawal was present at the time when the initial federal cabinet members took oath, however, he did not take the oath, Geo News reportedd.

But Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb had assured that the PPP Chairman would take the oath after he returned to Pakistan.

In a conversation with journalists in London, PPP leader Qamar Zaman Kaira said Bilawal has left for Pakistan, after he held two meetings with PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif to exchange views on political matters.

In their last meeting, the PML-N supremo and PPP chairman, the two key allies in the ruling coalition, discussed the way forward after a "constitutional victory for democracy, the rule of law and supremacy of parliament" and agree to work closely to "repair the rot across the board", read a joint statement.

The joint statement said that during the meeting both leaders agreed that they have accomplished a great deal whenever they work together, the statement said, adding that it was resolved that at a crucial crossroads in history the imperative to work together to rebuild the country was seriously needed.

Matters relating to the broad roadmap for the future with the consensus of all democratic forces and the unfinished business left on the "Charter of Democracy" were also discussed in the meeting.
Los Angeles, April 24 : Alex Kurtzman, who serves as an executive producer on the recently released television series 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' and has directed the Tom Cruise-starrer 'The Mummy', has gone on record with 'The Playlist' to state that the latter, is "probably the biggest failure of my life, both personally and professionally", reports 'Deadline'.

As per 'Deadline', while he has a lot of things he regrets about making the film, Kurtzman does find some positive aspects to the experience.

The writer-producer-filmmaker told 'The Playlist': "As brutal as it was, in many ways, and as many cooks in the kitchen as there were, I am very grateful for the opportunity to make those mistakes because it rebuilt me into a tougher person and it also rebuilt me into a clearer filmmaker.

"And that has been a real gift and I feel those gifts all the time because I'm very clear now when I have a feeling that doesn't feel right, I am not quiet about it anymore. I will literally not proceed when I feel that feeling. It's not worth it to me. And you can't get to that place of gratitude until you've had that kind of experience." Meanwhile, 'The Man Who Fell To Earth' is Kurtzman's newest television project starring Naomie Harris and Chiwetel Ejiofor, and debuts on Showtime and for Indian audiences on Voot Select on Sunday.
Hyderabad, April 24 : The discussions between Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and election strategist Prashant Kishor continued here for a second consecutive day on Sunday.

Prashant Kishor, who airdashed to Hyderabad on Saturday, had a night halt at Pragati Bhavan, the official residence of the chief minister after day-long discussions.

KCR, as the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief is popularly known, on Sunday resumed discussion with Prashant Kishor on the strategy for next year's Assembly elections in Telangana and his plans of a national alternative at the Centre.

The discussions are likely to continue throughout the day. KCR's son and TRS working president K.T. Rama Rao also discussed various issues with PK, as the political strategist is popularly called.

KCR's discussions with PK assume significance in view of the latter's recent series of meetings with Congress leadership and his reported plans to join the grand old party.

Kishor is understood to have shared with KCR the result of the survey done by his team in 89 Assembly constituencies in Telangana. He had already given a report to the TRS president on the survey done in 30 constituencies.

With PK's recent moves raising question mark on whether he would continue to work with the TRS, the election strategist is believed to have assured KCR that he would honour the commitment.

The TRS leader and PK also reported to have exchanged views on the current political situation in the country and KCR's plans to forge an alliance of regional parties.

The discussions come ahead of 21st foundation day celebrations of TRS scheduled in Hyderabad on April 27. Party sources indicated that the inputs given by PK may come up for discussion at the day-long plenary.

Based on the outcome of the survey by the PK team, the TRS chief may guide the party leaders to strengthen the organisation ahead of the 2023 polls.

Last month, KCR revealed that he is working with PK. Describing PK as his best friend for the last 7-8 years, KCR had claimed that he never takes money for his work. "Prashant Kishor never takes money for work. Take it from me. He is not a paid worker. You people don't know who Prashant Kishor is and what his commitment is for the nation," he said.

KCR said since Prashant Kishor worked in 12 states and can help in impacting national politics, he invited him to work with him.

The TRS chief said that Prashant Kishor with apps, surveys and his i-PAC team knows people's pulse.
Krishnagiri : , April 24 (IANS) Bhavish Aggarwal will not invite Elon Musk to his state-of-the-art, electric two-wheeler manufacturing facility here as the Ola Founder and CEO feels that when India becomes a global hub for electrification, Tesla CEO will have no choice but to come to the country.

Aggarwal said that not one company has the right or the entitlement to own the future of humanity, which is electric mobility.

"Why should I invite Musk? It is he who should invite us as we have to take pride in our work," Aggarwal told IANS.

"On one company can bring true mobility to the world. Neither Tesla, nor Ola. Our focus is on empowering our communities and building electrification for India and for the world, and genuinely creating the future industry right here," he emphasised.

Aggarwal, who revealed that Ola Electric has started testing an autonomous vehicle which it will launch in the global market by late 2023 or early 2024, said that the goal is to really make India a global hub for electrification.

"Once we achieve that, Musk will come on his own," he told IANS.

Despite tall promises and a lot of dilly-dallying, Tesla is yet to arrive in India amid "challenges with the government", especially around high customs duties and a key demand to manufacture its cars in the country.

Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari recently said that manufacturing Tesla in China and selling in India is not a digestible concept to "all of us", as Musk continues to seek tax rebates to sell his electric car in the country.

"If you start here, you are welcome, no problem. But manufacturing in China and selling in India is not a digestible concept to all of us," he had said.

Gadkari said that the country cannot appease one automobile company.

"India is a huge market. We have all the world's automobile giants -- BMW, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Tototo, Honda, Hyundai -- present here. If we give one benefit to one company, we have to give that benefit to other companies also. That is the practical problem," he elaborated.
London, April 24 : Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birth anniversary.

The celebration, with a parade of local primary and secondary school students and civic groups, began on Saturday.

Residents and visitors sang a birthday song to the late literary giant.

The celebration was cancelled in 2020 and went online in 2021 due to Covid-19.

Shakespeare was born in April 1564. The exact date of his birth is not recorded, but it is often celebrated in Britain on April 23.

This date carries other special meanings. "World Book and Copyright Day" is marked on this day.

April 23 also coincides with the deaths of Shakespeare and the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes.

Paul Edmondson, Head of Research for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, said it was befitting to mark World Book Day by reading books of the greatest writers like Shakespeare and Cervantes and enjoying the theatre performances of their plays.

Ane, a resident from Derbyshire, told Xinhua that she came on a day trip to see all the festivities in Stratford and watch live performances by street entertainers.

Apart from attending celebrations, visitors descended on the town library to enjoy some quiet reading.

Jake, a 17-year-old high school student, said he loves reading Shakespeare and performs in Shakespeare plays at school.

Stratford Library prepared a "Shakespeare Treasure Hunt" to encourage young readers to uncover information about Shakespeare around the library.

Christine Woollard, a sales assistant, told Xinhua that Shakespeare's books sales increased on Saturday.

"Visitors overseas are coming back. We're seeing more and more, especially this year."
Guwahati, April 24 : The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance on Sunday secured a clean sweep in the 60-seat Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) elections.

The saffron party won 58 seats, while one each went in favour of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Asom Jatiya Parishad (AJP).

According to the initial results announced by the Assam State Election Commission, the BJP (52 wards) and its ally Asom Gana Parishad (six wards) won in 58 wards, including the three which were earlier elected unopposed by the saffron party candidates.

AAP candidate Masuma Begum won ward number 42, while AJP nominee Hukum Chand Ali secured victory in ward number one defeating the BJP candidates.

The main opposition Congress this time could not open its account in the GMC elections, which were held after a gap of nine years.

In all, 197 candidates had contested the elections in 57 wards.

The GMC election was held after a gap of nine years. In 2013, Congress won the prestigious GMC elections but due to internal wrangling several elected councillors had shifted to BJP facilitating the saffron party to form the municipal board.

Besides the ruling BJP and the main opposition Congress, the AAP has fielded 38 candidates, giving added importance to the polls.

Around 52.80 per cent of the 7,96,829 voters exercised their franchise in the polls on Friday.

Electronic Voting Machines were used in the politically important elections.
Los Angeles, April 24 : Actress Tiffany Haddish has shared the "requirements" when making an appearance on 'Late Night with Seth Meyers'.

In the April 21 episode of the talk show, Haddish first tried to shoot her shot with the band's drummer. After he said he's about to "be married", the comedienne opened up about her love life, reports aceshowbiz.com.

"I'm back out in the streets," the 42-year-old told host Seth Meyers.

"It's interesting, it's an adventure. I'm all about adventure. I'm back on the dating apps. I put all my requirements in my profile." As for what the "requirements" are, Haddish detailed: "Good credit score 'cause I need to know you're responsible. You need to have good hygiene, that's really important to me." She went on to note: "I can't stand bad breath and funky armpits.

"I've been attracted to a lot of hip-hop kind of guys. I don't mind them wearing jewellery. But if you own a bunch of diamonds but you don't own no land, that's a problem for me. Land, then diamonds.

"Cause where does the diamonds come from? The land. So own the land, then get the diamonds. I got diamonds 'cause I got land." Earlier this month, Haddish unveiled the dating apps she uses.

"I'm on the apps: Raya, Tinder, Postmates, Candy Crush, and that therapy app BetterHelp, okay," the Carrie depicter in 'Night School' said when guest-hosting an April 14 episode of 'The Ellen Degeneres Show', before joking: "Hey you never know where you gonna meet a man, and if he's a therapist it might be helpful." "Now I don't care how tall they are; how old they are; how much they weigh, the only number that matters to me that I care about comes from FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act), because credit scores show how responsible they are," she explained.A "I'm just saying I'm a lot to handle." Haddish was previously in a romantic relationship with rapper/actor Common. However, they broke up in November 2021 after just over a year of dating.

The pair allegedly called it quits because their busy schedules kept them apart most of the time.

A source told People: "They are never in the same city together and both of them are just too busy for a serious relationship."
Thiruvananthapuram, April 24 : In a major breakthrough in RSS leader Sreenivasan's murder case, the Kerala Police have taken into custody two SDPI workers.

Sreenivasan was hacked to death on April 16, North Zone Inspector General, Ashok Yadav told the mediapersons at Palakkad that the main culprit in the case, Iqbal, was in police custody. Another person, Fayas who is one of the main conspirators, is also under custody. With these two in custody, the total number of arrested persons in the case has risen to seven.

Ashok Yadav said that Fayas is a close relative of the slain SDPI leader, Subair. It is to be noted that Subair was hacked to death allegedly by three RSS activists on April 15 in retaliation to the murder of RSS local leader Sanjith, who was killed allegedly by SDPI workers on November 15, 2021, while he was driving a two-wheeler with his wife.

Three RSS activists in the Subair murder case are already in judicial custody and five SDPI activists, who were conspirators in the murder of RSS leader Sreenivasan, are also in police custody.

Yadav told mediapersons that the other SDPI activists, who were directly involved in the murder of Sreenivasan, have been identified and the police are zeroing in on them. He said that taking Iqbal into custody was a major breakthrough in the case as he was the one who executed the killing and had led other killers.

Meanwhile, police patrolling has been intensified in Palakkad district and police are checking all the vehicles that are coming into the district from Tamil Nadu and those vehicles that are going out of Palakkad.

The killings and counter killings have disturbed the atmosphere of peace in Palakkad district. The BJP had boycotted the peace meeting on Tuesday called by the State minister for electricity, K. Krishnankutty, who hails from the district. BJP Kerala state general secretary, C. Krishnakumar, while boycotting the meeting, said that there was no peace meeting after RSS leader Sanjith was killed and that the BJP and RSS workers were not getting justice from the Kerala Police.
China will further leverage export tax rebates to provide stronger support for foreign trade enterprises, according to a circular jointly released by the State Taxation Administration and other government organs.

The circular outlines measures to improve export tax rebate policies and streamline procedures for applications.

Efforts will be made to strengthen the linkage of export credit insurance and export tax rebate policies, and improve rebate policies for processing trade firms, according to the circular.

The country will step up efforts to enhance data sharing and smooth the connections among customs, tax and other departments to further streamline export tax rebate procedures, it said.

Efforts will also be made to support cross-border e-commerce firms by encouraging qualified enterprises to actively claim export tax rebates, it said.

A State Council executive meeting earlier this month decided to increase export tax rebates to promote foreign trade development. Enterprises with better credit records will enjoy greater customs clearance and tax refund facilitation.




New Delhi, April 24 : The New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) is planning to display the pictures of 75 freedom fighters alongwith their quotes on the view cutters that will be installed on the railing of the Safdarjung Flyover.

The existing acrylic sheet view cutters are installed for the safety and security of the VVIP movements but they are vandalised frequently.

"The proposed view cutters will not only enhance the aesthetic of the area but also be durable and long lasting. The state of art view cutter will be viewed by the public passing from there," NDMC Vice Chairman Satish Upadhyay said.

He further informed that the total estimated cost of the project is approximately Rs 75 lakhs and the work will be awarded soon once the tender formalities are completed.

Upadhyay said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had already announced the Swachhta Mission during 2014 to ensure cleanliness in market areas, public places, roads, parks in each city.

"The motive of NDMC behind this initiative is to beautify the NDMC area and to achieve 7 Star ranking in the forthcoming Swachata Survekshan 2022," he said.

Notably, under the Prerak Daaur Samman, a new performance category introduced under Swachh Survekshan 2021, the NDMC was categorised as 'Divya' (Platinum), among four other cities.
Kiev, April 24 : Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed the kind of events might force his country to withdraw from peace negotiations with Russia.

During a press conference held at one of Kiev's metro stations amid the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine, Zelensky was asked how Kiev would respond to potential independence referendums in the territories controlled by Russian forces, RT reported.

The President admitted that it would force him to stop any talks with Moscow.

"If our people are destroyed in Mariupol, if a referendum, a pseudo-referendum, is announced in any new pseudo-republics of Ukraine, Ukraine will withdraw from any negotiations process," Zelensky said.

Two days ago, Moscow announced the capture of Mariupol.

However, President Vladimir Putin called off the assault on the Azovstal factory, which remains the last holdout of Ukrainian forces, including the fighters of the neo-Nazi Azov regiment, in the strategic port city.

Russian troops should "seal the area so that a fly cannot get through", Putin instead ordered.

Zelensky, meanwhile, admitted that at the moment Ukraine is not able to recapture Mariupol militarily and that the holed-up fighters there are aware of that.

He reiterated his wish to conduct direct talks with Vladimir Putin, as "the war can be stopped by the person who started it".

The President explained that, as he thinks, direct negotiations could be a more effective way to reach peace than speaking via mediators, RT reported.

"I want to stop the war and end it. There is a diplomatic path and a military one. Any healthy person chooses the diplomatic path because he knows that even if it is difficult, it can prevent the loss of millions of people," Zelensky said.

Putin, meanwhile, has not ruled out a personal meeting with Zelensky, but stressed that it would depend on the progress of talks between the negotiating teams.

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
London, April 24 : In a move that could reshape the online world dominated by Big Tech, the European Union (EU) has agreed on Digital Services Act (DSA) that will force tech giants to take greater responsibility for content on their platforms, else face fines of up to six per cent of their annual turnover for non-compliance.

Google, Meta and other platforms will now have to explain their algorithms.

The DSA sets out an unprecedented new standard for the accountability of online platforms regarding illegal and harmful content.

It will provide better protection for internet users and their fundamental rights, as well as define a single set of rules in the internal market, helping smaller platforms to scale up, the European Commission said in a statement.

"The DSA will upgrade the ground-rules for all online services in the EU. It will ensure that the online environment remains a safe space, safeguarding freedom of expression and opportunities for digital businesses. It gives practical effect to the principle that what is illegal offline, should be illegal online," said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Online platforms should now be transparent about their content moderation decisions, prevent dangerous disinformation from going viral and avoid unsafe products being offered on marketplaces, added Executive Vice-President for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age, Margrethe Vestager.

The DSA is different from the Digital Markets Act (DMA) which was agreed upon in March.

While the DMA focuses on creating a level-playing field between businesses, the DSA deals with how companies police content on their platforms.

"With the agreement we ensure that platforms are held accountable for the risks their services can pose to society and citizens," said Vestager.

The regulators said that with the DSA, the time of big online platforms behaving like they are "too big to care" is coming to an end.
April 24 : In a breakthrough, four robbers, who had looted Rs one crore at gunpoint from the employees of a cash collection company on April 18, have been arrested, the police said on Sunday.

The accused were arrested on Sohna Road near Ild mall by a crime branch team of the Gurugram Police.

According to the police, the accused had thrown chilli powder into the eyes of the employees and driver of the van and held them hostage before fleeing with the huge cash.

Police sources said the fifth accomplice is yet to be arrested and also claimed that most of the cash has been recovered from the arrested culprits.

The arrested criminals hailed from Haryana's Faridabad and Delhi's Chattarpur.

The police have also recovered a car used in the robbery.

During the probe, the investigation teams had scanned more than 1,000 CCTV cameras to identify the criminals.

The Haryana Police had announced a cash reward of Rs 2 lakh for anyone giving information about the culprits.
New Delhi, April 24 : Following Beijing's reluctance to allow the return of Indians stuck at home since 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, India has also suspended tourist visas for nationals of China.

The government's move came after thousands of Indians including more than 23,000 students, have been stuck in India for over two years as Beijing has suspended the visa process as well as flights from India due to the pandemic situation.

In its latest update on April, global air transport body IATA said that tourist visas issued to nationals of China were no longer valid. But the Indian government is still giving business, employment, diplomatic and official visas to Chinese nationals.

The IATA issues regular travel updates to all airlines to know which nationalities are allowed to be flown to which countries.

The latest update on India was about the countries whose nationals cannot travel to India on e-tourist visas.

The officials aware of the development said that students from Thailand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have been allowed to return to China, but it has continued to remain silent about permitting stranded Indian students and hundreds of businessmen and workers and their families to re-join their studies and work.

In March, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had taken up the issue with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi during the latter's visit to India, while in February Beijing had promised the Indian Embassy to work for the early return of the Indian students and assured that they will no discrimination in any manner as their resumption of studies.

Explaining China's decision to allow students from some countries to return but not from India, Wang had said on March 22 that on the basis of ensuring sound pandemic prevention and control, the country was coordinating arrangements for a small number of foreign students with actual needs to return to China in light of the changing international pandemic situation.

After a hiatus of over two years, India restored the electronic tourist visa facility for 156 countries last month following the resumption of all scheduled international flights from March 27.

According to the April 19 IATA update on India, the nationals of only these countries are allowed to enter the country such as Bhutan, Maldives and Nepal; those with a residence permit issued by India; those with a visa or e-visa issued by India; those with an overseas citizen of India (OCI) card or booklet; those having a PIO card; and diplomatic passport holders.
Mumbai, April 24 : In a huge setback for independent MP Navneet Rana and her husband MLA Ravi Rana, the Mumbai Police slapped sedition charges on them even as Bandra Magistrate Court sent them to 14 days' judicial custody, here on Sunday.

Special Public Prosecutor Pradip Gharat said the court also declined urgent hearing to the Ranas' bail application which will now come up only next Friday (April 29).

The Ranas' lawyer Rizwan Merchant termed the police case as 'fake' and said that certain charges were added later on under pressures. He termed all the charges against them as baseless since the couple had not flouted the laws as contended.

He also accused the police of filing two different FIRs with enhanced charges like IPC Section 124(A), pertaining to sedition, but claimed that this was not mentioned in the remand plea and the government lawyers failed to explain this charge before the court.

Soon after the court verdict, the couple stepped out with disappointment written on their faces, Navneet Rana is likely to be taken to the Byculla Women's Jail and Ravi Rana may be lodged in the Arthur Road Central Jail.

Even as Ravi Rana claimed they are being framed in false cases by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, the couple's lawyers are expected to file a fresh plea for bail before a regular court on Monday.

The Rana couple was served prohibitory notices, detained, then whisked off by Khar Police Station team and arrested late on Saturday after two-days of high-voltage drama in which they threatened to march to the private residence of the Chief Minister and chant 'Hanuman Chalisa', but were prevented by hundreds of aggressive Shiv Sainiks and the police.
Chennai, April 24 : The Tamil Nadu Health Department will conduct a mega vaccination drive against Covid-19 on May 8, which will be held at 1 lakh centres across the state.

While speaking to IANS, state Health Minister Ma Subramanian said: "With a slight hike in Covid-19 cases and a debate going on the possibility of a fourth wave, the only solution is to inoculate ourselves. There are 43 lakh people in Tamil Nadu who are yet to take even the first dose of the vaccine and 1.3 crore people are eligible for the second dose of the vaccine.

"Vaccination has proved that it can reduce hospitalization and deaths and I urge the people of the state to vaccinate themselves as early as possible." The mega drive will commence at 7 a.m., the Minister said, adding that it will continue for 12 hours at a stretch.

Subramanian noted that the latest initiative would reduce the the vaccination gap.

In a statement, the Health Department said that only 58 per cent of the people above 60 years of age have taken both doses of the vaccine.

The statement also said that only 46 per cent of frontline workers and 64 per cent of healthcare providers have taken both doses of the vaccine.

"The frontline workers and health care providers along with senior citizens are vulnerable to the disease and all of them should immediately take both the doses of the vaccine," the Minister told IANS.
Thiruvananthapuram, April 24 : The arrest of an RSS/BJP worker Nijil Das, who is an accused in the murder of a CPI-M worker, Punnol Haridas from a house located less than 100 meters from the ancestral residence of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, has left the part leaders red-faced.

The arrest took place on Saturday. The house, which hosted Nijil Das, is owned by Prasanth, who is an NRI and his wife Reshma, a teacher at a private school in Thalassery.

While the CPI-M Kannur district secretary M.V. Jayarajan alleges that Prasanth and his wife Reshma are supporters of the RSS/BJP, the local CPI-M leadership at Chief Minister's village said that the family was associated with the party. These diametrically opposite statements from the CPI-M local leaders and the district leadership have created confusion.

While Nijil Das is remanded in judicial custody, Reshma, who was also arrested for harbouring a criminal case accused, was granted bail by the Kannur district court.

Jayarajan while speaking to the mediapersons at Kannur on Sunday said that when Reshma got bail she was welcomed by BJP Thalassery unit general secretary K. Ajesh and that the advocate who appeared for Reshma was Premarajan was a lawyer representing the BJP.

Haridas was murdered on February 21, 2022, allegedly by RSS, BJP workers at his residence. He was a fisherman and had reached back home in the early morning of February 21.

BJP state president K. Surendran in a statement said that the party was never involved in the murder of CPI-M worker Punnol Haridas and that the Kerala Chief Minister must answer as to how one of the accused was in hiding at a residence close to the ancestral home of the Chief Minister which is a red fort.

Meanwhile, Advocate P. Premarajan, who appeared for Reshma in Kannur district court while speaking to media persons said that character assassination of his client was taking place in social media and that they will take legal measures against this.

BJP Kannur district vice president V. Manivarnan while speaking to IANS said, "It is for the police to bring out the facts. How can an accused stay in hiding at a place close to the residence of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan where there is a complete dominance of the CPI-M. Let the police bring out the truth and who was instrumental in the murder of Haridas. We demand a detailed investigation." The red fort of Kannur district of Kerala, which is the home district of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, CPI-M state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, LDF convenor E.P. Jayarajan and Chief Minister's Political secretary P. Sasi are now giving sleepless nights to the district leadership of the CPI-M.
Mumbai, April 24 : 'Mithai' actress Debattama Saha feels shooting for the show at Shrinathji temple, Mathura was like a dream coming true for her.

As she shares: "It was a dream come true moment when I got a chance to shoot at the Shrinathji Temple for Mithai. When I was a kid, my father used to narrate the stories of Lord Krishna and a few stories were related to the Shrinathji Temple in Mathura. After listening to all his tales, I was very curious to visit every place related to Krishna Ji and Shrinathji Temple was one of them." 'Mithai' is a story of a sweet maker, Mithai (played by Debattama) based in Mathura who wants to preserve the legacy of Aloo Jalebis that she has inherited from her father. Because of the entire storyline, the actress got an opportunity to fulfil her longtime wish of visiting the temple.

"I couldn't get a chance to visit the temple earlier, I am thankful to the entire Mithai team that they gave me a chance to shoot inside the temple. I feel I have started this new journey with the blessings of Krishna ji, which makes me feel very good. I hope everyone keeps showering me with their love and blessings," she adds.

'Mithai' airs on Zee TV.
Shanghai, April 24 : Amid an ongoing outbreak, total of 87 Covid-19 deaths have been reported in Shanghai, of which the average age was around 81, the municipal health commission said on Sunday.

Among the deceased, the oldest was 101-years-old, Xinhua news agency quoted the commission as saying.

All of those who passed away had serious underlying health conditions such as malignant tumours, coronary heart disease and hypertension.

The direct causes of their deaths are basic diseases, the commission noted.

It also said that Shanghai will set up more medical teams especially for severe cases to reduce the death rate, aiming to help senior citizens who are vulnerable to Covid-19 due to their low immunity.

The city had 157 Covid patients in severe condition and 18 in critical condition receiving treatment in designated hospitals.

In the last 24 hours, Shanghai reported 1,401 confirmed locally transmitted Covid-19 cases and 19,657 local asymptomatic carriers.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Jammu, April 24 : During his first visit to J&K on Sunday since the abrogation of Article 370, Prime Minister Narendra Modi came with a treasure trove of developmental packages for the people of the union territory.

Modi laid the foundation of developmental projects worth over Rs 20,000 crore as he rightly told the mammoth gathering at Palli village in Samba district, "I am here with a message of development. To give speed to development in J&K, projects worth over Rs 20,000 crore have been inaugurated today." During the visit, Modi also launched the 'Amrit Sarovar Mission' and transferred the amount of the National Panchayat Award into the bank accounts of the winning Panchayats.

He laid the foundation stone of the Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Expressway and inaugurated the 500KW Solar Power Plant at Palli village along with 108 Jan Aushadhi Kendras in J&K.

He also laid the foundation stones for the 850 MW Ratle Hydroelectric Project & 540 MW Kwar Hydroelectric Project to be constructed on the Chenab river in Kishtwar District.

The Prime Minister inaugurated the Amrit Sarovar initiative which marks a special moment in the collective endeavours to rejuvenate water bodies and conserve every drop of water. Under this initiative, 75 water bodies will be developed and rejuvenated in each district.

He inaugurated the Banihal Qazigund Road Tunnel which has been built at a cost of over Rs 3,100 crore. The 8.45-km long tunnel would reduce the road distance between Banihal and Qazigund by 16 km, and reduces the journey time by around one-and-a-half hours.

Accompanied by Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha, Modi visited INTACH photo gallery set up at Palli village.
Colombo, April 24 : Sri Lanka will appoint advisors to help with its debt restructuring in the next 20 days, Finance Minister Ali Sabry has said.

The Minister told local media that restructuring the country's unsustainable external debt is a major condition to obtain financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), reports Xinhua news agency.

Sabry said that the discussions he started with IMF officials in Washington would end on Sunday, and that there are a lot more discussions to be held ahead.

Meanwhile, IMF's mission chief for Sri Lanka Masahiro Nozaki welcomed the planned negotiations with creditors.

"The IMF team welcomed the authorities' plan to engage in a collaborative dialogue with their creditors," he said.
Kolkata, April 24 : Trinamool Congress leader Anubrata Mandal on Sunday did not appear before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which had summoned him for questioning in connection with its probe into post-poll violence in West Bengal.

The CBI asked him to be present at the agency's office in Kolkata by 2.30 p.m. to face questions pertaining to his alleged involvement in the post-poll violence cases. However, at 1.30 p.m. an email communication from Mandal expressed his inability to be present at the agency's office on health grounds.

Earlier, also Mandal did not go to the CBI office despite getting summons in a cattle and coal smuggling case.

On Saturday, Mandal was supposed to be present at the CBI's office at Nizam Palace in Central Kolkata for questioning in the cattle and coal smuggling case. However, he refused to turn up, citing bad health conditions.

However, his counsels said that if the CBI officers felt it necessary they could question him at his Kolkata residence.

On Friday late evening, Mandal returned to his residence at Chinar Park in Kolkata after spending 17 days at the state-run SSKM Medical College and Hospital, where he was admitted on April 6.

Mandal was supposed to appear for questioning at the CBI office at Nizam Palace in central Kolkata on April 6. A day earlier, he reached Kolkata from his ancestral residence at Bolpur in Birbhum district.

On the morning of April 6, he started from his residence and all perceived that he was heading for the CBI office at Nizam Palace. However, at the last moment he changed his way and reached the state-run SSK Medical College & Hospital. After initial checkup he was admitted to the hospital's Woodburn Ward, meant for the VVIPs.
Hyderabad, April 24 : Mahesh Babu was spotted at Hyderabad airport on Sunday morning, on his way to Dubai.

With only a few weeks left for the release of his film 'Sarkaru Vaari Paata,' Mahesh's journey has raised many questions.

According to reports, director SS Rajamouli will also join Mahesh Babu on his Dubai trip. Perhaps Mahesh and Rajamouli are collaborating in Dubai for the narration of their next massive project.

'RRR' director SS Rajamouli and 'Murari' actor Mahesh Babu are collaborating on a heavy-budget project, which will probably go on the floors next year.

Meanwhile, the duo is said to be actively participating in brainstorming sessions, as Rajamouli previously stated that they haven't zeroed in on a subject from a couple of interesting stories he has for Mahesh.

On the other hand, Mahesh's fans are perplexed by his unannounced trip to Dubai, where he is supposed to be taking part in dubbing sessions and promotional events for his upcoming film 'Sarkaru Vaari Paata.' 'Sarkaru Vaari Paata' is scheduled for its release on May 12.
Thiruvananthapuram, April 24 : In a tragic incident, a 23-year-old youth and a 16-year-old girl died on Sunday after the boy immolated himself after setting the latter on fire.

The incident occurred at Kolangode in the Palakkad district of Kerala.

The deceased youth has been identified as Balasubramanian, a management graduate.

Subramanian, according to his mother, invited the girl to his home stating that it was his birthday and set her on fire, and immolated himself.

She said that the tragedy took place at 7 a.m. and she noticed it only when smoke and fire were emanating from Subramanian's room.

Neighbours and the family doused the fire and took both of them to the Thrissur Medical College and then to a private hospital at Ernakulam.

However, they both died at 2.20 p.m.

Police said that the youth and girl were in a relation and off late, the latter's parents had forbidden her from seeing him.

The youth's mother told mediapersons that they had promised to get them married once the girl crosses 18 years, the legal age of marrying.

Locals in the area also confirmed the relation, but they were not aware of him inviting her to his home.

The bodies will be sent for post-mortem at the Ernakulam Medical College hospital and after the inquest and other proceedings handed over to their families.
New Delhi, April 24 : Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan on Sunday said that unity is not something born out of necessity, this is our civilizational and cultural heritage. Khan was speaking after giving away 'Capital Foundation Award for 2020' to eminent people from different fields here.

He was speaking on the topic 'unity in diversity'. Kerala Governor said, "If we look at world civilization, and for any civilization to grow, unity is essential." He noted that while in other world civilisations unity was there because most of them either belong to the same race, spoke the same language or adhere to the same religious traditions. "In India it was different from the start of our civilization. Even in Vedic era, diversity of languages and religious faith expressions of devotion existed in India. Indian society never accepted a ruler and powerful as their ideal but always thought leaders," Khan said.

He mentioned that only Indian civilization talks about promotion of knowledge and wisdom and this knowledge and wisdom is heritage and culture. "Swami Vivekananda and Swami Ranganathananda talked about it. Quoting 'Shrimad Bhagwat Geeta' Swami Ranganathananda said from worshippers of 'Maa Saraswati' we become 'villains of Maa Saraswati'," he said.

He mentioned that in the process of denying access to knowledge to our own people, we are weakening our society and becoming vulnerable and conquerable.

"When our renaissance started from Bengal again thought leaders realized the blunder we have committed. They scribe to correct the distortion. If we realize what real true heritage is then we shall strive to move in the same direction. Today we are living in the information age and the world is going to move into the knowledge age. I think this is the time we fully realise our potential. Once when we ourselves are convinced that this is our heritage then why should we leave any stone unturned to achieve unity in diversity," Kerala Governor added.
Lucknow, April 24 : In a social media post, BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj asked people to equip their homes with bottles and arrows in case of an attack by a mob, adding that the police would not save them and, hence they should be prepared.

The Unnao MP, who has often been in the news for controversial statements, wrote on Facebook: "If this crowd comes suddenly to your street, neighbourhood or house, there is a remedy for it... For such guests, every house should have one or two boxes of cold drinks and some arrows. Jai Shri Ram." Along with his message, he posted a photograph of a crowd of people charging down a street armed with sticks.

"The police will not come to save you, but will instead hide to save themselves. After these people do 'jihad' and leave, the police will come with lathis and form an investigation committee after everything is over." Sakshi Maharaj's post comes in the wake of communal clashes in Delhi's Jahangirpuri that took place on April 16.

Before that, communal clashes were reported from a number of states on the occasion of Ram Navami.
Jalaun/Lucknow, April 24 : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday said that his government is working towards empowerment and holistic development of gram panchayats through proper utilization of resources to realize Mahatma Gandhi's vision of 'Gram Swaraj'.

On National Panchayati Raj Day, he launched development projects worth over Rs 1100 crores in Airi Rampura, Jalaun.

Speaking on the occasion, he said: "Gram Swaraj, put forward by Gandhiji, will be realised only when our panchayats are empowered to become 'Atmanirbhar'. If all 58,000 gram panchayats work with a positive development-oriented approach, then every citizen, every village will contribute towards prosperity of the new India." Emphasizing on transforming the villages into 'smart villages', the Chief Minister said that his government is working towards establishment of village secretariats (gram sachivalaya) for effective implementation of various government schemes at grassroots level, facilities of optical fibre and Wi-Fi in every gram panchayat as per Prime Minister Modi's vision.

Urging all the village representatives to work similar to the award-winning panchayats, Yogi Adityanath said that "there is no shortage of funds today and with farsightedness, positive intent and determination, each gram panchayat should strive towards development".

Yogi further said that under Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, the exercise of excavation/rejuvenation of 'Amrit Sarovars' (ponds) will encourage the villagers towards conservation of rain water, its better management, usage and plantation of trees.

"The Amrit Sarovars emerge as tourist destinations and will serve as a spot for the villagers to celebrate national events together," he added.

Among the inaugurated projects were as many as 39,000 Panchayat Secretariats with Internet connectivity built at a cost of Rs 682.50 crore, as many as 7,10,000 LED lights installed in panchayats at a cost of Rs 306.72 crore, 2,000 community toilets built at a cost of Rs 90 crore and 16 District Panchayat Resource Centres and Training Centres (DPRCs) constructed at a cost of Rs 33.60 crore.

Uttar Pradesh had secured the third spot for the e-Panchayat award nationally for ensuring maximum use of information technology for monitoring the works of the panchayats.

It is noteworthy that the efforts of the state to bring in transparency, efficiency and accountability in the functioning of gram panchayats through the use of information and communication technology were also praised.
Lakhimpur Kheri : , April 24 (IANS) Ashish Mishra, son of Union Minister Ajay Kumar Mishra Teni and also the main accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence of October 3, 2021, surrendered in the court of the chief judicial magistrate on Sunday in compliance of the Supreme Court directive.

This comes just a week after the Supreme Court cancelled his bail and further granted him a week to surrender.

Ashish surrendered in the court a day ahead of the expiry of his bail term.

He was granted bail by the Allahabad High Court in February 2022. This pertains to the violence that broke out in Lakhimpur Kheri in October 2021, where eight people including four farmers were killed.

Last week, the apex court, while hearing the petitions filed by farmers challenging the accused's bail, ruled against Ashish Mishra.

The three-judge bench noted that the victims of the violence were denied the right of hearing in the Allahabad High Court which had granted bail to Mishra. It also asked the high court to reconsider the bail granted to Ashish Mishra.

The incident dates back to October 3, 2021, when a group of farmers was protesting in Lakhimpur Kheri district against the Centre's three farm laws. However, a violent clash broke out between the farmers following which an SUV reportedly owned by Union MoS Ajay Mishra, ran over the farmers, killing four of them.

As alleged by the protesting farmers, Ajay Mishra's son Ashish Mishra was inside the car when the accident took place.

Following this, a case was registered and the Supreme Court also appointed retired Punjab and Haryana High Court judge Rakesh Kumar Jain to monitor and investigate the incident. An SIT was also reconstituted by the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government, which included three IPS officers.

At the same time, the minister's son was also arrested.

However, after investigation and filing a charge sheet, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court granted bail to Mishra on February 10, 2022.
New Delhi, April 24 : India's External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Sunday held delegation-level talks with Philippines Secretary of Foreign Affairs Teodoro L. Locsin Jr here.

Welcoming the Filipino delegation, MEA spokesperson Aridam Bagchi, in a tweet, said: "Pleasure to welcome Secretary of Foreign Affairs @teddyboylocsin (Locsin Jr.) of Philippines as he arrives in Delhi for an official visit.

"The visit will strengthen our multi-faceted partnership & advance the shared priorities of our countries in the Indo-Pacific." In February 13-15, Jaishankar had visited the Philippines and reviewed bilateral relations as both sides agreed to further expand economic cooperation and reaffirmed their strong commitment to a multifaceted partnership.

During his visit to the Philippines, he and Locsin reviewed developments in bilateral relations since the meeting of the Joint Commission on Bilateral Cooperation that they co-chaired virtually in November 2020.

They also discussed the future trajectory of their wide-ranging bilateral engagement and also had an in-depth exchange of views on regional and international issues of mutual interest.

Meanwhile, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrived in India on Sunday for a two-day official visit to strengthen India-EU strategic partnership.

In her first visit to India, she will address the inaugural session on this year's edition of Raisina Dialogue on April 25.
As the Russian aggression in Ukraine has brought into focus the security of smaller nations and the expansionist inclination of a few, India has a perfect case against China. Having gobbled up parts of Arunachal and Ladakh (erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir), and continuing to pose a threat on the borders, China is a threat that India needs to highlight aggressively in all possible forums.

India and its political dispensation have been raising the illegality of Pakistan- Occupied Kashmir, but the continuing occupation by China of some areas of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir never finds an adequate mention. It is time that there is a change in the stance and a beginning be made by mandating Parliamentary and Assembly seats for PoK and Shaksgam Valley.

A Forgotten Fact The original Jammu and Kashmir geographical area, which was controlled by the last Maharaja, Hari Singh, at the time of his accession to India, was much bigger than what India is holding now. It had PoK in addition to Shaksgam Valley and Aksai Chin. Pakistani raids in Kashmir soon after Independence took away what is now called PoK as well as Shaksgam Valley and Aksai Chin.

The Shaksgam Valley was ceded to China by Pakistan on March 2, 1963, under an agreement that laid the foundation of the Karakoram highway, which was built by China and Pakistan jointly in the 1970s. At present, China occupies 5,180 sq. km. in Shaksgam Valley and approximately 38,000 sq. km. in Aksai Chin.

The legitimate frontiers of the Princely State of Jammu & Kashmir comprised a total area of 2,22,236 sq. km., which rightfully belonged to the Maharaja. Upon the signing of the Instrument of Accession on October 26, 1947, the territory passed into India. Of the total territory, 78,114 sq. km. are under the illegal occupation of Pakistan; 38,000 sq. km. are under Chinese control; and a further 5,180 sq. km. in Shaksgam Valley and the main Karakoram Range have been illegally ceded by Pakistan to China.

China, Pakistan Obfuscate Facts For the past 75 years Pakistan has been trying to portray Kashmir as its "unfinished agenda of partition". It does not miss any opportunity to attack India at any international forum on the Kashmir issue, but never mentions anything about the parts that it gave away to China.

China and Pakistan have colluded to obfuscate these facts. Instead, they brazenly promote the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which runs through parts of these occupied areas that lawfully belong to India.

The fact that China occupies approximately 42,735 sq. km. of the territory of erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir hardly figures in any reference to the Kashmir issue at the UN. India needs to highlight this on every occasion, whenever the issue of Kashmir is raised by Pakistan.

China has had a free run so far and its status as an occupier of territory in Ladakh, which was a part of the erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir state, has not been adequately publicised and even questioned. This has to be highlighted aggressively across all international platforms.

Exposing Pak-China Designs Post the Russia-Ukraine war, a conducive situation has emerged and it demands a set of measures that may serve as vital components of a long-term strategy on PoK and China-occupied areas. Apart from launching a diplomatic onslaught in world forums, India needs to push its claim on PoK, Shaksgam and Aksai Chin.

In reply to a question raised in Parliament on February 4 -- whether the government is planning to ask China to de facto return Shaksgam Valley illegally occupied by China since 1963 -- the government said: "China continues to be in illegal occupation of approximately 38,000 sq. km. of Indian territory in the Union Territory of Ladakh for the last six decades.

"Further, under the so-called China-Pakistan 'Boundary Agreement' signed in 1963, Pakistan illegally ceded 5,180 sq. km. of Indian territory in Shaksgam Valley from areas illegally occupied by Pakistan in the Union Territory of Ladakh to China.

"Government of India has never recognised the so-called China-Pakistan 'Boundary Agreement' of 1963 and has consistently maintained that it is illegal and invalid. The fact that the entire Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh are an integral and inalienable part of India has been clearly conveyed to Pakistani and Chinese authorities several times." More than making occasional statements, India needs to club the case of China's illegal occupation of Shaksgam Valley whenever it raises the PoK issue.

The present world order presents an opportunity that must be seized upon to enunciate a coherent, policy-oriented discussion both on Chinese occupation and PoK.

Mandating Assembly & Parliamentary Seats In a strategic move, the Centre should reserve seats in the J&K Assembly and in Parliament from the Indian areas under illegal occupation of China and Pakistan. The Delimitation Commission should mandate Parliamentary and Assembly seats for PoK, Shaksgam Valley and Aksai Chin.

When Parliament ended Jammu and Kashmir's special status in August 2019, it retained the provision of the J&K Constitution that reserved 24 seats from PoK for the Legislative Assembly of the present Union Territory of J&K. When the J&K Constitution was in force, these 24 seats in the Legislative Assembly were left vacant and not contested during state elections.

The Delimitation Commission has the mandate to redraw the boundaries of the existing constituencies of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and has been collecting the views of all, including political parties, on the matter. A view that has been strongly articulated is that the Commission must take into consideration those parts which are under illegal occupation of Pakistan and China.

Delimiting additional Lok Sabha seats for Parliament and the Assembly of the two union territories for PoK, Shaksgam Valley and Aksai Chin can be a strategic move towards reinforcing legitimacy. And this can be an important step in the direction of exposing the designs of China and Pakistan on Kashmir.

(Deepika Bhan can be reached at deepika.b@ians.in)

Latest updates on Russia-Ukraine War
New Delhi, April 24 : The Congress on Sunday launched a counter offensive against the BJP allegedly over the leaks from an ED charge sheet against Rana Kapoor, the accused in the Yes Bank fraud case.

Countering the Enforcement Directorate (ED) charge sheet, Congress senior spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi called it political vendetta and said the "government was jumping with joy because it suited their political target".

Singhvi said, "It's more disgusting that the government is relying on a 2010 transaction and on a statement of a person who is behind bars and whose 20-30 bail applications have been rejected. He is called a master fraudster, and the government is jumping with joy because it suits its political motive. They want the pot boiling for 2022 regarding a transaction of 2010, neither Murli Deora nor Ahmed Patel are sadly here to deny it." He alleged that the government was playing through "selective leaks..." "It is pressure tactics on a person behind bars who is eager to get his freedom to record statements against political opponents and to keep 12-year-old thing boiling just for convenience of politics..." he added.

The Congress spokesperson said that the facts were that the increase in loan in the Yes bank loan book increased from 2014 to 2019. He questioned whether the government knew in 2014 that the loan in Yes bank book was Rs 55,000 crore in March 2014 but till March 2019 it increased 5 times to Rs 2.41 lakh crore." "This is political Vendetta... at least spare the dead people like Deora and Patel..." Singhvi added.

In its charge sheet filed before a local Mumbai court, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) said that former Yes Bank Chairman Rana Kapoor paid Rs 2 crore for M.F. Husain painting and the money was later utilised for the treatment of Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi Sonia Gandhi in New York.

The charge sheet said, "Kapoor was forced by then Petroleum Minister Murli Deora to purchase the painting from Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

"Deora visited Kapoor's home and offices many times to force him to buy the paintings," the probe agency said.

"Deora also sent messages and called Kapoor in this respect several times. Kapoor tried to avoid Deora's call and didn't respond to his messages. However, he purchased the painting later. As per the directions, Kapoor gave a cheque of Rs 2 crore to Milind Deora, the son of Murli Deora." Kapoor's statements read that he was promised by Murli Deora that this would help him get Padma Bhushan. But it was never fulfilled.

"Late Congress leader Ahmed Patel had also told him that since he (Kapoor) had helped Sonia Gandhi at the crucial time, his name would be considered for a Padma Bhushan." Kapoor had said in his statements that "it was a forced sale" and he was never ready for it.

The second supplementary charge sheet was filed by ED against Kapoor, his family, DHFL promoters Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhwan.
Hubballi, : April 24 (IANS) Amid apprehensions of the Covid's fourth wave breaking out, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to hold a video conference with Chief Ministers on April 27 to discuss about the precautions and measures to tackle it, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said on Sunday.

"The Union government has already issued a caution alert. A slight increase in cases has been recorded in Kerala and Maharashtra in the last 8-10 days," he told media persons here.

"Based on the experience of the last three waves, experts too have suggested suitable precautionary measures. Already the Health Minister too has issued a few instructions. Clear instructions would be issued for Covid management in the state after the video conference with the Prime Minister," he added.

Bommai stressed that it is important for people to be careful as Covid's second wave started slowly and later exploded.

The Karnataka Health Department has stepped up measures to tackle the emerging situation in the state in the backdrop of detection of two cases of sub lineages of BA.2, a mutant variant of Covid virus in Bengaluru. The decision has been taken to increase the number of tests in the state, especially in Bengaluru.

The authorities are worried over the factor that the higher number of cases are being reported from Mahadevapura and East Zones in Bengaluru where major IT companies are based and lakhs of software professionals dwell.

Dr C.N. Manjunath, director of Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, Bengaluru, had stated on Saturday that Covid variants BA.2.10 and BA.2.12, have been found in the state.

BA.2 variants were found in New Delhi and Mumbai so far. The fourth wave of Covid in the country has started already and people need to be careful about the spread of infection, he said.
San Francisco, April 24 : Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reportedly declined a meeting to discuss climate change philanthropy with Bill Gates because the latter admitted he still holds a short position on Tesla stock.

As per a series of leaked text messages, Gates was proposing a potential meeting with Musk "to discuss philanthropy possibilities," but Musk was not willing to do so after Gates admitted he still has not closed out his short position on Tesla, reports Teslarati.

"Sorry, but I cannot take your philanthropy on climate change seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change," Musk replied to Gates, declining the invitation.

There were rumours Gates did hold a short position against Tesla, but he never truly confirmed whether he had any sort of investment in the automaker's stock.

During a February 2021 interview with CNBC, Gates declined to talk about his position.

"Yeah, I'm not, I don't talk about my investments, but I think he should be very proud of what he's done," the Microsoft co-founder said earlier.

However, only a few days later in an interview, Gates shed more light on his position, basically admitting to shorting the stock.
Now in the eye of a storm, Jahangirpuri a mini-India that's been around since 1970 Image Source: IANS News

Now in the eye of a storm, Jahangirpuri a mini-India that's been around since 1970 Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, April 24 : At Delhi's Jahangirpuri, which is in the eye of the storm since April 16, the members of the Hindu and Muslim communities are scheduled to take out 'Tiranga Yatra' here on Sunday evening to defuse the tension and promote brotherhood.

Around five lakh people reside in the 1.5 km area of Jahangirpuri. People from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Gujarat and others live here. Earlier, the area had shanties but later on small houses were built.

To make ends meet, lakhs of people residing in the small houses pull rickshaws, pick garbage, work in factories, do bangles business, sell fish and vegetables, etc.

Jahangirpuri's Aman (Peace) committee member Jahid, who is associated with the BJP, said: "In 1970, people from the above-mentioned states came here and worked in mandis and later settled here. People from Bihar used to sell bangles, many people from West Bengal were rag-pickers but now most of the families have started their own business." "Jahangirpuri is divided into three Assembly constituencies -- Adarsh Nagar, Badli and Burari. Three MPs and six Councillors are providing basic facilities in the area." Jahid said that in 1978 many flood-hit people sold their houses in Jahangirpuri for a paltry sum of Rs 200. It was only after Indira Gandhi visited the area that colonies were built.

The foundation for the construction of Jama Masjid, in front of which violence erupted last week, was laid in 1978, and it got completed in three years. Work for the Kali temple, adjacent to this mosque started in 1984.

People living in the area say that Muslims, who came from Bengal at that time, made the temple. This sort of violence was never witnessed in the area until Hanuman Jayanti, this year.

In the E block of the area, temple, mosque and gurudwara are built at a short distance from each other and people are here residing with love promoting brotherhood.

In the area, official papers say that the houses are built in 22 yards.

Historian Vivek Shukla told IANS, "When emergency was imposed in 1975, four colonies were built in Delhi for slum dwellers. The four colonies are Jahangirpuri, Mangolpuri, Khichdipur and Turkman gate.

"In Jahangirpuri, Mangolpuri and Khichdipur, slum dwellers of New Delhi and South Extension were settled. At that time Valmikis and washermen were in good numbers. There were many Muslims in Turkman Gate who went to Ranjeet Nagar and in 1976, Jahangirpuri started settling.

Meanwhile, the BJP has been accusing the Delhi government of facilitating Rohingyas and Bangladeshi Muslims in the national capital.

Experts who know about this area said, "There are many people from West Bengal living here, that's why their language sounds similar to that of Bangladeshis. It's not like Bangladeshi or Rohingyas are living here. In Delhi, people of various countries reside." According to sources, very few Bangladeshis reside here, but they have Aadhaar cards, PAN cards and other documents.

Last week, on the occasion of Hanuman Jayanti, a procession was attacked by stone pelters and soon it triggered major violence. Police are investigating and many people have been arrested in this connection.
New Delhi, April 24 : External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Sunday met his Argentine counterpart Santiago Cafiero, who is in India to participate in the Raisina Dialogue.

According to MEA officials, both ministers, in their meeting at the Hyderabad House, talked about expanding bilateral trade, co-operation in agriculture, pharmaceuticals, electronics, mobility, defence and atomic energy.

Apart from Cafiero, Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama, as well as a number of other leaders, will attend the Raisina Dialogue, beginning on Monday External Affairs Ministry's spokesperson Arindam Bagchi tweeted: "Pleased to welcome FM @GeoffreyOnyeama of Nigeria as he arrives in New Delhi on an official visit. He will also be attending the @raisinadialogue starting tomorrow." Poland's Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau will also visit India from April 25-27, according to a statement released by the Polish Foreign Ministry.

This will be the first time in nine years that a Polish Foreign Minister is visiting India and Rau is slated to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as Jaishankar.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also arrived in India on Sunday for a two-day official visit to strengthen India-EU strategic partnership.

In her first visit to India, she has been invited to address the inaugural session on this year's edition of Raisina Dialogue.
New Delhi, April 24 : Kerala Education and Labour Minister Vasudevan Sivankutty on Sunday refuted AAP leader Atishi Marlena's claims that the officials of his state had visited Delhi government schools in her constituency to understand Delhi's model of education.

"It was wonderful to host officials from Kerala at one of our schools in Kalkaji. They were keen to understand and implement our education model in their state. This is @ArvindKejriwal Govt's idea of nation building. Development through collaboration," Atishi had tweeted on Saturday.

In response, Sivankutty wrote: "Kerala's Dept of Education has not sent anyone to learn about the 'Delhi Model'. At the same time, all assistance was provided to officials who had visited from Delhi to study the 'Kerala Model' last month. We would like to know which aofficials' were welcomed by the AAP MLA." However, clearing the air, Atishi said on Sunday that one official each from the CBSE School Management Association and Confederation of Kerala Sahodaya Complexes visited Dr. B.R. Ambedkar School of Specialised Excellence, Kalkaji.

"Dr. B.R. Ambedkar School of Specialised Excellence, Kalkaji, was visited yesterday by Mr. Victor T.I, Regional Secy of CBSE School Management Association and Dr. M. Dinesh Babu, Confederation of Kerala Sahodaya Complexes," she tweeted this afternoon.
Srinagar, April 24 : An encounter between terrorists and security forces broke out in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on Sunday, officials said.

"Encounter has started at Pahoo area of Pulwama. Police and security forces are on the job," police said.

The firefight ensued after a joint team of security forces, which cordoned off the area for a search operation on the basis of specific information about presence of terrorists, came under fire as they zeroed in on the spot where terrorists were hiding.
New Delhi, April 24 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday thanked the people of Guwahati for giving a resounding mandate to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the municipal polls.

In a tweet, Prime Minister Modi said: "Thank you Guwahati! The people of this lovely city have given a resounding mandate to @BJP4Assam to build on the agenda of development. They have also blessed the hardwork of the state government under CM @himantabiswa. My gratitude to every BJP Karyakarta for the hardwork." Congratulating party workers and expressing gratitude to people of Guwahati, the BJP chief J.P. Nadda tweeted: "My gratitude to the people of Guwahati for the immense faith in our party's vision. This win is another testament to the undying faith of the people in the able leadership of PM @narendramodi ji. Many congratulations to CM @himantabiswa and to every karyakarta of @bjp4assam." The ruling BJP-led alliance on Sunday secured a clean sweep in the 60-seat Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) elections.

The saffron party won 58 seats, while one each went in favour of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Asom Jatiya Parishad (AJP).

According to the trends and results of the Assam State Election Commission, the BJP (52 wards) and its ally Asom Gana Parishad (six wards) won in 58 wards, including the three which were earlier elected unopposed by the saffron party candidates.

AAP candidate Masuma Begum won ward number 42, while AJP nominee Hukum Chand Ali secured victory in ward number one defeating the BJP candidates.

The main opposition Congress this time could not open its account in the GMC elections, which were held after a gap of nine years.
Mumbai, April 24 : Actress Neetu Chandra, who made her Hollywood debut with the 2021 martial arts film 'Never Back Down: Revolt', has won accolades by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Syed Shahnawaz Hussain, the state's Minister of Industries.

Acknowledging Chandra's visit, both the political figures took to their respective social media accounts and shared notes about their meeting with the actress.

"Met actress @nituchandra who is doing a lead role in #Hollywood film #NEVERBACKDOWNREVOLT with Sony Pictures," Hussain tweeted.

"It was a pleasure meeting her and proud to see a Bihar Ki Beti making her mark in the world's leading film industry." Appreciating Chandra's visit to her home city, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar congratulated the actress for making her Hollywood foray and wished her luck in her future activities.

Chandra, who has acted in films in different languages, previously appeared in Dibakar Banerjee's National Award-winning film 'Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!', 'Garam Masala', and 'One Two Three'.

She won SIIMA Award for Best Actress in Negative role for her part in the Tamil film, 'Aadhi Bhagavan'.
New Delhi, April 24 : European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday said that she is deeply convinced that our world will take the right direction in cutting emissions by clean innovative technology, the demand for which will be enormous.

Von Der Leyen, who has been invited to address the inaugural session of this year's Raisina Dialogue on April 25, on the first day of her two day visit, participated in an interaction at 'TERI Gram' at the The Energy and Resources Institute campus, where she stressed on the need to work together towards a green, sustainable and equitable future.

She said youngsters are the advocates to fight climate change, save the planet and develop solutions.

Von Der Leyen also noted that climate change and biodiversity loss are at the top of the political agenda of the European Union and India and the young should raise their voice for climate action.

Young people have fully convinced about the urgency of the climate crisis and they are doing something about it, she said. "From living more sustainable lifestyles to making their voices heard on the streets and advocating for greener policies, young people are at the heart of the solution. So make your voices heard," she added.

In her first visit to India, she will also be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other dignitaries.

India and the European Union share a vibrant strategic partnership which has been witnessing strong growth with wider and deeper co-operation in political, trade and commerce, climate and sustainability, digital and technology aspects as well as people to people ties.
Sydney, April 24 : Former Australia captain Ian Chappell feels that England will be in huge trouble if all-rounder Ben Stokes doesn't show interest in becoming the Test captain.

Stokes is widely tipped to be the next Test captain of England men's team ahead of the three-match series against New Zealand in June after Joe Root resigned as the skipper earlier this month.

"There's only one viable captaincy option in the best XI and that's allrounder Ben Stokes. If he seriously isn't interested in the job, then England are in big trouble. To question Stokes' viability based purely on the inferior captaincy of previous star allrounders is indefensible. Stokes has the fire in his belly and the positive approach to be successful. However, that alone doesn't guarantee success," wrote Chappell in his column for ESPNCricinfo on Sunday.

Chappell then went on to explain why he doesn't see veteran pacer Stuart Broad and wicketkeeper Jos Buttler as feasible options for Test captaincy. "Stuart Broad is an intelligent, well-spoken player, but he should not be a captaincy consideration. He's now too old and maintains a conservative streak, especially when it comes to field placings for his own bowling." "Jos Buttler is not a Test wicketkeeper; he has no obvious place in the first XI. It's hard enough to win Tests against a good team when you are playing level at XI-a-side, never mind prevailing when you are asked to perform while short-handed - just ask Mike Brearley." Irrespective of who becomes England's Test captain, Chappell thinks that the future skipper should look to improve England as an overall unit, with regards to batters especially. "Whoever accepts the appointment, his initial job will be to make a poorly performing England side better. That is a captain's job - to improve any team's results." "This shouldn't be hard, as England have some good, underperforming batters. It was also a trend under Root that England suffered great misfortune with their genuinely fast bowlers, especially Jofra Archer. Nonetheless batters Zak Crawley, Ollie Pope and Dan Lawrence possess a lot of skill but need encouragement to display it regularly." Chappell signed off by saying that if Stokes is made the Test captain, then he can encourage uncapped duo of leg-spinner Matt Parkinson and pacer Jamie Overton to be regulars in the side.

"If Stokes does accept the job, he may be the beneficiary of Parkinson's evolution if he provides a strong voice at the selection table. And while he's at it, he could overcome the fast-bowling shortage by encouraging Jamie Overton in his endeavours. There's no doubt Overton has suffered from multiple injuries, but his genuine pace, even at under-age level, has been poorly handled on the county circuit."
Chennai, April 24 : Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on Sunday asserted that his government will not discriminate against local bodies that are headed by opposition parties.

Addressing a grama sabha meeting at Sengadu village near Sri Perumbadur to mark the National Panchayat Raj day, he said that the people under local bodies will get all due facilities, irrespective of who heads them.

He also listed out a list of measures taken by the state government to give a fillip to the local bodies including the recent salary hike given to sitting members.

Stalin said that in the recent urban and rural local body polls in nine districts, the DMK-led alliance had come to power in 90 to 95 per cent of seats. He, however, said that the government would not leave out the other five per cent, ruled by the opposition parties, as irrespective of the party in power, the state government would provide all assistance required including basic facilities, ration shops, etc to all the local bodies without any bias.

He said that he would not merely make announcements for various schemes and assured people that he would review the status of implementation of these, by not only letters or by phone but would direct inspections.

Stalin said that only local bodies can help government realise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) envisioned by the United Nations and also assured that of action over all the demands raised by the people during grama sabhas.

State minister, T.M. Anbarasan, Sriperumbudur MP and senior leader, T.R. Baalu, Sriperumbudur MLA ,K. Selvaperuthungai, Sengudu panchayat President Senjurani Gavaskar and senior officers were present during the meeting.
Ranchi, April 24 : Jamtara in Jharkhand has become the only district in the country where all gram panchayats have community libraries.

This district with a population of about eight lakh has a total of 118 gram panchayats under six blocks and each panchayat has a well-equipped library which is open for students from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Career counselling sessions and motivational classes are also held free of cost here. Sometimes, IAS and IPS officers also visit these libraries to guide students. Everyone is welcome to visit these innovative sites! Most of these libraries, whose details, GPS location, photographs and contact numbers, have been provided on the district's official website, were set up around two years ago with the assistance of Deputy Commissioner Faiz Aq Ahmed Mumtaz.

The story of the beginning of this initiative is also interesting. A Janta Darbar was initially organised by the district administration to know the problems of the villagers in Changidih Panchayat.

However, when a villager complained about the lack of proper educational institutions and books here, Faiz decided to facilitate these libraries across the district.

When he received information about derelict buildings in each district, Faiz planned to renovate them and convert them into libraries. On November 13, 2020, the district's first ever community library was inaugurated.

From the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds received from several companies and money received by the district under the 14th and 15th Finance Commission, Rs 60,000-2.5 lakh was spent on the restoration and infrastructure of these libraries.

Gradually, libraries were set up in panchayats such as Chandradeep, Panjaniya, Menjhia, Gopalpur, Shaharpura, Champapur, and Jhilua. The villagers elected a President, Treasurer, and Librarian from amongst themselves, to run these libraries.

They also contributed furniture, water filters, blackboards and emergency lights for some.

When schools were shut during the Covid-induced lockdown, villagers used at least two teachers to teach students at each library.

According to Faiz, over 10,000 career guidance and motivational sessions have been organised in these libraries in the last one and a half years. Various department officers also take time off to teach classes.

Now over 350 teachers have joined these libraries, who regularly guide the 5,000 students enrolled here. Besides these, books for competitive exams, literature, history, spiritual and motivational topics are also available.

Faiz, who is elated with the success of his initiative, told IANS: "The best society is the one which invests the most in education and health. It is our endeavour that capable people of the society adopt these libraries.

"I'm excited with the initiative's fruitful results. Many students studying here every day have started scoring well in competitive examinations. A library member recently cleared the UPSC Civil Services Mains and is now preparing for the interview." Azharuddin, who studied in Jiajori Panchayat Library, has cleared the Panchayat Secretary examination of the Jharkhand government. Gaur Chandra Yadav, the librarian at Khaira Panchayat library, said that since the library opened in November 2020, the routine of the nearby students have changed.

On April 20, a seven-member committee, under the leadership of Deputy Secretary of the department, Shambhunath Mishra, of the Panchayati Raj Department of the state government took stock of the library models and visited the ones located in Jiyajori and Shahradal. The people of the committee were very impressed with the arrangement made here.

Jharkhand Assembly Speaker, Rabindranath Mahto, who represents the Nala Assembly constituency in the same district, inaugurated many libraries here. He said that efforts to change the identity of Jamtara district through libraries have been successful. This model should also be adopted in other districts of the state.

"Jamtara has been the work place of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, the great social reformer and educationist of the 19th century. He spent the last two decades of his life in Karmatand, Jamtara, awakening the light of education. It is to be hoped that this innovative campaign of libraries will bring back the old identity of Jamtara," he said.
New Delhi, April 24 : Cracking the sensational murder of a married woman who was chased and stabbed to death in front of her two kids in west Delhi, police on Sunday said they have arrested the alleged accused.

The accused, identified as Bharat alias Bhairav alias Kake (29), a resident of Sagarpur, Delhi, claimed that he had an illicit relation with the said woman and when she started ignoring him, he killed her.

According to CCTV footage of the the incident which took place on April 21, Bharat could be seen chasing the woman when she was going home along with her two kids.

"A call regarding stabbing of a woman near Ashok Park, Sagarpur was received at 2.15 p.m. on April 21 after which the woman was taken to DDU hospital where she was declared 'brought dead' due to stab injuries," Deputy Commissioner of Police, Manoj C said.

Her husband had already identified the suspect and revealed his name to the police.

Based on husband's complaint the police registered a case against Bharat under section 302 (punishment for murder) of the Indian Penal Code.

With the help of technical intelligence and local sources, the accused was nabbed and the knife which he used to commit the murder was also recovered.

Further investigations are in progress, the official added.
Chennai, April 24 : Director Vignesh Shivan has every reason to sport a smile as the Chennai Super Kings chose to dance to the popular number 'Two Two Two' from his upcoming film, 'Kaathu Vaakula Rendu Kaadhal', a light-hearted rom-com starring actors Vijay Sethupathi, Nayanthara and Samantha in the lead.

On Saturday night, the social media unit of the CSK team chose to release a video clip of the entire team having fun, dancing to the popular number, "Two two-two Too two-two tutu tutu I love you too, Nijama I love you too." Along with the video clip, the social media unit of the team, choosing to play with words, wrote: "Saturday Night Party Mood: Kaathuvaakula Konjam (yellow heart shaped icon) to the Superfans! We Yellove you two!"

The tweet thrilled Vignesh Shivan, who promptly responded to the tweet, saying: "Wowwww! That's sooo cool! 'Kaathu Vaakula Rendu Kaadhal' We Yellove you TwooooMillionn!"

Director Vignesh Shivan's production house, Rowdy Pictures, too was quick to seize the opportunity.

It tweeted: "Super Kings vibing for our king Anirudh's 'Two Two Two'. All we need is Yellove." Just a couple of days ago, Rowdy Pictures had cleverly used the score that Rajasthan Royals had scored against Delhi Capitals in their match to promote the number 'Two Two Two'.

Rajasthan had scored 222 for the loss of 2 wickets in their 20 overs and Rowdy Pictures tweeted: "Congrats Rajasthan Royals on the nail-biting victory! By the way, awesome total to put on the board!"

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New Delhi, April 24 : As the Congress is gearing up for the forthcoming electoral battles, it is, therefore, holding a three-day 'Chintan Shivir' (brainstorming camp) in Rajasthan's Udaipur, after nine years.

Two luxury hotels have been booked by the party for the programme. Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and the party's state in-charge Ajay Maken, visited Udaipur to select the venues for the event, out of which two hotels have been finalised.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi has also collected feedback from both Gehlot and the former Rajasthan unit President Sachin Pilot regarding preparations for the camp.

After nine years, this will be the first National Chintan Shivir of the Congress in Rajasthan. In the proposed camp, which is to be held from May 13-15, all veteran leaders of the party, including Sonia Gandhi, Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and political strategist Prashant Kishor will be present. All Congress MPs and MLAs have also been called to this event. Along with this, invitations have also been sent out to the office bearers and active workers of the party.

At the event, everyone will be informed about the Congress's action plan under Mission 2024. After tasting defeat in five states, the party will also discuss the possible reasons for their failure with the leaders and workers. Along with this, Congress will also prepare a strategy for the upcomming polls in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh.

A similar contemplation camp was held in Jaipur in 2013. At that time, discussions were held in the camp regarding the preparations and strategy for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Rahul Gandhi was also made the Vice President of the party then, at this event. Incidentally, the Chief Minister the state was also Ashok Gehlot then. Therefore, chances of Rahul Gandhi being elected as the party President again is very high this time.

However, experts believe that Mewar has been chosen as the venue of Chintan Shivir due to two reasons - first, winning Mewar is important to conquer Rajasthan and second, it is also close to Gujarat.

The Congress is preparing a roadmap to break the BJP's 27-year-old winning streak in Gujarat which will go to polls in December. According to experts, the party which wins maximum number of seats in Mewar, forms the government in Rajasthan. Therefore, the party's decision to hold the camp in Mewar is in light of polls in both the states.
San Francisco, April 24 : Alphabet-owned robotics subsidiary Intrinsic is acquiring the business of Vicarious, a robotics company and Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) leader based in the US, for an undisclosed sum.

The AI/robotic intelligence firm Vicarious has raised $250 million from Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Samsung.

The company describes its tech as, "a turnkey robotics solutions integrator using AI to automate tasks too complex and versatile for traditional automation." "For more than a decade, Vicarious has been pushing the boundaries of intelligent robotics and AI across multiple industries with visionary customers, building an interdisciplinary team and unique culture in the process," Wendy Tan White, CEO of Intrinsic, said in a blog post.

A smaller team from Vicarious will join DeepMind's research team alongside Vicarious CTO, Dileep George, an AI and neuroscience researcher.

"We are thrilled to welcome Scott Phoenix, Vicarious CEO, and an expert team of Vicarious engineers, roboticists and business professionals to the Intrinsic team," said White.

"We believe that combining our efforts will help us solve industry problems faster and accelerate our shared mission," he added.
New Delhi, April 24 : A massive fire broke out at a railway warehouse in the national capital on Sunday afternoon but no one was injured, Fire Department officials said.

According to the officials, a call was received a call around 4.25 p.m. about a fire in the warehouse at Subzi Mandi Railway Station near Pratap Nagar Metro Station in north Delhi after which 14 fire tenders were immediately pressed into service.

"The situation is now under control," Delhi Fire Service chief Atul Garg told IANS.

Initially, the Fire Department had sent 2 fire engines but as the firemen reached the spot and assessed the situation, seven more fire tenders were rushed to the location, and then another seven.

A total of 16 machines are dousing the flames, another official said.

As per the video recorded by the onlookers and the Fire Department, thick fumes of black smoke along with massive blaze could be seen billowing out of the warehouse.

The cause of fire is yet to be ascertained, however, there was certainly a massive loss of property. "It is a railway warehouse so the fire fed on different things present there, including some cables," the official added.
Srinagar, April 24 : Three Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists have been killed in an encounter in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district in Sunday, officials said.

According to police, one more terrorist was killed, taking to three the number of the killed terrorists, affiliated with proscribed terror outfit LeT, in the gunfight on Pahoo area of Pulwama.

A search operation in progress, a police official said.

The firefight broke out after a joint team of security forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation on the basis of specific information about presence of terrorists.

As the security forces zeroed in on the spot where terrorists were hiding, they came under a heavy volume of fire that triggered the encounter.
New Delhi, April 24 : Reacting to Yes Bank co-founder Rana Kapoor's allegation that he was forced to buy an M.F. Husain painting from Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the BJP on Sunday alleged that Gandhis and Congress are not just extortionist but were also selling the country's highest civilian honour to the highest bidder.

Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters here, BJP national spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said: "When the Congress was in power, Priyanka Gandhi put pressure to ensure that the painting worth Rs 2 crore is bought by Kapoor." "Rana Kapoor did not want to pay Rs 2 crore for the painting, but the ministers in the then Congress government put pressure on him that if he does not buy the painting from Priyanka Gandhi, then the Gandhi family will wreak havoc on him. To force him to buy the painting, Kapoor was told that he will get Padma Bhushan," Bhatia said.

Bhatia further alleged that when Congress was in power, members of Gandhi family used to pressurise that some paintings be brought using proceeds of crimes.

"Kapoor was pressured by Priyanka Gandhi through the former minister to buy a painting worth Rs 2 crore," Bhatia said.

The BJP spokesperson asked Congress and Priyanka Gandhi to clarify if such a painting was sold for Rs 2 crore by putting pressure and luring Rana Kapoor with Padma Vibhushan.

In-charge of BJP's national information and technology department Amit Malviya tweeted, "It is quite clear from Rana Kapoor's confession to the ED that the Gandhis and Congress are not just extortionist but were also selling the country's highest civilian honour to the highest bidder or durbaris, who did their bidding. It was an instrument to buy loyalty or silence." "The truth of the 'award wapsi' gang is now unravelling. They could either be people who had bought these awards or were beholden to the Gandhis for the crumbs they may have received off their table. Their dissent at that time was politically motivated and it is no more a secret," Malviya added.
Jaipur, April 24 : The local SHO of Jaipur's Kanota and his team had to shut themselves in a room after they were attacked by people from two groups who were engaged in fighting in the area late on Saturday, police said on Sunday.

The police team had, in fact, come to pacify two groups engaged in a spat in Kanota on Saturday evening, but were attacked themselves. Even the SHO's private vehicle was damaged as the crowd pelted stones on it.

Police officials said that SHO Arun Poonia and his team were not in uniform when they reached the spot and one of the quarelling groups took them to be members of the other group and attacked them.

The team had to take shelter in a room and called the police control room for help.

Soon after, a police team, drawn from six stations, reached the site to rescue the SHO and his team which included three policemen.

Additional DCP, East, Avnish Kumar Sharma said that police had received information about a quarrel between the two parties at around 10.30 p.m. near Jamdoli intersection in Kanota area.

Kanota SHO Poonia reached the spot in civil dress with two policemen and came under attack from one of the sides.

The windshield and window glasses of the SHO's personal vehicle were smashed with stones and sticks. The policemen locked themselves in a room to save themselves.

As the besieged policemen informed the police control room and officials about the incident, teams of Bassi, Tunga, Khoh Nagorian, Kanota, Transport Nagar and Adarsh Nagar police stations reached the spot. Additional forces were also sent from the Reserve Police Line.

Seeing the police force reaching the spot, the attacking party fled from the scene.

Meanwhile, the SHO and the other trapped policemen were freed and the three injured policemen were sent to the hospital for treatment.

Additional forces were deployed to maintain peace and order in the area. The police are searching for the attackers and have registered a case against them under various sections.
Srinagar, April 24 : A top Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) commander is among three terrorists killed in an encounter between terrorists and security forces at Pahoo area in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district, officials said on Sunday.

"Arif Hazar a.k.a. Rehan, deputy of LeT's top cmdr (Basit) killed in Pulwama Encounter. Involved in killings of Inspector Parvez in front of mosque, SI Arshid and one mobile shop owner in downtown. Several FIRs against him in Srinagar city. Identification of other 2 terrorists yet to done," Jammu and Kashmir police quoting Inspector General Police Kashmir zone Vijay Kumar tweeted.

The firefight broke out after a joint team of security forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation on the basis of specific information about presence of terrorists.

As the security forces zeroed in on the spot where terrorists were hiding, they came under a heavy volume of fire that triggered the encounter.
Panipat, April 24 : Remembering the supreme sacrifices of Guru Tegh Bahadur, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Sunday made several announcements to commemorate his memory at a state-level function here to mark the 400th Parkash Purb.

The ground where the function was held will be named after Guru Tegh Bahadur, besides naming the upcoming Government Medical College in Yamunanagar after the ninth Sikh guru who stood up against forcible conversions by then Mughal ruler.

"An exhibition of weapons used by Guru Tegh Bahadur would be showcased across the country. For this, we have also decided to provide a vehicle to carry these relics," Khattar, who had donned a turban, said.

Congress leader Bhupinder Hooda also participated in the programme, besides Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala and Uttarakhand Governor Lt General Gurmit Singh (retd).

Before addressing tens of thousands of devotees converged to attend the function, the Chief Minister first went to the main 'pandal' and paid obeisance to the Guru Granth Sahib.

Khattar said Guru Tegh Bahadur had made a supreme sacrifice while raising his voice against religious atrocities and injustice.

"Today we are celebrating the 400th Prakash Purab of Guru Tegh Bahadur as a part of ongoing celebrations of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, an initiative of the government of India to celebrate and commemorate 75 years of independence.

"The main purpose of organising such a grand event is to ensure that the inspiring stories of the supreme sacrifices made by 'Hind Ki Chadar' Guru Tegh Bahadur should reach every sphere of the country and our future generations can take inspiration from him," he said.

He said Guru Tegh Bahadur sacrificed himself for religious freedom and humanity.

"History tells that how a delegation of Kashmiri Pandits went to meet Guru Tegh Bahadur to save them from forced conversion. Then, Guru Tegh Bahadur had said this would need a great sacrifice, it was when Guru sahib's son, Guru Gobind Singh, had said who will be worthier than you to make such a sacrifice.

"After this, Guru sahib challenged Aurangzeb and after severe torture of Guru-ji, Aurangzeb beheaded him and Guru Tegh Bahadur made supreme sacrifice of his life for religious freedom." The Chief Minister said Guru Tegh Bahadur always shared a special bond with Haryana as during his lifetime, he had travelled six times through the area. Guru Tegh Bahadur visited 32 gurdwaras in what is now Haryana.

He said the state government is celebrating the birth anniversary and Parkash Purabs of all saints and great men so as to ensure maximum reach of their teachings.

Former Chief Minister Hooda said Guru Tegh Bahadur is revered not only by one religion but by the entire humanity. He sacrificed for the country, religion and humanity at a time when the people were facing atrocities.

Hooda demanded the government set up an international-level college and research centre in Dhamtan Sahib in the memory of a great personality so that the poor could be served.

He said it is a matter of pride that Haryana is celebrating the Parkash Purb. "Guru Tegh Bahadur was an example of courage, sacrifice and mutual love, which the mankind will never forget. Guruji's teachings and principles are relevant even today." The two-time Chief Minister said this unique example of sacrifice is not found anywhere in the history of the entire humanity.

Meanwhile, the devotees got a glimpse of the glorious history of Guru Nanak Dev, Baba Banda Bahadur and other Sikh gurus through an exhibition organised here.

In the exhibition, the inspiring stories of the supreme sacrifices made by the Sikh Gurus were displayed through more than 100 panels.

The life history, philosophy and teaching of Guru Tegh Bahadur remained the key attraction of the exhibition. In the exhibition, panels were set up in three languages -- Punjabi, Hindi and English -- to enable the visitors to get enlightened.

Thousands of books related to the life and teachings of Guru Tegh Bahadur were distributed free of cost among visitors.
New Delhi, April 24 : The Congress on Sunday attacked the government over the proposed increase in GST of 142 items, including jaggery and products which are of daily use.

Senior Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi said: "A proposal to increase 92 per cent of items in a list of 143 to the highest available slab category of 28 per cent; I would call it deceitful, dubious, and dissembling. Something like this, hits the common man, of course, who is being crushed, but, it hits the middle class, who is frequently forgotten by everyone. The middle class may be above the lowest class, but, they are hit very - very badly." He said the list of items include hand bags, suit cases, colour TV sets below 32 inches, walnuts, chewing gum, chocolates, and custard powder.

Singhvi noted that in 2017 Guwahati meeting, 75 items were taken away by the GST Council from the highest 28 per cent slab, leaving only 50 items in it "Look at these facts. Today 90 per cent of 143, like 120 items, are being moved back into that slab. Can you see any logic to it? At least, I cannot. Can you see any method to it? At least, I cannot," he said.

"Why do you want to hit the aam aadmi in the stomach? After all, nothing more can be expected from you. You have practiced the worst kind of treachery and hypocrisy on this subject. It was you, Modi Sarkar, Modi in the incarnation of Chief Minister, who called this retrograde in nature and against the tenets of fiscal federalism. "
Canberra, April 24 : Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared on Sunday that a Chinese military base on the Solomon Islands would be an unacceptable "red line", without adding how Canberra would retaliate, media reports said.

Morrison's government and the US are scrambling to respond to a recently-signed security deal between the islands and Beijing, which they consider an "aggressive" move, RT reported.

"Working together with our partners in New Zealand and of course the United States, I share the same red line that the United States has when it comes to these issues," Morrison said. "We won't be having Chinese military naval bases in our region on our doorstep." A tiny archipelago sitting around 2,000km off the northeastern coast of Australia, the Solomon Islands made international news last week when it signed a security pact with China. With the island nation reeling from violent protests last year, the deal - according to a leaked draft of the agreement - promises Chinese assistance in "maintaining social order" and allows China's warships to dock at its ports, RT reported.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare insists that the deal was necessary to beef up security and was "guided by our national interests". He stated last week that the agreement does not allow China to set up a military base on the islands, something that Beijing has also stressed.

However, Australia and her allies fear otherwise. "The reality is that China has changed. China's incredibly aggressive, the acts of foreign interference, the preparedness to pay bribes to get an outcome... that's the reality of modern China," Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton told Sky News on Sunday. Beijing so far has not responded to these allegations of corruption.
Srinagar, April 24 : Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Zone, Vijay Kumar termed Sunday's operation in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district in which three LeT terrorists were killed a big success and congratulated the joint forces for carrying it out in a professional manner without any collateral damage.

Police said based on specific input generated by Pulwama police regarding presence of terrorists in Pahoo area of Pulwama, a joint cordon and search operation was launched by police and army.

During the search operation, as the search party proceeded towards the suspected spot, the hiding terrorists fired indiscriminately upon the search party which was retaliated effectively leading to an encounter. Later on, the CRPF also joined the operation.

"In the ensuing encounter, three terrorists linked with proscribed terror outfit LeT were killed and their bodies were retrieved from the site of encounter," police said.

They have been identified as Arif Ahmad Hazar alias Rehan (Deputy of LeT's top commander Basit), Abu Huzaifa aliasA Haqqani (Pakistani terrorist) and Natish Wani alias Haider resident of Khanyar, Srinagar.

"As per police records, all the killed terrorists were part of groups involved in several terror crime cases including attacks on police/security forces and civilian atrocities," police said.

"Pertinently, the killed terrorist Arif Hazar was a categorised terrorist, active since March 2021 and involved in several terror crime cases including attacks on Police/security forces and civilian atrocities besides... several cases were registered against him in Srinagar city.

"He was involved in killing of Inspector Parvez in front of a mosque at Menganwari Nowgam on June 22, 2021, killing of PSI Arshid Ahmad Mir near PS Khanyar on September 12, 2021, killing of police personnel Javaid Ahmad at Saidapora Eidgah on June 17, 2021, killing of mobile shop owner Umar Nazir Bhat at Main Chowk Habba Kadal on June 23, 2021, killing of civilian Mohammad Shafi Dar at SD Colony Batamaloo, killing of civilian Rouf Ahmad Khan outside his house at Mejinpora Safakadal on December 22, 2021.

"Besides, he was also involved in grenade attacks on police patrolling party at Safakadal and joint Naka party at Rainawari. Moreover, he alongwith his associates was also involved in an attack on a BJP leader's residence at Aribagh, Nowgam Srinagar. In this terror attack, one police personnel Rameez Raja attained martyrdom and his service rifle was also snatched. He was also involved in attack on two outside labourers at Suthsoo Kalan area of Nowgam on April 22, 2022," police said.

Incriminating materials, and arms and ammunition were recovered from the site of encounter.

A case has been registered and investigation has been initiated.
Puducherry, April 24 : Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that to understand the soul of India, the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo has to be studied in detail. He said this on Sunday while speaking on the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Sri Aurobindo.

Shah said culture was the common factor that was binding the people of the country across various regions. He said that once India is seen as a geo-cultural country, then all the problems will be solved easily and automatically.

The Home Minister said that culture is the soul of India and that was the teaching of Sri Aurobindo and added that from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, and from Bengal to Dwarka, it was the culture that was holding the country together. He, however, said that the Constitution of the country was also equally important.

Shah said that in the concept of Indian culture, there is no border, and that in Vedas and Upanishads, there was no mention of borders and added: "We work for the welfare of the whole world." The Home Minister said that India attained independence when Sri Aurobindo was seventy-five years old and now during the 150th birth anniversary of the great saint, the country was celebrating its 75th birth anniversary.

He also said that Sri Aurobindo had played a major role in the freedom struggle of the country and reminisced about his incarceration in the Alipur bomb case.

Shah said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the freedom struggle as 'Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav' was to honour even the unknown freedom fighters and to take among the youth of the country the spirit of freedom struggle to invigorate the youths.

The Union home minister paid a visit to the Aurobindo Ashram and paid floral tributes at the memorial of Sri Aurobindo and his spiritual collaborator, The Mother.

Visiting the Mahakavi Bharathiar Memorial Museum, the Union minister paid floral tributes to the national poet and freedom fighter Subramania Bharathi.

In a tweet, he said: "Subramania Bharathi is the epitome of patriotism, unity, and social reforms. His patriotic songs motivated countless people to join the Indian freedom movement. His ideas continue to motivate us all." Earlier the Home Minister was received at the Puducherry airport by Lt Governor of Puducherry, Tamilisai Soundararajan, and Chief Minister of the Union Territory, N. Rangasami.
London, April 24 : Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced his regime's latest nuclear-capable missile will be deployed as early as this autumn, saying it will 'force those who try to threaten Russia to think twice', the media reported.

The Sarmat missile, or 'Satan II', is said to be the world's longest-range intercontinental ballistic missile, capable of striking a target 11,200 miles away -- meaning it could easily strike targets in the US and Europe, the Daily Mail reported.

Putin hailed the development of the missile, which was successfully test-fired earlier this week, 'a big, significant event' for Russia's defence industry, saying the Sarmat will 'ensure Russia's security from external threats and make those who try to threaten our country with aggressive rhetoric think twice.' "The missile can break through all modern anti-missile defences," he declared.

"There is nothing like this anywhere in the world, and won't be for a long time," Daily Mail reported.

Western military experts said the Sarmat is capable of carrying 10 or more nuclear warheads and decoys -- easily enough to wipe out territories the size of Britain or France in a single strike.

However, analysts believe the autumn target revealed by Putin and Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Roscosmos space agency, is an ambitious one because Moscow reported its first test-launch only on Wednesday and more tests will be needed before the missile can be deployed.

This week's test, after years of delays due to funding and technical issues, marks a show of strength by Russia at a time when the war in Ukraine has sent tensions with the US and its allies soaring to their highest levels since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

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Islamabad, April 24 : Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have agreed, in principle, to extend the stalled bailout programme by up to one year and increase the loan size to $8 billion, giving markets the much-needed stability and a breathing space to the new government, the media reported.

The understanding has been reached between Pakistan Finance Minister Miftah Ismail and IMF Deputy Managing Director Antoinette Sayeh in Washington, sources told The Express Tribune on Sunday.

Subject to the final modalities, the IMF has agreed that the programme will be extended by another nine months to one year as against the original end-period of September 2022, the sources added.

The size of the loan would be increased from the existing $6 billion to $8 billion -- a net addition of $2 billion, a senior government functionary requesting anonymity said.

The previous PTI-led government and the IMF had signed a 39-month Extended Fund Facility (July 2019 to September 2022) with a total value of $6 billion. However, the previous government failed to fulfil its commitments and the programme remained stalled for most of the time as $3 billion remained undisbursed.

Before taking Pakistan's case to the IMF Board for approval, Islamabad would have to agree on the budget strategy for the next fiscal year 2022-23, the sources said.

Also, the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif would have to demonstrate that it would undo some wrong steps taken by the former regime against the commitments that it gave to the IMF Board in January this year.

Pakistan is passing through a phase of political and economic uncertainty and the decision to stay in the IMF programme for longer than original period would bring clarity in economic policies and soothe the rattling markets, Express Tribune reported.
Thiruvananthapuram, April 24 : Senior Congress leader and former Maharashtra Governor K. Sankaranarayanan passed away in Kerala's Palakkad on Sunday. He was 89.

The senior leader was suffering from illness for the past couple of years.

Sankaranarayanan was the convenor of the United Democratic Front (UDF) for 16 years and had maintained an excellent rapport with the coalition partners including the Muslim League and the Kerala Congress-Mani when UDF was in power and in opposition.

He was also the Finance Minister in the A.K. Antony government.

Sankaranarayanan served as Governor in six states including Maharashtra.

The deceased Congress leader was remembered for his humour and his excellent rapport with political leaders cutting across political lines.

Antony expressed condolences at the passing away of his former cabinet colleague.

Former Union Minister and former state Congress President, Mullappally Ramachandran also expressed his condolences on the passing away of Sankaranarayanan.
New Delhi, April 24 : Has anyone ever thought that one can get two degrees at one go? Now, under the New Education Policy, Indian students have the freedom to take admission in diploma and graduation, or graduation and post graduation simultaneously.

The University Grants Commission has introduced these changes in the Higher education.

For implementation of the policy, universities will have to make massive change in the attendance system. Arrangements and rules will be made by the varsities to systematically arrange the attendance of the students who opt for two courses simultaneously.

Besides, the varsities will have to prepare new calendar for written and practical examinations.

Under the new education policy, students have the permission to apply for a diploma and undergraduate course; one undergraduate course and one Post graduate course; two post graduate courses; two undergraduate courses, simultaneously.

Not only this, a post graduate student can take admission in undergraduate course again for the subject of their choice. It means that a student who has done M.Sc after completing B.Sc can take admission in graduation programme of his choice.

Although it is also not like every student can do registration for two degrees simultaneously and in every curriculum also, dual degree is not possible. For example, PhD students cannot register for graduation, diploma or post graduation simultaneously.

PhD students even cannot go for two PhDs simultaneously.

Academician and former Delhi University Professor D.S. Sharma said, it is not necessary that almost all students, who opt for two degrees, will be able to do it.

According to Sharma, "students who are doing regular studies have time constraints. They have to spend five to six hours in their educational institutions, commuting time is also there and then they have to go back home and study too. In such circumstances they hardly have any time for other activities." It will be interesting to watch how many students will be able to derive benefit of the scheme.

UGC president M Jagadesh Kumar said there is a guideline for dual degree.

Students will have to keep in mind that while studying for the two courses, there is no conflict in the classes. To avoid that, the students will have to follow certain rules.

If the students want, they can opt for one degree via physical mode and another via open and distance learning or online mode.

According to UGC, the students have one other option under which they can opt for two degrees via open and distance learning and online courses.

As per UGC, it also not so that dual degree can be taken from online educational institution. For that also, special guidelines have been formulated.

Dual degrees through online mode can be only given by institutions which are recognised by UGC or the Delhi government.

In regular educational institutions, there is a provision for getting dual degrees. Although before applying for that, it has to be decided that timings of both classes do not clash. If the students want they can opt for two courses in separate universities or colleges.

The students are getting freedom to get two full time degrees under National Education Policy 2020.

Jagadesh Kumar said this provision has been made so that students who are interested in varied subjects can get benefitted.

According to UGC, Indian Universities can also sign a memorandum with international universities for the dual degree programme.

Under Dual degree programme, a student will have to get 30 per cent credit score from the international university.

The universities which have been granted 3.01 score by National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and top 100 universities under National Institute Ranking Framework can start this dual degree programme.

Prof Jagadesh Kumar said that for starting dual degree programme, educational institutions will have to sign MoU with top 500 universities having QS World University Ranking and Times Higher Education Ranking.
New Delhi, April 24 : The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Sunday said that it has filed a charge sheet against 20 cadres of the banned CPI-Maoist in Edakkara Maoist case of Kerala.

The charge sheet, filed before a special court in Kerala under various sections of IPC, the Arms Act, and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, relates to the conspiracy for conducting physical and arms training, and holding a meeting of Western Ghats Special Zonal Committee of the proscribed CPI-Maoist in the Nilambur forest in Kerala's Malappuram district in 2016 in order to strengthen the organisation with intention to commit terrorist acts and wage war against the government.

The Kerala Police had initially lodged an FIR in this respect in 2017 and the probe was taken over by the NIA in 2021.

Investigation conducted by the NIA established that the accused in the case were members of the proscribed CPI-Maoist, and had trespassed into the reserve forests of Nilambur in Malappuram to conspire for conducting training camps and organising meetings of the Zonal Committee.

They also observed Commemoration Week and celebrated the formation day of CPI-Maoist, collected men and arms, conducted and participated in arms and physical training by using prohibited arms in order to carry out terrorist acts for furthering the activities of the CPI-Maoist).
New Delhi, April 24 : Hitting out at the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday said Delhi's 'education model' is as fake as the visits to study it.

The BJP hit out at AAP after Kerala Education Minister V. Sivankutty said that his state's Department of Education never sent anyone to learn about the 'Delhi Model' -- a claim made by AAP MLA Atishi on Saturday.

In-charge of BJP's national information and technology department Amit Malviya tweeted: "AAP's claims on Delhi's 'education model' are as fake as the visits to study it. Is Sisodia grooming new talent to take forward the lie on their non-existent education model?" Sharing a screenshot of Sivankutty's tweet, Lok Sabha member from North East Delhi Manoj Tiwari asked: "How much lies you serve and get it published, Arvind Kejriwal.

"In a tweet on Saturday, Kalkaji MLA Atishi said: "It was wonderful to host officials from Kerala at one of our schools in Kalkaji. They were keen to understand and implement our education model in their state. This is @ArvindKejriwal Govt's idea of nation building. Development through collaboration." Quoting Atishi's tweet on Sunday, Kerala education and labour minister Sivankutty said: "Kerala's Dept of Education has not sent anyone to learn about the 'Delhi Model'. At the same time, all assistance was provided to officials who had visited from Delhi to study the 'Kerala Model' last month. We would like to know which 'officials' were welcomed by the AAP MLA." Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor urged the Delhi Education Minister and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia to clarify whether any official delegation of Kerala had visited any Delhi government school.

"It is surprising how Atishi can make such false claims violating state protocol for political gimmick," Kapoor said.
Hyderabad, April 24 : Amid Prashant Kishor's discussions with Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao for second consecutive day on Sunday, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) on Sunday confirmed that it has signed a deal with Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) founded by the election strategist.

During an interaction with a select group of journalists, TRS Working President K.T. Rama Rao confirmed that the TRS is working with I-PAC but claimed that this has nothing to do with Kishor. "PK (as Kishor is popularly known) is the founder but I don't know who is running it. PK introduced us to I-PAC and it is working with us," he said.

He said PK has disassociated himself from I-PAC which is working with multiple parties across the country. "It's not just PK we had interactions with. We had multiple iterations of discussions with several others. We spoke to Sunil and others. I-PAC is what we narrowed down to." The TRS leader, however, was evasive on whether the agreement is only for 2023 Assembly polls or 2024 Lok Sabha elections as well as the nature of discussions they are holding with PK. "If a gentleman who is into politics, who is into advisory or helpful roles in other places, offers you some inputs, would you not take them?" he asked.

KTR, as Rama Ro is known, did not agree that there will be conflict of interest as PK is planning to join the Congress. "Has he joined Congress? Isn't it hypothetical, right now. I don't know whether he is joining or not," said KTR, who is the son of KCR.

He dismissed the possibility of the TRS approaching Congress. "Why will we approach Congress. Where is Congress? Rahul Gandhi can't win his own seat, how will he make others win. Someone who can't win his own constituency or state, how will he win other states and the country," he asked.

KTR, however, said the TRS will win elections on its own and I-PAC will just supplement it. "If we don't have public support, they can't save us. They will just supplement. PK or some outsider can't save a sinking ship. If you are on the right path, your efforts can be augmented, majorities can improve, number of seats can improve and certain sections of the population can be connected which otherwise would not have connected." "All these strategists can only augment or complement your efforts. To overstress or overemphasise that I-PAC or political strategist will win you an election or PK or somebody made Mamata ji (Mamata Banerjee) or Stalin ji (M.K. Stalin) Chief Minister is exaggeration," he added.

The TRS leader said that if his party has to come back stronger in 2023, it will have to do it on its own strengths and merits. "Anybody else is only going to augment. You are overemphasising or overstressing on extraneous factors. I-PAC is an extraneous institution which will only give inputs." He explained that I-PAC will help reach people in the age group of 18-30 as the party needs different mediums and different forms of communication. He pointed out that digital media has become an important platform and the TRS doesn't want to miss out on it.

KTR was evasive to questions about the possibility of TRS working with the Congress for evolving a national alternative.

"I am not an astrologer to say what will happen six months from now," KTR said when asked if TRS would be working with Congress for Lok Sabha elections.

He said that the TRS plenary to be held on April 27 to mark 21st foundation day of the party will decide its approach to national-level politics and its stand on national issues. The day-long plenary will also decide how to win elections in Telangana for the third time.

On anti-incumbency, KTR said that it is extremely natural. He said any government which is in power will have to go through it and it is not just confined to the TRS. He was confident that people will give a fresh mandate to the TRS on the basis of the governance it provided during the last 8-9 years and what it delivered.

He exuded confidence that KCR will re-write history to lead the TRS to third consecutive poll victory, a record in south India.
New Delhi, April 24 : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Sunday said it has arrested three persons in connection with the sensational gang-rape and murder case of 14-year-old girl at Hanskhali in West Bengal's Nadia district.

"During the course of investigation, the role of the accused has allegedly been found and accordingly, they have been arrested. The arrested accused will be presented before the competent court," a CBI official said.

The Calcutta High Court had on April 12 ordered a CBI probe into the matter to bring out the truth.

Earlier, the local police was looking into the matter.

The CBI after taking over the probe lodged a fresh case and formed a team of elite officials to look into the matter.

The 14-year-old victim who belonged to Schedule Caste on April 4 reported having a severe pain in the lower abdomen. On April 5, she succumbed to her injuries. The cause of death is said to be excessive bleeding. The irony was that she was cremated without any post-mortem and death certificate.

On April 10, an FIR was lodged in this connection with the Hanskhali police station by the family members of the victim with the help of state run Child Line. The family members were initially not coming forward due to threats from the accused and his family.

It was alleged by the family members that she went to attend a birthday party at the house of the accused where she was made to have drinks laced with sedatives. And after being drugged, she was allegedly raped by the accused.
Sanaa, April 25 : The first commercial flight scheduled to depart Yemen's Houthi-held capital airport in six years has been delayed indefinitely amid accusations between the country's warring sides.

A plane of the national carrier Yemenia Airways planned to take off from the Sanaa International Airport on Sunday morning, to transport passengers in need of medical treatment to Jordan's capital Amman, as an essential step in a two-month truce, Xinhua news agency reported.

Just hours before the flight, the airline said it had not received permits and had to postpone the flight indefinitely, expressing "deep regret to the travellers".

Raaid Jabal, Deputy of the Houthi-controlled aviation authority in Sanaa, blamed the Yemeni government for refusing to issue permits for the flight.

"This is considered a violation of the truce that was announced by the UN envoy for Yemen," the Houthi official was quoted by the Houthi-run al-Masirah TV as saying.

The internationally recognised Yemeni government's Information Minister, Moammar al-Eryani said in a tweet that the government refused to greenlight the flight because some of the passengers do not possess "passports issued by the legitimate government".

The Yemeni government agreed to allow 104 passengers to board the plane, while the Houthi group insists on adding another 60 passengers with "unreliable passports," said the Minister, urging the UN to exert pressure on the Houthi group to "expedite the flight".

The Houthi-controlled Sanaa International Airport has been closed to commercial flights since August 2016. The Houthi group captured the ground area of the airport, and the Saudi-led coalition controlled the airspace over the Houthi-held city and its airport.

Only UN aid planes have been allowed to land and take off from the Sanaa airport.

On Sunday, UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg expressed his concern over the postponement of the flight.

"I urge the parties to work constructively with me and my office to find a solution that allows the flights to resume as planned," Grundberg said in a tweet.

Yemen's warring sides agreed to implement from April 2 a UN-brokered ceasefire that was meant to last two months.

The truce includes the halt of all ground, aerial and naval military offensive operations. It also include allowing the entry of 18 fuel ships into the Houthi-held port of Hodeidah and two commercial flights a week to and from the Sanaa airport, as well as lifting the siege to allow humanitarian aid access to the government-held Taiz city.

Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014 when the Iran-backed Houthi militia seized control of several northern provinces and forced the Saudi-backed Yemeni government out of Sanaa.
New Delhi, April 25 : Between April 11 and 20, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change introduced a bunch of amendments through three gazette notifications -- one set is proposed while two are done -- to the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification of 2006 that has drawn widespread criticism from environmentalists.

The EIA notification of September 2006 is for mandating prior environmental clearance for certain categories of projects. While the changes -- both proposed and done -- have a lot to be debated, it is the manner in which these amendments are being carried out has drawn equal or more criticism.

On April 11, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change brought out the first set of amendments to the EIA notification that provides for exemption of environmental clearance to several projects, including defence related or border area projects, those up to 25 MW thermal plants based on biomass or expansion of terminal building of airport, basically for projects deemed as public utility works.

The exemptions come with the condition that standard environmental safeguards for such projects would be followed by the agency executing such projects or the incremental environmental impacts can be catered by providing for environmental safeguards which can be built into the Environmental Management Plan (EMP) at the time of grant of such clearances.

The next set of amendments published on April 13 extended the validity of environmental clearance to hydro-power and nuclear projects, among others.

On April 20, a major amendment, among others, was that the Centre will now exercise the power to assess and grant environmental clearance to the projects under national defence or security importance, instead of the state.

Environmentalist Manoj Mishra, who is also the Convenor of 'Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan', said, "An amendment to the principal Act needs to go to the Parliament for any kind of change, big or small." "Even if you give a public notice, you get public or stakeholders' opinion, then also you will need to take it back to the Parliament," Mishra said, adding, "Only if there are any changes being done to the Rules (set of dos and don'ts that help in implementation of a given Act), then a 30 or 60-day notice for public or stakeholders can be a way to do it." But that is what the ideal situation should have been. The Environment Ministry has given reasons from 'national security' to 'in the public interest'.

The Centre has mentioned that they have dispensed with the requirement of notice under clause (a) of sub-rule (3) of Rule 5 of the Environment Protection Rule for 'public interest' under powers conferred by sub-section (1) and clause (5) of sub-section (2) of section 3 of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, (29 of 1986), read with sub-rule (4) of Rule 5 of the Environment (Protection) Rules, 1986.

Senior Resident Fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Debadityo Sinha said, "Such power is limited within the purview of Section 3 of the Act, which states that the Central government has powers to take measures to protect and improve the environment. This simply means the exception can be used only for purposes where the intention is strengthening environmental safeguards. Using this power to take any regressive or relaxation of the existing regulation is simply regressive and ultra vires to the Environment (Protection) Act." In the April 20 set of amendments, the Centre has usurped states' power of assessing for and granting environmental clearance for projects in category B that are for defence or strategic importance.

"Stating that overriding state's authority in the environmental clearance process is undermining the federal structure guaranteed under the Constitution," Sinha said, adding that, "Land is a 'state' subject while environment and forest conservation is in the 'concurrent list' of the Constitution. Centre must consult and take concurrence with the state before undertaking any activity on their land. This amendment is deeply problematic." Last week, when asked about the amendments and the poor manner of the implementation of environmental management plan, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav had told IANS, "We are working out the modalities to address all such issues and will soon come out with a policy regarding the same." The Environment Ministry had already proposed a volley of amendments that have been deemed as 'dilution' of the EIA process and criticised heavily by environmental activists.

Those amendments, introduced in 2020, are yet to be finalised. And now these additional amendments.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Paris, April 25 : In a victory speech, a mere 90 minutes after he was projected re-elected as French President for a second term on Sunday evening, Emmanuel Macron, 44, with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face, assured those who did not vote for him: "I am no longer the candidate of one camp, but the President of all." But on a more emotional note, on a brightly lit stage in the Place de la Republique in central Paris, his wife Brigitte with him, thousands of people as his audience and the iconic Eiffel Tower glowing in the background, Macron vowed "to heal the divisions that have been expressed in these elections, by ensuring respect for everyone, every day." He said: "The years to come will certainly be difficult, but they will be historic and we will have to write them, together, for the new generations." According to Ipsos-Sopra Steria, computing the result, Macron won with 58.8 per cent votes in his favour compared to 41.2 per cent for his far Right challenger, the 53-year-old Marine Le Pen. The second and final round of the French presidential election, which this was, is a straight contest between two candidates, after a first round eliminates others in the fray a fortnight earlier.

The margin of Macron's win was narrower than five years ago, when he attracted 66 per cent of votes to the same opponent's 34 per cent.

This was the first time since Jacques Chirac of the right-of-centre Republican party in 2002, that a sitting president has been granted dual terms by French voters, whose preferences have been quite volatile in recent years.

Macron's En Marche movement, launched only in 2016, was enthusiastically endorsed the following year at the expense of the long established Republican and Socialist parties. Simultaneously, there has been the steady rise of Le Pen's ultra-nationalist and racist National Rally party as well as that of the radical left France Unbowed party of veteran Jean-Luc Melenchon.

In her concession speech, a defiant Le Pen said: "The ideas we stand for are reaching new heights." Certainly she had gained seven per cent on her showing five years ago.

Melenchon, who narrowly lost out to Le Pen in the first round, also held a post-election rally.

"Let's get to work without hesitating," he told his supporters. His objective is to unite the left and green formations in French politics to establish a strong presence in the National Assembly in parliamentary elections in June.

An opinion poll broadcast on French television claimed 54 per cent of French voters did not want an En Marche majority to 46 per cent who did. If this transpires to be reality, Macron's party might only become the largest single party, without winning an absolute majority, as it did in 2017.

As En Marche supporters sipped champagne late into the night to celebrate their success, the conversation was more sobering, with talk of an immediate "third round". There are fears of public unrest led by the France Unbowed in the run-up to the June elections over Macron's proposal to raise the retirement age to 65 and the current high cost of living.

Much relieved European leaders -- for Le Pen posed a major threat to the unity and integrity of the European Union -- rushed to congratulate Macron.

The first foreign Head of state to signal his satisfaction was German Chancellor Olof Scholz.

"Your voters have sent a strong vote of confidence in Europe today," he posted on Twitter.

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, tweeted: "Together we will make France and Europe advance." Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said Macron's win "is splendid news for all of Europe".

Even British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a Brexiteer who has often been at loggerheads with Macron, said he looked forward to "continuing to work on the issues which matter most to our two countries and to the world".

Macron's victory was good news for India. The Indian government has been familiar with Macron since he was a cabinet Minister in the socialist President Francois Hollande's (2012-2017) government. He has, therefore, represented a continuing and steadfast alliance with India on defence, security, intelligence sharing and economic co-operation since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Law Office of Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP For more information about the class action lawsuit against Hawthorne Hydroponics LLC, call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

The Los Angeles employment law attorneys, at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP, filed a class action complaint alleging that Hawthorne Hydroponics LLC violated the California Labor Code. The Hawthorne Hydroponics LLC class action lawsuit, Case No. CIVSB2203720, is currently pending in the San Bernardino County Superior Court of the State of California. A copy of the Complaint can be read here.

According to the lawsuit filed, Hawthorne Hydroponics LLC allegedly (a) failed to pay minimum wages, (b) failed to pay overtime wages, (c) failed to provide legally required meal and rest periods, (d) failed to provide accurate itemized wage statements, (e) failed to reimburse employees for required expenses, and (f) failed to provide wages when due, all in violation of the applicable Labor Code sections listed in California Labor Code Sections  201, 202, 203, 226, 226.7, 510, 512, 1194, 1197, 1197.1, 2802, and the applicable Wage Order(s), and thereby gives rise to civil penalties as a result of such alleged conduct.

Hawthorne Hydroponics LLC allegedly failed to reimburse employees for required business expenses. California Labor Code  2802 expressly states that "an employer shall indemnify his or her employee for all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties..." During employment, Plaintiff and other California Class Members were allegedly required to use their personal cellular phones as a result of and in furtherance of their job duties.

For more information about the class action lawsuit against Hawthorne Hydroponics LLC, call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP is an employment law firm with offices located in San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Riverside and Chicago that dedicates its practice to helping employees, investors and consumers fight back against unfair business practices, including violations of the California Labor Code and Fair Labor Standards Act. If you need help in collecting unpaid overtime wages, unpaid commissions, being wrongfully terminated from work, and other employment law claims, contact one of their attorneys today.

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By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 04/23/2022



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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.

alum Thomas Jacobs has opened up about his plans to propose marriage to girlfriend Becca Kufrin and where the couple may be moving to in the near future!Thomas and Becca, who began dating on 's seventh season last summer, have been traveling together for the "Bachelor Live On Stage" tour and seemingly falling more in love with each other every day."As far as planning, has [ Tia Booth 's engagement ] given me any ideas? Yeah. I'm very aware [Becca] wants an elongated cushion [cut diamond]. I'm very aware she wants it to be very large," Thomas revealed during a recent appearance on the "Click Bait with Bachelor Nation" podcast."Am I aware if I have one in a safety lockbox in my bedroom? I don't know, time will tell. We'll have to find that one out later on this year."Thomas confirmed of the pending proposal, "I don't have a full plan yet, but I know it's going to be small and intimate.""There will be a camera. I'll have a photographer, but the last thing that I want for Becca is to have another grand spectacle."Becca previously got engaged at the end of her The Bachelorette season in 2018 to Garrett Yrigoyen but the couple announced their split in September 2020 after two years together."I want this to be a special moment just for us," Thomas continued on the podcast. "We want to sort of just be able to enjoy that moment the way that we want to. I think that's one of the biggest blessings we've had in our relationship."Thomas acknowledged how there is "pressure" on couples who come out of The Bachelor franchise "to be a certain way.""The people who have the most happiness are the ones who say, 'I understand that's there, but it's not going to dictate our lives, and we're going to be the people who we are and then go on from there,'" Thomas said.Thomas also told Tia, Joe Amabile and Natasha Parker on the podcast how he and Becca will be traveling to Hawaii after the "Bachelor Live On Stage" tour ends for a wedding and then head to Becca's hometown in Minnesota to visit with her sister and mother.Thomas also revealed how he and Becca have discussed the possibility of moving to New York soon."We love Manhattan. We're thinking about potentially following in the footsteps of Joe and [his fiancee Serena Pitt ] and signing a lease out there just for a few months," Thomas said."It's something, before we really settle down, there's a bucket list thing of items that we want to do -- and living in a big city for a little bit is one of those... That's in the talks. It's in the talks."Back in early November 2021, Thomas and Becca were not living together -- as Becca lived in Los Angeles and Thomas had a place in San Diego -- but Thomas told Hollywood Life that he was pretty sold on marrying Becca because they were spending a lot of time together and had "the most healthy, normal relationship" at the time.During an October episode of the "Talking It Out with Bachelor Nation" podcast hosted by The Bachelorette alums Mike Johnson and Bryan Abasolo , Becca revealed how Thomas has sent her "multiple text messages" asking about engagement rings."It's something we've talked about," Thomas disclosed during the joint interview. "I mean, I don't want to spend my life with anybody else... I wouldn't want to wake up next to anybody else."On 's seventh-season finale, Becca was shown breaking up with Thomas and crushing his heart before overnight Fantasy Suite dates because, despite having "an incredible start" to a relationship, Becca didn't want to leave The Bachelor franchise for the third time with a man unless she knew everything about him, including how he'd face adversity and real-life challenges.However, the finale concluded with an update on Becca and Thomas' relationship, revealing how they had reunited after filming ended and were dating, "happy and in love."During Becca and Thomas' appearance on "Talking It Out" last year, Becca revealed she's the one who tracked down Thomas' phone number and initiated their reunion "After we ended things, I think I waited a couple days. I didn't have my phone right away and he didn't have his phone right away, so I think I gave it two days," Becca said.Thomas recalled, "I was waiting for my bags in the San Diego airport when I got a text."While Thomas confessed he was "mad" and "hurt" about his Paradise breakup, he had faith they'd have "a future conversation.""I was just waiting for the moment and opportunity to see her again," Thomas shared."When she first texted me, she started off, 'I know I'm probably the last person you want to hear from right now.' And it couldn't be further from the truth, that's the one text I was waiting to hear."Thomas shared, "That's the one person I wanted to see. That's the one person I wanted to hold... [Our split] showed us that we experienced something and it was taken away from us for a moment."Becca said she met up with Thomas in San Diego and they picked up right where they had left off, and Thomas told Hollywood Life that he had no hesitation or reservations about giving Becca another chance.Becca also boasted about how Thomas is different from her past relationships because he's so passionate about a life with her and was prepared to fight "tooth and nail" to save their romance."He is so supportive and he's just funny and quirky in the cutest ways. Everything about him, I just felt safe with, unlike anything I had in the past. I was just like, 'This guy is my guy,'" Becca gushed.Becca had been engaged twice before appearing on .Becca had her heart broken by Arie Luyendyk Jr. on The Bachelor's 22nd season in 2018, when he decided to end their engagement because he was still in love with his runner-up, Lauren Burnham , who is now his wife and the mother of his three children.Becca also had her very public breakup with Garrett in 2020.But the third time may be the charm , as Becca apparently thinks Thomas could be The One and they are meant to be."I'm gonna probably hate myself for actually admitting this to anyone, but I called my mom -- and even though I was engaged twice in the past -- I was like, 'Mom, I think I want to marry this guy ,'" Becca previously said on the "Talking It Out" podcast."It's the first time I've ever actually said that out loud."Since the pair began dating in the real world, Becca has defended Thomas and stood up for their relationship on more than one occasion considering he had been portrayed as a villain on Katie Thurston 's season of The Bachelorette.Interested in more The Bachelor news? Join our The Bachelor Facebook Group
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 04/24/2022



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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.

couple Kenny Braasch and Mari Pepin-Solis have provided an update on their wedding planning.Kenny and Mari got engaged on 's seventh season in Summer 2021, and their engagement aired on the show's October finale.The couple is now in the process of planning their big day, but Mari confirmed they don't have a wedding date set just yet."We agreed that we're gonna do it in Puerto Rico, definitely," Mari said on the "Talking It Out With Bachelor Nation" podcast.Mari revealed that she and Kenny have "narrowed down" their wedding-venue options to four places."I have a lot of extended family there -- my grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, everybody -- so we're all gonna meet up there in Puerto Rico... I really want to do something outdoors for the ceremony and then something indoors for the party," Mari said.Mari said she wants "a tropical theme" with "tropical flowers" and a "colorful" event.Mari, however, admitted that she doesn't exactly have all of her ducks in a row."I have so many ideas now! I thought I already had a ton of ideas because I have a whole Pinterest board dedicated to this, but now I'm like, 'I want that color. I want this cake, but I want that cake, too!' It's a mess," Mari shared.After Kenny popped the question in Paradise, Mari moved to Kenny's hometown of Chicago.Kenny revealed in January 2022 that he and Mari were taking the next step in their relationship and moving in together."@Mari_Pepin and I have signed the lease on a new apartment here in Chicago," Kenny reportedly wrote on his Instagram Story at the time.Mari then reposted the announcement and added, "I can't wait to keep annoying you, and scaring you, and love you every day boo!"On 's seventh season, Mari, a 25-year-old marketing manager at the time, connected with Kenny, a boyband manager, right off the bat, and it seemed like love at first sight.But once things began getting serious, Mari pumped the brakes and suggested the couple should continue seeing each other while keeping their options open and pursuing other possible romances in Mexico.Kenny, a little heartbroken over Mari's lack of commitment, therefore dated Demi Burnett , with whom he went to "The Boom Boom Room," and he also went on a date with Tia Booth in which they played naked volleyball with strangers.Once Mari saw Kenny with other women, she realized how much she missed him and how she wanted him all to herself. Mari therefore apologized to Kenny and fought for him, and the pair became inseparable after their reconciliation."Obviously, I was very into Mari from the very beginning," Kenny explained to People in October 2021."So once I sort of knew she was in the same place I was is when I started thinking, like, we might end up engaged at the end of this."Mari said that although there is a 15-year age difference between them, she believes they are at similar stages in life and want the same things, which helped bring them closer together and solidify their bond."I feel like I'm kind of in a different life stage than most people my age. And so for me, I think someone who is in a similar stage [works best]," shared Mari, who revealed on she's not interested in partying and had always wanted to get married young."We do the same things and we've got the same habits, and it just works really well for us. So I think that's ultimately what I was looking for, and I found it."Mari added of the significant age gap, "I think the only way that it's noticeable is when we talk about movies or music, because [we're] obviously [from] different generations."On the finale, Kenny popped the question with an oval-shaped diamond ring, and the pair couldn't wait to show off their love and be a couple in public.Although Mari and Kenny had to hide their relationship from the public for several months while the show was airing, they didn't exactly follow the rules of their contract."We actually snuck [out] to [got to] a concert together. We saw Journey here in Chicago," Mari revealed to People."We weren't supposed to, but we didn't get caught. We both wore hats. I wore a pair of glasses, and it was really late at night, so it worked out."Late last year, Mari was already thinking about her wedding."I have all my ideas of what I want for my wedding, but we haven't started planning anything solid yet," Mari noted at the time. "The only thing that we've agreed on so far is that we will get married in Puerto Rico."In terms of having children, Mari said, "I think I just want to enjoy being married for a little bit first and then maybe in the next year to two years we'll start talking about that."On 's finale, Kenny said getting engaged to a person so soon was "insane" but he'd be an "idiot" not to wife Mari up because he was absolutely crazy about the girl.Mari gushed about how Kenny had "100 percent of her heart" and she felt like the luckiest woman in the world to be with him.Kenny admitted he was "blown away" by Mari's beauty at first sight and felt something entirely new for her. In turn, Mari felt she and Kenny had been tested like no other couple in Paradise.Kenny's hands were shaking and he needed to pause and take a deep breath during his marriage proposal on the beach, before yelling, "Mari, I am so f-cking in love with you! And I can't see my life without you. You are an amazing woman and you've changed my whole outlook on life."In addition to Kenny and Mari, two other couples got engaged on the seventh-season finale: Joe Amabile and Serena Pitt as well as Riley Christian and Maurissa Gunn.Maurissa and Riley have since split, but Joe and Serena are currently living together in New York City and thinking about their wedding.Before appearing on , Mari competed for Matt James ' heart on The Bachelor's 25th season and Kenny dated Clare Crawley and Tayshia Adams on The Bachelorette's sixteenth season.Interested in more The Bachelor news? Join our The Bachelor Facebook Group
Former Ray Donovan showrunner David Hollander has been fired from the upcoming Showtime series, American Gigolo, following an investigation by the network and producers Paramount Television Studios into his alleged misconduct.

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"David Hollander is no longer on the drama series American Gigolo and Paramount Television Studios no longer has a producing relationship with him," a statement from Showtime and Paramount said Saturday.

Deadline cited unnamed sources as saying the investigation and firing involved comments Hollander allegedly made on the set of American Gigolo.

Although the type of statements have not been disclosed, they were not of sexual harassment nature, the outlet said.

Hollander has not publicly remarked on the situation and Variety said Hollander's representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The series adaptation of the 1980 Richard Gere film stars Jon Bernthal Rosie O'Donnell , Gabriel LaBelle and Wayne Brady . Bernthal plays former male escort Julian Kaye who returns to the Los Angeles sex industry 15 years after he was arrested for murder.

Hollander also created created CBS' The Guardian and TNT's Heartland.
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - Senior Libyan and World Bank officials have discussed ways to develop and strengthen joint cooperation between them
With music and the smell of food filling the air, people pop in and out of different booths that dot the land at the outdoor Brattleboro Area Farmers Market that opened for the season on Saturday, May 7, 2022, and will run every Saturday until Oct. 29.
Chloe Learey of the Child Care Counts Coalition hands out appreciation checks to Jessica Corbeil, Jessica "Essy" Farquhar and Moriah Carney at West Bee Nursery School on Wednesday, April 13, 2022.
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





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EASTON  An agreement between officials and a local business resulted in Easton becoming the first municipality in Connecticut to grow cannabis on town-owned land - and could be a model for other towns to cash in on the adult-use market.

While it took a while to iron out the details, Easton Grows LLC used approximately one acre of town property on South Park Avenue to grow cannabis plants for hemp and CBD. Notably, the product was not used for THC, the psychoactive property known for getting people high.

As a part of the deal, the company paid Easton 20 percent of its profits. Officials say the agreement is a way Easton can participate in the modern economy while also honoring its roots as a farming community.

State Rep. Anne Hughes, a Democrat who represents Easton, Weston and Redding in the legislature, said the partnership is the only such deal in Connecticut. She said people like to buy products from local farmers they know and trust.

Easton is a farming community, she said. Weve been farming for hundreds of years, and we have I think 30 active farmers in Easton alone. This is a legacy that were really proud of.

Griffith Conti, one of the three owners of Easton Grows, said he has a background in the cannabis industry. He said the South Park Advisory Committee, which aimed to find uses for the South Park Avenue property, was looking for ways to preserve the land while also benefiting the town.

Easton First Selectman David Bindelglass said the companys gross sales were $6,472, of which they paid the town $1,294. As promised, he said, Easton Grows returned pristine land to the town.

Bindelglass said the selectmen approved the deal because they thought it would be a good experiment. As long as the company doesnt destroy the land, he said, there was nothing to lose. He said the agreement highlighted a few things for him.

It highlights that farming is a potential use for some of the remainder of that land  even if the (Aspetuck) Land Trust buys it, he said. Theres also been talk about potential difficulties of securing the property, and they had no issues.

Conti said his business partner Jeff Becker sought him out after hemp was identified as a good use for some of the land. While he, Becker and David Dwight Senior, the third partnet, thought it would be easy to get a green-light on the project from the town, he said, that is not what happened.

Boy were we wrong, he said.

Conti said they went through four or five months of meetings with the Board of Selectmen, the Planning and Zoning Board and the Agriculture Commission, adding they were rejected three times before finally getting approval.

For that reason, Conti said, they did not put plants in the ground until August. But, he said, once approval came, they got moving very quickly.

Theres never been a situation where youve been able to grow a crop on town land, he said, later noting the products were sold at Franny's of Westport. We ended up growing an incredible crop.

Getting approval, growing and selling

Conti said getting approval from the selectmen and P&Z was relatively easy. The biggest step of the approval process was the Agriculture Commission, he said, which required an entire business plan.

They grilled us for hours, and really had us put a lot of information together, he said.

The trio spent $12,000 on an attorney to help them get through the approval process, Conti said, which also included negotiating a lease with the town.

He said they were treated differently because of the crop they were growing.

We went to 12 or 15 different meetings and everything was centered around these completely bogus assumptions about cannabis, he said. We were kind of working against every objection you can imagine.

Conti said people had doubts that they would be successful in their venture. He said some residents and officials doubted they would be able to sell the crop for a premium price, while others worried about security of the farm.

We really did it all correctly, he said.

When the company got approval, Conti said, the owners spent $30,000 of their own money building it out. He said their goal was to raise awareness in town, adding they did not seek grants.

Conti said Easton Grows went about creating a little farm on the one acre of land it leased. He said they planted the cannabis in rows in two hoop houses.

We had about 150 total plants, he said. They flowered beautifully and we got some really incredible yields.

Conti said the company had 100 percent compliance with the law and no incidents of theft or public safety issues.

I mean, they thought animals were going to come by and get high from a plant that cant get you high, he said.

Despite the rocky approval process, Conti said it was rewarding to see how he and the other co-owners, as well as supportive residents and officials, all came together.

Hughes said Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and Commissioner Bryan Hurlburt of the Connecticut Department of Agriculture visited the farm last year.

Its a really low-impact use of that land that creates some revenue and creates a good quality, local grown product, she said.

Conti said the only reason the business even came to be was because they could sell the product at Frannys of Westport, which he also owns. He said the company had worked hard to create the brand for Easton Grows, adding they grew five different strains.

We sell bulk flower. We sell a premium pre-roll and a five-pack, he said. That was all sold exclusively through Frannys.

Conti said CBD products like the ones grown in Easton are federally legal because they are derived from hemp. He said people use it to help with pain, inflammation, sleep and overall wellness.

On the marijuana side, theres some (people) that can get on board, others that cant, he said. But, from the pure, fundamental medical benefits side of it, CBD is widely studied.

Conti said the company had grown five pounds of product originally, noting sales started on October 4. He said town officials only wanted the 20 percent cut of sales up until January of this year, but there is still more Easton Grows products at Frannys.

We also have, I think, five more pounds of the crop from last year that continues to be sold, he said, adding his company has gotten a lot of positive feedback about their product.

Bindelglass said it is hard to judge the financial results of the agreement, as Easton Grows started growing late and it did not make much money.

Who knows how much better it could be? he said.

Looking forward

Conti said the business trio is definitely interested in growing hemp again, but he does not know where that will happen.

Were going to continue in some format and were exploring what that looks like, whether its on town-owned land or private land, and whether or not we grow as big of a crop, he said. Were really focused on some of the exotic cannabinoids, so some of the very niche strains that have a lot of good results behind them.

Conti also said they have also applied to the state to grow cannabis for THC, the psychoactive ingredient, now that it is legal and the state is coming out with the regulations surrounding its production and sale.

That would be dictated by the towns, if we were to win a license, whether its through Easton Grows or Frannys, he said. Were also applying individually. Its a lottery process.

Conti pointed out that many towns, including neighboring Fairfield, have voted to put a one year moratorium on cannabis establishments. Eastons Planning and Zoning Commission is currently considering a similar moratorium.

If we get a license, theres a stipulation that within 18 months you have to become active with that license, he said. Youre going to be limited on the municipalities that allow this.

Bindelglass said the Aspetuck Land Trust could still allow for agricultural use of the land even if after it becomes deed-restricted. He said the agreement turned out to be a good thing.

To me, its indicative of the towns flexibility, sometimes, to consider other ways to keep Easton Easton  to keep it agricultural and to preserve space, he said. This was a positive.

Bindelglass said it might be a tougher sell if Easton Grows wanted to grow cannabis for THC on the property, but he thinks it would still be considered.

Hughes said growing hemp, a fast-growing, renewable product, is an important way to replace fossil fuel-based products like plastic in clothing. She said she hopes Easton does not pass a moratorium on cannabis establishments.

As we build the responsible economy that we want, thats sustainable for the future, we need to build off of our strengths, she said, adding responsible, inspected and licensed agricultural products fall under that.

Hughes questioned why a town would not want to explore options with cannabis growers when it could get a portion of the sales tax and revenue from their sales, all while knowing the people doing the work.

Passing a moratorium just means that other communities like ours would then benefit from the revenue and we wont, she said. The towns that are doing that are a little bit foolish because they are delaying working with the new economy.

Hughes also emphasized that keeping cannabis production local was important, adding these big, multi-state operators dont take pride in that work.

If they were to win the license, Conti said, it would also require a huge financial investment to get the THC project off the ground. Essentially, whether Easton Grows ends up growing cannabis for THC in Easton depends on getting the license and it being allowed there, he said.

But by all means, if we win (we might try it), he said.

joshua.labella@hearstmediact.com
WINSTED  The proposed 2022-23 municpal and school budget is heading to a town meeting, after the Board of Selectmen approved Town Manager Josh Kellys spending package last week.

The budget for 2022-23 totals $36,053,374, reflecting a 3.33 percent increase, or $1.162 million. The approved budget for 2021-22 is $34,890,658. Winsteds tax rate is 33.54.

A town meeting is set for May 9, followed by a town referendum on a date to be determined.

Gilbert School Head of School Greg Shugrue and Winsted Superintendent Melony Brady-Shanley presented their proposed budgets for 2022-23 during a public hearing March 24. The towns education budget request totals $20.8 million and includes a tuition request from Gilbert for $7.956 million, an increase of $610,827, or 8.3 percent.

Kelly made several adjustments to the municipal side of the proposal before presenting it to selectmen April 18.

Compared to our last meeting, there are a handful of changes that have been made, he said. Namely, theres a shift of $285,000 from the town support for education, and that money is going into capital improvements for our sidewalk projects.

We also moved $150,000 out of the capital improvement budget to purchase digital radios for the Public Works department, which was scheduled for American Rescue Plan Act funding, Kelly said. We then moved another $150,000 for debt service, which we can use on the upcoming bonding for the Hinsdale School, to be sure were very well-prepared for future bond costs.

Kelly was referring to the fact that in 2023, Winsted will begin repaying its $6 million in bonds for the Hinsdale School renovation, which are nearly completed.

The board approved the budget unanimously.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is calling for 'opinions' from citizens ahead of a crucial political meeting later this year, amid growing public anger over CCP leader Xi Jinping's COVID-19 policy, that has seen millions confined in grueling lockdowns across the country in recent months.



The "call for public submissions" comes ahead of the CCP's 20th Party Congress, scheduled for late 2022, the Global Times newspaper cited state news agency Xinhua as saying.



From through , the anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1967) when late supreme leader Mao Zedong began a purge of his political rivals within party ranks, people can submit their "opinions and suggestions" online, including via the CCP's official People's Daily newspaper, Xinhua and the China Media Group, it said.



"Opinions expressed online will be collected, analyzed and then provided as a reference to the drafting of the report of the 20th national congress, and some of the common problems raised by netizens will be dealt with immediately or assigned to responsible departments for further research," the paper said, citing "analysts."



The move is intended to boost the CCP' public image as confident, open, honest and innovative, it said.



The People's Daily said it received more than 10,000 submissions within the first 12 hours of launching the page.



Submissions must be made under eight categories, many of which are ideological rather than factual, and include subjects like "developing the people's whole-process democracy," a Xi Jinping buzzword for public consultation under an authoritarian system, as well as "improving people's livelihoods," and "strengthening and upholding party leadership."



China's President Xi Jinping (front) appears for the closing session of the National Peoples Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 11, 2022. Credit: AFP Strict limits

Deng Yuwen, a former newspaper editor for a CCP party school publication, said calls for public consultation aren't uncommon in China's political system, but that there are strict, unwritten rules about what kind of opinions are acceptable.



General political points are particularly unwelcome, he said.



"You can only talk about things that related to your personal situation, such as raising retirement benefits a little," Deng said. "[These are the] so-called vital interests."



"Other topics can't be raised at all and people know not to mention them," he said, adding: "Asking for some opinions online doesn't represent a particularly noteworthy change."



According to the submission page on the People's Daily website seen by RFA on , people submitting comments and suggestions must supply their real names, their employer's name, their rank or job title, political status, age and geographical location.



Mobile numbers must also be supplied, so that submissions can be verified with an SMS code, meaning that anonymous submissions aren't an option.



The submissions already visible on the People's Daily page tended to point in the same direction as published government policy, rather than challenging anything.



' Petitioners are escorted out of a park by police and security personnel before being loaded on buses and driven away in Beijing as hundreds of police swarmed the streets of Beijing's financial district to quash a rally by angry peer-to-peer lenders, Aug. 6, 2018. Credit: AFP Marginal, mundane and innocuous issues'

Chen Kuide, executive chairman of the Princeton Chinese Society in the United States, said all submissions will be subject to strict review, and that critical or challenging comments would never make it as far as Xi himself.



"The authorities can only tolerate opinions on fairly marginal, mundane and innocuous issues," Chen told RFA. "But when it comes to issues linked to Xi Jinping's political survival, like the zero-COVID policy, China's relationship with Russia and the U.S. or Taiwan, there can be no opinions opposing CCP policy or Xi Jinping's own view."



Wang Dan, a former leader of the 1989 student-led democracy movement in China and the founder of the Dialogue China think-tank, said the zero-COVID strategy alone could mean there is a political crisis brewing for Xi, who will seek an unprecedented third term in office at the 20th Party Congress.



"The disease control strategy will have a psychological impact on all Chinese people, but it will have a greater psychological impact on the middle classes; those who have gained some benefit from past economic development," Wang said in a commentary broadcast by RFA's Mandarin Service.



"Shanghai, where life became unbearable overnight, will make many people see the grim reality, [people] who used to go about thinking they could live a peaceful life without getting involved in politics," Wang said. "When this crisis happened, they will realize that politics will come to you."



"People are facing the risk of starvation, or arrests and beatings, even in the richest districts of Shanghai," he said. "All of this ... will make the middle classes -- once the biggest supporters of CCP policies -- totally lose any confidence in China's future."



He said most of Generation Z in China will likely feel abandoned both by society and the economy in the aftermath of the pandemic.



"Once they wake up to this, the sense of resistance will be very strong ... [and] that kind of crisis will be far more deadly to the CCP than the pandemic," Wang said.



'Full of pseudoscience'

Veteran Democracy Wall dissident Wei Jingsheng agreed, adding that Xi's political ideology is unlikely to give way easily in the face of anger and resentment, as his thinking was molded by the chaotic factional strife of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).



"Comrade Xi Jinping grew up in that era, and his basic notions were formed then: his head was full of pseudoscience, his thinking full of arrogance, superstition, violence and other absurdities," Wei wrote in a recent commentary.



"This is the ideological source of his insistence on the absurd zero-COVID policy ."



Wei said Xi would have been regularly exposed to violent propaganda in his youth, and had likely developed a taste for violent oppression, which Wei said was akin to Stockholm Syndrome.



Wei warned that it would be hard to mount a determined political resistance to Xi, however, despite widespread public anger.



"He has a large number of people who are as sick as him, who were also affected by the Cultural Revolution and who think he is right, supporting and helping him," Wei said. "Otherwise, he would never have been able to put his absurd ideas into practice."



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called on Iran to release a U.S. citizen he said had been held for years as a "political pawn."

Emad Sharghi was sentenced to 10 years in prison on spying charges, Iranian media have reported, saying he was detained while attempting to flee the country.

Blinken said the Iranian-American venture capitalist had been held for four years, and that the "family has waited anxiously for the Iranian government to release Emad.

"Like too many other families, their loved one has been treated as a political pawn," the top U.S. diplomat said on Twitter on April 23.

"We call on Iran to stop this inhumane practice and release Emad," Blinken added.

Earlier on April 23, U.S. special envoy for Iran Robert Malley also called for the release of Sharghi and other detained Americans, including businessman Siamak Namazi and U.S.-British environmentalist Morad Tahbaz.

"Emad Sharghi was arrested 4 years ago today. He was cleared of all charges, but then convicted in absentia, rearrested, and has now spent over 500 days in Evin Prison," Malley said on Twitter.

"Emad, the Namazis, and Morad Tahbaz must all be allowed to come home now," he added.

On April 22, U.S. Senator Mark Rubio called for Sharghi's release, saying he remained in Tehrans Evin prison on "false charges."

The United States, Britain, and other countries have sought to secure the release of more than a dozen dual nationals detained by Iran.

Family members and human rights activists have accused Tehran of arresting the dual nationals on trumped up charges to squeeze concessions out of Western nations.

Last month, Tehran allowed two British citizens to return home after years of detention.

Their release was reached as world leaders try to revive the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear pact.

Negotiations on renewing the deal have reportedly stalled over the U.S. blacklisting of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

With reporting by AFP
The armies of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan fought brief but destructive skirmishes along their frontier at the end of April 2021. Tensions had been building for years before that, and despite efforts to build trust and calm emotions after last year's conflict, three people have been shot dead since March in clashes between border guards. Has any progress at de-escalation been made, or is more conflict on the horizon?
Former President Dmitry Medvedev's opinion article in the daily Kommersant in October 2021, ahead of Russia's massive military buildup along the Ukrainian border, was as surreal as it was acerbic.

Medvedev, who owes his political career and his seemingly enormous wealth to Russian President Vladimir Putin, lashed out at Ukraine's leaders, calling them "weak," "nonindependent," and corrupt and adding there was no sense in negotiating with them.

In the article, which Western analysts described as "chauvinistic," Medvedev described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who is Jewish, as beholden to "the most rabid nationalist forces" and accused him of "completely chang[ing]" his political and moral compass.

"One can only imagine how revolting it was for [Zelenskiy] to commit such a moral somersault," he said in the October 11 commentary.

To many Kremlin observers, Medvedev could have been talking about himself.

The 56-year-old former lawyer once represented the hopes of Russian liberals seeking democratic change. When Putin picked him to become president in 2008, many put doubts about the motives of the senior partner in the ruling "tandem" aside and latched onto the idea that reforms were in the offing.

Nearly 15 years later, a different Medvedev jumps out from the page. Putin returned to the presidency in 2012 and has remained in the Kremlin ever since, steadily shutting the door on dissent and bringing the country into increasing confrontation with Kyiv and the West.

And in recent months, as Putin narrowed his inner circle to a handful of hard-liners, launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, and taken the clampdown in Russia to new levels, Medvedev has done a flip -- at least verbally -- to stay in his patron's good graces.

The October commentary was one of several caustic articles, social-media posts, or remarks that Medvedev has issued in recent months, some of them echoing the outlandish kind of historical revisionism that Putin has used to vilify the West and underpin the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Bellicose Name-Calling

In Russia's current bilious climate, with officials, lawmakers, and state TV guests seemingly vying to top one another in terms of belligerence, they may not seem outlandish. But they sharply contrast with Medvedev's established image as a mild-mannered, iPhone-toting technocrat.

"It's not so much the content. It's the tone -- the name calling. I don't remember Medvedev being like that earlier in his career," Brian Taylor, a professor of political science at Syracuse University who focuses on Russian politics, told RFE/RL. He said that Medvedev -- who lost a lot of power and influence when he was ousted as prime minister two years ago -- is trying to "stay relevant" politically.

In a March social-media post, Medvedev compared Polish, Slovak, and Czech leaders traveling by train to Kyiv to show support to Zelenskiy -- a transportation choice dictated by Russia's war in Ukraine -- to Vladimir Lenin's return trip to Russia from self-imposed exile in 1917, ahead of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Medvedev claimed that the Polish elite suffers from Russophobia due to anger over having lost control of the throne in Moscow 400 years ago -- an assertion that ignores far greater and more recent factors, such as the decades of repressive Soviet dominance over Poland and its neighbors.

Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale University who is an author and an expert on the region, called the post "grotesque" and said that Medvedev was trying to position himself as a populist speaking for ordinary citizens in Central and Eastern Europe.

"But he is himself a caricature of the global elite, wealthy for no reason, trying to dictate to people in a foreign country what they should do and how they should think, endorsing a war of destruction in the name of nothing more, in the end, than his own personal comfort," Snyder wrote in a blog post.

Standing By His Man, And His Money

A 2017 investigation by now-imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny and his associates alleged that Medvedev used an array of charity and nonprofit organizations to collect $1.2 billion in donations from tycoons and state banks and then redirected the funds to purchase pricey assets, including luxury homes.

Maria Snegovaya, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank, says the upsurge in Medvedev's belligerent public rhetoric is an attempt to demonstrate loyalty to Putin at a time of growing political infighting. "Medvedev may want to signal to everyone that he is part of the system, that he is essentially by Putin's side," she told RFE/RL.

"I think he is desperate to at least secure some safety. His goal right now is to survive [within the system], not to climb his way back on the top of the vertical," she said, a reference to Medvedev's loss of influence since the end of presidency in 2012 and his loss of the prime minister's post in 2020.

Medvedev once represented an influential faction in the constellation of competing groups that Putin uses to maintain power. But he has lost significant political weight over the years and some of his allies -- such as former Open Government Minister Mikhail Abyzov and the businessmen brothers Ziyavudin and Magomed Magomedov -- have ended up behind bars.

Medvedev himself has fallen out of Putin's narrowing inner circle, now dominated by hawks with security-service backgrounds, in part due to the embarrassing allegations of corruption, analysts have said.

'Fifth Column Of Traitors'

And with the war in Ukraine clouding Russia's future, the atmosphere in the circles of power surrounding Putin may be tenser than ever.

Denunciations and attacks on "weak elements" within the elite are on the rise "and will become a big part of the dynamic," Snegovaya said, especially as the economy shrinks following the imposition of strict Western sanctions over the invasion.

Putin has come out hard against any opposition to the war in Ukraine. In a chilling speech in mid-March, he asserted that there was a "fifth column of national traitors" inside the country and that Russians "will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors."

Reports of senior Russian officials being put under house arrest have emerged in recent weeks following the initial failures in the war against Ukraine. Hard-line hawks within the elite may suspect Medvedev and his associates of not fully supporting the war, potentially making him an "attractive" target for attacks, Snegovaya said.

Arkady Dvorkovich, a former close adviser to Medvedev, was accused by a senior lawmaker from the ruling United Russia party of "national betrayal" last month after expressing concerns about the war and sympathy for civilians in Ukraine.

Dvorkovich soon stepped down as chairman of the Skolkovo Foundation, a technology hub located in Moscow region that emulates Silicon Valley and which Medvedev promoted on a trip to the United States during his presidency.

Remember The 'Reset'?

Medvedev, 56, has been one of Putin's most loyal allies over the past two decades. Putin tapped the former lawyer to succeed him as president in 2008 in order to avoid violating what was then a constitutional limit of two consecutive four-year terms.

Putin's choice of Medvedev over fellow former KGB officer Sergei Ivanov "signaled the possibility of a new, more liberal period in Russian politics, or so some hoped," Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow in 2012-14, wrote in his memoir, From Cold War To Hot Peace. Medvedev "spoke a more sophisticated style of Russian than Putin, and seemed more orientated to, or at least familiar with, Western ideas," he wrote.

Medvedev is not from the KGB and is a member of a generation of Russians who as a rule viewed the West and the collapse of the Soviet Union -- which came when he was in his 20s and Putin was almost 40 -- in a more positive light than their elders.

In a September 2009 article laying out his political vision, Medvedev described Russia's democracy as "fragile" and something that "needs to be protected." He called for dialogue with civil society and touted changes he made to improve electoral competition. "Putin had never said that," McFaul wrote.

As he was grooming his former campaign manager and fellow St. Petersburg native for the top job, Putin said that Medvedev could sometimes be tougher than him -- a remark that later seemed to presage Russia's invasion in Georgia in August 2008, three months after he took office.

But despite that move, Medvedev's presidency did seem to promise change, both at home and in ties with the West.

He pursued reforms at home and embraced President Barack Obama's "reset" of U.S.-Russia ties, signing the New START nuclear arms-reduction treaty with Obama in April 2010 and then smiling over cheeseburgers with him and enthusiastically taking in Silicon Valley during his U.S. visit that June.

On The Outside Looking In

Medvedev's metamorphosis, if that is what it is, did not occur overnight. It slowly followed the sharp and steady souring of Russian-U.S. relations that can be traced to the end of 2011, when Putin accused the United States of fomenting protests over fraud-marred parliamentary elections and his decision -- announced by himself and Medvedev that September -- to return to the presidency in 2012.

Putin swapped jobs with Medvedev, who remained in the No. 2 spot as prime minister until January 2020. Analysts said Putin replaced Medvedev as head of the government after he failed to deliver on the president's domestic priorities, including improving living standards.

But the shakeup also came as Putin was preparing constitutional amendments, adopted that July, that allow him to run for president again in 2024 and 2030, a move that seemed aimed to quash talk of a post-Putin Russia and ensure he could stay in power for years.

Putin created a new role for Medvedev as deputy chairman of the Security Council, which is one of his main venues for decision-making on strategic issues but is a purely advisory body. Some analysts see the position as a sort of political retirement home for Medvedev. Putin is unlikely to "put him in a position of trust anymore," Taylor said.

Medvedev is among the top politicians least trusted by Russians, according to opinion polls, and Putin barred him from heading the United Russia party ticket for the September 2021 parliamentary elections.

Starting around that time, Medvedev seems to have been seeking to step back into the spotlight with his acerbic, hawkish statements that are aligned with the rhetoric on state TV.

The new image as a brash Russian nationalist "doesn't really fit him very well" but may be part of a strategy to get back into a position of power at a later date, Taylor said.

"I think he -- maybe unrealistically -- still has political ambitions and doesn't know how the regime will shake out over the next few years, and he would rather be in power than out of power," he said. "He may even still think that he could get the top job again."
Russian police detained four people at a meeting of opposition figures and municipal deputies in the city of Novgorod, in the latest crackdown on Kremlin critics ahead of elections later this year.

Yulia Galyamina, an opposition leader from Moscow; Vitaly Bovar, a municipal deputy from St. Petersburg; Yamalo-Nenets lawmaker Aleksandr Bondarchuk; and Viktor Shalyakin, the head of the Novgorod Yabloko party, were all detained on May 22.

Police broke up the meeting at the Rossia hotel soon after it started, citing a breach of coronavirus rules.

Andrei Nikitin, the governor of the Novgorod region, banned gatherings of more than 30 people in one room in a decree on May 8.

Gatherings of more than 30 people in one room are banned. Police claimed 31 people were present, although organizers said only 25 people were in attendance.

"This is political persecution," said Galyamina, who posted a video of herself being taken into police custody.

In March, Russian police detained around 200 people, mostly opposition figures and municipal deputies, at an event in Moscow.

Among the detainees were prominent Putin critics, including senior Open Russia leaders Andrey Pivovarov and Anastasia Burakova; former Yekaterinburg Mayor Yevgeny Roizman; opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza; and city deputy Ilya Yashin.

The detentions were the latest crackdown on Russias opposition since Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny was arrested, put on trial, and imprisoned in the wake of his January return from Germany, where he had been recovering from a nerve agent poisoning he blames on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Navalny's team has accused authorities of seeking to further intimidate critics ahead of general elections in September.

Navalny and his supporters have developed a "smart-voting" system, which is aimed at undoing United Russias stranglehold on political power in the upcoming election through better coordination of voters at the local level.

With reporting by dpa

CORRECTION: This article has been amended to correct the Novgorod governor's first name as well as to clarify that four people were detained and the events took place in the city of Novgorod.
BEIJING, April 22 -- Recently, three Type 055 destroyers that have entered service since last year, Lhasa, Anshan and Wuxi, took part in a combat training exercise organized by a warship training center of the PLA Navy. The exercise involved nighttime anti-sea main gun shooting, nighttime anti-air secondary gun shooting, and joint search and rescue by ships and aircraft.
"I remember that it was hot. And there was lot of fruit," said Adelia, a 23-year-old final-year university student from Russia's Tatarstan region, when asked about the vacations her family took in her childhood to visit her grandparents in the Zaporizhzhya region of southern Ukraine.

Now her phone calls with her mother's parents are often punctuated by the sound of exploding shells in the background. It is hard to talk about anything but the war, she says.

But talking about the war itself is also difficult. Adelia's Ukrainian grandmother is sure that the shelling is coming from Russian forces, while her ethnic Russian grandfather blames the Ukrainian military. "My grandfather says they try to avoid talking about politics so as not to argue," Adelia said. "They are focused on surviving."

Adelia's extended family is one of millions that straddle the border between the two countries and have been profoundly affected since Russia's February 24 invasion of Ukraine. Her name and those of all her relatives have been changed for this story by request, for fear of repercussions for discussing the war in Ukraine candidly.

"The split in my family is becoming pronounced," Adelia said.

In addition to her grandparents, Adelia has an aunt, uncle, and cousin who lived in Kyiv when the war started. In the early days of the war, Adelia's aunt and cousin sought refuge abroad, ending up in Germany. Men were not allowed to leave the country, so Adelia's uncle remained in the capital.

"He wasn't called to military service, and he has no desire to volunteer," Adelia said, adding that he remains in relative safety in Kyiv.

She said that these relatives had long dreamed of emigrating to Europe and would most likely try not to return to Ukraine.

'He Will Never Be The Same'

Adelia's relatives on her father's side live in Russia. One of them is an officer in the Russian Army, whose unit was transferred to the Ukrainian border in January. Adelia says he has not been able to share any of his personal opinions about the war.

He is not in a combat zone himself, although he is in Ukraine. His job, Adelia says, is to arrange for the repatriation of the bodies of Russian servicemen killed in action.

"He says there are a lot of bodies. They bring in 200 or 300 a day," she said -- numbers that correspond roughly to U.S. statements that more than 10,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the two-month-old war. The Russian military has not released a death toll since March 25, when t said that 1,370 of its soldiers had been killed.

Seeing the bodies brought her brother to tears for the first time in many years, Adelia says. "We are sure he will return from the war a completely different man," she told RFE/RL's Idel.Realities. "These are the first real combat operations that he has participated in."

Back in Russia, he has a wife and three small children waiting for his return. The children have been told that he is away "on business."

'Hoping Everyone Survives'

The war has taken its toll on Adelia as well. She studies at an institute connected with a state agency in a large Russian city. She knows that students can be expelled from any Russian university for expressing opposition to the war and fears that punishments could be even more severe for students of institutes like hers that are tasked with preparing state officials.

So she carefully curates her social-media presence and keeps her head down. "I won't be going to any demonstrations or protests," she said.

"Sooner or later, this war will end," she said philosophically. "Most likely, the conflict will return to a smoldering state. But the relations between our two countries will definitely never be the same."

Her family, she fears, will also never recover. "It is an impossibly difficult situation when members of your family are on both sides of a war," she said. "But there's nothing we can do except hope that everyone survives."

"And that the house in Zaporizhzhya that I remember from my childhood is not destroyed," she added.

Robert Coalson contributed to this report
More than 60 percent of the settlements in Ukraine's southeastern Zaporizhzhya region are occupied by Russian forces, says Oleksandr Starukh, the head of Ukraine's military administration of the region. Yet Starukh is convinced Moscow's military is stymied in the region, and has made little progress controlling it since the early days following Russia's February 24 invasion.

"At the beginning, there was a danger [of complete occupation]," he told Current Time. "But now the people of our cities are united. The whole country is united. We are building barricades from logs brought from the Carpathian forest [in western Ukraine]. Using bulldozers and other construction equipment sent from [the northwestern city of] Rivne."

"The whole country is bolstering our lines," Starukh added. "And we will make lines that no enemy will be able to cross."

The Zaporizhzhya region, which includes the occupied Azov Sea port of Berdyansk, has been in Moscow's crosshairs since the invasion was launched on February 24 and is a key objective as Russia seeks to create a land bridge between Crimea -- the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014 -- and the parts of eastern Ukraine that are controlled by Russia and Moscow-backed separatist formations.

On April 22, the acting commander of Russia's Central Military District, Rustam Minnekayev, was quoted by state media as saying that full control of southern Ukraine was a strategic goal for Moscow and that it would even aim to link up the area to Moldova's pro-Russian breakaway Transdniester region.

"The front lines haven't shifted from more than six weeks," Starukh said. "There is constant fighting, and it has intensified in the last few days, particularly in the east."

Starukh added that Russian occupation had been difficult in places like Melitopol and Berdyansk, where he alleged Russian forces were "terrorizing the local population."

"More than 150 leaders, public figures, and journalists have been kidnapped, abducted," he said. "It has become a widespread phenomenon. They have also set up their own broadcast towers throughout the whole region and are trying to brainwash people with their television channels. We aren't talking about authorities, but about terrorists who are trying to seize power."

Starukh said Russia was attempting to "manipulate public opinion" through "terror."

"They do not allow humanitarian corridors," he said. "They don't allow food or even medicines to be brought in.... These are simply acts of genocide being carried out by means of terror."

He dismissed concerns that Russia was attempting to pave the way for an independence "referendum" in the Zaporizhzhya region and the neighboring Kherson region, as it did in 2014 in Crimea and the parts of eastern Ukraine known as the Donbas.

"What sort of elections or referendums has Russia conducted over the last quarter-century?" he said. "Were they honest and open? Let them learn how to hold their own competitive elections and referendums, and then they can have an opinion."

Starukh added that Ukraine had learned difficult lessons from 2014.

"Probably we should have fought to the end, although in 2014 that was a difficult thing to do," he said. "We can't ever give even one square meter of our land to anyone. They will take another bite and another and will keep eating those bites until they have eaten everything."

Robert Coalson contributed to this report
President Vladimir Putin has justified Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine as a necessary move for "defending the motherland," a claim Britain said mirrored the fascism and tyranny that sparked World War II, as Russian forces pressed ahead with their offensive in the east and south of the country.

In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy promised his war-ravaged nation that Ukraine will soon have two Victory Days, as the last Ukrainian defenders at the besieged Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol vowed to fight to the end against Russian troops who have surrounded them.

Putin, who presided over a military parade in Moscow's Red Square to mark the Soviet Union's role in the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, reiterated his accusation that NATO was creating threats right next to its borders and claimed that the invasion of Ukraine was a necessary preemptive action.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the major developments on Russia's invasion, how Kyiv is fighting back, the plight of civilians, and Western reaction. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

He also addressed soldiers fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which Russia has pledged to "liberate" from Kyiv.

"Defending the motherland when its fate is being decided has always been sacred," he said.

In his own speech marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, Zelenskiy on May 9 likened the Allies' fight against Hitler with his nation's struggle to repel Russia's aggression.

We will never forget what our ancestors did in World War II, where more than 8 million Ukrainians died. Every fifth Ukrainian didnt return home, Zelenskiy said, adding, Soon there will be two Victory Days in Ukraine. And someone will not have even one left. We won then. We will win now, too,'' he said.

Meanwhile, British Defense Minister Ben Wallace called out the "absurdity of Russian generals -- resplendent in their manicured parade uniforms and weighed down by their many medals," saying they were "utterly complicit in Putin's hijacking of their forebears' proud history of...repelling fascism."

"All professional soldiers should be appalled at the behavior of the Russian Army," as they not only have "engaged in an illegal invasion and war crimes, but their top brass have failed their own rank and file to the extent they should be court-martialed," he said in a speech at the British National Army Museum.

"Through the invasion of Ukraine, Putin and his inner circle of generals are now mirroring the fascism and tyranny of 77 years ago, repeating the errors of the last century's totalitarian regime," he added.

U.S. President Joe Biden on May 9 signed largely symbolic legislation to reboot the World War II-era lend-lease program that helped defeat Nazi Germany.



Before signing the bill, Biden said that Putins war was once more bringing wanton destruction of Europe, drawing a reference to the anniversary of the allied victory in 1945.

Although there had been speculation that Putin might officially declare war on Ukraine, his 11-minute speech offered no assessment of progress in the war and gave no indication of how long it might continue.

Russian forces have so far failed to complete the occupation of the strategic Sea of Azov port of Mariupol, where an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters continue to resist in the sprawling network of underground tunnels and bunkers of the Azovstal steel mill.

Azovstal has achieved a symbolic value in the conflict, as Russian forces sought a celebratory win ahead of May 9. Zelenskiy warned of more intense attacks against the remaining defenders, who vowed to fight to the end.

The complete capture of Mariupol would also deprive Ukraine of a vital port, allow Russia to complete a land corridor to the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula, and free troops up for fighting elsewhere.

On the battlefield, intense fighting raged in Ukraine's east, the port of Odesa in the south came under missile attack, and Russian forces sought to finish off the Ukrainian defenders of the steel plant, who have vowed to fight to the end.



The Odessa City Council said late on May 9 that three missiles were fired from an aircraft, destroying five buildings. Two people were injured and taken to hospital, a statement from the council said.



According to the City Council, rescuers managed to save a dog from under the debris.



"This is how they celebrate their Victory Day. Apparently, the only thing the occupiers have won is common sense and humanity," said Maksym Marchenko, head of the Odessa regional military administration.



Russian troops earlier on May 9 fired four missiles into the Odesa region from occupied Crimea. The missile strike occurred as European Council President Charles Michel visited the city.



In Washington, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said there had been indications that Ukrainians have been taken against their will into Russia."



Asked about statements from Kyiv that more than 1 million Ukrainians were being sent to Russia and placed in camps, Kirby said: "I can't speak to how many camps or what they look like." He called these actions "unconscionable" and "not the behavior of a responsible power."

On May 8, the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) commemorated the anniversary of the end of World War II by pledging to "spare no effort" to hold Putin and the architects "and accomplices of this aggression," including the regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka in Belarus, accountable for their actions.

The leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States said Putin's actions "bring shame on Russia and the historical sacrifices of its people."

WATCH: Fighting continues to rage near Vuhledar, a city in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. Because of the ongoing, unpredictable shelling by Russian forces, many people are living in basements. The buildings have been cut off from electricity, water, and gas. Civilian casualties are buried in an improvised cemetery.

The United States after the meeting announced sanctions against three Russian television stations and executives from Gazprombank along with a ban on Americans providing accounting and consulting services to Russians.

Zelenskiy also told the G7 leaders that 60 civilians had died in the bombing of a school on May 7 in the eastern Luhansk region.

"They were hiding from shelling in the building of a regular school, which was attacked by a Russian air strike," he said.

British officials announced an extra $1.6 billion in military aid for Ukraine, while Britain's Defense Ministry said in its regular bulletin on May 9 that Moscow's invasion "has revealed shortcomings in its ability to conduct precision strikes" on a large scale and has shown utter disregard for the lives of civilians.

"Russia has subjected Ukraine's towns and cities to intense and indiscriminate bombardments with little or no regard to civilian casualties," the ministry said.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, AFP, and dpa
After Russian forces withdrew from occupied positions in northern Ukraine at the end of last month, allegations of rapes and other war crimes mounted in their wake, prompting calls for investigations and, possibly, international tribunals.

Now, although fighting remains intense in southern and eastern Ukraine as Russian forces regroup and push for new objectives in those parts of the country, similar allegations are emerging there.

Oleksiy Danylyak, first deputy prosecutor of the southern Kherson region, which has been occupied by Russian troops for most of the 2-month-old war, told RFE/RL his office had opened more than 1,000 cases into alleged violations during the occupation, including murder, kidnapping, deportation or forcible relocation, torture, and sexual crimes.

Even in areas under Ukrainian government control, documenting cases of possible war crimes is difficult work. In areas still occupied by the Russian military and where fighting continues unabated, the difficulties are compounded.

Alyona Kryvulyak, a rights monitor with the La Strada-Ukraine rights group, says her hot line has received reports of various alleged crimes, despite efforts by Russian forces to prevent civilians living under occupation from communicating with Kyiv-controlled Ukraine.

"They are carrying out psychological and physical violence against civilians," Kryvulyak said. "They constantly check people's mobile phones and their social-media accounts. Any messages. They are always asking whether they send messages to anyone in [other parts of] Ukraine. They check to see if they have on their phones photographs of places were Russian forces are. We get a lot of calls along these lines."

She says her organization has recorded two alleged cases of rape -- a woman and her young daughter were both allegedly raped by Russian soldiers in front of one another  in the occupied Kherson region.

"As for other cases of rape of women or children in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories of the south, we do not have any other reports," she said. "But we are sure there have been more cases."

Kryvulyak says La Strada makes such an assessment based on its experiences in the parts of eastern Ukraine -- known as the Donbas region -- that were taken over by Moscow-backed separatists in 2014-15.

"Back then, we received appeals from Ukrainian women who were raped by Russian occupiers in the Donbas," Kryvulyak said. "And all of these cases were unique. Some victims spoke out immediately. But we had one woman who called us only after three years and asked to speak with a therapist. It was the first time she had spoken about what happened to her."

Uncovering A 'Multi-Trauma'

Oleksandra Kvytko, the director of the Ukrainian rights ombudswoman's psychological-help hot line, says she has been informed about four cases of alleged rape in the Kherson region.

"Rape is a difficult subject," she said. "It is a so-called multi-trauma -- a trauma from many aspects. A girl who goes out to collect flowers for her mother and is then raped might blame herself for going outside."

Others blame themselves for the way they dress or for being in a certain place at the wrong time or simply for being female.

"It is often a matter of overcoming one's own feelings of guilt," Kvytko said.

Aid workers must be careful not to ask questions that contain implications that could bolster such feelings, Kvytko adds. And they must be careful not to try to force women to speak about things they are not ready to discuss.

"These are the two basic taboos that you must always keep in mind," she said.

"Some victims can't talk about what happened," Kvytko said. "They have lost trust."

"But others give me permission to share their stories on social media or with journalists as part of their healing," she added. "The first thing that helps victims of sexual violence is the punishment of the perpetrators. They often say to me, 'If I don't speak out or do something, I am betraying other women.'"

'International Hybrid Tribunal'

Although Moscow has not responded to any specific allegations of war crimes committed in Ukraine, Russian officials have insisted their troops do not target civilians.

Oleksandra Matviychuk, director of the Kyiv-based Center for Civil Liberties, says Ukrainian rights activists have united to call for an "international hybrid tribunal" based in Ukraine to investigate and try cases of war crimes committed in Ukraine since the Russian invasion on February 24.

"Such a court would be highly visible because it wouldn't be somewhere off in The Hague, but here in Ukraine," she told RFE/RL. "It would combine the work of local investigators and judges with that of invited foreign investigators and foreign judges."

"That in itself would bolster the legal system," she added. "Such a court would take on responsibility for investigating and trying these tens of thousands of war crimes and crimes against humanity that we are now documenting."

Robert Coalson contributed to this report
The United States' top diplomat and defense chief are set to make their first wartime visits to Kyiv since Russia launched its unprovoked war on Ukraine two months ago, as intense fighting continues in the eastern part of the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on April 23 that he would meet in the capital the following day with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as he seeks more weapons to repel Russia's invasion.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the major developments on Russia's invasion, how Kyiv is fighting back, the plight of civilians, and Western reaction. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

The visit would mark the highest-profile arrival by U.S. officials to war-ravaged Ukraine and follow a series of visits by European leaders, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

The U.S. visit is an attempt by the Biden administration to "show personal support for Zelenskiy and Ukraine," Bill Courtney, an analyst at the Washington-based RAND Corp and a former U.S. diplomat, told RFE/RL. The visit "suggests a level of confidence that Kyiv is safe enough for foreign leaders."

Russian forces sought to capture Kyiv in the first weeks of the war, shelling parts of the capital and sending hundreds of thousands of residents fleeing the city. However, the Russian forces retreated after facing strong resistance.

The Kremlin is now refocusing its military campaign on capturing the Donbas region in the east.

Ukraine has requested heavy artillery from the West for the new phase of the war, which will take place on the region's vast plains.

In his daily video address late on April 23 , Zelenskiy said he was "expecting specific things and specific weapons" from the meeting with the U.S. officials.

The Biden administration has already announced several billion dollars in military and economic aid to Ukraine since the war began, including another $800 million on April 21.

Austin may use the visit to get a better understanding of how Ukrainian military leaders see the new phase of the war progressing and gauge their future weapon needs, Courtney said.

Peace Effort Dead?

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears set on seizing as much Ukrainian territory as possible, having given up on peace talks, the Financial Times reported on April 24, citing three people briefed on conversations with the Russian president.

Putin told people involved in trying to end the conflict that he sees no prospects for a settlement, the paper said. Talks stalled after Zelenskiy earlier this month accused Russia of committing war crimes, the paper reported.

Russian forces have continued to press their attacks in the east, including on the besieged port city of Mariupol, the Ukrainian military said on April 24.

Ukraine's General Staff said the Russians fired on Ukrainian positions along the entire line of contact on the war's 60th day. It also said the Russian military intensified its offensive and assault operations in the Severodonetsk, Kurakhiv, and Popasna directions.

Russian forces also intensified their assaults on cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine.

Luhansk region Governor Serhiy Hayday said on April 24 that eight people were killed and two others were wounded in a Russian barrage the day before.

In the strategic Black Sea port of Odesa, government officials said a Russian missile strike hit a military facility and two residential buildings, killing at least five people and injuring 18, although the reports could not immediately be confirmed.

The Ukrainian presidential office said a 3-month-old child was among those killed.

"Among those killed was a 3-month-old baby girl. How did she threaten Russia? It seems that killing children is just a new national idea of the Russian Federation," Zelenskiy said.

Ukraine's Prosecutor-General's Office said on April 24 that at least 213 children had been killed in the war, and 389 wounded.

The Prosecutor-General's Office added that the figures were not final and that work was under way to establish them in areas of hostilities.

In the eastern Donetsk region, the governor said two children were killed on April 24 in shelling by Russian forces.

Pavlo Kyrylenko said in a post on Telegram that the children, girls aged 5 and 14, had died in the Ocheretynsk community after the building where they lived was destroyed.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military said on April 23 it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.

The command post was hit on April 22, killing two generals and critically wounding another, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said in a statement. The Russian military did not comment on the claim.

British military intelligence said on April 24 that Ukraine had repelled numerous Russian assaults along the line of contact in Donbas this week.

Despite Russia making some territorial gains, Ukrainian resistance has been strong across all axes and inflicted a significant cost on Russian forces, the U.K. Ministry of Defense tweeted in a regular bulletin.

"Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganize forces from prior offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness," the update said.

In its latest analysis, the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War said Russian forces did not appear to be pausing to refit or mass their troops as they redeployed and were likely to step up their offensives.

"Russian forces will likely increase the scale of ground offensive operations in the coming days, but it is too soon to tell how fast they will do so or how large those offensives will be," it said.

Senior Ukrainian negotiator and presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said on April 24 that Russian forces were continuously shelling Mariupol and urged Moscow to agree a "real Easter truce."

Russia has largely reduced Mariupol to rubble as it seeks to crush the last vestiges of resistance holed up at the massive local steel plant.

The UN's Ukraine crisis coordinator, Amin Awad, on April 24 called for an "immediate stop" to fighting in Mariupol to allow the evacuation of trapped civilians in the battered city "today."

"The lives of tens of thousands, including women, children, and older people, are at stake in Mariupol," Awad said in a statement. "We need a pause in fighting right now to save lives." Awad said Orthodox Easter provided an opportunity to halt hostilities.

His call came after the latest of many attempts to evacuate civilians from Mariupol failed on April 23.

The UN statement said there was an estimated 100,000 civilians trapped in the city, which has been heavily devastated after being besieged by Russian forces for weeks.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on April 24 that it was "deeply alarmed" by the situation in Mariupol, calling for unimpeded access to help residents, including hundreds of wounded.

"Each day, each hour that passes has a terrible human cost," the ICRC said in a statement.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters
Welcome Guest! You Are Here:
One hundred years ago, in the spring of 1922, Leonid Krasin, the Peoples Commissar (Minister) of Foreign Trade of the RSFSR, wrote a letter to the Bolsheviks leader Vladimir Lenin about the Soviet Russia situation in the diamond market, in which, in particular, he stated that ... De Beers visited me in the spring and reproached us for completely spoiling the market because of the Comintern sales and forcing it to shut down the mines in Africa. The company offered to arrange a syndicate, not to sell in small quantities, but to sell all stock through it, and promised to grant a loan against security. Not knowing whether we had a large stock in the Gokhran or whether everything had already been sold out, I did not give a definite answer and dragged out the negotiations... As soon as I definitely know that there are a lot of valuables and that they will not leak away and will not be sold by non-professionals, a syndicate can be organized ... However, it is not safe to immediately export the entire quantity abroad: in case of cancellation of the trade agreements, they can lay their hands on the valuables. I think to keep the quantity of stones for no more than 30-50 million and replenish as they are sold1.





Being an esthete, talented publicist, excellently educated engineer and financier, Krasin had an amazing biography and he managed to combine a brilliant business career (including the highest management positions at Siemens AG) with an illegal arms trade, terrorist attacks, bank robberies and political assassinations. Without a doubt, he was the best conspirator and negotiator in the inner circle of the communist leaders Lenin and Trotsky, and besides, he had a European gloss. In a word, he was a gentleman and it was a pleasure for European diamond dealers led by De Beers management to deal with him, especially in the conditions when the Russias communist regime was not only under some kind of sanctions, but was in a complete blockade: there were no business contacts, and even diplomatic ones.

The result of Krasins work in the diamond market is known today: over 11 million carats of polished diamonds2 were sold through his closest employees in Europe (mainly in the UK) only2. The number is huge, considering that the average annual diamond production in 1921-1930 was slightly over 5 million carats. And these quantities were far from simple sales of valuables confiscated from wealthy Russian people, aristocratic families and the churches. The revenues were invested in political lobbying and - through third parties - in the capital of the giants of the European industry and the banks, which later largely ensured the success of Stalins industrialization in the 1930s.

The participation of the diamond market regulator and its satellites in this process was largely a forced one and was dictated not so much by the desire to make a profit, but to save the market from a fatal collapse caused by the dumping already partially made by the Bolsheviks (the so called Comintern deliveries) that threatened to be like an avalanche in the very near future. Nevertheless, a quite meaningful picture emerges that a market player having a share comparable to the size of the market is able to impose its own conditions, regardless of the ideological and political contradictions, sanctions, blockade, etc.

Despite the fact that the diamond market has come a long way during over a hundred years of its development, we quite unexpectedly found ourselves in the situation very similar to that in the 1920s. The barrage of sanctions against Russia is already unprecedented, and the likelihood is very high that the political and business isolation of our country will approach the political and business isolation observed at the dawn of the USSR existence. Thus, a player who controls over a third of the diamond market runs the risk of facing a complete ban on its participation in this market in a civilized way. The discriminatory decisions of the US regulator, Tiffany and Signets refusal of the Russian diamond goods, ALROSAs withdrawal from the NDC, GIAs position on Russian diamonds, as well as the inclusion of ALROSAs CEO in the Specially Designated Nationals (SND) list and other unpleasant events of the recent days - all this bears evidence to the rapid development of a negative trend for Russian manufacturers, the danger of a complete blockade loomed on the horizon. What will happen in such an extreme (still extreme) scenario?

Rough and polished diamonds are not oil or gas, pipelines are not needed for their sale. The organization of gray (or, as they used to say in the days of the USSR, parallel) sales channels is a completely feasible and rather easy task. But dumping will be an integral element of the process, perhaps, even worse than in the 1920s. Angola will most likely survive, but Canada and Botswana will not. The Kimberley Process, NDC, WDC, etc. will be irreversibly destroyed. Even now, these superstructures are practically half-dead, and in the event of a Russian diamonds blockade, they will stop existing within a year. The useful idiots, fans of investment diamonds and diamond cryptocurrencies, will go into oblivion as unnecessary; and a special farewell can be sent to the proponents of diamond tracing. But on the other hand, manufacturers of diamond synthetics will get a unique chance as it will be just the greatest high day, the peak, for them - for obvious reasons.

And in the cramped conservative world of the todays diamond market, new people like Leonid Krasin may appear; comparing with him, the Nicolas Cages hero from Lord of War, or his prototype Victor Bout, are just naive romantic young men. And a historian of the future will one day study - with understandable awe - the correspondence of the critical year 2022  De Beers visited me in the spring.

Sergey Goryainov, Rough&Polished



1. RGASPI (Russian State Archive of Social and Political History). F. 2. L. 2. D. 1166. P. 12.

2. Osokina E. A. Alchemy of the Soviet Industrialization: The Time of Torgsin. Moscow: New Literary Review, 2019. P. 65.










Chief Expert of the Gokhran (State Valuables Depository) of Russia Veronika Voldaeva, Art History Ph.D., Honored Worker of Culture of the Russian Federation, author and compiler of the decorative and applied section of the Gokhrans collection of valuables, curator of the exhibition Man-made Link of Times. The Art of Russias Jewellers, which is currently being held at the State Historical Museum.

Veronika Voldaeva told Rough&Polished about the specifics of her work, the treasures of the Diamond Fund, about the Gokhran exhibitions and the jewellery competition Russia. The 21st Century.

Please tell us how you became an art critic.

It so happened historically that before the Revolution [of 1917], my grandfather was engaged in art, then my mother did researches at the Moscow Kremlin Museums all her life. The business of my life was the study of jewellery art, gold and silver business in Russia in the 18th-20th centuries. I work at the State Valuables Depository in the Department of Analytical Certification, Exposition of Valuables of the Diamond Fund and the State Fund of Russia.

What are your official duties?

The Chief Expert of the Gokhran performs a practical, routine work connected with jewellery items. We do the examination of all historical heritage items stored at the Gokhran and the jewellery pieces coming to the Gokhran.

You are the Chief Expert at the Gokhran. Do you have the last word what is a states valuable and what is not?

Not only my word counts - things acquire the status of a historical heritage item thanks to a collegial decision: a group of experts is involved in this, the procedure cannot be otherwise.

You can be envied: do you work only with precious and beautiful pieces?

You know, I love all our jewellery pieces, all our collections... Probably, without this, it is impossible to convey knowledge to young professionals who come to us. We deal directly with pieces and also work with the archives. In 2014, my large monograph was published on the history and creative activity of the Sazikovs firm, the largest and oldest jewellery house in Russia.

How was the collection of the Diamond Fund created?

The Diamond Fund exhibition opened in 1967. It has its own history how it was built, and it consists of three major sections.

Firstly, it is a mineralogical section that includes precious metals and precious stones in their pristine, rarest natural state such as large nuggets of gold, platinum, pre-revolutionary finds, as well as those found after the Revolution up to modern times. The rarest collection of high-carat and high gem-quality diamonds is stored and exhibited there.

Are all the diamonds named?

Yes, almost every diamond is named. These are unique, one-of-a-kind diamonds.

The exposition contains the richest collection of historical heritage items, masterpieces of jewellery art, including the state regalia of the Russian Empire, and a magnificent collection of works by the masters of the Gokhran Experimental Jewellery Laboratory founded in 1970, which functioned till the early 2000s. Only five craftsmen were selected to work at the Laboratory who made a kind of revolution in the jewellery art. In the 1970s and 1980s, jewellery factories operated in the USSR and very interesting jewellery pieces were produced, but those were mass-produced jewellery items. The craftsmen at the Gokhran Experimental Jewellery Laboratory fulfilled very unusual state orders. They created jewellery pieces made in a single copy, today such jewellery items are considered to be designer jewellery art pieces. Their unique works are recognized by the world community of connoisseurs as the works of high artistic value. For example, the Russian Beauty diadem and the Russian Field diadem are truly extraordinary jewellery art works - in terms of their high artistic level, ideal proportions, excellent craftsmanship taking into account that they worked with such a complex material like platinum.

There is another part of the Gokhran art collection, which has actually been formed over the past 30 years using the historical valuables stored here. Many of them are displayed as part of the Gokhran exhibitions.

As for the Gokhran: is it possible to tell any price for its treasures, or are they priceless?

Of course, it is impossible to tell their price because a variety of valuable things are stored at the Gokhran such as masterpieces of world art, unique works of the most famous Russian jewellers of the 18th-20th centuries, precious metals in bars and nuggets, rare precious stones. For example, the Russian state does not melt down the nuggets, and a large collection of nuggets has been created. The nuggets of the 19th century are stored at the State Fund of the Russian Federation, as well as the ones mined during the Great Patriotic War that are very valuable gifts of nature that we treasure. Even in the most difficult times, the state preserved them, did not melt down and did not sell these unique natural samples of precious metals - native gold, native platinum, and even native silver in nuggets. Everything is treasured! Many samples have the status of unique ones. The Gokhran of Russia stores historical items created by masters of the major jewellery firms in Russia such as the Sazikovs, Khlebnikovs, Ovchinnikovs, Bolins jewellery houses, as well as by Faberge, Lyubavin, Morozov firms. It is possible keep on mentioning the names of the geniuses of the Russias jewellery art of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The works of the Moscow Jewellery Factory, the Moscow Experimental Jewellery Factory, Sverdlovsk Factory are stored - there is a great variety of jewellery items.

Today, a small section of the Gokhran of Russias collection is displayed at the exhibition called Man-made Link of Times. The Art of Russias Jewellers, which opened on February 15, 2022 at the State Historical Museum.

The exhibition at the State Historical Museum is extended until July. Perhaps, this is indicative of the events significance.

This exhibition has become an important cultural event in the life of Moscow and Russia. The exposition of the exhibition attracts great attention of visitors, they examine the works for two, three hours. The State Historical Museum offered to extend the exhibition for three months more, and the Gokhrans management agreed.

The exhibition is the result of the work of the Jewellery Art Competition Russia. The 21st Century held by the Gokhran every second year. The works accepted for the Competition show the current state of the designer jewellery art, and not only the designers art. The works of jewellers from 46 cities of the Russian Federation were displayed at the Competition.

What differs the Gokhran Competition from other jewellery competitions, of which there are many such as the Competition of Jewellery Design in Hong Kong, Recognition by St. Petersburg competition in St. Petersburg, J-1, the Battle of Jewellers, etc.?

First of all, the Competition held by the Gokhran of Russia is non-commercial, therefore, absolutely everything related to its activities, including the final exhibition, is held free of charge. The Gokhran took on the responsibility of developing the exhibition project, artistic arrangement of the jewellery pieces. The competition judging panel consists of, dare I say it, outstanding jewellers of the 21st century who won the world recognition, such as Ilgiz Fazulzyanov, Alexey Dontsov, and Eduard Nikitin. The judging panel members are famous art historians and experts in the diagnostic assessment of precious stones. All their names can be found on the official website of the Gokhran of Russia in the section Judging Panel Members of the Competition. They are wonderful people passionate in their profession, and most importantly, interested in the work of our competition. They are doing serious work and they know many masters of the jewellery community. The work of the judging panel is a kind of collegial examination of jewellery items. After all, a competition is a place where only good works are sent to, and we choose the best, most interesting ones out of them, which become the winners of the Competition. Such qualitative characteristics as the perfect craftsmanship and the originality and novelty of ideas are very important when evaluating the jewellers works.

The jewellery art works quite innovative in terms of aesthetics were awarded the Grand Prix, and there were even discussions on social networks. Perhaps, innovative things should cause controversy.

This is normal. Imagine, if there were no creative discussions about jewellery pieces and no opponents, there would be no creative artistic life. Let us turn to the history of the 19th century - Stasov was very critical of the works selected for art and industrial exhibitions, but they won the Grand Prix there. And at the first World Exhibition in London in 1851, such names as Sazikov, Kemmerer, Seftigen were mentioned. And they were our outstanding jewellers of the 19th century. In the same way, there should be, of course, criticism while discussing the art works now.

Why are there no such brands as Faberge, Sazikov, Ovchinnikov, Bolin today, which really represented the heights of the Russian jewellery art?

They were also criticized by their contemporaries. Someone liked them, someone didnt, and it was wonderful, like todays criticism is. Because its a real life, which means that people are interested in what they hold in their hands, see at the exhibitions they visit.

Is there a possibility that our best jewellers can create a truly global brand?

There should be a lot of brands, and they should definitely occupy their own niches. We also have many interesting jewellers; there are wonderful works by Ilgiz Fazulzyanov, Alexey Dontsov, Eduard Nikitin, and Gennady Sokolov - they are very different.

Each of them goes his own way, each has his own creative manner - and most importantly - the designers individual features, as well as a high-class artistic and technical approach to the implementation of their ideas. Our competition participants have absolutely amazing works. For example, the world-famous sculptor Dashi Namdakov was awarded a diploma for the special artistic expression of his jewellery, and his jewellery pieces are displayed at the exhibition.

The jewellers normally write about their creative works in essays they send to the Organizing Committee, according to the Regulations on the Competition, and tell us that their jewellery art works are in certain collections today. Of course, this process is on the rise, everything cannot be done in a short period of time. Jewellery art should have some support, and we try to support it by all possible means. At the end of the Competition, awards and diplomas are given to the winners, participants in the exhibition ... It turns out to be a kind of a club of like-minded people: when people come to the exhibition, they attend not just a social event - they have a chance in networking and communicating with each other, discussing new interesting ideas and the jewellery works displayed. The jewellery art pieces created by the jewellers are beyond the level of highly artistic items made to order, they come into the history of the jewellery art. This is a completely different sphere of life of a piece of jewellery.

It is remarkable that the Gokhran has joined in the promotion of the jewellery art. Many jewellers complained about the lack of state support...

Our exhibition, for example, provides support not only for the prizewinners of the Competition. This is the support for a large number of jewellers who took part in the Competition. The exhibition is formed in such a way that jewellery works of completely different styles are exhibited at the next exhibitions. Each next showcase attracts the visitors as it offers jewellery pieces of a completely different style, designed in a different manner.

Is this the third exhibition based on the results of the Gokhran Competition?

The first exhibition based on the results of the Competition was held at the State Historical Museum in 2016, but only the prizewinners took part in it. In 2019, there was a very large exhibition at the New Manege in the centre of Moscow. As you can see, the Gokhran chooses special venues for its exhibitions, the best and prestigious ones. And it is very important for jewellers to exhibit at the State Historical Museum as its history goes 150 years back. The Historical Museum houses one of the finest jewellery collections from ancient times to the present day. The jewellery art works by Faberge, Khlebnikov, Ovchinnikov, Bolin are exhibited at the Museum. It is a great honour and responsibility for any jeweller today to be next to the works of the outstanding jewellers, no matter what niche he or she occupies in our jewellery art and in the world art.

The permanent general name of the Gokhran Competition is Russia. The 21st Century. Each new final exhibition has its own name. The current exhibition is named Man-made Link of Times. Art of the Russias Jewellers, it has a poetic name, as one of the jewellers said. We have been thinking for a long time what could unite the jewellers of different generations and epochs. They have different social, material status, but they are united by a high responsibility for the jewellery works they offer to the public. In the 19th century, it was written about Sazikovs stores in Nevsky Prospekt (Avenue) and in Ilyinka Street in Moscow that these stores were like museums. The jewellery pieces were created at such a high standard level. We are now presenting the jewellery art works made in 2020, 2021 or early 2022. Many of them were created specifically for our Competition.

Exhibits of the Gokhrans historical collection were taken abroad to be displayed at the world-class international exhibitions. Please tell us about them.

In 1997, a large exhibition was held in the Peoples Republic of China that aroused genuine interest among the Chinese and European tourists who came to China. There were huge lines to the exhibition. In 2000, there was an exhibition in Berlin that was also very successful. It was held in the historic centre of Berlin. Both historical and modern art works included in the collection of the Diamond Fund exhibition were showcased. There was a section of art works of the 19th century - these were classic works in the Russian and European styles, the works telling how silver and gold could be used to imitate other materials in precious metal and, of course, it was very informative for the visitors. And many people made amazing discoveries for themselves. The visitors took a great interest in the exhibitions and expressed their feelings, people visited the exhibitions many times, they were eager to come as they were interested in the Russian jewellery art.

Are there any similar exhibitions planned in the future?

Such projects can be of great interest. Now, we are busy arranging the exhibitions we planned. In 2019, we showed our exhibition in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, which became a major event in the region. This year, an exhibition in Yakutsk is being held in April. Yakutia celebrates the 100th anniversary of the formation of the Yakut ASSR.

There is a public museum at the Gokhran of Yakutia, and it is the venue for the exhibition, which, I hope, will also be received with great interest. The works of the jewellers at the Experimental Jewellery Laboratory of the Gokhran of Russia, the modern ones, including the piece of jewellery The Great Imperial Crown are offered for the exhibition; this is a replica made by the craftsmen of the Smolensk Factory using new technologies and a new diamond cut. This is a one-of-a-kind work of jewellery art, so the Gokhran acquired it in 2020 and included it in the State Fund of the Russian Federation. The exhibition includes the works by the creative laboratory of the Gokhran, which made smaller copies (two-thirds) of the scepter and orb. After all, regalia are not subject to export from their place of storage, this is an international practice. Therefore, the works of modern jewellers are of interest - how all this can be made now using new technologies. The exhibition features wonderful examples of the jewellery art of the 19th century, including the works by enamellers, silversmiths, and jewellers, of course.

What stories or events of your 30-year practice as the Chief Expert at the Gokhran do you particularly remember?

I would like to mention two cases. Many representatives of the diplomatic corps of different countries visited the Berlin exhibition, the symbol of which was the Russian Beauty diadem. This diadem captivated everyone and evoked a sense of closeness as if it was a living one. The Spanish ambassador visited the exhibition with his wife who was fascinated by this diadem; she looked at it for a long time, her face was wet with tears of delight that this diadem evoked. And, leaving the exhibition, she waved Goodbye to the diadem, as if the Russian Beauty was alive - the diadem was a manifestation of extraordinary, divine beauty. It was very touching. There is a classic phrase Art is an Ambassador of Peace. And this is true.

And at the Gokhran exhibition in 2019 visited by a huge number of people, I was surprised that the visitors perceived the modern works (that took part in the Competition) as a still unknown, unusual world. People turned out to be not indifferent to the creative world of the jewellers: they approached and examined for a long time to see how the stone was mounted, how the enamel was made, and asked endless questions. And at the current exhibition, after they had seen the jewellery art works many people went to the guest book and left amazing comments about their impressions, how these things touched their souls and hearts so that tears welled up in their eyes. And those were and are not ordinary emotions, people like the spirituality of the jewellery world.

If you see the ring by Veronika Mucha and Victoria Sinelnikova, you will be surprised how the old Fedoskino School of the late 18th century harmoniously combines with the todays aesthetics, and the ancient monuments of the Moscow Kremlin - with the new architecture of Moscow. This is a continuation of the traditions - hence, it is the man-made link of times. In my opinion, we gave a very correct name to the exhibition.

Galina Semyonova for Rough&Polished




(bloomberg.com) - U.S. sanctions on Russias giant diamond miner are causing chaos through the industry, leaving traders and manufacturers hunting for workarounds to keep tapping one of the worlds main sources of precious gems. Buyers across the big trading centers in Antwerp and Dubai and manufacturing hubs in India have spent the past two weeks consulting lawyers to determine what the U.S. sanctions on Alrosa PJSC mean and how they can continue to buy, according to people familiar with the matter. In the meanwhile, diamonds have stopped flowing from Russian mines to Surat - the worlds diamond-cutting epicenter - because Indian banks are unable or unwilling to process payments.
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(Photo : JUNIOR D. KANNAH/AFP via Getty Images) A team of World Health Organization (WHO) members prepares to launch the Ebola vaccination drive in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Mbandaka on May 21, 2018. - The death toll in an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) rose to 26 on May 21, 2018, after a person died in the northwest city of Mbandaka, the government said, as it began vaccinating first responders against the dreaded disease.

Health officials of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) recently announced that the country is facing another outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus.

Ebola Outbreak in Mbandaka, Equateur Province



According to the World Health Organization, the initial case was detected in the city of Mbandaka. The places located in the republic's northwest Equateur Province and near the city are currently on high alert.

WHO experts said in a press release that the recorded cases from the same province sum up to three outbreaks already in such a short time since 2018, and the surge of Ebola detection this month marks the 14th outbreak in the country since 1976.

WHO-Africa regional director Matshidiso Moeti explained that the time is not sufficient to combat the virus. The first cases of the disease emerged two weeks ahead of the detection, and the health sector of the country is still exerting its efforts to catch up with the spread.

The Democratic Republic of Congo health authorities, fortunately, include specialists that contain more knowledge and experience compared to others in battling and controlling Ebola outbreaks through a quick and effective approach, Moeti continued.

WHO said that only a single case was confirmed so far. The individual who was identified with Ebola was a man in his early 30s. According to a report by CNN, the patient began experiencing symptoms of the disease on April 5.

The Ebola patient immediately went to a medical facility for consultation and treatment after experiencing an unusual state for over a week.

When the sickness did not disappear, the patient was admitted to a center that specializes in treatments for Ebola on April 21. But prior to being given intensive care solutions, the man died the same day.

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State of Ebola Virus Disease in DRC

Health workers from the facility took samples from the case and recognized right away the Ebola virus. Samples were also sent from the city for further testing, WHO reports.

The organization explained that there are current efforts relayed to prevent the outbreak from surging. Included in the national response initiatives in the following weeks are vaccination drives to cater protection to the region's population.

Most of the Mbandaka citizens were already administered vaccination against the Ebola virus. Moeti said that people who received the treatment will be affected with just a subtle or no impact from the disease.

The groups who were vaccinated in 2020 will be given another vaccine session, Moeti added.

The deceased Ebola patient was given a proper burial through a 'safe and dignified' approach. This process includes strict health protocols to prevent further cases by the remains while keeping the solemnity of traditional funeral ceremonies.

WHO said that the individuals who came in close contact with the patient will be monitored. The places in the facility where the patient stayed are already contaminated.

In recent years, the Equateur Province experienced separate Ebola outbreaks. There were approximately 130 cases of the disease confirmed back in the outbreak last 2020, and 54 cases in 2018.

Ebola is a disease that could severely endanger the health of primates and humans. The case fatality from the disease jumped between 25 percent to 90 percent in the past outbreaks. Thankfully, there are already modern solutions that could treat patients from the illness, giving a much higher survival rate compared to the past.

DRC is the largest hotspot of Ebola cases in Central Africa. The virus has already taken the lives of over 2,000 people after a series of outbreaks between 2018 and 2020.

RELATED ARTICLE: Breakthrough Study Reveals How Meningitis Spreads Through Fungal Infection, Block and Damage Blood Vessels

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Dozens of French expatriates lined up early Saturday morning outside the French-American International School on Oak Street in San Francisco to be the first to cast their ballots in what is widely seen as an unusually high-stakes French presidential election.

The current president, centrist Emmanuel Macron, is facing far-right firebrand Marine Le Pen in his second and her third run for the office. While Macrons centrist approach has disillusioned many voters on either end of the political spectrum, Le Pen is deeply nationalistic  promising to put Frances needs above those of the European Union, to cut immigrants off from social services and even to ban Muslim headscarves in public.

The April 24 election, sometimes likened to other political inflection points such as the 2016 election of U.S. President Donald Trump or the U.K.s Brexit referendum the same year to leave the European Union, comes at a critical time for the EU, as the war in Ukraine continues on its eastern border. Le Pen, who has long had ties to Moscow, has expressed skepticism about supplying weapons to Ukraine and opposes oil and gas sanctions, though she said she supports the Ukrainian people.

If Macron wins, hell become Frances first president in 20 years to win a second term. Le Pen would be Frances first woman president.

Jana Asenbrennerova/Special to The Chronicle

The importance of the vote has been deeply felt by French voters in the Bay Area, which has the second largest French community in the U.S. after New York. More than 20,000 French citizens live here and are registered with the French consulate, and many thousands of them were expected to go to the polls on Saturday, a day before their countrymen back home do the same.

Many voters interviewed on Saturday said they still felt the country was their own, even after living in some cases for years in the U.S. As for why it was important to cast an expat vote in the election, more than one answered: Because Im French.

Cyril Dorsaz, who voted Saturday for Macron, said the election was important to him not just because his family still lives in France, but also because he frequently visits the country and still sees it as home.

I want to make sure if I ever move back, theres a president who shares my values, he said.

Jana Asenbrennerova/Special to The Chronicle

There were six polling stations for French citizens throughout the Bay Area on Saturday, said Frederic Jung, the Consul General of France in San Francisco, before casting his vote at the French Consulate on Kearny Street.

The voting procedure for French people abroad is the same as for those in France, Jung explained. There is no vote-by-mail for presidential elections, so citizens must cast ballots in person at the polls or register a proxy.

Once voters enter the polling place, they show their French passport or ID to check in and then pick up two cards, each with the name of one of the candidates. From there, they go into a private booth and put one in an envelope and one in the trash. Then they take the envelope to a table where a poll worker confirms that it is sealed correctly and another verifies the ID again and checks the voters name off a list.

When everything is ready, the voter drops the envelope into a slot on the top of a large deposit box, which the poll worker uncovers while saying a vote, or has voted.

Its very formal, Jung said.

Jana Asenbrennerova/Special to The Chronicle

Domitille Ripart, who has been in San Francisco for six years, said she has voted in every election since she was 18, something she sees as her duty as a French citizen. Today, she voted for Macron, she said.

Its scary with the far-right being so close, she said.

Macron previously faced Le Pen in the presidential election in 2017. At that time, though a relative political newcomer, he won by a landslide in his first-ever run for the presidency. But this time, Le Pen pulled her best numbers ever in the first round of voting two weeks ago among a field of a dozen candidates. Overall, she garnered 24% of the vote to Macrons 27%  putting her much closer to than before to the incumbent.

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But in the San Francisco jurisdiction, Le Pen got only 2.2% of the vote in the first round, compared with Macrons 61.3%.

That discrepancy was reflected on Saturday, as nearly every French voter leaving the polls said they had voted for Macron. One woman even said that he was the best French president shes seen in her lifetime.

Jana Asenbrennerova/Special to The Chronicle

But for others, the election was more about voting against the incumbents far-right challenger.

Jeremie Gluckman, who immigrated to the U.S. as a child with his parents, said he felt it was important to vote against Le Pen as waves of extremism are sweeping through places like the U.S. and Britain.

If I can vote to avoid that in France, I will, he said.

Another voter, Mathieu Legoc, said that, as a French immigrant to another country, Le Pens nationalist stance ran counter to his lived experience.

Being an immigrant to the U.S. and knowing the positives of immigration, it would be very hard to vote for Le Pen, regardless of how much I disagree with Macron, he said.

Danielle Echeverria is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: danielle.echeverria@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DanielleEchev
Rafe Swan/Getty Image

A juvenile has been arrested on suspicion of murder in the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old girl in Oakland in early April, authorities said.

The suspect, whose name was not released because they are a minor, was arrested on Tuesday in Sacramento in coordination with U.S. Marshals and Oakland police officials, Oakland Police Department said in a statement on Friday.
A group of people who oppose vaccine mandates drove their trucks and vans in Oaklands Rockridge neighborhood and protested outside the home of an East Bay state legislator while she was reportedly inside.

The protest, captured in online videos, involved a convoy of about 20 vehicles, according to the California Highway Patrol. Protesters gathered, apparently, in opposition to a pair of bills written by Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, that would, separately, require California businesses to mandate COVID vaccinations among their employees and end a state requirement that coroners investigate stillbirths. Wicks already announced in late March that the vaccination bill was being put on hold.

Officer David Arias, a CHP spokesperson, said protesters remained peaceful and no arrests or citations were issued. The protest convoy remained in the area for about an hour, Arias said, and caused temporary traffic congestion.

Online videos of the protest showed testy, expletive-laced exchanges between onlookers and protesters as the latter made their way past the Safeway on College Avenue. One video showed onlookers throwing eggs at trucks as they loudly blared their horns, shouting at protesters to leave the area.

Wicks office told The Mercury News that she was at home when the group of protesters arrived at her street, prompting her to call police for protection.

Bullhorns and loud trucks lend no legitimacy to baseless conspiracy theories from out-of-state protesters, and Asm. Wicks will not indulge any attempts to influence her legislative work through harassment and intimidation tactics  especially when its directed at her home and her family, Erin Ivie, Wicks communications director, wrote in an emailed statement to The Chronicle.

Protesters in the videos could be heard voicing opposition to vaccine mandates and AB 2223, the legislation written by Wicks that would do away with a state law requiring coroners to investigate fetal deaths related to a suspected self-induced or criminal abortion. The law also appears to do the opposite of a controversial Texas law that effectively bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy by allowing private citizens to sue anyone who helps someone obtain an abortion; Wicks bill would prohibit someone who helps a pregnant woman obtain an abortion from facing civil or criminal liability.

Wicks put the bill requiring businesses to mandate vaccinations for employees and contractors, AB 1993, on hold last month in an attempt to negotiate with public safety unions that oppose the legislation.

Another major piece of vaccine legislation in the Legislature, one that would have required all students to get vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend school by eliminating the states existing personal belief exemption, has also been shelved.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Meanwhile, AB 2223 so far has cleared two legislative committees. The bill needs to pass floor votes in the Assembly and state Senate before it can make its way to Gov. Gavin Newsoms desk.

AB 2223 aligns with a legal alert by Attorney General Rob Bonta that instructed the states prosecutors and police not to pursue charges against mothers who deliver stillbirths or have miscarriages. In his announcement, Bonta cited the case of Adora Perez, a Kings County woman who spent four years in prison for using drugs before giving birth to a stillborn child.

Last month, a judge overturned Perezs conviction with support from Bonta, saying that there is no crime in California of manslaughter of a fetus.

Ricardo Cano is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ricardo.cano@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByRicardoCano
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An East Bay resident was arrested Saturday for allegedly aiming a laser pointer at a sheriffs helicopter in the sky, authorities said.

Officers from the Contra Costa Countys Sheriffs Office were flying over San Pablo on Saturday evening in a helicopter when a resident aimed a laser pointer towards the aircraft, according to the San Pablo Police Department.
For a few weeks last fall, mandates that would require all K-12 students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 were becoming ubiquitous.

Dozens of districts across California said they would soon put in place such orders, in some cases as early as January this year. Even before the first vaccines had been authorized for children under age 12, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans for a statewide mandate that officials hoped would go into effect this July, on the assumption theyd be formally approved by then.

But the path toward school vaccine mandates for COVID has proved rockier than anticipated, and earlier this month, the state announced that it would delay implementation of its mandate until at least July 2023.

A state senator also withdrew legislation that would have added COVID vaccines to the list of immunizations required for all incoming kindergartners. School districts with planned mandates also have delayed or outright abandoned those efforts, largely due to a lack of parental support.

Mandating COVID vaccines for California schoolchildren still makes sense, health and legal experts say. But the barriers toward putting such mandates in place are formidable.

A vaccine still hasnt been formally approved for most children, and experts dont know when that might happen. Six months after all school-age children became eligible for vaccination under a federal emergency use authorization, there remains uncertainty over how many shots kids will need to be fully protected, and how often boosters might be required.

Perhaps most problematic: Parents havent embraced the vaccines as much as health officials had hoped or expected. Uptake has been especially low in communities of color, raising concerns that mandates would disproportionately affect Black and brown families by preventing their children from attending school.

Meanwhile, districts have now shown that they can keep schools open and prevent academically disruptive outbreaks, even when most students are not vaccinated, which tempers the urgency to require immunization.

Its possible well be able to mandate by July 2023. Or it might be the next year, or the year after that, said Dr. Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at UC Davis Childrens Hospital. But I think its also possible there is no mandate in the end.

State Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, dropped his legislation that would have added COVID to the list of required K-12 vaccinations on April 14, citing the currently low immunization rates. He said the state should focus instead on increasing uptake and access to vaccines for kids.

Hours after Pans announcement, the California Department of Public Health pushed back its separate planned mandate, which was meant as a sort of backstop until COVID joined the roster of diseases against which students must be vaccinated. State officials said the delay was due to the lack of federal approval of a vaccine for kids and schools needing more time to implement a mandate once a vaccine is approved.

School vaccine mandates are meant to serve several purposes. For diseases like polio that are eliminated or close to it in the United States, mandates are key to maintaining herd immunity and preventing illnesses that circulate in other parts of the world from getting a domestic foothold. For diseases like pertussis that are still endemic, mandates can prevent large outbreaks and allow schools to remain safely open.

Mandates also are useful in increasing vaccination against diseases that parents may not worry about because they are mostly mild in children. Many vaccine-preventable diseases  including measles and polio, along with COVID  dont often cause serious illness but can have disastrous effects in some kids.

The number of kids who get infected with polio who get paralysis is about 1 in 200, said Dr. Art Reingold, a UC Berkeley infectious disease expert. We still think its important to prevent those rare but really serious cases of polio. So the argument that most COVID cases are mild or asymptomatic in kids is not a very compelling argument not to mandate vaccines.

Californians are well familiar with state-mandated vaccinations for schoolchildren, which were first introduced more than a century ago. The state has one of the strictest mandates in the United States, allowing exemptions only if parents can prove their child cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.

Students currently are required to be vaccinated against nine diseases, some of which, like polio, have been eliminated in the U.S., and others like pertussis that are stubbornly endemic.

Influenza is notably not on that list, in part because flu shots must be given annually, making vaccination prohibitively cumbersome for schools to enforce. COVID vaccines could be similarly challenging, depending on how many shots people need to be fully protected and how often they need boosters.

Another similarity between flu and COVID vaccines: They dont provide the so-called sterilizing immunity that prevents infections altogether, such as with measles vaccines. COVID vaccines are more protective than those for influenza, which vary in effectiveness from year to year, but theyre imperfect at preventing transmission.

That todays COVID shots dont entirely protect against infection is among the obstacles against requiring vaccination for kids, but none is insurmountable, nor should be used as an excuse never to mandate them, said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, an infectious disease expert at Stanford who has studied COVID shots in children.

At what point are we going to know that these vaccines are perfect and have the same schedule? Thats never going to happen, Maldonado said. Not dealing with it now is like saying theres a fire, but we dont have the perfect solution to that fire so lets let it run rampant and see what happens.

The most troublesome barrier to requiring COVID vaccination may be getting parents on board, health and legal experts said. Statewide, about two-thirds of teenagers are vaccinated, but only a third of the youngest children  ages 5 to 11  are. Parents often cite the newness of the vaccines as a reason for their reluctance, and some may have been fed misinformation that makes them worry about safety.

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Its an ironic situation: The fewer parents who support vaccination, the more it might appear as though a mandate would be necessary to bump up rates.

But experts say mandates actually work best when theres already fairly high uptake and officials are trying to reach a relatively small group of holdouts. School officials may not be eager to handle enforcement of a mandate when 60% or more of parents in their community havent vaccinated their children.

Indeed, thats the main reason several districts have given in on delaying local COVID vaccine mandates  too many families would be forced to keep their kids home.

I think we will only see a school mandate if we get the vaccination rates for children to 70% or 80%, said Dorit Reiss, an expert in childhood vaccinations at UC Hastings College of the Law. Vaccine mandates can make a big difference in vaccine uptake, but theyre not a miracle. If theres strong enough lack of interest, a mandate may not get you where you want to go.

The next year and a half before the state mandate goes into effect will be key to getting more parents on board, health experts said. State officials said they plan to focus their student vaccination campaigns in disadvantaged communities in particular. Theyve also ramped up efforts to counter vaccine misinformation, especially when its targeted to parents.

Some parents may just need more time to be comfortable with the COVID vaccines before they choose to get their kids the shots, health experts said. Though the vaccines have been widely studied and are considered safe for children, theyre still new, and thats made many parents balk during the initial rollout.

Another factor that could affect vaccine uptake is the virus itself  and how the pandemic plays out over the next year or so. If a variant arrives that causes more severe illness, or disproportionately affects children, that would likely increase vaccination rates in kids. A better vaccine might also compel more parents to vaccinate  and its entirely possible that better options may be available in a year or two, experts say.

Oakland parent Guadalupe Canchola, whose three school-age kids are not vaccinated against COVID, said that if the shots are mandated eventually shes not sure what she would do. Shes been hesitant mostly because the shots are new, and she worries more about potential safety issues than she does severe illness if her kids get COVID; two of her children tested positive in January and did not have symptoms.

If a mandate is put in place, Canchola likely would let her oldest, whos entering middle school this year, decide for himself if he wanted to get the shots. But she might choose to educate the youngest at home rather than have them vaccinated. Her children are up to date on their other vaccinations, she said.

I just feel like it should be our choice, Canchola said. I dont think it should be forced on us.

Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: eallday@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @erinallday
As the founder of Samovar Tea and Joyride Pizza, two longtime San Francisco institutions, I am urgently requesting San Franciscans speak up now (at www.saverestaurants.com) if you want your favorite local restaurant to survive.

The federal Restaurant Revitalization Fund in 2021 helped keep 101,000 independent restaurants and bars open. But nearly 200,000 businesses did not receive funding and are at risk of closing forever.

There is one solution to all these problems: Congress prioritizing urgent relief for restaurants and voting to replenish the the fund.

This lifeline would help independent restaurants deal with the long-term structural challenges facing the industry because of COVID-19 and secure the employment of 11 million workers across 500,000 small businesses, as well as the 5 million more jobs up and down our supply chain.

A bill to reallocate funds has passed the House. Senators, please help support the small businesses and people who support you.

Jesse Jacobs, San Francisco

Stop climate denial

Regarding Race to save fish as lake dies away (Front Page, April 16): Does this sound familiar: Climate change started the glaciers melting, but glaciers are very far away. Then it bleached the coral reefs, but Im not a scuba diver. Then it started threatening the redwoods, the Sequoias and the Joshua trees, but that doesnt worry me that much because Im not a tree. Now its threatening some fish, and the bird and bee populations have plummeted, but Im not a wild animal. Its also threatening to wipe out the foolishly concentrated coffee and banana monocrops, but I can switch to tea and some other fruit.

When does the denial end? When does the average person have that Aha! moment and become a climate activist? Re-read this article, let it sink in and reconsider. Inform yourself, then spread the word. Average citizens, working together and making noise, can lead our leaders and fix this, and that is what it will take.

Gary Stewart, Laguna Beach, Orange County

Put As stadium to vote

Its time to let Oaklanders decide the future of our neighborhoods. A recent poll of Oakland voters showed that 76% of respondents want the right to vote on any deal to use our tax dollars to pay for the As private development at Howard Terminal.

The Howard Terminal project would be the largest expenditure of taxpayer dollars for a private project in Oakland history. Oakland has plenty of more urgent needs for taxpayer dollars  reducing homelessness, crime prevention and more. Before we give away hundreds of millions of dollars to a billionaire, we deserve a vote.

Mercedes Rodriguez, Oakland

Getting a fresh start

When passing through San Francisco, my credit card was declined (thanks to my traveling partner, who had been dipping in the till). I found myself standing on a curb  which I later learned was on Mission Street  with $18, no phone and my closest relative was in Texas. I then became a statistic, another homeless person, a burden. Survival became the priority.

I soon discovered the resources and opportunities San Francisco had to offer. With time and effort, things started to turn around for me. As I write this, Im in a safe, beautiful apartment while sitting on a soft bed (not a piece of cardboard). I begin work next week! I am extremely grateful.

Whether this is now my home I dont know, but if so, I vow to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
In 1973, San Francisco beer delivery drivers were at odds with local beer distributors over low wages, union-busting efforts and employment discrimination. Distributors of the Colorado-based Coors Brewing Co. were particularly notorious  their parent company went as far as to require pre-employment polygraph tests to weed out supposedly undesirable hires.

The drivers, members of the Teamsters union Local 888, decided to strike and to call for a boycott of Coors beer. By fall 1974, the boycott included LGBTQ consumers, Chicanx and Latinx organizations, Black activists and Native American community leaders in the Bay Area.

Though it is 1967s Summer of Love, the student-led strikes at what was then San Francisco State College in 1968 and the Indians of All Tribes 18-month occupation of Alcatraz Island from 1969 to 1971 that made the Bay Area a famous hub of countercultural radicalism, this lesser-known, coalition-based effort against Coors also left a major mark. Now, as San Francisco once again becomes a hub of coalition organizing, labor and community activists are revisiting the boycotts innovative movement-building approach to take on a present-day corporate goliath: Amazon.

What initially inspired the 1970s Coors boycott was antagonism for the companys labor practices. But as the boycott grew, the Coors familys politics became its focus. Third-generation executives Joseph and William Coors were closely linked to conservative politicians and generously funded right-wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation. By challenging Coors, boycotters saw themselves as fighting conservatism, anti-unionism and racism, as a Bay Area Teamster publication put it.

But these coalitions required more than an enemy; cementing a movement required organizers who moved in and out of LGBTQ, labor and other activist circles. One such organizer was Allan Baird, a Korean War veteran, musician, and Teamster who worked out of his home in the Castro District. With the help of Andris Cirkelis and other Teamsters, Baird dispatched striking beer drivers to grocery stores. Using picket signs, leaflets and a red-and-white bullhorn, they got many stores to remove the offending cans from their shelves.

As these protests fanned out, Baird and his team built connections outside the labor movement. Baird had only to go around the corner from his home to spark one such connection  with camera store owner, aspiring politician and gay-rights activist Harvey Milk. As the two became fast friends, Milk emerged as a key supporter of the boycott, on the condition that Baird and the Teamsters guaranteed jobs for LGBTQ drivers. With Milk on board, other LGBTQ activists joined the fray, including Cleve Jones, Milks assistant and future union leader, and Howard Wallace, co-founder of a radical organization called the Bay Area Gay Liberation, or BAGL. After BAGL meetings, which became hotbeds of Coors organizing, members would hit gay bars to convince patrons and owners to join the fight.

Baird and Cirkelis also forged alliances with other activist communities, from radical Chicanos to Black civil rights leaders. In November 1974, a coalition of over a dozen organizations, including the American Indian Movement and Black Panthers, endorsed the boycott and a ground-breaking Teamsters affirmative action plan that prioritized LGBTQ and applicants of color for open driver positions. Shortly thereafter, Milk editorialized in the Bay Area Reporter that the union of beer drivers, blacks, Chicanos and Latinos and gays fighting together had planted the seeds of joint battles.

After a decade of boycotting that extended to the East Coast  Fenway Park in Boston ousted Coors from its concession stands  most of the boycott coalitions broke up. The movements success in prompting changes in Coors employment practices, as well as company efforts to infuse hundreds of millions of dollars back into boycotting communities, made the boycott less urgent. Still, original boycott organizers take pride in the fact that Coors beer has never touched their lips.

Fifty years later, activists, and young Teamsters in particular, see that boycott as a blueprint for the massive long-term task of organizing Amazons fast-growing and highly precarious workforce. Coalition-building is integral to these efforts. In San Francisco, where Amazon is planning a distribution center southeast of downtown, Teamsters have partnered with a diverse group of organizations  union locals, transit riders, nonprofits, neighborhood advisory boards  to create the San Francisco Southeast Alliance.

Founded in 2021, the alliance seeks not to stall the Amazon project but, rather, to guarantee that the company make a meaningful long-term investment in affordable housing, commit to environmental standards and guarantee union jobs.

The coalition has worked with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to enact an 18-month moratorium on new parcel delivery facilities to give time for thorough studies of environmental and community impacts. After the moratorium passed in March 2022, Amazon said it would pause construction on this new facility to re-evaluate long-term priorities and work with community partners.

As activists across the country work to contain Amazons expansion and unionize its warehouses  from the long-running organizing campaign in Bessemer, Ala., to the most recent victory on Staten Island, N.Y.  Bay Area activists are looking back at their own playbook. They are following the footsteps of Baird and other Coors boycott organizers.

Allyson Brantley is a historian at the University of La Verne in Los Angeles County. This piece was written for Zocalo Public Square.
Russias violent invasion of Ukraine has forced over 5 million civilians to flee, creating what the United Nations is calling the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.

With this mass exodus, a flood of harrowing photographs showing the humanitarian plight has emerged. Given the fundamental power of photography, however, the desire to spread awareness of human rights abuses and the potential harm of showing difficult photos are not easily reconciled. Before sharing images of vulnerable migrants on social media, its wise to pause and consider the myriad ways a single photograph can wield outsized influence.

On several occasions during the past century, a single photograph led to widespread public awakening about the plight of migrants and quickly mobilized significant humanitarian support. Dorothea Langes widely reprinted Migrant Mother, first published in a San Francisco newspaper in 1936, prompted the U.S. government to send 20,000 pounds of food to California to aid the impoverished family pictured and others like them. In response to the gut-wrenching photo of the lifeless body of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach in Turkey in 2015, the United Kingdom announced that it would accept 20,000 Syrians refugees.

While photography can move hearts and minds, it also poses ethical dilemmas. A viewer is never privy to how subjects feel about the way they have been captured, nor if circulating the moment enshrined on film (or in pixels) might perpetuate further suffering.

As migrants are, by definition, without the stability of permanent shelter, photographs typically show them struggling. Florence Thompson, who, in the late 1970s, self-identified as the Migrant Mother, felt strongly that her right to privacy had been violated and told the Associated Press that she and her family felt exploited by the photograph. In 2008, two decades after it became the face of a U.S. postage stamp, Thompsons daughter Katherine McIntosh told CNN, We were ashamed of it. We didnt want no one to know who we were.

Another problem with the pervasive sharing of images of migrants is that it tends to render their pain as ordinary and therefore acceptable. While viewers may initially empathize with the subjects plight, repeat exposure inures us, and with each viewing, empathy wanes. With an estimated 95 million images shared on Instagram daily, only to be subsumed by another round of images the following day, depictions of desperate migrants can rotate among pet portraits and birthday party pics  placement that suggests the predicament of migrants as routine as opposed to an urgent crisis requiring mobilization.

Susan Sontag famously wrote in her 1977 essay collection, On Photography, about how the perceived meaning of any image is blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it. Consider how Agence France-Presse photographer Paul Ratjes photos of U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback chasing Haitian migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border quickly became social media fodder last year. Millions of people circulated the images, in which reins appeared to be used as whips, in hopes of condemning the brutality of the Border Patrol. Yet, simultaneously, the images were also shared by those appalled not by the actions of the agents, but of the migrants, captioning them as invaders or illegals who needed to be sent back to where they came from. Some offered celebratory remarks, like just happy that cowboys are back. From this perspective, the visual tropes in photographs characterize migrants as people to fear rather than people in fear.

Embedded stereotypes affect how people interpret images, particularly in the case of racist beliefs. Even in the instance of Kurdi, the Syrian toddler, perceived ethnicity was instrumental in the publics sense of emotional urgency.

The week before, dozens of African kids washed up on the beaches of Libya and were photographed, and it didnt have the same impact, Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, told Time magazine.

Racial bias has already been apparent in the double-standard reception of migrants from the Ukraine. They look like any European family that you would live next door to, explained Al Jazeeras British anchor, Peter Dobbie. Daniel Hannan, a conservative activist, Brexit campaigner and media personality wrote in the Telegraph, They seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking. Such biased coverage compelled the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association to release a statement urging the media to be mindful of perpetuating prejudicial responses to political and humanitarian crises.

Looking at a migrant in peril, through the intimate, yet distanced lens of photography, is no guarantee of empathy and certainly not of political action.

Photographs of migration have been at the center of the global news cycle for years, and the number of migrants globally is only accelerating. In 2019, there were an estimated 272 million people without homes, 51 million more than in 2010, the U.N. said. With these numbers, the circulation of images of migrants in crisis is likely to escalate as well. Though many may be visually striking, its unclear that endless reposting will result in sustained policy changes.

To be sure, photojournalism remains a powerful tool in the arsenal of free speech, providing access to vital information that otherwise wouldnt be available. Professionals devote their lives to balancing the thorny paradox of what images should be circulated in public and their potential consequences. Photojournalists work in collaboration with professional organizations and editors trained to make careful decisions about what they share. In contrast, the ease of instantaneous reposts on social media obscures accountability and, when sources arent credited, upends a professional structure that has value.

Context matters. In photojournalism, photographs do not speak for themselves. Severing an image from the written context of its initial circulation  including information about the photographer and the legally responsible publisher  happens frequently on social media and opens the photograph to a gamut of unforeseen consequences.

In an age when digital images can travel with more ease than people and be endlessly repurposed without the consent of the subject (or photographer) and viewed by any audience in any context, its time for all of us to consider whether sharing these images may itself become a form of human rights abuse.

Before sharing a photo of a stranger, its worth asking: How might the subject feel about seeing this image distributed, and what might be the ramifications?

Showing images of violence and abuses of power in public is not inherently a liberatory act. Neither is the act of witnessing. Rather, critically questioning the sharing of such pictures may be a step toward reframing the system itself.

Heather Diack is an associate professor of art history at the University of Miami and a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project.
God stands for truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth where hypocritical priests have no room to play the old game.

Editorial

His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo, has arrived in the Vatican recently with a carefully selected team to meet with the Pope. The Cardinal said members of the families affected by the 2019 Easter attacks had gone there with him. He further stated that the trip was financially sponsored by an individual. Subsequently the carnage, the only important and commendable action initiated by Cardinal, who had been involved in indistinguishable ugly politics for many years before the attacks, was to take immediate action to mitigate the risk of religious conflict. But it soon became apparent that the Cardinal was acting as if he had committed a crime against his conscience. The statements he flooded on media show that he has no intention of gaining an accurate understanding of those who were involved in the attacks or of supporting a national program to eradicate extremism that advocates violence as a way of liberation from the country. As a result, Islamic extremism is now spreading more subtly than ever before in various parts of the country.

His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo

In this backdrop, we believe it is important to focus on a basic event related to the Easter attacks, subject to correction. Why did the Cardinal suddenly decide not to attend the Easter morning service in 2019? Why didn't the Cardinal, who otherwise prioritises attending the Easter service at St. Anthony's Church in Kochchikade in previous years, attend it in 2019? Did he decide not to attend because of prior information of possible disruption? Here we do not intend to generate any conspiracy, but it is an important event to be aware of. In case, if the Church thinks we are spreading misinformation, the Cardinal and the Catholic Church in Colombo are welcome to correct us. We believe it is crucial to focus on this because of the importance of this event. Many have received early warnings about this terrorist attack. None of them did anything substantive to save the people but ensured their safety. In this context, isnt it important to discuss whether the Cardinal was also one among the few who ensured his safety without informing the public? It is a matter of conscience.

After the attacks, the Cardinal said that the carnage was plotted by a powerful Western country. He had no evidence to substantiate the allegation. Over time, he changed his tongue in various ways. Many, including Cardinal, are now commenting on the attacks, alluding to it as a conspiracy by the current president. But there is no evidence to support this claim other than mere speculations. I say the same thing because he said so, is the only basis for their arguments. The devastation caused to the country and the people by this irrational and unscientific manner of dealing with such a deep-rooted social crisis is incalculable.

The damage that the Cardinal is causing to society concerning this incident is very serious. First, due to his irrational behaviour, the authority has not been able to implement an accurate program against the prevailing Islamic fundamentalism in the country. Secondly, he thwarted the rehabilitation program introduced by the government two years ago to eradicate Islamic radicalization from society. Third, the truth has been suppressed by socializing that there is a conspiracy behind this attack without any clear evidence. Fourth, the government's service to the victims of the attacks is sadly concealed. (In fact, more than Rs. 310 million has been provided as direct financial assistance to the victims and a large number of new houses have been built and donated. All those suspected of being directly or indirectly involved in the attacks are being arrested and investigated, but unfortunately, this process was hampered by undue pressure from NGOs and various social groups, including the Cardinal, to release some lawyers who had close ties to suicide bombers such as the Jameel and Ibrahim brothers.) Fifth, the victims of the attacks were turned into commodities of certain parties in society. These facts show that the truth has been overshadowed by the Cardinal's ignorant and hateful actions. As a result, the whole world is being deceived by various false information and the ground is being prepared to nourish violent extremists. We would like to reiterate the fact that it is important that the Cardinal, who is going to express his desire for justice to the Pope, pay attention to the above.

God stands for truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth where hypocritical priests have no room to play the old game. As Pope Francis put it in his Let Us Dream: The Path to A Better Future, "We are living a time of trial. The Bible talks of passing through fire to describe such trials, like a kiln testing the potters handiwork (Sirach 27:5). The fact is that we are all tested in life. Its how we grow. In the trials of life, you reveal your own heart: how solid it is, how merciful, how big or small." This test removes a person from his sham acts and reveals the truth about him. Like everyone else, the Cardinal is a person who is tempted by God. There the Cardinal is examined for the good and bad deeds he has done so far. It is a transaction between his conscience and God. Will such an epoch test benefit the conspirators?
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Fewer than a dozen mourners gathered near the Gilman Playground in San Franciscos Bayview neighborhood last weekend to remember Keita ONeil, an unarmed Black man killed by police in 2017.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin stood among them.

Im just here to celebrate Keita ONeils life, he told the small crowd once people started noticing he was there.

Boudin didnt post about the vigil online, mention his appearance in a fundraising email or use it as a photo op for his anti-recall campaign. I was as surprised as others to see him there. And while most of ONeils friends and relatives thanked Boudin for his work on police accountability, one vocal person criticized Boudin for not going far enough. Over the next two hours, Boudin listened earnestly.

At that very moment, his online detractors were going after him for completely different reasons.

On Twitter, a number of users were tagging him in a video of someone they alleged to be stealing items from a local CVS. Thanks @chesaboudin you have created this, one user wrote. Another said, people are killing people and walking of jail in San Francisco because of Boudin.

There were dozens of tweets like this. None had more than one or two likes, but their narratives are shared by Boudins mainstream detractors, who blame his criminal justice reforms for pandemic crime spikes that have afflicted cities across the U.S. and have no single, easy-to-blame cause.

To say crime is out of control in San Francisco is a blatant distortion of reality. And to blame a shoplifting spike on Boudin is as asinine as blaming the tragic mass shooting in Sacramento on that countys conservative district attorney, Anne Marie Schubert. But these are the narratives that voters seem to be buying into  of Boudin the online caricature rather than Boudin the imperfect public servant.

As my colleague Megan Cassidy reported earlier this month, the recall campaign has been trouncing Boudin in fundraising, amassing more than $2.7 million as of April 3. The figure doesnt include the more than $600,000 the recall campaign has since received from the California Association of Realtors, Hotel Council of San Francisco and Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, which is actually based in San Rafael.

Boudin, whose supporters had raised just over $1 million as of earlier this month, probably wasnt collecting any big checks from the people at the vigil, who are still awaiting closure more than four years after ONeils death. But that didnt stop him from showing up.

ONeil was killed on Dec. 1, 2017, after allegedly stealing a state lottery workers minivan and leading police on a brief pursuit that ended just a stones throw from where the vigil took place. When he jumped out of the vehicle and ran past a squad car, Christopher Samayoa, a rookie cop who was less than a week into his career with the San Francisco Police Department, fired a single shot through his passenger side window, striking ONeil in the head. ONeil was unarmed.

Boudin filed manslaughter charges against Samayoa in November 2020, less than a year after taking office. It marked the first time a police officer in the city faced criminal charges for an on-duty shooting. The criminal case against Samayoa is ongoing. Boudins office has pending cases against 11 officers, seven of whom face charges for alleged conduct while on duty.

The prosecutions rely on a 3-year-old memorandum of understanding with the SFPD that makes Boudins office the lead investigator in serious police violence cases. In early February, Police Chief Bill Scott tried to end the arrangement and alleged Boudin wasnt abiding by the MOUs terms, which Boudin denied. Both sides are still negotiating on what a revised version could look like.

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April Green, ONeils aunt, organized his vigil. There was a microphone available for use, but the crowd wasnt large enough for most to need it. Among the folks who spoke from a makeshift stage was Jameel Patterson, a community activist who knew ONeil and credited Boudin for fighting for accountability in political spaces that often lack Black representation. Others echoed his sentiments.

About midway through the vigil, one of Greens cousins, who had spent most of the event pacing along the edges, started shouting that there hasnt been justice in ONeils killing, and that Boudin was like other politicians who have been lying to Black San Franciscans about police accountability.

Nobody was alarmed by the commotion. Patterson told me the man was just saying what many Black residents feel. Boudin quietly listened until Green led her cousin away.

As the vigil started coming to an end, Green told me she was surprised Boudin was still there.

I know he has things to do, she said. But I know seeing him here for something like this meant a lot to people. ... It shows we arent alone in this fight and at least one person thinks our voices matter.

Justin Phillips is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @justmrphillips
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Andres Rojo cracked open his sketchbook just before noon at his longtime creative home in technicolor Balmy Alley.

Rojo is a 54-year-old artist from Veracruz also known as Speedy Corona. Some neighbors call him the mayor of the mural-adorned alley in San Franciscos Mission district, where he runs an art studio and bike shop out of a garage full of paint, tools and Burning Man-style, extra-tall bikes.

When the pandemic hit, the garage took on another role: Rojo started living full-time in a back office with worn carpet and no bathroom, heat or running water, he said in a recent eviction lawsuit.

Its a little like the Middle Ages, Rojo told The Chronicle, where the shop owner lives in the back.

But in a city increasingly out of reach, it was still something.

After losing the eviction case on the grounds that his use of the space created a nuisance, Rojo has just over a month to find a new home for himself and his business. Advocates see the case as a cautionary tale about San Franciscos deepening affordability crisis.

Expensive regions like the Bay Area are famous for rentals of illegal or pseudo-legal spaces, and artists have long lived in warehouses and other fringe housing. But Rojos case highlights fears about more renters being forced to downsize from apartments to rented rooms to unstable arrangements with no legal protections  a spiral researchers call being precariously housed or couch homeless, where renters lack stable housing but arent on the street.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

I think were going to see more of these cases, said Rojos lawyer, Raquel Fox of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. Its upsetting to see these conditions play out, when people are out of necessity in these living situations.

Rojos landlord Joseph Bravo denied in court filings that he was aware of anyone living in the garage. Bravo, a longtime San Francisco landlord-tenant lawyer, filed the case as a commercial nuisance eviction, alleging that Rojo kept flammable materials in the bike shop.

Its an unusual situation, Bravo said in an interview. This is a space that should have never been residential, and its a fire hazard.

Hanging on

Rojo wasnt sure about San Francisco when he moved here in 1991. A friend urged him to come, but it didnt seem like anyone had a job, and he really wanted to go to art school in Toronto.

He stuck around to learn English, then got married. Eventually, Rojo found an audience for portrait skills honed as a photojournalist in his hometown of Xalapa, and for more niche pieces like leather masks for the Folsom Street Fair. Most of all, he fell for his neighborhood.

The Mission is just beautiful, Rojo said. You can go to eat anything. People come and go. Everybody knows me.

It was 2001 when Rojo moved into an apartment over the garage on Balmy Alley. Even after he moved out two years later, he kept paying $100 a month for storage space in the garage, he said in court filings, eventually paying $300 a month to rent the whole garage.

By 2016, Rojo was renting a nearby apartment but still using the garage for storage and as a studio in the alley; his use of the garage increased, he said in court filings, to repairing motorcycles. His landlord was aware of the change, Rojo argued in legal filings, and he soon switched to less chemical-intensive bike repairs. But he was operating in a neighborhood transformed. Where he and his ex-wife once found a body on their doorstep, tech executives were moving in and one-bedrooms rented for $3,000.

In 2017, Rojo said, his monthly rent at the nearby apartment was increased from $1,000 to $4,000. He said in court filings that he worked with the landlord to stay during a planned remodel, but after he moved out, he started sleeping part-time at the garage and part-time at a neighbors. Since the neighbor was elderly and vulnerable to the coronavirus, Rojo told the court that in 2020 he moved completely into the garage.

It was terrible, Rojo told The Chronicle. But compared to sleeping in a car

Most Bay Area cities, including San Francisco, dont estimate how many people resort to marginal spaces like garages, couches or closets as part of regular housing inventories. One 2013 homeless count in Marin County found there were four times as many people in precarious situations  4,388 people  than there were currently homeless. The county tallied another 196 people in places not meant for human habitation.

Another report published by the National Coalition for the Homeless estimated that, across the U.S., some 1.7% of the population may experience couch-homelessness, defined in that report as staying with someone else.

Identifying the couch-homeless is important because people are often couch-homeless before they become street-homeless, the authors wrote. This is because people in difficult situations can often find someone to stay with, but only for a limited time.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

The 2016 Ghost Ship fire that killed 36 people at an illegal live-work artist warehouse in Oakland is the Bay Areas most notorious recent example of what can go wrong when officials leave murky living conditions and aging buildings to fester. The deadly blaze spawned a web of lawsuits, and the warehouses primary tenant Derick Almena ultimately pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter.

Rojo and his attorneys disputed the gravity of fire hazards at the Mission garage. Bravo opposed a motion to delay the eviction on the grounds that, Facing homelessness (as) the result of creating a fire hazard is not an extreme hardship.

The judge was also unconvinced that the garage was preferable to whatever might come next.

Thats whats being requested of the court right now  an order saying you can live in an area that doesnt even have a toilet, Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo said at Rojos April trial, Mission Local reported. I cant do that.

Under siege

With his paintbrushes out and the sun shining, Rojo was at ease the day after an April 18 settlement gave him 40 days to move out of the garage. He wasnt sure where he or his business would go long-term, but he planned to stay with friends.

For the moment, he focused on capturing the spirit animal of another artist and Mexico transplant seated in his studio, Denhi Donis.

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Im going to ask you a favor, Rojo implored his subject in Spanish. That you make the face of a coyote.

Ooooh oooooh ooooh, Donis played along as Rojo sketched.

They laughed, but tears followed minutes later. Donis had also received her own eviction notice, after the owners of the Bernal Heights house where shes rented a lower-level unit for 15 years filed a notice that they intend to stop renting it out in whats known as an Ellis Act eviction.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

The daughter of renowned Mexican painter Roberto Donis said she first moved to a San Francisco shelter with her two children 25 years ago, after escaping a bad relationship. In the years since, shes sold flowers, worked at community organizations and created ornate floral art for cultural events.

She offered Rojo white carnations with feathered red tips as a symbol of prosperity.

We need it, Donis said. Its not only my house. Its my life.

Rojos attorney Fox is also representing Donis, who is organizing a protest to fight her eviction. Fox rattles off other cases nearby, like a 10-unit building facing Ellis Act evictions, and a lawsuit where a 10-year-old was named as a defendant in her familys eviction case. With pandemic tenant protections expiring, she worries how many may follow.

Artists and low-income, often Black and Latino, San Franciscans already seem to be bearing the brunt in a city that is increasingly hard to recognize, Fox said. She, too, is struggling to help her daughter find an apartment on an early-career salary.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

The Mission is once again under siege, said Fox, who grew up in Noe Valley. There was a lull, and now its back.

For Rojo, the sting of losing the trial is still fresh. But as he brought the portrait of Donis to life with earthy shades of red and brown, he focused on how dozens of neighbors and activists supported him in court.

Satisfied with the days progress, the pair emerged into the alleys kaleidoscope of colors. A breeze blew, and neighborhood shaman Jorge Molina drifted by to offer a word of wisdom.

There was no justice, Molina said. Just us.

Lauren Hepler (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hepler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LAHepler
With salsa music blasting through In Chan Kaajal Park in the Mission District on Saturday, Stephanie Garcia, 28, sat down underneath a white tent and got her first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Even after holding out for more than a year, she was still skeptical, she said, of whether it would actually work.

But for organizers of the Vidas Saludables Community Health and Wealth Fair in the park, Garcias decision to get the shot was evidence that their community outreach was working. The lively fair in the heart of the Mission was the latest effort by the Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) and its partners to connect with residents and visitors  especially Latinos  and provide them with useful information and services amid the pandemic.

The goal was to offer a fun, community-centered event to help locals learn about the kinds of resources that are available to them, as well as to combat misinformation about COVID-19 testing, vaccines and more, said Christopher Gil, a spokesperson for MEDA.

Were breaking down barriers around the whole thing, Gil said, adding that developing trust within the community was crucial. If your abuelita or your tia tells you to go get the shot, youll get the shot.

Saturdays fair, he said, was about creating opportunities for people to learn and ask questions, eliminate the language barrier among Latinos and generally help residents find solutions to challenges related to health and wellness.

Jana Asenbrennerova/Special to The Chronicle

Early on in the pandemic, Gil said, Latinos in San Francisco were disproportionately affected by COVID-19, making up roughly half of all the citys COVID-19 cases despite accounting for just 15% of the population. Many Latinos are frontline workers, and crowded living conditions  common among Latino families in the Mission  made isolating difficult or impossible, he said.

At In Chan Kaajal Park on Saturday, music filled the air and an Aztec dance group performed as dozens of families walked from tent to tent. Many chatted with outreach workers or volunteers and picked up fliers with information about everything from medical, dental and mental health care to summer camps, affordable housing and local food banks.

In addition to COVID-19 vaccines and testing, the fair offered opportunities for HIV and blood-pressure screenings. Attendees could speak with experts for financial support and inquire about a variety of family services. Some people played games or participated in a live Zumba class. Others stopped for a free massage or to pick up bags of fresh produce.

Jana Asenbrennerova/Special to The Chronicle

The fair highlighted the love that exists in this community, Juan Sanchez, 68, said in Spanish after picking up a flier that encouraged people to call a phone number if they had questions about COVID. The fact that people could get vaccinated at the fair was fantastic, he said.

Under one of the tents was a large sheet of paper where people were encouraged to share their reasons for getting vaccinated. One person wrote that they got their shot because their job required it. Another wrote that they live with someone who is at higher risk of getting seriously ill. Several said they wanted to play a role in keeping their community safe.

Maria Sanchez, a promotora, or outreach worker with the group Promotoras Activas SF, said she has noticed that local Latinos have become more receptive to seeking out COVID-related resources, such as vaccines and testing. In San Francisco, 89% of Latinos now have at least two vaccine doses, one of the highest vaccination rates among ethnic groups in the city, Gil said.

Jana Asenbrennerova/Special to The Chronicle

Promotoras Activas SF has worked since last fall to connect with Latinos and help them take advantage of resources that are available to them. Promotoras like Sanchez do outreach and education, help people make appointments, and follow up with them afterward to make sure the families theyre assisting feel supported.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

You want to help your people, Sanchez said in Spanish. We speak Spanish, we understand the culture, we understand where the concerns come from. At one point, many of us found ourselves in the same situations.

Maria de Lourdes Covarrubias said she was able to pick up a lot of new information at the fair, finding helpful dental care resources that she didnt know existed.

This is a really good thing, she said of the fair. With events like this, one begins to learn how to get help.

Andy Picon (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: andy.picon@hearst.com Twitter: @andpicon
The dreams of the Peoples Convoy quickly died in the Bay Area after a critical tactical error: turning onto a street with a Safeway and a group of bored kids.

The trucker convoy, which aimed to emulate the disruptive Canadian protests against COVID-19 restrictions, has failed spectacularly at every turn. During a few weeks of driving around Washington, D.C., the convoy was held up by a single bicyclist, and some convoy members said they were having difficulty finding places for bathroom breaks and, as a result, were forced to urinate in their pants.

After an anemic showing in Washington, the convoy made the long drive back across the country, landing in the Bay Area this week. Since the convoy began, practically all major COVID restrictions have been lifted in the United States, so it appears its switched its messaging to support other conservative causes.

On Friday afternoon, the small convoy of semitrucks, pickup trucks, minivans and other cars drove to Democratic Assemblymember Buffy Wicks East Bay home to protest her support of an abortion rights bill. As they honked and used bullhorns in the quiet residential neighborhood, neighbors gathered to heckle them right back, yelling at the truckers to get off their street.

Livestreams posted by convoy participants show police arriving to protect Wicks home, which eventually prompted the group to move on. It was here the convoy members made their mistake, driving onto busy, one-lane College Avenue on the Berkeley-Oakland border. There, slowed down by the usual Friday afternoon traffic, they were sitting ducks outside the Safeway. A large group of kids, armed with eggs purchased at the grocery store, began pelting the convoy.

Were fighting for your freedoms too, one convoy participant said as eggs flew amid shouts of get the fk out of here by the gathering crowd. A few ill-advised convoy drivers had their windows rolled down, resulting in eggs splattering the insides of their vehicles. Passersby watched in confusion and amusement, with some adults stopping to cheer on the kids.

One livestreamer for the convoy begrudgingly conceded victory to the Bay Area youth. Well, its convenient because theres a Safeway right there that sells eggs, he said on the stream.

Furious truckers then drove out of town, heading back on the highway toward their base in Sacramento. According to citizens band radio captured by the livestream audio, truckers complained about needing to wash their vehicles and seemed shocked at how poorly received they were by locals. According to Daily Beast reporter Zachary Petrizzo, the convoy also encountered setbacks the day before in San Francisco.

The Peoples Convoy made it to San Francisco and decided to try and locate Nancy Pelosis residence, but the planned activity of placing flags in her yard fell apart due to the group failing to come to a consensus on what home was actually Pelosis, Petrizzo tweeted.

In the aftermath of its defeat at the Rockridge Safeway, the convoy has returned to Sacramento Raceway Park. Its unclear what its future plans are, but according to its website, it has raised nearly $1.9 million in donations.

SFGATE politics editor Eric Ting contributed to this report.
AGOURA HILLS, Calif. (AP)  Construction has begun on what is billed as the world's largest wildlife crossing for mountain lions and other animals caught in Southern California's urban sprawl.

Officials held a ceremony Friday to mark the start of construction of a $90 million bridge over a freeway and feeder road that is about 35 miles (56.33 kilometers) northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

"This wildlife crossing could not have come at a better time. It is truly a game changer," said Jeff Sikich, biologist for the National Park Service. Today's groundbreaking sets a path toward saving our local mountain lions and supporting the diversity of wildlife in this whole region.

The bridge will stretch 200 feet (61 meters) over U.S. 101 to give big cats, coyotes, deer and other wildlife a safe path to the nearby Santa Monica Mountains. It is expected to be completed by early 2025 and will be named the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing for the philanthropist whose foundation donated $25 million.

Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

About 300,000 cars a day travel that stretch of the 101 in Agoura Hills, a small city surrounded by a patchwork of protected wildland that the new crossing will connect.

The star of the fundraising campaign to build the bridge was mountain lion P-22, who traveled across freeways and made his home in a huge Los Angeles park. While he is unlikely to use the span because he lives many miles away, P-22 became a symbol of the shrinking genetic diversity of wild animals that must remain all but trapped by sprawling development or risk becoming roadkill.

Scientists tracking mountain lions fitted with GPS collars found over decades that roadways are largely confining animals in mountains that run along the Malibu coast and across the middle of Los Angeles to Griffith Park, where P-22 settled.

On Thursday, a mountain lion was struck and killed on a nearby freeway. J.P. Rose, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said these deaths are preventable if the state invests in more wildlife crossings.

Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

Wildlife crossings  bridges and tunnels  are common in western Europe and Canada. A famous one in Banff National Park in Alberta spans the Trans-Canada Highway and is frequently used by bears, moose and elk.

Cara Lacey, project director for wildlife corridors and crossings project at the Nature Conservancy, said her organization has been mapping out other wildlife crossings that she hopes can also be built so animals can seek out mates and food sources.

We can do this everywhere, she said. "We and our partners have a vision for reconnected California where wildlife does not have to compete with cars to cross roads."
There have been many cold and snowy days recently making it hard to believe that in a few short weeks we will be marking Memorial Day weekend.

Although that weekend doesn't coincide with the calendar version of when summer officially begins, most of us generally agree that is our unofficial beginning to the season. Although it has been a gloomy spring from a weather standpoint there is good reason for people from this area to remain positive for what lies ahead in the coming weeks and month.

Besides nature coming back to life with the arrival of flowers, leaves on the trees and warmer temperatures that actually make you want to watch a sunset at the beach there are other positive things taking place. It also is the time when the population of this small county on the shores of Lake Michigan swells in size with the return of snowbirds returning from the south and tourists visiting our community.

However, this year the summer months might also bring about something new and different to Manistee unlike what we have witnessed in the past. In fact, the Manistee we see on Memorial Day may look quite differently from the one that will exist when we roll up the sidewalks and put everything in storage for another fall and winter on Labor Day.

This community has been a place I have called home for more than 60 years and its hard to recall an upcoming summer season when so many projects are lined up to begin taking place. Those projects will without a doubt bring a new look to many areas of this community.

Its a movement that started in the past several years with projects like the West Shore Community College Manistee Downtown Education Center on River Street, the moving of the historic shelter at Orchard Beach State Park and the construction of an apartment complex at the old Washington School site on Ford Street.

Change is always something some will embrace while others will disagree with it. But like it or hate it, the one thing that is certain is things are going to look different in many areas of Manistee come Labor Day.

Lets start with the Manistee Area Public Schools; voters approved a bond proposal in May 2021 that will finally swing into action full force. One of the changing scene things I spoke of will take place at the corner of Sixth and Maple streets with the demolition of a building that has been a part of the community for 90 plus years.

The old high school building has been part of that location since 1927. Since the district stopped using the building years ago it has fallen into total disrepair and is one eyesore that needs to be torn down.

Constructed in its place will be a bright, new elementary school building that will be much more appealing to the eye, but also a structure that will meet the needs of children for years to come. Its a switch in views that is impossible to argue against and one that will brighten up the whole neighborhood.

Another new look in the community that is already in progress is the construction of the Hampton Inn at First Street Beach. I am not here to stir up the passionate differences of opinion on both sides of the fence on that issue, but to merely point out it is another one of those changing scenes we will witness in this area over the next couple of months.

There also may be some new looks to several parts of the east end of River Street. The most notable would be the Spirit of the Woods Gateway project on the first block off of River Street. Buildings located in that section will be coming down soon and fresh new ones will be going up in their place for this project that will bring a hotel, dining and other options to that area.

Further back to the east on River Street, one of Manistees older buildings the former Iron Works that was constructed in 1907 is undergoing a transformation to bring in a brewery and marijuana grow facility. Although the actual exterior structure will not be changing much, there will be more people in and around that building.

Another building we have been watching transform on River Street over the past few months that should have a much different look by Labor Day is the Fricano's Manistee River restaurant located by the Manistee Municipal Marina. And speaking of the marina, even it is undergoing a renovation of sorts receiving new docks, so by fall that whole section of our community should have a new look.

All of us have also witnessed the upgrade project at the Maple Street Bridge and anyone who has walked on the Riverwalk in the past few weeks may have noticed a fresh coat of paint sprucing up the underside of that nearly 60-year-old structure.

More improvements are coming down the road to the Memorial Bridge as well, as its another changing part of scenery from that general area.

Memorial Drive that leads into both bridges will be getting a much-needed overhaul and upgrade this summer. This long overdue project will finally take away the street that had become one big cold patch of asphalt filling one pothole connected to another.

The work should give a new fresh look to the Veterans Memorial Park. What better way is there to showcase those honored veterans memorials? Also on the resurfacing schedule are other streets in the city in need of repair adding more fresh looks to several neighborhoods.

Plans are moving forward as well with the former Hotel Northern building on Washington Street where there are plans to renovate that structurex, adding another new look to the community.

Yes, the Manistee you see on Memorial Day may have some new looks by Labor Day. The look may be different but deep down it is the same city we continue to know and love and our feelings will remain that way about it long after I see you again on Thursday.
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP)  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ' deepening feud with Walt Disney World is testing the limits of his combative leadership style while sending an unmistakable message to his rivals that virtually nothing is off limits as he plots his political future.

The 43-year-old Republican has repeatedly demonstrated an acute willingness to fight over the course of his decadelong political career. He has turned against former aides and rejected the GOP Legislature's rewrite of congressional maps, forcing lawmakers to accept a version more to his liking and prompting voting rights groups to sue. He's also leaned into simmering tensions with Donald Trump, which is notable for someone seeking to lead a party where loyalty to the former president is a requirement.

But DeSantis' decision to punish Disney World, one of the world's most popular tourist destinations and one of Florida's biggest private employers, took his fighter mentality to a new level. In retribution for Disney's criticism of a new state law condemned by critics as Don't Say Gay, DeSantis signed legislation on Friday stripping the theme park of a decades-old special agreement that allowed it to govern itself.

To critics, including some in his own party, such a raw exercise of power suggests DeSantis is operating with a sense of invincibility that could come back to haunt him. Others see an ambitious politician emboldened by strong support in his state and a mountain of campaign cash grabbing an opportunity to further stoke the nation's culture wars, turning himself into a hero among Republican voters in the process.

When you listen to Ron DeSantis, it's righteous indignation: 'Here's why you're wrong and here's why I'm right,'' said Florida Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, a former state GOP chairman. And it is that righteous indignation and that willingness to fight back that endears people to Ron DeSantis' message. As long as he keeps on showing that he's willing to fight, people are going to continue to keep flocking to him."

DeSantis is up for reelection in November. But in the wake of his scrap with Disney, he will introduce himself to a key group of presidential primary voters this week when he campaigns for Nevada Senate candidate Adam Laxalt. The appearance marks his first of the year in a state featured prominently on the presidential calendar, although DeSantis aides insist it is simply a trip to help out a longtime friend.

Disney drew DeSantis wrath for opposing a new state law that bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. The DeSantis-backed bill has been condemned by LGBTQ activists nationwide as homophobic, although the measure, like others dealing with transgender athletes and racial history in schools, has emerged as a core piece of the GOPs political strategy.

The Disney legislation, which does not take effect until June 2023, could cause massive economic fallout for the company, the surrounding communities and the millions who visit the Orlando amusement park every year.

There are risks to DeSantis' embrace of the legislation, particularly if his antagonism towards Disney threatens the GOP's standing with independents and women, who could play crucial roles in the fall campaign. Jenna Ellis, a former Trump administration attorney, called the DeSantis-backed legislation vengeful.

Democrats who are facing a tough election year are eager to highlight DeSantis' moves as a way to portray the GOP as a party of extremists. In an interview, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison described DeSantis attack on Disney as a continuation of a divisive agenda geared toward booking interviews on conservative media at the expense of his constituents.

The people of Florida deserve a governor whose first priority is them, not his own political ambition, Harrison said.

President Joe Biden said at a party fundraiser in Seattle that this is not your father's Republican Party.

I respect conservatives, Biden told donors on Thursday. Theres nothing conservative about deciding youre going to throw Disney out of its present posture because ... you think we should be not be able to say, gay."

In a statement, DeSantis' spokesperson Taryn Fenske, called the governor a principled and driven leader who accomplishes exactly what he says he will do.

Indeed, DeSantis' friends and foes in the GOP agree that his crackdown on Disney is a major political victory among Republican base voters already enamored by his pushback against pandemic-related public health measures over the past two years. They suggest it also taps into a growing Republican embrace of anti-corporate populism and parental control of education that resonates with a wider swath of voters.

Republican pollsters have been privately testing DeSantis' political strength beyond Florida for several months, finding that the only Republican consistently with more support than DeSantis among GOP voters is Trump himself. At the same time, DeSantis is sitting on more than $100 million in campaign funds.

Hes a very smart guy in what hes doing and how hes doing it, Republican strategist David Urban, a close Trump ally, said of DeSantis.

Those close to the Florida governor say there is one message above all to take away from the Disney fight: that DeSantis, one of the few high-profile Republicans who has not ruled out running against Trump in a 2024 presidential primary, is not afraid of anybody, anything or any fight.

Tensions between the two men have been building for months.

In a Washington Post interview last month, Trump took credit for DeSantis' rise. And last weekend, longtime Trump loyalist Roger Stone released a video clip in which Stone calls DeSantis an expletive while greeting Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club.

So far, Florida voters seem to be on DeSantis' side.

Nearly 6 in 10 Florida voters approved of DeSantis' job performance in a February poll conducted by the University of North Florida. The poll also asked registered Republicans about a hypothetical presidential primary between Trump and DeSantis. The result? Trump and DeSantis were about even.

Brian Ballard, a Florida lobbyist and a major Republican fundraiser, said DeSantis has a combination of popularity and instincts that is shaping the modern-day GOP.

No other elected official, maybe in the country, has the Republican base support that Ron DeSantis has. So hes incredibly powerful, not only a powerful politician, but a powerful government leader, Ballard said. The guy really has the reins of power in his hands.

___

Peoples reported from New York. Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this report.
TUNIS, Tunisia (AP)  At least 12 Africans trying to reach Europe by boat have died and 10 others are missing after four migrant boats carrying an estimated 120 people sank after setting out across the Mediterranean, Tunisian maritime officials said Sunday.

The Tunisian navy rescued 98 people out of 120 believed to be on the boats, said Ali Ayari, spokesman for the Tunisian National Guard in the coastal region of Sfax. The region is the jumping-off point for many such migration attempts.
CEDAR CITY, Utah (AP)  Four people were killed when a single-engine airplane on a sightseeing tour crashed minutes after takeoff in rural southwestern Utah, authorities said Sunday.

Deputies discovered the aircraft after responding to a report of a fire just before 7 p.m. Saturday about five miles east of Cedar City, the Iron County Sheriffs Office said.

Pronounced dead at the scene were pilot Steven Eatchel and his wife Lindsay Eatchel of Springville Utah, Thomas Eatchel of Heber City Utah, and Danielle Deagostini of Sandy City, the sheriff's office said.

The National Transportation Safety Board identified the aircraft as a Diamond DA-40 and said it was investigating the crash. No cause was immediately identified.

The plane earlier in the day flew from Spanish Fork to Cedar City, where it had a layover of about 2-1/2 hours at the regional airport before taking off and heading east toward some mountains for a sightseeing tour of Zion National Park, the sheriff's office said.

Radar communication with the aircraft was lost about four minutes after it took off. The position of the downed aircraft and damage to foliage at the crash site suggested it was headed west when it crashed, the sheriff's office said.

Steven Eatchel had been working as a deputy in the Utah County jail and was married to Lindsay Eatchel, according to the Utah County Sheriff's Office. The couple had four children.

Cedar City has about 35,000 people. It's located about 250 miles south of Salt Lake City and roughly 50 miles from the borders of Arizona and Nevada.
Netherlands: Report on VERON Annual Meeting held April 23 The annual meeting of the Dutch amateur radio society VERON was held April 23. Among issues covered in the speech given by the Chair Remy Denker PA0AGF were Membership Growth and articles for magazine



A translation of an extract of the speech says:



Membership Growth



After the gigantic increase in membership in the early eighties, we saw a steady decline until the year 2017-2018. This decline has many causes and one of them is that a lot of information became findable via the internet and therefore the need for information provision via VERON's Electron magazine began to disappear.



This trend has been recognized by the Board and in recent years there has been a much stronger focus on publication via the website with daily news items. Kudos to the PR committee that took the first steps in this regard. There is now also a newsletter that is highly valued. From a substantial point of view, the articles published in Electron are at a good technical level. I have received signals that the magazine is held in high regard internationally.



Locally, the departments do everything they can to bring our hobby in all its facets to the attention in various ways. Also in our discussions with the Agency, the VERON tries to draw attention to the position of the radio amateurs and successes are not excluded. We now see that all these activities result in a slight increase in the number of members. The new members apparently see that we offer them an organization in which they feel at home. Nowadays it is called that the new members step into a warm bath. I assume that feeling will remain that way.



Not that we are going to rest on our laurels now. No, there are still many possibilities to offer an even better service.



It is important to note that we are building this together and by each other I mean you as directors of departments, committees and working groups. But also with you as a member of the VERON. Together we face the challenge that ensures that VERON offers a package where current and new members feel at home.



Unfortunately, we are also confronted with unsubscribing as a result of the death of members. That is a natural process.



A third aspect is the group of members who unsubscribe for whatever reason. That's a group we can't quite get a finger on yet. If it is out of dissatisfaction, we would like to hear about it via a comment. In any case, attention is paid to it.



Sharing knowledge



I regularly listen with great interest to the AmbergRonde on 80 meters led by Gerrit Jan Huisman PA0GJH. A wide range of topics are discussed extensively during this net. One amateur has a practical approach while another takes a more scientific approach to a problem. Nice to hear those discussions. Incidentally, attention is also paid to the person behind the radio amateur. My conclusion is that together we have a lot of knowledge under the name of a well-founded collective memory.



Of course, this also applies to other nets where technical topics are discussed. It is a pity that this knowledge is not shared. Experiments are often published on their own website. I understand this, but I would really appreciate that this knowledge is shared through articles in Electron. In this way our members can take note of it. The writer of an article shares his knowledge widely and our members read about it, which may provide an incentive to get started with a topic. A clear win/win situation. Let the editor's mailbox fill up.



Read the full speech at

https://tinyurl.com/IARU-Netherlands
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HILDALE, Utah (AP)  Marion Timpsons own marriages reflect Utahs recent legal battles over polygamy.

I married Holly in 2005 and Katie in 2013, and I married Lisa in 2014, the polygamist told FOX 13 News, referring to his wives.

One of his marriages took place shortly after a federal judge struck down Utahs anti-polygamy laws. Reality TV polygamist Kody Brown and his wives sued the state and won, effectively decriminalizing plural marriage as a religious belief. Then a federal appeals court reinstated the bigamy law and the Utah Legislature passed a law that re-criminalized bigamy.

For Timpson and his family, the shift again was too much.

Eighteen months later, when the politics changed again, on that ruling, she (Holly) said Lets get out. Were leaving Utah, he recalled in an interview with FOX 13 News.

The Timpsons moved from the Salt Lake City area down to Colorado City, Arizona.

In 2020, the Utah Legislature passed a law to decriminalize polygamy, reducing bigamy among consenting adults from a third-degree felony, punishable by prison time, to an infraction on par with a speeding ticket.

Thats for consenting adults, said Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson, who sponsored the bill when she served in the Utah Senate. Anyone who still commits bigamy, the traditional sense of bigamy where theyre married to someone and they go fraudulently marry someone else, thats a third-degree felony. Or if they try to coerce someone into purporting to marry them? Thats also a third-degree felony. We also kept a second-degree felony for anyone who engages in bigamy and also commits other crime like fraud or sexual abuse, things like that.

Henderson argued that it was time the state try something different to reach people within closed, polygamous societies to get them to report any crimes.

Bigamy had been a felony in Utah since 1935 and it clearly didnt do what the law, I think, or the people who put that law intended it for it do. It didnt stop people from engaging in polygamy. It ended up driving people underground, created a wall of secrecy surrounding some communities, she said.

The change in approach was significant, given Utahs long history with polygamy. Plural marriage has been woven into the fabric of Utah. Mormon pioneers settled here after being driven out of other states in part because of their beliefs in plural marriage. In order to get statehood, Utah had to prohibit polygamy. It's in the state constitution. Polygamists were imprisoned.

In 1953, authorities raided Short Creek"  the name for the border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona  and split apart families, putting polygamists in jail. In the early 2000s, the state of Utah launched a number of prosecutions of people for abuses within polygamy. In some cases, prosecutors tacked on a bigamy charge.

But in those prosecutions, cooperation was always difficult  even if the state was trying to combat horrific abuses. Sister-wives refused to testify against their husbands and others in the community refused to help. Henderson said her goal was to open up the closed societies to report abuses by bringing polygamy out into the open, without fear of criminal charges for everyone just for living a religious belief.

We had a serious human rights crisis that needed to be addressed, she said. So thats what my legislation in 2020 was meant to do.

The legislation personally benefited Alina Darger, a plural wife who is the executive director of Cherish Families, a nonprofit based in Hildale and Colorado City. She advocated on Utahs Capitol Hill in support of the bill.

People can come forward and say Im part of the state of Utah. Im part of this society. I have a proud heritage, too. I belong, she said.

Cherish Families runs a food pantry, offers parenting and healthy relationship classes, mental health support and other services for people in plural families.

We have no opinion about their religion or their families, that we were here to serve them and help them make their own decisions, said Shirlee Draper, Cherish Families operations director. That was really based on experiences we all had, experiences I had trying to leave the FLDS.

The Fundamentalist LDS Church, one of Utahs largest polygamous groups, was based in Hildale and Colorado City. Its leader, Warren Jeffs, is serving a life sentence in a Texas prison for child sex assault related to underage marriages. Since Jeffs imprisonment, and as a result of a number of other cultural and political shifts, the communities have dramatically changed. People who live in the communities say it is more open now than ever before.

Darger said part of that is because of the change in Utahs anti-polygamy laws which has led to many in plural families to open up about their lives. She said people are stepping forward to report abuses.

Were absolutely seeing it and were absolutely seeing it come top down in different groups, Darger said.

Cherish Families said in 2020, it provided assistance to 1,126 people and offered 24,951 services. In 2021, the number rose to 1,356 people and 46,083 services.

Tonia Tewell, the executive director of Holding Out Help, said she has also seen an increase in abuse reports. But Tewell said she does not believe it is because of the law change.

Weve had a 25% increase, our abuse rate is up to 95% and not a single of those clients have said weve landed here because the law has changed, she told FOX 13 News. I hope I am wrong and this is really going to do what everybody is saying its going to be doing. But I dont think it has. I dont think its accomplished what the state hoped.

Tewell, who testified against the decriminalization bill, said she fears abusers within polygamous communities have become emboldened because there is no longer the threat of felony charges against them. She argued the state has yet to address the root problems within polygamous communities.

Pedophiles are still pedophiles. Abusers are still abusers. And traffickers are still trafficking clients and until that systemic issue has been dealt with, were still perpetuating the problem, she said.

Holding Out Help said it served 167 clients in 2020. That number climbed to 203 in 2021, with more coming in. The group recently opened another shelter in the Draper area to meet growing demand for services.

But asked if polygamy should be re-criminalized, Tewell said she was not so sure.

I really dont know either way. All I know is were not really dealing with the core issue. A lot of the people living in these communities are my friends and for me to go and say i want them to be felons doesnt feel right, either, she said. I cant say one way or another. I dont know if Im right when I was going up against it on Capitol Hill. I just know what my clients were saying and I had to be the voice for them.

Lt. Gov. Henderson said the fact that more people were reporting abuses spoke to the decriminalization effort working.

I think any increase in reporting, any increase in services that are requested, points to the success of the law not to its failure, she told FOX 13 News.

While the bill was designed to address crimes within closed societies, there has also been a larger cultural shift in polygamous communities. Where there was once a fear that if you spoke too much about your families you would invite police and prosecutors cracking down, now there is more of a freedom to speak openly.

We dont have the same worries we did a few years ago. Really, and truly, you can be more honest about your lifestyle, said Ruth Williams, a plural wife in Centennial Park, Ariz. Theres a lot of work to be done. We have a long ways to go.

Williams is a member of the Centennial Park Action Committee, a group of plural wives who pushed for decriminalization and challenged prosecutors who sought to stigmatize polygamists. Marlyne Hammon, another member of the group, said they spoke out when Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff began addressing abuses within polygamous communities but failed to include plural families.

We ladies said Thats enough of that. Weve got to stand up and speak for ourselves, she said.

Hammon, who grew up in the 1953 raid, said she has also observed a change in how others view people who live polygamy. She said many had to fight for it.

I feel a more openness and a friendliness and an ability to interact with people without that hanging over, like they used to look at polygamists, Hammon told FOX 13 News.

But there are still some fears that Utah could change course again when it comes to the politics surrounding polygamy.

I did have a lot of people in the community saying Lets hold off. Dont say who you are, dont post your family pictures, Darger said.

Timpson said he has been open about his family, posting photos on social media. He has observed co-workers change their opinions of his lifestyle and now defending his family.

As soon as you get rid of the pressures to close down a polygamous society and open it up? he said. Remove those pressures, then you can acutely prosecute those issues that then remove the stigma.

But Draper cautioned it will not happen immediately.

I can personally see a lot more people coming out and a lot more people reporting crimes, she said. But its going to take some time to undo some of the harms. Its going to take a generation.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  The island kingdom of Bahrain announced Sunday it would start banning the import, distribution and sale of single-use lightweight plastic bags from mid-September, the latest move by an oil-producer to advance carbon reduction goals.

The statement from Bahrain's state-run news agency did not specify how the upcoming ban would be enforced, whether by fining distributors of the ubiquitous thin bags or charging people for their use.
I thought I knew all about the information that consumer reporting agencies were collecting on me.

Then I discovered The Work Number  a database that reports every paycheck Ive received from my company, with net and gross amounts, going back to my hire date six years ago.

Another consumer reporting agency shows the results of a 2016 echocardiogram. (It was normal.) Yet another tracks insurance claims on my home and car. If Id made too many returns at retail stores or bounced a check at a casino, that could show up in a database as well.

Any data point that someone can track, theres going to be a bureau or someone gathering information and selling that information, says Matthew Loker, a consumer protection attorney in Arroyo Grande, California.

Unfortunately, not all the information being reported is accurate  and mistakes can have serious consequences. Loker says one of his clients lost a lucrative job offer because an employment screening company confused her with a drug smuggler. By the time the error was fixed, the position was filled. Other people have been denied insurance, apartments, bank accounts and government benefits because of database errors.

But discovering and correcting mistakes is no small task.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau maintains a list of consumer reporting agencies thats currently 38 pages long. In addition to the big three credit bureaus  Equifax, Experian and TransUnion  the list includes 22 employment screeners, 10 tenant screeners, six check and bank screeners, four insurance reporting agencies and two medical information companies, among others.

Checking all those reports would be a monumental task, says consumer advocate Chi Chi Wu , a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. Even narrowing down the options to the agency most likely to have relevant information can be tough, Wu says.

Lets say youre applying for an apartment, Wu says. There are all these companies and you dont know which one your landlord is going to use.

You can ask the prospective landlord, of course, but by the time you spot and fix an error in the report, that apartment may be long since rented.

Privacy advocate Evan Hendricks recommends you start by targeting some of the larger databases. For tenant screening, that could include RealPage or TransUnion SmartMove.

One of the largest consumer data aggregators is LexisNexis, which provides various types of background screening . The report you get back could be hundreds of pages long, detailing everything from traffic tickets and concealed weapons permits to the amount of every mortgage youve ever had, bankruptcies, tax liens, evictions and criminal records. LexisNexis also operates the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, or CLUE, which collects and reports auto and personal property claims. You can request your comprehensive report at consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com/consumer.

If youre employed, check The Work Number, which is owned by Equifax and has current payroll data for more than 136 million jobs. If your salary information is there  and it probably is  youll also see which companies and government agencies have checked it recently.

Government agencies also consult The Work Number files to fight unemployment fraud and determine eligibility for public benefits, among other uses. That alone is a good reason to check your file for errors, Wu says.

People have been kicked off or risked being kicked off of benefits or accused of an overpayment because of The Work Number, Wu says.

Request your ChexSystems report if you plan to open a new bank account or had problems with a previous account, such as not paying an overdraft fee or bouncing a check.

If you plan to apply for individual life, health, long-term care or disability insurance, request your files from MIB and Milliman IntelliScript. MIB collects information about medical conditions, while Milliman IntelliScript collects prescription drug purchase history.

You typically dont have to pay to request your data, but you may have to wait to get it. Some companies allow you to see your files online, but many require you to submit a form or call a toll-free number to request a report. A company has 15 days to respond once it receives your request, the CFPB says.

If you find any errors, follow the companys dispute process. If you cant get the problem resolved, you can file a complaint with the CFPB.

A few companies  including the credit bureaus, RealPage, LexisNexis, ChexSystems and The Work Number  give you the option to freeze your reports. That generally prevents companies from accessing your data without your permission. Freezes can involve some hassle since youll have to keep track of a password or PIN, and a freeze could slow down credit or other applications. The trade-off is more privacy.

Speaking of credit bureaus: Youre allowed free weekly access to your credit reports through the end of the year. But many other consumer reporting agencies limit your free reports to one every 12 months. So mark your calendar, since checking your data for errors is likely to be a never-ending task.
GILROY, Calif. (AP)  This years edition of Californias beloved Gilroy Garlic Festival has been canceled and the annual event's future is uncertain, organizers announced.

The celebration of the pungent vegetable has been held for more than 40 years, drawing huge crowds over three days to farm country 80 miles (129 kilometers) south of San Francisco.
BEIJING (AP)  China is promoting coal-fired power as the ruling Communist Party tries to revive a sluggish economy, prompting warnings Beijing is setting back efforts to cut climate-changing carbon emissions from the biggest global source.

Official plans call for boosting coal production capacity by 300 million tons this year, according to news reports. That is equal to 7% of last years output of 4.1 billion tons, which was an increase of 5.7% over 2020.

China is one of the biggest investors in wind and solar, but jittery leaders called for more coal-fired power after economic growth plunged last year and shortages caused blackouts and factory shutdowns. Russias attack on Ukraine added to anxiety that foreign oil and coal supplies might be disrupted.

This mentality of ensuring energy security has become dominant, trumping carbon neutrality, said Li Shuo, a senior global policy adviser for Greenpeace. We are moving into a relatively unfavorable time period for climate action in China.

Officials face political pressure to ensure stability as President Xi Jinping prepares to try to break with tradition and award himself a third five-year term as ruling party leader in the autumn.

Coal is important for energy security, Cabinet officials said at an April 20 meeting that approved plans to expand production capacity, according to Caixin, a business news magazine.

The ruling party also is building power plants to inject money into the economy and revive growth that sank to 4% over a year earlier in the final quarter of 2021, down from the full year's 8.1% expansion.

Governments have pledged to try to limit warming of the atmosphere to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the level of pre-industrial times. Leaders say what they really want is a limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

Scientists say even if the world hits the 2-degree goal in the 2015 Paris climate pact and the 2021 Glasgow follow-up agreement, that still will lead to higher seas, stronger storms, extinctions of plants and animals and more people dying from heat, smog and infectious diseases.

China is the top producer and consumer of coal. Global trends hinge on what Beijing does.

The Communist Party has rejected binding emissions commitments, citing its economic development needs. Beijing has avoided joining governments that promised to phase out use of coal-fired power.

In a 2020 speech to the United Nations, Xi said carbon emissions will peak by 2030, but he announced no target for the amount. Xi said China aims for carbon neutrality, or removing as much from the atmosphere by planting trees and other tactics as is emitted by industry and households, by 2060.

China accounts for 26.1% of global emissions, more than double the U.S. share of 12.8%, according to the World Resources Institute. Rhodium Group, a research firm, says China emits more than all developed economies combined.

Per person, Chinas 1.4 billion people on average emit the equivalent of 8.4 tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to WRI. That is less than half the U.S. average of 17.7 tons but more than the European Unions 7.5 tons.

China has abundant supplies of coal and produced more than 90% of the 4.4 billion tons it burned last year. More than half of its oil and gas is imported and leaders see that as a strategic risk.

Chinas goal of carbon neutrality by 2060 appears to be on track, but using more coal could jeopardize this, or at least slow it down and make it more costly, Clare Perry of the Environmental Investigations Agency said in an email.

Promoting coal will make emissions much higher than they need to be by the 2030 peak year, said Perry.

This move runs entirely counter to the science, she said.

Beijing has spent tens of billions of dollars on building solar and wind farms to reduce reliance on imported oil and gas and clean up its smog-choked cities. China accounted for about half of global investment in wind and solar in 2020.

Still, coal is expected to supply 60% of its power in the near future.

Beijing is cutting millions of jobs to shrink its bloated, state-owned coal mining industry, but output and consumption still are rising.

Authorities say they are shrinking carbon emissions per unit of economic output. The government reported a reduction of 3.8% last year, better than 2020s 1% but down from a 5.1% cut in 2017.

Last years total energy use increased 5.2% over 2020 after a revival of global demand for Chinese exports propelled a manufacturing boom, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Stimulus spending also might raise carbon output if it pays for building more bridges, train stations and other public works. That would encourage carbon-intensive steel and cement production.

Chinas coal-fired power plants operate at about half their capacity on average, but building more creates jobs and economic activity, said Greenpeaces Li. He said even if the power isnt needed now, local leaders face pressure to make them pay for themselves.

That locks China into a more high-carbon path, Li said. Its very difficult to fix.
NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP)  The recent appearance of two cruise ships in New London has raised hopes that Connecticut might stand to benefit from the return of an industry decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The two ships, part of American Queen Voyages, were on a tour of the East Coast and Canada, and were the first cruise ships to stop in New London in four years. Both are scheduled to stop in New London on the way back south in the fall.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)  A recent court ruling has opened the door to the release of psychological treatment records of priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany accused of child sexual abuse.

The Albany Times-Union reported the ruling came in a lawsuit by an alleged abuse victim from the 1980s who sought records detailing the treatment received by the Rev. Edward Pratt and other priests.

The diocese had argued that the records were subject to patient-physician privilege, but the appeals court wrote last Thursday that the privilege was waived because the priests' records had been shared with then-Bishop Howard J. Hubbard.

The appellate court also upheld a lower court judge's decision that ordered the diocese to turn over personnel records of dozens of priests determined to have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse from the 1940s through the 1990s, as well as notes of investigators hired by the diocese to look into sexual abuse allegations, the newspaper reported.

The claims of the victims-survivors remain the highest priority of the diocese. The guidance and orders provided by the courts are respected and followed with compliance, the diocese said Thursday in a statement, the Times-Union reported.

Last month, the same lower court judge ordered the release of a deposition taken last year in which Hubbard acknowledged covering up allegations of sexual abuse against children by priests.

Hundreds of people have sued the Albany diocese over sexual abuse they say they endured as children, sometimes decades ago. In his testimony, Hubbard said part of the reason he didnt report allegations of sexual abuse was to avoid scandal and protect the reputation of the diocese.
Andrew J. Rosen wasn't surprised when he was diagnosed with high blood pressure at 39. Both his parents had taken medication for years, which had effectively controlled the condition that affects nearly half of all American adults and frequently runs in families.

But Rosen, who lives in Carlsbad, Calif., was not so lucky. Even on the maximum recommended doses of five drugs, his blood pressure remained stubbornly elevated.

Rosen said he repeatedly asked his doctors whether an undiagnosed condition might be to blame. Each time, he received the same response: He had "essential hypertension" - high blood pressure with no underlying cause.

Sometimes, doctors told him, the condition, also known as primary hypertension, can be difficult to control. Poorly controlled high blood pressure increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, irreversible kidney damage and early death.

More than a decade would elapse before Rosen learned that he had been asking the right question but had been given the wrong answer. His persistently high blood pressure did have an underlying, treatable cause.

"He was on a bucketload of medication," which was the first clue, noted William F. Young Jr., a Mayo Clinic expert Rosen consulted in 2019. Young said Rosen's case is "extremely typical" of patients whose delayed diagnosis results in preventable harm.

For a variety of reasons, observed Young, a professor of medicine at Mayo, "physicians often seem to not think about what might be causing" resistant hypertension - high blood pressure that is not controlled by three or more drugs. It is an oversight he is attempting to remedy.

"To be honest," Young added, "this is one of the simplest things to diagnose."

- - -

Now 60, Rosen, senior vice president of development for a company that builds rehabilitation hospitals, suspects he developed high blood pressure in his late 20s, although there's no way to know. He hated having his blood pressure measured, so readings were confined to periodic medical visits.

Those measurements routinely exceeded 140/90 mmHg, the cutoff that then signified hypertension. (It has since been lowered to 130/80.) Rosen said he talked his way out of that diagnosis by assuring doctors he had "white-coat syndrome," also known as "white-coat hypertension" - readings that are high in a medical setting but otherwise normal. Because of his youth, doctors typically agreed.

In fact, Rosen didn't know if that was true; he assiduously avoided taking his blood pressure at home. "It was anxiety-producing," he said. "It was always high." He hated feeling the cuff squeezing his arm and preferred to assume he did not have high blood pressure.

Not all doctors were persuaded. His allergist in Atlanta, where Rosen was then living, expressed skepticism about the white-coat explanation. "He said, 'I don't know. You're too young for high blood pressure,' " Rosen recalled.

In 2001, after his internist diagnosed hypertension, Rosen began taking a beta blocker, a medication that blocks adrenaline. When his blood pressure didn't budge, his internist added two other classes of drugs: a calcium channel blocker and an ACE inhibitor. When that trio proved ineffective, the doctor increased the doses.

In his mid-40s, Rosen was told he had high levels of cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes, a chronic condition in which the processing of sugar is impaired. Cholesterol-lowering and diabetes drugs controlled those problems.

In 2011, after Rosen moved to the San Diego area, his new primary care doctor changed his blood pressure medications. When that resulted in only a minimal reduction, the doctor added two more drugs.

- - -

But the elevated readings persisted. "It would be 148/90 when the nurse measured it on the machine several times," Rosen said. At the end of a visit, Rosen's doctor would do a quick manual reading and announce that it had dropped to 118/69.

Rosen, whose sister is a physician, was relieved. "I assumed he was a really good doctor," he said. "And I liked his answer."

But over the next several years, he grew increasingly uneasy. Even though he took his medication faithfully, too many readings were too high to make him believe his blood pressure was under control.

In 2017, after both his parents had undergone cardiac bypass surgery for blocked coronary arteries, Rosen consulted a cardiologist.

The heart specialist ordered a stress echocardiogram, a test that measures how well the heart is functioning. It showed that Rosen's heart appeared to be normal, but the cardiologist was alarmed by his blood pressure, which was sometimes as high as 179/85, and increased the amount of the one drug Rosen wasn't taking at the maximum dose. He suggested that Rosen's hypertension might be the result of a kidney problem, but a kidney scan found nothing.

At this point, Rosen told his family physician he wanted to start looking for a "zebra," the term doctors use for a rare diagnosis. The doctor ordered tests for a pheochromocytoma, a rare, typically benign tumor that originates in one or both adrenal glands, which sit atop the kidneys.

After tests did not reveal a "pheo," Rosen was referred to an endocrinologist, a physician who specializes in treating hormone-related diseases.

- - -

Rosen saw the first endocrinologist in November 2018. She suspected he might have the disorder most commonly associated with resistant hypertension - primary aldosteronism (PA), also known as Conn or Conn's syndrome after University of Michigan endocrinologist Jerome W. Conn, who discovered it in 1954.

PA is caused by a surfeit of aldosterone, a hormone produced by the adrenal glands. Excess aldosterone can cause the kidneys to retain sodium and lose potassium, which raises blood pressure.

The disease can be detected by blood tests that measure the levels of aldosterone and renin, an enzyme made in the kidneys that helps control blood pressure, then calculating the ratio between the two. Further testing is required to confirm the diagnosis and to determine whether one or both adrenal glands are affected. In the latter case, PA is treated with medication. But in 30% of cases, PA is caused by a benign tumor on one gland. Surgically removing that gland can normalize blood pressure.

While awaiting the results of his blood tests, Rosen pored over the voluminous clinical guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of PA issued in 2016 by the Endocrine Society, the international medical organization of endocrinologists.

He discovered that sleep apnea and low potassium levels, both of which he had, are associated with the disease. And he was heartened when his blood tests seemed to point to it.

"To me, this seemed like a really good thing, because it's treatable," Rosen said.

But the junior doctor who worked with his endocrinologist ruled out the possibility. "You don't have it. Your aldo[sterone] is too low," Rosen remembers being told. Rosen said he protested that his understanding of the 50-page Endocrine Society guidelines, along with his calculation of the blood test ratio, suggested otherwise.

The fellow disagreed. Rosen said he ended the call and immediately began searching for a new specialist.

Soon afterward, Rosen saw a second endocrinologist, who agreed that PA seemed likely. She ordered additional testing along with a CT scan, which provided confirmation. The final step was a technically tricky procedure known as adrenal venous sampling, which involves the insertion of a catheter into the adrenal veins to determine whether one or both are affected. That finding would guide treatment.

After consulting Young, the second endocrinologist advised Rosen to undergo the vein sampling procedure at Mayo. In April 2019, Rosen and his sister flew to Minnesota and met with Young, the clinic's former chair of endocrinology and a past president of the Endocrine Society.

An interventional radiologist who specializes in the vein sampling procedure found that only one adrenal gland was involved, which meant that Rosen was a candidate for surgery. ("You need only half of one adrenal gland to be totally normal," Young said.)

In June 2019, Rosen underwent laparoscopic surgery at UCLA Medical Center. Over the next year, he lost 35 pounds and his health improved dramatically. He now needs a low dose of only one blood pressure medicine to achieve readings of 124/80.

"I feel much better now than I did before," he said. "And I'm much more active."

But the delayed diagnosis exacted an irreversible toll. Years of uncontrolled high blood pressure caused Stage 3b kidney disease, for which Rosen takes medication and regularly sees a kidney specialist. If his disease worsens, Rosen has been told he may need a kidney transplant.

- - -

Young said he sees patients like Rosen far too often, a primary reason he has become an evangelist for PA screening.

Although doctors have long been taught that the disease is rare, Young said that recent studies show it is not. Researchers estimate that 5% to 10% of people with high blood pressure and 20% of those with resistant hypertension have PA. Most don't know it because they have never been tested.

A 2020 Stanford study found that only 2.1% of patients with resistant hypertension were screened for PA; at the University of Minnesota, the figure was 4.2%. And a 2003 study from Australia found an unexpectedly large number of PA cases among a group of patients with high blood pressure.

"It's vastly underdiagnosed and not just in the U.S.," said Young, who advocates screening everyone with hypertension at least once. "From my perspective, it comes down to clinician awareness. Endocrinologists and nephrologists think of this. Primary care doctors, not so much."

People with PA are more likely to develop heart and kidney disease and have a poor quality of life, Young noted in a 2018 article. Timely treatment can reduce those outcomes.

Rosen said he, too, has sought to educate his doctors. "I have tried to tell every doctor I go to that if you have a patient on three or more [blood pressure] meds and they're not well-controlled, you need to test them" for PA, he said, echoing Endocrine Society guidelines.

After his surgery, Rosen said he "sent nice letters to all my old doctors saying, 'You missed this.' " The only doctor he heard from was the first endocrinologist, who called to apologize, saying that the fellow had misinterpreted Rosen's tests.

Rosen said he hopes his experience spares others. "Every day I wish I had done more research," he said. "If I had done it 20 years ago, I wouldn't have kidney damage."
OXFORD, Iowa (AP)  Arlo the bull was born with neurological damage. He can walk, but he needs help.

Faith is a cow who was born into the meat industry. She suffered from frostbite so severe that it caused her to lose a rear hoof. Her disability made it unsafe for her to live with other cows, so she was turned over to a neighboring farm in western Iowa, where she was destined to be slaughtered.

She met Arlo there, and they formed a bond.

Arlo was rescued by the Iowa Farm Sanctuary. The Oxford-based nonprofit negotiated to take Faith as well, so they could keep their friendship intact.

They now live on 40 acres of land, sharing the open space with chickens, pigs, sheep, barn cats, ducks, turkeys, one well-known miniature zebu and plenty of goats  including one particularly chatty newborn named Fawn.

On a recent weekday, sheep wandered across a field shared by cows and goats. Some cows curled up inside the barn, where a cat walked across the loft above them. Other animals, like the pigs, enjoyed some enclosed land just for them.

The efforts of IFS, which stand out in the heart of farm country, recently resulted in international recognition.

Iowa Farm Sanctuary is the first in the state to be accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries. The organization received the designation Feb. 1.

There are more than 150 GFAS-accredited and -verified sanctuaries, rescues and rehabilitation centers worldwide.

Its a huge accomplishment, and theres so much buildup to it. We were confident that we are accreditation-worthy, but it was just all the work that we put into it, Katie Valentine, assistant director of operations at the Iowa Farm Sanctuary, told the Press-Citizen.

The Iowa Farm Sanctuary was founded by Shawn and Jered Camp in 2016. The nonprofit focuses on helping animals with special needs like Ellie, a cow who was born blind.

Not all residents at the farm sanctuary have special needs. Many come from dangerous situations like Kathy the goat, who was rescued from a hoarder in Pennsylvania. Shes also Fawns mom.

Fawn is a fitting name for the young goat whose tan and white coloring resembles a young deer. Fawn kept the barn at IFS noisy with her many baas, comfortably trotting up to a reporter and waiting with other goats nearby.

Valentine said that the application process for accreditation was rigorous. The farm sanctuary began the process just over a year ago, she said.

It was a big deal for us. It instills confidence in our donors, so they know their money is going to a reputable organization, where we do everything we can to take care of these animals, Valentine said.

GFAS offers verification and accreditation. The Iowa Farm Sanctuary was in a position to skip verification and go straight to accreditation based upon the work it was already doing.

GFAS is really the only global sanctuary accreditation program, and part of what sets us apart is that we visit every single sanctuary that we accredit in person, Jessica Harris, program director of farmed animals at GFAS, told the Press-Citizen.

Accreditation from GFAS vouches for organizations with stakeholders, whether thats donors or a foundation.

Anybody who has any interest in knowing whether a sanctuary is reputable and operating ethically can see the GFAS seal right there on their website and understand at a glance what caliber of organization theyre engaging with, Harris said.

At minimum, the accreditation process takes several months, but its usually dependent on how prepared an organization is to take on this process.

It involves a written application and providing numerous documents like insurance, financial documents, policies on animal care and so on.

Iowa Farm Sanctuary reported $282,000 in revenue on its 2018 tax form, the most recent available. It had five employees and 25 volunteers that year, none of whom drew a salary from the nonprofit. It earned a gold rating for transparency from the nonprofit watchdog group GuideStar.

An organization must meet the GFAS Standards of Excellence to be accredited. The standards are specified to each order of animals, like testudines, the order that turtles and tortoises fall under, or canids, which includes foxes or wolves.

The standards contain guidelines for housing, veterinary care, well-being and handling, financial stability and more. Standards of Excellence also extend to the operational side of an organization.

The standards are continually updated and revised but were originally put together by an array of experts in various species, animal protection advocates, sanctuary managers and more.

In Iowa, which is a state known for having a lot of animal agriculture, Iowa Farm Sanctuary really stands out, because unlike (in animal agriculture) they are providing individualized care to their residents, Harris said.

Harris said Iowa Farm Sanctuarys focus on taking on special-needs animals stood out to GFAS, complimenting the farms ability to come up with creative and caring solutions for animals that might not otherwise have a home.

Animal care is of utmost importance, she said. But on the other side, you have to have some of those other operational and financial and organizational pieces to make sure that the sanctuary is sustainable.

The federation looks to see that organizations are treating animals as individuals and providing them with high-quality veterinary care.

Iowa Farm Sanctuary conducts a general health check for all residents every two weeks with a local veterinarian, Valentine said.

The Iowa Farm Sanctuary receives its residents from organizations that reach out, often when an animal is born with a disability or is ill, according to Valentine.

The sanctuarys capacity for care fluctuates depending on the number of volunteers and staff, Valentine said. It serves 111 animals currently, compared to the 70 cared for when it moved to this location from Marengo almost two years ago.

When an animal comes to the farm sanctuary  not needing urgent medical care  they are put into a designated quarantine space for 30 days.

They are assessed, vaccinated and will slowly be introduced to a herd of other animal residents.

From there, the animals live out their lives at the sanctuary cared for, like the miniature zebu named Angel, who lounges outside on the grass wrapped in a blue polka dot blanket to protect her against the chill. Angels back legs dont work, so shell get strapped into a rear wheelchair to get around. She can also be carried, thanks to her smaller size.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that red meat production in 2020 was 55.8 billion pounds. Commercial cattle slaughter in America in 2020 was 32.8 million head, and commercial hog slaughter was 132 million.

Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas accounted for 49% of Americas commercial red meat production in 2020, according to the USDA. In Iowa, more than 40 million commercial hogs were slaughtered.

I think a huge, very important piece that I touched on, but really want to point out is their location, which they themselves say is sort of the epicenter of animal agriculture, and it really is, Harris said.

So it is a very powerful position that they hold to be able to make change for farm animals and change some hearts in that region. Because it is a very different perspective of what a farm animal  and we use the term farmed animal, its something thats being done to them  of what a farmed animal really is and who they are.
Pakistan must enhance its strategic bonding with Russia, China and Turkey in order to accomplish its strategic and economic objectives as US led Western block has so far failed to recognize Pakistans pivotal role, its positive and leading role in Afghanistan peace process and its sacrifices in US-led war against terror.

by Asad Ali

Mid-April saw high-level, intense meetings between India and US- as PM Modi and President Biden announced a surprise virtual summit to take place just before talks between Indian Minister of External Affairs Jaishankar, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and their US counterparts Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. This years summit format dialogue came amid the looming threat of nuclear war in Ukraine. India and US receive a reality check as they intensify talks in Washington: agree to disagree on Ukraine, announce agreements on other fronts. As US Defence and Foreign Secretaries visited India last year to attend 3rd round of dialogue, this is the first 2+2 Ministerial held since Biden administration took over.

The dialogue was seen as pivotal as India has refused to bow down before Western and US pressure to condemn Russian aggression in Ukraine. The Indian government also denied US request to stop importing Russian oil. Last but not the least, India had also refused to endorse US and EU sanctions, and to negotiate a payment mechanism to work around the sanctions through Rupee-Rouble payments. These Indian actions severely damaged Western efforts to put more economic pressure on Russia.

So if Biden called India shaky amongst Quad members on Russia, US State Department Official Wendy Sherman said Washington would like India to move away from its partnership with Russia, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said she is deeply disappointed by the decision on buying oil, Deputy NSA Daleep Singh came to India and suggested there would consequences to Indias sanctions subversion, Director of White House National Economic Council, Brian Deese said Singh told India that consequences of a more explicit strategic alignment with Moscow would be significant and long-term.

During 2+2 ministerial dialogue, Russias invasion of Ukraine - and Indias disinterest in taking a hard position - dominated headlines. But in the days ahead of the actual visit, US policymakers refocused attention on the upside to the relationship: our shared concerns about the future of Asian security. While the Biden administration played the god cop, it slipped badly when Secretary of State Antony Blinken decided to raise the issue of human rights in India despite the matter not being discussed at all during the April 11 meetings.

Despite important announcements outlined in the joint statement after the dialogue, areas of tension remain. Perhaps most importantly, US didnt clarify path ahead on potential application of sanctions against India under Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). This is in reaction to Indias long-pending purchase of Russian-made S400 missile defense systems. While the purchase predates Russias invasion of Ukraine, the invasion makes sanctions relief more difficult. Apart from a clear pathway forward on CAATSA sanctions, other key issues remain in limbo. The two sides did not announce the plans to resume tri-service military exercise, Tiger Triumph. The exercise was first launched in 2019 to great fanfare but has not been held since. Also, longstanding commercial disputes did not receive a mentioned in the statement.

While the 2+2 ministerial dialogue is not meant to handle the day-to-day commercial issues, the business communities in both nations remain concerned that the list of commercial disputes continues to increase. In the aftermath of the recent geostrategic situation of the region, Pakistan has gotten the opportunity to engage with Russia on 2+2 format dialogue to mend further differences and strengthen their economic and strategic partnership which is now key to the regional integration. Both Pakistan and Russia are having a convergence of interests in some core strategic areas, which will further provide more potential for bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

Likewise, the recently concluded Indo-US two plus two dialogue has also exposed Washington biased policies when it comes to impose sanctions on other countries and pressurize them. Like, recently India categorically refused to oblige US and Western states in acting against Russia. India not voted against Russia at UNGA and UNSC. Despite these bold actions to deny American requests, Biden administration has failed to impose sanction on India under CAATSA. On the other hand, US and Western states are vehemently putting pressure on other states who are siding with Russia or acting as neutral states. It is pertinent to mention here that Western and US actions against developing countries have become rampant. They are dealing with India through economic prism while smaller and less developed states are increasingly becoming prey of their hostile and discriminatory approaches.

Consequently, Pakistan must enhance its strategic bonding with Russia, China and Turkey in order to accomplish its strategic and economic objectives as US led Western block has so far failed to recognize Pakistans pivotal role, its positive and leading role in Afghanistan peace process and its sacrifices in US-led war against terror. The recent American policy towards Pakistan has given us an ample opportunity to look beyond Western camp for economic, political and strategic cooperation. Increasing strategic bonding with Russia will help Pakistan in resolving outstanding disputes with India as Moscow has also strong strategic ties with India. Because, the sole objective of Indo-US two plus two dialogue is to put pressure on Russia and China and stop their economic and strategic progress in the region.

The writer is Islamabad based expert of strategic affairs
CAIRO (AP)  Egypt released more than three dozen prisoners Sunday, a week before the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is typically a time of amnesty, a political party and state-run media said.

Political activists and family members confirmed several high-profile detainees were freed.

The Reform and Development Party said those freed had been political prisoners being held in pre-trial detention. The English edition of the state-run newspaper Al-Ahram said 41 prisoners in all were released.

The government's human rights body said in a statement only that there had been a release of individuals held in pre-trial detention but gave no details.

The move came a week before the Eid holiday marking the end of Ramadan. It is typically a time when prisoners are released on presidential pardons, but the number of those freed was one of the largest in recent years. Thousands of political prisoners, however, are estimated to remain inside Egypt's jails, many without trial.

Among the released was political activist Waleed Shawky, his wife, Heba Anees, said on social media. She posted a picture of the couple hugging.

Journalist Mohamed Salah was also released, activist Esraa Abdel Fattah said. And Nabeh Elganadi, a human rights lawyer, posted a picture with Radwa Mohamed, who was arrested after making videos posted on social media criticizing President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.

Under broad counterterrorism laws, Egypts state prosecutors have often used vague charges to renew 15-day pretrial detention periods for months or years, often with little evidence.

On Sunday, Sanaa Seif, the sister of one of Egypts most high-profile detained activists, Alaa Abdel Fattah, said her brother had faced new ill-treatment in prison and he was on the 22th day of a hunger strike.

Meanwhile, new arrests are still taking place. On Saturday, the human rights lawyer Khaled Ali said several men in the country's south had been arrested and accused of spreading lies after they sung a song about rising food prices in a video posted online.

The government of el-Sissi  a U.S. ally with deep economic ties to European countries  has been relentlessly silencing dissenters and clamping down on independent organizations for years with arrests, detentions and jail sentences, and other restrictions.

Many of the top activists involved in the 2011 uprising in Egypt are now in prison, most of them arrested under a draconian law passed in 2013 that effectively bans all street protests.
HOUSTON (AP)  In a story published April 24, 2022, about the planned execution of Melissa Lucio, The Associated Press erroneously reported that Lucio would be the first Latina executed by Texas. Lucio would be the first Latina executed by Texas since 1863.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)  Baton Rouge Community Colleges 2022 commencement ceremonies next month will include an address from state Sen. Cleo Fields.

The college announced Thursday that the May 20 ceremony will take place near its Magnolia Performing Arts Theatre & Pavilion. And it will be streamed live on the colleges Facebook page.

College Chancellor Willie E. Smith praised Fields in a news release as someone who serves a vital role in shaping the future of the educational landscape for our parish and state.

After graduating from Southern University Law School in 1987, Fields was first elected to the state Senate at age 24. He later served in Congress before returning to the Legislature.
WEBSTER CITY, Iowa (AP)  She was never made to be inside, behind a desk, staring at a screen.

Jean Eells was made for something more. Rain or shine, summer or winter, this is a woman who is confident in nature.

Many of her contemporaries have already retired, but Eells continues reaching forward in her mission to help others, especially women and children, gain their footing in the great outdoors, and even becoming better stewards of the land.

Once the environmental education coordinator for Hamilton County Conservation, Eells has long since branched out into independent consulting and is the owner of E Resources Group. She specializes in soil and water conservation issues, in particular for women land owners who are seeking help to better manage their land.

That work, in the last year, has gained considerable accolades on a state and national basis.

I was astounded, Eells told the Fort Dodge Messenger. It was a big year.

Indeed, Eells earned two national awards and one state level award:

 Conservation Professional of the Year for 2021 from the International Soil and Water Conservation Society.

 Conservationist of the Year for 2021 from the National Organization for Professional Women in NRCS (National Resource Conservation Service).

 Iowa Conservation Woman of the Year for 2021 from the Conservation Districts of Iowa and Iowa NRCS Federal Womens Program.

All three of these awards are for my work with women land owners in conservation; talking about soil and water conservation, Eells said.

But why women?

For Eells, her focus on providing education and support to women landowners started when she realized how many women own land independently, and how they are often under-served in accessing programs that are available to all landowners.

In 2002, I was at a conference  and I had been doing conservation workshops for decades  when a speaker talked about land ownership in Iowa and how 47 percent of the land, almost half, is owned by women, she said. Up to that point, I didnt know that.

A long-time soil and water conservation district commissioner, Eells was very familiar with programs such as CRP, but seldom saw women take advantage of the program. Out of 50 applications, perhaps only three would be from women land owners.

That launched me into a Ph.D. program, she said, recalling that she knew she would have to be better educated herself in order to better educate others.

Eventually, she developed a strong working relationship with the Women, Food and Agriculture Network.

I started doing programs specifically for women land owners, not necessarily women farmers, but women who are land owners and who tend to be behind the scenes, she said.

Eells has led workshops on soil and water conservation issues for women in dozens of states, from Maine to Kentucky and beyond, meeting with more than 3,500 women in the process. She also teaches a course for NRCS at the federal level.

While travel had once been a big part of her work, as with all business travel since the pandemic began, her work has changed.

In 2020, when most of the world sheltered at home, Eells sought to find new ways to communicate and continue her work.

I spent most of 2020 pouting because we couldnt do anything, couldnt go anywhere, Eells said with a grin. So, I invested in a course in how to do Zoom meetings, and I drank the Kool-Aid.

Its hard to imagine the last two years without Zoom, but not all Zooming, is created equal.

What I found is that people dont mind Zoom meetings that are well facilitated, Eells said. They hate ones that are long and boring and dull. Im allergic to staff meetings.

This spring, she is offering a series of online workshops to help women land owners with soil and water conservation issues, as well as women in conservation who may not own land but work to help protect the environment.

And men will not be left out entirely. There will also be workshops that include others who may be a part of the farm, such as a husband, siblings, or out-of-state land owners.

While a great part of her mission is with women land owners, she also keeps her hand in other projects. Eells particularly enjoys research and finding ways to interpret history to audiences of today. She has consulted with street car projects in Des Moines and was instrumental in research and finding ways to bring to life a veterinary pharmaceutical lab that is part of the Floyd County Museum.

These days, visitors may find Eells inside, in front of a screen, but her heart is always outside. She still remembers the children she worked with as environmental education coordinator. Many of them are now parents themselves, and she hopes they remember how she sought to instill a love of nature.

I want to know that they had fun, thats what is important to her. That joy of being outside, of learning outside, can carry a person through a lot of different things.

And as for the women land owners who are now a big focus for Eells, she wants to help them preserve that land for future generations.

I want them to be confident enough and knowledgeable enough so that they can ask good questions. They need other women to talk to, and they need to feel supported, she said.

Slowing down?

Not hardly. With all those awards on her wall, Eells might just be catching a second wind.
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. (AP)  Declan Horgan remembers his first dinner service down to the plating.

I did a rack of lamb, brown sugar and mustard glaze with black pepper, he recalled. Sauteed green beans with trimmings off the lamb, made something that resembled Dauphinoise Potatoes.

Not bad for a 7-year-old.

Horgans culinary journey, which began in Dublin, Ireland, more than 30 years ago and has included stops on primetime television, recently reached Fredericksburg. Last month, he joined Rebellion Bourbon Bar + Kitchen as its new culinary director and executive chef.

Were thrilled to welcome Chef Horgan to the team, Rebellion co-owner Joel Griffin said in a statement. Hes a great match for our vision for Rebellion Bourbon Bar & Kitchen and brings extensive operational and leadership experience.

Horgan, 45, will split his time between Rebellions William Street location and Leesburg, where Rebellion will soon open a three-floor concept with a members-only cigar lounge on the top floor.

The latter will serve as a laboratory of sorts; Horgan will develop new recipes, which hell then photograph and discuss with Rebellion Fredericksburg kitchen manager Matt Matter over the phone.

The excitement comes from all of the experience he has, Matter said. So many people would be starstruck, but hes just a regular guy who wants to teach us as much as he can.

Horgan has only been on the job for a month, but he plans to eventually overhaul everything from portion size to the cutlery.

This menu for me, right now, is very male orientated, Horgan said. Its more big burgers and sandwiches, and its not really got a female influence on it. Im changing that.

Exhibit A: a beetroot salad with lemon-thyme flavored goat cheese thats been rolled in panko breadcrumbs and deep fried, drizzled with balsamic vinegar and olive oil and served on a bed of peppery arugula.

Other additions include buffalo cauliflower with a tempura breading, and taco fries, which replace poutine on Rebellions happy hour (36 p.m.) menu.

The restaurant, which is named for the 18th-century Whiskey Rebellion, offers 160 varieties of the stuff, and Horgan has plans to use them in everything from sauces and glazes to dry-aged beef.

Horgan traces his earliest inspirations to his maternal grandmother, who would make traditional Irish dishes like grilled lambs hearts and rosti whenever she babysat him.

There was never a case of Im not eating that, I dont like broccoli, he said. I ate everything. My mother had every cookbook under the sun, so I got to try all different types of flavors from a very young age.

The potato didnt stray far from the root on that one; much to his girlfriends chagrin, Horgan maintains a collection of more than 400 cookbooks, an impressive feat considering he left behind some 700 volumes when he came to the United States in 2015.

Through his father Denis, an angler on the Irish national team, Horgan learned how to butcher all manner of wild game. Berry-picking trips to the rural Irish County Kerry doubled as a lesson in foraging for flat cap mushrooms.

Subconsciously, I was always studying food, he said.

Culinary school, then, was a no-brainer. Horgan excelled during his two years at the DIT School of Culinary Arts and Food Technology in Dublin before working in some of the citys most esteemed eateries.

In Horgan, Rebellion is getting more than a seasoned, classically-trained cheftheyve hired a celebrity. His TikTok (chefdeclanhorgan) has more than 24 million views, and hes amassed legions of followers on Instagram, where he also posts cooking videos.

On St. Patricks Day, Horgan was invited to appear on the Today show. Wearing a black chefs smock bearing the Rebellion logo, he showed viewers how to prepare corned beef and cabbage with gnudi gnocchi.

Horgans popularity surged as a result of his performance on the television series Hells Kitchen with Gordon Ramsey. On season 21 of the show, which aired last year, Horgan advanced all the way to the finals, ultimately finishing third in the competition. He was the first Irishman to appear on the show.

Horgan admits that he never expected his star turn, which has reverberated outside of the kitchen.

Unbelievable, he says. Opportunities have fallen in my lap.

He has an endorsement deal with The Ridge wallet company, and pulled one out of his pocket as proof. Horgan has also secured deals with a kitchen uniform company and Guinness, the company known for its quintessential Irish Stout.

Horgans life has changed substantially since those first meals, prepared with humble Irish ingredients. His personality has not.

Ive always been this way, he says. Even when Im on TV, Im the exact same way. People like me, people dig me, people think Im actually an alright dude.

And I dont (mess) around. I tell you it straight, if its bad I just tell you straight. I dont mean offense by it, but I think people like that about me as well.
EAGLE PASS, Texas (AP)  The name of a Texas National Guard member who remains missing after going into the river along the U.S.-Mexico border to help two migrants who appeared to be drowning was released on Sunday by officials.

The Texas Military Department identified the missing Guard member as Specialist Bishop E. Evans, 22, from Arlington.

Evans went missing on Friday as he jumped into the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass along the U.S.-Mexico border in a section of the river known to have strong currents.

Evans is assigned to A Battery, 4-133 Field Artillery Regiment in New Braunfels, the Texas Military Department said in a statement. He joined the Texas Army National Guard in May 2019. Evans left Texas but returned in 2020 after taking part in Operation Spartan Shield in Kuwait.

Dive teams had stopped their operations Saturday evening due to the rivers strong current. Three airboats from the Texas Department of Public Safety helped with the search on Sunday.

The Texas Military Department said Evans was trying to rescue the two migrants when he disappeared.

Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber said Evans took off his jacket and left his radio before going into the water around 8:30 a.m. Friday.

He jumped in the river, Schmerber said. They never saw him come out.

The two migrants were taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. According to the military department, authorities believe the migrants were involved in drug smuggling.

Evans was assigned to Republican Gov. Greg Abbotts sprawling border security mission, known as Operation Lone Star, which has deployed thousands of Guard members across Texas 1,200-mile (1,920-kilometer) southern border since launching last year. The multibillion-dollar operation also includes a heavy presence of state troopers and authorizes Guard members to help make arrests.

The mission has come under scrutiny over migrants sitting in border jails for months on trespassing charges and low morale among Guard members over living conditions, long deployments and little to do.

Migrant rescues are common in the river along the Texas border, and the attempted crossings are also sometimes deadly.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  An Iowa man has been charged with first-degree murder after a deadly shooting at a Des Moines hotel Saturday night.

Des Moines Police spokesman Sgt. Paul Parizek said a 54-year-old man was found wounded after the shooting Saturday night, and he died Sunday at a hospital. KCCI reported that the shooting happened in the parking lot of an AmericInn Hotel.
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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)  Johnnie A. Jones Sr., a Louisiana civil rights attorney and World War II veteran who was wounded during the D-Day invasion of Normandy, has died. Jones was 102 years old.

Jones goddaughter, Mada McDonald, told WAFB-TV that Jones died Saturday at the Louisiana War Veterans Home in Jackson, Louisiana.

Jones was born Nov. 30, 1919 in Laurel Hill, Louisiana and raised on Rosemound Plantation by his parents, who farmed 73 acres of land but insisted that their son get an education. He graduated from Southern University and then was drafted in 1942. He became the Army's first African American warrant officer. He was assigned to a unit responsible for unloading equipment and supplies onto Normandy.

During the June 6, 1944 invasion  as Jones came ashore on Omaha Beach  he came under fire from a German sniper. Jones grabbed his weapon and returned fire, a memory that haunted him all his life.

I still see him, I see him every night, Jones told The Associated Press in a 2019 interview.

Jones almost never made it to the beachhead that day. His ship hit a mine, and he was blown from the second deck to the first. The explosion, blew me sky high into the air, Jones was quoted as saying in an Department of Veterans Affairs interview. Later, Jones got hit with shrapnel when he didnt hit the ground fast enough during a bomb attack.

By the end of World War II, more than a million African Americans were in uniform including the famed Tuskegee Airmen and the 761st Tank Battalion. But they returned from the war only to encounter discrimination back home.

Jones told the AP in 2019 that after returning from Europe, he had to move to the back of a bus filled with fellow soldiers as it crossed the Mason-Dixon line separating North from South.

I couldnt sit with the soldiers I had been on the battlefield with. I had to go to the back of the bus, said Jones. Moreover, while traveling to New Orleans to get shrapnel removed from his neck, Jones was pulled over by a white police officer and roughed up.

Such events served as a call to action, to fight racism. He obtained a law degree and was recruited in 1953 to help organize a bus boycott in Baton Rouge and defend the participants. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King used that event to plan his larger bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, several years later.

Jones also defended students arrested during sit-ins as civil rights protests gained momentum in the South. His car was bombed twice.

The French government in 2020 presented Jones with the Legion of Honor award for his World War II service.

It took decades for Jones' sacrifice and courage during World War II to be recognized. In 2021  at age 101  he finally received a Purple Heart, which is awarded to U.S. service members killed or wounded in action.

The Louisiana Digital Library has an interview with Jones on its website.

Funeral arrangements are pending, McDonald told the TV station.
A Tamil couple came to Gota-Go-Gama before going on their honeymoon, the bride still in her wedding finery, holding afloat the national flag. Protestors of all ethnicities sang the national anthem in Sinhala and Tamil.

by Tisaranee Gunasekara

Beyond the barricade

Is there a world you long to see?

Do you hear the people sing (Les Miserables)

Im 89 years old, the grandmotherly protestor holding a hand-drawn placard says. For the last...89 years I have not gone through so much misery. Every time in the night when the light goes off, I cry... Im going to the polima (queue) in my old age trying to get gas. I stand in the polima to get a packet of milk in my old age... What is the meaning of this? Havent they got a heart? (Newswire  6.4.2022 - Watch here).

That misery is worse now, and will become infinitely more in the coming months. The discussions with the IMF seem to have ended inconclusively. Other than trying to lease national assets (the list reportedly includes Katunayake, Ratmalana, and Mattala airports and the southern part of the Colombo Port), the Rajapaksas have no economic plan. They have abandoned even the pretence of governance, their energies focused on staying in power.

The Rajapaksas will not go into the powerless night peacefully. They have a world to protect, and will protect it to death, the countrys and ours. Already one life is lost, two children made fatherless. The residents of Gota-Go-Gama marked the wanton murder of Chaminda Lakshan by laying wreaths outside the Temple Trees.

Nothing, however, was farther from PM Rajapaksas mind than political obsequies. Just hours previously he had informed Neth FM that he will remain prime minister, even in the event of an interim government being formed. What use of interim governments when people with varying policies cant see eye to eye? he asked rhetorically, pertinently.

The Rajapaksas know what they want. The opposition doesnt. The Rajapaksas are concentrating their energies and efforts on jamming every constitutional highway and byway to their ouster. The opposition is too busy squabbling over power that is not yet  and may never be - theirs. The SJB and the JVP are wasting time and energy on who can organise a bigger march, probably as a prelude to a future presidential contestation between Sajith Premadasa and Anura Kumara Dissanayake. The 11 party Independent group is opposed not to the government but to Basil Rajapaksa; their aim is a palace coup to install Dulles Alahapperuma as prime minister under a President Gotabaya.

(A necessary digression. This week the Chinese Ambassador paid a public call on the leaders of the 11 parties in parliament, in a none-too-subtle message to the Rajapaksas about the wages of flouting Beijings authority. Obviously China sees Basil Rajapaksa as Americas and Indias Man and plans to regain its grip on Sri Lanka by engineering a power-shift within the regime. China is also pushing the old free trade deal idea as their solution to Lankan crisis.).

A three-pronged effort is needed to eject the Rajapaksas from power peacefully and constitutionally.

The first prong is present, nationwide public protests.

The second prong is a constitutional path to a post-Rajapaksa Sri Lanka. The opposition needs to unite around a single roadmap. A major shift in the parliamentary balance is needed to oust the Rajapaksas constitutionally and that wont happen while the opposition remains in its current state of infantile disunity.

The third prong is the entry of organised labour into the struggle. The strike option needs to be used, though in a way that minimises the impact on the already suffering masses (for example, the health sector should be kept out of it). The business community, if they are sincere about their vaunted support for change, should become a part of this, paving the way for an unprecedented employee-employer general strike.

The revenge of the economy

In a yet another first, the Cabinet gave permission to cut down trees in state-owned plantations and sell the timber to pay statutory dues of thousands of employees, according to a report in The Sunday Times.

This news is not from April 2022, but November 2013. The Rajapaksas have habitually caused economic havoc because of their habit of treating Sri Lanka as a cornucopia for themselves and their political and business acolytes.

The national health system is on the verge of collapse because the country lacks foreign exchange to import essential medicines. Yet private hospitals are not facing such an existential crisis. The paucity of foreign currency is affecting the printing of exam papers and school text books, but not the importation of designer goods. Odel, now owned by the owner of Asiri Hospitals (who was appointed by President Gotabaya as Sri Lankan chairman), this opened an exclusive Polo Ralph Lauren outlet in the New Galle Face Mall this year (some of those products have to be imports).

The ship of the nation, state, and people is sinking, while the Rajapaksas and their acolytes lack for nothing.

The current crisis cannot be resolved without ousting the Rajapaksas constitutionally and peacefully. That is a necessary precondition, but not a sufficient one. Even without the Rajapaksas, the road ahead would remain tortuous. Just as there are concrete proposals for an alternative political system, there must be concrete proposals for an alternative economic system. If the opposition does not possess an economic road map, we will lose our way again.

Even with workable economic policies and international backing, conditions will worsen before they get better. For the ordinary man and woman, already overburdened, life will get worse. Prices will rise while real incomes fall and living conditions decline. A large swathe of the lower middle class will sink below the poverty line, a process that is already in motion.

Any massive creation of new poor is deadly for political stability. Beset by unfamiliar economic woes, shamed by social degradation, and fearful for the future of their children, they will be especially vulnerable to any extreme ideology (religious or secular) or ultra-right solution, including a military one.

Sri Lanka cannot emerge from this economic morass without a great deal of economic pain. The question is who should bear the brunt of this pain? Since austerity of a sort we have never known before is inevitable, which segments of the population should tighten their belts most? How will a post-Rajapaksa government increase revenue and decrease costs?

Is the opposition willing to impose more taxes on the wealthy, to increase personal and corporate income taxes, over the objections of their moneyed-backers? The IMF will not oppose such a measure. On the contrary the IMF currently advocates such measures: Higher taxes for the rich will reduce inequality without hitting growth... Now it seems that its time for the politicians to start translating this into policy as soon as possible. (https://maketaxfair.net/imf-fiscal-monitor-tackling-inequality/).

Remember the time when gas cylinders exploded because of an arbitrary change in their composition? Its victims included a former soldier (who had been disabled after a mortar attack). This Menikhinna, Kandy resident was injured by a gas explosion on July 17th and died on August 23rd 2021. According to media reports, at the time of his death, he was still pension-less.

When presidential soothsayer built a hotel in Anuradhapura, labour was provided by the army (Read Here).

The two stories, in confluence, are emblematic of everything that is wrong with our mammoth defence budget. What a post-war Sri Lanka needs is a lean and a smart military. Instead, out military is like our political class, corpulent, unintelligent, guzzlers of national wealth, and focused not on national defence but on defending their own corporate, organisational and personal interests and fiefs.

Is the opposition willing end this travesty by reducing and streamlining defence expenditure? After all, if guns continue to claim the largest share of the budget, the spending cuts will have to come from education, health and public welfare. This will impede national development and increase public discontent.

Is the opposition willing to cut the unjust and unmerited privileges the political class has ladled out to itself over time? Will the opposition announce its willingness to end the most egregious of these privileges starting with pension for parliamentarian, duty-free vehicles, official residences for ministers (including the payment of utility bills)?

The National Audit Commission has recommended that the loss of revenue from the Rajapaksa sugar scam (amounting to 16.8billion rupees in just four months) be reclaimed from those businessmen who were its major beneficiaries. The chairperson of the Human Rights Commission has backed this recommendation, pointing out that the arbitrary and unreasonable use of state powers affects the economic, social, and cultural rights of citizens. Will the opposition adopt this recommendation as part of its policy package?

What is the oppositions poverty alleviation programme, taking into consideration the rapid increase of those living in poverty (the figure may be close to about 50% now)?

The roots of the failure of the 2015 government can be traced to its unwillingness to depart decisively from Rajapaksa economics. Post-Rajapaksa Sri Lanka II cannot afford to remake that mistake. As economic pain renders the present becomes more unbearable and the future more uncertain, the tendency towards nostalgia would gain ground. As Mahinda Mahattaya, Gota Sir and Basil Sir become rehabilitated in public memory, the Family will ride to rescue, be it from their homes, behind bars or abroad.

Dawn or Dusk?

The 1848 revolutionary wave in Europe began with a series of pro-democracy banquets in France. The government of King Louis Phillipe had banned the gathering together of more than six people in public. To circumvent this, the French resistance started holding subscription banquets. The first was held in July 1947 at the Chateau-Rouge Dance Venue. After a series of such political banquets across the country, a final one was planned for 21st February 1848 in Paris. The government banned it. And the 1848 revolution began.

Leaders who dream of tyranny hate laughter. A mocking song would hurt them more than a fiery slogan. Irreverence and joy can be as political as unsmiling contemplation of the ills of the world.

Lankan protests seem to be helping the nation to find its submerged brain, heart, and backbone, to think about issues, reach out to racial/religious Other, and stand up to the powers that be.

A hospital building in Galnewa was opened by village people people. An underground pedestrian crossing in Matugama was opened by a little boy. Motorists peacefully objected to arbitrary road closures for VIPs and persuaded police to open them..

A Tamil couple came to Gota-Go-Gama before going on their honeymoon, the bride still in her wedding finery, holding afloat the national flag. Protestors of all ethnicities sang the national anthem in Sinhala and Tamil. A young Muslim mother brought her baby to the protest for a kind of revolutionary baptism; the protestors held the baby aloft reverently before handing him/her to the waiting mother. In a country plagued by rape and abuse, women can be both active and safe in todays physical and political space of resistance.

This is the Lankan nation in embryo, a glimpse of what we can be. Whether this potential is realised or become a memory depends on whether the Rajapaksas can be ousted constitutionally - and how a post-Rajapaksa administration handles the all important question of distributing economic pain.

As economic and social misery mounts, the publics energies will be increasingly spent on survival. If the opposition continues to quibble and meander, this historic opportunity to save and remake Sri Lanka will be dissipated. The current stalemate will end in a Rajapaksa or a Rajapaksa-Shavendra or  the worst possibility  a Shavendra solution. And the dawn at Galle Face will be followed not by a new morning, but by a night worse than any this long suffering land has known.

The Go-Gota-Gama protestors and others like them would know the danger of such a military solution. But for the new poor or soon to be new poor (who were preponderant in the protests that followed Ceypetco fuel price hike) the entry of the military will be a welcoming development. The soldiers  like monks  are their brothers and sons in uniform. They will hail a military solution, until the military turns the guns on them.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)  A Kentucky arson unit is investigating after a fire destroyed a synagogue and worship center on the final day of Passover.

Rabbi Avrohom Litvin is regional director of Chabad of Kentucky. He said the blaze started as a grease fire in a building adjoining Louisville's Chabad House early Saturday morning, WDRB-TV reported. Firefighters brought it under control, but it apparently rekindled around noon and the Chabad House caught fire.
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When the Rev. Kyunglim Shin Lee was ordained in 1988, it angered her in-laws for contravening long-held Korean cultural values subordinating womens roles in society. Even her husband, a pastor, told her he understood intellectually but his heart couldnt accept it.

Those reactions broke Lees heart  and steeled her resolve. Today she is vice president for international relations at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.; has traveled to 60 countries as the seminary's ambassador; and once served as interim lead pastor at a Korean American church for 11 months. Along the journey, she visualized herself as a speeding train.

People would either have to get in for the ride, or step out of the way, she said. Once I became convinced that God can use me, no one or nothing could stop me.

Lees success story is rare in the realm of Korean American churches, where women are seldom seen in the pulpits. In a time when women make up about 20% of Protestant pastors in the United States, Korean American female pastors still struggle to gain acceptance in their home churches and often end up assuming leadership roles elsewhere.

Women like Lee who have broken barriers in these spaces remain pessimistic about the pace of change and are concerned by the resilience of patriarchal attitudes even among second- and third-generation Korean Americans. More representation in church elder boards and in the pulpit is needed to promote equality and provide role models for younger women considering ministry, they say, but bringing about such cultural shift has proved a formidable challenge.

Gender equality in Korean American churches lags well behind congregations in South Korea, according to the Rev. Young Lee Hertig, executive director of Innovative Space for Asian American Christianity, which supports Asian American women in ministry. There are more female lead pastors in South Korea, she said, because culture changes faster when it is mainstream.

Korean American churches are the most patriarchal among Asian American churches. ... Things should have changed by now, but they havent, Hertig said.

Male dominance in traditional Korean society has roots in Confucianism from centuries ago, when women were subject to the authority of their husbands and fathers and in many ways barred from participating in public life. Many immigrants from Korea still hold such notions, and churches especially have been slow to embrace equality, said Grace Ji-Sun Kim, a theology professor at the Earlham School of Religion in Indiana.

Its hard for Korean women to be ministers because they are expected to be obedient to men, she said. Its difficult for (Korean) men to listen to a woman who is preaching because this idea of superiority is embedded in their psyche.

The Rev. Janette Ok, an associate professor specializing in the New Testament at Fuller Seminary and pastor at Ekko Church, a nondenominational congregation in Fullerton, California, agreed that representation matters.

She was fortunate to have a role model while growing up in the 1980s in Detroit, where she saw a Korean woman leading her churchs English-language service every Sunday  but at the time didn't grasp how exceptional that was.

I watched her give sacraments, give the benediction. I still have this image of her in a pastoral robe and stole, Ok said. Without her example, I wouldve never imagined I could become a pastor.

That woman was the Rev. Mary Paik. Now retired and living in Hawaii, Paik said she was only hired as a last resort because the male applicants English wasnt good enough. She received a lot of strange looks as an unmarried, 30-year-old female pastor.

Male church elders were patronizing and treated her like a daughter, while some of the younger men flirted with her or refused to acknowledge her. Many of the older women seemed to find her presence inconceivable.

But some younger women were standing up a little straighter because I was there, Paik said. They felt good about it.

She has seen some progress. When the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) started a group in 1991 for female Korean American clergy in the denomination, there were just 18. Today there are 150.

When I started this, I was alone, Paik said. Now there are other women who talk to each other, share their struggles with one another. As long as we do it together, its bearable. And we do it not because its easy or hard, but because its a calling.

But Ok said that while there are more of them in ministry now, most end up serving in mainline or multiethnic congregations rather than Korean American churches.

There is this sense that I love my home church and I dont want to abandon my home community, she said. But they dont affirm me as a leader. Its heartbreaking.

Oks own church is largely Asian American, but not specifically Korean. Several years ago she served as interim lead pastor for nine months.

I was afraid people would leave because Im a woman, but they didnt, she said. That was very encouraging. Change doesnt happen overnight. You have to create pathways and pipelines.

Soo Ji Alvarez is in a similar situation. After growing up in a conservative Korean immigrant church in Vancouver, British Columbia, that had no female pastors, today she is lead pastor of The Avenue Church, a multiethnic Free Baptist congregation in Riverside, California.

The move away from her home church was not intentional but happened organically, she said, and she embraces her pastoral position as a role model.

Its a big deal for me (as a woman of Korean descent) to lead a congregation, she said. I hope I can help pave the way for others so they know its possible. Ministry should be like any other career  your ethnicity or gender should not affect your chances.

As for the pastors male counterparts in Korean American churches, Kim, for one, expressed anger that so many stay silent on the issue: They feel like fighting social justice issues shouldnt be the churchs business. But to me it is Gods work. Its important, necessary work.

But Lee, whose ordination was objectionable to her family, said it pleases her to see some male pastors welcome women to the pulpit  as her husband eventually did.

The Rev. John Park, who leads Numa Church in Buena Park, California, is one male pastor who embraces such allyship. He called on men to consciously work to empower women, citing Scripture in the words of the Apostle Paul: There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

The Bible is clear on the issue of equality, Park said. But this is an internal battle in our community. Were fighting our own past.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the APs collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
BEL AIR, Md. (AP)  Police in Maryland say they fatally shot a man Saturday near a Harford County shopping center after getting calls about an armed, suicidal man.

Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said deputies were called around 2:45 p.m. and searched for the man for nearly an hour. He said they also spoke with the man on the phone.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  Cordie Rodenbaugh recalls a conversation she had with her son Parker at the end of his freshman year of college. He had decided to transfer schools to Mississippi State University to study architecture and they spoke about his future.

He said, Mama, I just want to make a difference in the world, she said recently.

Parker died in 2014, when he was 22 before his junior year, from the effects of a drug called 25b-NB0me, or synthetic LSD, which he took at a party and caused him to have violent convulsions. Two acquaintances testified in court that they sought medical care but only after Parker was turning blue and appeared to have stopped breathing.

His death led to what is believed to be the first known case in Mississippi where a drug dealer was prosecuted for murder in a drug-related death. The person who sold him the synthetic LSD, Skylar OKelly, was convicted of drug trafficking and second-degree murder and sentenced to two concurrent 10 year sentences in 2016. A state appeals court, however, overturned the murder conviction in 2018 finding there was insufficient evidence to support the charge. OKelly was later resentenced on drug trafficking charges and remains in state custody.

Since her son's death, Rodenbaugh has devoted her life to speaking with families who have lost loved ones to drug overdoses. As deaths have surged due to synthetic opioids in recent years in Mississippi, she has held Narcan training in her home but she mainly focuses on lobbying for tougher laws to hold drug distributors accountable for overdose deaths.

Attempts to pass such laws have failed until this year when HB 607  better known as Parkers Law  was approved by state lawmakers in March. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed the bill April 19.

Previous versions faced criticism from mental health advocates who feared it criminalized an already vulnerable population and would keep people from seeking help, resulting in further overdose deaths.

The new law specifically targets the sale of fentanyl. A person charged with drug distribution of fentanyl could face 20 years to life in prison if the sale directly results in an overdose death. It takes effect July 1.

Drug users who share drugs resulting in an overdose or those who seek medical help for people who overdose cant be charged under the law.

State Rep. Nick Bain said the law was crafted with input from mental health experts and provides prosecutors a tool to go to after this type of crime.

And I believe it is a crime, he said. I think the bill is narrow and tailored to fentanyl and aimed at being a shield for people who are addicts and targets people trying to exploit them for being addicts.

Drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed during the pandemic. There were more than 100,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. during 2020 and 586 were Mississippians, according to CDC data.

Deaths involving fentanyl climbed from 139 in 2019 to 313 in 2020, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health. More than half of these deaths involved the use of multiple substances and about a third were among people younger than 35.

In Mississippi and nationally, one of the primary causes of this crisis is the prevalence and availability of illicit fentanyl, said Col. Steven Maxwell, director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. Unlike pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl, it can be cut, colored, scored, and pressed to be sold as a counterfeit for other illicit drugs such as Xanax, Ritalin or Oxycodone, he said.

Fentanyl is extremely lethal and about 50 times more potent than heroin. Two milligrams of fentanyl is essentially a lethal dose, said Maxwell.

Put into perspective, that amount equates to about 15 to 20 granulates of salt.

Maxwell's agency is responding to the crisis by collaborating with state health officials to educate the public about the dangers associated with the misuse or abuse of illicit drugs and of drugs potentially laced with fentanyl.

When we talk to high school students about this we are trying to impress upon them its no longer just marijuana but could be marijuana laced with fentanyl or some other synthetic drug. And oftentimes the retail-level sellers (selling small quantities) dont know what theyre selling themselves, he said.

Murder convictions in drug overdose cases are still rare, though the rise in synthetic opioid-related deaths has prompted more states to consider laws that would hold drug distributors accountable.

As of 2019, 25 states had some form of a drug-induced homicide law on the books, according to Temple Universitys Prescription Drug Abuse Policy System. The charges vary by state from manslaughter to capital murder, which carries a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

In Mississippi, the OKelly case was one of the first known examples where a murder conviction occurred in addition to drug trafficking charges. Last month, Jackson resident Carlos Allen was sentenced to 124 years in prison without the possibility of parole for drug trafficking fentanyl which resulted in the overdose death of a 24-year-old man in 2021.

But these cases remain some of the few exceptions.

Drug-induced homicide laws date back to the 1980s and have been criticized by drug policy experts who say they criminalize vulnerable drug users rather than effectively target drug distributors.

Often these laws dont have the effect they are intended to have and do more harm, said Angela Mallette, the founder of the Mississippi Harm Reduction Initiative, an organization that advocates for health-based solutions for people living with addiction.

When you pass these types of laws, it creates increased fear among the drug-using population to call for help,  she said. It does nothing to decrease the number of people who use. People are still going to use a substance theyre dependent upon. But now theres a possibility that they can be charged with murder if someone overdoses. In scenarios like that, it just precipitates more people dying.

In addition to the safety nets built into Parkers Law, a non-partisan committee of the Mississippi legislature will be required to evaluate and report how many people are prosecuted every year under the provisions of the bill.

This will be a good way to see how this law is playing out and if it is resulting in any harmful practices, she said.
CARLSBAD, N.M. (AP)  State environmental regulators are reviewing plans submitted by Mosaic Potash to investigate and define the extent of groundwater contamination from discharges associated with potash mining along the Pecos River in southern New Mexico.

The state Environment Department announced earlier this month that contamination had been detected in nearby groundwater monitoring wells between the company's Laguna Grande lake and the river. As a result, the company was required to submit a plan for monitoring and dealing with the pollution.

Potash mining is a main economic driver in Eddy County. A salt rich in potassium, potash is used mostly as a plant fertilizer and in animal feed.

Carlsbad was the site of potashs first discovery in North America in 1925 during oil drilling, the Carlsbad Current-Argus reported. The discovery led to a boom in development in the former ranching town that predated the areas prominence in fossil fuels.

Mosaics mine, about 16 miles east of Carlsbad, produces the ore both through its underground mining and surface operations.

Waste resulting from mining the ore is moved around the facility into multiple disposal areas, potentially leeching into groundwater supplies.

Extracting potash from underground generates tailings that are disposed of along with salty brine water. The salt and clay settle and the brine water and residual clay flow into a settling pond. The brine is then discharged from the pond through a pipeline into Laguna Grande, and then into evaporation cells where the resulting chloride salt is harvested.

Mosaics discharge permit allows for up to 7.5 million gallons (34 million liters) per day of tailings, brine and other liquids, including 29,000 gallons (109,777 liters) per day of untreated domestic wastewater.

These discharges have the potential, according to the state Ground Water Quality Bureau, to increase groundwater in the area to more than state standards for total dissolved solids, potentially impacting the Pecos River.

Should that happen, the Environment Department has the authority to close the facility and require Mosaic provide an immediate plan to mitigate the pollution.

The agency holds a bond with Mosaic for about $82 million to fund such a closure should elevated contaminant levels be detected.

Mosaic's discharge permit was last renewed in 2011. The permit includes the abatement plan that defines how the company reduces its environment impact.

Mosaic is required to collect water samples quarterly from several monitoring wells in the area and from the Pecos River, and report to the state on the levels of dissolved solids and other contaminants.

Once Mosaic characterizes the nature and extent of groundwater contamination from mine discharges between Laguna Grande and the Pecos River, the state may require the company to develop an more detailed abatement that outlines strategies to clean up the groundwater contamination.
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP)  Fifteen people were killed, including nine soldiers, in coordinated jihadi attacks in northern Burkina Faso on Sunday, the army said.

Two military detachments, in Gaskinde and Pobe Mengao in Soum province in the Sahel region were hit by terrorists Sunday morning, wounding more than two dozen people, said the army in a statement. Security operations are underway in both areas, it said.

The attacks are the latest in a series of increased violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic state across the country thats killed thousands and displaced 2 million people.

Earlier this month, 16 soldiers were killed in the center-north region and at least 40 security forces were killed in the last two weeks of March, according to an internal security report for aid groups seen by The Associated Press.

The military junta, which overthrew a democratically elected government in January, is struggling to stem the violence while trying to create new strategies to secure the country. Last week the government said it was going to support community leaders in talking with some jihadis in order to bring back locals who had joined them.

However, community leaders said there was little guidance on what that entailed and that this attack casts doubt on the process.

The situation is confusing. There is talk of dialogue and at the same time there are attacks, Ousmane Amirou Dicko, the Emir of Liptako, told the AP.

Perhaps a desire to negotiate from a position of strength, for some, or to make the dialogue fail for others, he said.

Conflict analysts say the indiscriminate attacks signal a persistent militant campaign and cast doubts on the administrations ability to contain and subdue the jihadis, said Laith Alkhouri, CEO of Intelonyx Intelligence Advisory, which provides intelligence analysis. Its a task thatll likely define their governance, he said.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  Agents with North Carolina's Alcohol Law Enforcement Unit charged more than 250 people Friday night in a series of coordinated actions.

Officials said the charges included alcohol, drug, firearm, driving and gambling offenses.
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DOTHAN, Ala. (AP)  After spending years as a registered nurse, Marteen Lewis decided to change how she helped people.

So she left the hospital setting and, more than a year ago, opened Earthly Wellness Bar, a health and wellness spa providing handmade products as well as services designed to help with relaxation, lymphatic drainage, and feminine care.

Developing the business is a dream come true for Lewis.

The fact that you can simply turn a thought of a dream into a reality, stay focused and do the work, Lewis said. I really want to let people know its possible. Entrepreneurship has been one of the hardest tasks Ive ever tried to complete, but it has been one of the most rewarding outside of motherhood.

The Marianna, Florida, native attended nursing school at Wallace Community College in Dothan and worked at Flowers Hospital after graduating. Over the course of her nursing career, Lewis worked as a cardiac care nurse, as a dialysis nurse, and eventually as a travel nurse.

During the first year of the pandemic, Lewis helped care for COVID-19 patients during her travel assignments. The emotional and physical strain of the pandemic on health care workers was far worse than anything portrayed in the media, Lewis said.

The news shared as much as they could but to be in it was a different story, she said. If you give me a scale, it was probably 10 times worse than the scale that you can give me. It was bad. The hours and the exposure, the lack of eating, the lack of sleeping because you go home thinking about all you were exposed to  Will I give it to my family?

During a travel assignment, Lewis was caring for a dialysis patient in a hospital COVID unit when five members of the same family all hospitalized with COVID-19 coded during the same shift. That was it for Lewis. She began to rethink how she could use her skills as a nurse to help people strengthen their immune systems and live healthier lives.

I had to make a change, and I just started researching the immune system and detoxification and healthy living, Lewis said.

It was a difficult transition because she loved being a nurse, and Lewis still works one day a week as a dialysis nurse. Her family, including her two sons ages 20 and 11, have been supportive during her days as a travel nurse and her transition into business owner.

Earthly Wellness Bar is located on the Ross Clark Circle in Dothan. Services, products, and information on booking can be found at earthlywellnessbar.com. Or, call 850-557-8530 for more information.

Services include aromatherapy, detoxification, vaginal steaming, dry brushing, body contouring, and manual lymphatic treatments with wood tools designed to help with post-operative care following cosmetic procedures. Handmade soap, yoni oil, bath balms, foot soaks, and exfoliating scrubs are available for purchase. While the soaps are made by a fellow nurse in Atlanta, Lewis makes other products herself.

Products at Earthly Wellness Bar are made from all-natural ingredients, Lewis said.

While theres an emphasis on feminine care, Earthly Wellness also offers services for men  such as a beard facial  as well as a package designed for couples. Lewis plans to also bring in a massage therapist to offer massage services.

Prices vary depending on the service but can range from $65 to $100. Services can also be bundled in a package. Soap, oil, bath balm, and exfoliating products can be packaged in a $60 bundle or bought individually for $8, $10, $12, or $35 depending on the product.

Lewis does a consultation with clients prior to their first visit and said she tries to educate her clients about how to live a more healthy life and the benefits they will experience as a result.

Services offered at Earthly Wellness Bar were influenced by Lewis own wellness journey when she was still working as a nurse. She began by learning more about clean eating, fasting, detoxifying, and the importance of good gut health. Lewis said as she began eating better, she saw the connection between eating healthy and reducing her stress levels.

That helped me along the way when I was out travel nursing, Lewis said. I was able to make better food choices, I wasnt as tired. I had more energy because the gut is where the serotonin is stimulated, which gives you happy thoughts.
BEIJING, April 23 (Xinhua) -- The First National Conference on Reading was held in Beijing on Saturday. Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, sent a congratulatory letter to the conference.

Reading is an important avenue for humans to acquire knowledge, expand wisdom and cultivate virtues, Xi noted. It enlightens us and helps us aim high and stand upright. Since ancient times, the Chinese people have advocated reading and stressed the acquisition of knowledge through studying the nature of things and rectification of mind through thinking with sincerity. Reading helps the Chinese people to carry on the traditional spirit of perseverance and shape their character of self-confidence and self-reliance.

Xi called on Party members and officials to take the lead in reading and learning, foster virtues and ideals and improve abilities. He hoped that all children will have a habit of reading, enjoy reading and grow up in a healthy way. He also expressed a wish that all Chinese people are engaged in reading and contribute to an atmosphere where everyone loves reading, has good books to read and knows how to gain from reading.

Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, read Xi's congratulatory letter and delivered a speech at the conference. He said the letter fully demonstrated that the CPC Central Committee attaches great importance to fostering people's love of reading and a culture of reading in the country. We must study Xi's important instructions conscientiously and put them into practice, Huang said. He called for efforts to encourage reading, create a trend of reading, and set up a system to promote reading in both urban and rural areas. The reading campaign should be extended to cover as many people as possible, while reading should help people learn and improve themselves, said Huang, who added that fostering a culture of reading will help strengthen and enrich the Chinese culture, so as to inject strong impetus into the new journey to fully build a modern socialist China in the new era.

The conference was hosted by the Publishing Bureau under the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee and the Publicity Department of the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee. The National Press and Publication Administration (the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee), the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee and the Beijing Municipal Government oversaw it. Its theme is "promoting reading in the new era and forging ahead on the new journey." The conference includes a series of forums, exhibitions, book launch events and themed activities.

Officials from relevant departments as well as representatives of publishers, social organizations, experts, scholars, writers and readers participated in the conference.

Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, reads Chinese President Xi Jinping's congratulatory letter to the First National Conference on Reading and delivers a speech at the conference in Beijing, capital of China, April 23, 2022. (Xinhua/Yan Yan)
CAMBRIDGE, Neb. (AP)  Wind-driven wildfires sweeping through parts of Nebraska killed a retired fire chief and injured at least 15 firefighters, authorities said Sunday.

The man who died Friday night was a retired Cambridge fire chief who was working with firefighters as a spotter in Red Willow County in the southwestern corner of the state. That fire had burned more than 78 square miles (202 square kilometers) in Red Willow, Furnas and Frontier counties by Sunday afternoon.

The Nebraska Emergency Management Agency said firefighters were still working to contain that large fire Sunday, and officials didn't have an estimate of how much of it had been contained.

Alyssa Sanders, with NEMA, said 66-year-old John P. Trumble, of Arapahoe, was overcome by smoke and fire after his vehicle left the road Friday because of poor visibility from smoke and dust. His body was found early Saturday.

At least 15 firefighters have been injured battling the blazes, including five who were hurt in the fire that killed Trumble, but a spokeswoman said the state agency didn't have details about their injuries.

Blazes have been reported in 14 counties in around the state since Friday, including Perkins, Dundy, Burt, Butler, Scotts Bluff, Cheyenne, Duele, Blaine, Cherry, Brown and Thomas counties. The state agency said those other fires had either been extinguished or mostly contained by Sunday afternoon.

The agency didn't provide estimates of the total area that had been burned by all the fires or the number of homes or other structures that had been destroyed. Roughly 100 calves were killed when one fire in Rising City burned several calving sheds, and at least three fire trucks were damaged or destroyed in the fires.

Sanders said her agency didn't have all of the details about the fires because local fire departments were managing the response to most of them.

Several small towns, including Cambridge, Bartley, Indianola and Wilsonville, in Nebraska's southwest and Macy in its northeast, were forced to temporarily evacuate because of the fires. The evacuation orders were lifted Saturday.

The Nebraska National Guard deployed three helicopters and several support trucks to help battle the blazes.

In New Mexico, 20 wildfires continued to burn Sunday across the state, including one fire that had grown to consume 84 square miles (217.56 square kilometers) of land.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP)  Prosecutors are seeking short jail sentences for two brothers from Virginia Beach who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Paul and Eric Von Bernewitz are scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday in federal court in Washington. They each pleaded guilty in January to demonstrating inside the Capitol.
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CANAKKALE, Turkey (AP)  The remains of 17 missing French soldiers who fought in the World War I Battle of Gallipoli were on Sunday handed over to French military officials and put to rest alongside other fallen comrades more than a century after their deaths.

The remains were found during restoration work on a castle and surrounding areas on Turkeys northwestern Canakkale Peninsula, where Allied forces fought against Ottoman Turks in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign that started with landings on the peninsula on April 25, 1915.

Col. Philippe Boulogne paid tribute to soldiers who came to defend their homeland on this distant land, the scene of one of the most tragic episodes in our history at the handing-over ceremony.

The ceremony coincided with commemorations marking the 107th anniversary of the start of the battle, during which French, British and other soldiers are remembered. On Monday, Australians and New Zealanders will mark Anzac Day to remember their fallen soldiers in a dawn ceremony.

Zouaves (light-infantry corps) and riflemen from Senegal, Algeria, legionnaires, 10,000 French and colonial soldiers fell in the front at Gallipoli, Boulogne said. Neither the scale of the losses nor the violence of the war diminished the bravery of these men. Their courage and their sense of sacrifice will never be forgotten.

Only one out of the 17 French soldiers  Cpl. Paul Roman, of the 1st Engineers Regiment  has been formally identified.

Authorities were also able to identify three tombstones belonging to Cmdr. Galinier of the 58th Colonial Infantry Regiment, and Capt. Stefani and 2nd Lt. Charvet of the 4th Zouaves, according to the French Embassy. Only their last names were provided.

The World War I Gallipoli campaign aimed to secure a naval route from the Mediterranean Sea to Istanbul through the Dardanelles, and take the Ottoman Empire out of the war. The Gallipoli landings marked the start of a fierce battle that lasted for eight months.

Around 44,000 Allied troops and 86,000 Ottoman soldiers died in the fighting.

Ismail Tasdemir, the Turkish official in charge of the historical site, said during the handing-over ceremony that the former battlefields have now become a land of peace, tranquility and trust.

At the soldiers final resting place at the Seddulbahir French cemetery, French Embassy official Mathilde Grammont read from a message that modern Turkeys founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk  a former Gallipoli commander  wrote for the mothers of the fallen soldiers:

You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

___

Suzan Fraser reported from Ankara.
BAMAKO, Mali (AP)  A series of attacks targeted three military bases in Mali on Sunday, killing at least six soldiers and injuring nearly a dozen more, the West African nation's army said.

In a tweet, the Malian army said simultaneous attacks were underway in Sevare, Niono and Bapho, three central towns in the sprawling desert nation.

While no one has claimed responsibility for the attack, violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State has ravaged the nation for eight years. The military junta that seized power in 2020 has been struggling to stem the violence.

Mali's army has been attacked a number of times this year but this is the first time they are being hit in three different cities.

A military official not authorized to speak to the media said the attacks involved car bombs and that the camp in Bapho was particularly hard hit, with shrapnel from an explosion damaging a helicopter.

The violence occurred in the center of the country where the Malian military together with the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary force, has been very active and where the junta has been claiming to have been making significant progress, said Michael Shurkin, a former political analyst at the CIA who works with the Dakar-based 14 North Strategies.

The attacks appear to belie the governments claims. The attacks appear well-coordinated. This is not the work of an adversary whose back is up against a wall, he said.
MADRID (AP)  Spanish authorities are pledging full transparency as they launch inquiries into allegations that the phones of dozens of supporters of Catalan independence were hacked with powerful and controversial spyware only sold to government agencies.

An internal probe by the country's intelligence agency, a special parliamentary commission to share its results, and a separate investigation by Spain's ombudsman will be arranged to show that central authorities in Madrid have nothing to hide," the minister for presidency and relations with parliament, Felix Bolanos, announced Sunday.

Bolanos also said the government remained committed to negotiations with separatists on the future of the restive northeastern region of Catalonia.

We want to recover trust by resorting to dialogue and to transparency, the minister said in Barcelona, following a meeting with the regional chief of the Catalan presidency, Laura Vilagra.

The government has a clean conscience and we have nothing to hide," Bolanos added.

Pere Aragones, a pro-independence left-wing politician leading Catalonia's government, said last week that it was putting on hold relations with Spain's national authorities after cybersecurity experts in Canada revealed massive political espionage.

Aragones accused Spain's intelligence agency, known as CNI in Spanish, of the alleged hacking.

Citizen Lab, an experts group linked to the University of Toronto, said traces of Pegasus and other spyware by two Israeli companies, NSO Group and Candiru, were identified in devices of 65 people, including elected officials, activists, lawyers, European lawmakers and others.

Most infiltration took place between 2017, when a banned referendum on Catalan independence caused a deep political crisis in Spain, and ended in mid-2020, when Citizen Lab revealed the first cases of the alleged espionage.

The Spanish government has not denied nor confirmed whether it uses Pegasus or other hard-to-detect spyware, saying that any surveillance is conducted under the supervision of judges.

Rounds of talks between the central government in Madrid and Catalan regional authorities have yielded some progress in solving some of the separatists long-term grievances, but have not resolved the fundamental issues of Catalonias status within Spain.

Polling and recent elections show that the share of Catalans supporting independence grew since last decades financial crisis, but have since 2017 remained divided, with majorities fluctuating recently between those in favor or against breaking away from Spain.
FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP)  Authorities say they were able to rescue a woman by helicopter after she was stuck in the vast marshland of a Florida state park.

Various agencies were deployed to the 11,000-acre (4,450-hectare) Estero Bay Preserve State Park on the Gulf Coast south of Fort Myers.
CAIRO (AP)  Tribal clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs in Sudans war-ravaged Darfur region Sunday killed 168 people, a local aid group said, one of the deadliest bouts of violence in the country in recent years.

The fighting in West Darfur province comes as Sudan has been plunged into turmoil since a military coup last year. The takeover upended the countrys transition to democracy after a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

The clashes raise questions over whether military leaders are capable of bringing security to Darfur, which has been wracked by years of civil war. In 2020, the U.N. Security Council ended its peacekeeping mission known there.

Adam Regal, spokesman for the General Coordination for Refugees and Displaced in Darfur, said Sundays fighting in West Darfurs Kreinik area also wounded 98 people.

The fighting grew out of the killing of two people by unknown assailants Thursday, he said.

Early Sunday, large numbers of people armed with heavy weapons launched a major attack on Kreinik, torching and looting properties, Regal said. The fighting lasted for several hours and forced thousands of people to flee their homes, he said.

Regal, whose group provides food and other assistance to displaced people in the region, shared footage of destroyed houses in the area, with some images showing pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns.

The clashes eventually reached Genena, where militias and armed groups attacked wounded people while they were being treated at the citys main hospital, said Salah Saleh, a doctor and former medical director at the hospital.

The area was burned down, and many people were killed ... There was no intervention from the local government to stop the fighting, he said.

Authorities said they deployed more troops and a military aircraft to the region since fighting on Thursday left eight dead and at least 16 wounded.

Volker Perthes, the U.N. envoy for Sudan, deplored the heinous killings of civilians ... as well as the attacks on health facilities in West Darfur.

He called for an in-depth and transparent investigation and to hold those responsible accountable.

Darfur has seen bouts of deadly fighting between rival tribes in recent months as the country remains mired in a wider crisis following the October coup. Kreinik was the scene of clashes in December that killed at least 88 people.

The Security Council terminated the peace-keeping mission UNAMID on Dec. 31, 2020. Since then, sporadic intercommunal clashes have increased in the region.

In December, Human Rights Watch urged the U.N. to deploy monitors to Darfur, saying that the departure of UNAMID caused a gap in monitoring the abuses fueled by impunity for atrocities committed in in the region.

The yearslong Darfur conflict broke out when rebels from the territorys ethnic central and sub-Saharan African community launched an insurgency in 2003, complaining of oppression by the Arab-dominated government in the capital, Khartoum.

The government of al-Bashir responded with a campaign of aerial bombings and raids by the janjaweed militias, which have been accused of mass killings and rapes. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes in Darfur over the years.

Al-Bashir, who has been in prison in Khartoum since his ouster, is wanted by the International Criminal Court over charges of genocide and crimes against humanity related to the Darfur conflict.
When Russian troops first streamed across the Belarusian border into Ukraine for what they had assumed would be a lightning assault on Kyiv, they were intending to rely on the region's extensive rail network for supplies and reinforcements.

The Russians hadn't taken into account the railway saboteurs of Belarus.

Starting in the earliest days of the invasion in February, a clandestine network of railway workers, hackers and dissident security forces went into action to disable or disrupt the railway links connecting Russia to Ukraine through Belarus, wreaking havoc on Russian supply lines.

The attacks have drawn little attention outside Belarus amid the drama of the Russian onslaught and the bloody aftermath of Russia's humiliating retreat. Fierce Ukrainian resistance and tactical errors by an ill-prepared Russian force were likely enough to thwart Russia's plans, analysts say.

But the Belarus railway saboteurs can at least claim a role in fueling the logistical chaos that quickly engulfed the Russians, leaving troops stranded on the front lines without food, fuel and ammunition within days of the invasion.

Alexander Kamyshin, head of Ukrainian railways, expressed Ukraine's gratitude to the Belarusian saboteurs. "They are brave and honest people who have helped us," he said.

The attacks were simple but effective, targeting the signal control cabinets essential to the functioning of the railways, members of the activist network said. For days on end, the movement of trains was paralyzed, forcing the Russians to attempt to resupply their troops by road and contributing to the snarl-up that stalled the infamous 40-mile military convoy north of Kyiv.

How much of the chaos can be attributed to the sabotage and how much to poor logistical planning by the Russians is hard to tell, especially as there is no independent media reporting from Belarus, said Emily Ferris, a research fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute. But without automated signaling, trains were forced to slow to a crawl and the number of them traveling on the tracks at any one time would have been severely restricted, she said.

"Given the Russian reliance on trains, I'm sure it contributed to some of the problems they had in the north. It would have slowed down their ability to move," she said. "They couldn't push further into Ukrainian territory and snarled their supply lines because they had to rely on trucks."

The attacks also bought time for Ukrainian troops to formulate an effective response to the Russian invasion, said Yury Ravavoi, a Belarusian activist and trade unionist who escaped to Poland under threat of arrest during the anti-government protests that rocked Belarus in 2020.

"I can't say we were the most important factor, but we were an important brick in the wall," he said.

The saboteurs drew inspiration from an earlier episode in Belarusian history, during World War II, when Belarusians opposed to the Nazi occupation blew up railway lines and train stations to disrupt German supply lines. The Rail War, as it is known, is venerated as a moment of triumph for Belarus, taught in schools as the most successful of the tactics deployed by resistance fighters that eased the way for Soviet troops to drive the Germans out.

Eight decades later, it is Russia's presence in Belarus that has stirred dissent. The deployment of tens of thousands of Russian troops in Belarus in preparation for the invasion of Ukraine triggered widespread domestic opposition and rekindled opposition networks formed during the 2020 protests against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, said Hanna Liubakova, a Belarusian journalist living in exile in Lithuania.

This second Rail War has taken a more benign form than its predecessor. The partisans were keen not to inflict casualties, Ravavoi said. So they focused their attacks on damaging equipment to stop the railways from functioning.

"We didn't want to kill any Russian army or Belarusian train drivers. We used a peaceful way to stop them," he said.

He and other Belarusians involved in organizing the attacks decline to reveal precise details of how the attacks were carried out and by whom, citing the need for secrecy and concerns for the safety of the railway partisans, as the saboteurs are loosely known.

Three main groups have been involved, representing railway workers, security force defectors and cyber specialists, said Lt. Col Alexander Azarov, a former security official living in Warsaw who heads the security force group called Bypol.

Railway employees sympathetic to the partisans have leaked details of Russian movements and the locations of key railway infrastructure to a group called the Community of Railway Workers, which shares them on Telegram channels. Supporters on the ground link up to carry out the attacks, but there is no formal chain of command, Azarov said.

"Our movement is not centralized," he said. "It's not like there's a leader of the resistance. It's horizontal, with dozens of groups working on the ground."

The third group, the Cyber Partisans, is formed of exiled Belarusian IT professionals who have carried out several cyberattacks on the Belarusian government since joining in 2020.

The Cyber Partisans launched the first attack, hacking into the railway's computer network in the days leading up to the invasion and snarling rail traffic before Russian troops had even crossed the border. Infiltrating the railway network's computers was relatively easy, said Yuliana Shemetovets, a spokesperson for the group, which is based in New York, because the railway company is still using Windows XP, an outdated version of the software that contains many vulnerabilities.

Starting on Feb. 26, two days after the invasion began, a succession of five sabotage attacks against signaling cabinets brought train traffic to an almost complete halt, said Sergey Voitekhovich, a former railway employee now based in Poland who is a leader in the Community of Railway Workers.

By Feb. 28, satellite photographs began to appear of the 40-mile convoy of Russian trucks and tanks ostensibly headed from Belarus toward Kyiv. Within a week, the convoy had completely stalled as vehicles ran out of fuel or broke down.

The Belarusian authorities have since launched an intense effort to prevent attacks and hunt down the saboteurs. The Interior Ministry has decreed that damaging railway infrastructure is an act of terrorism, a crime that carries a 20-year prison term.

Dozens of railway workers have been randomly detained and their phones searched for evidence that they were in touch with the partisans, the activists say. At least 11 Belarusians are in custody, accused of participating in the attacks, according to human rights groups.

In early April, security police captured three alleged saboteurs near the town of Bobruisk and shot them in the knees. State television broadcast footage of the bleeding men, their knees bandaged, and claimed they had been shot while resisting arrest.

The shootings have had a chilling effect on the saboteur network, Azarov said. Belarusian troops are patrolling and drones have been deployed to monitor the railway lines. "It has become too dangerous to do attacks," he said.

But by the time of the police shooting, Russia's withdrawal from the area around Kyiv was in full swing and the Kremlin had announced it would refocus its military effort on capturing the east of Ukraine. The majority of the Russian troops that entered Ukraine from Belarus are now in the process of being redeployed to the east, the Pentagon says.

"We believe the fact that the Russians gave up on taking Kyiv is a result of our work because the Russians didn't feel as safe in Belarus as they had expected," said Franak Viacorka, spokesman for Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. "Thousands of Russian troops didn't receive food, they didn't receive fuel, and they didn't receive equipment on time."

Now, a new phase in the rail war may be underway. In recent days the railway activists have posted on Telegram photographs of damage to signaling cabinets along Russian railway lines being used to transport troops into eastern Ukraine. The attacks can't be independently confirmed, but Voitekhovich claimed members of his railway network are involved. "There are open borders between Belarus and Russia," he said.
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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP)  Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called for compromise in negotiations to replenish the states unemployment insurance trust fund and to pay frontline worker bonuses during his fourth State of the State address on Sunday.

Legislative leaders are deadlocked on the unemployment insurance issue, causing an automatic tax increase on employers statewide after lawmakers missed a March 15 deadline. Walz implored the joint session of the Legislature to find common ground in the last weeks of the session and provide relief for those workers and businesses.

We have the resources to do it and we can move Minnesota forward in a bipartisan matter so I would ask, if we're getting close to a compromise on this, let's finish this deal and let's finish it now, Walz said. We have an opportunity to get money back in people's pockets. We can compromise on how we do that.

Senate Republicans want to use $2.7 billion to refill the trust fund. But House Democrats have tied that to a $1 billion proposal to give $1,500 checks to frontline workers who braved the pandemic, up from $250 million agreed to by both sides last year that wasnt doled out.

Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman told reporters after the address that negotiations between legislative leaders have been more productive in recent weeks and she remains optimistic they can reach a deal by April 30, which is when tax payments are due for employers.

The Democratic governor said the state is strong and moving forward after a challenging two years, thanking ICU nurses, long-term care staff, first responders and teachers, among other groups, for getting the state through the worst of the pandemic.

Walz also highlighted portions of his proposed supplemental budget plan, which includes direct payments of $500 to single filers and $1,000 to joint filers that hes dubbed Walz checks." His proposal also includes a $2.7 billion infrastructure package, in addition to tax cuts for lower- and middle-class taxpayers, paid family and medical leave and increases in education and public safety spending.

Walz's annual address was the last before he faces a stiff challenge from Republicans in the November election and his first in the House chamber since the pandemic started. In 2020, Walz taped a shortened version from the governors mansion in St. Paul, and he delivered last year's address from a classroom at Mankato West High School, where he taught before he was elected to the U.S. House.

During the final stretch of the legislative session, which adjourns May 23, lawmakers will have to figure out how to use the state's $9.25 billion budget surplus and more than $1 billion in federal pandemic funds. The divided chambers remain far apart on spending and policy items. The GOP-controlled Senate is pushing for permanent income tax cuts, while House Democrats are seeking targeted tax credits and increases in spending.

In a video earlier Sunday, Republican Senate Majority Leader Jeremy Miller, of Winona, reiterated the GOPs priorities heading into the end of the session, which include public safety proposals to hire more police officers, Parents Bill of Rights education legislation and cuts to taxes on income and Social Security benefits.

GOP House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt, of Crown, said the governor's proposal would give back a miniscule" one-time payment back to taxpayers, urging permanent, ongoing tax relief.

I would challenge the governor to be more ambitious because I think with the resources we have we can invest back in Minnesotans who grow our economy and we can then grow our state in a meaningful way, he told reporters.

___

Associated Press writer Steve Karnowski contributed to this report.

___

Mohamed Ibrahim is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
By Kristen Hwang

CalMatters

By this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court will issue a decision on the most consequential challenge to Roe v. Wade since the landmark ruling in 1973 guaranteed the constitutional right to obtain an abortion.

If federal abortion protections are eliminated or severely weakened-- as legal experts expect -- a cascade of absolute bans will follow in more than a dozen states. Already, six more states are considering so-called "trigger bans" in the lead-up to this summer's decision, while dozens of other state legislatures are considering 15-week bans, abortion pill bans and bans modeled after Texas' controversial law that allows private citizens to sue anyone who helps someone obtain an abortion after six weeks.

California lawmakers intend to buck the trend. Gov. Gavin Newsom aims to make the state a "sanctuary" for out-of-state abortion seekers -- even proposing to use state funds to defray their travel costs. He's already signed into law a measure eliminating out-of-pocket costs for Californians. The state Legislative Women's Caucus has also introduced a 13-bill package to further cut barriers to access and protect patient and provider rights.

But the state wasn't always a bastion for reproductive choice. It took decades of black market abortions, a national rubella epidemic, an international drug scandal, several high-profile trials against physicians, and thousands of maternal deaths for California to decriminalize abortion. In fact, abortion remained illegal here until 1967, when state lawmakers passed the Therapeutic Abortion Act. It was signed into law by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan -- surprisingly the same politician who later, as president, championed a constitutional "right-to-life" amendment.

In the ensuing years, California has garnered the distinction of being the state that goes furthest to allow easy access to abortion. So how did that happen?

The evolution of California attitudes

In the decades before California decriminalized abortion, public opinion on the issue had begun to sway. Driven largely by the worldwide thalidomide tragedy and U.S. rubella epidemic, California women were seeking illegal abortions in droves.

Thalidomide was a sedative widely used in the 1950s to mitigate morning sickness in pregnant women, but unbeknownst to prescribing doctors it caused severe birth defects in the developing fetus, including limb malformations, kidney dysfunction and cognitive disabilities. Before most countries banned the drug, 10,000 "thalidomide babies" were born worldwide.

Many in California traveled to Mexico where a black market abortion industry boomed, spurred by the 1953 Buffum decision. But the illegal procedures came at a high cost: Post-procedure infections, other complications and deaths were common.

In a 1962 hearing before the Legislature, State Department of Public Health Officer Dr. Theodore Montgomery testified that illegal abortions were the leading cause of maternal mortality and attributed one-third of all maternal deaths to the procedure.

Then -- in a time before vaccines -- a rubella epidemic swept the United States in 1964, infecting 12.5 million people. Infection during pregnancy came with serious consequences, and 20,000 children were born with Congenital Rubella Syndrome, which included deafness, blindness and intellectual disabilities.

The risks associated with rubella didn't meet California's criteria for a legal abortion, however, and more women sought illegal procedures in Mexico. By the time Dr. Leon Belous challenged the constitutionality of California's ban in the state Supreme Court, hospitals on the California side of the border were reportedly treating hundreds of women per month with complications from botched procedures.

Read more of this story at https://calmatters.org/explainers/abortion-in-california-laws/.

Copyright  2022 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

Copyright  2022 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
By Gina Gotsill

Bay City News Foundation

The astronaut suit at the entrance of David Huffman's show "Terra Incognita," on view until Sept. 18 at the Museum of the African Diaspora, is the first clue that we aren't in San Francisco anymore. We're in the land of the Traumanauts, Huffman's signature Black space travelers searching for a place to call home. They're on a surreal trip, making stops at an Oakland sideshow, shooting baskets in a random court and playing guitar in an abstract void.

What's going on here? Where did the Traumanauts come from? And do they ever settle down, pull off their helmets and say, "Mission accomplished"?

With this survey of the Oakland artist's work spanning three decades, MoAD tries to answer these questions. But with his ties to science fiction and social and ecological justice, the Berkeley-born artist seems to suggest that the journey is ever-changing and eternal. It's triumphant in one moment, and painful in the next.

Elena Gross, MoAD director of exhibitions and curatorial affairs, says it best: "It's a narrative that has been developing over decades, and we wanted to be able to bring that narrative in all of its complexities to MoAD."

The show features a range of media, including several large-scale canvases, works on paper, ceramics and video. Huffman's 1999 ceramic sculptures of Luxor DX and TraumaEve set the tone. The figures wear a disturbing "traumasmile," defined as "a survival gesture in response to acts of intentional and institutional anti-Black racism."

Standing beside their watermelon-themed UFO, Luxor DX and TraumaEve transport us to the era of minstrelsy, when white people wore blackface and played the fool. Then, Luxor DX and TraumaEve start to evolve. Their emotions grow. In one 2005 painting, TraumaEve angrily hurls a tank at her likeness as smoke rises around her. These early characters gave way to the Traumanauts in 2005, regular fixtures of Huffman's work that represent Black people on a journey through strange, unsettling and unpredictable worlds.

"Terra Incognita" has a "Twilight Zone" appeal that is enhanced by eerie sounds that pulse through the space. The sounds lead viewers to a nearby screening room, where Huffman's 2009 video, "Treehugger" is playing on a loop. Huffman shot the video after seeing trees marked for cutting during a trip to the Sierra Nevada. He put on his NASA space suit (the same suit on display at the show) and filmed himself walking around hugging trees, Huffman's publicist Nina Sazevich says, describing a recent conversation she had with the artist about the work.

The video feels like saying goodbye to a loved one whom you wish you had more time with. There's a dystopian feel to it -- like with the Traumanauts -- being from Earth but not of it, Sazevich explains. It speaks to ecological trauma -- how we are all visitors here and not very good caretakers of the planet.

MoAD intended to open the show in March 2020, Gross says. "But now, in March/April 2022, it feels especially important because the Traumanauts remind us of what collectivity, connection and mutual care mean today," she says. "In the face of a national reckoning with anti-Black racism and a global pandemic, the Traumanauts provide a balm and a guide through these troubling circumstances we find ourselves in."

"David Huffman: Terra Incognita" run through Sept. 18 at Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission St., San Francisco. The museum is open 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $12 for general admission, $6 for seniors, students and educators, and free for youth under 12. For more information, visit https://www.moadsf.org/.

Copyright  2022 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

Copyright  2022 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
In 1999, the pop band LFO released the song Summer Girls, whose thirsty first verse featured the immortal couplet: I like girls that wear Abercrombie & Fitch, Id take her if I had one wish.

At the time, the clothing brand Abercrombie & Fitch was ubiquitous across malls, high schools and college campuses, combining all-American preppiness with a not-so-subtle undercurrent of sex. But brewing underneath that tantalizing image was a company culture that weeded out both potential employees and customers based on their race and physical appearance.

The new Netflix documentary White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch dissects both the aspirational nature of the brand and pulls back the curtain on the lawsuits and public relations disasters that tarnished its otherwise pristine image. According to the employees, journalists and activists who appear in the film, the overwhelming theme is that discrimination was actually a feature rather than a bug.

Its why people liked that brand, says Benjamin OKeefe, an activist who mobilized a campaign against Abercrombies discrimination in 2013 and is featured heavily in the film. Exclusion is part of our society.

Courtesy of Netflix

It might surprise many to learn that A&Fs roots extend back far further than the glory days of the suburban mall. The company began as an outdoors Americana brand worn by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway. It fell out of popularity but in 1988, it was acquired by the clothing chain operator The Limited, whose CEO Les Wexner was dubbed The Merlin of the Mall for his marketing tactics on brands like Victorias Secret. Wexner brought on Mike Jeffries as A&Fs CEO, who cracked a formula for success that is outlined in the documentary.

He found a way to connect the heritage of Abercrombie as established in 1892, catering to elite privileged people. And combined it with this very sexy, sexual imagery, New York Times business reporter Sapna Maheshwari said.

The promotional ploy for A&F was relatively simple: hire conventionally good-looking people. Recruiters would track down the most attractive frat guys at each college and enlist them as store employees. Overwhelmingly, these employees were white. Several Black employees recounted in the documentary how they were relegated to late night shifts stocking shelves.

Courtesy of Netflix

A second important piece was the advertising. Jefferies hired Bruce Weber, a famous fashion photographer with a signature style of capturing the eroticism of the male physique. The overwhelming motifs of the ads were groups of scantily clad men interacting playfully, which the documentary notes has homoerotic undertones.

It was clear to anyone who was paying attention that there were a lot of gay men involved in all of it. The brilliance of the brand is that that went right over the head of their target customer, the straight college frat bro, said journalist Benoit Denizet-Lewis.

Paul Sakuma/Associated Press

Throughout the 90s, the brands cultural cache grew, with stars like Heidi Klum and Ashton Kutcher appearing in its ads. The company built a huge campus, where employees happily pulled all-nighters and referred to the environment as the 13th grade.

Jeffries took the company public in 1996, and A&F left the shadow of The Limiteds retail empire three years later. Sales exploded, with revenue increasing from $165 million in 1994 to $1.04 billion in 1999.

Courtesy of Netflix

The first backlash against the brand started with the content of its irreverent graphic T-shirts, a cornerstone of its offerings that were sold at an 85% markup. The teenage-style humor often crossed the line with explicitly racist themes. The shirt that broke the retail giants back was for a fictional laundry service called Wong Brothers with the tagline two Wongs can make it white. Asian American student groups began to protest in 2002, leading to A&F literally burning all remaining shirts.

Soon after, employees began speaking out against the companys racially discriminatory hiring practices. A former manager told a Wall Street Journal reporter about having to grade employees looks on a scale from cool to rocks, and if they didnt fit into that range, theyd be taken off the schedule despite their sales numbers.

Courtesy of Netflix

A group of nine former employees of color then filed a class action lawsuit against the brand, which made national news.

In 2004, A&F settled the lawsuit without admitting guilt, but it signed a consent decree agreeing to change its hiring practices and report to a court-appointed chief diversity officer for six years. However, a semantic shift to calling its employees models gave cover for A&Fs hiring practices, and sources in the documentary state that not much actually changed.

Additionally, A&F fashion models began speaking out against photographer Bruce Weber and filed lawsuits. Although he has never been convicted of a crime (one case was dismissed, two were settled with no admission of guilt), several fashion models in the documentary describe how they were coerced into sexual activities, in detail.

Jeffries himself was at the center of several more scandals. He would use words like butch to describe female clothing that wasnt feminine enough, was obsessed with the narrow definition of an all-American aesthetic and openly admitted to the exclusionary intentions of the brand. Plus sizes werent even offered.

Courtesy of Netflix

Hes not the only person in fashion who believed these things. But he was the only person seemingly that would say that out loud, Denizet-Lewis says in the film. That attitude, highlighted in a profile Denizet-Lewis wrote for Salon, wasnt out of place in the mid-aughts. However, seven years later, Jeffries unapologetic quotes about being purposefully exclusionary came back to haunt him, with a campaign demanding Jeffries resignation.

Yet another controversy involved an instance in 2008, when fashion blogger Samantha Elauf showed up to an interview wearing a black head scarf. When the interviewer brought up the topic with a hiring manager, the manager said that head scarves were not allowed. Elauf contacted the Council for American-Islamic Relations, and the story made national news.

A&F didnt back down, and eventually the case landed in the Supreme Court, which ruled in Elaufs favor 8-1.

On top of all the scandals (which includes a close relationship between Wexner and accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein), the clothes themselves just seemed to stop being cool.

Courtesy of Netflix

At some point those kids that learned that it wasnt cool to be bullied grew up and decided that they didnt want to spend money at a place that made them feel bad. Exclusion was the root of their success. And exclusion itself stopped being quite so cool, said former A&F merchandiser Kjerstin Gruys.



Today, neither Wexner or Jeffries are involved with the company, and Abercrombies current leadership has made efforts to shed the labels discriminatory past, hiring more diverse employees and emphasizing body positivity. However, despite a fresh PR blitz, some sources in White Hot question whether the strides the company have made are enough.

The documentary closes with the filmmakers asking Black fashion editor Robin Givhan of the Washington Post whether Abercrombie  and American culture at large  had successfully turned away from exclusionary tactics.

She laughs, and then delivers a simple no.
WFO DALLAS / FT. WORTH Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Sunday, April 24, 2022

_____

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING

The National Weather Service in Fort Worth has issued a

* Severe Thunderstorm Warning for...

Jack County in north central Texas...

* Until 1045 AM CDT.

* At 1005 AM CDT, a severe thunderstorm was located near Bryson, or

11 miles west of Jacksboro, moving northeast at 30 mph.

HAZARD...Half dollar size hail.

SOURCE...Radar indicated.

IMPACT...Damage to vehicles is possible.

* Locations impacted include...

Jacksboro, Bryson and Newport.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

For your protection get inside a sturdy structure and stay away from

windows.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
WFO MIDLAND/ODESSA Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Sunday, April 24, 2022

_____

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING

The National Weather Service in Midland has issued a

* Severe Thunderstorm Warning for...

Northwestern Mitchell County in western Texas...

Southeastern Howard County in western Texas...

* Until 430 AM CDT.

* At 331 AM CDT, a severe thunderstorm was located over Big Spring,

moving northeast at 30 mph.

HAZARD...60 mph wind gusts and quarter size hail.

SOURCE...Radar indicated.

IMPACT...Hail damage to vehicles is expected. Expect wind damage

to roofs, siding, and trees.

* Locations impacted include...

Big Spring, Colorado City, Coahoma, Sand Springs, Lake Colorado

City, Lake Colorado City State Park, Westbrook, Big Spring Country

Club, Big Spring McMahon-Wrinkle Airpark and Cuthbert.

This includes Interstate 20 between mile markers 173 and 215.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

For your protection move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a

building.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
WFO MIDLAND/ODESSA Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Sunday, April 24, 2022

_____

FLASH FLOOD WARNING

The National Weather Service in Midland/Odessa has issued a

* Flash Flood Warning for...

Central Howard County in western Texas...

Northwestern Mitchell County in western Texas...

* Until 600 AM CDT.

* At 400 AM CDT, Doppler radar indicated thunderstorms producing

heavy rain across the warned area, especially over Big Spring.

Between 1 and 3 inches of rain have fallen. Flash flooding is

ongoing or expected to begin shortly.

HAZARD...Flash flooding caused by thunderstorms.

SOURCE...Radar.

IMPACT...Flash flooding of small creeks and streams, urban

areas, highways, streets and underpasses as well as

other poor drainage and low-lying areas.

* Some locations that will experience flash flooding include...

Big Spring, Coahoma, Sand Springs, Lake Colorado City State Park,

Lake Colorado City, Westbrook, Big Spring Country Club, Cuthbert

and Big Spring McMahon-Wrinkle Airpark.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

Turn around, don't drown when encountering flooded roads. Most flood

deaths occur in vehicles.

Be especially cautious at night when it is harder to recognize the

dangers of flooding.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
WFO NORMAN Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Saturday, April 23, 2022

_____

SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT

Special Weather Statement

National Weather Service Norman OK

653 PM CDT Sat Apr 23 2022

...A strong thunderstorm will impact portions of southeastern

Jackson, northwestern Tillman and north central Wilbarger Counties

through 730 PM CDT...

At 652 PM CDT, Doppler radar was tracking a strong thunderstorm 5

miles east of Fargo, moving northeast at 40 mph.

HAZARD...Nickel size hail.

SOURCE...Radar indicated.

IMPACT...Minor damage to outdoor objects is possible.

Locations impacted include...

Frederick, Tipton, Manitou and Fargo.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

If outdoors, consider seeking shelter inside a building.

This storm may intensify, so be certain to monitor local radio

stations and available television stations for additional information

and possible warnings from the National Weather Service.

LAT...LON 3420 9919 3429 9934 3461 9904 3446 9878

TIME...MOT...LOC 2352Z 227DEG 37KT 3432 9919

MAX HAIL SIZE...0.88 IN

MAX WIND GUST...<30 MPH

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
WFO SAN ANGELO Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Sunday, April 24, 2022

_____

FLASH FLOOD WARNING

The National Weather Service in San Angelo has issued a

* Flash Flood Warning for...

Central Fisher County in west central Texas...

Northwestern Jones County in west central Texas...

* Until 700 AM CDT.

* At 352 AM CDT, Doppler radar indicated thunderstorms producing

heavy rain across the warned area. Between 2 and 4 inches of rain

have fallen. Additional rainfall amounts of 0.75 to 1.5 inches are

possible in the warned area. Flash flooding is ongoing or expected

to begin shortly.

HAZARD...Life threatening flash flooding. Thunderstorms

producing flash flooding.

SOURCE...Radar.

IMPACT...Life threatening flash flooding of creeks and streams,

urban areas, highways, streets and underpasses.

* Some locations that will experience flash flooding include...

Hamlin, Roby, Mccaulley and Tuxedo.

This includes the following Low Water Crossings...

US 180 crossing 7 miles west of Roby and crossings along County Road

141.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

Turn around, don't drown when encountering flooded roads. Most flood

deaths occur in vehicles.

Be especially cautious at night when it is harder to recognize the

dangers of flooding.

...HIGH RIP CURRENT RISK REMAINS IN EFFECT THROUGH THIS EVENING...

* WHAT...Dangerous rip currents.

* WHERE...Brazoria Islands, Matagorda Islands, Bolivar Peninsula

and Galveston Island Counties.

* WHEN...Through this evening.

* IMPACTS...Rip currents can sweep even the best swimmers away

from shore into deeper water.

Swim near a lifeguard. If caught in a rip current, relax and

float. Don't swim against the current. If able, swim in a

direction following the shoreline. If unable to escape, face the

shore and call or wave for help.

...A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 430 AM CDT

FOR NORTHWESTERN MITCHELL AND EAST CENTRAL HOWARD COUNTIES...

At 354 AM CDT, a severe thunderstorm was located over Coahoma, or 8

miles northeast of Big Spring, moving northeast at 30 mph.

HAZARD...60 mph wind gusts and quarter size hail.

SOURCE...Radar indicated.

IMPACT...Hail damage to vehicles is expected. Expect wind damage to

roofs, siding, and trees.

Locations impacted include...

Big Spring, Colorado City, Coahoma, Sand Springs, Lake Colorado City,

Lake Colorado City State Park, Westbrook, Big Spring Country Club and

Cuthbert.

This includes Interstate 20 between mile markers 176 and 215.

For your protection move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a

building.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
WFO SAN ANGELO Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Sunday, April 24, 2022

_____

FLASH FLOOD WARNING

Flash Flood Statement

National Weather Service San Angelo TX

421 AM CDT Sun Apr 24 2022

...FLASH FLOOD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 AM CDT THIS MORNING

FOR CENTRAL FISHER AND NORTHWESTERN JONES COUNTIES...

At 419 AM CDT, Doppler radar indicated thunderstorms producing heavy

rain across the warned area. Between 2 and 4 inches of rain have

fallen. Although storms have weakened across the warned area, an

additional one quarter to one half inch of rainfall is possible.

HAZARD...Life threatening flash flooding. Thunderstorms producing

flash flooding.

SOURCE...Radar.

IMPACT...Life threatening flash flooding of creeks and streams,

urban areas, highways, streets and underpasses.

Some locations that will experience flash flooding include...

Hamlin, Roby, Mccaulley and Tuxedo.

This includes the following Low Water Crossings...

US 180 crossing 7 miles west of Roby and crossings along County Road

141.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

Turn around, don't drown when encountering flooded roads. Most flood

deaths occur in vehicles.

Be especially cautious at night when it is harder to recognize the

dangers of flooding.

The National Weather Service in Midland has issued a

* Severe Thunderstorm Warning for...

Northwestern Mitchell County in western Texas...

Southeastern Howard County in western Texas...

* Until 530 AM CDT.

* At 423 AM CDT, a severe thunderstorm was located over Sand Springs,

or near Big Spring, moving northeast at 25 mph.

HAZARD...Ping pong ball size hail and 60 mph wind gusts.

SOURCE...Radar indicated.

IMPACT...People and animals outdoors will be injured. Expect hail

damage to roofs, siding, windows, and vehicles. Expect

wind damage to roofs, siding, and trees.

* Locations impacted include...

Big Spring, Coahoma, Sand Springs, Westbrook, Big Spring Country

Club and Big Spring McMahon-Wrinkle Airpark.

This includes Interstate 20 between mile markers 174 and 209.

For your protection move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a

building.

Torrential rainfall is occurring with this storm, and may lead to

flash flooding. Do not drive your vehicle through flooded roadways.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
WFO SAN ANGELO Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Sunday, April 24, 2022

_____

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING

The National Weather Service in San Angelo has issued a

* Severe Thunderstorm Warning for...

Southern Irion County in west central Texas...

* Until 630 PM CDT.

* At 538 PM CDT, a severe thunderstorm was located over Barnhart,

moving east at 25 mph.

HAZARD...60 mph wind gusts and quarter size hail.

SOURCE...Radar indicated.

IMPACT...Hail damage to vehicles is expected. Expect wind damage

to roofs, siding, and trees.

* This severe thunderstorm will be near...

Mertzon and Sherwood around 625 PM CDT.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

For your protection move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a

building.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk earned the nickname Teflon Elon by successfully fighting off multiple legal challenges. But a recent court ruling suggests his run of personal victories may be endangered.

Last week, it was revealed that a San Francisco judge had determined that one of Musks 2018 tweets about taking his company private was a lie.

Elon Musk has a Twitter sitter under an agreement with the SEC to ensure someone else vets his tweets before he posts on the popular social media platform. Credit:AP

Its one of at least a dozen high-profile cases that Tesla or Musk are involved in years after he posted the infamous funding secured tweet, sending shares soaring and inviting the wrath of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Now, as Musk ramps up his battle to buy Twitter, the lingering ramifications of his prior use of the social media platform may come back to haunt him.
While the generation who has grown up with TikTok and Instagram might be seen to be addicted to fame and a good selfie, the rapid rise of another kind of social media app suggests they want something entirely different from the platforms: a regular reflection of the mundane realities of daily life. No filters, no effects, and no fakes.

BeReal, the latest in a long line of apps touted as the Next Big Thing in digital media, might be described as an influencer-free Instagram.

Once a day, at a random time, it sends a notification to BeReal. Users have two minutes to take a photo  with both the front and back cameras, simultaneously  of whatever they are doing at that moment.

BeReal is the latest app to attract the attention of young people. Ben Jefferson, 23 (left), and Tom Dunbabin, 23, are keen users. Credit:BeReal

It might sound boring, but its purpose has clearly hit a nerve with Generation Z. Data from consumer analytics research group data.ai says the app has reached around 5 million downloads since its creation in January 2020. But the vast majority of these new users have appeared since the beginning of the year: its user base has increased 315 per cent since January.
I was at a barbecue when I let slip I was going for the snip. That was my first mistake. My second was to admit I was nervous.

Theres an unwritten rule that when you hear a story involving fear, you have to tell your own worst-case version and add to the worlds net anxiety.

I told my friends I was getting the snip. Credit:iStock

So while I shifted uncomfortably and gripped my beer for comfort, my friend Ed waxed lyrical about his own experience. The worst of his life, he said, solemnly. Clawing the sides of the bed to escape. Too late, too late. The slit had been made. The nurses had to hold him down as the doctor ransacked his sacred baby-making apparatus. Afterwards, his testicles ballooned to the size of tennis balls. Agony. Indignity. Weeks of bruising.

Thanks for that, mate, I said, laying heavy emphasis on mate. And they say men dont do passive-aggression.
On this day, every year for more than a century, Australians have gathered to remember the many people, from all walks of life, who have served the nation in times of war.

Whether defending ideals of freedom and democracy, coming to the service of other nations when they faced crisis, or even misguided conflicts that seem, in hindsight, errors, our defence force has served Australia well.

At the dawn service and in ceremonial marches, at informal assemblies in cities and regions, here and overseas, Australians on Anzac Day vow never to forget the sacrifice of those men and women.

We stand in silence to hear the haunting bugle strains of the Last Post and we echo the invocation Lest we forget.

On one level, that phrase is considered an expression of mourning. Taken literally, though, it cautions us to look beyond myths and legends and remember the facts of history and what really happens in war.
NSW Police said the truck was carrying 50 cattle to Scone in the Hunter region when it crashed.

Paramedics and firefighters freed the 36-year-old trapped driver, who sustained minor head and leg injuries. He was taken to Westmead Hospital by road in a stable condition, a NSW Ambulance spokesman said.

The crash occurred about 8am on Mulgoa Road at Glenmore Park.

A number of cows have died after a cattle truck overturned in Sydneys west on Monday morning.

A number of cows were located deceased at the scene, and a number were required to be humanely euthanised, police said in a statement.

An operation is currently under way to remove the remaining cows off the roadway.

Inspector Natalie Gilbody said the surviving cattle required herding in a long and delicate operation.

What has happened when the truck rolled is a number of cattle have wandered off into the surrounding paddocks [and] we've managed to fence them into a neighbouring farmland, she said.

[They are] big animals and the truck is obviously in quite a precarious position as well, so we need to be quite careful.
From the moment they swung past the Cenotaph in Martin Plaza, heads turned in salute to fallen comrades, the crowd was with them.

For the first time Vietnam veterans led the march. Credit:Staff photographer

The proud figures of 600 Vietnam war veterans at the head of yesterdays Anzac March through the city instilled a new enthusiasm into the crowds lining the streets.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on April 26, 1972

It must have brought back memories to many of the older spectators to see soldiers, sailors and airmen in full uniform recently returned from a war zone.

Australias newest veterans received generous applause amidst cries of welcome back, boys, and good on you, fellers.

And the feeling seeped through as old servicemen from South African campaigns and World War I received their full quota of recognition.

Some of the older veterans who have seen many Anzac marches said it was one of the best spirited they could remember.

This was epitomised when, at the corner of George and Bathurst Streets, World War II infantry veterans returned the cheers of two women who held aloft a banner supporting their battalion.
The NSW government is paying contractors nearly $5 million to remove the wreck of a historic former Manly ferry that sank in Sydney Harbour, but wet weather has frustrated the mission to retrieve it.

Workers are dismantling the 99-year-old MV Baragoola, and the wreck is expected to be removed from the harbour off Balls Head at Waverton on the lower north shore within weeks. The ferry was inundated with water late on New Years Day, following a lengthy campaign to restore the vessel.

Sydneys long spell of wet weather and COVID-19 disruptions have delayed the operation to retrieve the Baragoola. Credit:Nick Moir

The Baragoola ferried passengers between Manly and Circular Quay for six decades before making its last official voyage in 1983. It was stripped of its heritage listing in 2010.

Its demise highlighted the precarious fate of vessels that once plied Sydney Harbour, and sparked debate about preserving the citys maritime heritage.
As soon as the outline of her distinctive freckled face started appearing in a mural on our best-known beachs boardwalk this week, Bondis only world surfing champion, Pauline Menczer, started receiving calls and texts at her Brunswick Heads home.

It may have been 36 years since the Bondi-born and bred star of the hit 2021 documentary Girls Cant Surf, had ridden the waves here, but old school friends from Bondi Public and Dover Heights Girls High recognised her immediately.

Artist Megan Hales (left) and her mural of 1993 World Surfing Champion Pauline Menczer (right) at Bondi Beach. Credit:James Alcock

People didnt message me or get in touch when I won the world surf title in 1993, but they did as soon as they saw the mural, says the champion once forgotten by the surfing world.

By Sunday, when she jumped on a board at Bondi and surfed there for first time since she was 16, and the finishing touches were being put on the artwork by Stanmore artist Megan Hales, she was swamped with surfies wanting selfies with her in front of her giant image.
A Sydney council is facing a backlash over plans for buildings up to 20 storeys to cater for the citys booming population as the areas state MP says residents are sick of continued overdevelopment.

Campsie, in the City of Canterbury Bankstown, is forecast to grow from having 24,500 residents in 2016 to more than 39,000 in 2036.

More than 6300 new homes will be built to house the areas population under the draft Campsie Town Centre master plan.

An artists impression of the redevelopment of the Campsie town centre. Credit:City of Canterbury Bankstown

Canterbury Bankstown Labor mayor Khal Asfour said the master plan for Campsie, which includes buildings between 42 and 66 metres high, was a response to what people are telling me they want.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has chastised Labor for an advertisement highlighting Liberal MP Gladys Lius links to donors suspected to be risks to Australias national security, claiming the opposition is engaging in racist campaigning.

They go after Gladys Liu because shes Chinese, Morrison said on Sunday. Theyre engaged in what I think is a sewer tactic here.

The Sunday Age revealed a new online ad targeting the Hong Kong-born MPs record, including her involvement in a campaign against the LGBTQ Safe Schools program and her campaigns use of controversial signage that appeared to mimic the Australian Electoral Commission.

One component of the ad stated that the Victorian division of the Liberal Party reportedly handed back $300,000 in donations because then prime minister Malcolm Turnbulls office was told the Chinese donors, invited to a 2015 event by Liu, were potential national security threats.
Labor has flagged it will increase Australias diplomatic heft in the Pacific and boost foreign aid in a bid to combat Chinas growing influence while Prime Minister Scott Morrison warns the superpower is seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in the region but he would draw a line at a Chinese military base.

The opposition accused the government of a substantial national security failure after Solomon Islands signed a new security deal with China that experts warn could lead to Chinese ships and planes being based some 2000km from Australias east coast.

Peter Dutton and Penny Wong. Credit:Nine

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare reiterated in a statement from his office on Saturday the security agreement was not about China establishing a military base in his country.

Morrison said he had received similar reassurances previously, and the establishment of a base in Solomons would be a red line for Australia and the United States.
At dawn, across Australia, hundreds of thousands of Australians will gather. Young and old, Indigenous and immigrant, city dweller and farmer, followers of every creed and those with none at all.

We will remind ourselves that what we share as free people is always more enduring than what might separate us.

The Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Credit:Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

The world has been reminded in recent weeks that the strength and defence of any nation always starts with the citizens themselves.

As my friend Jim Molan says it takes a nation to defend a nation.
Roshn, the national community developer powered by Saudi Arabias Public Investment Fund (PIF), has succeeded in completing 10 million man-hours with no lost-time injuries (LTIs) 23 months after it broke ground on its first community project, Sedra.

Located south of Riyadhs King Khalid International Airport, Sedra is an integrated, walkable community designed to enhance interaction between residents and encourage a healthy lifestyle with a variety of essential facilities such as green spaces, cycle tracks, hospitals, medical centres, schools, mosques, and retail outlets.

In recent years, Lost Time Incident Rates (LITIR) have become a key indicator of construction site safety and efficiency, and are used by insurers, government agencies, and other stakeholders to assess how safe a companys practices are.

On the key milestone, Roshns Group CEO David Grover said: "The primary cause of serious injuries on regional construction sites is moving vehicles, and at the peak of Sedras construction phase we averaged 130 heavy vehicle movements per day."

"Reaching 10 million man-hours with zero lost-time injuries is a remarkable achievement, and the result of the hard work of our dedicated HSE staff and site supervision teams, as well as our contractors and subcontractors. Id like to thank and congratulate them all for the brilliant teamwork that made this outcome possible," he stated.

A key community developer bringing new, sustainable modes of living to the kingdom, Roshn said an estimated 4,000 employees and contractors have worked at Roshns Sedra 1 site since its inception, and the company has invested around 50,000 hours in training to ensure a high level of operational safety.

Roshn creates communities that are inspired by both Saudi heritage and the evolving aspirations of the Saudi people. It has the mandate to deliver high-quality living standards to Saudis and support government efforts to increase rates of homeownership.-TradeArabia News Service
More than 30 months since work began on the new Albert Street station, construction crews have bottomed-out at Brisbanes biggest-ever hole, prompting obligatory celebrations from a hard-hatted and high-vizzed Acting Premier, and subsequent accusations from the Opposition about hiding in the CBD crater to dodge the states real problems.

Weve literally dug a big hole 50 metres below the city, Steven Miles declared on Sunday morning, adding shiny facts and figures: 1500 bolts to hold the hole in place and 47,000 cubic metres of excavated dirt and rock.

Acting Queensland Premier Steven Miles at the underground site of the new Albert Street Station on Sunday morning.

One day this spot will be bustling with 67,000 passengers coming and going from our city.

Once the Cross River Rail station was operational in 2025, construction would fill this 50-metre hole and rise another 50 metres above street level, Cross River Rail chief executive Graeme Newton said.
Kabul: Afghanistans acting defence minister said that the Taliban administration would not tolerate invasions from its neighbours after protesting against airstrikes it says were conducted by neighbouring Pakistan.

The comments come after the Taliban administration blamed Pakistan for airstrikes that officials say killed dozens in Kunar and Khost provinces.

Pakistan, which has not confirmed any involvement in airstrikes inside Afghanistans borders, said the two countries are brotherly countries.

Afghan Talibans Acting Minister of Defence Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob. Credit:AP

We are facing problems and challenges from both the world and our neighbours, the clear example is invasion by them in our territory in Kunar, said Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, acting Afghan defence minister, at a ceremony in Kabul commemorating the anniversary of the death of his father, Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Kyiv: After a secrecy-shrouded visit to Kyiv, US Secretary of State Blinken said Russia is failing in its war aims and Ukraine is succeeding.

The trip by Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin was the highest-level American visit to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the capital since Russia invaded in late February.

We had an opportunity to demonstrate directly our strong ongoing support for the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people. This was, in our judgment, an important moment to be there to have face-to-face conversations in detail, Blinken told reporters Monday near the Polish-Ukrainian border.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meet in Kyiv. Credit:AP

Blinken said their meeting with the Ukrainians lasted for three hours.
London: Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is pinning his hopes of a successful return to the British TV news market on the star power of his former tabloid editor Piers Morgan and the professional provocateurs ability to create worldwide controversy.

The 91-year-old executive chair of News Corp, who has been out of the sector since he sold Sky four years ago, is making his latest attempt to upset Britains broadcasting establishment through the UKs newest television channel talkTV.

Ruperts man on screen: Controversial broadcaster Piers Morgan. Credit:AP

The station  with the brash Morgan as its star on a reputed three-year 50 million ($89 million) deal to front the daily talk show, write columns for The Sun and New York Post and publish a book with HarperCollins  will launch on April 25 in Britain on subscription and free-to-air TV as well as online platforms including Amazon, Apple TV and YouTube.

The first episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored  featuring an interview with former US president Donald Trump  has already attracted global coverage, with the pair in a seemingly confected row about deceptive editing of a promotional clip. Morgans program, filmed in a dedicated studio in west London, will also be broadcast on the Murdoch-owned Sky News Australia from Tuesday and FOX Nation in the United States.
Kyiv: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has hailed accelerated weapons supplies he said could help Ukraine step up its counteroffensive as he prepares for a visit to the capital by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The visit, announced by Zelensky on Saturday, would be the highest-level visit by US officials to the country since the start of the war on February 24.

Russian tanks roll along a street in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol on Saturday. Credit:AP

As the war enters its third month, there is no end in sight to the fighting that has shocked the world, killed thousands, uprooted millions and reduced cities to rubble.

The general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said on Sunday that the Russians had fired on Ukrainian positions along the entire line of contact on the wars 60th day. It also said the Russian military intensified its offensive and assault operations in the Siverodonetsk, Kurakhiv and Popasna directions.
Shahid Al Hafid, 24 April 2022 (SPS) - The Permanent Office of the National Secretariat of the Polisario Front has reiterated the Sahrawi party's adherence to the legitimate and inalienable right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination and independence, during its ordinary meeting on Saturday chaired by the President of the Republic, Secretary General of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali.



In a final statement, the Permanent Office also stressed the sacredness of the territorial integrity of the Sahrawi Republic and the close connection of the peace process led by the United Nations to these two principles, for which a just and final peace in Western Sahara cannot be achieved without their absolute respect, in line with the resolutions of the United Nations and the African Union and the rulings of the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Justice, given that Western Sahara and Morocco are distinct and separate countries, and according to the fact that the Sahrawi issue is an issue of decolonization that can only be resolved by respecting the rights of the Sahrawi people and the territorial integrity of their country.



The meeting discussed the current situation on all the fronts of national action at various military, political and diplomatic levels.



062/T






How did you choose the college you attended? Would you have chosen differently if you could have compared colleges based on graduates earnings for specific fields of study versus the cost of their education?

It turns out that you can now get this information and more through the College Scorecard, which is published by the U.S. Department of Education.

When the recent update was released, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona commented: The updated and enhanced College Scorecard shines a spotlight on affordability, inclusivity and outcomes, over exclusivity and colleges that leave students without good jobs and with mountains of debt (tinyurl.com/7hczyahd).

College Scorecard is worth a visit for anyone with future college students in their family circle. Found at collegescorecard.ed.gov, the website offers several choices: You can search by school, by field of study or by selecting certain options, such as Schools Near Me.

Choosing Finance and Financial Management Services as a field of study produces a long list of 915 colleges. Winnow down these results by using the menu on the left side to select variables, such as location and credential type.

At some point, youll want to zero in on one college to explore more fully. For example, youll learn that Georgetown, a private school located in Washington, D.C., has a graduation rate of 94%, which is the share of students who graduated within 8 years of entering this school for the first time. Further, Georgetown is listed with an average annual cost of $28,909. This figure is important to understand, as it is not the same as the published sticker price. Cost is the average annual net price that a student who receives federal financial aid pays to cover expenses (e.g., tuition, living expenses) to attend a school. Net price is the schools cost of attendance minus any grants and scholarships received.

Scrolling down further in the listing to Fields of Study, you can see that Finance and Financial Management Services turns out to be one of the most popular fields of study at Georgetown, ranked by student size (you can also sort top fields by highest earnings and lowest debt).

Clicking on the field of study brought up more information: Median earnings are $107,054 (the annual earnings three years after graduation of those students who received federal financial aid), median total debt after graduation is $15,500 and the monthly student loan payment is $155. The number of graduates (bachelors degree) of the program is also listed.

Other tabs include information on typical earnings (which will tell you the percentage of students earning more than a high school graduate, based on six years after a student entered college), the student body demographics, and test scores and acceptance rate.

After reviewing one college, youll want to compare results to others. I compared Georgetown with a university in my home state, the University of Connecticut, which is a public school located in Storrs. By clicking on the Finance and Financial Management Services tags for the listings for Georgetown and the University of Connecticut, I was able to create a point-by-point comparison (you can compare up to 10 schools at once by specific program or general school listing).

The comparison showed details for median earnings (three years after graduation), median total federal loan debt after graduation and the number of graduates from each program.

The ability to compare schools in this way provides information that simply was not easily available before.

Now, decisions can take into consideration potential outcomes. Not only can you see your cost of attendance (and what you might be paying in loans afterward), but also what you could potentially be earning once you graduate  one way to define the value of a college education.

To truly give college selection some meaning, check out one more datapoint: alumni giving. What could be a better sign of happy graduates? Check out the Grateful Graduates Index created by Forbes at tinyurl.com/5p254hwb. (The index contains only private, not-for-profit institutions with at least 500 students.)

College Scorecard is worth exploring, as is alumni giving. Gone are the days when high school students choose colleges based on geographic location.

Julie Jason, JD, LLM, a personal money manager (Jackson, Grant of Stamford) and author, welcomes your questions/comments (readers@juliejason.com). Her awards include the 2021 Clarion Award, symbolizing excellence in clear, concise communications. Her latest book, a curated collection of Julies columns, is Retire Securely: Insights on Money Management From an Award-Winning Financial Columnist. To hear Julie speak, visit juliejason.com/events.
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MIDDLETOWN  An expanding local IT company, founded in December 2006 by Foster Charles while a senior at Middletown High School, has gained approval for a special exception to occupy the first floor of the former Rite Aid building at 10A Main St.

Charles, CEO and founder of Charles IT, sought a special exception from the Middletown Planning and Zoning Commission earlier this month to move his headquarters from 150 William St. one-tenth of a mile away to the building where the national drugstore chain was located, and, before that, The Middletown Press.

Charles sought a special zoning exception from retail use to professional office space. He plans to sublease the building, which has been vacant since spring 2019, from Rite Aid.

The company is very customer-centered in his services, according to its mission. Charles ITs tagline is We make IT for humans, by humans. The website has a button on its landing page that says Speak to a REAL person.

The firm also has an office in Stamford.

Charles, who was born and raised in Middletown, began his career as a young entrepreneur, he told zoning commissioners. He launched his endeavor in 2006  while still a senior at Middletown High School  on Main Street, above Pedal Power. He then moved to an office near Luce Restaurant.

It was a struggle to stay on the citys main drag, due to costs, Charles admitted.

He invested in the William Street building, renovating it for his purposes, Charles said. During the past five years, his outfit has grown by 30 percent year over year.

He intends to occupy 75 percent of the 10,000 square-foot main floor  and has high hopes for the future. In five, six, seven years, I can definitely see us moving into the upstairs as well.

Buildings with frontage on Main Street must dedicate 50 percent of it to largely retail use, according to city zoning code, hence the exception.

Charles says he looks for a certain demographic in his workers  professionals with growing families. I want my organization and my office space in something thats premiere, and that people are proud to work for, he said.

Commissioner Catherine Johnson asked what would be done with the black film now on the facilitys windows.

I want something more exciting to look at, and, right now, its all blacked-out, Charles said. I, personally, dont like that look.

The structure is across from the South Green and kitty-corner to the Northern Middlesex YMCA, Charles said, so hes planning to make the view a little bit more exciting to complement the area.

Johnson pointed out that there is more space available on the second floor behind the building if he were to expand the business.

Thats definitely the plan, Charles said. Every time I move into a new space, I think, Im never going to fill this much space, however, after being in his current location for less than five years, he has already expanded to the top floor, and is converting conference rooms to office space.

Its getting a little cramped in there, he said.

Commission alternate Joan Liska asked about parking, to which Charles replied that he expects to sublease 50 spaces from Rite Aid. He is also leasing some spots from the Congregation Adath Israel on Broad Street, and from the city, which he said, would accommodate up to 90 employees.

Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce President Larry McHugh said he is fully behind the plan. He said Charles IT is a flourishing business that has demonstrated 62 percent growth in Middletown over the past two years.

This is a very important project for us, because young people want to stay and grow their business in Middletown, McHugh told commissioners. Hes had opportunities to move, but he loves Middletown, the chamber president said, calling Charles a strong, committed person.

There are very few retail shops at the south end of Main Street, McHugh said.

This is a win-win for the city of Middletown  a young company thats growing on a fast track, that wants to stay here, grow here, and then become more and more of a community leader, he added.

Chairman Thomas Pattavina said he supports the proposal because Charles commitment to Middletown is honorable.

Commissioner Sebastian Giuliano took issue, however, with the proposal, saying that, in the 1990s, Main Street was at its nadir in terms of uses. Middletown did not take the bait and allow first-floor retail space to be converted to office space, he said.

We were proven right to have done that, he said. The expansion of activities on Main Street all came about because we made that decision.

The building, Giuliano said, was designed from the chips up to be retail space, and has a drive-thru window. And, the second floor is already dedicated to office space, the commissioner said. The Press was not retail, he pointed out.

As much as I can emphasize with all the reasons Ive heard to do this, I also have to say that exceptions tend to become the rules. The more exceptions that are granted, the harder its going to be to not grant an exception, Giuliano explained.

At this time, he said, Im unwilling to go down that road, so I will not be supporting this.

Richard Pelletier disagreed with Giuliano, saying the building is very suitable for the purpose with YMCA and South Green nearby.

I honestly believe this is a great opportunity to use a space thats been vacant for a while, and could have been used if a retailer was interested, he said.

The commission voted to approve the zoning change application 6-1.
Mohammed bin Salman Foundation (Misk) has appointed David Henry as the CEO of its recently launched mega development - Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Nonprofit City project.

An industry veteran, Henry has over four decades of experience in property development majorly in Australia and Southeast Asia. His career began at Lend Lease Group in Sydney, and Mur Group, a diversified property development company.

A first-of-its-kind project in the world, the Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Nonprofit City is being developed on a 3.4 sq km area in Saudi Arabia.

The citys general masterplan includes residential areas with 500 villas and townhouses, as well as 6,000 apartments with multiple floor plans; all are anticipated to accommodate nearly 18,000 residents.

According to Misk, Henry had formerly held the position of CEO for Springfield City Group, a company specialised in the development of a new city in SE Queensland in 1992. As Managing Director of VinaCapital Real Estate, he was responsible for an active portfolio of 40 plus projects.

Expanding and diversifying his reach, he was managing director of the LSE AIM board listed Vinaland Fund, and a member of the VCRE Investment Committee.

Henry has been leading the team responsible for developing the city from the beginning of the project towards the goal of establishing it as a premier ecosystem for youth, and a global center for incubating innovative, educational, and creative enterprises.

Fulfilling HRH the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmans ambitious vision for the city, Henry is prioritising working alongside a dedicated workforce on the project to deliver a city that will foster Saudi youth talent.

On his new role, Henry said he was keen to promote Saudisation with particular emphasis on women empowerment and upskilling of staff.

He also aims to increase the percentage of Saudi talent working on the team from the current 58% to reach 70% by the end of 2022.

Lauding the appointment, Chairman Dr Ghassan Alshibl said: "With the support of HRH the Crown Prince, the Nonprofit City is working towards the goal of creating a vibrant Saudi youth talent system to shape the future of the kingdom and the world, by encouraging learning and developing leadership skills among youth."

"We are delighted to have Henry as a key partner and globally recognized industry leader that will help us shape a long-term strategy in both economic and urban sustainability for the City," he added.

On the appointment, Henry said: "As a destination that places youth, innovation, and creativity at its heart, the City will be an inspiration for all, and will help realize the ambitious vision for the Kingdom outlined by HRH Mohammed bin Salman."

"It is my honor to be part of this project that pushes the boundaries in design innovation, ecosystem development, sustainability standards and developing local youth talent," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
NEW YORK (AP)  In the aftermath of their hard-won labor victory, Amazon workers in the New York City borough of Staten Island popped Champagne, cheered their victory and danced in celebration. But their jovial attitude will be tested by a company that seems likely to drag its feet to the bargaining table.

Among other things, the nascent Amazon Labor Union, or ALU, has said it wants longer breaks for warehouse employees, more time off and a dramatically higher minimum hourly wage of $30, up from just over $18 an hour now at the Staten Island facility.

To achieve anything close to that, the grassroots union would need to negotiate a contract with Amazon that both sides, as well as union members, agree on. Doing so could prove difficult.

Amazon is seeking to overturn the election, having argued in a filing with the National Labor Relations Board this month that the vote was tainted by organizers and by the board's regional office in Brooklyn that oversaw the election. On Friday, the company submitted material to support its objections in a filing to the agency. A spokeswoman for the labor board said the agency won't make that filing public while the case is still open. A separate NLRB regional office in the Southwest will likely hold hearings and decide whether to certify the results.

If Amazon's effort fails, it could appeal to the national labor board, whose Democratic majority is expected to favor the fledgling union. But even in cases when the agency upholds a union victory, companies often refuse to negotiate  a stance that can trigger lengthy legal battles in federal court as a backdoor way to thwart labor victories.

Data compiled in 2009 by Kate Bronfenbrenner, a labor expert at Cornell University, found that fewer than half of unions obtained their first contract within a year of winning an election, and 30% didn't secure one within three years. In the meantime, time ticks away as workers are left in a state of uncertainty.

John Logan, director of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University, says anti-union companies have traditionally taken the view that even if they lose an election, the battle isnt truly lost until a union contract is signed.

Theres every incentive for them to delay the process at every opportunity, Logan said. Law firms and consultants who specialize in continued avoidance activity have, for years, told employers explicitly, Time is on your side.' "

Even if Amazon goes to federal court and fails, it could still cause a contract delay and potentially blunt some of the momentum a union victory might create. Chris Smalls, the fired Amazon worker who leads the Amazon Labor Union, has said that since the group won its election earlier this month, workers from more than 100 Amazon facilities in the U.S. have contacted the union about organizing their own workplaces. A neighboring Amazon warehouse on Staten Island, which has roughly 1,500 workers, is set to have its own union election this week.

Experts say delays for a contract can frustrate such union campaigns and undermine employee confidence in organized labor. The result can be a weak contract or diminished interest among workers in organizing.

If Amazon pursues a protracted legal battle before agreeing to a contract, the number of employees at the warehouse who voted for the union would also likely dwindle. Amazon is known for its high turnover rate  up to 73% at the unionizing warehouse in the past two years alone, according to a recent court filing by the company.

One way workers can push back is by employing a strike. That, of course, carries its own risks. Michael Duff, a former NLRB lawyer who teaches at University of Wyoming College of Law, noted that Amazon could replace any striker with a substitute worker, potentially leaving strikers out of a job for months or even years.

Some unions have funds to help out-of-work strikers stay afloat. But sustaining such support can be burdensome for unions. Its also difficult for workers to survive long strikes, Duff said, something that employers know well.

Connor Spence, an Amazon employee who is ALUs vice president of membership, says the nascent union is ready to pressure the company by making its case through the news media and by engendering public sympathy. According to a Gallup poll from August, public approval of unions is at its highest level since 1965.

Spence said ALU organizers, who appeared recently at a virtual event with Sen. Bernie Sanders, a longtime champion of labor causes, will also try to persuade lawmakers to lean on the retailer.

But at the end of the day, its collective action that works, Spence said.

Organizers could deploy a strike or a walkout to disrupt Amazons operations on Staten Island, Spence said, noting that walkouts have occurred at other Amazon facilities in recent months. The group also plans to set up a strike fund, using donations collected through its GoFundMe page.

For now, organizers are focused on a rematch with Amazon at the neighboring Staten Island warehouse known as LDJ5. A victory there would give Amazon workers additional leverage during any potential strike or walkout.

Amazon and its CEO, Andy Jassy, have said that while its up to employees to decide whether to join a union, they believe theyre better off not doing so. To press its argument, the company is continuing to hold mandatory anti-union meetings for workers  a practice that the labor boards top prosecutor is trying to get outlawed.

Organizers have previously accused Amazon of confiscating union flyers from the LDJ5 warehouse. Last week, the union filed a complaint with the NLRB, asserting that Amazon has unlawfully barred it from displaying a pro-union sign in the break room. Organizers say workers had been able to display the same sign at JFK8, the neighboring facility that voted to unionize.

Seth Goldstein, a lawyer who is providing pro-bono legal help to the union, contended that Amazon managers told workers that it was against company policy to display the sign but didnt specify the policy and threatened discipline. An Amazon spokesman said some workers had erected a banner in violation of company policy" but declined to say why the same banner was allowed to be displayed in the nearby warehouse.

"Its an information war," said Madeline Wesley, one of the organizers who works at the LDJ5 warehouse. Its not going to stop us. But were going to have to be a little careful, making sure that no one gets to the point where theyre starting to get seriously disciplined or lose their job.
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Springfield College in Springfield, Mass., has named Jesika Garay from Greenwich to the Deans List for academic excellence for the 2021 fall semester.

Garay has a primary major of art therapy.

Honored students must have a minimum semester grade average of 3.500 for the term.

Baylor honors local students on Deans List

More than 5,000 Baylor University students, including two from town, have been named to the Deans Academic Honor List for the fall 2021 semesters.

The honored students are Anna Schmidt of Greenwich, a student in the Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences; and Mark Bourgeois of Old Greenwich, a student in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The Deans Academic Honor List at Baylor, located in Waco, Texas, honors undergraduates who earned a minimum semester grade-point average of 3.70 with no grade lower than a C.

U. of Delaware honors local students

Three area students have been named to the Deans List for the Fall 2021 semester at the University of Delaware in Newark, Del.

The honored students are Mallory Reinken, Natalie Medico and Thalia Doundoulakis, all of Greenwich.

To meet eligibility requirements for the Deans List, a student must be enrolled full-time and earn a GPA of 3.5 or above (on a 4.0 scale) for the semester.

Stamford Senior Center to honor River House director

The Stamford Senior Center will honor two community leaders at its annual Lives Blossom fundraising event at 6 p.m. May 5 at The Village in Stamford.

Donna Spellman, executive director of River House Adult Day Center, and Stamford Senior Center board member Roberta Eichler will take the stage as the organization pays tribute to their work to serve seniors in the community.

Spellman has led River House, an adult day care and health care facility in Greenwich that has served the Greenwich and Stamford community, for nearly seven years. Attendees come to the center to participate in activities, socialize and receive compassionate care. The organization is a safe haven for caregivers, knowing that health care is provided to loved ones while their quality of life is improved.

To be able to do the kind of work where you make a real difference in peoples lives is very humbling. I dont see it as work, said Spellman. People come to River House and magic happens, because people are stimulated, and they meet friends, and like the Stamford Senior Center, people have purpose; a reason to get up in the morning.

Roberta Eichler of Stamford joined the Stamford Senior Centers Board of Directors in 2012 after retiring from the Volunteer Center of Southwestern Fairfield County, where she served as executive director for 21 years.

The Stamford Senior Center is a place for everyone, a welcoming environment with lively activities; a good place to meet people and socialize, said Eichler. It also solves community problems, providing transport to a food pantry for those that are food insecure and vouchers for bus travel for those who need it. Its an important place and Im eager to help the organization grow.

The Lives Blossom event raises critical funds for the Stamford Senior Centers array of active programming. The evening offers networking, cocktails, hors doeuvres and a silent auction to support the nearly 900 seniors who depend upon the organization.

We are thrilled to honor Donna and Roberta for their dedication to improving the lives of seniors in our area, said Christina Crain, executive director of the Stamford Senior Center. Their work helps older adults to live independently and remain active members of the community. They are enriching lives and creating positive ripple effects across the entire region.

For more information and tickets, visit www.StamfordSeniorCT.org.

Celebrating the birth of a baby, an engagement or a wedding; a high school or college graduation; or an honor at work or through volunteering? Send information on celebrations involving Greenwich people or places to gtcitydesk@hearstmediact.com.


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OSLO, Norway  Norways $1.3 trillion wealth fund will vote next week to support top management at German drug and farm products maker Bayer AG, but will vote against the remuneration package of CEO Werner Baumann, it said on Sunday.

Shareholders will vote on April 29 at Bayers annual general meeting on whether to ratify the executive boards business conduct during 2021, a standard procedure at German AGMs.

The Norwegian fund owned 2.27% of Bayers shares at the end of 2021, valued at $1.19 billion, making it the companys fifth largest shareholder according to Refinitiv data.

"The board is responsible for attracting the right CEO and setting appropriate remuneration," Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which operates the fund, said in a statement.

It cited the need for a "substantial proportion of annual remuneration" to be provided as shares locked in for five to 10 years, transparency to avoid "unacceptable outcomes" and that all benefits should have a clear business rationale.

While the AGM vote is largely symbolic, with no bearing on managements liability or tenure, it is nevertheless seen as a key gauge of investor sentiment.

Baumann, whose contract as CEO runs until 2024, is under pressure to boost return on investment which has been lagging that of its rivals following the $63 billion takeover of agribusiness Monsanto in 2018.

Bayers shares tumbled in the months that followed the acquisition when jurors found Monsanto liable in several U.S. lawsuits for not warning of alleged cancer risks linked to its weedkiller Roundup.

The Norwegian fund joined a majority of shareholders at the 2019 AGM in rebuking Bayers management, but did, however, give its backing to Baumann and his team for the following two years.
PARIS (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macron comfortably won a second term Sunday, triggering relief among allies that the nuclear-armed power won't abruptly shift course in the midst of the war in Ukraine from European Union and NATO efforts to punish and contain Russia's military expansionism.

The second five-year term for the 44-year-old centrist spared France and Europe from the seismic upheaval of having firebrand populist Marine Le Pen at the helm, Macron's presidential runoff challenger who quickly conceded defeat but still scored her best-ever electoral showing.

Acknowledging that numerous voters cast ballots for him simply to keep out the fiercely nationalist far-right Le Pen, Macron pledged to reunite the country that is filled with so many doubts, so many divisions and work to assuage the anger of French voters that fed Le Pen's campaign.

No one will be left by the side of the road," Macron said in a victory speech against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower and a projection of the blue-white-and-red tricolor French flag. He was cheered by several hundred supporters who happily waved French and EU flags.

We have a lot to do and the war in Ukraine reminds us that we are going through tragic times where France must make its voice heard," Macron said.

During her campaign, Le Pen pledged to dilute French ties with the 27-nation EU, NATO and Germany, moves that would have shaken Europes security architecture as the continent deals with its worst conflict since World War II. Le Pen also spoke against EU sanctions on Russian energy supplies and faced scrutiny during the campaign over her previous friendliness with the Kremlin.

A chorus of European leaders hailed Macron's victory, since France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and is supplying weapons to Ukraine.

Democracy wins, Europe wins," said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

Together we will make France and Europe advance," tweeted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi called Macron's victory splendid news for all of Europe and a boost to the EU "being a protagonist in the greatest challenges of our times, starting with the war in Ukraine.

Macron won with 58.5% of the vote to Le Pen's 41.5%  significantly closer than when they first faced off in 2017.

Macron is the first French president in 20 years to win reelection, since incumbent Jacques Chirac trounced Le Pens father in 2002.

Le Pen called her result a shining victory, saying that in this defeat, I can't help but feel a form of hope.

Breaking through the threshold of 40% of the vote is unprecedented for the French far-right. Le Pen was beaten 66% to 34% by Macron in 2017 and her father got less than 20% against Chirac.

She and hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, one of 10 candidates eliminated in the first round on April 10, both quickly pitched forward Sunday night to France's legislative election in June, urging voters to give them a parliamentary majority to hamstring Macron.

Le Pens score this time rewarded her years-long efforts to make her far-right politics more palatable to voters. Campaigning hard on cost-of-living issues, she made deep inroads among blue-collar voters in disaffected rural communities and in former industrial centers.

Le Pen voter Jean-Marie Cornic, 78, said he cast his ballot for her because he wanted a president who would prioritize our daily lives  salaries, taxes, pensions.

The drop in support for Macron compared to five years ago points to a tough battle ahead for the president to rally people behind him in his second term. Many French voters found the 2022 presidential rematch less compelling than in 2017, when Macron was an unknown factor.

Leftist voters  unable to identify with either the centrist president or Le Pen  agonized with Sunday's choice. Some trooped reluctantly to polling stations solely to stop Le Pen, casting joyless votes for Macron.

It was the least worst choice, said Stephanie David, a transport logistics worker who backed a communist candidate in round one.

It was an impossible choice for retiree Jean-Pierre Roux. Having also voted communist in round one, he dropped an empty envelope into the ballot box on Sunday, repelled both by Le Pens politics and what he saw as Macrons arrogance.

I am not against his ideas but I cannot stand the person, Roux said.

In contrast, Marian Arbre, voting in Paris, cast his ballot for Macron to avoid a government that finds itself with fascists, racists.

Theres a real risk, the 29-year-old fretted.

Macron went into the vote as the firm favorite but faced a fractured, anxious and tired electorate. The war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic battered Macrons first term, as did months of violent protests against his economic policies.

In celebrating victory, Macron acknowledged a debt to voters who helped get him over the line, not to support the ideas I hold, but to block those of the extreme right.

I want to thank them and tell them that I am aware that their vote obliges me for the years to come, he said. "I am the custodian of their sense of duty, of their attachment to the Republic.



Associated Press journalists Sylvie Corbet, Elaine Ganley, Angela Charlton and Thomas Adamson in Paris, Sam Petrequin in Brussels Michel Spingler in Henin-Beaumont, and Alex Turnbull in Le Touquet, contributed.



Follow APs coverage of the French election at https://apnews.com/hub/french-election-2022

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
GLEN CARBON  A man from Glen Carbon and his brother and cousin pleaded guilty Thursday to illegally entering the U.S. Capitol through a broken window during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.

Jeremiah Carollo, 45, of Glen Carbon, and his brother, Anthony Carollo, 23, and their cousin, Cody Vollan, 31, both of Lockport, Illinois, were all charged in January with misdemeanor counts of unlawfully entering a restricted government building and disorderly conduct on U.S. Capitol grounds.

They pleaded guilty to a superseding information on Thursday during a telephone hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington. U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta set separate sentencing hearings for all three on Sept. 13.

A criminal complaint filed in January included photos of the three men standing amid the mob outside the Capitol.

They later could be seen filing past a man in a gas mask and bicycle helmet. Another photo shows the defendants walking single-file through the Capitol rotunda.

The men were identified through Google records and surveillance images, according to court records. Anthony Carollo and Vollan were arrested in the Lockport area, southwest of Chicago, while Jeremiah Carollo was arrested near his home in Glen Carbon.

As part of their guilty pleas, the men admitted they entered the building through a broken window adjacent to the Senate wing door around 2:22 p.m. and wandered near the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before leaving after about 15 minutes.

At least 27 Illinoisans have been charged so far in the Capitol breach, an ongoing investigation that has been described by prosecutors as the largest criminal investigation in the countrys history.

Most of the Illinois cases have involved simple trespassing and disorderly conduct, rather than allegations of violence.

In December, however, James Robert Elliott, 24, of Aurora, Illinois, was charged with felony counts alleging he used a flagpole to assault officers while illegally on the Capitol grounds. He has pleaded not guilty, and his case is pending.

Nationwide, nearly 800 people have been arrested as of this month in all 50 states and the District of Columbia on charges stemming from the Capitol breach, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
ST. LOUIS COUNTY  A man was found dead Sunday morning on the campus of Hazelwood Central High School, St. Louis County police said.

The victim was not a student, police said, and the incident did not appear to be related to the school.

Police received a report of a shooting at the high school at about 6:40 a.m. on Sunday. After arriving at the campus, officers found a man in the parking lot with a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The school said in a statement on its website that the incident "has no connection to Central High School, Hazelwood School District, or any school activity, and our campus is safe."

Police have not released the name or age of the victim.

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LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP)  An opposition liberal party convincingly won Sunday's parliamentary election in Slovenia, according to early official results, in a major defeat for populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa, who was accused of pushing the small European Union country to the right while in office.

The Freedom Movement won nearly 34% of the votes, compared with around 24% for the governing conservative Slovenian Democratic Party, state election authorities said after counting over 97% of the ballots.

Trailing behind the top two contenders were the New Slovenia party with 7%, followed by the Social Democrats with more than 6% and the Left party with 4%.

The results mean that the Freedom Movement, a newcomer in the election, appears set to form the next government in a coalition with smaller leftist groups. The party leader addressed supporters via a video message from his home because he has COVID-19.

Tonight people dance, Robert Golob told the cheering crowd at the party headquarters. Tomorrow is a new day and serious work lies ahead.

Jansa, an ally of right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, congratulated the relative winner of the election in a speech.

The results are as they are, Jansa said, praising his government's work. Many challenges lie ahead for the new government, whatever it may look like, but the foundations are solid.

A veteran politician, Jansa became prime minister a little over two years ago after the previous liberal premier resigned. An admirer of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Jansa had pushed the country toward right-wing populism since taking over at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reflecting strong interest in Sunday's election, turnout was higher than usual  around 67% of Slovenia's 1.7 million voters cast their ballot, compared with 52% in the previous election in 2018.

Golob, a U.S.-educated former business executive, came out as a frontrunner shortly after entering the political scene. The Freedom Movement party has advocated a green energy transition and sustainable development over Jansa's nation-centered narrative.

Liberals had described Sundays election as a referendum on Slovenias future. They argued that Jansa, if reelected, would push the traditionally moderate nation further away from core EU democratic values and toward other populist regimes.

Opinion polls ahead of the vote had predicted that the leading parties would be locked in a tight race.

Jansa's SDS won the most votes in an election four years ago, but couldn't initially find partners for a coalition government. He took over after lawmakers from centrist and left-leaning groups switched sides following the resignation in 2020 of liberal Prime Minister Marjan Sarec.

Jansa, in power, faced accusations of sliding toward authoritarian rule in the Orban style, drawing EU scrutiny amid reports that he pressured opponents and public media, and installed loyalists in key positions for control over state institutions.

The Freedom House democracy watchdog recently said that while political rights and civil liberties are generally respected (in Slovenia), the current right-wing government has continued attempts to undermine the rule of law and democratic institutions, including the media and judiciary.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
MOSCOW (AP)  A new Russian intercontinental ballistic missile is capable of carrying several hypersonic weapons, a senior Russian military officer said Sunday.

Col. Gen. Sergei Karakayev, the commander of the Russian military's Strategic Missile Forces, said in televised remarks that the new Sarmat ICBM is designed to carry several Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles.

Russias Defense Ministry said the Sarmat was test-fired for the first time Wednesday from the Plesetsk launch facility in northern Russia and its practice warheads have successfully reached mock targets on the Kura firing range on the far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula.

The test launch came amid soaring tensions between Moscow and the West over the Russian military action in Ukraine and underlines the Kremlins emphasis on the countrys nuclear forces.

Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the Sarmat launch as a major achievement, claiming that the new missile has no foreign equivalent and is capable of penetrating any prospective missile defense.

This really unique weapon will strengthen the combat potential of our armed forces, reliably ensure Russias security from external threats and make those, who in the heat of frantic aggressive rhetoric try to threaten our country, think twice, Putin said Wednesday.

The Sarmat is a heavy missile that has been under development for several years to replace the Soviet-made Voyevoda, which was code-named Satan by the West and forms the core of Russias nuclear deterrent.

The military has said that the Avangard is capable of flying 27 times faster than the speed of sound and making sharp maneuvers on its way to target to dodge the enemys missile shield.

In anticipation of the deployment of the Sarmat, the new hypersonic vehicle has been fitted to the existing Soviet-built ICBMs, and the first unit armed with the Avangard entered duty in December 2019.

The director and the designer-in-chief of the Makeyev missile-maker that developed the Sarmat, Vladimir Degtyar, said in televised remarks that its range allows it to fly along any trajectory across north or south poles to hit any target around the world.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  Russian forces in Ukraine tried to storm a steel plant housing soldiers and civilians in the southern city of Mariupol on Saturday in an attempt to crush the last pocket of resistance in a place of deep symbolic and strategic value to Moscow, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, announced he would meet Sunday in his nation's capital with the U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the U.S. secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin. The White House declined to comment.

Speaking at a news conference, Zelenskyy gave little detail about logistics of the encounter but said he expected concrete results  not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons.

It would be the first high-level U.S. trip to Kyiv since the war began Feb. 24. While visiting Poland in March, Blinken stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil to meet with the country's foreign minister. Zelenskyys last face-to-face meeting with a U.S. leader was Feb. 19 with Vice President Kamala Harris.

In attacks on the eve of Orthodox Easter, Russian forces pounded cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine.

A 3-month-old baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa, officials said. Zelenskyy said 18 more were wounded.

The war started when this baby was one month old. Can you imagine what is happening? Zelenskyy said. They are just bastards. ... I dont have any other words for it, just bastards.

The Ukrainian military said Saturday it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.

The command post was hit on Friday, killing two generals and critically wounding another, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said in a statement. The Russian military did not comment on the claim, which could not be confirmed.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a Zelenskyy adviser, said in an online interview that 50 senior Russian officers were in the command center when it was attacked.

The fate of the Ukrainians in the sprawling and besieged seaside steel mill in Mariupol, where Russia says its forces have taken the rest of the city, wasnt immediately clear. Earlier Saturday, a Ukrainian military unit released a video reportedly taken two days earlier in which women and children holed up underground, some for as long as two months, said they longed to see the sun.

We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe in fresh air, one woman in the video said. You have simply no idea what it means for us to simply eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, it is already happiness.

Russia said it took control of several villages elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region and destroyed 11 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including three artillery warehouses. Russian attacks also struck populated areas.

Associated Press journalists observed shelling in residential areas of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city; regional Gov. Oleh Sinehubov said three people were killed. In the Luhansk area of the Donbas, Gov. Serhiy Haidai said six people died during the shelling of a village, Gorskoi.

In Sloviansk, a town in northern Donbas, the AP witnessed two soldiers arriving at a hospital, one of them mortally wounded.

Sitting in a wheelchair outside her damaged Sloviansk apartment, Anna Direnskaya, 70, said, I want peace."

One of many native Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, Direnskaya said she wishes Russians would understand that Ukrainians are not bad people and that there should be no enmity between them.

"Why is this happening?" she said. I dont know.

While British officials said Russian forces had not gained significant new ground, Ukrainian officials announced a nationwide curfew ahead of Easter Sunday, a sign of the wars disruption and threat to the entire country.

Mariupol has been a key Russian objective and has taken on outsize importance in the war. Completing its capture would give Russia its biggest victory yet, after a nearly two-month siege reduced much of the city to a smoking ruin.

It would deprive Ukrainian of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere and establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014. Russia-backed separatists control parts of the Donbas.

An adviser to Ukraine's presidential office, Oleksiy Arestovych, said Russian forces resumed airstrikes on the Azovstal plant and were also trying to storm it, in an apparent reversal of tactics. Two days earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had given an order not to send troops in but instead to blockade the plant.

Ukrainian officials have estimated that about 2,000 of their troops are inside the plant along with civilians sheltering in its underground tunnels.

Earlier Saturday, the Azov Regiment of Ukraines National Guard, which has members holed up in the plant, released the video of about two dozen women and children. Its contents could not be independently verified. But if authentic, it would be the first video testimony of what life has been like for civilians trapped underground there.

The video shows soldiers giving sweets to children who respond with fist-bumps. One young girl says she and her relatives havent seen neither the sky nor the sun since they left home Feb. 27.

The regiments deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, told the AP the video was shot Thursday. The Azov Regiment has its roots in the Azov Battalion, which was formed by far-right activists in 2014 at the start of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine and has elicited criticism for some of its tactics.

More than 100,000 people  down from a prewar population of about 430,000  are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate that over 20,000 civilians have been killed in the city.

Yet another attempt to evacuate women, children and older adults from Mariupol failed Saturday. Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupols mayor, said Russian forces did not allow Ukrainian-organized buses to take residents to Zaporizhzhia, a city 227 kilometers (141 miles) to the northwest.

At 11 oclock, at least 200 Mariupol residents gathered near the Port City shopping center, waiting for evacuation, Andryushchenko posted on the Telegram messaging app. The Russian military drove up to the Mariupol residents and ordered them to disperse, because now there will be shelling.

At the same time, he said, Russian buses assembled about 200 meters (yards) away. Residents who boarded those were told they were being taken to separatist-occupied territory and not allowed to disembark, Andryushchenko said. His account could not be independently verified.

In the attack on Odesa, Russian troops fired at least six missiles, according to Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraines interior minister.

Residents of the city heard explosions in different areas, Gerashchenko said via Telegram. Residential buildings were hit. It is already known about one victim. He burned in his car in a courtyard of one of the buildings.

Zelenskyy's news conference was held in a Kyiv subway station, where he paused at one point as a train noisily passed through. The subway system, which includes the worlds deepest station, attracted widespread attention early in the war when hordes of people took shelter there.

Regarding the expected visit Sunday by U.S. officials, Zelenskyy said: I believe that we will be able to get agreements from the United States or part of that package on arming Ukraine which we agreed on earlier. Besides, we have strategic questions about security guarantees, which it is time to discuss in detail, because the United States will be one of those leaders of security countries for our state.

Fisch reported from Sloviansk, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Inna Varenytsia in Kviv and Associated Press staff members around the world contributed to this report.

Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
One big question deserves to be on every police officers mind when pulling a motorist over for a relatively minor offense: Is this stop really worth the violent confrontation or death that could follow? Even if cops arent asking that question, city governments are, and they increasingly are concluding that, no, its better to let the offender move on than risk yet another tragedy that undermines public trust in the police.

On April 4 in Grand Rapids, Mich., an officer stopped a Black driver for having a license plate that didnt match his car. The unarmed driver, Patrick Lyoya, made a series of horrendous decisions that escalated into confrontation. In video, the officer wrestles Lyoya to the ground and straddles his back. He then pulls his gun and shoots Lyoya in the back of the head. A license plate violation effectively yielded a death sentence.

There are scores of other horrific examples that resulted in the suspects death  which is not to suggest that the suspects werent at fault. Ideally, police training would be revamped so that officers first reaction in tense situations would not be to assume the worst if the suspect seems distrustful of police. Ideally, civilian interaction with police would be so common that trust between both sides would build rather than deteriorate to todays levels, where some people, particularly Black young men, worry that they could die simply for asserting their rights or feeling they have to run to save their own lives.

Until that magic day arrives, several cities are deciding that the next best thing is for police to stand down from stopping motorists for minor infractions  like, say, a non-functioning turn signal or an expired tag  to avoid potentially deadly escalations. Law enforcers argue that denying police such pretexts eliminates the potential for searches that could lead to discoveries of contraband guns or drugs.

Los Angeles has ordered cops to stop pulling over motorists for minor infractions. The New York Times reports that other cities such as Pittsburgh and Seattle  and the entire state of Virginia  have imposed similar restrictions. Some prosecutors now say that if cops turn up drugs or other contraband during a minor-infraction stop, they wont bring charges related to the contraband.

St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones has spent the past year redefining police functions and how to de-escalate situations before they result in tragic outcomes. By all means, police should step up efforts to stop motorists from engaging in the kinds of conduct that puts others lives in danger  particularly racing through red lights and speeding. But its also worth looking at the experience of other cities to see if their new stand-down policies are yielding positive results.

One things for sure: Its time to change the dynamic in which a police stop for a broken tail light yields a tragic outcome.
Regarding "White House officials say Biden will decide on student loan cancellation before August" (April 20): When my husband and I married in the early 1990s, we had a combined student debt that equaled a nice sized mortgage. As a result, we pooled our entry-level resources and bought a teeny, tiny 812-square foot house. I drove two cars. One was a monster 1978 Impala with holes in the roof. The other was a pondwater green 1977 Dodge Aspen that had the hottest vinyl seats known to man. When they broke, we fixed the cheapest.

We also consumed a lot of ramen and orange juice dinners. Vacations were local and rare. We couldnt afford them. We had no children  we couldnt afford them. We paid the whole student debt off in under 10 years. No one forced us to go to university. No one made us go into debt. We chose to do both. And, as such, we made the necessary life adjustments to accommodate those choices.

Now should I support lowering the cost of college for those in need? Absolutely. Support increased funding for public education? Absolutely. And after having scrimped and sacrificed to pay off my own student debt, should I turn around and pay off some strangers debt out of my taxes? Absolutely not.

Madonna Laws-Lowell  Crestwood
Regarding the editorial "When the gutter isn't good enough, St. Louis politics aims for the sewer" (April 19): Im disappointed by the Editorial Boards defense of the 1st Congressional District Democratic primary challenger, state Sen. Steve Roberts, and criticism of incumbent Rep. Cori Bush.

Roberts has been accused twice of sexual abuse, and he publicized details of a settlement in which one accuser cleared him of wrongdoing. According to the editorial, however, it is Bush who wants to revive the rape allegation as a campaign strategy. Using alleged sexual violence as a pretext to bash Bush, herself a survivor, is gross.

The editorial referred to Bushs abysmal record, including her vote against sanctions, support for Ukraine and banning Russian oil. Her vote did not prevent Ukrainians from receiving U.S. support. In fact, Rep. Bush called for increased sanctions on oligarchs funding Putins war.

It seems the Editorial Board frequently criticizes Bush. The board dismissed her summer sleep-in to extend the eviction moratorium as a publicity stunt, yet her activism spurred President Joe Biden to act. As a constituent, Im pleased she is an influential voice in national conversations. Specifically, her work to expand health care access, improve child care systems and address the student loan crisis benefits my family and thousands of other St. Louisans.

In all this, Bushs moral clarity is refreshing. Bush speaks powerfully and directly on behalf of constituents like me. The Post-Dispatch may disagree, but I will vote to reelect Bush.

Katharine Nimmons  St. Louis
In March 2022 India and Israel successfully completed missile-interception tests for the updated Indian MRSAM (Medium Range Surface-To-Air Missile) ship-based air defense system. MRSAM is based on the Israeli Barak 8 SAM (surface-to-air missile) system. MRSAM can be used on ships or on land with a mobile multimode radar similar to the one used for the Israeli Iron Dome. Each land-based MRSAM battery contains one truck-mounted command and control system, one truck-mounted multimode radar and three 8x8 launcher vehicles each carrying eight missiles. The MRSAM missile has a range of 70 kilometers and the radar has a max range of 470 kilometers. MRSAM is being used by both the Indian Air Force for defense of bases and cities while the army is procuring MRSAM to operate with mobile units. The truck mounted launcher erects the missiles so they can be fired straight up, as does the Barak. The back blast of the launched missiles means components of the launcher exposed to this heat have to be replaced after about 60 launches. Launchers contain a communications mast which enables the launcher to be up to 20 kilometers from the radar vehicle. The launcher and command/control unit are built in India while Israel supplied 2,000 missiles initially to equip army and air force batteries. Most of the missiles will go to the air force, which has to defend numerous urban areas and military bases from hostile jets, UAVs and cruise missiles. An advanced version of MRSAM is under development that will provide ballistic missile defense and the longer range (150 kilometers) missiles Israel has already developed for the new Barak ER.

The 2020 acceptance tests for the land-based version came two years after the LRSAM (Long Range Surface to Air Missile) ship-based version of Barak 8 was accepted and put into production. This involved a $777 million contract to supply system equipment and missiles to install LRSAM on seven Indian warships. Each ship receives an AESA radar, launchers and fire control equipment as well as an initial supply of missiles. Since 2016 India has placed two orders totaling over $1.6 billion for Barak 8 systems and missiles. More orders are expected because the Indian version of Barak 8 has proved effective and reliable, as did the Barak 1 India installed in 14 Indian warships since it was first ordered in 2000.

Barak 8 was developed from the Barak 1 missile, which entered Israeli service in the mid-1990s as a short-range defense against anti-ship missiles and aircraft. The Barak 1 missile weighed 98 kg (216 pounds) each, with a 21.8 kg (48 pound) warhead. The missiles are mounted in an eight-cell container. The radar system provides 360-degree coverage and the missiles can take down an incoming missile as close as 500 meters away from the ship. The missile has a range of ten kilometers and is also effective against aircraft.

The basic Barak 8 is a larger 275 kg (605 pound) missile with a 60 kg (132 pound) warhead and a range of 70 kilometers. The warhead has its own seeker that can find the target despite most countermeasures. The missiles are mounted in a three-ton, eight cell, low maintenance container and also launched straight up. The compact fire control module weighs under two tons and was designed for easy installation on a ship.

Back in 2013 Israel first installed Barak 8 on three 1,075-ton Saar 5 class corvettes and had it operational by 2014. Thus Barak 8 was ready for action over a year before its scheduled 2015 service date. Israel is believed to have rushed this installation because Russia had sent high-speed Yakhont anti-ship missiles to Syria and Barak 8 was designed to deal with this kind of threat. Barak 8 is also Israels first air defense system equal to the American Patriot, and similar systems like the U.S. Navy SM-2, Russian S-300, and European Aster 15. An improved Barak 8 would be able to shoot down short-range ballistic missiles. And the Israeli manufacturer went ahead with that as well as the three different versions of Barak 8 as well as the Barak MX fire control system.

In 2014 India was still ordering Barak 1 for its ships and continuing work on its customized and much delayed versions of Barak 8. India had run into problems implementing changes for its naval version (LRSAM) and land version (MRSAM). Not surprisingly the LRSAM/MRSAM was behind schedule. This is the norm for Indian state-run defense firms. And theres not much India could do about it because Indian politicians and defense officials insist on Indians (mainly state-owned defense firms) doing modifications that Israel could have completed sooner and cheaper.

This was all about India doing a minor bit of work on its version of Barak 8 that would enable Indian politicians to claim LRSAM and MRSAM are Indian developed and made. The Israelis go along with this because India is a big customer. A growing number of Indians, especially those in the military who are put at risk by all this, know what is going on and would prefer just getting it done as soon as possible. These are persistent Indian problems managing the development of military technology. The Barak 8 fiasco began in 2006 when India and Israel agreed to jointly develop and manufacture a customized (for India) Barak 8 variant; LRSAM and MRSAM. Both of these systems were to replace older Russian weapons as well as Russian offers of new Russian made replacements.

While most (70 percent) of the Barak 8 development work was done in Israel, India is the major customer because it is buying $1.1 billion worth of LRSAM for their warships and even larger orders to replace older Russian SA-6 and SA-8 land-based systems. Since India has larger armed forces (and weapons needs), they will be the major user. The two countries evenly split the $350 million development cost for the Indian variant. The Indian delay was because of problems developing features that India wanted as well as setting up manufacturing facilities for the few Indian-made LRSAM components.

While the Barak 8 was installed in Israeli ships in late 2013, Israel could not just install Barak 8 in Indian warships until the two countries resolved some differences over the transfer of some Israeli technology to India. This has also been a problem with other Western nations and the Indian government has not been willing to change Indian laws and patent protections to avoid these problems.

By 2010 Indian defense officials realized they had a major, and embarrassing, problem with LRSAM/MRSAM; they did not have enough engineers in the government procurement bureaucracy to quickly and accurately transfer the Israeli technical data to the Indian manufacturers. In addition, some of the Indian firms that were to manufacture Barak 8 components either misrepresented their capabilities or did not know until it was too late that they did not have the personnel or equipment to handle the job. In 2016 another self-inflicted problem arose when two state-owned defense manufacturing firms got into a dispute with each other and the government over which of them would be in charge of managing the Indian work on LRSAM/MRSAM. This dispute also involved efforts by state-owned defense firms to get more political support for increasing pressure on Israel to give ground on exporting defense tech to India. What no one wanted to say openly was that the corruption in India, especially in defense matters, was epic and most Western states do not trust the Indians unless there are strong (and embarrassing to Indian officials) legal guarantees about the security of exported tech.

Fortunately, Israel had a large (about 100,000 people) Indian Jewish minority, including many who continued doing business with India and were available to explain the intricacies of how things are done in India. While India had a Jewish community for over 3,000 years, most of them moved to Israel after World War II and prospered because they were no longer a tolerated religious minority, but part of the majority. The Indian Jews brought a lot of Indian culture with them as well as intimate knowledge of how things worked in India compared to Israel. This helped Israel survive the difficulties encountered working with India on the Barak 8 modifications.

Earlier in 2018 Israel announced that the Israeli version of the Barak 8 SAM system has been reorganized and expanded. There are now three Barak missiles, all variants of the Barak 8 that entered service in 2013 and was seen as a missile which could be easily reconfigured. The first customer for this was India, which wanted Barak 8 customized to operate from ships as well as land-based launchers. This collaboration was beset by many problems with Indian developers and manufacturers. Meanwhile, the Israeli manufacturer went ahead on their own and developed three versions of the Barak 8 missile. The Barak 8 was renamed Barak LRAD. A Barak 8 with a smaller rocket motor (and a range of 35 kilometers) was called Barak MRAD. Adding a booster rocket to the Barak 8 resulted in the Barak ER (with a range of 150 kilometers). All three versions retained the terminal radar guidance in the warhead.

But the major selling point of the new Barak configuration was the MX fire control system. This is a separate product customized to work with all three Barak missile types. Barak MX was designed to easily accept sensor (usually radar) data from numerous sources and then use threat assessment software to determine which Barak missile systems should be used against each target. This approach has long been used with the Iron Dome system, which ignores rockets or shells that are calculated to land in uninhabited areas and instead only fires missiles at incoming projectiles that threaten lives or valuable military or civilian structures.
TORONTO, ON and NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / April 22, 2022 / Sekur Private Data Ltd. (OTCQB: SWISF) (CSE:SKUR.WT) (CSE:SKUR) (FRA:GDT) ("Sekur" or the "Company"), the leader in Swiss hosted secure communications and secure data management, is pleased announce that it has now updated the final amount the closed a private placement, mentioned in April 21 2022 news, in the amount of CA$ 812,554.75 (US$ 639,806). The Company sold a total of 2,321,585 Units for gross proceeds before banking and wiring fees of CA$ 812,554.75 (US$ 639,806) in equity financing in the form of Units.

Each Unit consists of one common share (a "Share") priced at CA$0.35 per share, and one share purchase full warrant (a "Warrant"). Each Full Warrant will entitle the holder to purchase a Common share at a price of CA$0.70 per share for a two-year term (the "Warrant Term"). The offering is now closed and is being filed with the regulatory authorities.

The proceeds of the financing will be allocated to continue to accelerate the marketing of the Company's Sekur encrypted email and messaging solution to the US market, for the marketing and launch of the Company's SekurMail App being launched in Q2 2022, and for general purposes. There were no fees associated with this financing and no warrants associated with this financing were issued.

Alain Ghiai, CEO of Sekur Private Data said: "In a time when markets are in turmoil, we find ourselves very appreciative of our supporters and shareholder. The placement was oversubscribed and closed at above market prices, which demonstrates both the strength of our value offering, our brand, and the valuable support and loyalty of our shareholders. We plan to use a sizable portion of the financing in order to launch our new SekurMail application, which is being completed for a formal launch in June 2022. We plan to do several launches in various countries in Latin America and Europe, throughout Q2 and Q3 of this year. We are grateful to all our shareholders and our customers who are supporting us by subscribing daily to SEKUR, and purchasing our security on the Canadian, American and German stock exchanges."



Sekur , which includes SekurMessenger and SekurMail, is part of a bundle of email, messaging and file transfer into one application, includes the Company's latest SekurMail technology, which includes proprietary anti-phishing and privacy feature called SekurSend. SekurSend lets a user send an email to any other recipient, whether they have Sekur or not, in full privacy and security as the email never leaves Sekur 's encrypted email servers based in Switzerland. The recipient can then click on the notification and reply in the same manner using SekurReply, without the recipient having to register for a Sekur account. The sender can also decide to protect any email sent by adding a password to open it, a read-limit and a self-destruct timer as well. Sending an email with the SekurSend feature allows the senders and recipients to add limitless size attachments to the emails without crowding the recipients' email box. This also eliminates BEC attacks for businesses and email phishing attacks. Additionally, SekurMail includes full control of email delivery, automatic data export for large Enterprises and an automatic Data Loss Prevention technology ("DLP") with real time continuous archiving.

Recent data breaches in messaging applications have created a certain urgency for businesses and data privacy advocates to protect their communications form cyber-attacks and identity theft via mobile and desktop devices.

SekurMessenger eliminates many of the privacy and security risks by not only not requiring a phone number, which would divulge a user's phone device ID, but also by not social engineering a user's phone or computer contact list and infecting the contacts by default as well, eliminating a huge loophole in security and privacy. SekurMessenger issues each user a username and a Sekur number. The Sekur number is the contact ID a user would disclose in order for other Sekur users to be added. The service comes with a self-destruct timer and other features as well, including GlobeX's proprietary VirtualVaults and HeliX technologies with all data stored in Swiss hosted encrypted servers.

Additionally, SekurMessenger now comes with a proprietary feature and technology called Chat by Invites. This feature allows a SekurMessenger user ("SM user") invite a non-SM user, or a group of non-SM users, to chat in a fully private and secure way, without the recipient ever having to register to SekurMessenger or download the app. At the end of the chat, the initiator of the conversation can remotely terminate the conversation and all traces of the conversation are deleted from all users, including the recipient. This unique feature is now fully deployed and functional on all iOS and Android devices and web platforms. The target sectors are numerous, including but not limited to real estate, legal, financial, government, energy, mining, manufacturing, trade and medical sectors.

Sekur's Data privacy solutions are all hosted in Switzerland, protecting users' data from any outside data intrusion requests. In Switzerland, the right to privacy is guaranteed in article 13 of the Swiss Federal Constitution. The Federal Act on Data Protection ("FADP") of 19 June 1992 (in force since 1993) has set up a strict protection of privacy by prohibiting virtually any processing of personal data which is not expressly authorized by the data subjects. The protection is subject to the authority of the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner.

Under Swiss federal law, it is a crime to publish information based on leaked "secret official discussions." In 2010 the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland found that IP addresses are personal information and that under Swiss privacy laws they may not be used to track Internet usage without the knowledge of the individuals involved.

About Sekur Private Data Ltd.

Sekur Private Data Ltd. is a Cybersecurity and Internet privacy provider of Swiss hosted solutions for secure communications and secure data management. The Company distributes a suite of encrypted e-mails, secure messengers, secure communication tools, and secure cloud-based storage, disaster recovery and document management. Sekur Private Data Ltd. sells its products through its approved wholesalers and distributors, and telecommunications companies worldwide. Sekur Private Data Ltd. serves consumers, businesses and governments worldwide.

On behalf of Management

SEKUR PRIVATE DATA LTD.

Alain Ghiai

President and Chief Executive Officer

+1.416.644.8690

[email protected]

For more information, please contact Sekur Private Data at [email protected] or visit us at https://www.sekurprivatedata.com

For more information on Sekur visit us at: https://www.sekur.com .

Forward Looking Information

This news release contains certain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws ("forward-looking statements"). All statements other than statements of present or historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "achieve", "could", "believe", "plan", "intend", "objective", "continuous", "ongoing", "estimate", "outlook", "expect", "project" and similar words, including negatives thereof, suggesting future outcomes or that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. These statements are only predictions. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations; they are not guaranteeing future performance. Sekur cautions that all forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond Sekur's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to the future of the Company's business; the success of marketing and sales efforts of the Company; the projections prepared in house and projections delivered by channel partners; the Company's ability to complete the necessary software updates; increases in sales as a result of investments software development technology; consumer interest in the Products; future sales plans and strategies; reliance on large channel partners and expectations of renewals to ongoing agreements with these partners; anticipated events and trends; the economy and other future conditions; and other risks and uncertainties, including those described in Sekur's prospectus dated May 8, 2019 filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators and available on www.sedar.com. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, Sekur undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.

SOURCE: Sekur Private Data Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Blackmagic Design today announced a new family of live production switchers that include powerful broadcast features, while including the latest electronics technology so they are extremely affordable. The new models are a 1 M/E model with 10 x 3GSDI inputs, 2 M/E model with 20 x 3GSDI inputs and a 4 M/E model with 40 x 3GSDI inputs. All models include full standards conversion on every SDI input, 4 ATEM advanced chroma keyers per M/E row, a DVE per M/E row, media players, larger media pool and much more. These new switchers are designed as a professional upgrade for ATEM Mini customers who need to expand, or for large broadcasters who want to upgrade their studios to get a modern switcher. ATEM Constellation HD switchers are available immediately from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide from US$995.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220424005050/en/

New family of HD live production switchers with 1 M/E, 2 M/E and 4 M/E models that gives customers powerful broadcast features at an affordable price. (Photo: Business Wire)

The ATEM Constellation HD switchers will be demonstrated on the Blackmagic Design NAB 2022 booth N302.

ATEM Constellation HD switchers feature a compact rack mount design with a built in control panel. This allows operation of the switcher, critical during setup or for emergency use. Also included is a large LCD so customers can see program output and change switcher settings via on screen menus. The compact design is perfect for portable live production, with the rear of the switcher including the connections for 3G-SDI inputs, 3G-SDI aux outputs, balanced audio and Ethernet for control. The top 4 M/E model even includes RS-422 for serial control and MADI digital audio connections.

With a control panel built into the front panel, customers can simply walk up and operate the ATEM Constellation at any time. Plus the front panel control buttons are the same premium type used on full sized panels so they are extremely reliable. Customers can even control keyers, media and fade to black from the front panel. Plus the front panel LCD and menu buttons also allow almost every single operational feature of the switcher to be accessed.

The ATEM Constellation HD family features models that have up to 40 independent 3G-SDI inputs, with each input featuring its own dedicated up and cross converter. That means its possible to convert any 1080p input source to the video standard of the switcher. That means customers could have each switcher SDI input running a different television standard and all the inputs will just work.

The ATEM Constellation HD family have a massive number of fully independent 3G-SDI outputs. Even the small 1 M/E model has 6 x 3G-SDI outputs. Then the 2 M/E model has 12 x 3G-SDI outputs and the 4 M/E model has a massive 24 x 3G-SDI outputs. These SDI outputs are very powerful because customers can independently route any SDI input or any internal source to each SDI output. Or use the SDI outputs for ISO recorders, where each deck will get a resynchronized switcher input with matching timecode. All SDI outputs contain program audio, RP-188 timecode, SDI camera control, tally and talkback.

The built in multiview lets customers monitor multiple sources on a single monitor. The 1 M/E model includes 1 multiview, the 2 M/E model has 2 independent multiviews and the 4 M/E model has 4 independent multiviews. All external SDI inputs, plus all internal video sources can be routed to any view. All multiviews are fully customizable and can be independently set to 4, 7, 10, 13 or 16 simultaneous views. Customers can add the tally border plus source label and VU meters as an overlay on each view. Plus a red and green border will show tally on each view, so customers know what sources are on air.

ATEM Constellation HD includes a wide range of broadcast quality native transitions such as mix, dip, wipe, and more. All transitions can be customized in the system control menus with adjustments for border color, border width, position, direction and a lot more. The ATEM Constellation switcher includes a powerful digital video effects processor for DVE transitions, which can be used to squeeze the current picture off screen revealing a new video under it. The DVE can even be used to create graphic wipe transitions.

To keep crews working as a single creative team, ATEM Constellation features built in talkback. Talkback supports a 5 pin XLR headset connector, plus a rear mounted RJ12 connector for interfacing with industry standard talkback systems such as ClearCom or RTS. Customers get full talkback control including program and engineering loops, sidetone control for hearing the headset mic into the headphones and program mix. ATEM Constellation HD also supports SDI talkback that uses SDI channels 15 and 16 for 2-way communication with Blackmagic Design cameras. Customers can even use channels 13 and 14 for engineering talkback.

The built in media pool stores broadcast quality RGBA graphics and animations that can be played back instantly by the 2 or 4 media players. The built in media pool holds graphics for use with the media players and the 1 M/E model can hold 20 stills and 200 frame animations, the 2 M/E model can hold 40 stills and 400 frame animations and the 4 M/E model can hold 60 stills and 600 frame animations.

For news or virtual set work, ATEM Constellation HD is perfect as it features lots of ATEM advanced keyers for high quality chroma or luminance keying. The chroma keyer is incredibly powerful and features a color picker to sample background colors for automatic generation of the key parameters. Customers get precise controls for edge and flare, and there is even a foreground color corrector so customers can match the "look" of the foreground layer to the background layer making seamless compositions possible. The keyer can also be used for pattern and DVE keying. Customers get 4 ATEM Advanced Keyers on the 1 M/E model, 8 ATEM Advanced Keyers on the 2 M/E model and 16 ATEM Advanced Keyers on the 4 M/E model.

With 4 upstream chroma keyers per M/E row, customers get the perfect solution for building virtual sets. With so many ATEM advanced chroma keyers, customers can use a keyer per camera to create a seamless composition of the camera over the custom background. Even the 1 M/E model has enough keyers to generate a 4 camera virtual set. Customers can use external image processors for virtual sets, or customers can even build a fixed camera virtual set by loading pre rendered still image backgrounds from the media players and media pool. Customers can setup macros to change cameras and load the correct background into the media players. With so much flexibility, customers can experiment to try out different studio setups.

In addition to the DVEs in the M/E rows, the 2 M/E and 4 M/E models include powerful SuperSource multi layer processors with 4 extra DVE layers plus a background layer, that all appear to ATEM Constellation HD as an additional input source. Any switcher video input can be used for each SuperSource DVE, then its all layered together over a media pool custom background. SuperSource is just like having an extra multi-layer VFX switcher built in. SuperSource is perfect for doing picture in picture displays for interviews because customers can set up the effect while keeping the main DVEs free for other tasks. The ATEM 4 M/E Constellation even has 2 completely independent SuperSource processors.

The SDI inputs will also handle embedded audio and mix audio from all video inputs. Plus the program outputs include talkback, tally and camera control information. That means customers can connect any of the switcher SDI outputs back to the camera for program return, camera control, and talkback.

With a built in Fairlight audio mixer, the ATEM Constellation makes it possible to do extremely complex live sound mixing. The internal mixer has up to 156 input channels, for the biggest audio mixer in a live production switcher. Audio is de-embedded from all the SDI video inputs and passed to the audio mixer. Then the 4 M/E model has extra audio mixer input channels for the MADI audio inputs. Each input channel features the highest quality 6 band parametric EQ and compressor, limiter, expander and noise gate as well as full panning. Customers get extra channels for the analog input, talkback microphone and media players. All this audio power can be controlled via the ATEM Software Control or a Mackie compatible panel.

The ATEM Software Control Panel gives customers total control over their switcher and is included free. The ATEM Software Control Panel features a beautifully designed interface with a visual switcher and parameter palettes for making quick adjustments. The ATEM Software Control also lets customers access camera control, audio mixing, media, macro programming and even control of HyperDeck disk recorders. Customers can even save the full state of the switcher as XML files, plus all media is backed up from the media pool.

All rows of M/E buttons include integrated LCDs for dynamic input button labeling. The 1 M/E model features a single M/E row with 10 input buttons. The 2 M/E model features 2 M/E rows with 20 input buttons. The massive 4 M/E model features 4 M/E rows with 40 input buttons per row and 4 independent system control LCD screens.

Unlike other switchers, all features are included in the purchase price. That means customers get all features fully enabled and always ready for use. There are no license fees to allow customers to use features and no ongoing monthly costs. This means users will never experience a license expiring 5 minutes before their program starts. Advanced features such as multiview, SuperSource, DVEs or the ATEM Advanced Keyers are always enabled and always ready to use.

"We are excited to introduce these new live production switchers, as many high end broadcasters don't need Ultra HD, but they still need to upgrade their studios," said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. "Plus a lot of our ATEM Mini customers have been growing and doing innovative work. They are now looking to upgrade and purchase more advanced switchers that can keep up with their work as their streaming channels grow. Its a very exciting time!"

ATEM Constellation HD Switchers Features

Advanced design with built in front panel controls.

Up to 40 standards converted 3G-SDI inputs.

Up to 24 customizable 3G-SDI outputs.

Includes up to 4 independent multiviews with multiple layout options.

Includes DVE and stinger transitions.

Includes up to 4 DVEs.

Professional talkback compatible with ClearCom and RTS.

Internal media for stills and motion graphics.

Includes new ATEM Advanced Chroma Key.

4 upstream ATEM Advanced Chroma keyers per M/E row for green/blue screen work.

Up to 4 independent DVEs.

Multi rate 3G-SDI for all HD television standards including 720p, 1080i and 1080p.

Built in 156 channel Fairlight audio mixer.

Includes free software control panel.

Compatible with all ATEM hardware control panels.

All features are included with no extra customer costs.

AVAILABILITY AND PRICE

ATEM Constellation HD switchers are available now from US$995, excluding local duties and taxes, from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide.

PRESS PHOTOGRAPHY

Product photos of the ATEM Constellation HD switchers, as well as all other Blackmagic Design products, are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images.

ABOUT BLACKMAGIC DESIGN

Blackmagic Design creates the worlds highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Designs DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the companys Emmy award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984.

Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220424005050/en/

Terry Frechette

+1 408 954 0500 Ext. 321

[email protected]

Source: Blackmagic Design
BitNile Holdings, Inc. (NYSE American: NILE) today announced that it plans to fund up to $100 million in commercial loans to small, publicly traded companies, secured by Bitcoin, through its subsidiary, Digital Power Lending, LLC.

During 2022, BitNile plans to significantly expand its Bitcoin mining production capacity, growing its number of Bitcoin miners to 20,600, representing an expected mining production capacity of approximately 2.24 exahashes per second. The Company plans to hold up to $100 million of self-mined Bitcoin in reserve to back the expansion of commercial loans to be offered through a new lending platform known as Ault Lending (the Platform), powered by DP Lending. The funding of the Platform is expected to occur over an approximate two-year period. The Company reported revenue from lending and trading activities at DP Lending of approximately $17 million for the year ended December 31, 2021 and DP Lending ended the year with total assets of approximately $100 million.

The Platform is designed to lend to publicly traded companies under $250 million in market capitalization. The Platform is designed to use Bitcoin layer three technology to offer smart contracts to participating companies and is also expected to allow participating companies to borrow against their Bitcoin holdings. Layer three protocols, commonly known as application layers, consist of the protocols that allow applications to run on blockchains. Smart contracts are simply programs stored on a blockchain that run when predetermined conditions are met.

DP Lending plans to partner with Earnity Inc. (Earnity) to build out layer three technologies. We look forward to partnering with DP Lending to enable businesses to secure a variety of liquidity opportunities with crypto and fiat assets, said Dan Schatt, cofounder and CEO of Earnity. Businesses have a variety of treasury, cash management and custody needs that can be met with virtual currencies and decentralized finance platforms, and we look forward to providing a roadmap that can successfully support these institutions.

The Company expects the loans to range from $1 million to $25 million. Micro-cap and small-cap market borrowers typically have very limited access to new capital funding from traditional fiat currency-based sources. The Companys goal is to provide a Bitcoin-backed lender to fund these public companies in a unique way by leveraging todays DeFi technology and the growing acceptance of Bitcoin worldwide. The lending program will allow the borrower to repay a loan using various methods including cash, Bitcoin, or, in the case of convertible promissory notes, common stock of the borrower. The Platform, which expects to announce other partners, including other financial lenders and banks, will initially be funded from Bitcoin mined from the mining operations of BitNile. The Company will hold the Bitcoin on deposit, and anticipates to incrementally extend this opportunity, to other owners of Bitcoin by depositing their Bitcoin with DP Lending, thus increasing greatly the availability of funding to the micro-cap and small-cap market. The Company anticipates the program to commence in May 2022. The Company notes its current lending platform has been operational for over four years.

Traditional banks are required to hold a certain amount of cash reserves; while DP Lending is not a bank, but a licensed lender, it plans to use Bitcoin as reserves on its balance sheet. The Companys objective is to allocate a total of $250 million in capital to DP Lending, including the $100 million in Bitcoin. The Companys plans to hold Bitcoin provides a potential benefit if the long-term value of Bitcoin increases.

The Companys Founder and Executive Chairman, Milton Todd Ault, III said, This is the Companys first opportunity to expand the lending program around Bitcoin and I am pleased that the lending platform of our licensed financial lender will be offering Bitcoin-backed loans to small public companies. We believe the Platform is truly innovative and believe DP Lending is the first financial company, lender or institution that we know of to provide Bitcoin-backed lending on a commercial basis or leverage DeFi technology to uniquely target capitalization assistance to small public companies. Ault explained, From my many years of financing companies, I know all too well the challenges faced by these aspiring entrepreneurs and employers. It strikes me as a natural progression of the Company and its subsidiaries to join to provide a new unique source of capitalization and to assist in their growth while creating a new revenue stream in a very positive and mutually beneficial way.

For more information on BitNile and its subsidiaries, BitNile recommends that stockholders, investors, and any other interested parties read BitNiles public filings and press releases available under the Investor Relations section at www.BitNile.com or available at www.sec.gov.
Twitter app is seen on a smartphone in this illustration taken, July 13, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

By Lisa Pauline Mattackal

(Reuters) - Twitter Inc and digital payments processor Stripe Inc will pilot cryptocurrency payouts for select users of the social media site's content monetization products, the companies announced on Friday.

Eligible users of Twitter's Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows programs will be able to receive their earnings from the company in USD coin, a stablecoin whose value is pegged to the U.S. dollar.

Twitter added the monetization features last year in an effort to integrate more into the "creator" economy and boost revenues.

Users who receive crypto payments can hold their earnings in crypto wallets on the Polygon network, a crypto infrastructure firm on the ethereum blockchain, and can then exchange them into other currencies.

The crypto payments will be routed through Stripe Connect, which will also handle know-your-customer requirements, Stripe said.

Stripe plans to add options for payment in other cryptocurrencies in the future, the company said.

Twitter is in the midst of a takeover attempt by Tesla head Elon Musk, a prominent figure in the cryptocurrency world who has used the platform to promote bitcoin and "meme coins" like dogecoin.

(Reporting by Lisa Pauline Mattackal in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)
MIAMI, April 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The team behind DCB World  a limited-edition original art NFT created by the most licensed artist in history, Romero Britto  hosted its first Twitter Space to announce its new utility, the "888 Draw." This new format will guarantee a winner for every draw, triggered when 888 tickets are minted, ensuring 33 ETH for three lucky holders.

The Space was attended by Britto, along with several members of the DCB World team, including serial tech entrepreneur Ayman Jomaa, Founder of DCB, Arwa Damon, a renowned journalist for CNN and founder of INARA, the charity benefiting from proceeds of the NFT collection sales, whose valuable work helps to improve the lives of children impacted by conflict. Other attendees included partners of DCB World Chaker Khazaal, Author, Wissam Breidy, a prominent media figure, and Evan Luthra, a star in the crypto and NFT world. Dana Al Fardan, the first female Qatari composer and prominent figure in the Arab music scene also joined the space to engage with the conversation.

Britto's DCB NFT is an original artwork that is elevated by the addition of the gaming dimension that DCB World made possible with full transparency thanks to the technology of Chainlink, the most widely used oracle network for powering hybrid smart contracts. During the Space discussion, Britto expressed his admiration for this NFT collection which he believes reflects the pillars of his art: dreams, happiness, and giving back to the community.

Jomaa, whose passion for innovation led him to become one of the first investors in the metaverse with projects like Mojo Lens, the world's first true smart contact lens, elaborated on the project further: "The NFT serves as a ticket that holds a unique number, allowing its owner to enter a lifetime weekly draw for prize money. This makes it the first non-fungible ticket that never expires. For eternity." Breidy added to his comments that the project will give holders different utilities, such as the access to exclusive play to earn games.

The team also announced that all early holders will receive free DCB tokens. This unique ticket promises access to exclusive events in real life and in the metaverse. Holders of this NFT also have the option to order a physical version of their virtual art.

Other announcements took place during the conversation, including an exclusive benefit for holders of the NFTs from Al Fardan. The 1,000,000th DCB X Britto NFT will be auctioned, revealing an exclusive song by the renowned composer.

For those interested in the work done by INARA, Khazaal also announced during the Space that the first surgery for a child, funded by proceeds from DCB World, will take place soon. This life-saving procedure will be completed thanks to the people who already purchased the NFT. "I can't be more grateful to all of you; partners, holders, and this awesome community," said Damon who is herself new to the NFT and Web 3.0 world.

Watch for regular updates on Discord, Telegram, Instagram, and Twitter  NFT project with high utility.

DCB World redefines NFTs.

-ENDS-

Creator: Romero Britto

Developer: DCB World

DCB World Media Office: [email protected]

OBCIDO PR and Marketing: OBCIDO Inc. Katharine Gordon: [email protected].

Phone: +1.917.608.0404

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Image 1: DCB World X Romero Britto NFT Launch Romero Britto, Ayman Jomaa, Arwa Damon, Evan Luthra, Chaker Khazaal, Wissam Breidy, Dana Al Fardan

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

Attachment

DCB World X Romero Britto NFT Launch DCB World X Romero Britto NFT Launch

Source: DCB World (986895)
FILE PHOTO: Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn gives an interview on FOX Business Network's Neil Cavuto show in New York February 11, 2014. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

(Reuters) -Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn said on Thursday he had no interest in making a bid for Southwest Gas Holdings Inc, days after the utility said it would evaluate a sale following interest from an unnamed potential buyer.

In an open letter to Southwest's shareholders, Icahn said his "only interest is to replace the incumbent board of directors".

If his slate of director nominees were elected, they would continue pursuing strategic alternatives for Southwest, Icahn said, but he would not consider bidding for the utility.

The billionaire also questioned the acquisition interest from the anonymous potential buyer Southwest disclosed earlier this week, saying it was "barely credible".

"When we state that we began this process because we received an indication of interest well in excess of Mr. Icahn's $82.50 per share offer, it is a fact," Southwest said in a statement on Thursday.

The company also said it encourages Icahn to participate in the sale process.

In October, Icahn sought to gain control of the Southwest Gas board and replace its chief executive officer after the company adopted a shareholder rights plan to stop his push to make it abandon a $2 billion takeover of Questar Pipelines.

The billionaire later launched a tender offer for Southwest shares, seeking to buy stock from other shareholders of the company at $82.50 each. Southwest rejected Icahn's bid as "inadequate" in March.

No reference to Icahn's offer was made in Thursday's letter.

(Reporting by Niket Nishant and Arunima Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
Boeing (NYSE: BA) has informed airlines and parts vendors that it expects to restart 787 Dreamliner deliveries in the second half of 2022, according to Reuters.

Resuming deliveries later this year will be crucial for Boeings plans to gradually ramp up the 787 production and support the supply chain that has been facing significant challenges in the recent period.

Boeing initially planned to resume 787 deliveries this month, but the planemaker was forced to push back deliveries to May, with reports suggesting that further delays can be expected as the company continues to deal with inspections and repairs of structural flaws in roughly 100 787 jets.

Reuters reports that Boeing has informed clients that deliveries would continue in the second half of this year, with the third quarter appearing as the most realistic target. The company will not make a public projection of when it will be allowed to resume deliveries.

The overall cost of the production delay is estimated to be around $5.5 billion.

A spokesperson of Boeing said the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will decide when will deliveries of 787 resume.

"As we've said, we are taking the time needed to ensure conformance to our exacting specifications. Safety dictates the timeline," an FAA spokesperson said.

The FAA pulled Boeings ability to self-certify 787 airplanes two months ago, saying it would give not give back that ability until it sees that the planemaker can build jets that meet design standards.

Boeing has a well-designed plan for the re-work that it must perform on a large volume of new 787s in storage, said the FAA spokesperson.

Boeing is due to report earnings on April 27, with many investors interested in seeing the details of the companys performance after it was forced to reduce production, weighing further on the already crippled supply chain.

Boeing stock price is up 1% in pre-open Thursday.

By Senad Karaahmetovic
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 22, 2022) - Choom Holdings Inc. (CSE: CHOO) (OTCQB: CHOOF) ("Choom"), announces today that Choom and certain of its subsidiaries (Choom BC Retail Holdings Inc., 2151414 Alberta Ltd., 2688412 Ontario Inc., and Phivida Holdings Inc., herein the "Subsidiaries", and together with Choom, the "Companies") have obtained an order (the "Initial Order") of the Supreme Court of British Columbia providing the Companies protection from their creditors pursuant to the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (Canada) ("CCAA").

As part of the Initial Order, the Companies are authorized to enter into an interim financing term sheet (the "Interim Financing") with Aurora Cannabis Inc. (the "Lender") pursuant to which the Lenders has agreed to advance to the Companies up to an aggregate of $0.8 million to fund the Companies' ongoing operations and CCAA proceedings.

CCAA Proceedings

The Companies have obtained CCAA protection for an initial period of 10 days, expiring on May 2, 2022 and the Court has set a further hearing date of May 2, 2022 at which time an extension of the protection under the CCAA will be sought. Pursuant to the Initial Order, Ernst & Young Inc. has been appointed as monitor in the Companies' CCAA proceeding (in that capacity, the "Monitor").

While under CCAA protection, creditors and others are stayed from pursuing any claims or enforcing any rights against the Companies. The Companies are seeking creditor protection under the CCAA in order to permit the Companies to conduct a sale and investment solicitation process ("SISP") and facilitate a transaction that will allow the Companies to address their liquidity issues and stabilize operations. The Companies intend to operate in the ordinary course throughout the CCAA proceedings and while conducting the SISP. Management of the Companies will remain responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Companies, under the general oversight of the Monitor. The Companies' day-to-day obligations to employees and key suppliers of goods and services, from and after the filing date, is expected to continue to be met.

All inquiries regarding the CCAA proceeding should be directed to the Monitor (Philippe Mendelson, 604-891-8491). Information about the Companies' CCAA proceeding, including all court orders and the Monitor's reports, will be available on the Monitor's website at www.ey.com/ca/choom.

Interim Financing

In order to fund the CCAA proceedings, the SISP and other short term working capital requirements, the Companies have executed a term sheet with the Lenders, pursuant to which the Lenders will advance an interim financing loan in the aggregate amount of $0.8 million (the "Loan"). A portion of the Loan is available immediately, with the balance available if approved by the Court following the May 2, 2022 hearing. The Loan accrues interest at a rate of 12% per annum, and matures, at the latest, on August 31, 2022. The Loan is secured against all assets of the Companies pursuant to the Initial Order.

Aurora Cannabis Inc. ("Aurora") is a significant shareholder of Choom and is the Lender in connection with the Interim Financing. Each of the aforementioned parties is a "related party" of Choom and, accordingly, the Interim Financing constitutes a "related party transaction" of Choom under MI 61-101 Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). Related party transactions under MI 61-101 require a formal valuation and minority shareholder approval unless exemptions from these requirements are available. Choom will rely on the exemption from the formal valuation requirement contained in Section 5.5(b) of MI 61-101 (Issuer Not Listed on Specified Markets) in respect of the Interim Financing and the exemption from minority approval requirement contained in Section 5.7(d) of MI 61-101 (Bankruptcy , Insolvency, Court Order) in respect of the Interim Financing. Choom did not file a material change report more than 21 days before the expected closing of the Interim Financing transaction, as the details of the transaction were not finalized until immediately prior to the closing and Choom wished to close the transaction as soon as practicable for sound business reasons.

About ChoomTM

ChoomTM is a retail cannabis company that has established an extensive store network across Canada. ChoomTM is focused on delivering an elevated customer experience through high quality service. The Choom brand is inspired by Hawaii's "Choom Gang"-a group of friends in Honolulu during the 1970s who loved to have fun and smoke weed-or as the locals called it, "Choom". Evoking the spirit of the original Choom Gang, our brand caters to the Canadian market with the ethos of 'cultivating good times'.

For additional information contact:

Chris Bogart, President and Director

Telephone: 604-683-2509

[email protected]

Cautionary Statement on Forward-looking information

This news release contains forward-looking information relating to Choom's proposed activities and other statements that are not historical facts, including the successful completion of the SISP. Choom's intention to operate in the ordinary course during CCAA proceedings and the expectation that Choom's day-to-day obligations to employees and key suppliers of goods and services will continue to be met. Forward-looking information relates to management's outlook and anticipated events or results and includes statements or information regarding the future or prospects of Choom. When used in this news release, words such as "will", "hope", "could", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "potential", "believe", "should" and similar expressions, are forward-looking statements. Although management of Choom 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. These factors include risks and uncertainties associated with or arising as a result of delays in obtaining or an inability to obtain required regulatory approvals, access to sufficient quantities of cannabis, the actions of third parties, the results of negotiations with third parties, developments in the cannabis sector, the ability to access sufficient capital from internal and external sources, reliance on key personnel, regulatory risks and delays and other risks and uncertainties discussed in the management discussion and analysis section of Choom's interim and most recent annual financial statement or other reports and filings, including those made with the CSE and applicable Canadian securities regulators. There can be no assurance that such forward-looking 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.

NEITHER THE CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER HAS REVIEWED OR ACCEPTED 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/121405
This transaction represents the first cross-selling purchase order through Aurora for Plurilock's high-margin proprietary DEFEND solution

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 22, 2022) - Plurilock Security Inc. (TSXV: PLUR) (OTCQB: PLCKF) and related subsidiaries ("Plurilock" or the "Company"), an identity-centric cybersecurity solutions provider for workforces, announced today that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Aurora Systems Consulting, Inc. ("Aurora"), has received a purchase order from a California-based pension fund for the Company's Plurilock DEFENDTM continuous authentication solution.

This transaction represents the first cross-selling purchase order through Aurora for Plurilock's DEFEND technology offering. Per the purchase order, the customer will pay a monthly subscription for the Company's continuous identity confirmation solution based on a fixed number of end-users. This order also includes ongoing maintenance support.

All contracts and orders announced by PlurilockTM and its subsidiaries since January 1, 2022, including the latest orders, represent a combined total of roughly US$5.28 million in sales.

"We are pleased to report the completion of our first cross-sale of Plurilock's cutting-edge DEFEND solution," said Ian L. Paterson, CEO of Plurilock. "This order highlights the strategy we developed following the acquisition of Aurora in April 2021, where we first acquire profitable cybersecurity companies with prominent customers, and then leverage those distribution channels to cross-sell our high-margin proprietary products. We will continue to identify new cross-selling opportunities and vigorously work towards signing new purchase orders for our advanced zero trust identity technology."

This California-based pension fund is an existing Aurora customer that required an identity-centric cybersecurity solution to enhance their system's defense against potential cyber threats. Following a stringent evaluation, the customer selected DEFEND given its robust continuous identity analysis capabilities and zero trust architecture - Plurilock DEFEND's proprietary technology uses micro-patterns in a person's keystroke and pointer behavior to continuously confirm identity every 3 to 5 seconds, ensuring that the person using a device is the authorized user.

Pension and retirement funds are at a heightened risk for a cyber attack as evidenced by instances like the September 2021 breach of a Missouri retirement system with 128,000 active members, where an employee's email account was compromised by an attacker that accessed files containing personal information.1 Additionally, 44% of surveyed Master Trust retirement-related funds reported they experienced a cyber attack between 2019 and 2020, underscoring the need for a zero trust identity solution that will secure access and halt credential compromise.2

About Plurilock

Plurilock provides identity-centric cybersecurity for today's workforces. The Plurilock family of companies enables organizations to operate safely and securely while reducing cybersecurity friction. Plurilock offers world-class IT and cybersecurity solutions through its Solutions Division, paired with proprietary, AI-driven and cloud-friendly security through its Technology Division. Together, the Plurilock family of companies delivers persistent identity assurance with unmatched ease of use.

For more information, visit https://www.plurilock.com or contact:

Ian L. Paterson

Chief Executive Officer

[email protected]

416.800.1566

Roland Sartorius

Chief Financial Officer

[email protected]

Prit Singh

Investor Relations

[email protected]

905.510.7636

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") related to future events or Plurilock's future business, operations, and financial performance and condition. Forward-looking statements normally contain words like "will", "intend", "anticipate", "could", "should", "may", "might", "expect", "estimate", "forecast", "plan", "potential", "project", "assume", "contemplate", "believe", "shall", "scheduled", and similar terms. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, actions, or developments and are based on expectations, assumptions, and other factors that management currently believes are relevant, reasonable, and appropriate in the circumstances. Although management believes that the forward-looking statements herein are reasonable, actual results could be substantially different due to the risks and uncertainties associated with and inherent to Plurilock's business. Additional material risks and uncertainties applicable to the forward-looking statements herein include, without limitation, the impact of general economic conditions, the success of the Company in obtaining new or extended contracts or orders; the Company's ability to maintain existing customers or develop new customers; the Company's ability to successfully integrate acquisitions of other businesses and/or companies or to realize on the anticipated benefits thereof; and unforeseen events, developments, or factors causing any of the aforesaid expectations, assumptions, and other factors ultimately being inaccurate or irrelevant. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect the Company's forward-looking statements. Many of these factors are beyond the control of Plurilock. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are expressly qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as at the date hereof, and Plurilock undertakes no obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws. Risks and uncertainties about the Company's business are more fully discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in its most recent Annual Information Form. They are otherwise disclosed in its filings with securities regulatory authorities available on SEDAR at www.sedar.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.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/121304
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen makes a speech about the current and future state of the U.S. and global economy at the Atlantic Council in Washington, U.S., April 13, 2022. REUTERS/Leah Millis

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Thursday that she was committed to working through the Group of 20 major economies to address difficulties brought on by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, despite a walkout by her and several other Western officials from a G20 finance meeting as Russian officials spoke.

"I think we were looking for a way to make our disapproval known while still recognizing we have a lot of work to accomplish," Yellen told a news conference.

Yellen said that Russia's invasion of Ukraine "so violates international norms" that the United States and its allies are not going to allow Russia to participate in international institutions, nor listen to its officials' speeches.

Another walkout occurred on Thursday at the International Monetary Fund's steering committee meeting, by British Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, people familiar with the action said.

"It simply cannot be business as usual for Russia in terms of its participation in our global forums, whether it's the G20 or other forums where we need to address common challenges," Yellen said.

She said that a key piece of the G20's work is to discuss the impact of Russia's "horrible war of choice" in Ukraine, including rising energy prices, food insecurity and other effects.

"We're continuing to get that work done," she said.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)
WARSAW, Poland (Tribune News Service)  On March 28, as bombs fell on the then-besieged city of Kyiv, Jared Malone was livid and confused.

The Marine veteran turned counselor who lives in Post Falls had been talking with a family behind Russian lines near the suburb of Irpin. The family, whose daughter was sick, asked Malone and his two Ukrainian friends for help getting to the safety of western Ukraine, where Malone had been raising money and volunteering at a church. All day, Malone listened to the rumble of bombs and artillery. Reports bubbled up online that the Russians were making a move to fully surround Kyiv, cutting off Malone's southern escape route.

The three men debated what to do. Should they go and rescue the family? Should they return to the safety of western Ukraine? Malone had served two combat tours in Iraq and had the skills and experience to go into enemy territory, but should he?

"I am not here to fight a war but to help in a humanitarian capacity. I am not seeking out an enemy but rather trying my best to avoid this one. As I feel them getting closer, I have to remind myself why I am here and what my role is," he texted from Kyiv that evening. "Drawing a line of when I must leave is proving to be a problem as I am struggling to leave behind those who need help. Unfortunately, that window is closing for us right now. Phones are starting to drop calls and getting hard to connect. I don't think we can do anything more today. It breaks my heart."

Malone and his friends decided to not go get the family. That evening, he lay in bed, the anger and frustration from the decision thwarting sleep. At the same time, being back in a war zone had triggered Malone's own memories of combat and the resulting PTSD. Staring at the ceiling, he wondered, why am I doing this to myself?

And then, around 2 a.m., his Ukrainian friend rushed into the room. Two families had just arrived from Mariupol. With them was a 2-month-old girl. Malone, who has twin daughters, scooped the child up and held her for hours while the kid's exhausted parents ate and rested after a harrowing flight.

And there lay the answer to Malone's question.

"I remember saying to myself, 'This girl right here is worth a lifetime of PTSD,' " he said. "It's worth 1,000 years of personal trauma. I never experienced anything like that when I was in the military."

Malone never heard again from the family behind Russian lines, a fact that still eats at him. But the experience holding the infant from Mariupol gave him some solace and completed a personal journey. In 2005, while on the Iraq border, Malone, who was a Marine tank crewman, got in a firefight with insurgents. During the battle, the combatants inadvertently killed civilians, including children.

That trauma and guilt, among other combat experiences, ate at Malone, and he struggled, like many soldiers, to reintegrate into civilian life. The VA estimates that between 11% and 20% of all veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts suffer from PTSD.

Malone certainly did. He had nightmares. He was angry, and it was threatening his nascent relationship with his now-wife. So he started going to counseling through Veterans Affairs and then went back to school.

Now, Malone is a licensed master social worker with a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Hawaii and a master's from Fordham University.

On March 22, he came to Ukraine to raise money for Victory Christian Church and help rent a building in Lviv that could house refugees. He'd just graduated from school and believed his combination of experiences  combat and counseling  could be helpful. He spent nearly a month in Ukraine, flying back to the U.S. on April 16.

During that time, he helped raise more than $100,000 for the Victory Christian Church. Some of that money went to renting a large building the church is using as a shelter and a kitchen for refugees. Excess money is being sent to churches and organizations in some of the hardest hit areas, including Bucha and Mariupol.

And on April 9, Malone gave a talk to at the Victory Christian Church in Lviv about trauma and how refugees and those helping refugees can spot and respond to it. About 70 people attended his talk, and another 100 watched online. He talked about the signs of trauma and taught breathing techniques, and how to listen and respond appropriately to a traumatized person. He also emphasized that nearly everyone present was suffering from some sort of trauma themselves, either having fled their own homes or having relatives that did.

"The process of healing from trauma is very complex, and it can last a very long time," he said during the talk. "The process is nonlinear, and there are many steps a victim has to go through to heal."

For him, one of those nonlinear steps came the night he rocked the infant from Mariupol as her parents rested. Those few hours "made it all come full circle."

"All these bad experiences you have been through, if this is the end result, this is worth it," he said. "A thousand lifetimes worth it."

(c)2022 The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.)

Visit The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.) at www.spokesman.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
(Tribune News Service)  Turkey closed its airspace to Russian jets flying to Syria, a significant shift in Turkish policy aimed at increasing the cost of the war in Ukraine for Vladimir Putin.

Turkey barred all Russian aircraft, including civilian flights carrying troops, from its skies for the first time since Russia intervened in Syria's civil war in 2015 in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Putin of his decision in a phone call, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was cited as saying by state broadcaster TRT. He didn't specify when the call took place.

Most Russian flights to Syria pass though Turkish airspace, though exact numbers of troops or materiel isn't publicly disclosed. But the move also carries symbolic weight, signaling Turkey's solidarity with fellow NATO members and adding to Turkey's own pressure on Russia for a war-ending deal with Ukraine.

It adds, moreover, another layer to the already complicated relationship between Turkey and Russia.

The nations are in opposing camps in conflicts from Syria to North Africa to the Caucasus, often backing sides at war with each other.

At the same time, tensions between Turkey and the U.S. have risen over Erdogan's decision to buy air defense missiles from Russia. Russian tourists make up the bulk of foreign visitors, bringing in much needed hard currency to Turkey's economy, while Russian companies are building Turkey's only nuclear power plant.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Ankara joined NATO allies in its condemnation. Turkey has also limited access through the Bosporus strait for Russian naval vessels.

But the Turkish government has refrained from joining sanctions for fear of retribution. Russia meets around half of Turkey's demand for natural gas, giving it huge leverage over the government in Ankara.

The two countries are also locked in a bitter dispute in Syria. Thousands of Turkish soldiers are deployed around the rebel-held Idlib province, vulnerable to attacks by government forces backed by Russia.

 2022 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
DETROIT (Tribune News Service)  Two men accused of plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer asked a federal judge Friday to acquit them of the charges, two weeks after jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict.

The requests from lawyers for Grand Rapids resident Adam Fox, 39, and Delaware trucker Barry Croft, 46, argued there is insufficient evidence to convict the defendants of kidnapping conspiracy or agreeing to use a weapon of mass destruction.

The requests came two weeks after jurors deadlocked following a 20-day trial in the largest domestic terrorism case in recent U.S. history. Two others  Lake Orion resident Daniel Harris, 24, and Brandon Caserta, 34, of Canton Township  were acquitted though prosecutors have vowed to retry Fox and Croft.

Defense lawyers spent months raising questions about FBI agent conduct and claiming that a team of investigators and informants orchestrated the conspiracy and entrapped the four men, a ragtag band of social outcasts who harbored antigovernment views and anger over restrictions imposed by Whitmer.

The evidence presented at trial, even when viewed in the light most favorable to the government, did not establish that there was an agreement between Adam Fox and any of the other defendants to kidnap the governor or to purchase and use a weapon of mass destruction in furtherance of that kidnapping, Foxs lawyer Christopher Gibbons wrote. A government agent or informant cannot be a conspirator.

The acquittals and deadlocked jury were a blow to a case that had been dogged by controversy and scandal. The defense had raised questions about the FBIs conduct and use of informants, including the indictment of rogue FBI informant Stephen Robeson on a gun crime.

The defense alleged that FBI agents and informants had orchestrated the conspiracy and entrapped the men.

During the trial, Harris was acquitted of possessing an unregistered destructive device but deadlocked on the same charge against Croft.

Croft is entitled to an acquittal because the jury determined either the device was not a destructive device or that Mr. Harris did not know that the device was a destructive device, Crofts lawyer Joshua Blanchard wrote. It is not possible to logically determine which conclusion the jury reached, but either entitles Mr. Croft to an acquittal.

___

(c)2022 The Detroit News

Visit The Detroit News at www.detnews.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
WASHINGTON  A Colorado man died after setting himself on fire outside the Supreme Court on Friday evening, according to police.

D.C. police said that Wynn Bruce, 50, of Boulder, Colo., died Saturday as a result of his injuries.

Members of his family could not immediately be reached Saturday. The incident occurred about 6:30 p.m. Friday, said Patricia McCabe, a spokeswoman for the court. A helicopter landed on the plaza to take Bruce to a hospital. Supreme Court police, Capitol Police and D.C. police all responded to the incident, she said.

McCabe said the incident was not a public safety issue, but the plaza was closed to permit investigation.

By Saturday it was full of life: Fountains splashed, the American flag whipped in the breeze, people snapped photos and posed alongside the marble pillars, a family shared lunch on the steps.

The 252-foot oval plaza is up a small flight of steps from the sidewalk on First Street NE outside the court building. The court faces the Capitol across First Street and is often the site of heated protests and faceoffs between advocates for different causes as the justices consider some of the weightiest and most divisive issues confronting the nation. It has also been a site of public mourning and memorials in recent years for justices such as Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

- - -

The Washington Post's Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.
ANZAC Day commemorations will be held at various locations around the Bay of Plenty on Monday, April 25, to honour those who fought at Gallipoli 107 years ago.

These services are also to honour those who have contributed to the wars and conflicts around the world since World War One.

Anyone feeling unwell is advised to please stay home. While not mandatory, face masks are also being encouraged.

Tauranga RSA

The Tauranga RSAs dawn parade will be held at the Tauranga RSA Cenotapth at 1237 Cameron Road, with the service commencing at 6am. Assemble at 5.45am on Hayes Avenue, and march off at 5.55am.

Memorial Park

The Tauranga Civic Memorial Service starts at 9am, April 25, at Memorial Park. Groups wishing to march in the parade will need to assemble on the grass beside the Queen Elizabeth Youth Centre at 8.45am. March off will commence at 8.55am.

A free park and ride service will be available from Tauranga Boys College to Memorial Park between 8am and 8.40am, with buses returning immediately after the service. Buses will drop off and pick up from the Queen Elizabeth Youth Centre car park. All park and ride buses are accessible for people with limited mobility.

Car parking is available at the Tauranga Boys College car park off Devonport Road (between Thirteenth and Fourteenth Avenues), with marshals on-site to help people make their way to the buses. PAKnSAVE on Cameron Road (between Ninth and Tenth Avenues) has made its above-ground car park available for people attending the service.

The Queen Elizabeth Youth Centre car park is only available for mobility cardholders.

Mount Maunganui

Mount Maunganuis Dawn Parade is at the Mount Maunganui Cenotaph, Marine Parade (opposite Mount Drury Reserve, Hopukiore). The dawn parade will begin at 6am.

Assemble at Mount Drury at 5.45am for march off. March off begins at 5.55am.

A free park and ride service will be available from Kawaka Street (behind Blake Park) to Maunganui Road (behind Mount Drury Reserve, Hopukiore). Buses will depart from Kawaka Street between 5am and 5.50am, returning at the conclusion of the Dawn Service between 6.15am and 7.30am.

Mount Maunganuis Civil Memorial Service begins at 9.30am. Those marching will assemble at Mt Drury Reserve, Hopukiore. March off is at 9.25am.

A free park and ride service will be available from Kawaka Street (behind Blake Park) to Maunganui Road (behind Mount Drury Reserve, Hopukiore). Buses will depart from Kawaka Street between 5am and 5.50am, returning at the conclusion of the Dawn Service between 6.15am and 7.30am.

Papamoa

Papamoas Memorial Dawn Service will begin at 5.30am at Papamoa Memorial, Setella Place beach car park, Papamoa Beach Road.

Pyes Pa

The Pyes Pa Remembrance Service will begin at 11am, at the Pyes Pa Cemetary, 403 Pyes Pa Road.

Tauranga Moana Tumatauenga

The Tauranga Moana Tumatauenga Anzac Commemoration will begin at 5:45am, Whareroa Marae, 25 Taiaho Place, Mount Maunganui.

Te Puke

The 100th Te Puke Anzac Civic Memorial Service commences from 10am at the Te Puke War Memorial Hall. Please be seated before the arrival of the parade.

Parade to fall in opposite Te Puke War Memorial Hall at 9.50am.

After the service, All move to the cenotaph. Parade will be assembled and led off. The public are invited to attend the Citizens RSA Te Puke Clubrooms Jellicoe Street/Beatty Avenue for light refreshments.

Katikati

The Katikati Dawn Parade will commence at 5.45am and will conclude at 6.45am. The parade will run from the Talisman Hotel to the Katikati War Memorial Hall.

The Katikati Civic Service commences 6.45am at the Katikati War Memorial Hall.

Waihi Beach

The Waihi Dawn Parade will commence at 5.45am outside the Waihi Beach RSA, and will conclude at 6.30am.

The Waihi Civic Service commences at 9.25am, at the Waihi Beach RSA.

Omokoroa

The Omokoroa Dawn Service commences at 6am at the Remembrance Carin, Gerald Crapp Reserve, Omokoroa Point.

The Omokoroa Community Service commences at 11am on the forecourt of the CHT Acacia Park Home and Hospital, 134 Hamurana Road.
An innovative new programme designed to enrich the lives of those living with dementia is being launched in Tauranga. The programme is being run by Enliven and if successful will be rolled out in other regions.

Weve got 70,000 people in New Zealand living with dementia and that number is expected to double every 20 years due to our aging population, says Health and Disability general manager Wendy Hoskin.

This is a degenerative condition that affects a lot of people, and we need to prepare ourselves.

EnlivenPlus has been in development for 18 months and now the team is looking for Tauranga people to take part. For Wendy, this is a personal passion project.

I have loved ones living with dementia, she says. The diagnosis is confronting because theres no cure. Its scary for the person but it also affects their wider whanau. Theres a large amount of stress that comes with a diagnosis.

Presbyterian Support northern dementia implementation lead Adrian Toft says often, people with dementia can often simply withdraw from society.

Clients have told us they feel as if theyre about to fall off a cliff. Its scary and theres such a stigma around dementia that many tend to keep quiet about it. Then friends and family can pull back because they dont know how to deal with it. It can be a very isolating condition and thats what we need to change.

EnlivenPlus staff meet with each person living with dementia as well as their caregiver to work out a strategy that keeps them excited about the dreams and goals they had prior to their diagnosis.

All the staff involved are highly trained in dementia, theyre experienced, and they have a heart for people living with dementia. They want to help make the journey through dementia one where you get to live your best life, says Adrian.

We are very fortunate to have Ruth Thomas leading the programme who is well known in dementia circles having spent the last 30 years involved in the sector including as a dementia advisor for the Ministry of Health.

Those on the programme have Kitcal; an electronic tablet controlled remotely that provides reminders and allows direct communication with their family. They create a This Is Me folder of their life story as one of the cognitive re-ablement activities and agree to a personalised action plan.

We find out what theyre interested in and build on that. The difference with EnlivenPlus is that were providing a tailored programme by people trained to work with this condition, says Wendy.

As an example, says Adrian, someone who loves bowls may just need someone to go with them to enable them to continue rather than becoming socially isolated.

"Someone who had been planning a world trip may still like to plan and plot the journey they wouldve taken. It gives them something to look forward to each day.

Adrian says losing purpose and social connection can cause the brain to degrade and speed up the onset of dementia.

The brain is a muscle that needs to be stretched, says Adrian.

This is a complex brain disease that goes beyond memory problems, it can also affect communication and the ability to make decisions.

We need to convince the government to subsidise the programme to help as many New Zealanders with dementia as possible. We want to enable people with dementia to stay in their homes for longer where possible. It is important to improve the quality of life for them, their primary carers and their entire families.
Some worrying trends have been emerging in Japan recently. The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan has put forward a number of suggestions on revising the country's direction-setting National Security Strategy, including describing China as a "grave threat," increasing defense expenditure to over 2 percent of GDP within five years, and pursuing the ability to attack an enemy's command and control systems as well as missile bases. At the same time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan on Friday released its 2022 Diplomatic Bluebook. Some analysts believe that the policy report abandoned the country's moderate attitude toward Russia in the past nearly two decades and shifted to a hard-line stance.

In the new Bluebook, Japan not only hypes up "China threat theory" and the Taiwan question, but also harshly condemns Russia's "invasion" of Ukraine. And for the first time, the report says the Southern Kurils, which Japan calls the Northern Territories, are "illegally occupied by Russia." It says Japan will cooperate with South Korea to "deal with" North Korea. But it calls Takeshima, referred by South Korea as Dokdo, as "Japan's territory," which triggered protest from the South Korean Foreign Ministry.

The territorial disputes and frictions between Japan and its neighboring countries have historical origins, but in the context of the increasing geopolitical conflicts in the world, it is hard not to imagine whether Japan intends to take advantage of the chaos through such indiscriminate moves, like spraying bullets from a machine gun.

After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Japan has been very active in "punishing Russia." While many European countries are remaining cautious, Japan, an Asian country, has become one of the most high-profile allies of Washington on this issue. At the same time, some politicians in Japan, and even government departments such as the Ministry of Defense, are sparing no effort to exaggerate the "threat" of China and Russia. Their purpose is obvious - catering to the US in exchange for Washington making an exception to clear Japan's path toward making amendments to its pacifist constitution and breaking its commitment to the "exclusively defense-oriented" strategy.

What is worth particular vigilance is, since the Ukraine crisis, there have been voices in Japan equating the crisis with the hypothetical scenario on Taiwan island, and the influence of such voices is growing. Influential Japanese right-wing politicians including Shinzo Abe have repeatedly claimed that Taiwan island's security challenges are Japan's concern, alarmingly tying the island's "security" with Japan and trying to mislead the Japanese public and even national policies. This is extremely ridiculous. They are very clear that as long as Japan maintains a "safe distance" from Taiwan secessionists and as long as the Japanese Self-Defense Forces are far away from the Taiwan Straits, where could the so-called danger come from?

All of the above are just the pretense of Japanese right-wing politicians. Their goal is to untie Japan militarily step by step, and finally achieve the target of revising the pacifist constitution. After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, they raised their advocacy of introducing a "nuclear sharing" arrangement, and behind the move is the eagerness to revive militarism and rewrite the post-WWII international order. Leaving other issues aside, what does increasing defense spending to 2 percent of GDP within five years mean? This means that Japan's defense expenditure will double in a short period of time, which is unprecedented in peace years. Once done, Japan's defense expenditure may rank third worldwide, and it is still an "exclusively defense-oriented" country in name.

The wishful thinking of some people in Japan is that they can carefully balance the situation and use crises one after another to militarily unbind itself in the context of the China-US competition. Japanese right wing still hold grudges toward the WWII, and militarism has not been truly and completely cleared in the country. This has not changed until today. Not only is Washington turning a blind eye to Japanese right wing's moves due to geopolitical short-sightedness, but there are even voices in the US urging Japan to arm itself. If so, the US is breeding evil.

No matter how Tokyo and Washington coordinate with each other across the Pacific Ocean, it will not change the reality that their moves are incompatible with the general trend of the region. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida sent a ritual offering to the Yasukuni Shrine on Thursday, triggering strong opposition from countries including China and South Korea. In recent years, the Japanese right-wing's eagerness to revive militarism has become more and more obvious. As a result, Japan has fallen into constant discord with neighboring countries, and there has been a serious state of confrontation. This shows that whatever excuses Japan has found, they cannot become a passport to militarism. The harder Japanese right-wing forces try to break free from the shackles, the stronger counterforce they will feel.
5.30pm update: A motorist who arrived at the scene of the house bus crash in Mangorewa Kaharoa Gorge on Sunday afternoon, says it's unbelievable that anyone could have survived.

Police say that they received a report of a crash on SH36/Pyes Pa Rd, Ngawaro at 1.52pm.

"The house bus appeared to have suffered brake failure coming down a steep hill," says a motorist at the scene.

"It went straight ahead on a right hand corner, hit the bank at about 70 km per hour, launched about five metres into some trees and then straight down 20 metres and came to rest right way up at the bottom on the edge of a creek.

"One guy was thrown clear, the other crawled his way backwards and climbed out through the crushed roof.

"Both were injured but didn't appear to be too bad," says the motorist.

"[It's] absolutely unbelievable anyone could have survived, let alone both."

Emergency services arrived at the scene, and road diversions were put in place at Te Matai Road, Dudley Road, and Whataroa Road.

St John say a helicopter was sent to the scene of the crash. According to St John, one patient in serious condition has been taken to Rotorua Hospital and one patient in moderate condition was taken to Tauranga Hospital.

The historic horse trough in the Mangorewa Kaharoa Gorge. Photo: File.

Update, 2.30pm: Emergency services are at the scene of a house bus crash in the Mangorewa Kaharoa Gorge on State Highway 36 between Tauranga and Rotorua.

The Tauranga Transport Operations Centre report that two people have been injured, one with serious injuries and the other with moderate injuries.

One lane is reported to be closed on SH36.

"The road is likely to be closed for some time and diversions are being put in place at Te Matai Road, Dudley Road, and Whataroa Road," says a Police spokesperson.

Motorists are cautioned to expect delays, and consider delaying travel or use alternative routes.

Earlier, 2pm: A bus has crashed in the Mangorewa Kaharoa gorge on State Highway 36 between Tauranga and Rotorua near Te Matai Rd.

The Tauranga Transport Operations Centre report that there have been injuries, with people ejected from the bus.

Emergency services are en route to the scene of the crash.

Police say that they received a report of a crash on Pyes Pa Rd, Ngawaro at 1.52pm.

"We are not at the scene yet, so have no further details at this time," says a Police spokesperson.

Motorists are advised to expect delays, to delay travel or use alternative routes.

An update will be provided as soon as more information is available.

At the scene? Phone 0800 SUNLIVE or email newsroom@thesun.co.nz
The Ministry of Health is reporting 5,662 new community cases of Covid-19, 490 hospitalisations and nine deaths today. There are 20 people in New Zealand who are in ICU with Covid-19.

Two of the deaths are from the Bay of Plenty and one from the Lakes District Health Board region.

There are 223 new community cases in Bay of Plenty and 85 in the Lakes. There are 20 cases in hospital in Bay of Plenty and six in Lakes.

Covid-19 deaths

Today we are sadly reporting the deaths of nine people with Covid-19, says a Ministry of Health spokesperson.

The deaths being reported today include people who have died over the past nine days. Delays to reporting can be associated with people dying with Covid-19, rather than from Covid-19, and Covid being discovered only after they have died.

These deaths take the total number of publicly reported deaths with Covid-19 to 674 and the seven-day rolling average of reported deaths is 13.

Of the people whose deaths we are reporting today, one person was from the Auckland region; one from Waikato; two from Bay of Plenty; one from Lakes; one from Nelson-Marlborough; and three from the Canterbury region, says a Ministry of Health spokesperson.

One person was in their 50s; one in their 60s; one in their 70s; one in their 80s and five people were over 90. Four were male and five were female.

This is a very sad time for whanau and friends and our thoughts and condolences are with them.

Out of respect we will be making no further comment.

Todays seven-day rolling average is 8,435, and the seven-day rolling average of cases as at last Sunday was 8,170.

Border case with Omicron XE variant

New Zealands first known detection of the Omicron XE variant was reported on Saturday.

XE has been spreading overseas and its arrival in New Zealand is not unexpected, says a Ministry of Health spokesperson. At this stage, the public health settings already in place to manage other Omicron variants are assessed to be appropriate for managing XE and no changes are required.

XE is a combination of BA.1 and BA.2 sub variants of Omicron.

The Ministry of Health says there is some early evidence that it may be slightly more transmissible than BA.2, which is more transmissible than BA.1.

There is no evidence to date that XE causes more severe disease than other Omicron lineages, noting that it takes weeks or months to identify the severity of each new variant.

ANZAC weekend

If you are travelling this ANZAC weekend, you should have plans in place in the event you contract Covid-19 or are identified as a household contact of a case, says a Ministry of Health spokesperson.

You would need to self-isolate and likely remain wherever you test positive or become a household contact, so there may be extra costs involved in paying for additional accommodation and changing your travel plans.

If you have used your own vehicle to travel, you can travel back to your home to isolate, taking public health measures to ensure you dont infect anyone on your way home  such as maintaining physical distance and using self-service petrol stations, says a Ministry of Health spokesperson.

However, if you have used public transport or travelled between islands, you wont be able to isolate at your home. So it is important you have a plan and the ability to isolate where you are holidaying, if you need to do so.

There are three actions everyone can do to help protect themselves and others this long weekend.

Firstly  be up to date with vaccinations, including a booster if youve not yet had one. If you are planning to be away, get boosted before you go.

Secondly  wear a mask. Masks are still required in many indoor settings. A good rule of thumb is to wear a mask in indoor public settings as we know that mask use halves the risk of spread of Covid-19. You must also wear a face mask on all flights and public transport, in taxi and ride-share services  unless you are exempt.

And thirdly  stay home and avoid others if youre unwell, isolating or waiting for the results of a Covid-19 test.

For guidance if you or someone you know tests positive or becomes a household contact, visit the Ministry of Health website.

For more information on mask use at Orange, visit the Unite Against COVID-19 website.

Vaccinations administered in New Zealand

Vaccines administered to date: 4,026,402 first doses; 3,977,415 second doses; 31,723 third primary doses; 2,621,445 booster doses: 260,942 paediatric first doses and 110,013 paediatric second doses

Vaccines administered yesterday: 24 first doses; 78 second doses; 4 third primary doses; 1,202 booster doses; 87 paediatric first doses and 975 paediatric second doses

People vaccinated

All Ethnicities (percentage of eligible people aged 12+): 4,056,236 first dose (96.4%); 4,006,634 second dose (95.2%), 2,618,037 boosted (71.2% of those eligible)

Maori (percentage of eligible people aged 12+): 520,915 first dose (91.2%); 503,899 second dose (88.2%), 233,573 boosted (55.1% of those eligible)

Pacific Peoples (percentage of eligible people aged 12+): 281,803 first dose (98.3%); 276,886 second dose (96.6%), 139,247 boosted (57.3% of those eligible)

5 to 11-year-olds all ethnicities: 258,332 first dose (54.2%); 107,456 second dose (22.6%)

5 to 11-year-olds - Maori: 40,724 first dose (35.2%); 12,183 second dose (10.5%)

5 to 11-year-olds - Pacific Peoples: 23,419 first dose (47.4%); 6,021 second dose (12.2%)

Note that the number for People vaccinated differs slightly from Vaccines administered as it includes those that have been vaccinated overseas.

Vaccination rates for all DHBs*

Northland DHB: first dose (90.1%); second dose (88%); boosted (67.9%)

Auckland DHB: first dose (99.2%); second dose (98.3%); boosted (72.9%)

Counties Manukau DHB: first dose (96.2%); second dose (95%); boosted (66%)

Waitemata DHB: first dose (96.5%); second dose (95.6%); boosted (70.8%)

Waikato DHB: first dose (95.1%); second dose (93.6%); boosted (66.8%)

Bay of Plenty DHB: first dose (95.1%); second dose (93.4%); boosted (66.3%)

Lakes DHB: first dose (93.2%); second dose (91.4%); boosted (66.6%)

MidCentral DHB: first dose (96.4%); second dose (95.2%); boosted (72.3%)

Tairawhiti DHB: first dose (93.2%); second dose (91%); boosted (66%)

Whanganui DHB: first dose (91.9%); second dose (90.4%); boosted (71.7%)

Hawkes Bay DHB: first dose (97.2%); second dose (95.6%); boosted (70%)

Taranaki DHB: first dose (94.6%); second dose (93.3%); boosted (68.3%)

Wairarapa DHB: first dose (96.5%); second dose (95%); boosted (73.1%)

Capital & Coast DHB: first dose (98.5%); second dose (97.8%); boosted (79.5%)

Hutt Valley DHB: first dose (96.6%); second dose (95.7%); boosted (75.1%)

Nelson Marlborough DHB: first dose (96.4%); second dose (95.2%); boosted (73.6%)

West Coast DHB: first dose (92.7%); second dose (91.3%); boosted (71.9%)

Canterbury DHB: first dose (99.7%); second dose (98.8%); boosted (74.7%)

South Canterbury DHB: first dose (94.7%); second dose (93.7%); boosted (74.7%)

Southern DHB: first dose (98.5%); second dose (97.4%); boosted (73.3%)

*Partially and second doses percentages are for those 12+. Boosted percentages are for 18+ who have become eligible 3 months after having their second dose or 16 and 17 year olds who have become eligible 6 months after having their second dose.

Percentages are based on 2020 HSU data - a health-specific population denominator. As the population continues to change over time, coverage rates can exceed 100%.

Hospitalisations

Cases in hospital: total number 490: Northland: 37; Waitemata: 76; Counties Manukau: 70; Auckland: 83; Waikato: 41; Bay of Plenty: 20; Lakes: 6; Tairawhiti: 2, Hawkes Bay: 8; Taranaki: 11; Whanganui: 4; MidCentral: 5; Wairarapa: 3; Hutt Valley: 15; Capital and Coast: 12; Nelson Marlborough: 6; Canterbury: 58; South Canterbury: 7; West Coast: 1; Southern: 25

Average age of current hospitalisations: 60

Cases in ICU or HDU: 20

Vaccination status of current hospitalisations (Northern Region only, excluding Emergency Departments): Unvaccinated or not eligible (47 cases / 18%); partially immunised <7 days from second dose or have only received one dose (8 cases / 3%); double vaccinated at least 7 days before being reported as a case (68 cases / 26%); Received booster at least 7 days before being reported as a case (127 cases / 49%); unknown (7 cases / 3%).

Cases

Seven day rolling average of community cases: 8,435

Seven day rolling average (as at Sunday last week): 8,170

Number of new community cases: 5,662

Number of new community cases (PCR): 129

Number of new community cases (RAT): 5,533

Location of new community cases (PCR & RAT): Northland (203), Auckland (1,455), Waikato (365), Bay of Plenty (223), Lakes (85), Hawkes Bay (187), MidCentral (196), Whanganui (68), Taranaki (152), Tairawhiti (50), Wairarapa (53), Capital and Coast (355), Hutt Valley (191), Nelson Marlborough (224), Canterbury (978), South Canterbury (128), Southern (666), West Coast (81), Unknown (2)

Number of new cases identified at the border: 44

Number of active community cases (total): 59,018 (cases identified in the past 7 days and not yet classified as recovered)

Confirmed cases (total): 881,481

Please note, the Ministry of Healths daily reported cases may differ slightly from those reported at a DHB or local public health unit level. This is because of different reporting cut off times and the assignment of cases between regions, for example when a case is tested outside their usual region of residence. Total numbers will always be the formal daily case tally as reported to the WHO.

Tests
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(Photo : GettyImages/PATRICK PLEUL) Elon Musk

Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk threw some uncertainty into his plans for a takeover of Twitter by posting a cryptic message that said he was "moving on."

Elon Musk's Tweet Raises Questions

According to The Guardian, Musk posted the said tweet on Sunday, Apr. 24. The entrepreneur is known for his enigmatic messages on the social media platform, which he often uses to attack other people, make jokes or even post insults.

Moving on   Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 24, 2022

The meaning of his latest tweet is still unclear, as it simply said that he is "moving on," and he has not done any follow-up on it.

What makes the public raise their eyebrows over the tweet is that it was posted after Musk had a dramatic week. He secured $46.5 billion in financing to fund a possible hostile bid for Twitter, including $21 billion of his own money.

Also Read: Elon Musk Reacts on Twitter Meme About His Purchase of the Company-What is Happening on Social Media?

The funding commitments were outlined in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC. Musk already owns 9.2% of the social media platform, and he announced a $54.20-per-share bid on Apr. 18.

Musk's offer is viewed as a hostile bid because it bypasses Twitter's board. The social media giant has also launched a poison pill defense to block Musk from building a stake that is bigger than 15%.

Musk has always been open about his views on Twitter. He has called himself a free speech absolutist and has clarified that he believes the platform is not giving its users enough freedom.

In a letter to the company's board, Musk said that the platform needs to be transformed as a private company. He has also flagged changes that he might bring to the social media company, including introducing an edit button for published tweets.

House Republicans Demand Twitter to Preserve Musk's Records

According to The Verge, republicans are currently in an uproar about Twitter's attempts to accept Musk's offer.

CNBC reported that the House GOP members, led by Rep. Jim Jordan, are calling on the board to preserve all records of the transactions, setting the ground for a future hearing if the Republican party takes control of the House after the US's midterm elections.

Republicans have accused Twitter of censorship, as several conservatives have been banned from the platform these past few years.

The Musk-Twitter Saga

On Apr. 4, Musk announced that he had purchased 9.1% of Twitter. The news that the Tesla CEO was the largest shareholder in his favorite social media platform sent the stock price soaring.

Musk had immediately solicited suggestions from his followers about ways to improve the social media platform by tweeting a poll.

The company responded by offering him a board seat, a move that would have restricted him to owning only 15% of the company.

At first, Musk agreed. Then he changed his mind and declined the offer. After dropping a seat on the board, he updated his filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission to indicate that he would not be a "passive player" in Twitter's affairs.

On Apr. 14, Musk purchased Twitter, to the surprise of the users.

Related Article: Elon Musk's Twitter Name Change Suggestion Goes Viral! Other Updates the Billionaire Wants for the Platform

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Sophie Webster

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Fireworks are set off in many places in Russia to celebrate the 77th anniversary of the victory of the Great Patriotic War - Teller Report
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Spencer Hudson was making drinks March 20 behind the bar at the Cats Meow in the French Quarter when he crumpled dead to the floor, shot in the chest by a stray bullet that was fired at someone else outside on Bourbon Street.

Two of his friends, who also work on Bourbon Street, traveled to Baton Rouge last week to ask the Louisiana Legislature to allow the New Orleans City Council  contrary to existing state gun laws  to limit folks from toting firearms into the French Quarter and to public events like the Jazz Fest. I dont feel secure, said musician Tracy Brown.

House Bill 209, by New Orleans Democratic Rep. Mandie Landry, would have allowed the council to set gun control measures that are stronger than the state allows currently. At the end of the day, were asking this committee and the Legislature to allow New Orleans to carve out legislation that affects the unique problems that we have, said City Council member Eugene Green.

Hudsons friends also were joined by Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams, who testified that Louisiana has the nations second-highest rate of gun-related deaths, behind Mississippi, with 26.3 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Every year an average of 575 Louisiana residents die, and 1,700 are wounded.

The math is very clear: Louisiana has the highest rate of homicides and gun assaults, he said.

But the debate quickly became a critique of Williams sometimes stormy 15-month reign as district attorney, which include claims by law enforcement that he doesnt aggressively prosecute crimes.

Pulling out his copy of the Louisiana Supreme Court's Annual Report for 2021, Prairieville Republican Rep. Tony Bacala, who is the vice chair of the House Committee on the Administration of Criminal Justice, began reading statistics that showed Orleans Parish had filed 1,807 criminal complaints in courts, compared to, say, 7,800 in Jefferson and 6,300 in East Baton Rouge parishes. New Orleans held only four criminal jury trials during 2021. Jefferson Parish had 34, and East Baton Rouge had 15.

Bacala, a retired Ascension Parish Sheriffs deputy, said maybe a lack of criminal prosecutions led to the increase in of violent crime (To be fair, crime is up all over the country).

Is there a point in time when we start recognizing a correlation between the ineffectiveness of the criminal justice system and crime? Bacala said. His GOP-dominated committee rejected the bill.

Williams pointed out that New Orleans criminal courts have been reopened only four weeks and trials already have been held.

Given the fact that criminals are able to do it (acquire guns), you and the people from New Orleans you represent, believe that prohibiting law-abiding citizens.  You think that restricting their rights is the way to solve crime? said Chalmette Republican Rep. Ray Garofalo.

Who to blame for causing violent crime, however, somewhat misses the point.

What this legislation is about is state governments preeminence over local government. Unlike most states in the nation, Louisiana holds tight reins on municipal officials and police jurors through a wide range of laws, from what taxes can be collected locally to what local governments can and cannot do.

The real issue is a law thats not yet two years old, which was passed over the fierce objections from city governments across the state.

Lawmakers may remove permits, training required for concealed carry in Louisiana; see all Gun Day bills A House committee advanced legislation Tuesday that would remove the permits  and training that goes with it  required for carrying conceale

New Orleans, at the time, had ordinances prohibiting guns in public buildings used for youth recreational programs. Baton Rouge banned firearms at all BREC parks and playgrounds. Lafayette and Hammond were among the municipalities that had forbidden people from carrying guns into places where families gather.

But safety concerns articulated by city officials were trumped by arguments that law-abiding people unknowingly broke the law when they carried guns, perfectly legal in one jurisdiction, into another with different rules. Act 299 of the 2020 Legislative Session negated the patchwork of different local ordinances. That left state law, which allows guns to be carried pretty much anywhere in Louisiana.

Cities, like New Orleans, continue to argue that one size for rural and urban Louisiana doesnt fit all their situations.

People who live in different areas of the state have different needs, different desires, said Landry. We have state preemption on a whole lot of issues.
The last time the bank tightened during a campaign was in 2007, when then-prime minister John Howard counted on a strong economy to hold off Kevin Rudd. Howard lost, and his team admonished the central bank. There was a lot more going on at the time  Howards support for the war in Iraq was deeply unpopular  but higher rates became part of the autopsy.

Pretty much anything that happens right now is viewed through the lens of the election on May 21. While the Reserve Bank sets borrowing costs independently of Canberra, it hates getting dragged into partisanship. And nudging up the benchmark rate from near zero on May 3 would do just that.

Australias economy is sizzling by most measures: The monthly jobless rate is nearing a record low, inflation is accelerating, and business confidence is soaring. After a rare recession induced by COVID-19, the government reckons growth will be well in excess of the global average this year.

RBA Governor Philip Lowe would probably prefer not to go there  and many economists doubt he will. They also say the case for a hike soon is strong. By waiting until June, Lowe may even need to lift the main rate by more than a quarter point, a bigger first step than analysts anticipated a few months ago. Hell have the advantage of scrutinising the Federal Open Market Committees May 4 decision, which may result in a half-point climb.

But does declining to act on the data test the very autonomy the RBA seeks to preserve? Like every central bank, the RBA operates within parameters set, ultimately, by the political class. Lest we forget, the bank doesnt deliberate in complete isolation from the government, either; the top bureaucrat at Treasury, Steven Kennedy, sits on the RBAs board.

While the Reserve Bank sets borrowing costs independently of Canberra, it hates getting dragged into partisanship. And nudging up the benchmark rate from near zero on May 3 would do just that.

Neither Prime Minister Scott Morrison nor Labor leader Anthony Albanese have hinted that the RBAs independence might in jeopardy. That said, both parties have pledged a review of the central bank after the election, the first in decades, even if they have been vague about the details. Some change is coming, no matter the victor. Its understandable Lowe might not want to kick a hornets nest.

For his part, Morrison considers the thriving economy to be his best chance of a come-from-behind win. He has trailed in polls for much of the past year, partly because of COVID fatigue and in-fighting among his party. Morrisons term got off to a poor start with bushfires ravaging the east coast while he was on holiday in Hawaii. During the pandemic, Morrison struggled to get his way with state leaders wanting to pursue their own strategy. Hammering Labor on the economy is Morrisons best, and perhaps last, hope.
The Commonwealth has seized control of a $1.6 million home in Sydneys south after federal police found drugs, cash and two secret rooms behind a bookcase during a raid in 2017.

The five-bedroom home, at Sylvania, was searched in April 2017 as part of an investigation into a Colombian organised crime group based in Sydney which was involved in drug importation and money laundering.

Photos of a home in Sylvania which has been forfeited to the Commonwealth. Drugs were found in a secret room behind a bookcase in a raid in 2017. Credit:AFP

Australian Federal Police officers found an automatic door disguised as a bookshelf that concealed two hidden rooms.

In a statement on Sunday, the AFP said the rooms contained cocaine, cannabis, cannabis resin, mobile phones, scales, clip-seal bags, a substance commonly used to cut drugs, and equipment used to detect surveillance devices.
As we find ourselves in the midst of an election chapter, Granny thinks its worth considering the leaning of Michael Fischer of Coogee in suggesting that the pub test be replaced by the dog park test. The latter surely reflects a broader demographic than the former.

Simon Dixons story regarding the inability of a gunnery crew to shoot down a pilotless aircraft (C8) reminds me of a case in 1955 where an unmanned Auster aircraft became airborne from Bankstown airport and circled over Sydney for nearly three hours, writes Col Burns of Lugarno. Eventually it was shot down by two RAN Sea Fury aircraft, but only after two Meteor jets, the front-line fighter of the RAAF, had failed to do so. In the 1980s one of those Meteor pilots had become an Examiner of Airmen charged with regularly assessing my flying proficiency. Any mention of the above incident needed to be avoided in order to pass this assessment.

My wife points out that snails eat the junk mail (C8) because they mistake it for letters, explains Melvyn Dickson of Malabar.

Sorry, Graham Russell (C8), there are still no takers for a switch to Column 5. And some see C5 as a bad omen. Like Malcolm McEwen of North Turramurra, who says: C5 was more infamously the name of one of Britains most disastrous marketing flops. The Sinclair C5 (named for inventor, industrialist Sir Clive Sinclair) was an electric vehicle launched in January 1985. By August of the same year, production had ceased. Its featured in an episode of the podcast series, Cautionary Tales. Lets stick with C8.

Speaking of a column shift, Michael Ward of Mosman wonders Would the younger folks be familiar with a four on the floor or three on a tree?
On this day, every year for more than a century, Australians have gathered to remember the many people, from all walks of life, who have served the nation in times of war. Whether defending ideals of freedom and democracy, coming to the service of other nations when they have faced crisis, or even involved in misguided conflicts that seem, in hindsight, errors, our Defence Force has served Australia well.

Credit:

At the dawn service and in ceremonial marches, at informal assemblies in cities and regions, here and overseas, Australians on Anzac Day vow never to forget the sacrifice of those men and women. We stand in silence to hear the haunting bugle strains of the Last Post, and we echo the invocation, Lest we forget. On one level, that phrase is considered an expression of mourning. Taken literally, though, it cautions us to look beyond myths and legends and remember the facts of history and what really happens in war.

Redgums famous song about a 19-year old conscript, drafted to fight in Vietnam, notes how the Anzac legends didnt mention mud and blood and tears / And the stories that my father told me never seemed quite real. For while the Anzac legend occasionally risks drifting into starry-eyed, even romantic, notions of patriotism, the reality of military conflict is horror, human suffering and civilian upheaval on an unimaginable scale.

We are seeing it again in Ukraine, where cities and towns have been pulverised by Russian forces. Civilian homes and apartment blocks, hospitals, schools and churches have been ruthlessly bombed. And widespread evidence has emerged of massacres and rapes. All this constitutes conduct in breach of international rules of war. Russia has committed crimes against peace, and its invading forces have committed war crimes: murder, rape and the wanton and unnecessary destruction of cities and civilian premises.
On a sunny Sunday morning in Melbournes inner-north, Svitlana Solovey and her family marked Orthodox Easter thousands of kilometres from home.

When conflict broke out in Ukraine, they lived for a week in a bunker, sleeping on mattresses on the cold floor while Svitlana tried to help her seven-year-old daughter continue her school lessons. Before long, they realised they had to leave.

My husband said to me, the war  wont end soon, she said. So we left.

Lena Pylioenko, Svitlana Solovey, Dasha Solovey and Liza Solovey, 7, at the Saint Peter and Paul Catholic Church in North Melbourne on Sunday. Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui

While waiting for the train to Poland, there was bombing near the station, and they spent the trip lying on the floor of the carriage, terrified they would be hit.
Harold Charlie Slater tries not to get emotional when he talks about being able to attend the Anzac Day dawn service in Perths Kings Park again.

The 99-year-old WWII veteran, who joined the 2/28th Battalion in the Australian Army at the age of 18, which was made up of West Australian volunteers, has been attending the states largest memorial of the annual observance for decades, but the COVID-19 pandemic has put a hold on the event for the past two years.

Perth WWII veteran Harold Charlie Slater will be able to attend the Kings Park dawn service for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit:Cameron Myles

Even though the pandemic stopped Slater  a retired banking administrator  from going to Kings Park, it did not stop him from raising the Australian flag and holding his own driveway service in a Floreat cul-de-sac.

The rest of the street came along and supported me, Slater said. We had a representative from each of the houses in the cul-de-sac.
Coal miners will have to pay to reduce their carbon emissions from next year under a Labor vow to overhaul the government mechanism that regulates 215 big emitters, setting off a political dispute over the cost of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

Labor climate spokesman Chris Bowen confirmed the impact on coal on Sunday in a key statement about the scope of the policy while saying the changes would be done gradually using a mechanism and targets backed by the Business Council of Australia.

Chris Bowen confirmed coal mines will be subject to Labors tightened safeguard mechanism. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

But Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce went on the attack by claiming the resources industry would be punished if Labor won the election and tightened the benchmarks in the governments safeguards mechanism to require greater cuts to emissions.

While the claims set the scene for another dispute over the cost of acting on climate change, Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood said the idea of setting new baselines in the safeguard mechanism was an effective way to proceed using a structure already in place.
Premier Daniel Andrews has rubbished the prospect of an audit into his multibillion-dollar Suburban Rail Loop, arguing his 2018 election win gave his government a mandate to build what would be the largest project in Australian history.

Weve had an audit  its called an election, he said, referring to Labors landslide 2018 win when the loop was among his partys pledges.

Opposition MP Matt Bach: Wheres the $100 billion coming from? Credit:Wayne Taylor

I put it forward to the Victorian community last time, and they voted for it in unprecedented terms.

Opposition transport infrastructure spokesman Matt Bach told the Sunday Age that, while his party would honour any contracts signed for the first section from Cheltenham to Box Hill, the entire rail link to Melbourne Airport and then Werribee would be immediately audited if the Coalition won power in November. The project could be amended or future sections could be scrapped.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size If the election were held on Snapchat, Labor would win. It is the only party, aside from a solitary One Nation candidate, to put up advertisements on the social media platform during this campaign, according to the platforms political ad library. The message from Labors 15 ads, styled as though they could be an invite to a trendy university party, is aimed straight at the voters aged between 18 and 26 who will see the highly targeted images. Moved out of home? one asks. Dont forget to update your AEC details online. Labors brand is absent, save for a tiny authorisation as required by electoral law, suggesting it is aiming at young voters who lean left but take a dim view of party politics. The ads are a fractional part of the election campaign but they point to parties determination to win votes online, their willingness to be tricky in the digital arena, and the sophisticated targeting techniques at play. So, how is the digital campaign being run? And who do the parties hope to sway? Credit:Artwork: Steve Kiprillis More than half of Generation Z say social media is their main source of news. Thats anyone born since 1997. But social medias importance is not limited to young people. Ten per cent of those aged 75 and older rely on it to stay informed, according to a University of Canberra report last year.

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Snapchat claims more than 7 million users in Australia. The video social network TikTok does not disclose users in Australia, but a report from a marketing agency in 2021 suggested marketers could reach more than 7 million people on the platform. The same document, from social management tool Hootsuite and marketing company We Are Social, pegs Facebooks ad-reach at 16 million, YouTubes at 20.5 million, Instagrams at 11 million and Twitters at 2.9 million. In a population of 26 million, thats good coverage. An ALP ad on Snapchat (fine print magnified). Credit: Twitter, which is favoured by many current affairs consumers, and TikTok, which has a younger audience, do not allow political advertising. There, posts have to be engaging enough to reach users on their own, which means that funny, impassioned or (sadly) negative content tends to get the most views. Loading In broad terms, candidates use each platform for a different purpose. Twitter is used for the cut and thrust of political discussion. Snapchat and TikTok are used to reach the youngest audiences. Facebook, photo and video-sharing platform Instagram and YouTube, for videos, command huge audiences and substantial ad expenditure across demographics, although Instagrams engaged audience is viewed as younger than that of Facebook. Ads that come up in search results on Google, or on other websites sites where Google sells the advertising space, will be especially important in the last days of the campaign as voters search for their local candidates and try to make a decision. On each platform parties will tailor ads to voters in specific electorates and to specific demographics  which is the targeted nature of advertising on social media. More people registered for this election in a single day than any other before. Social media was a key reason why. Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers called the decision by 214,000 people to enrol to vote  most of them aged between 18 and 24  an unmitigated success for the election and Australian democracy. It takes the total enrolment rate to 96 per cent.

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Several platforms, including Snapchat and Twitter, partnered with the AEC to encourage enrolments. The electoral commission spent $173,000 on Facebook and Instagram in the week to April 16, leading up to the close of enrolments on April 18, too. Left-leaning parties are the likely beneficiary of surging enrolments. In 2019, large-scale polling by the Australian National Universitys Australian Election Study found Labor and the Greens claimed 81 per cent of the vote among people aged between 18 and 24. That is more than double the 31 per cent share of the vote they received from those aged over 65. The image for a Liberal party Instagram ad. Credit: Parties do not just want enrolments. Some ads encourage voters to apply for a postal vote direct from the party. This election, Labor and the Coalition have both set up sites through which voters can request a postal ballot. This has triggered a warning about the practice from the electoral commission, which pointedly notes that political parties do not have to comply with privacy law. That means they could use the sites, which voters are directed to by social media ads, to add to their databases on voters. People have a right to know what theyre doing with their personal data, Rogers says. Where political parties cannot persuade voters to enrol or request a postal ballot directly online, they are trying to convince Australians to back them on election day in May. Posts are varied, but data from Facebooks CrowdTangle analysis tool suggests fringe politicians and controversial posts generate the most engagement from readers. On April 19, for example, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson had the highest share of voice, a measure of engagement with Australian political pages on Facebook, at 10 per cent. She was followed by Liberal National Party Senator Gerard Rennick, whose overwhelming focus is on attacking COVID-19 vaccine mandates, at 8 per cent. The Prime Minister was third, at 7 per cent.

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Meanwhile, individual candidates tend to use social media advertising in a different way to political parties, focusing on local issues and introducing themselves to voters. Below is a Google ad for the independent candidate for Wentworth, Allegra Spender. Credit: Australia does not have laws that prevent false or misleading claims in federal election campaigns. Only South Australia and the ACT have a law prohibiting the publication of false factual claims, as opposed to statements of opinion, and that does not apply to federal elections. The only guard rail at a federal level is that Australians cannot be misled about their voting rights  but everything else is unprotected. Loading That has consequences. A Liberal National Party ad that ran on YouTube in Queensland showed Labor leader Anthony Albanese saying, What weve said is we dont have a plan. Albanese did say those words at a press conference in mid-April but the quote is out of context. He was, in fact, saying that Labor did not have a plan to raise the JobSeeker payment rate in its first budget, but could look at it in future budgets as long as it was fiscally responsible in the context of Australias large national debt. Labor has made similarly misleading or tendentious claims, with some posts suggesting the government plans to make cuts to Medicare (it has ruled that out) and put the aged pension on a debit card that restricts purchases and allows only minimal cash withdrawals (again, ruled out).

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Paris: French citizens have begun voting in the presidential runoff election on Sunday with repercussions for Europes future, with centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron the front-runner but fighting a tough challenge from far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

The centrist Macron is asking voters to trust him for a second five-year term despite a presidency troubled by protests, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. A Macron victory in this vote would make him the first French president in 20 years to win a second term.

A man casts his vote in Marseille on Sunday. Credit:AP

The result of voting in France, a nuclear-armed nation with one of the worlds biggest economies, could also impact the conflict in Ukraine, as France has played a key role in diplomatic efforts and support for sanctions against Russia.

Le Pens support in Frances electorate has grown during this campaign to her highest level ever, and much will depend on how many people turn out to vote. Many of those expected to choose Macron are doing so to keep out Le Pen and ideas seen as too extreme and anti-democratic, such as her plan to ban the Muslim headscarf in public, or her ties to Russia.
Washington: Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has slammed Representative Kevin McCarthy as a liar and a traitor over recordings that show the House Republican leader  despite his denials  suggesting Trump should resign over the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021.

Its unusually strong language to use against the House Republican leader, who is in line to become speaker  second in presidential succession  if Republicans win control of the House in the November elections.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Credit:AP

But Warrens statement reflects a swell of Democratic criticism against McCarthy. They point to his recorded comments from January 2021 as proof that GOP lawmakers at the highest levels privately acknowledge Trumps role in the insurrection at the Capitol yet continue to defend him in public.

McCarthy denied a New York Times report last week that detailed phone conversations with House Republican leadership shortly after the riot during which he said that he thought Trump should resign. He called it totally false.
Batavia, NY (14020)

Today

A few clouds. Low near 45F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low near 45F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.
Falun Gong practitioners participate in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the April 25th peaceful appeal of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing, in Flushing, N.Y., on April 23, 2022. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

2,000 March in New York to Highlight Plight of Falun Gong Adherents in China

NEW YORKFor New Yorkers walking on the streets of the citys largest Chinatown on April 23, their presence was hard to dismiss.

With lion dancers and a marching band in sky-blue suits leading the way, the 2,000-strong parade marched through the Flushing neighborhood of Queens. On a float richly decorated with golden tassels, blue-gilded clouds, and large lotus flowers, men and women attired in traditional costumes smiled and waved from under a golden tiled rooftop meant to represent a heavenly palace. From time to time, women dressed as traditional Chinese fairies walked by, offering an origami lotus flower from a small wicker basket to passersby.

Falun Gong practitioners participate in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the April 25th peaceful appeal in Beijing, in the Flushing neighborhood in New York, on April 23, 2022. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

But cheerful colors and the celebratory mood told only part of the story. The annual tradition, dating back more than a decade, commemorates the largest peaceful resistance in Chinas recent history seeking religious liberty.

Roughly 23 years ago, on April 25, 1999, 10,000 adherents of Falun Gong, a meditation practice centered on the three principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, gathered by the Appeals Office near the Chinese communist headquarters in Beijing to appeal for the right to exercise their beliefs without political suppression.

The adherents disbanded quietly that evening after receiving assurances from a top Chinese official that their requests had been heard. But the incident proved to be the prelude to a decades-long persecution targeting their faith.

Related Coverage INFOGRAPHIC: How Falun Gong Is Persecuted in China

Three months after the event, then-Party leader Jiang Zemin initiated a nationwide campaign aiming to eradicate the group. Millions have since been subjected to detention in various facilities, where they face torture, forced labor, and organ harvesting, according to estimates by Falun Dafa Information Center.

Still targeted by the communist regime in China, the groups activitiessuch as the April 23 event in Flushinghave served to raise awareness among the Chinese diaspora about Beijings abuses.

Bystanders join Falun Gong practitioners in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the April 25th peaceful appeal of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing, in Flushing, N.Y., on April 23, 2022. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)

April, a Chinese expatriate who was witnessing the parade for the first time, said the traditional elements of Chinese culture presented by the adherents felt very heartwarming.

Theres no way to see this in China, she told the Chinese language NTD, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times. No one in China dares to express their thoughts.

Falun Gong practitioners participate in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the April 25th peaceful appeal in Beijing, in Flushing, N.Y., on April 23, 2022. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

Another Chinese immigrant watching the parade, who identified herself as Susan, said the persecution is one of many egregious abuses that demonstrates the regime to be the enemy of China.

For some people from a society to be willing to stand up and fight for the freedom to be good, what an admirable thing is this? But such an attempt has been suppressed, she told NTD.

Falun Gong practitioners participate in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the April 25th peaceful appeal of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing, in Flushing, N.Y., on April 23, 2022. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

The persecution, she said, has suppressed peoples aspirations to be good, and all of China is bearing the consequences.

Look at todays Shanghai, even the freedom to eat is almost gone, she said, making a reference to the regimes draconian lockdown in the financial hub that has left many in the city struggling to obtain food, supplies, and medical care.

Freedom is something that if you dont defend from the beginning, it will crumble at an accelerating pace. In the end, you not only wont have the right to eat, you wont even have the right to breathe.

Falun Gong practitioners participate in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the April 25th peaceful appeal of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing, in Flushing, N.Y., on April 23, 2022. (Zhang Xuehui/The Epoch Times)

Bystanders join Falun Gong practitioners in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the April 25th peaceful appeal of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing, in Flushing, N.Y., on April 23, 2022. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)

Falun Gong practitioners participate in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the April 25th peaceful appeal of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing, in Flushing, N.Y., on April 23, 2022. (Zhang Jingyi/The Epoch Times)

Falun Gong practitioners participate in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the April 25th peaceful appeal of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing, in Flushing, N.Y., on April 23, 2022. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

Falun Gong practitioners participate in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the April 25th peaceful appeal of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing, in Flushing, N.Y., on April 23, 2022. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)

Falun Gong practitioners participate in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the April 25th peaceful appeal of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing, in Flushing, N.Y., on April 23, 2022. (Zhang Xuehui/The Epoch Times)

Bystanders join Falun Gong practitioners in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the April 25th peaceful appeal of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing, in Flushing, N.Y., on April 23, 2022. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)
Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison attends the state memorial service for former Australian cricketer Shane Warne at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia, on March 30, 2022. (Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)

Australian PM Says No New Taxes From His Government

Australias prime minister has doubled down on the Coalitions promise not to introduce new taxes as the opposition Labor Party pledges to throw more than A$500 million (US$362.36 million) at Veterans Affairs to fix a backlog in support claims.

Both sides have kicked off Sundays campaigning with big cash pledges as Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese remains in isolation with COVID-19.

Morrisons pledge will see A$100 billion (US$72.47 million) added to the national debt as part of a lower tax guarantee with no new income, superannuation, business or housing taxes if the Liberal-National Coalition is re-elected.

Lower taxes are at the heart of our economic plan for a stronger economy and stronger future, the prime minister said.

The Coalition is upping the scare campaign by suggesting Labor will introduce new taxes, despite the opposition already ruling it out.

Labor has floated taking stronger action to curb multinational tax evasion and said more details on their plan would be announced soon.

Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the latest announcement from the Liberals was contrary to a commitment Australia had previously made.

The prime minister  appears to be walking away from a deal Australia said that we want to be part of, 130 countries around the world who recognise that we need a fairer way to tax multinationals so theyre paying their fair share in the countries where they make their profits, he told ABCs Insiders on Sunday.

Morrison says his new tax guarantee will mean Australians will be A$100 billion better off but there are questions over whether this figure represents already legislated cuts.

Meanwhile, Albanese has dubbed a crisis in Veterans Affairs a national disgrace with the opposition saying unresolved claims for help have hit 60,000.

For so many of our veterans, the war does not end when they leave the battlefield. Just as they stepped up for us, we must step up for them, Albanese said.

Labors announcement of more than $500 million (US$362.36 million) for Veterans Affairs, on the eve of Anzac Day, aims to cut waiting times, build new support hubs, increase veteran home ownership and boost pension and employment programs.

On Friday, the prime minister announced a re-elected Coalition government would establish 14 new Veteran Wellbeing Centres providing access to health and wellbeing support, at a cost of A$70 million (US$50.73 million)

Morrison will head to Darwin later on Sunday for an Anzac dawn service on Monday, with Labor deputy Richard Marles to attend in Albaneses stead.

Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce appears to be walking back previous comments comparing the Solomon Islands security deal with China to the Cuban missile crisis.

Joyce said he believed the assurances from the Solomon Islands government that a Chinese naval base would not be established in the country.

I just hope that China does not get the capacity to set up a naval base because its obviously an intimidating tactic to Australia, he told ABCs Insiders.

Ahead of its campaign shifting to the Northern Territory, Labor has pledged to train an additional 500 Indigenous health workers and invest in life-saving dialysis and rheumatic heart disease treatments.

The party said it would work closely with Indigenous health services to deliver up to 30 new dialysis units to treat chronic kidney disease and double the federal funding to combat rheumatic heart disease with $12 million (US$8.70 million) for prevention, screening and treatment.

It would also invest $15 million (US$10.87 million) to improve water supply in remote communities to enable new dialysis units in these communities for the first time.
Tents are lined up on the sidewalk in front of the non-profit Midnight Mission's headquarters in Los Angeles on Nov. 25, 2021. (Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images)

Californias Vanished Dream, by the Numbers

Even today amid a mounting exodus among those who can afford it, and with its appeal diminished to businesses and newcomers, California, legendary state of American dreams, continues to inspire optimism among progressive boosters.

Laura Tyson, the longtime Democratic economist now at the University of California at Berkeley, praises the state for creating the way forward to a more enlightened market capitalism. Like-minded analysts tout Silicon Valleys massive wealth generation as evidence of progressivisms promise. The Los Angeles Times suggested approvingly that the Biden administrations goal is to make America California again. And, despite dark prospects in Novembers midterm elections, the President and his party still seem intent on proving it.

Laura Tyson, distinguished professor of the Graduate School/Chair, Board of Trustees, UC BerkeleyHaas School & Blum Center for Developing Economics, speaks at the 2017 Concordia Annual Summit at Grand Hyatt New York on Sept. 18, 2017. (Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)

But most Californians, according to recent surveys, see things differently. They point to rising poverty and inequality, believe the state is in recession and that it is headed in the wrong direction. Parting with the states cheerleaders, the New York Times Ezra Klein, a reliable progressive and native Californian, says the Golden States failures are making liberals squirm.

Reality may well be worse than even Klein admits. In a new report for Chapman University, my colleagues and I find California in a state of existential crisis, losing both its middle-aged and middle class, while its poor population faces dimming prospects. Despite the states myriad advantages, research shows it plagued by economic immobility and inequality, crushing housing and energy costs, and a failing education system. Worse than just a case of progressive policies creating regressive outcomes, it appears California is descending into something resembling modern-day feudalism, with the poor and weak trapped by policies subsidized by taxes paid by the rich and powerful.

Journalist Ezra Klein attends The New Yorkers David Remnick Hosts White House Correspondents Dinner Weekend Pre-Party at W Hotel Rooftop in Washington on April 26, 2013. (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The New Yorker)

California may conjure images of Rodeo Drive and Malibu mansions in the public imagination, but today the state suffers the highest cost-adjusted poverty rate in the United States. The poor and near-poor constitute over one thirdwell over 10 millionof the states residents according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Los Angeles, by far the states largest metropolitan area, and once a magnet for middle class aspirations, has one of the highest poverty rates among major U.S. cities. A United Way of California analysis shows that over 30 percent of residents lack sufficient income to cover basic living costs even after accounting for public-assistance programs; this includes half of Latino and 40 percent of black residents. Some two-thirds of noncitizen Latinos live at or below the poverty line.

In California, there is this idea of Oh, we care about the poor, but on this metric, we are literally the worst, Stanford Universitys Mark Duggan, principal author of an economic comparison of California with Texas, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The states poverty and associated dysfunction are on full display in leading cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, where a large underclass now inhabits the streetsthe once-iconic locales having become poster children for urban dysfunction. Beyond massive homeless camps, crime has become so bad that the LAPD has warned tourists it can no longer protect them. San Francisco, meanwhile, suffers the highest property crime rate in the country. Businesses like Walgreens have shut down numerous Bay Area locations due to rampant burglaries. Homelessness and crime increasingly dominate the states political discourse, particularly in these two deep blue bastions.

California also faces growing inequality. By the Gini index, a measure of the distribution of income across a population, California has the third-highest inequality behind New York and Louisiana, and has experienced the fifth largest expansion of inequality since 2010, according to American Community Survey data. California also suffers the widest gap between middle- and upper-middle-income earners of any state.

Tents housing the homeless line up in front of closed storefronts near downtown Los Angeles on Feb. 16, 2022. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

Once among the most egalitarian regions in the country, Silicon Valley has become among the most segregated places in the country. CityLab has described the technology hub as a region of segregated innovation, a trend becoming more pronounced, according to recent research. Silicon Valley now boasts its own underclass of those who clean its buildings and provide food service. Nearly 30 percent of its residents rely on public or private financial assistance.

Similarly, according to the Brookings Institution, San Francisco, the technology industrys most important urban center, has experienced the most rapid growth in inequality among the nations large cities in the last decade. The California Budget and Policy Center has named the city first in California for economic inequality; the average income of the top one percent of households in the city averages $3.6 million, forty-four times the average income of the bottom 99 percent, which stands at $81,094 in a city and state with a high cost of living.

The situation is worse elsewhere in the state. Over the past decade more than 80 percent of California jobs paid under the median income, and most under $40,000 annually, a poverty wage in California. Worse yet, as demonstrated in our analysis, California lags all peer competitorsTexas, Arizona, Tennessee, Nevada, Washington, and Coloradoin creating high wage jobs in fields like business and professional services, as even tech growth begins to shift elsewhere.

The biggest losers in California have been those industries that historically provided the best opportunities for working-class peoplemanufacturing, construction, energyas well as agriculture, the states historic economic powerhouse. On a per capita basis, California builds only a fraction of the housing compared to its main rivals, while corporate new investment, suggests a new Hoover Institution study, has shriveled to a rate one-tenth Texas and one-sixteenth that of Ohio.

The states climate change policies, however well-intentioned, have had a particularly devastating impact on manufacturing. Californias renewable energy push has generated high energy prices and the nations least-reliable power grid, crippling an industry reliant on fossil fuels and a stable electric supply. The state fell to 44th in the country in manufacturing sector employment growth last year; its industrial new job creation has lagged competitors such as Nevada, Kentucky, Michigan, and Florida. Even without adjusting for costs, no California metro ranks in the U.S. top ten in terms of offering well-paying blue-collar jobs, notes The New York Times. But fourVentura, Los Angeles, San Jose, and San Diegosit among the bottom ten.

As the environmentalist Breakthrough Institute summarizes it, the states climate agenda has created a new Green Jim Crow era keeping more people, particularly minorities, in poverty.

Housing policy has also hurt most of those who can least afford it. Californias state planning policies aim to reduce urban sprawlthe shift to locales where costs are lower and the state is gaining migrants. The heavily minority Inland Empire, which has little political influence, now has more people than the San Francisco metropolitan area, which dominates state politics, but the former is unable to reverse any of these policies.

Despite expectations by planners that limiting suburban growth would reduce prices for the masses and greenhouse emissions by encouraging density, studies in Vancouver, Canada, and several other locations have shown the opposite; they associate densification with higher land and housing prices. California has the highest urban density of any state, yet suffers the second highest housing costs and rents of any state except Hawaii. On this issue, some media coverage appears to have been influenced by the pro-density preferences of tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during a panel talk at the 2020 Munich Security Conference (MSC) in Munich on Feb. 15, 2020. (Johannes Simon/Getty Images)

Striving, largely minority middle- and working-class families bear the brunt of such policies. According to a recent American Enterprise Institute survey, California is home to six of the nations worst markets for first-time homebuyers. It would take more than 100 years for the median-income household to save for a mortgage on a median-priced home in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or San Jose. The state now ranks 49th in homeownership rate, producing far less new housing than competitive regions like Arizona, Texas, or Florida. A recent study by economist John Husing found not one unionized construction worker can afford a median-priced home in any coastal California county.

Unable to buy their own home, many working class families find themselves paying extraordinarily high rents, with more than half of all renters shelling out in excess of 30 percent of household income, the traditional definition of an outsized housing burden. Nearly four in ten California households meet or exceed this level. Not surprisingly, one quarter is contemplating a move elsewhere. High rents and house prices, along with low wages, also have produced the nations highest level of overcrowding.

Nor has densification brought the purported environmental benefits cited by Californias champions at Brookings and in the Biden Administration; the pro-density Terner Center projects that if Californias cities followed the density guidelines, at best the state would see a 1 percent reduction in emissions.

Manifest Education Failures

Historically education was seenparticularly among traditional liberalsas critical to upward mobility for poor and working-class people. Yet for decades the states schools have underperformed national norms, particularly for poor students. Since 1998, California has ranked, on average, 46th in 8th-grade reading and mathematics subject-area performance on the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), the only comparable assessment between states nationwide. This includes comparisons with demographically similar states like Texas, which spends less money per student.

Today, almost three of five California high schoolers are not prepared for either college or a career; the percentages are far higher for Latinos, African Americans, and the economically disadvantaged. Among the 50 states, California ranked 49th in the performance of poor, largely minority, students. San Francisco, the epicenter of Californias woke culture, and site of the recent recall of several far-left school board members, suffers the worst scores for African Americans of any county in the state.

These students are often unprepared for college. At California State Universitywhere ethnic studies programs are now mandatedthe need for remedial courses or 40 percent of freshmen demonstrates a low level of preparedness in such basic skills as reading comprehension, writing, and mathematics. Some educators have decided to eliminate this problem by eliminating remedial classes.

Californias model curriculum, which focuses on how to build new possibilities for post-imperial life that promotes collective narratives of transformative resistance, may only exacerbate these problems by inculcating attitudes antithetical to those necessary to succeed in a highly competitive capitalist economy.

Many California educators from the highest reaches of academia down to the grade school level champion equity in education over developing hard math skills and fostering excellence. Even basic life skills such as being on time are eschewed: The San Diego Unified School District will no longer count such scruples as turning in work on time in grading and evaluation. It may reduce the penalties for cheating. This is justified as a way of redressing racial issues, as many of the malefactors (like most California students) are from disadvantaged minority groups.

Most Californians support charter schools, including nearly half of all Democrats, and three chapters of the Southern California NAACPSan Diego, San Bernardino, and Riverside. The states powerful teachers unions, and the Democrats they back, oppose such education alternatives.

Tech titans, once focused on improving schools, now seem less engaged. This may make sense given the extent to which tech relies on global talent rather than recruiting locally. In 2018, three-quarters of the tech workforce in the Bay Area was foreign-born, a majority on short-term non-immigrant visas.

The answer to many of the problems plaguing Californias struggling lower classes has been to throw more of the upper classs money at them. Michael Bernick, a former director of the states Employment Development Department, says The culture for much of California, driven by state politics, is one of the benefits (and now guaranteed income), not a jobs strategy or expectation. California is unlikely to be devoting the states surplusdriven largely by stock and property gains among the wealthas Texas and other states do, to attract businesses. Instead, as Bernick suggests, the preference has been to boost the welfare state, as it did in initiating record-setting stimulus payments during the pandemic. It is now contemplating handing out debit cards to cope with high energy prices created by the states environmental policies.

Andrew Yang, former Democratic presidential candidate and founder of the Forward Party, speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Oct. 20, 2021. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

Californias technology industry consists of staunch funders of the states progressive Democrats. They may themselves be obsessed workaholics and living testaments to entrepreneurial capitalism, but Greg Ferenstein, who interviewed 147 digital company founders, says most believe that an increasingly greater share of economic wealth will be generated by a smaller slice of very talented or original people. Everyone else will increasingly subsist on some combination of part-time entrepreneurial gig work and government aid.

Many prominent business people, including those who made their fortunes in California such as Zuckerberg, Pierre Omidyar, Elon Musk, and Sam Altman, founder of the Y Combinator, have embraced the notion of a guaranteed wage, that would cover the most critical bills. Democratic Presidential candidate Andrew Yangs campaign was built around this concept.

In the interim, people are fleeing the state. Demographer Wendell Cox notes that since 2000, California has lost 2.6 million net domestic migrants, more than the current populations of San Diego, San Francisco, and Anaheim combined. In 2020, California accounted for 28 percent of all net domestic outmigration in the nation, about 50 percent more than its share of the US population.

Californias population growth has fallen below the national average for the first time, and the state appears to have even possibly lost population in the last two years. The pandemic seems to have accelerated this movement. Last year California was home to three of the five large regions over one million with the highest percentage of population lossSan Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles. Both San Francisco and Los Angeles school districts face large decreases in enrollment; the LA district, the states largest, projects a 20 percent cut in this decade.

This outmigration trend cannot be dismissed as white flight. An analysis of minority population flows shows that Latinos and African Americans are settling increasingly west of the Sierra, particularly in the south, Texas, and parts of the Midwest. Similarly, the foreign-born populationso critical to the states economyhas declined in Los Angeles over the past decade, and stagnated in the Bay Area while swelling in places like Dallas-Ft. Worth, Austin, Houston, Nashville, and even midwestern cities like Columbus, Des Moines, and Indianapolis.

Simply put, California is in danger of losing its youthful mojo. Many of those leaving, according to IRS data, come from young, middle, and working class families. When these people leave, birthrates plummet. Los Angeles and San Francisco rank last and second-to-last in birthrates among the 53 U.S. major metropolitan areas. Among Californias big metros, only Riverside/San Bernardino exceeds the national average in women aged between 15 and 50 with births. Californias total fertility rate, long above the national average, is now the nations 10th lowest. Los Angeles County alone has lost three quarters of a million people under 25 over the past twenty years.

California today is as old as the rest of the country and aging 50 percent faster than the national norm.

It is rapidly replacing the surfboard with a walker.

Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.

This article was written by Joel Kotkin for RealClearInvestigations.
Chris Rock backstage during the 94th Annual Academy Awards at Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Calif., on March 27, 2022. (Al Seib/A.M.P.A.S. via Getty Images)

Chris Rocks Mother Says Will Smith Slapped All of Us

The mother of comedian Chris Rock spoke out about a month after actor Will Smith slapped him at the Academy Awards, saying the incident was embarrassing for his family.

[Smith] started using obscenities, Rose Rock told South Carolina media outlet WIS-TV. When he slapped Chris, he slapped all of us. He really slapped me.

After Rock presented the award category, No one was able to just be in the moment because everyone was sitting there like, What just happened? Rose Rock added.

During the incident, Rock, who was presenting an award, make a joke about Pinkett Smiths shaved head, prompting her husband to walk on the stage, approach Rock, and slap him. Rock declined to press charges, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The comedians mother, who is a motivational speaker, added that she believes Smith, 53, should personally apologize to Chris Rock, 57.

I feel really bad that he never apologized, she told the outlet. I mean his people wrote up a piece saying I apologize to Chris Rock, but you see something like that is personal, you reach out.

Smith issued an apology through social media several days after the slapping incident, coming as the Academys Board of Governors said it would place Smith on a 10-year ban from attending any Academy event. Minutes after the slap, Smith won the Best Actor award for his role in King Richard.

The Board has decided, for a period of 10 years from April 8, 2022, Mr. Smith shall not be permitted to attend any Academy events or programs, in person or virtually, including but not limited to the Academy Awards, Academy President David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson said in a statement earlier this month.

The 94th Oscars were meant to be a celebration of the many individuals in our community who did incredible work this past year; however, those moments were overshadowed by the unacceptable and harmful behavior we saw Mr. Smith exhibit on stage, the Academy also said.

Smith told the New York Post that he accepts the Academys punishment and again apologized.

Meanwhile, Pinkett Smith issued a cryptic comment via a Facebook show that she hosts, in part.

Considering all that has happened in the last few weeks, the Smith family has been focusing on deep healing, she said via Red Table Talk, which is featured on Facebook Watch.

Some of the discoveries around our healing will be shared at the table when the time calls. Until then the table will continue offering itself to powerful, inspiring, and healing testimonies like that of our incredibly impressive first guest, Pinkett Smith also said.
John Durham speaks at a conference in New Haven, Conn., on Sept. 20, 2018. (Courtesy of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut)

Where Things Stand With John Durhams Probe

Cases handled by special counsel John Durham have produced a flurry of notable discoveries that shed more light on the sprawling yearslong investigation. Durham so far has three indictments and one guilty plea under his belt, with some indications that there may be more in the pipeline.

Durham was tasked around March-May 2019 with reviewing the 2016-2017 FBI investigation of alleged nefarious ties between candidate and later President Donald Trump and Russia. In October 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham a special counsel. In February 2021, Durham resigned his position as a federal prosecutor after 35 years with the Department of Justice (DOJ), where he handled some of the most prominent investigations of FBI misconduct. At age 72, his current job may just be the last chapter and culmination of his career.

The investigation has led Durham into some of the deep recesses of the D.C. political machine. As the current record indicates, multiple federal agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, were sicced on Trump and his associates by operatives tied to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the presidential campaign of former State Secretary Hillary Clinton. The FBI launched a sprawling investigation into Trumps campaign with some of the FBI officials most deeply involved in the probe privately expressing strong animus against Trump and preference for Clinton.

A stream of leaks from the federal bureaucracy facilitated an avalanche of misinformation that to this day has many Americans convinced that Trump was secretly in cahoots with Moscow. The pale of the media frenzy as well as the FBI probewhich was taken over in May 2017 by a special counsel, former FBI head Robert Muellerhamstrung Trumps foreign policy toward Russia. The repercussions are still felt today, some experts have argued.

Mueller ultimately concluded that no Trump-Russia collusion to sway the 2016 election could be established. Durham is looking at both the origin of the Russia probe as well as how it was conducted before Mueller took over.

In stark contrast to the Mueller probe, theres been a dearth of leaks from Durhams team.

As far as the reports go, Durham has enlisted assistance of the governments of the United Kingdom, Italy, and Australia. Hes interviewed dozens of individuals, including former CIA Director John Brennan, and subpoenaed thousands of documents.

His first indictment, in August 2020, targeted former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith for altering a CIA email to say that former Trump campaign aide Carter Page was not a source, when in fact he was providing information to the agency. The message was then used as a part of an application to extend surveillance of Page. FBI Director Christopher Wray later admitted that the surveillance was illegal.

Clinesmith pleaded guilty and in January 2021 received a year of probation and 400 hours of community service. Prosecutors demanded six months in jail. His license to practice law in D.C. was reinstated after less than a year.

In September 2021, Durham indicted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who in 2016 represented the Clinton campaign, for lying to the FBI. Sussmann approached then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in September 2016 with information about a supposed secret communications channel between Trump and a Russian bank, which, it turned out, was false. Sussmann allegedly told Barker he wasnt there representing any client, when in fact he was billing the time to the Clinton campaign. Sussmanns lawyers attacked the indictment for relying on a single witness, Baker, but then Durham revealed an email from Sussmann to Baker explicitly saying Sussmann was reaching out not representing any client.

In November 2021, Durham indicted Igor Danchenko, a Russia analyst formerly with the Brookings Institution, for lying to the FBI. Danchenko was paid to collect dirt on Trump by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was in turn hired (through intermediaries) to collect dirt on Trump by the Clinton campaign.

As it turned out, much of the resulting Steele dossier was fabricated. Danchenko told the FBI some of the information came from Belarus-born real estate agent Sergei Millian, which was false, Durhams indictment said. In fact, Millian never spoke with Danchenko.

A significant portion of what Danchenko collected appears to have been provided to him by longtime Clinton operative Charles Dolan, who himself has deep ties to Russia. The information, laced with fabrications, was then folded by Steele into his dossier. Dolan admitted to the FBI that he provided (and fabricated) some of the information.

Recent filings in the Sussmann case revealed that the lawyer, formerly with the DOJ, peddled to the CIA data that showed supposedly suspicious existence of a Russian-made phone in Trumps vicinity. The CIA assessed the data was user-created, possibly fabricated, and contradicted itself, according to Durhams team.

Earlier this week, Sussmann, the Clinton campaign, the DNC, Sussmanns former employer and law firm Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS (retained by Perkins Coie to research Trump), and several Clinton operatives asked the court to prevent revelation of certain emails and documents that they say are protected by attorney-client privilege. They largely argue that Perkins Coie was hired by the Clinton campaign to provide legal services and the research on Trump was done to support those services and is thus covered by the privilege. The Durham team disputes that.

The trial is scheduled for mid-May.

The Durham team in recent court documents hinted at an assertion that there was a conspiracy between the various operatives tied to the Clinton campaign. Criminal conspiracy is a federal crime, but it needs to be tied to an underlying crime. Two or more people have to agree to break a federal law and then take at least one overt acteven if innocuous on its ownto carry out the plan. Durham has so far brought no conspiracy charges.

John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence under Trump, said last year he believes there will be many indictments based on the intelligence that I gave to John Durham and that I have seen.

All three current cases of Durhams have highlighted the tight-knit nature of the federal judicial and law enforcement community in the D.C. area.

The judge in the Clinesmith case, James Boasberg, sits on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that approved spying on Page based primarily on the Steele dossier and partly on the false information provided by Clinesmith.

The judge in the Danchenko case, Anthony Trenga, presided over the Mueller-brought case against former business partner of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump. Trenga threw out the conviction in that case for a lack of evidence.

The judge in the Sussmann case, Christopher Reid Cooper, used to be a colleague of Sussmanns at the DOJ. His wife, Amy Jeffress, is a lawyer for Lisa Page, formerly a high-level FBI attorney whos now suing the DOJ. Page was deeply embedded in the Russia investigation. She was also a mistress of Peter Strzok, former head of FBI counterintelligence operations and a point man in the Russia probe. Cooper and Jeffress also have close ties to the Democratic Party. Cooper served on the 2008 transition team of President Barack Obama, Jeffress spent 20 years at the DOJ and was a national security counselor for Obamas Attorney General Eric Holder, and their wedding was officiated by Merrick Garland, the current Attorney General.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the time frame when Michael Sussmann met James Baker. Court documents say they met in September 2016. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
By Xu Ziwen

Japan's Yomiuri Shinbun reported that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)'s Research Commission on Security, which was chaired by former defense minister Itsunori Onodera, recently proposed to revise the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Program Guidelines, and the Mid-term Defense Program. It called for increasing Japan's defense expenditure to 2% of GDP, the standard for NATO members, in the next five years.

Hurried revision

The National Security Strategy, the fundamental guidebook on Japan's diplomatic and defense policies, will have its first revision since being formulated in 2013.

Fan Xiaoju, director of the Institute of Northeast Asian Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), said in an interview that the revision is a step taken by Japan toward its goal of becoming a major military country when the international situation is going through fast changes. It reflects the Japanese right-wing forces' attempt to break through the limitations imposed by the Peace Constitution by hyping up international tension and consequently become a "normal" country.

The Research Commission on Security explicitly proposed to increase the defense spending to over 2% of GDP within five years, the first time a timeline was set for reaching the percentage. "Setting the five-year term indicates that some political forces in Japan reckon that the Russia-Ukraine conflict has turned international and domestic public opinions in favor of realizing such a goal. Besides, Germany, another losing country in WWII, has already put forth the 2% goal, making Japan all the more eager to seize the opportunity and make some substantial progress on the defense front," said Fan Xiaoju.

Constant crossing of line

In addition to increasing defense expenses, the draft also considered allowing "enemy base strike capabilities" that are aimed at crippling an enemy missile launch base as an act of self-defense, the target of attack not limited to the missile base, but also including commanding centers. Kyodo News reported that the Research Commission on Security also suggested loosening the "Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology" on the excuse of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

"In recent years, Japan has kept crossing the line on military expansion and constitutional revision, which is closely related with the changes both in the international environment and in its own domestic political ecology." According to Fan, Japan is consistently worried about the uncertainties stemming from the "asymmetric relation" within its alliance with the US. As the US never makes a clear commitment as to how far it will go to protect Japan, many Japanese political elites have turned from relying on America's one-way protection of Japan to "joint defense" between the two countries. On the other hand, the conservative right-wingers in Japan have been hyping and clamoring about "China threats" for many years just to fabricate the excuse to intensify Japan's military to respond to such "threats". Besides, the opposition parties that are for a peaceful path have become weaker and unable to effectively counterbalance the ruling party on diplomatic and security policies. As a result, the country is going further down the path of military expansion.

A threat to regional peace

It is reported that Japan will also revise the National Defense Program Guidelines that set goals on military development and the Mid-term Defense Program that makes a five-year estimate on defense spending, including how to respond to the security environment that has changed because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Some media pointed out that what the LDP really wanted was, to take the opportunity of the conflict and launch a public debate on how to deal with the so-called "emergency state" that might appear around Japan.

"The revision will be a major adjustment of Japan's security strategy and policies, which is intended to emphasize external military threats and allow the country to significantly increase military expenditure and develop aggressive military forces," said Fan. Judging from the current situation, the revision will cause considerable negative effects on the region in the following ways. First, it will aggravate regional confrontation and security status; second, it is likely to escalate a regional arms race; third, it violates Japan's long-held international commitment to following a peaceful path of development and will damage the mutual trust between it and its neighboring countries; and fourth, it will hamper regional cooperation because a political atmosphere conducive to solving hotspot issues and promoting economic cooperation in the region will be hard to form.

Editor's note: This article is originally published on haiwainet.cn, and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
The logos of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google in a combination photo. (Reuters)

EU Sets New Online Rules for Google, Meta to Curb Illegal Content

BRUSSELSAlphabet unit Google, Meta, and other large online platforms will have to do more to tackle illegal content or risk hefty fines under new internet rules agreed between European Union countries and EU lawmakers on Saturday.

The agreement came after more than 16 hours of negotiations. The Digital Services Act (DSA) is the second prong of EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestagers strategy to rein in Alphabet unit Google, Meta, and other U.S. tech giants.

Last month, she won backing from the 27-country bloc and lawmakers for landmark rules called the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that could force Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft to change their core business practices in Europe.

We have a deal on the DSA: The Digital Services Act will make sure that what is illegal offline is also seen and dealt with as illegal onlinenot as a slogan, as reality, Vestager said in a tweet.

European Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager speaks during an interview with Reuters in Brussels, on March 28, 2022. (Johanna Geron/Reuters)

EU lawmaker Dita Charanzova, who had called for such rules eight years ago, welcomed the agreement.

Google, Meta, and other large online platforms will have to act to better protect their users. Europe has made clear that they cannot act as independent digital islands, she said in a statement.

In a statement, Google said: As the law is finalized and implemented, the details will matter. We look forward to working with policymakers to get the remaining technical details right to ensure the law works for everyone.

Under the DSA, the companies face fines up to 6 percent of their global turnover for violating the rules while repeated breaches could see them banned from doing business in the EU.

The new rules ban targeted advertising aimed at children or based on sensitive data such as religion, gender, race, and political opinions. Dark patterns, which are tactics that mislead people into giving personal data to companies online, will also be prohibited.

The companies could be forced to hand over data related to their algorithms to regulators and researchers.

The companies also face a yearly fee up to 0.05 percent of worldwide annual revenue to cover the costs of monitoring their compliance.

The DSA will be enforced in 2024.
FBI Warns of Targeted Cyberattacks on Food Plants Amid Heightened Coverage of Fires

The FBIs Cyber Division has issued a warning about potential cyberattacks on agricultural cooperatives and food plants amid increasing media coverage of recent fires and explosions at food processing plants across the United States.

Ransomware actors may be more likely to attack agricultural cooperatives during critical planting and harvest seasons, disrupting operations, causing financial loss, and negatively impacting the food supply chain, the FBIs recent notice reads (pdf), noting that ransomware attacks in 2021 and early 2022 could disrupt the planting season by affecting the supply of seeds and fertilizer.

A significant disruption of grain production could impact the entire food chain, since grain is not only consumed by humans but also used for animal feed. In addition, a significant disruption of grain and corn production could impact commodities trading and stocks.

Detailing a spate of recent cyberattacks on food processing facilities and agricultural companies, the FBI listed at least four separate incidents since last summer.

In July 2021, a business management software company found malicious activity on its network, which was later identified as HelloKitty/Five Hands ransomware. The threat actor demanded $30 million USD ransom, the agency stated in one of its examples.

Last month, a grain company that operates in several states experienced a Lockbit 2.0 ransomware attack, according to the FBI. The firm also processes fertilizer and seeds and provides logistics for agricultural services.

Six grain cooperatives experienced ransomware attacks between mid-September 2021 and October 2021, the agency stated. A variety of ransomware variants were used, including Conti, BlackMatter, Suncrypt, Sodinokibi, and BlackByte. Some targeted entities had to completely halt production while others lost administrative functions.

The warning comes as an increasing number of firesand even explosionshave been reported at food processing facilities across the country, according to reports, which were even featured during a segment on Fox Newss Tucker Carlson Tonight on April 22.

On April 14, a fire destroyed a food processing plant in the agricultural hub of Salinas, California, officials confirmed. City officials said at the time that an ammonia-triggered explosion sparked the fire at the Taylor Farms Processing Facility.

The most recent fire occurred on April 21 in Georgia, when a plane crashed into a General Mills plant just east of Atlanta, killing two people in the crash, officials told local media outlets. Officials said the plane took off from a nearby airport and appeared to suffer a mechanical failure before crashing into an isolated area of the plant where tractors are located.

Days before that, a fire destroyed parts of the Azure Standard Headquarters in Oregon, local media outlets reported.

While the HQ facility is a total loss, and a few product lines will be affected for the short term, other Azure Standard facilities are operating as close to normal as possible, Azure Standard CEO David Stelzer said in a statement after the fire.

However, despite the increase in media coverage of the food plant fires in recent days, the National Fire Protection Association stated that U.S. fire departments respond to an estimated average of 1,210 fires on warehouse properties every year. Fires that were intentionally set and fires caused by electrical and lighting equipment account for about 18 percent of the total warehouse fires, the group stated.

Representatives for the FBI and the National Fire Protection Association didnt respond to requests for comment by press time.
Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during the opening ceremony of the 4th World Internet Conference in Wuzhen in eastern China's Zhejiang Province on Dec. 3, 2017. (AFP via Getty Images)

FCC Commissioner Criticizes Apple CEO Tim Cook Over App Store Censorship in China

A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner has accused Apple CEO Tim Cook of hypocrisy, arguing that his companys dealings with the Chinese communist regime contradict his words about commitment to human rights.

I am concerned that your words in Washington founder upon the harsh reality of your actions in China, Brendan Carr, the FCCs senior Republican, wrote in a letter to Cook dated April 20.

Carr was referring to Cooks keynote speech at the 2022 International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) Global Privacy Summit on April 12. During his speech, Cook spoke about how privacy is a fundamental human right and touted Apples commitment to protecting people from a data industrial complex built on a foundation of surveillance.

Indeed, at the very same time that you were speaking in D.C. about your App Store policies promoting privacy and human rights, your company was continuing its well-documented campaign in Beijing of aggressively censoring apps at the behest of the Communist Party of China, Carr wrote.

According to Carr, Apple had done the bidding of Communist China by removing Quran and Bible apps, and the Voice of America (VOA) mobile app from its App Store in China. He described Apples decision to remove the VOA app, which is congressionally funded, as deeply troubling.

In October 2021, Apple Censorship, a website that tracks apps on Apples App Store globally, reported that two apps, Quran Majeed and Bible App by Olive Tree, had been taken down. Apple later told the BBC that Chinese officials had said the apps contained illegal religious texts.

Apples decision to appease the Communist Party of Chinaan authoritarian regime that the State Department has determined is committing genocide and crimes against humanitycannot be squared with your representation in Washington that Apple will battle against an array of dangerous actors, Carr wrote.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposes strict control over its internet and its censors regularly scrub online content that is deemed unfavorable to the communist regime. Washington-based nonprofit Freedom House called China the worlds worst abuser of Internet freedom in its Freedom on the Net 2021 report.

The Voice of America building, in Washington on June 15, 2020. (Andrew Harnik/AP Photo)

The Chinese regime also blocks many foreign social media and news websites, including YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Voice of America.

Apple pulled the crowd-sourced app HKmap.live from its App Store in October 2019, at the height of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. The map app was popular among Hong Kong protesters to avoid direct confrontation with Hong Kong police, who have been heavily criticized for their violent handling of protesters and journalists.

Carr also criticized global corporations such as Apple for giving all sorts of reasonable-sounding arguments to justify their decisions to do business in China. He said these arguments run headlong into real-world experience.

In December 2021, The Information reported that Cook traveled to China in 2016, lobbied Chinese officials, and secured a secretive $275 billion deal with Beijing that involved more investments and working training in China from Apple, citing internal Apple documents. The five-year deal was made to quash a sudden burst of [Chinese] regulatory actions against Apples business.

China is not becoming more open or bending towards freedom because Apple is doing business there. Far from it, Carr wrote. Look at Hong Hong. Look at Xinjiang.

Continuing to partner with brutal regimes like Communist China only provides them with tacitif not explicitsupport and emboldens those bad actors.

Carr concluded his letter by asking Cook to answer a question by April 29 this year.

Will Apple allow access to the Voice of America mobile app through its App Store in China, consistent with the fundamental human rights that you articulated in your speech, Carr asked.

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), who reposted Carrs letter, said she looks forward to hearing what Apple has to say about Voice of America.

Big Tech companies like Apple love to profess one set of values to elitist crowds in the U.S., but when push comes to shove, theyre quick to kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party, she wrote.

Apple officials didnt respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
R | 2h 17min | Drama, Thriller, Action | 22 April 2022 (USA)

With his 2015 debut The Witch (stylized as The VVitch) and its 2019 follow-up The Lighthouse, director Robert Eggers firmly established himself as one of the premier modern artistic visionaries. With a combined budget of $15 million, the two films grossed close to $60 million which, in the art-house world, is considered blockbuster territory.

With The Northman, Eggers moves away from his horror roots. He was given upwards of $90 million by Focus Features to adapt the ancient fable The Legend of Amleth by Dutch historian Saxo Grammaticus. If what youre about to read here (and hopefully see in theaters before opening weekend is over) sounds a lot like Hamlet, its because Shakespeare based his best-known, most performed play on this same story.

Five Parts, Not Three Acts



Instead of the traditional three act format, Eggers and his mono-monikered co-writer Sjon split the movie into five parts, each beginning with multi-language title cards. It opens in A.D. 895 in what would become Holland with the return home of an army led by King Aurvandill War-Raven (Ethan Hawke).

Ethan Hawke as King Aurvandill War-Raven in The Northman. (Focus Features)

Given a heros welcome by his subjects and family, Aurvandill soon informs his wife Queen Gudrun (Nicole Kidman) that his war wounds have tapped his ability to lead. So disabled, he decides to abdicate the throne to their preteen son Amleth (Oscar Novak) and return to the fight where he hopes hell eventually die in battle. This confidential news makes its way to Fjolnir (Claes Bang), Aurvandills already envious brother who will have none of it and assassinates him in an ambush, which Amleth witnesses before barely escaping a certain grizzly death.

Nicole Kidman as Queen Gudrun in Th Northman. (Focus Features)

Some 20-odd years later, Amleth (now played by a ripped Alexander Skarsgard) is the member of a rather raucous band of Vikings who pass their time with nighttime campfire rituals and pillaging villages in the Land of the Rus (now Russia and Belarus). As violent as anything seen in Braveheart (but with far more interesting camera work), Eggers lets the audience know early on hell be holding nothing back.

It is after one such encounter that Amleth is addressed by the Seeress (frequent Sjon collaborator Bjork), an apparitional prophet, informing him that it is now time to begin his long-planned journey to avenge his fathers murder, rescue his mother (now Fjolnirs queen) and claim the crown.

Amleth purposefully gets caught, put into slavery, and eventually lands in Iceland, now the province of his uncle. At the same time, he meets and mutually falls in love with Olga (Ana Taylor-Joy), a Slavic sorceress who also catches the wandering eye of Fjolnir and is more than willing to assist Amleth in his mission.

Alexander Skarsgard as Amleth and Ana Taylor-Joy as Olga in The Northman. (Focus Features)

Echoes of Tarantino



While the film has a not-surprising midway point hiccup or two, it hits full stride at the 90-minute mark with Amleths methodical, some may say diabolical, whittling away of Fjolnirs soldiers, associates, and hangers-on. Not unlike parts of Quentin Tarantinos Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and the Kill Bill opus, the filmmakers build the tension with a sometimes nerve-rattling, deliberate pace and often make you think youre seeing something that is merely implied.

Shot entirely in Ireland, at times the color passages in The Northman bare a strong visual resemblance to both the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Ari Asters 2018 jarring Nordic daymare: Midsommar. Masters of depth and contrast, Eggers and his regular cinematographer Jarin Blashchke present close to half of the 137 minute film in traditional black and white alongside bleached color stock and the result is an unnerving palate of smoky grays and gun-barrel blues. It goes without saying this is a movie that should be watched on the biggest screen you can possibly find.

Alexander Skarsgard as Amleth in The Northman. (Focus Features)

Skarsgards Breakthrough Role?

Although hes enjoyed considerable success and received glowing accolades for his work on the TV series True Blood and Big Little Lies (where he and Kidman played husband and wife characters), Skarsgard has yet to play the lead in a high profile feature, but in all likelihood that will change very soon.

Coupled with a brilliant prerelease ad campaign, mostly glowing reviews and a debut at over 2,700 U.S. theaters (with some houses offering hourly starting times on multiple screens), it would be quite surprising if the movie doesnt pass the $20 million mark by the end of the weekend.

Add to that the audience fatigue of interchangeable superhero comic book flicks, the time is ripe for this movie to become a huge hit and for Skarsgard to emerge as a household name. He may be crowned as the industrys next go-to action star to boot. Hed also make a great James Bond.

It will be interesting to see what Eggers does next. Hes managed to establish a unique brand with just three features without getting repetitive or stale in the process. With The Northman, hell still please his established base while roping in mainstream audiences who are looking for an inspiring story of redemption and a lead character with unwavering moral conviction. Thats a fine line to navigate and Eggers has pulled it off without breaking nary a sweat.

The Northman

Director: Robert Eggers

Stars: Alexander Skarsgard, Ethan Hawke, Claes Bang, Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy

Running Time: 2 hours, 17 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Release Date: April 22, 2022

Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Michael Sussman in an undated interview. (CNN/Screenshot via NTD) Special counsel John Durham in 2018. (U.S. Department of Justice via AP)

Former DNI Expects More Indictments to Come From Classified Durham Docs

Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe said that there are still many more classified documents that should be released in connection to special counsel John Durhams investigation, which he said will appall the public if theyre declassified.

I expect there to be a lot more indictments to be forthcoming from John Durham besides the ones that have trickled out so far. And thats based upon documents, some of whichmany of whichare not yet declassified, Ratcliffe told the Charlie Kirk Show.

When Ratcliffe was still in office as the nations top intelligence official, he announced in October 2020 that he provided about 1,000 pages of materials to the Department of Justice to aid Durham.

Currently, Durham has two active prosecutions that are ongoing as part of his probe into the origins of the TrumpRussia collusion narrative. Last year, he charged former Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann with lying to the FBI, and weeks later, he charged Russia analyst Igor Danchenko with lying to the bureau. Both men have pleaded not guilty.

The coordinated effort here that took place in 2016 was wide and broad. I think it involved folks in the Clinton campaign, in the Democratic national party, elected officials, media officials, folks that coordinatedintelligence community officials, and on down the line, Ratcliffe added in the interview, published last week.

John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) is at a Senate Intelligence Committee nomination hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, on May 5, 2020. (Andrew Harnik-Pool/Getty Images)

Im not saying that every single one of those folks have criminal liability or exposure, said Ratcliffe, a former Texas congressman. Im just saying this was a very coordinated effort, and the more and more the public finds out about the things that Ive seen that remain classified, theyll be more and more appalled by those efforts in 2016.

On April 20, Hillary Clintons presidential campaign filed court papers to intervene in Durhams case against Sussmann after federal prosecutors sought to compel the Democratic National Committee, Clintons campaign, and other associates to produce documents for Sussmanns upcoming trial.

The campaign asserts its attorney-client privilege and the attorney-work-product protection with respect to all documents and information under the control of Perkins Coie or any of its consultants, including Fusion GPS and is not waiving any of its privileges, and it opposes the governments motion to compel, John Podesta, a longtime Democratic operative and the former chairman of the Clinton campaign, told the court in one filing last week.

Robby Mook, who was Clintons campaign manager, said that Sussmanns law firm, Perkins Coie, gave legal services and legal advice that entailed fact-finding and research against then-candidate Donald Trump.
Conservative Party chairman and minister without portfolio Oliver Dowden leaves after a Cabinet meeting at Downing Street in London, on Nov. 16, 2021. (Rob Pinney/Getty Images)

France and Germany Could Be Doing More to Support Ukraine: UK Minister

France and Germany could be doing more to help Ukraine defend itself against the Russian invasion, a UK minister has said.

Oliver Dowden, a minister without portfolio who also serves as chairman of the Conservative Party, told the BBC on Sunday that the West needs to continue to tighten the ratchet on Russia as Moscow appears to be determined to keep on going and going.

Dowden also called for more Western support for Ukraine, telling Sky News that Prime Minister Boris Johnson is engaging on precisely that point.

Mentioning Johnsons call earlier this week with U.S. President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, and leaders of Germany and other countries, Dowden said, There is a desire for us all to do it but it would be good to see more from France and Germany as well.

Britain has emerged as one of Ukraines closest allies in its resistance against Russian invasion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told a press conference in Kyiv on Saturday that the UK, along with the United States, was supplying the biggest military aid to his country.

In a phone call earlier on Saturday, he personally thanked Boris Johnson for supplying British armoured vehicles to his country and offering training on home soil to Ukrainian troops on how to use them.

Meanwhile, Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of the Ukrainian city Melitopol, said many countries closed their eyes to the situation in Ukraine after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

When asked on Times Radio if he would have liked to have seen more help from the West prior to the invasion, he said the worlds understanding of the situation in Ukraine between 2014 and February this year was the greatest mistake and that many countries made huge business with the Russian Federation.

According to a former UK defence chief, even Britain was among the countries that made such mistakes.

Michael Fallon, who served as defence secretary under former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, accused previous Downing Street operations of being reluctant to support Kyiv in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea.

Fallon told The Sunday Times that the Ministry of Defence wanted to do more to help Ukraine upgrade its defences, but he was told to turn down Kyivs requests for assistance.

We were stymied and we were blocked in Cabinet from sending the Ukrainians the arms they needed, Fallon told the newspaper.

Some in the Cabinet felt extremely strongly that we should do nothing to further provoke Russia, he said, adding: I felt that was absurd. The Russians didnt need any provoking. They were already there, sending people across the border.

PA Media contributed to this report.
Fugitive ex-auto magnate Carlos Ghosn stands inside the elevator on his way to a media interview, in Dbayeh, north of Beirut, Lebanon, on May 25, 2021. (Hussein Malla/AP Photo)

France Issues Arrest Warrant for Disgraced Auto Tycoon Ghosn

PARISFrench prosecutors have issued an international arrest warrant for disgraced auto tycoon Carlos Ghosn, who fled Japan in 2019 for Lebanon in a gripping escape.

The prosecutors office in the Paris suburb of Nanterre said Friday that it issued the warrant for the former head of Nissan and Renault and four other people based on an investigation opened in 2019 into money laundering and abuse of company assets.

Prosecutors are investigating millions of dollars in alleged suspect payments made between the Renault-Nissan alliance and Suhail Bahwan Automobiles (SBA), a vehicle distributor company in Oman.

The former head of the Nissan-Renault alliance fled to Lebanon in 2019, while out on bail facing financial misconduct charges in Japan. He denies wrongdoing.

Ghosn said he learned about the new warrant Friday via the media, and noted that hes barred from leaving Lebanon anyway.

Im ready to defend myself, he told Frances BFM television. He repeatedly insisted that he did not receive any money from the Oman distributor and that there was no embezzling.

Later Friday, Ghosn told Lebanese TV station Al-Jadeed that he questioned the timing of the arrest warrant and added that he had planned a long time ago to retire in Lebanon.

The timing is surprising. A warrant like that is issued two days before the (French) presidential election? Ghosn said. This makes us a bit suspicious. There is bad smell.

Asked whether he might trigger a crisis between France and Lebanon, Ghosn said: I dont think so. I think there has to be an understanding between the two countries.

He said French and Japanese judicial authorities should cooperate with Lebanese authorities and send the cases to Beirut and judicial authorities in Lebanon can see if there was any wrongdoing. He said otherwise there will be trial in France in his absence.

The Nanterre prosecutors office described this warrant as the next step in the ongoing investigation, one of two separate cases involving Ghosn in France.

In an interview last year with The Associated Press, Ghosn was confident, energized and determined to fight to restore his reputation.

A statement sent Friday to the AP from his PR team called the French warrant surprising, and suggested that it was ineffective as Ghosn is subject to a judicial ban on leaving Lebanese territory.

Lebanon does not extradite its citizens. Ghosn has citizenship in Lebanon, France, and Brazil.
French President and La Republique en Marche (LREM) party candidate for reelection Emmanuel Macron celebrates after his victory in France's presidential election, at the Champ de Mars in Paris, on April 24, 2022. (Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)

French President Macron Wins Reelection, Le Pen Concedes

French President Emmanuel Macron won a second term on Sunday, defeating National Rally candidate Marine Le Pen.

With 97 percent of votes counted, Macron was on course for a solid 57.4 percent of the vote, interior ministry figures showed.

Minutes after Macron was projected to be the winner, Le Pen conceded defeat via her social media. She said the election was still a win for her political movement.

The French showed this evening a desire for a strong counterweight against Emmanuel Macron, for an opposition that will continue to defend and protect them, Le Pen told supporters on Sunday. Macron, meanwhile, said that the result was a victory for a more independent France and a stronger Europe.

Le Pen broke through the threshold of 40 percent of the vote, which is unprecedented for French nationalist parties. In 2017, Le Pen only won 34 percent of the vote to Macrons 66 percent.

Marine Le Pen, presidential candidate, delivers her concession speech after early result projections show Frances incumbent president Emmanuel Macron heading to win a second five-year term as president, in Paris, on April 24, 2022. (Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images)

Macron, 44, and Le Pen, 53, have competing visions for France, with Macron seeking to continue introducing neoliberal politics into the country. Le Pen, supported by Frances right-wing, has focused her campaign on the rising cost of living in France, while also describing Macron as an elitist with contempt for working peopleincluding his rhetoric last year that targeted unvaccinated French and during the yellow vest protests against globalists in 2018.

Le Pen had promised sharp cuts to fuel tax, zero-percent sales tax on essential items from pasta to diapers, income exemptions for young workers, and a French first stance on jobs and welfare. Macron had claimed Le Pen had a pro-Moscow stance and said she couldnt be trusted amid the conflict in Ukraine, something she had denied.

Turnout in the second round was low on Sunday, according to figures released through the government, French media reported. As of Sunday, it stood at about 62 percent, the lowest in decades.

Some French voters told local media they decided to abstain from casting ballots in the election. One person, 24-year-old Gaspard Hermann, told EuroNews that voters in his country are often forced to vote against a candidate, instead of one that they actually support.

I dont see myself in the current presidential system or in the way it works, in particular, its failure to take into account abstention and blank votes, or the choice of candidates, said another who abstained and who was only identified as Louise, 28.

Hugo Winter, a 26-year-old salesman in Paris, said he would be among those who would not bother to cast a vote.

I dont see the point in choosing between two things that dont correspond to my ideas, Winter told Reuters as he did some morning food shopping. We live in a parallel world. The politicians dont represent the people.

According to initial polling by Elabe, the vote this year was sharply split by both age and socio-economic status: two-thirds of working class voters backed Le Pen, while similar proportions of white-collar executives and pensioners backed Macron.

Macron won around 59 percent of votes by 18-24 year-olds with the vote almost evenly split in other age categories.

Macron will likely face a difficult second term, with none of the grace period that he enjoyed after his first victory, and protests likely over his plan to continue pro-business reforms, including raising the retirement age from 62 to 65. His first major challenge will be to win parliamentary elections in June to secure a workable majority to implement their policies.

U.S. President Joe Biden congratulated Macron on his re-election on Twitter, calling France a key partner in addressing global challenges.

I look forward to our continued close cooperationincluding on supporting Ukraine, defending democracy, and countering climate change, Biden said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also congratulated his French counterpart.

I wish Emmanuel Macron new success for the benefit of the French people, he said on Twitter. I appreciate the support of France and I am convinced: we are stepping together to new common victories! To a strong and united Europe.

In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz responded by saying that French voters had sent a strong vote of confidence in Europe today.

I am happy that we will continue our good cooperation, he said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen echoed the same sentiment on Twitter.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The wreckage of a plane that crashed in the community of Carrefour, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on April 20, 2022. (Odelyn Joseph/AP Photo)

Haiti Grounds Private Flights Amid Probe Into Deadly Crash

SAN JUAN, Puerto RicoHaitis National Civil Aviation Office announced Thursday that it is banning all private aircraft from flying during an investigation into the crash of a small plane that killed at least five people and injured several others.

Authorities did not say when private flights could resume, adding that the measure is part of a review of private operators.

The announcement was made a day after a Cessna 207 crashed into a truck transporting sodas in the crowded capital of Port-au-Prince. A police official told The Associated Press that five people died upon impact, including the truck driver.

I heard a big boom, said Jean Felix Surin, a farmer who rushed out of his house to the scene of the crash. Everybody was in shock.

Someone in the crowd said one of the victims asked for help while still on the ground but died shortly afterward. Hours later, firefighters used hoses to clean the site.

Paule Robitaille, a Canadian politician, said on Twitter that one of the victims was Gamaniel Valcin and called on Canadas government to help repatriate his body.

The Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported that the pilot died after being taken to a hospital.

The pilot was identified as Amado Gutierrez from the Dominican Republic and carried a badge belonging to a Dominican flight school called Enalas. A secretary at the school said no one was immediately available for comment.

Officials said the plane was en route to the southern coastal city of Jacmel and crashed shortly after taking off from Port-au-Prince.

The crash comes four months after Haitis Civil Aviation Security Department issued a notice warning that several private operators it did not identify had been breaking rules by running commercial flights, among other things, without the required license.

Last July, another small plane also en route to Jacmel crashed near the capital, killing six people, including two U.S. missionaries.

Some people in recent months have opted to fly from the capital to Haitis southern region to avoid driving through gang-controlled areas that have seen a spike in kidnappings and killings.

By Danica Coto and Evens Sanon
HBO Grows to Almost 77 Million Subscribers

HBO and HBO Max reported nearly 77 million total subscribers at the end of the first quarter of 2022, showing consistent and significant growth for the platforms at a time when their largest competitor, Netflix, has struggled to maintain growth.

According to the release by former HBO parent company AT&T, HBO has grown to 76.8 million subscribers, a 3 million subscriber increase from the previous quarter and a 12.8 million increase from last years first quarter.

Since its debut in 2020, HBO Max has featured a mix of original programming and licensed content from WarnerMedia. With HBOs long history of producing original television hits such as The Sopranos, The Wire, and Sex and the City, the companys latest streaming platform entered the market with a distinctive edge as a production studio-cum-streaming platform, while other streaming services, such as Hulu and Netflix, found themselves having to create the infrastructure for original content from scratch.

This news arrives on the heels of the latest Netflix quarterly earnings report, which attested to a net loss in subscribersthe first time Netflix has lost subscribers quarter-to-quarter in over ten years. A steep decline in Netflixs stock price ensued, causing the companys stock to decline by over 66 percent as of writing.

Amid the Netflix stock market calamity, observers and insiders have scrambled to find explanations for the companys reversal of fortune. The company has placed the blame on its withdrawal from Russian markets in protest of that countrys recent invasion of Ukraine, which it claims cost the company 700,000 Russian subscribers. Password sharing has also been also been a challenge for the company.

Tesla CEO and would-be Twitter owner, Elon Musk, has also pinned the blame on a woke mind virus contaminating Netflix original content with socially progressive messages, allegedly making the platforms shows unwatchable.

However, it is worth noting that any of these explanations could apply to HBO to some degree. On March 9, HBO parent company WarnerMedia pulled out of the Russian Federation, without a consequent decline in overall subscribers in the recent financial quarter.

Furthermore, there is no immediate reason to assume that password sharing is significantly less widespread on HBO Max than on Netflix.

And while one could plausibly argue that woke content is less ubiquitous on HBO Max than on Netflix, the former has its own share of progressive ideological messages featuring prominently in shows such as Peacemaker, in which John Cenas titular character is incessantly mocked for alleged racist and misogynistic attitudes, and Generation, about an ensemble of sexually diverse teenagers preoccupied with intersectional concerns.

With 222 million subscribers, Netflix still remains preeminent among streaming platforms. However, with the recent quarterly support, the companys edge in the so-called streaming wars has been diminished. Meanwhile, HBO isnt the only company making inroads on Netflixs share of the market: Disney Plus ended the 2021 fiscal year with nearly 130 million subscribers, with a 11.8 million gain in the quarter ending January 2022.

For HBO executives, the recent subscriber figures are a cause for celebration, demonstrating consistent growth for the young streaming platform, which has thus far avoided the troubles that have plagued Netflix.

If this pattern continues, consumers will likely find themselves with an increasingly multipolar streaming industry, with the hegemony of Netflix being undermined by the ascendance of HBO Max, Disney Plus, and other competitors.
Elon Musk disclosed in a filing on April 21 that he has received commitments for $46.5 million in debt financing to buy Twitter, Inc.. The announcement came a week after he launched his hostile takeover bid, and the social media platform reacted with the adoption of a poison pill.

In a weeks time, how did Musk manage to rally the bankers around him?

Musk Details Vision: The Tesla, Inc. CEO shared his vision for Twitter, which went a long way toward convincing a bevy of banks to give commitments, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The banks were apparently impressed by Musks plan to increase Twitters debt without taking the companys credit rating to junk levels, the report said, citing people familiar with the plan. The plan introduced in the form of a presentation on a call last Monday detailed Musks thoughts on how Twitters business could be run and topline could be grown, along with his views on the companys financial profile.

Musk also spoke directly to some of the top lenders, with his discussion about his plans for Twitter oozing with enthusiasm, the report added.

This was the culmination of efforts since April 9, when Musks team approached the lenders and engaged with them through Easter Sunday and into this week, Bloomberg said. Morgan Stanley reportedly coordinated with Musk and the other lenders in facilitating the clinching of the deal.

How The Financing Math Works: Musk has mobilized up to $13 billion in debt financing and $12.5 billion in margin loan commitment from Morgan Stanley, which leads the consortium of 11 other banks. Prominent among the banks that have given funding commitments are Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc, Bank of America Corp, Barclays PLC, BNP Paribas ADR, and Mizuho Financial Group Inc.

Musk personally has committed to $21 billion in equity financing.

Morgan Stanleys role as the facilitator does not come as a surprise, given Musks suggestion that the Wall Street firm would be the lead adviser in the proposed deal when he announced his interest in Twitter,

Twitter closed Fridays session 3.93 percent higher at $48.93, according to BenzingaPro data.

By Shanthi Rexaline

The Epoch Times Copyright  2022 The views and opinions expressed are only those of the authors. They are meant for general informational purposes only and should not be construed or interpreted as a recommendation or solicitation. The Epoch Times does not provide investment, tax, legal, financial planning, estate planning, or any other personal finance advice. The Epoch Times holds no liability for the accuracy or timeliness of the information provided.
LAs Crime Surge Migrates to Wealthy, Whiter Zip Codes of Boldface Names

On March 22, in the broad daylight of a typically gorgeous day in Beverly Hills, thieves in hoodies and sunglasses took a sledgehammer to the plate glass window of Peter Sedghis boutique and furiously rummaged through the shards. In less than 90 seconds, the robbers stole more than $3 million worth of jewels. Two days later, in response to a wave of high-end robberies, the Los Angeles Police Department announced there would be no arrests. Instead, it cautioned Hollywood residents not to wear high-quality jewelry in public.

Beverly Hills is one of the most affluent, safest neighborhoods in the world and now everyone is scared, Sedghi said. All of my clientsno one wears anything.

Crime has risen dramatically in Los Angeles, as well as in many other major cities, since the start of the pandemic and last summers protests against police violence resulted in the slashing of many law enforcement budgets. News stories document rising fear across LA and crime has become the major issue in both the upcoming mayors election and a possible recall of the district attorney. It may not be surprising that issues of race and class are driving this concern, though they have a new twist.

Wealthy and predominantly white neighborhoods have experienced the sharpest upticks in a wide array of crimes, according to an analysis conducted for RealClearInvestigations by criminologist John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center.

The zip codes showing the largest increases are home to film and pop stars, including Beverly Hills, of 90210 fame, where Beyonce and Jay-Z have their West Coast house; Bel Air, of Fresh Prince Will Smith fame, where Jennifer Lopez now resides; and Los Feliz, where Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom share a house and where Angelina Jolie has resided since her divorce from Brad Pitt. Nearby, the U.S. Postal Service has suspended delivery to one neighborhood in Santa Monicaa town where celebrities including Tom Cruise, Christian Bale and Sandra Bullock reportedly have homesbecause multiple carriers have been subjected to assault and threats of assault.

Lotts analysis (data here), which correlates census and LAPD crime statistics for the period January 2019 to January 2022, also reveals that those neighborhoods now account for much greater shares of the total number of crimes committed in Los Angeles. It shows that the richer and whiter the area, the greater the increase in both raw crime totals and percentages of total city crime. This includes a wide range of felonies, from robbery, burglary, shoplifting and car theft to aggravated assault and rape. Although poor and minority neighborhoods still experience the largest total number of crimes, including violent crimes such as murder, the shift to relatively safer neighborhoods is pronounced.

Map photo of the area with the zip code 90210 in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 2022. (Google Maps/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

While the total number of rapes fell in Los Angeles during the 37-month period studied, their share spiked in predominantly white neighborhoodsrising 18.2 percent in neighborhoods where they comprise 81 percent to 100 percent of residents.

Lotts analysis found a similar trend for aggravated assault.

Lott also found that while the number of reported robberies across the city has fallen slightly, the share of total crimes increased sharply in wealthier and whiter zip codes, rising by 11.8 percent annually over the 37 months in the most heavily white neighborhoods.

For median house values, the share of robberies fell for the highest valued homes by 4.9 percent, but they rose by 9.7 percent annually for zip codes where the median house was $1 million to $1.5 million, and by 15.2 percent for zip codes where the median house was $1.5 million to $2 million, Lott said.

Fear is more pronounced than ever in posh areas, according to several Angelenos familiar with the turf of the rich and famous. This is evidently in part because the fancy wheels often seen on the streets of Beverly Hills, Brentwood, or other upscale communities have also been the prime targets of thieves, Lotts analysis indicated.

Although Lott only analyzed data from Los Angeles, anecdotal evidence and news reports suggest similar trends may be occurring in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities experiencing crime waves.

You see people just smashing glass and stealing on the Miracle Mile in Chicago, videos of people in cities just carrying bags full of clothes theyve stolen, Lott said. I dont think weve ever seen crime quite like that in the U.S.

There has surely been a change in where the crimes are occurring, moving from lower income to higher property values and to more places. I was surprised by the extent of it.

Just what has made once more insulated neighborhoods vulnerable is difficult to pinpoint. RealClearInvestigations reached out to the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department, as well as the Beverly Hills Police Department, but none of the three agencies returned phone calls or responded to emailed questions. Details on the race or ethnicity of those involved in the crimes were thus generally unavailable. Also unavailable were official assessments of whether any of the incidents constituted hate crimes.

Lott noted how California voters have moved the needle on crime in recent years. Proposition 47 decriminalized a number of theft and drug charges, making them misdemeanors, as it did several non-violent felonies. Voters also approved Proposition 57, which allows for early release of non-violent offenders.

Los Angeles and other urban centers, including the Washington, D.C. area, have also been plagued recently by the phenomenon of crime tourism, in which organized gangs from South America obtain visas online and jet into the Golden State to burglarize residencesoperations that have targeted luxury homes.

Theyre coming here for the purpose of targeting neighborhoods, a cop in neighboring Ventura County told ABCs LA affiliate on March 23. Not violent crimes, but theyre going after the big bucks.

The Los Angeles Times reported this week that more than a dozen gangs are targeting some of the citys wealthiest residents  sending out crews in multiple cars to find, follow and rob people driving high-end vehicles or wearing expensive jewelry, according to police.

Lili Bosse, recently elected mayor of Beverly Hills for the third time, said she sees the crime hitting once seemingly insulated zones as an extension of what is happening to the entire city. We live in chaos, it seems like Gotham City, she told RCI. People have been traumatized regardless of where they live. Its not just a matter of physical safety, this affects ones sense of mental well-being. In Los Angeles, there is a sense of anxiety and uncertainty.

Indeed, a look at other theft outside of burglary and motor vehicles also shows a notable shift toward Tinseltowns fabled moneyed quarters.

Between 2019 and 2022, other thefts were up 16.7 percent where median home prices top $2 million, and up 8.7 percent where homes range from $1.5 to $2 million, which is expensive even in Los Angeles, Lott noted. Meanwhile, where homes are between $400,000 and $500,000, other theft dropped 5.5 percent and 4.6 percent where the median home is below $400,000, the analysis showed.

These shifts are in addition to some headline-grabbing incidents that have shaken the rich and famous. Last December, Jacqueline Avant, the African-American wife of Motown Records chief Clarence Avant, was murdered in her Beverly Hills home, and in January Brianna Kupfer, a white UCLA graduate student, was killed in a random attack at a luxury furniture store in Brentwood.

A police officer crosses under police tape near the 1100 block of Maytor Place, where Jacqueline Avants house is, in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Dec. 1, 2021. (Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images)

Bosse stressed crime in her recent victory, and the issue has taken center stage in Los Angeles politics. The mayors race has seen billionaire developer Rick Caruso make the rise in crime a centerpiece of his campaign, vowing to restore the ranks and funding of the LAPD, which has seen both slashed since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. Last July, the city council voted to cut LAPD money by $150 million.

But even more than the mayors race, the disgust and vulnerability felt by many Angelenos is fueling the recall effort against District Attorney George Gascon. Bankrolled by more than $3 million from George Soros-funded PACs, Gascon came to office with a promise to turn our court system upside down.

The recall-Gascon forces hope to follow the path of famously liberal San Francisco, which put on the ballot a recall of progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudinwho has delivered on his promise to radically reform criminal justice since his election in 2019. And the money flowing to the Gascon effort would seem to reflect the trends detected in Lotts analysis for RCI.

Big money Democrats who live in Los Angeles toniest districts have contributed to Gascons recall, according to a recent article in Los Angeles magazine which cited an exclusive look at still unreleased donors lists.

The article named supermarket heir and Bill Clinton buddy Ron Burkle, movie titans like Mike Medavoy, founder of Orion Pictures, and Hillary Clinton campaign bundlers such as Jordan Kaplan of Pacific Palisades.

But among the most ardent supporters of Gascons recall are the ranks of his deputy district attorneys who are already engaged in litigation against some of his left-wing initiatives, such as refusing to file enhancements on charges that deputy DAs say California law requires of prosecutors.

San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon speaks during a news conference at the San Francisco Hall of Justice in San Francisco, on May 5, 2010. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The DA doesnt ask for bail on non-violent offenders and criminals arent held accountable for having a gun, said Eric Siddall, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, their union. Thats one reason youre seeing that in neighborhoods traditionally considered safeno one is detained, no one is held accountable any longer.

Siddall believes the numbers showing a big shift to more privileged Los Angeles neighborhoods could be less pronounced because non-violent property crimes are the most underreported of all, which happens for factors like the relationship people have with the police, the victim feeling like it serves no real purpose to report it, or they might fear retaliation.

In more white-collar circles, however, Siddall said, fear of crime is changing behaviors.

Anecdotally, I cant tell you how many people have come up to me and asked if I could recommend a certain kind of firearm, he said. People are signing up for gun training courses, and these are people who never before in their lives ever thought of having a gun.

Gascon was an architect of Proposition 47, the decriminalization measure, and a backer of Proposition 57, the early-release measure. Momentum may be growing for a repeal of the first initiative, along with possibility of a major change among Los Angeles top elected positions.

For now, however, that offers little solace to Angelenos who arent used to feeling crimes pinch.

A lot of people are afraid, Sedghi said. Everyone is thinking about crime and worried about being a victim. People are looking behind them all the time while driving home, afraid they are being followed.

This article was written by James Varney for RealClearInvestigations.
Opponents of the academic doctrine known as critical race theory protest outside of the Loudoun County School Board headquarters in Ashburn, Va., on June 22, 2021. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

South Carolina Legislation to Prohibit Discriminatory Teaching in K12 Classrooms Advances

Legislation in South Carolina that would prohibit the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) in K12 classrooms was approved by the states House of Representatives on April 21.

House Bill 5183, or the South Carolina Transparency and Integrity in Education Act, seeks to prevent ideological and viewpoint biases from being presented as fact instead of theory while maintaining complete histories of South Carolina and the United States.

The proposal was introduced by the Education and Public Works Committee in March and was approved after second reading in the House on a 7340 mostly party-line vote. The measure would give parents and students a voice in raising objections to material that they believe has been presented in a biased manner.

The bill prohibits teachings that are discriminatory and bars any teaching that claims one race, sex, ethnicity, color, or national origin is inherently superior or more privileged than another.

Any teachings that base ones moral character on the above characteristics, or teachings that place the responsibility for actions committed in the past on the shoulders of the students and teachers of a particular race or sex, will also be eliminated from the public-school curriculum under this bill.

Teaching that the United States was founded for the purpose of oppression and that the American Revolution was fought for the purpose of protecting oppressionas has been proposed by leading CRT theoristswould also be prohibited in the classroom, although the impartial discussion of controversial aspects of history in accordance with South Carolina state standards and regulations is allowed.

CRT is a Marxist philosophy that claims society can only be explained by the theory of class struggle between oppressors and the oppressedspecifically labeling white people as the oppressors and all other races as the oppressed. For many teachers and parents, the phrase has come to encompass a more expansive trend that incorporates not only issues of race but also themes of sexuality.

The bill also addresses what proponents have referred to as pornography found in school libraries by mandating only age-appropriate print and digital content.

In November 2021, Gov. Henry McMaster called for an investigation after reports of the graphic novel Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe surfaced in the Fort Mill School District.

The book contains explicit images of sexual acts between minors, with one identifying as transgender.

The South Carolina legislative effort follows other bills that prohibit gender or sexual diversity training or counseling for minors in public schools, such as that in Florida, which, in addition to giving parents more of a say in their childrens education, also bans the teaching of complex sexual issues.

During several hours in which Democrats presented amendments to the proposal, Rep. John King, a Democrat, said on the House floor that the bill will destroy public education, citing a potential rise in complaints from students alleging they have an issue with what theyre being taught.

Proponents of the legislation, however, say theres a complaint process outlined in the bill that students and teachers can follow if they feel that instruction is being presented with bias.

King echoed what many Democrats have alleged, stating that the bill would erase historyspecifically the history of mistreatment of African Americans.

Rep. Jermaine Johnson, also a Democrat, said on the House floor that CRT isnt what is being discussed in the House bill because its not being taught in K12 schools, only in universities and law schools.

So this is more about censorship, and I think we need to make sure that we identify what were talking about appropriately when were talking about censorship, he said.

Rep. Rita Allison, a Republican and the chair of the House Education and Public Works Committee, said the bill doesnt erase black history, and emphasized that the bill specifically provides that schools can teach the history of ethnic groups as described in our state standards already.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Panama Pacifico Airport in Panama City, on April 20, 2022. (Brendan Smialowski/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

RussiaUkraine War (April 24): Blinken, Austin Meet With Zelenskyy

The latest on the RussiaUkraine crisis, April 24. Click here for updates from April 23.

Blinken, Austin Meet With Zelenskyy

The U.S. secretaries of state and defense met Sunday night with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the highest-level visit to the war-torn countrys capital by an American delegation since the start of Russias invasion.

The meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was confirmed by presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych in an interview on Ukrainian TV.

It came as Ukraine pressed the West for more powerful weapons against Russias campaign in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, where Moscows forces sought to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops in the battered port of Mariupol.

Yes, theyre meeting with the president. Lets hope something will be decided on further help, Arestovych said in an interview on Ukrainian TV.

Before the session, Zelenskyy said he was looking for the Americans to produce results, both in arms and security guarantees.

You cant come to us empty-handed today, and we are expecting not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons, he said.

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Ukraine to Call for Heavy Arms When Top US Officials Visit Kyiv

Ukraine will ask U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin for more powerful weapons during an expected visit by the officials to Kyiv on Sunday, seeking to build the countrys defences against the Russian invasion.

The trip by Blinken and Austin, announced earlier by Zelenskyy, would be the highest-level visit to Ukraine by U.S. officials since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of the country two months ago.

The White House has not confirmed any visit by Blinken and Austin. The State Department and Pentagon declined to comment.

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NATO and Russian Military Presence in Mediterranean Sea at Cold War Levels

As the conflict in Ukraine enters its third month, NATO and Russia have built up their naval forces in the Mediterranean Sea to the most significant levels in decades.

That was confirmed in a recent interview with Thibault Lavernhe, regional communication officer of French forces in the Mediterranean, who said that Ukraine has changed things.

The Americans are back. This hasnt been the case since the Cold War, he said. Russia has doubled, if not tripled, its military capacity in the area in terms of destroyers, submarines, and frigates, Lavernhe continued to say.

Read the full article here

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Ukraines Military Says Russian Forces Are Trying to Storm Azovstal Plant

Russian forces attempted to storm the Ukrainian-held Azovstal steel plant in the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said, despite Russian President Vladimir Putins comments last week that the complex did not need to be taken.

Ukraines armed forces command wrote on Facebook that Russian forces were firing and performing offensive operations in the Azovstal area, as well as conducting airstrikes on civilian infrastructure.

Serhiy Volyna, commander of Ukraines 36th Marine brigade forces in Mariupol, said in an interview with an opposition lawmaker that was shown on YouTube on Sunday that Russia was hitting the complex with air and artillery bombardments.

We are taking casualties, the situation is critical  we have very many wounded men, (some) are dying, its a difficult (situation) with guns, ammunition, food, medicines  the situation is rapidly worsening, Volyna said, speaking from his location at the plant.

Konstantin Ivaschenko, the official who has been designated mayor of Mariupol by Russia but not recognized as such by Ukraine, denied that any fighting was taking place in the city in comments reported by Russian news outlet TASS on Sunday.

The Epoch Times could not independently verify the Ukrainian or Russian accounts.

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Russia Says Village in Belgorod Region Shelled by Ukraine: Tass

Russia said on Sunday a village in its Belgorod region bordering Ukraine was shelled from across the frontier, state news agency Tass quoted a local official as saying.

Vladimir Pertsev, the official, said there were no casualties or damage after one projectile landed in a field, according to Tass.

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Zelenskyy, Erdogan Discuss Evacuation

Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he has discussed the evacuation of civilians from Mariupol in a call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Zelenskyy said on Twitter that he stressed the need for immediate evacuation of civilians from Mariupol, including Azovstal, and immediate exchange of blocked troops in Sundays call with Erdogan. He noted that the call came before Erdogans planned conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine has urged Russia to allow the evacuation of civilians holed up at the giant Azovstal steel plant, the last remaining Ukrainian pocket of resistance in the strategic Sea of Azov port. It also has pushed Russia to conduct talks on a safe exit for the Ukrainian defenders of the plant, but Moscow has stonewalled the demands.

Zelenskyy said he and Erdogan also discussed the course of the negotiation process and possible security guarantees for Ukraine from Turkey and other nations.

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Ukraine Says Russia Deploys Iskander-M Launchers Near Border

Russia has deployed Iskander-M mobile battlefield missile launchers within 60 km (40 miles) of the Ukrainian border, General Staff of Ukraines Armed Forces said on Sunday.

Then enemy has increased the number of troops in the Belgorod region by transferring and concentrating additional units, the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in its daily morning update.

According to available information, Iskander-M launchers have been deployed 60 km from the border with Ukraine, it said, without providing more detail on the location of the systems.

The Epoch Times could not immediately verify the reports. There was no immediate reaction from Moscow to the reports.

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WTA Chief Promises Strong Reactions to Ban on Russian, Belarusian Players

Womens Tennis Association chief Steve Simon has warned Wimbledon organisers and Britains tennis body of strong reactions to their decision to ban players from Russia and Belarus from competing in tournaments.

The ATP, which runs the mens tour, and the WTA denounced the move as discriminatory, with the two world governing bodies saying they were evaluating sanctions in response.

Simon told The Tennis Podcast that the Wimbledon decision was against Grand Slam rules and the agreement they have with the tournament while the LTA, which has WTA sanctioned events, violated the regulations regarding athlete entry.

We dont have the same jurisdiction over the Grand Slams as we do (over) our own sanctioned events. We have precedents  where these situations may have occurred where fines and tournament sanctions have been imposed, Simon said.

We need to sit down with our tournament, our player councils and I suppose our board and see where everythings at. I do think that youll see some strong reactions that will come from us, but what those are and how far theyll go is still to be determined.

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Britain Says Ukraine Repelled Numerous Russian Assaults Along the Line of Contact in Donbas

Ukraine has repelled numerous Russian assaults along the line of contact in Donbas this week, a British military update said on Sunday.

Despite Russia making some territorial gains, Ukrainian resistance has been strong across all axes and inflicted a significant cost on Russian forces, the UK Ministry of Defence tweeted in a regular bulletin.

Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganise forces from prior offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness, the update added.

The Epoch Times could not immediately verify the report.

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Switzerland Blocked Germanys Request to Export Swiss Ammunition to Ukraine

Switzerland has rejected two requests by Germany to export Swiss ammunition to Ukraine, citing the Alpine nations strict neutrality.

The decision was first reported Sunday by Swiss weekly Sonntagszeitung.

Switzerlands State Secretariat for Economic Affairs confirmed that both requests from Germany, whether the ammunition received from Switzerland can be passed on to Ukraine, were answered negatively with a reference to Swiss neutrality.

Germany needs Switzerlands consent for the arms delivery as part of the original sale contract. The Swiss office declined to specify what type of ammunition Germany had sought to export to Ukraine.

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Ukraine Urges Russia to Allow Civilians to Leave Mariupol Steel Plant

A Ukrainian presidential adviser has urged Russia to allow civilians to leave a steel mill in Mariupol besieged by the Russian forces.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, appealed to Russia to announce a truce in Mariupol on Orthodox Easter Sunday and immediately open a humanitarian corridor for civilians holed up at the giant Azovstal steel plant. He also challenged Russia to conduct a round of talks to negotiate an exit for the Ukrainian defenders of the plant.

Podolyak wrote on Twitter that the Russian military is attacking the plant with heavy bombs and artillery barrage and is accumulating forces and equipment for an assault.

The Epoch Times could not independently verify the claims.

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Ukrainian Steel Plant Bombed; Zelenskyy to Meet US Officials

Russian forces called in airstrikes on a besieged steel factory in the southern city of Mariupol to try to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops holding out in the strategic port, Ukrainian officials said Sunday, while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would meet in Kyiv with two top American officials.

Zelenskyy gave few details about the logistics of his planned talks with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on what was the 60th day since Russia invaded Ukraine. But he told reporters he expected the Americans to come bringing not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons.

The visit would be the first to Ukraines capital by high-level U.S. officials since the invasion began Feb. 24. While visiting Poland in March, Blinken stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil to meet with the countrys foreign minister. Zelenskyys last face-to-face meeting with a U.S. leader was Feb. 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris.

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Russia Strikes Ukrainian Explosives Factory

The Russian military says it has struck a Ukrainian explosives factory, several artillery depots, and hundreds of other targets.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Sunday that the Russian military used precision-guided missiles to destroy a factory making powder and explosives near Pavlohrad in the Dnipro region in central Ukraine.

Konashenkov said Russian forces also struck several depots with artillery munitions and rockets in Barvinkove, Nova Dmytrivka, Ivanivka, Husarivka, and Velyka Komyshuvakha in the Kharkiv region.

He added that the Russian artillery hit 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, including fortified positions and troops concentrations, while Russian warplanes destroyed 26 Ukrainian military targets.

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Ukrainian Military Says It Destroyed a Russian Command Post in Kherson

The Ukrainian military said Saturday it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.

The Ukrainian military intelligence agency posted a statement saying the command post was hit on Friday and two generals were killed and one was critically wounded.

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in an online interview that 50 senior Russian officers were in the command center when it came under attack. He said their fate was unknown.

The Russian military did not comment on the claim, which could not be confirmed.

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Ukrainian Military: Russian Forces Have Continued to Press Their Attacks in the East

The Ukrainian military says Russian forces have continued to press their attacks in the east.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said Sunday that the Russians fired on Ukrainian positions along the entire line of contact on the wars 60th day. It also said the Russian military intensified its offensive and assault operations in the Siverodonetsk, Kurakhiv and Popasna directions.

A regional official in eastern Ukraine says at least eight people have been killed by the Russian shelling.

Luhansk regional Governor Serhiy Haidai said Sunday that two others were wounded by the Russian barrage in the past 24 hours.

The General Staff added that Russian forces have also continued to pummel the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, hitting it with air strikes, including by long-range aircraft.

Jack Phillips, The Associated Press, and Reuters contributed to this report.
Marxists Seek to Destabilize American Society Through Sexualization of Young People: Expert

Young people in the United States are being subjected to communist-style sexualization, according to author and expert James Lindsay.

The goal is to destabilize society to make it ripe for communists to grab power, Lindsay, author of Race Marxism and Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identityand Why This Harms Everybody, recently told EpochTVs China Insider program.

And their plan has been afoot for more than a century.

This is a deliberate program that Marxists have employed since at least the 1910s, starting in Hungary, to try to sexualize children to cause sexual and gender confusion so that they become political activists on behalf of some other agenda, he said.

Lindsay pointed to Georg Lukacs, a devout Hungarian Marxist who served as deputy commissar of education in 1919 during the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. He introduced sex education to children at the elementary level, he said.

[Lukacs] sexualized the children of Hungary in order to separate them from their family, to separate them from their religion, their nation and their culture, Lindsay said. Essentially getting children  all into these ideas so that when they go home, they would tell their parents, you know, things have changed, or the Bible is wrong, or whatever our religion is wrong, our traditions are wrong.

Next came Herbert Marcuse, a prominent member of the Frankfurt School, who focused his efforts on trying to free sexual energy, according to Lindsay. Marcuse in his 1965 work Eros and Civilization applied Marxist ideology to delve into these topics, becoming the intellectual basis for the sexual revolution of the 1960s. This in turn led to the comprehensive sexual education programs that are in American schools today, Lindsay noted.

Later on, in the 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of the post-structural feminism movement. These feminist activists used postmodern theory to advocate the notion that gender was socially constructed, and that sex roles are a form of oppression, according to the expert.

They used postmodern theory to break down all boundaries whatsoevernot just the idea of gender being a social construct, but sex and sexuality and everything becoming socially constructed, as well, he said.

And those people have basically taken over.

Modern-day Marxists focus more on gender and on the social fluidity of these concepts than you would have seen 100 years ago from older school Marxists. But the general thrust is the same, he added.

Meanwhile, with young people as their target group, Marxists find a population who are highly vulnerable and impressionable, Lindsay noted, as theyre at a stage of their lives when theyre trying to find their identity, theyre trying to go grow up, and go through puberty and discover what it means to be who they are.

As a result, young people are being victimized. Theyre being injected full of all of these ideas about the fluidity of their gender, the fluidity of their sex, the socially constructed nature of sexuality. And its actually victimizing those people in particular, he said.

Meanwhile, they [activists] hide behind saying that this is actually about protecting LGBT people, who are also being victimized, he said.

The Marxist movements back then and nowadays all share the same goal, noted Lindsay, which is to soften children up to get them to be more accepting of the gender and sexual instruction thats going on in their schools.

So the purpose is actually to weaken and destabilize in the short term, so that power can be seized, he said. And then itll be up to whoevers in charge to decide what they think is acceptable and not acceptable afterward.

With children being inundated by such Marxist ideas from all angles, especially when the schools are doing a terrible job, are failing at educating our students, Lindsay stressed that this places more responsibility on parents.

Theyre having to take up the role of actually educating  their children, first of all. And then second of all, theyre also having to de-program their kids about what theyre learning about race, about history, about sex, about  sexuality and gender, he said.

The situation, Lindsay said, is also forcing parents to have conversations about sex and sexuality with their children at far younger ages than parents think is appropriate, as the schools and the media are dragging them into having these conversations.

The job that parents have right now is enormously harder than it was 10 or 15 years ago, he said.

But I stress this has been going on pretty rampantly at least over the last decade anyway. And so primarily, parents are just now becoming aware that this is being taught to their children in such a large quantity.

Hannah Ng Reporter Follow Hannah Ng is a reporter covering U.S. and China news.
Mask Mandates Make Comeback to US College Campuses

Two months after the federal government eased mask recommendations for most Americans, some colleges and universities have reinstated mask mandates, along with other measures, citing surges in COVID-19 cases on their campuses.

Several prominent institutionsincluding American University and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.; Columbia University in New York; Johns Hopkins University in Maryland; and Rice University in Texas, to name a fewhave brought back indoor mask requirements that were phased out not too long ago.

Many of these schools already have vaccine and booster mandates. For example, Columbia required all students and employees to submit proof of their booster vaccination before March, boasting an overall 99.9 percent compliance rate for the campus community. Yet it now demands that students wear surgical masks in classrooms because of an uptick of COVID-19 cases on campus and elsewhere in New York City.

Based on the current situation and in an abundance of caution, we will require wearing of non-cloth masks in classrooms, the Ivy League school announced on April 10. In a more recent update, the university said the requirement wouldnt go away any time soon, despite an overwhelmingly high level of vaccination among the campus population.

We anticipate making no changes in our current campus COVID-19 guidance, unless New York City puts in place measures that we would be required to follow, Columbia officials said on April 22, noting a gradual increase in COVID-19 cases in the city.

Rice also requires all eligible students and employees to get booster shots. In mid-March, the Houston-based university lifted its mask mandate for vaccinated individuals, only to reverse the policy after less than a month because of a sudden rise in COVID-19 cases.

Theres been a significant rise in the number of positive cases reported in our communityabout 145, the university said in an April 10 statement. Specifically, Rice demanded that everyone in a classroom wear a mask regardless of their vaccination status, except for instructors while lecturing, since 90 percent of those new cases have occurred among undergraduate students. Large events also have been canceled. Students can continue to eat in dining halls, but at half of the designated capacity.

According to a COVID-19 tracker on Rices website, the university has recorded 31 positive tests for the week following Easter. Theres also been a noticeable downward trajectory since April 10, but the restrictions remain in place.

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, health officials and the mayor raised the citys COVID-19 alert level on April 18, requiring citizens to wear face coverings when out in public. That has prompted a number of schools, including the University of Pennsylvania, Temple, St. Josephs, La Salle, Drexel, and Thomas Jefferson universities, to require students and staff to mask up while in school buildings.

All of these Philadelphia schools went mask-optional again just three days later, when the city announced that it not only has reversed the decision to reimpose the mask mandate, but also ditched the COVID-19 alert system that triggered it.

The infection rate is going down, hospitalizations are going down, and, frankly, the ruling in Florida confused a lot of stuff. SEPTA is doing what they did and confused a lot of stuff, said Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney.

Kenney was referring to a U.S. district judge in Florida who struck down a federal rule requiring face coverings for planes and other forms of public transportation, as well as the decision by SEPTA, Pennsylvanias regional transit authority, to lift the requirement that travelers must wear masks on its buses and trains.

Floridas universities were among the earliest in the nation to drop their mask mandates. South Florida University has been mask-optional since August 2021, while the University of Florida said it simply doesnt have the authority to force people to mask up on campus.

The university does not currently have the authority to take the actions you recommend, University of Florida President Kent Fuchs wrote in response to the Alachua County Commission, which had asked the school to adhere to a public health emergency declaration that mandated masks indoors.
Moheeb Murray attended Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Detroit Opera House in Mich. on April 23, 2022 (Nancy Ma/The Epoch Times)

DETROIT, Mich.The beauty of Shen Yun Performing Arts captures the spirituality of Chinas traditional culture, audience members at the Detroit Opera House on April 23 said after experiencing the performance and connecting with the spiritual messages expressed by the dancers and musicians.

Moheeb Murray, a lawyer, was delighted by Shen Yuns expression of Chinas rich culture and history.

The entirety of the performance was synonymous with beauty, he said.

Shen Yuns story-based dances depict Chinas spiritual origins, its dynasties and heroes, and vagaries of everyday life in ancient times.

I think  the artistry, the beautiful costume design, the techniques of the dancers, [were] very beautiful. Watching that all together, [the performance] was really something to behold. Im really impressed with it, Mr. Murray said.

Shen Yuns mission is to revive the traditional culture of China as it was in the pre-communist era.

I think its really just a contrast to the current communist view. Its nice to see  that culture being preserved.

In ancient China, there was pride in traditions and attention was given to beauty, artistry, and music, he said. He was impressed by Shen Yuns vocalist who sang To Heaven in This Lifetime, the story of mans spiritual journey.

Mr. Murray also appreciated the projected translations of the lyrics that gave the song context, which was very important.

The themes in many of the messages depicted in Shen Yun were meaningful to him and the way he views life, and he connected with the energy that emanated from the stage.

He found it difficult to find the right words to describe his experience and encouraged others to go and see Shen Yun as a unique educational experience that offers a perspective on Chinese culture that is rarely seen.

Also thoroughly enjoying Shen Yun at the Detroit Opera House were Michelle and Larry Stone, both retirees.

It was spectacular. Just truly, truly enjoyable, Mrs. Stone said. The beauty of costumes, the color, and how [it was expressed], and their dance, the swirling  its just awesome.

She marveled at the beauty of Chinese culture but felt sad to learn that it has all but been destroyed by the Chinese communist regime.

Mr. Stone echoed his wifes comments. In my opinion, the communist [regime] does not represent the people of China and  how their past was, he said. Formerly, Mr. Stone was a real estate investor.

I love the spirituality of [Shen Yun] and that there will be a coming and that  light will overcome the darkness  [with a message] to keep the faith, Mrs. Stone said.

In one dance, A Display of Great Compassion, the dancers depict a time when people have forgotten their spiritual values and a great reckoning begins.

Thats going to happen, and if we keep our faith and we keep doing the right thing kindness and compassionand honor our beliefs, the Savior will come.

Now, how can I top that? Mr. Stone said. Shes absolutely right.

Mrs. Stone also enjoyed listening to Shen Yuns vocalist. It was beautiful. In fact, I have downloaded that [piece] on my song list. He had a beautiful voice [and] his message was awesome.

The couple felt that Shen Yun had made a difference in their lives.

My heart feels lighter. Especially in todays [world], all the ugliness thats out there  [I] feel lighter, Mrs. Stone said. The body feels good.

Its a good feeling, Mr. Stone agreed.

Reporting by Nancy Ma and Diane Cordemans

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006.
A view of the Rio Grande with Mexico on the left and the United States on the right, from the Camino Real international bridge in Eagle Pass, Texas, on April 19, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

National Guard Soldier Still Missing at Southern Border a Day After Trying to Help Immigrants From Water

A soldier from the Texas Army National Guard remains missing a day after he tried to help two illegal immigrants who appeared to be drowning in the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas. The two immigrants are now alleged by the Texas Rangers to be involved in narcotics trafficking.

The service member selflessly attempted to help two migrants who appeared to be drowning as they illegally crossed the river from Mexico to the United States, the Texas Military Department said in an update on Saturday.

Initial reports from the Texas Rangers have determined that the two migrants were involved in illicit transnational narcotics trafficking. They remain in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, the department said.

The family of the missing soldier were notified about his disappearance on Friday evening, the Texas Military Department stated.

Additional information, including the name of the Soldier, will be officially released at a later date. The search for the missing TMD soldier will continue until we have exhausted all available resources.  Our thoughts and prayers remain with the family of the soldier, it said.

The department is continuing to work with the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Border Patrol, and the Texas Rangers to investigate his disappearance. The Texas Rangers is leading the search, which began when he went missing on Friday.

The soldier was assigned to Operation Lone Star, a mission launched in March 2021 by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. It aims to combat the smuggling of humans and contraband into Texas across the southern border. Abbott later expanded the operation to also deal with human trafficking.
The French anti-submarine frigate FREMM Auvergne (R) and the U.S. Navy USS Donald Cook class guided missile destroyer (2R) and the Greek HS Aigaion frigate (2L) during an exercise how simulate a humanitarian response to a powerful earthquake and significant movement of IDF vessels and foreign vessels in the Mediterranean sea on Aug. 7, 2019. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

NATO, Russian Military Presence in Mediterranean Sea at Cold War Levels

As the conflict in Ukraine enters its third month, NATO and Russia have built up their naval forces in the Mediterranean Sea to the most significant levels in decades.

That was confirmed in a recent interview with Thibault Lavernhe, regional communication officer of French forces in the Mediterranean, who said Ukraine has changed things.

The Americans are back. This hasnt been the case since the Cold War, he said. Russia has doubled, if not tripled, its military capacity in the area in terms of destroyers, submarines, and frigates, Lavernhe said.

Currently, there are about 20 Russian warships positioned around the Mediterranean, Lavernhe told the AFP news agency. Meanwhile, the United States has doubled its naval presence in the region since the start of the Ukraine war, the official said.

Where there are American forces, the Russians are there too, Lavernhe said. Russian ships are positioned to monitor the activity of allied forces.

NATO operated about three aircraft carrier strike groups in the region before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. The United States several weeks ago extended the deployment of the USS Truman aircraft carrier strike group in the eastern portion of the Mediterranean.

A man rides a motorbike past a destroyed Russian tank on a road in the village of Rusaniv, near Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 16, 2022. (Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images)

The role of Truman, with other allies, is to deter Russians from further aggression and to be on constant standby for orders that might be given from our president or from other leaders around the world for the protection of Ukraine and the people of Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro told reporters last month.

It comes as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were visiting Ukraines capital, Kyiv, on April 24 to discuss sending more powerful weapons to Ukraines military.

The trip was announced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on April 23, although the State Department and Pentagon havent issued public comments on the matter.

The United States and its NATO allies have shown growing readiness to supply heavier equipment and more advanced weapons systems. The UK has promised to send military vehicles and said it was considering supplying British tanks to Poland to free up Warsaws Russian-designed T-72s for Ukraine.

Russian forces are attempting to storm the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol by land, backed up by aerial and artillery bombardment, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said on April 24.

Russian troops are trying to finish off the defenders of Azovstal and more than 1,000 civilians who are hiding at the plant, Arestovych wrote on Facebook. He said on April 23 that troops in the steel complex were attempting counterattacks.

Reuters contributed to this report.
San Miguel County Sheriff's Officers patrol NM94 near Penasco Blanco as the Calf Fire burns nearby, on April 22, 2022. (Eddie Moore/The Albuquerque Journal via AP)

New Mexico Governor Declares State of Emergency in 5 Counties Due to Wildfires

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has declared a state of emergency in five counties due to wildfires that have burned through large swaths of the drought-stricken state.

The Democratic governor declared states of emergency for Colfax, Lincoln, San Miguel, and Valencia Counties on April 22, and issued a similar declaration for Mora County on April 23 due to the fire threat.

This executive order makes funding and state resources available for communities battling ongoing wildfires, Grisham said in a statement.

More than 20 active wildfires were burning in at least 16 of New Mexicos 33 counties, Grisham said during a briefing that was streamed online. So half the state has a fire issue.

The declarations for the five counties made $3 million available for the states Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to help counties with emergency measures, prevent additional damages, repair infrastructure, and help lessen recovery time, according to the governors office.

Two large fires, the Calf Canyon Fire and the Hermits Peak Fire east of Santa Fe, have merged. Together, the fires have burned over 42,300 acres, officials announced early on April 23, adding that due to the merging of the two fires, containment has not been able to be accurately calculated.

The extreme weather caused an uncontrolled fire line and resulted in structure loss; damage assessments are continuing, officials said. A red flag warning was issued on April 23 because of westerly winds with speeds up to 25 mph and gusts above 40 mph.

Meanwhile, the Cooks Peak fire in Mora County had burned more than 48,600 acres and was zero percent contained as of April 23, fire officials said. The cause of the fire, which began on April 17, is unknown and is under investigation.

New evacuations orders have been issued for Mora County amid a strong cold front moving across the states north on April 23, bringing gusty, erratic winds.

As of April 23, New Mexico had the most major wildfires burning of any state, although neighboring Arizona also had large fires, including one that burned 30 homes near Flagstaff on April 19.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on April 21 declared a state of emergency for a fast-growing fire, the Tunnel Fire, in Coconino County. The fire has burned at least 21,000 acres and was 3 percent contained as of April 23.

Another fire, the Crooks Fire, located south of Prescott, Arizona, has burned more than 2,800 acres and is 5 percent contained.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The state of Florida is making a lot of waves lately, and the recent announcement that 41 percent of potential mathematics textbooks and materials were rejected by the Florida Department of Education is no exception. Critics responded with dismay, hinting that such decisions were based on politics rather than teaching.

Yet rejecting these textbooks was an attempt to get politics out of education, such as indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, and get back to the basics of straightforward learning, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a statement. Given that 71 percent of materials in grades K5 were rejected, it seems that Florida might have its work cut out for it to find decent, straightforward curricula.

To aid them in this uphill quest, I have a textbook recommendation of my own. Granted, its a reading textbook, not math, but given Floridas difficulty in finding solid textbooks for math, it seems likely theyll have trouble finding appropriate textbooks for other subjects as well and would benefit from a head start in their search. My recommendation? McGuffeys Eclectic Readers.

McGuffey Readers were used by elementary students across the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The lessons taught solid moral character, and the reading selections were often short stories, poems, or excerpts from classic texts and authors. Lesson 102 in McGuffeys Fifth Reader is a poem by Sir Henry Wotton, The Character of a Happy Life, and is a prime example of what Florida schools can expect to have their students learn by using the McGuffey Readers. A bonus of the lesson is that it even touches on themes that those who want to see more critical race theory or social-emotional learning in the schools appreciate  although perhaps not in the way they expect!

The poem opens with the following verse:

How happy is he born and taught,

That serveth not anothers will;

Whose armor is his honest thought,

And simple truth his utmost skill!

Here we see a pet educational goal of our public schools: critical thinking. Yet the critical thinking advanced here is based on logic, which relies on rational thought and knowledge of facts, rather than the mere creative deconstruction that seems to be the theme of todays critical thinking. When children learn logic, theyre able to know the truth and think for themselves rather than being sucked into the cookie-cutter thought process often advanced in schools today.

The second verse of the poem addresses the issue of social-emotional learning, which encourages students to get in touch with their emotions and use them to make decisions. Yet this McGuffey lesson teaches students to do the reverseto not be controlled by their feelings or standing in the world:

Whose passions not his masters are,

Whose soul is still prepared for death,

Untied unto the worldly care

Of public fame, or private breath;

Moving on to the third verse, we see hints of the ever-popular critical race theory, which is fond of discussing inequalities between the races. Yet instead of emphasizing inequalities, the McGuffey lesson encourages students to avoid envy when they see disparities between themselves and those who are better or worse off:

Who envies none that chance doth raise,

Or vice; who never understood

How deepest wounds are given by praise;

Nor rules of state, but rules of good:

Faith and religious training have been taboo in U.S. public schools for years, yet as the next two verses explain, the happy individual is one who has strong moral principles, who regularly engages in prayer, and who spends time studying religious material. Students who incorporate such principles into their lives wont be swayed either by flatterers or difficult times, for theyll have a strong foundation of truth and right.

Who hath his life from rumors freed,

Whose conscience is his strong retreat;

Whose state can neither flatterers feed,

Nor ruin make oppressors great;

Who God doth late and early pray,

More of his grace than gifts to lend;

And entertains the harmless day

With a religious book or friend;

The poem concludes by saying:

This man is freed from servile bands,

Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;

Lord of himself, though not of lands;

And having nothing, yet hath all.

In other words, the happy man doesnt demand favors, safety, or security. Instead, he knows that the one who has freedom and knows how to govern himself has true wealth. He then acts accordingly to ensure that he keeps such freedom.

Of course, were such lessons to be introducedmany teaching the exact opposite of todays popular educational theories and philosophiesthey would be highly unpopular and probably even called racist, sexist, or some other label that may not apply, but sounds impressive nonetheless. The reason is that the lessons taught in the McGuffey Readers are clearly ones designed to give students a chance at a successful and joy-filled lifeone far different from the controlled, depressing life that the government seems to enjoy inflicting upon its citizens in recent years.

Public figures in Florida are beginning to recognize that todays textbooks are often passing along concepts that dont lay a good foundation to turn students into happy, successful citizens one day. This is likely happening because parents have been standing up, speaking out, and pulling their kids from the clutches of public schools. Now its time to take the next step and start advocating for a curriculum that teaches students to be good, upright students who can think for themselves without being swayed by emotion. What better place to find a framework than the McGuffey Readers, which are full of lessons vital not only for children, but for ourselves as well.
For years, sustainable has been the buzzword in conversations about agriculture. If farmers and ranchers could slow or stop further damage to land and water, the thinking went, that was good enough. I thought that way too, until I started writing my new book, One Size Fits None: A Farm Girls Search for the Promise of Regenerative Agriculture.

I grew up on a cattle ranch in western South Dakota and once worked as an agricultural journalist. For me, agriculture is more than a topic  it is who I am. When I began working on my book, I thought I would be writing about sustainability as a response to the environmental damage caused by conventional agriculture  farming that is industrial and heavily reliant on oil and agrochemicals, such as pesticides and fertilizers.

But through research and interviews with farmers and ranchers around the United States, I discovered that sustainabilitys give back what you take approach, which usually just maintains or marginally improves resources already degraded by generations of conventional agriculture, does not adequately address the biggest long-term challenge farmers face: climate change.

But there is an alternative. A method called regenerative agriculture promises to create new resources, restoring them to preindustrial levels or better. This is good for farmers as well as the environment, since it lets them reduce their use of agrochemicals while making their land more productive.

What Holds Conventional Farmers Back

Modern American food production remains predominantly conventional. Growing up in a rural community of farmers and ranchers, I saw firsthand why.

As food markets globalized in the early 1900s, farmers began specializing in select commodity crops and animals to increase profits. But specialization made farms less resilient: If a key crop failed or prices tumbled, they had no other income source. Most farmers stopped growing their own food, which made them dependent on agribusiness retailers.

Under these conditions small farms consolidated into large ones as families went bankrupt  a trend that continues today. At the same time, agribusiness companies began marketing new machines and agrochemicals. Farmers embraced these tools, seeking to stay in business, specialize further and increase production.

In the 1970s, the governments position became Get big or get out under Earl Butz, who served as Secretary of Agriculture from 1971 to 1976. In the years since, critics like the nonprofit Food and Water Watch have raised concerns that corporate representatives have dictated land grant university research by obtaining leadership positions, funding agribusiness-friendly studies, and silencing scientists whose results conflict with industrial principles.

These companies have also shaped government policies in their favor, as economist Robert Albritton describes in his book Let Them Eat Junk. These actions encouraged the growth of large industrialized farms that rely on genetically modified seeds, agrochemicals and fossil fuel.

Several generations into this system, many conventional farmers feel trapped. They lack the knowledge required to farm without inputs, their farms are big and highly specialized, and most are carrying operating loans and other debts.

In contrast, regenerative agriculture releases farmers from dependence on agribusiness products. For example, instead of purchasing synthetic fertilizers for soil fertility, producers rely on diverse crop rotations, no-till planting and management of livestock grazing impacts.

Agribusiness dogma says that regenerative agriculture cannot feed the world and or ensure a healthy bottom line for farmers, even as conventional farmers are going bankrupt. I have heard this view from people I grew up with in South Dakota and interviewed as a farm journalist.

Everybody seems to want smaller local producers, Ryan Roth, a farmer from Belle Glade, Florida told me. But they cant keep up. Its unfortunate. I think its not the best development for agriculture operations to get bigger, but it is what were dealing with.

The Climate Threat

Climate change is making it increasingly hard for farmers to keep thinking this way. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that without rapid action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over roughly the next decade, warming will trigger devastating impacts such as wildfires, droughts, floods and food shortages.

For farmers, large-scale climate change will cause decreased crop yields and quality, heat stress for livestock, disease and pest outbreaks, desertification on rangelands, changes in water availability and soil erosion.

As I explain in my book, regenerative agriculture is an effective response to climate change because producers do not use agrochemicals  many of which are derived from fossil fuels  and greatly reduce their reliance on oil. The experiences of farmers who have adopted regenerative agriculture show that it restores soil carbon, literally locking carbon up underground, while also reversing desertification, recharging water systems, increasing biodiversity and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And it produces nutrient-rich food and promises to enliven rural communities and reduce corporate control of the food system.

No Single Model

How farmers put this strategy into practice differs depending on their location, goals and community needs. Regenerative agriculture is a one-size-fits-none model of farming that allows for flexibility and close tailoring to individual environments.

At Great Plains Buffalo in South Dakota, for example, rancher Phil Jerde is reversing desertification on the grassland. Phil moves buffalo across the land in a way that mimics their historic movement over the Great Plains, rotating them frequently through small pastures so they stay bunched together and impact the land evenly via their trampling and waste distribution. The land has adequate time to rest and regrow between rotations.

After transitioning his conventional ranch to a regenerative one over 10 years, Phil saw bare ground revert back to prairie grassland. Water infiltration into the ground increased, his herds health improved, wildlife and insect populations recovered and native grasses reappeared.

On Browns Ranch in North Dakota, farmer Gabe Brown also converted his conventional operation to a regenerative one in a decade. He used a combination of cover crops, multicropping (growing two or more crops on a piece of land in a single season), intercropping (growing two or more crops together), an intensive rotational grazing system called mob grazing, and no-till farming to restore soil organic matter levels to just over 6 percent  roughly the level most native prairie soils contained before settlers plowed them up. Restoring organic matter sequesters carbon in the soil, helping to slow climate change.

Conventional farmers often worry about losing the illusion of control that agrochemicals, monocultures and genetically modified seeds provide. I asked Gabe how he overcame these fears. He replied that one of the most important lessons was learning to embrace the environment instead of fighting it.

Regenerative agriculture can be done anywhere because the principles are the same, he said. I always hear, We dont get the moisture or this or that. The principles are the same everywhere. Theres nature everywhere. Youre just mimicking nature is all youre doing.

The future

Researchers with Project Drawdown, a nonprofit that spotlights substantive responses to climate change, estimate that land devoted to regenerative agriculture worldwide will increase from 108 million acres currently to 1 billion acres by 2050. More resources are appearing to help farmers make the transition, such as investment groups, university programs and farmer-to-farmer training networks.

Organic food sales continue to rise, suggesting that consumers want responsibly grown food. Even big food companies like General Mills are embracing regenerative agriculture.

The question now is whether more of Americas farmers and ranchers will do the same.

Stephanie Anderson, Instructor of English, Florida Atlantic University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) (2nd L) speaks during a news conference with members of the group, including (L-R) Rep. Yvette Herrell (R-NM), Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), about immigration on the U.S.-Mexico border outside the U.S. Capitol on March 17, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Rep. Biggs Warns of Border Catastrophe After Ending Title 42

After Title 42 ends, the volume of illegal border crossings will more than double, straining the already overburdened Border Patrol and leading to an almost impossible to believe scenario of a border catastrophe, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said on April 19.

Biggs recently took about 45 of his colleagues in the House of Representativesmany from non-border statesto visit the southern border. They traveled from San Diego to Yuma, Ariz., and visited three border sections, Biggs told NTDs Capitol Reports.

They come away, their eyes are wide open. They understand more than ever the ramifications of continuing to have an open border, said Biggs, who represents a district in the border state of Arizona. Theyre resolved to make changes and to evangelize, if you will, around the world, around the country, and in Congress. [They] have some things that we can do, and we must do, if were going to secure the border.

In Yuma, the representatives took a nighttime spin with some Border Patrol agents and saw two open areas in the fence about a mile-and-a-half apart. At each of them, there were between 40 and 50 illegal aliens who crossed the border from Mexico and were sitting there waiting to be picked up by Border Patrols transport, Biggs said.

Each group of illegals was overseen by only one Border Patrol agent, he said. The next morning they visited exactly the same gaps in the fence and saw different groups of illegal immigrants.

In a few hours, at each of those two locations, Border Patrol processed 200 individuals, Biggs said.

That opens eyes, because its 24/7, he said. In both of those groups, we didnt have anybody from Mexico or the Northern Triangle states. In one of those groups, everybody was either from Uzbekistan or Cuba.

Illegal aliens arent just coming from south of the border, the congressman said. Last year, those who crossed the southern border illegally came from 157 different nations.

The Biden administration has announced that it will terminate the Title 42 public health policy that has been used for the past two years to quickly expel illegal immigrants at the southern U.S. border because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Title 42, which will end on May 23, was implemented under the Trump administration, and it was used by both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.

During the congressional visit, Border Patrol apprehended between 8,000 and 10,000 people per day at the southern border, and it has been estimated that about 4,000 illegal aliens per day are not caught, Biggs said.

If no countermeasures are taken by May 23 when Title 42 ends, Border Patrol expects that the volume of illegal immigration could reach between 18,000 and 30,000 people per day in places where there are only 50 agents on duty, according to Biggs.

But 40 of them are processing people and  six [of them are] transporting or [are] on hospital duty, he said.

As a result, the border is wide open with nobody guarding it, Biggs said, noting that the Biden administration doesnt plan to finish the border fence.

Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) told Newsmax earlier in April that the United States will be basically a borderless country down on the southern border when Title 42 ends.

Tiffany said the illegal immigration situation is deliberate and that this is what some people want to have happen.

Illegal immigration on the southern border is facilitated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Tiffany said. The IOM is part of the U.N. system as the leading intergovernmental organization in the field of migration, according to its website.

Tiffany said the World Economic Forum and its founder and chairman, Klaus Schwab, are promoting the Great Reset.

America should understand that Great Reset includes getting rid of American sovereignty, Tiffany told Newsmax.

International Organization Facilitates Illegal Immigration

Tiffany told EpochTVs Crossroads in December that he traveled to Panama in 2021 and made three trips to the Texas border to research the issue of illegal immigration.

During his trip to Panama, he found that the IOM was the chief facilitator of moving people up that first step of the pipeline to Panama.

Ive seen, they [IOM] provide a variety of services from taking care of paperwork, for those that are seeking to come into the country, as well as getting them supplies, Tiffany said.

When immigrants would come out of the Darien Gap in Panama during Tiffanys trip, they would be in horrible shape, he said.

Some people [were] being wheeled up in wheelbarrows to the medical tent, he said.

Tiffany went to Darien Gap to see firsthand what was actually happening.

People [are] coming from countries all over the world through the Darien Gap into Panama, and [then] they get in the pipeline and come to the United States, he said.

Illegal immigrants go through a lot of misery. People die in these mass migrations, and women are sexually assaulted, Tiffany said.

If [the] remain in Mexico [policy] stayed in place, the border wall continued to be built, there was no catch and release [policy], these things would not have happened, he said.

Tiffany said there are quite a few Haitians in Bajo Chiquito, a village in Darien, but they didnt come from Haiti. They had been living in Chile or Brazil for years, where their lives had been relatively stable. When asked why they decided to emigrate, they answered that this was their opportunity to get to the United States and it might not come again, the congressman said.

More than 91,000 immigrants, mostly Haitians, arrived at Darien Gap with the intention of reaching the United States, Canada, or Mexico during the first nine months of 2021, reported IOM, citing Panamas government.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.

Ella Kietlinska Reporter Follow Ella Kietlinska is a reporter for The Epoch Times focusing on U.S. and world politics.

Steve Lance Follow Steve Lance is the host of Capitol Report, a political news show based in Washington aimed at providing a direct channel to the voices and people who shape policy in America. Capitol Report features all of the political news of the day with expert interviews and analysis.
Road to Electric Vehicles: Carrot for the Wealthy, Stick for the Rest

Feds expand EV subsidy, ponder expanding tax on non-electric vehicles that most Canadians can actually afford

Commentary

Despite years of coercive effort on the part of the government and billions spent trying to get Canadians to buy electric vehicles, only a mere 5 percent of drivers have chosen to go electric. Research conducted by the Department of Natural Resources concluded that most Canadians simply found electric vehicles to be too expensive to purchase.

So how has the government responded to this information?

They are expanding the range of their subsidy program to cover vehicles worth as much as $70,000 in some cases. It used to cap out at $55,000. If people couldnt afford to get into an electric vehicle worth $55,000 with a $5,000 price break, why would the government think they would buy into a $70,000 one? We are witnessing government logic at its best here.

Electric vehicles cost between $12,500 to $25,000 more than their gas-powered counterparts. Even with the federal rebate of $5,000, most consumers arent willing or able to take on such an added expense for vehicles that remain impractical for most people in our climate.

Electric vehicles are a luxury item. They are typically purchased by high-income urban dwellers with short commutes who rarely range outside the city. In other words, the people who are least in need of subsidies for a vehicle purchase are the ones who are qualifying for it.

Unsurprisingly, in a poll conducted for the Privy Council in 2021, support for electric vehicle rebates is highest among Canadians with post-secondary education and a household income of over $100,000. Of course it is! They are the only people who can afford these vehicles in the first place.

While the subsidy carrot is being offered to high-income Canadians in hopes of coaxing them into electric vehicles, the taxation stick is being offered to people who drive pickup trucks. The government already punitively taxes SUVs and vans by as much as $1,000 to $4,000 depending on the fuel economy of the vehicle. In the latest government emissions plan, it is recommended that this tax be applied to pickup trucks that used to be exempt.

Most of the people who drive SUVs and vans are people with large families or tradespeople. They dont have the option to simply buy or use a compact car, or the income to buy an expensive electric vehicle. If the tax is expanded to pickup trucks, workers from landscapers to plumbers will be punished for driving the only vehicles they can to ply their trades.

Can a parent with five children afford to simply upgrade to a comparable electric SUV? I doubt it. Electric SUVs start at around $50,000. How about a carpenter who needs a pickup truck in order to move material and tools to work? Electric pickup trucks start at around $70,000 and can go well over $100,000 with options.

Lower- and middle-income people will be forced to pay that extra tax on their vehicles because it still is far less expensive than getting an electric equivalent.

The current government scheme of taxation under the guise of environmentalism is hiking taxes on middle- to lower-income citizens and transferring those dollars into the pockets of high-income ones. For a government that likes to claim it stands up for the little guy and wants to address income disparity, they sure are going about it in a terrible way.

Maybe one day, electric vehicles will indeed manage to replace all combustion engines. We are still a long way from there though. Electric vehicles are terribly expensive, have limited ranges, and can be time-consuming to charge. Not every home is well-equipped to charge electric vehicles either. Electric home upgrades for car charging can range into the thousands. If you live in an apartment building, you may be totally out of luck.

For now, electric vehicles are a novelty for well-heeled city dwellers. They provide a way for high-income people to virtue signal about their green living practices but remain well out of reach for the common Canadian. The rebates offered for these luxury vehicle owners are bad enough already. It is a slap in the face to the people who are forced to pay extra taxes due to not being able to afford to get into the electric vehicle market.

If government electric vehicle rebates only managed to get 5 percent of Canadians into electric vehicles by now, they wont draw many more people into electric vehicles in years to come. The world isnt becoming any greener due to government initiatives. They are policies that simply drain the vulnerable and give the resources to those who never needed them in the first place.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Cristen Collen (L) and Apryl Edwards attended Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Detroit Opera House in Detroit, on April 22, 2022. (Xinxin Teng/Epoch Times)

DETROIT, Mich.It was truly a transcendental experience, said friends Cristen Colleen and Apryl Edwards of Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Detroit Opera House.

New York-based Shen Yun was fulfilling its mission of reviving Chinas traditional culture by presenting a repertoire of story-based dances and music from China before communism.

It was not the first time that Ms. Edwards had seen Shen Yun, and every time, it has been an amazing, energizing experience, she said. Ms. Edwards is a video editor and owner of Spring Flix Media.

Im happy to see were able to bridge the gap between America and China through music and arts and dance. Its so important because we get to see how much we really are connected, she said.

The dances depict events from Chinas five millennia history including the regimes current persecution of the gentle spiritual practice Falun Dafa, which teaches people to live by the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.

While Ms. Colleen enjoyed the artistry of the performance, she was deeply moved by one mini-drama portraying the persecution, abuse of human rights, and difficulties of life today in China. The message was delivered in a soft, tactful, but forthright manner, she said. She commended the company for boldly presenting the truth.

I felt extreme compassion in that moment. And weve had minor restrictions in this country over the last few years  Weve got just a small taste. And so, I just want the Chinese people to know that everyone around the world loves them.

And if we knew how to help more, we would. Coming to [a performance such as Shen Yun] is one small step, Ms. Colleen said, adding that it was a story that the world needed to hear.

Ms. Edwards was captivated by the storyline, the colors, and the costumes. She was entranced by the dance Plum Blossom in Spring. In this dance, plum blossoms flowering in the cold of winter demonstrate beauty and courage in the face of trying conditions.

She praised the performers skill in presenting Chinas true traditional culture.

The friends also commented on feeling energy emanating from the stage.

So there was  an indigo-like glow behind some of the actors. When I was watching it  I wasnt really present. But when I allowed myself to go deeper and feel the music, I started to see the energy. I saw the energy with my eyes because it was like a glowing spirit  from the Creator, Ms. Colleen said. It was indigo and it filled the theater, she added.

I saw the energy with my eyes because it was like a glowing spirit  from the Creator.

She sensed that Shen Yuns music united the theater audience.

[The energy] is so vibrant and awake. And it allows us to see more than what we already know, Ms. Edwards said.

The friends felt that the energy was flowing throughout the performance and that it had healing power.

There was a moment when I was watching and I forgot where I was and I giggled like a child. And it was quiet in the theater, and I was in the second row. I went ho, ho, because something made me feel childlike in a positive way. I felt happy, I felt joy, I felt playful. I felt no problems, no concerns of the world. I felt interconnected, Ms. Colleen said.

And at that moment [when] I giggled,  a woman who was in the orchestrabecause I was in the second rowshe and I made eye contact, and we smiled. And that was the moment when I thought, music brings us together.

It brings us all together: music, art, and it doesnt matter where you are in the world, it brings us together. This [performance] is very important, she added.

Upon hearing that Shen Yun had been banned from performing in China, Ms. Edwards felt emotional.

We need this energy to come to all cities in the world, so we can connect  and remind [each other] that were all one, she said. Were feeling connected to another part of the world. Whether we visited there or not, were connected to it.

Ms. Colleen said that, in her opinion, the energy from Shen Yun had a profound effect on the audience. She had observed happiness, politeness, and friendliness among people.

It was much stronger during the break and after than it was before.

In ancient China, artists were believed to be messengers from heaventhe conduit between deities and earthly beings.

Some people believe in Buddha, some people believe in Christ  or different religions. And I think that Shen Yun [was careful] not declaring one Creator but definitely giving the message that there is one and that there is a brighter light. And I think today was proof that that light brought us together, Ms. Colleen said.

Reporting by Xinxin Teng and Diane Cordemans.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006.
A Lebanese army soldier gestures to health workers inside an ambulance after a boat capsized off the Lebanese coast of Tripoli overnight, at the entrance of port of Tripoli, northern Lebanon, on April 24, 2022. (Omar Ibrahim//Reuters)

6 Dead in Migrant Boat Capsizing, Lebanon Minister Says

TRIPOLISix people died when a boat capsized off the Lebanese coast of Tripoli overnight, including at least one child, Lebanese transport minister Ali Hamie told Reuters.

The small dinghy carrying around 60 people sunk off the coast on Saturday night with both Lebanese and Syrians aboard.

Hamie told Reuters that a young girls body was retrieved on Saturday night and that the army had recovered another five on Sunday morning.

The army had previously said the vessel had left the coast illegally. In a press conference on Sunday, it said naval forces had crashed into the dinghy as the smuggler in charge tried to evade the military.

The Lebanese military saved at least 47 people, but we dont know how many more are missing because we dont know the total number of those aboard, said Hamie.

Lebanese army search for survivors after a migrant boat capsized off the Lebanese coast of Tripoli overnight, near port of Tripoli, northern Lebanon, on April 24, 2022. (Omar Ibrahim/Reuters)

Tensions were rising in Tripoli on Sunday as relatives of the victims gathered in agitated crowds outside hospitals where those hurt in the sinking were receiving treatment.

Mohammad Damnawi, a Lebanese man who survived the boat sinking, said he didnt know if his wife and son had survived.

I was with them. I managed to get out, he said.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced a national day of mourning on Monday.

Lebanons economic crisis has seen the local currency lose more than 90 percent of its value and pushed waves of Lebanese as well as Syrian refugees to try the sea journey to Europe on small dinghies.

The United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon Najat Rochdi expressed her condolences on Sunday and said UN agencies were on the ground to help.
Bystanders walk through the scene of bombing at a seaside restaurant at Lido beach in Mogadishu, Somalia, on April 23, 2022. (Feisal Omar/Reuters)

Six People Killed in Blast at Restaurant in Somalias Capital: Ambulance Official

MOGADISHUSix people were killed on Friday by a blast at a seaside restaurant in Somalias capital Mogadishu, an ambulance service official told Reuters.

So far we have carried six dead civilians and seven others injured, Abdikadir Abdirahman, director of Aamin Ambulance Service said.

Somalias terrorist group al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the blast, with their military operations spokesperson Abdiasis Abu Musab telling Reuters they were targeting security officers and politicians of the apostate government.

Al Shabaab frequently carries out bombings in Mogadishu and elsewhere as part of its war against the Horn of Africa countrys central government.

The terrorist group has been fighting for years to topple the central government and establish its own rule.

The Pescatore Seafood Restaurant, which opened recently in Lido Beach in Mogadishus south, was frequented by security and government officials.

It was unclear if any high-ranking officials or security personnel were among the dead or injured.

Last week hundreds of Somali lawmakers were finally sworn into office, paving the way for them to pick the countrys new leader, a process that has been delayed for months amid a power struggle between the current president and the prime minister.

By Abdi Sheikh
A Taiwanese soldier throws a smoke bomb during a demonstration at an army base in Kaohsiung on Jan. 6, 2022. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

Taiwan Can Learn from Ukraine in Defending Against Possible Chinese Invasion: Analysts

Taiwan may be forced to confront a saturation of missile attacks and cyberattacks against critical infrastructure in a fight to maintain its de facto independence from the Chinese regime. Taking tips from Ukraine could prove to be beneficial to its survival, according to experts.

Russia is using a variety of cruise missiles and short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) to inflict damage to the Ukrainian military and countrys infrastructure. While Ukrainian defense forces remain intact, they have not been able to stop the ability of the Russian military to conduct the missile attacks.

Retired rear admiral Mark Montgomery, who serves as senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation and senior fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Epoch Times there is a lesson here for Taiwan to learn, explaining that it is imperative the small East Asian country to boost its short-range to medium-range air defense capabilities against both cruise missiles and SRBMs as a possible invasion from China looms closer.

The Chinese regime views Taiwan as part of its territory, even though the island has been governed as a separate entity for more than seven decades. Beijing has vowed to take control of the island by force, if necessary.

In February, the United States approved a possible $100 million sale of equipment and services to Taiwan to sustain, maintain, and improve its Patriot missile defense system. According to the statement by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the proposed upgrades to the air defense would help improve the security of the recipient and assist in maintaining political stability, military balance, economic and progress in the region.

Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan faces a substantial threat from the sea. To that end, Montgomery said the land-based version of the Harpoon Black II anti-ship missile would do a lot of damage to an inbound [naval] invasion force. As part of a recently awarded Harpoon Coastal Defense System (HCDS) contract for Taiwan, nearly $500 million dollars was granted to Boeing to begin the process of supplying 100 launcher transporter units, 25 radar units, and HCDS training equipment.

Protect Against Cyberattacks

On the heels of the Russian invasion of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Russia managed to knock out electric power for tens of thousands of citizens in western Ukraine. In the following years, an onslaught of cyberattacks against Ukrainian government agencies, the countrys banking system, and more have ensued.

Clearly, the Ukrainians have upped their cyber protection game, as [the Eastern European country] has become much better at fending off [Russian cyberattacks] in 2022 than was done in the years past, according to Montgomery. Taiwan can learn from that.

Yet one day before the invasion, Ukraines military and infrastructure came face to face with a massive Chinese cyberattack, according to a report.

Meanwhile, Taiwan government agencies alone receive about 2.5 million cyberattacks and probes per day from China, an official has said.

A mass power outage in Taiwan in early March further reinforces Montgomerys concern about cyberwarfare. While a blackout has been attributed to operational negligence, he said the Chinese regime will not cease to look for vulnerabilities to the islands government agencies and critical infrastructure. Taiwan has no choice but to improve their cyber protection game, Montgomery said.

Utilize the Civilian Population

Ukrainian civilians have been trained for war as a second-tier line of defense, participating in drills to bolster their fighting capabilities and assist the Ukrainian military. According to global security expert Benjamin Varlese, the use of civilians to assist in protecting the country has been an effective strategy. Not only have civilians offered first aid to the injured, but theyve also been successful in stalling Russian military advances, he said.

In the event of an attack from China, Taiwan has also been teaching first aid and preparing its citizens to assist the islands armed forces.

Taiwans citizens could definitely be used to slow an invasion from China, forcing what could be a speedy military invasion into a much lengthier insurgency, Varlese said.

Any such delay to an invasion could cause the Chinese regime to take a tactical pause and force them to rethink their strategies, he added.

According to Varlese, the window is narrow as the Russia Ukraine conflict unfolds as the Chinese regime currently finds itself not quite as  as it was prior to the conflict, having seen the Wests unifying response to Moscows aggression.

Before things start escalating more dramatically, a civilian population that administers more than first aid is clearly something that should be given serious consideration as a deterrent.

Thwarting the Financial Burden

As Taiwans most formidable ally, the United States is witnessing the burgeoning cost of money and lives attributed to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, according to Montgomery.

Its very expensive to address the invasion and impact of an authoritarian state like Russia, and the same would hold true for China, he said.

As of April 22, Washington has committed $3.4 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the start of the invasion, and more than $4 billion since the start of the Biden administration, according to the Pentagon.

Should Russia fail, Montgomery warned about the future cost to rebuild Ukraine after the invasion is over. Its clear that we would have been much better served by investments and sanctions made left of bang, ahead of the crisis, as this might have deterred Russia, he said.

But because Russia was not deterred, Montgomery said, the United States is now going to be spending a lot more money cleaning up the mess.

The decision to fully invest in protecting Taiwan cannot wait, according to Montgomery. The U.S. cant wait on exquisite intel, but the lesson from Russia is that deterrence requires action ahead of the crisis, [adding that] its too late once the crisis starts.
A boat travels on the Huangpu River as the skyline of the city is seen, including the Shanghai Tower, in Shanghai, China, on Aug. 28, 2020. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Thousands of Employees at Shanghais Tesla, Apple Supply Factories Infected With COVID-19

Shanghai continues to implement the Chinese Communist Partys harsh dynamic clearing COVID-19 pandemic control policy, while the outbreak continues spreading in China.

Employees of the well-known company Quanta (Shanghai) Computer Co., Ltd., which produces Tesla accessories and Apple laptops, revealed to The Epoch Times recently that thousands of workers were infected, and their calls to the outside world for help were silenced.

Shanghai, an eastern Chinese megacity with 26 million residents, has been locked down for more than three weeks, severely impacting the Chinese economy and the international supply chain. On April 16, Shanghai officials issued the Guidelines for the Prevention and Control of the Epidemic of Industrial Enterprises Resuming Work and Production to push for the resumption of production in manufacturing.

According to the Chinese regimes official media Xinhua News Agency, two factories of Quanta Shanghai Manufacturing City began to partially resume production on April 15.

However, according to employees of Quanta Computer, the company is still facing COVID-19 infections at the workplace.

An employee surnamed Li of Quanta Computer told The Epoch Times on April 19 that he was living in one of the Quanta factory dormitories where many people had tested positive for COVID-19.

There are positive cases in the dormitory next door to me. No one was taking care of the confirmed patients, and they are not being transported to hospitals. Cross-infection occurred in the dormitory, he said. There are more than 40,000 people in the factory. Thousands have been infected.

He said that with so many confirmed cases, alarms have been installed on all the dormitory doors, but they do nothing about the risk of cross-infection in public areas in the dormitory, nor do they disinfect them.

It is useless to put the alarms, he said. Is it to prevent us from going out?

Photos from the Quanta Computer company facilities in Shanghai during recent COVID-19 outbreak in April 2022. (Supplied)

Li said: In the dormitory building, drinking water facilities and toilets are shared. I dont know what (pandemic prevention) measures the factory has taken.

For doing the COVID-19 nucleic acid test, so many people are pulled out at night, he said. More than 2,000 people in the building would be infected, and no one takes any [prevention] measures. When will the lockdown be lifted?

Another Quanta Computer employee surnamed Lin, told The Epoch Times on April 19 that the factory has now banned employees from speaking about the outbreak to the outside world.

In a factory with tens of thousands of people, the factory has banned everyone from speaking up. There is chaos here, she said. Some people in the factory area have resumed work, and the rest are still in isolation in the dormitory. Those testing positive are put in dormitory building A for isolation, and some are sent to isolation centers outside Shanghai. The COVID-19 nucleic acid testing has stopped for several days.

Another employee surnamed Liu at the Quanta Computer factory told The Epoch Times, The companys last test for nucleic acid was on April 13, and on April 14, they transferred some people to other places, and no nucleic acid testing has been done since then.

Now, there are a lot of people who have cold-like symptoms in the dormitory, Liu said.

The Epoch Times called Quanta Computer Company, Shanghai CDC, and the citys 12345 hotline to inquire about the matter but no one answered the phone.

Zhao Fenghua and Hong Ning contributed to the report.
Air Force Academy cadets march into their graduation ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colo. on April 18, 2020. (Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

US Air Force General Convicted of Sexual Misconduct

Maj. Gen. William T. Cooley of the U.S. Air Force was found guilty of sexual assault by a military court in Ohio on April 23, becoming the first general to be convicted in the 75-year history of the military wing.

Cooley was charged with forcibly kissing a victim while in a car after an evening barbeque in New Mexico on Aug. 12, 2018, according to an April 23 statement made by the Air Force.

This case clearly demonstrates the commitment of Air Force leaders to fully investigate the facts and hold Airmen of any rank accountable for their actions when they fail to uphold Air Force standards, said Col. Eric Mejia, staff judge advocate for Air Force Materiel Command.

In total, 10 witnesses testified at the trial, the first being Cooleys victim, who described the assault and its impact as an F5 tornado that ruined everything in its path. On the day of the incident, both individuals attended a social event where Cooley had consumed alcohol. He asked her for a ride, during which Cooley made sexual advances on the victim and forced himself on her.

Cooley denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty. The victim and her spouse reported the assault to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations in December 2019.

Cooley was charged with sexual assault according to Article 120 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice with three specifications. As per the Uniform Code, an accused person has the right to trial by either a sole military judge or by court member jurors. Cooley chose the first option.

Of the three charges, the first was that the general kissed the lips and tongue of the victim with an intent to satisfy his sexual desire.

Col. Christina M. Jimenez, the senior military judge in the case, judged Cooley guilty of this crime, dismissing two other crimes of touching.

Ryan Guilds, the victims attorney, said it takes incredible courage on the part of sexual assault victims to come forward and report abuse, face trial, and get through cross-examination.

It is very hard to be a survivor in a criminal case. That is one of many reasons you see so few of these cases go to court-martial, Guilds said. At the end of the day, she wanted a process that was fair.  She is incredibly grateful for the prosecution team that worked on this case.

The sentencing phase of the case begins on April 25.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies at a House hearing in Washington on July 31, 2020. (Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)

White House Official Says Courts Play Important Role After Fauci Questions Involvement

The White House on Sunday contradicted Dr. Anthony Fauci on mask mandate decisions and said that courts play an important role, coming after Fauci publicly complained that a Florida judges decision rescinding the mandate sets a dangerous precedent.

Obviously, the judiciary has an important role to play, White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha said on CNNs State of the Union. What you heard out of the administration, out of the Department of Justice [DOJ], is the assessment that this is an incorrect decision and the DOJ is now appealing this decision.

Jha, who was named to the position several weeks ago, said that court decisions should follow the science, without elaborating. The DOJ said it would appeal U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelles ruling last week on behalf of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which set the mask rule on public transportation and airplanes in early 2021.

Mizelle had argued that the CDC, in crafting its masking rule, violated federal administrative law by not allowing a period of public comment before enacting the mandate.

Late last week, Fauci, who has headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, suggested that judges with no experience in public health shouldnt make such decisions in an apparent reference to Mizelles order.

Fauci asserted in a CBS News interview on April 21 that the CDC has the capability, through a large number of trained epidemiologists, scientists, to be able to make projections and make recommendations  far more than a judge with no experience in public health.

Mizelles ruling also set a dangerous precedent, he said, without addressing the substance of Mizelles arguments in her order.

After his remarks during the interview, Republicans suggested that Fauci has a poor understanding of federal law.

Paging Dr. FauciThats not how America operates. The Constitution applies to you too, Doc! wrote Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) on April 21.

Following the judges order, most major U.S. airlines, Amtrak, Uber, and Lyft announced they would remove their mask rules. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which enforced the rule, said it would stop enforcing the order.

Several Democratic-led cities, including New York, Boston, and San Francisco, will require passengers on public transportation to wear masks in the meantime. Philadelphia, however, ended its indoor mask mandate on April 23just a few days after it was reinstated.

Were in a situation that we really had not anticipated being in this soon, but it is good news, said Cheryl Bettigole, Philadelphias health commissioner. It appears that we no longer need to mandate masks in Philadelphia and that we can actually move to simply a strong recommendation, she said, according to local media reports.

COVID-19 is the illness caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
Conservative member of Parliament Leslyn Lewis rises during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Dec. 2, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

WHO Shouldnt Encroach on Canadas Health Sovereignty: Leslyn Lewis

Conservative Party leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis says that the World Health Organization shouldnt encroach on Canadas health sovereignty with a global pandemic response treaty, and that Canada needs its own pandemic strategy.

The WHOs governing body, the World Health Assembly (WHA), announced in December 2021 that world leaders have reached a consensus to begin drafting a global treaty to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.

Lewis warned that we need to be vigilant about what we sign on to and what we consent to, adding that we do not need the WHO to limit our health-care sovereignty, such as when Canadas borders will be closed or what kind of personal protective equipment will be used.

I have, and will continue to sound an alarm when any international body attempts to encroach on our nations sovereignty. We do not need the WHO telling Canada how we should respond to a pandemic. We need our own pandemic response plan, Lewis wrote in a Twitter post on April 22, reiterating her points made during an interview with CBC News earlier in the week.

In the interview, CBCs Vassy Kapelos questioned why Lewis was sounding an alarm and making an insinuation or an implication that Canada would give up its sovereignty to a global organization, which is part and parcel of bigger theories out there that are criticized as being conspiracy theories. Kapelos called it an attempt to undermine faith in global institutions and a theory without evidentiary proof.

Lewis, who holds a PhD in international law, explained that an international treaty works like a contract, which brings parties together to set the terms in the process of its negotiation.

I am alerting Canadians to the fact that this is happening, and we do not even have our own pandemic response, so how can we be powerful at the table when we dont even know what we want as a nation? Lewis said.

Instead, she said Canada needs to create its own pandemic strategy where the government is accountable to Canadians

Canada is a sovereign nation. It should maintain control of its health-care system, including its pandemic response and planning, Lewis said.

We need to increase the capacity of hospitals to deal with the pandemic. We need to make sure that we have pandemic funding that will relieve some of the burden that was put on the health-care system.  We need to make sure that we create beds that we can better respond to pandemics, and we do not need an international organization like the WHO to tell us how to do that.

Under the consensus decision adopted in December 2021, the World Health Assembly agreed to create an intergovernmental negotiating body, whose next meeting is to be held by or before Aug. 1, 2022, to discuss progress on a working draft of the global treaty. It will also hold public hearings to inform its deliberations and deliver a progress report to the WHA in 2023. A final report will be submitted to the WHA for its consideration in 2024.

In an article posted on her campaign website, Lewis said her predictions that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is leading Canada towards a socialist coup are coming true, citing her October 2020 op-ed in the National Post.

There will be no need to throw dissenters in jail because new societal protocols can be put in place and those who fail to obey the ever-changing societal norms can simply be fined or jailed for minor infractions, she wrote in the op-ed.

Lewis said Trudeau has since raised questions about whether we should tolerate people who disagreed with him on certain issues, while an estimated six million Canadians still cant travel freely in their own country because federal restrictions ban unvaccinated Canadians from boarding federally operated planes, boats, and trains.

The MP for Ontarios HaldimandNorfolk riding said that while the op-ed had a negative impact on her career, she was still glad to have written it.

It reminded me that speaking the truth is always its own reward, Lewis said. I will continue to do so.
Hunter Biden walks to Marine One on the Ellipse outside the White House in Washington on May 22, 2021. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Wikipedia Deletes Hunter Biden Investment Firm Entry

Wikipedia editors deleted an entry for Hunter Bidens investment company Rosemont Seneca Partners, according to comments on the Talk Page of the entry.

Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, co-founded U.S. investment and advisory firm Rosemont Seneca Partners in 2009, along with Chris Heinz, the stepson of former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and Devon Archer, one of his business partners. The firm has been under congressional scrutiny and has faced questions about the younger Bidens overseas business dealings.

According to the Wikipedia Talk Page, the Rosemont Seneca entry was deleted on April 20. Some editors said the entry was not notable and suggested that it was thin on details.

This organization is only mentioned in connection with its famous founders, Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz, said Wikipedia editor Alex, who claimed that keeping [the page] around could turn it into a magnet for conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden. That editor didnt elaborate or provide any evidence.

Its a non-notable company with a tangential connection to some conspiracy-related thing that didnt happen, another wrote.

Other editors, meanwhile, suggested the entire page be merged with the main Hunter Biden entry, which briefly mentions his involvement with Rosemont Seneca. However, arguments in favor of merging the pages were rejected, according to the Talk page.

There are no in-depth references that discuss the company, only passing references with a mention here and there of a transaction, one editor wrote. That fails our criteria for establishing notability. The Hunter Biden article already mentions this firm so I dont see any need for a Merge or Redirect.

Rosemont Seneca Partners became a shareholder of a Chinese investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR), which was incorporated in Shanghai in 2013. Biden resigned from his seat on BHRs board of directors in 2019.

Curtis Houck, of the Media Research Center, told the New York Post that the decision suggests a double standard.

If a Trump-linked company had its Wikipedia page wiped or one from the Russia probe, its more than a safe bet to say that CNN would be dedicating multiple reporters to following the internet trail, he told the outlet.

The decision is sure to draw further criticism against Wikipedias editors, who have often been accused, including by one of its founders, Larry Sanger, of tilting far to the left.

Theres a very big, nasty, complex game being played behind the scenes to make the article say what somebody wants them to say, Sanger said in 2021, accusing the website of disseminating propaganda.

For example, editors have attempted to delete the page Mass killings under communist regimes, which includes documented atrocities committed by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Chinese Communist Party founder Mao Zedong, Ethiopian communist leader Mengistu Haile Mariam, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, and North Korean founder Kim Il-Sung.

Representatives of Wikipedia didnt respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
NEW YORK (AP)  A federal judge ordered the head of New York City's jails to appear at an upcoming status conference on conditions at the troubled Rikers Island jail complex, after prosecutors said the situation had become so dire that it might be necessary to install court supervision over the beleaguered system to institute necessary reforms.

U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain directed city Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina to attend the session scheduled for Tuesday.

She issued the order after getting a letter earlier in the week from the office of U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.

In the letter, prosecutors said, The jails are in a state of crisis, inmates and staff are being seriously injured, and action is desperately needed now, and questioned whether the city and corrections department had the ability, expertise, and will to swiftly make the changes necessary to bring true reform.

Sixteen inmates died at Rikers last year, and three have died so far in 2022.

Prosecutors went on to suggest that more aggressive steps could be sought, including putting an independent authority in place to implement reforms.

In her order handed down Thursday, the judge noted the gravity and urgency of the security situation, and the consequent need for clarity as to planned changes and the implementation.

In a statement, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Molina is laying the groundwork for long-term change.

Fixing Rikers is critically important, a moral imperative, and we need to get it right. But to do that, we need the opportunity to implement our plan, he said. These are generational challenges, deeply ingrained, and no administration can solve them in less than four months. We look forward to continuing our close collaboration with the federal monitor and all other stakeholders.
NORWALK  The Republican Town Committee has selected lifelong city resident and outspoken critic of Mayor Harry Rilling to fill the vacancy soon to be left by Common Council member Tom Keegan.

Keegan, the lone Republican on the council, announced last month he will resign from his seat as he plans a move to Florida in July. Keegan has been the only Republican member of the council since he was elected in 2019 and is one of two members representing District D.

The RTCs District D contingent voted last week for business owner Bryan Meek to fill the vacancy, RTC Chair Fred Wilms said.

Three RTC members initially vied for Keegans seat, but the election came down to two residents. Meek won over fellow District D resident Carl Dickens, who previously ran for the council in 2019.

Growing up in Norwalk, Meek attended Silvermine and Cranbury elementary schools, West Rocks Middle School, and Norwalk High School. He worked for the Department of Public Works in the summer during college and eventually purchased a house in District D, he said.

Meek has served as an RTC treasurer for more than 10 years and served more than five years on the citys Parking Authority, he said. He also filled a vacated Board of Education seat for the 2015-19 term.

In those 10 years, we never had a deficit in accounts, while paying down garage debt and kicking off what was then a smart facilities plan that has since been scuttled by our opponents across the aisle, Meek said. My last vote on the school board was against the insane late high school start times. Like that, I was right about many other things too lengthy to list.

In being elected for council, Meek said he plans to focus on improving infrastructure as Norwalks population continues to grow.

Ask anybody who's lived here for more than 10 years, the city has drastically changed with no plan for addressing the real traffic issues and problems with infrastructure, Meek said. We are left to the devices with the state and a mayor who will never challenge them to do what is right for Norwalk.  No one cares and I'm here to change that.

Earlier this month, in emails shared with Hearst Connecticut Media, former District D Council candidate and RTC Chair Dickens asked to be considered for the role by the committee.

He wants to make Norwalk a great and safe place to live, work, and play, Dickens wrote in an email to RTC Secretary Liz Tardif. These were the goals of Candidate Dickens in 2019 and Councilman Keegan, who has served in District D well and the entire city of Norwalk.

Dickens previously served as chairman of the RTC for about two years as well as four years on the Oak Hills Park Authority, he said.

Another former Common Council candidate, Matt Merluzzi, who ran for the council at-large seat in last Novembers election, withdrew from consideration for the vacancy last week.

After three weeks of attending all the committee meetings that Keegan is on I feel it best that I withdraw my name for contention for this council seat, Merluzzi wrote in an email shared with Hearst Connecticut. Although part of me fears that I am making a mistake in backing out of this opportunity, I have a greater fear that I will not carry the torch for Keegan in the way necessary to be the only republican representative in Norwalk. The hours, and specifically the timing of the hours, are daunting for a single man such as myself.

Merluzzi, who serves on the Conservation Commission, said his experience and interests would best serve the city and Republican party if he remained on the Commission, as he bears an environmental bent.

abigail.brone@hearstmediact.com
COVID-19 vaccinations are at a critical juncture as companies test whether new approaches like combination shots or nasal drops can keep up with a mutating coronavirus  even though its not clear if changes are needed.

Already theres public confusion about who should get a second booster now and who can wait. There's also debate about whether pretty much everyone might need an extra dose in the fall.

Im very concerned about booster fatigue causing a loss of confidence in vaccines that still offer very strong protection against COVID-19s worst outcomes, said Dr. Beth Bell of the University of Washington, an adviser to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Despite success in preventing serious illness and death, there's growing pressure to develop vaccines better at fending off milder infections, too  as well as options to counter scary variants.

We go through a fire drill it seems like every quarter, every three months or so when another mutant causes frantic tests to determine if the shots are holding, Pfizer vaccine chief Kathrin Jansen told a recent meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Yet seeking improvements for the next round of vaccinations may seem like a luxury for U.S. families anxious to protect their littlest children  kids under 5 who are not yet eligible for a shot. Moderna's Dr. Jacqueline Miller told The Associated Press that its application to give two low-dose shots to the youngest children would be submitted to the Food and Drug Administration fairly soon. Pfizer hasn't yet reported data on a third dose of its extra-small shot for tots, after two didn't prove strong enough.

COMBINATION SHOTS MAY BE NEXT

The original COVID-19 vaccines remain strongly protective against serious illness, hospitalization and death, especially after a booster dose, even against the most contagious variants.

Updating the vaccine recipe to match the latest variants is risky, because the next mutant could be completely unrelated. So companies are taking a cue from the flu vaccine, which offers protection against three or four different strains in one shot every year.

Moderna and Pfizer are testing 2-in-1 COVID-19 protection that they hope to offer this fall. Each bivalent shot would mix the original, proven vaccine with an omicron-targeted version.

Moderna has a hint the approach could work. It tested a combo shot that targeted the original version of the virus and an earlier variant named beta  and found vaccine recipients developed modest levels of antibodies capable of fighting not just beta but also newer mutants like omicron. Moderna now is testing its omicron-targeted bivalent candidate.

But there's a looming deadline. FDA's Dr. Doran Fink said if any updated shots are to be given in the fall, the agency would have to decide on a recipe change by early summer.

DONT EXPECT BOOSTERS EVERY FEW MONTHS

For the average person, two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine plus one booster  a total of three shots  gets you set up and ready for what may become an annual booster, said Dr. David Kimberlin, a CDC adviser from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

After that first booster, CDC data suggests an additional dose offers most people an incremental, temporary benefit.

Why the emphasis on three shots? Vaccination triggers development of antibodies that can fend off coronavirus infection but naturally wane over time. The next line of defense: Memory cells that jump into action to make new virus-fighters if an infection sneaks in. Rockefeller University researchers found those memory cells become more potent and able to target more diverse versions of the virus after the third shot.

Even if someone who's vaccinated gets a mild infection, thanks to those memory cells there's still plenty of time to protect you against severe illness, said Dr. Paul Offit of the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia.

But some people  those with severely weakened immune systems  need more doses up-front for a better chance at protection.

And Americans 50 and older are being offered a second booster, following similar decisions by Israel and other countries that offer the extra shot to give older people a little more protection.

The CDC is developing advice to help those eligible decide whether to get an extra shot now or wait. Among those who might want a second booster sooner are the elderly, people with health problems that make them particularly vulnerable, or who are at high risk of exposure from work or travel.

COULD NASAL VACCINES BLOCK INFECTION?

Its hard for a shot in the arm to form lots of virus-fighting antibodies inside the nose where the coronavirus latches on. But a nasal vaccine might offer a new strategy to prevent infections that disrupt peoples everyday lives even if theyre mild.

When I think about what would make me get a second booster, I actually would want to prevent infection, said Dr. Grace Lee of Stanford University, who chairs CDCs immunization advisory committee. I think we need to do better.

Nasal vaccines are tricky to develop and it's not clear how quickly any could become available. But several are in clinical trials globally. One in late-stage testing, manufactured by Indias Bharat Biotech, uses a chimpanzee cold virus to deliver a harmless copy of the coronavirus spike protein to the lining of the nose.

I certainly do not want to abandon the success we have had with COVID-19 shots, said Dr. Michael Diamond of Washington University in St. Louis, who helped create the candidate thats now licensed to Bharat.

But were going to have a difficult time stopping transmission with the current systemic vaccines," Diamond added. We have all learned that.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
PARIS (AP)  Paper ballots tucked in paper envelopes. No absentee voting, and no early voting either. French voters in Sundays presidential election are using and old-school system that has defied calls for more flexibility or modernization.

As Frances 48.8 million voters are invited to choose between President Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen, here is a look at how the French election works:

HOW DO THEY CAST BALLOTS?

Voters make their choices in a booth, with the curtains closed, then place their ballot in an envelope that is then put into a transparent ballot box. They must show photo identification and sign a document, next to their name, to complete the process.

Machine-voting has been allowed on an experimental basis, but the purchase of new machines has been frozen since 2008 due to security concerns. Only about 60 towns still use them, out of 35,000 municipalities in France.

Last year, Macrons centrist government tried to pass an amendment to allow early voting by machine to encourage electoral participation amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Senate, led by a conservative majority, rejected the measure, arguing it was announced with too little notice and wasn't solid enough legally.

A nationwide effort to streamline voter rolls, notably to remove people who had died or changed addresses, led to some people being unable to vote in the first round presidential election April 10. The state statistics agency reported that about 3,100 voters who were removed by error were restored to voting lists in time for the second round.

ARE THERE OTHER OPTIONS?

Mail-in voting was banned in 1975 amid fears of potential fraud.

People who cant go to the polls for various reasons can authorize someone else to vote for them.

To do so, a voter must fill out a form ahead of time and bring it to a police station. Up to 7% of people voted by proxy in the last presidential election five years ago. French people living abroad vote in embassies or consulates.

Local authorities can organize vans or buses to pick up older people from nursing homes to bring them to voting stations, and prisons set up voting stations inside their facilities.

HOW ARE THE BALLOTS COUNTED?

Volunteers count the ballots one by one, by hand. Officials then use state-run software to register and report results.

But legally only the paper counts. If a result is challenged, the paper ballots are recounted manually.

For towns using machines, the results are registered locally and then reported to the Interior Ministry, which oversees elections. The ministry said it received no reports of irregularities involving voting machines in the first-round vote on April 10.

WHAT ABOUT COVID-19?

Most pandemic restrictions have been lifted in the country. The number of cases is significantly lower than earlier this year, but there are still more than 80,000 new confirmed infections each day.

People who test positive for the virus can go to the polls. They are strongly advised to wear a mask and follow other health guidelines.

Voters can wash their hands at polling stations, which also have hand sanitizer available. Equipment is to be frequently cleaned. Each voting station lets fresh air in for at least 10 minutes every hour.

___

Follow the APs coverage of the French election at https://apnews.com/hub/french-election-2022
Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has filed a lawsuit against President Muhammadu Buhari over the failure to unblock the phone lines of over 72 million telecommunication subscribers barred from making calls on their SIMs.

The suit followed the recent directive by the Federal Government to telecommunications companies to block outgoing calls on all unlinked lines, as the deadline for the verification expired on March 31. Following the directive, over 72 million subscribers have now been barred from making calls.

In the suit number FHC/L/CS/711/2022 filed last week at the Federal High Court in Lagos, SERAP is seeking: an order setting aside the directive by President Buhari to telecommunications companies to block outgoing calls on all unlinked lines without due process of law, and for being inconsistent with the requirements of legality, necessity and proportionality.

SERAP is also seeking an order of perpetual injunction restraining President Buhari and the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami from unlawfully directing telecommunications companies to block outgoing calls on all unlinked lines, without due process and in violation of Nigerians human rights.

SERAP is further seeking an order directing and compelling President Buhari to ensure adequate infrastructure and logistics to allow Nigerians including persons with disabilities, older persons, and persons living in remote areas, to capture their data and conclude registration to obtain National Identity Number (NIN).

In the suit, SERAP is arguing that, directing and compelling the Federal Government to unblock the phone lines unlawfully barred would be entirely consistent with the Nigerian Constitution 1999 [as amended], and the countrys international obligations to respect, protect, and promote socio-economic rights.

SERAP is also arguing that, Where agencies of government are allowed to operate at large and at their whims and caprices in the guise of performing their statutory duties, the end result will be anarchy, and authoritarianism, leading to the loss of the much cherished and constitutionally guaranteed freedom and liberty.

According to SERAP, It is in the interest of justice to grant this application. Access to telecommunications services is a condition sine qua non for the effective exercise of human rights. Therefore, the decision to block people from making calls is discriminatory, and a travesty.

SERAP is also arguing that, The blocking of phone lines of Nigerians without due process of law has disproportionately affected those on the margins of society. This has resulted in the discrimination of marginalized or vulnerable groups.

Joined in the suit as Respondents are Mr Abubakar Malami, SAN Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, and Mr Isa Pantami.

The suit filed on behalf of SERAP by its lawyers Kolawole Oluwadare and Opeyemi Owolabi, read in part: While Nigerian authorities have a legal responsibility to protect, ensure and secure the rights to life and property, any such responsibility ought to be discharged in conformity with human rights standards.

Fundamental rights are regarded as part of human rights and are protected to enhance human dignity and liberty.

Unblocking the phone lines unlawfully barred from making calls would improve respect for the rule of law, and ensure peoples right to freedom of expression, and access to information, as well as their right to associate with others.

The blocking of people from making calls constitutes impermissible restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, information, and association.

The rights to freedom of opinion and expression and access to information are protected under section 39 of the Nigerian Constitution, article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act.

These rights must be protected online as they are protected offline. Any restriction on these rights must be provided by law, be necessary in a democratic society and serve a legitimate aim.

The blocking of people from making calls on their SIMs also amounts to an arbitrary or unlawful interference with their right to family life, and socio-economic rights, as it unnecessarily or disproportionately interferes with these fundamental human rights.

The decision to block the phone lines also appears to be arbitrary, and lacks any legal framework, independent and judicial oversight. This may allow authorities to act in an unfettered and potentially arbitrary or unlawful manner.

Under international human rights law, States including Nigeria shall not engage in or condone any disruption of access to digital technologies for segments of the public or an entire population. States must refrain from cutting off access to telecommunications services.

Millions of Nigerians including persons with disabilities, elderly citizens, persons living in remote areas have been unable to capture their biometrics, and obtain their NINs due to logistical challenges, administrative and bureaucratic burdens, as well as the persistent collapse of the national grid.

The rights to freedom of expression, access to information, and freedom of association, whether offline or online, promote the democratic ideal by allowing citizens to voice their concerns, challenge governmental institutions, and hold the government accountable for its actions.

Kolawole Oluwadare

SERAP Deputy Director

24/4/2022

Lagos, Nigeria

Emails: [email protected] ; [email protected]

Twitter: @SERAPNigeria

Website: www.serap-nigeria.org

For more information or to request an interview, please contact us on: +2348160537202
At each stage in our life, we build rafts to get us from one level to anotherPushing through boundaries (How to create epic outcomes in life and business) By Innocent Usar



It has been a while since I read voraciously a work by a Nigerian author without dropping it, till I was done, because not only was it well written but because I could relate with it, and it made me reflect again on the construct called Nigeria.

I do not know exactly what was the driving force for Innocent Usar, but for the barracks raised lad turned great man, the journey through the book Pushing through boundaries (How to create epic outcomes in life and business) indeed is one of shared learning and teachable moments, 43 chapters, 307 pages, well-crafted around six parts, I cannot pick out which is my best part.

Reading through the first part reinforced my learning that Nigeria is where we are today because our leaders and citizens (A) do not have an aware mind, and (B) do not know the power of an aware mind. I saw myself asking what does the Nigerian mind run on, and as a cautious optimist on the Nigerian project, what is the unseen, as we head towards 2023, what does our mind hold, if Nigeria was a puzzle, is there a missing piece, or it is a jigsaw all completely gone wrong, a nation of people just running kitikiti and katakata.

So, let me share this, in Feb 2019 Egypt's transport minister resigned following a deadly train crash in Cairo that killed at least 25, leaving scores injured. In India, the administrative head of the nations railways, AK Mittal, resigned in Aug 2017 after two train derailments in five days in the northern state of Uttar, it was not the first time, sometime in 1999, there was a resignation too.

David Cameron resigned in June 2016 after the UK votes to leave the European Union. The then PM announced resignation following victory for leave supporters after a divisive referendum campaign, bringing an abrupt end to his six-year premiership, after the British public took the momentous decision to reject his entreaties and turn their back on the European Union.

Same David Cameron resigned as chairman of the advisory board to the Afiniti software company after its founder was accused of sexual harassment and assault in November 2021.

In Nigeria, there are no boundaries, there are no limits, our mind is not aware! The question then, is in Usars words succinctly shaping realityas we move along, nothing is new, when one listens, we hear a cacophony of noise, the thoughts are scary. The glasses are stained, visuals blurred, and perception is vague, for a nation and people that cannot agree on one thing. Leaders that are stiff necked, followers that are guided by primordial sentiments. We do not resign, because there is no remorse. No one holds up to his responsibility.

When I look at the debate on where the next President should come from, I borrow copiously from Usars word of caution that a map is not the territory, our difficult differences, and the odds, amongst many other factors, has left us a nation where her people cannot simply deal with the hard truths.

The story told by Usar in chronicles of a barracks boy before he embarks on discussing language can be best understood when we look at the recent brouhaha between Apostle Sulieman, and Pastor Bakares attacks on the Igbo nation and the reactions all in the battle towards 2023, it is obvious that this nation is not ready for a mental repatterning when one watches and listens to the retinue of those seeking political offices.

A nation and people trapped in a whirlwind of nothingness, and the in-between atmosphere is why the government is battling to explain pardon that it granted within the limits of constitutional power but one that has ripple effects.

The Nigerian project lacks the essentials of teamwork that Usar alludes to. The Chrisland Sex-tape makes the last part of the book a treasure, I asked myself, how are we measuring on the scale of integrity, where is the vulnerability in parenting, is this the generation of going through the motions, where most decisions are taken with the fear of missing out, in other words, rather than get it right, we probably are tripping on a pedestal.

Innocent, a master practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming certainly knows that if we use his Epic Outcomes Matrix, there is a huge difference in political rhetoric and realities, we are again on the one-chance journey, the country called Nigeria is at another stage, are we building rafts to get us pass this level or is it a case of a people that are consistently and consciously destroying all that we stand for.

What do we stand for, who are we, what really is working in Nigeria, we are tortured with banditry, terror, and abductions, killings by unknown gunmen, every section of the country is terrified, and our economy is on a nosedive, but no one is bold enough to say that a nation that should ordinarily be creating epic outcomes across the globe is a minnow, beset in all corners?

The book Pushing Through Boundaries is one that every Nigerian leader should read, every citizen must read, with a pen by his/her side taking notes. Sadly, what is it that we say again, that to hide information from the black man, put it in a book.

We are losing it, there is need for the many Usars of this nation to stand and be counted, very few things put a smile on the face of Nigerians these day, but with Innocent Usars book, I again see the resilience, the Nigerian never-say-die spirit, we may still be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat because as it currently stands, the story of the barracks boy seems a story told once upon a time in Niagara Falls, I am afraid that we didn't start well, can we end wellOnly time will tell.
The UN Secretary-General is on his way to Moscow and Kyiv. With fighting still raging, he may find his diplomatic options limited, but nevertheless he should table proposals both for how to save lives now and how the UN might help with future peace talks.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is travelling to Moscow and Kyiv. He will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on 26 April, and then with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the next day. The Secretary-Generals visit will take place against the backdrop of the hostilities in eastern and southern Ukraine. He is in no position to act as a peacemaker in the short term, as both sides still believe that they can gain the upper hand on the battlefield and he has no new incentives to offer that would be sufficient to persuade either party to change course. Nonetheless, Guterres can use this opportunity to press for relief for Ukrainian civilians  especially those trapped in the devastated city of Mariupol  and give the two presidents some ideas as to how the UN could facilitate and support credible peace initiatives in the future.

The Secretary-General has had no major diplomatic role in the war to date. Like many other informed observers, he was reportedly sceptical of U.S. intelligence at the start of the year that Russia planned a full-scale invasion. Once the invasion was under way, he condemned it in clear terms and called on Russia to withdraw, drawing accusations of bias from Moscow. Crisis Group understands that President Putin has since turned down a number of requests for telephone calls with Guterres. While it may be a small positive sign that Moscow will host him, the Secretary-General will need to avoid looking like he wants to curry favour with Russia after being on the outs with the Kremlin. President Zelenskyy  who has decried the Security Councils inaction over the war  has called the Secretary-Generals decision to visit Moscow first and Kyiv second simply wrong.

The UN may yet play a crucial role in coordinating efforts to mitigate the wars international economic fallout





Given his limited diplomatic options, the Secretary-General has tried to address the wars consequences inside and outside Ukraine from other angles. He has focused on humanitarian operations inside the country  where the UN has over 1,000 staff  and on drawing attention to the wars impact on global food, energy and commodity prices. The UN may yet play a crucial role in coordinating efforts to mitigate the wars international economic fallout. But given the central place of peace and security in the organisations charter, it is hard to see the Secretary-General giving up on diplomacy while the war rages.

In both Moscow and Kyiv, Guterres is likely to find the atmosphere chilly at best. Russia has said the Secretary-General will be received by President Putin on 26 April, adding that he will also have talks with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. This language does not suggest that the Russian leader is open to an extended discussion. Even if he were, it might not make much difference. In March 2014, shortly after Russia annexed Crimea, and with crisis building in eastern Ukraine, then Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with Putin for what he called a very productive and constructive meeting, but with no observable impact on Russias subsequent actions. Zelenskyys criticism of how Guterres will sequence his visits suggests that the Secretary-General will also get a sceptical reception in Kyiv.

Secretary-General Guterres should nonetheless aim to table specific proposals to ease the harm done by the war in his meetings in Moscow and Kyiv. He can use his meetings with the two presidents both to lay out immediate humanitarian priorities  to help ensure that he makes the most of this trip to save lives  and also to share some thoughts about how the UN could support long-term efforts to achieve an eventual peace. Three themes that Guterres should emphasise in particular include:

Pressing for humanitarian access : Both the Russians and Ukrainians accuse each other of stopping humanitarian convoys from reaching embattled Ukrainian locales. According to Ukrainian and international sources involved in relief efforts, Russian forces are the main culprits as they block some roads and mine others, precluding aid access. Russian units have also struck health care facilities and people queuing for food assistance. The Secretary-General can use his meetings to offer both the Russians and Ukrainians a reckoning of the obstacles UN and other humanitarian agencies face in Ukraine. He can also try to extract assurances that aid will henceforth be delivered without obstructions (although aid workers will doubtless wonder if such pledges will mean anything in reality).

: Both the Russians and Ukrainians accuse each other of stopping humanitarian convoys from reaching embattled Ukrainian locales. According to Ukrainian and international sources involved in relief efforts, Russian forces are the main culprits as they block some roads and mine others, precluding aid access. Russian units have also struck health care facilities and people queuing for food assistance. The Secretary-General can use his meetings to offer both the Russians and Ukrainians a reckoning of the obstacles UN and other humanitarian agencies face in Ukraine. He can also try to extract assurances that aid will henceforth be delivered without obstructions (although aid workers will doubtless wonder if such pledges will mean anything in reality). Aiding and evacuating civilians from Mariupol: Over 100,000 civilians remain in the port city of Mariupol, a centre of intense fighting since the first day of Russias assault. Some 1,000 are taking shelter in the besieged Azovstal steel mill complex. Recent efforts to allow them to flee through humanitarian corridors have had very limited success as few people took advantage and there were reports of shelling of those who did. If the Secretary-General can persuade Russia to agree to a large-scale evacuation of the citys remaining civilians to central Ukraine, and the provision of humanitarian assistance to those who cannot leave (and if Russia actually sticks to these terms), this accomplishment alone will make his travel worthwhile.

Over 100,000 civilians remain in the port city of Mariupol, a centre of intense fighting since the first day of Russias assault. Some 1,000 are taking shelter in the besieged Azovstal steel mill complex. Recent efforts to allow them to flee through humanitarian corridors have had very limited success as few people took advantage and there were reports of shelling of those who did. If the Secretary-General can persuade Russia to agree to a large-scale evacuation of the citys remaining civilians to central Ukraine, and the provision of humanitarian assistance to those who cannot leave (and if Russia actually sticks to these terms), this accomplishment alone will make his travel worthwhile. Setting out ideas for a future UN role in peace talks: The UN has played no significant role in peace talks between Russia and Ukraine so far, leaving other actors such as Turkey and Israel to guide discussions. These efforts have to date been inconclusive, as both sides continue to see military victory as plausible, although they have led to some humanitarian steps. Depending on battlefield events, more realistic peace talks may become possible in the months ahead. The Secretary-General cannot predict when or under what circumstances this opportunity may arise. But he can at least table some ideas about how the UN might provide its support in this eventuality. Options range from purely logistical assistance  such as the provision of facilities in Geneva  to the appointment of a personal envoy by the Secretary-General to coordinate with interested parties in forging a diplomatic resolution to the crisis. If all these possibilities seem remote at present, Guterres can still flag them for future consideration.

The Secretary-General should avoid pressing for a ceasefire





There are topics that Guterres should avoid. While talking about potential UN support for peace talks, the Secretary-General should avoid pressing for a ceasefire, which both parties will likely reject as playing to the others military advantage by allowing breathing space for rest and resupply. He should also eschew premature speculation about what a final settlement might look like. As Crisis Group has noted, it is conceivable that the UN might one day be invited to send military monitors to observe a disengagement of Russian and Ukrainian forces if hostilities cease. But such options remain entirely hypothetical, and it would be distracting to discuss them this week.

The Secretary-General will also have step gingerly around some difficult moral and legal issues. In Kyiv, if not in Moscow, his political interlocutors and the media may press him on whether President Putin is a war criminal, and if Russian politicians and generals should face tribunals. He will have to avoid making pointed remarks on these matters, whatever his own views of their merits. The Secretary-General has already highlighted the wars illegality and immorality. His job now is to focus on maximising the UNs humanitarian and diplomatic functions in Ukraine.

Finally, there is an important question concerning the Secretary-Generals itinerary. He and his advisers should consider whether, in addition to visiting Kyiv, he should also go to other parts of Ukraine to see the scale of war damage. The most dramatic move he could make would be to go to Mariupol or its environs to urge evacuation of civilians. Making this trip would send a powerful signal and symbolise that the UN understands the severity of the wars human costs. The Secretary-Generals security detail is unlikely to welcome the idea of him visiting an active war zone, although his predecessors have taken such risks. (Boutros Boutros-Ghali flew into Sarajevo when it was under siege in 1993 for example.) If it proves impossible to go to such a place, Guterres should take the time to speak in person with civilian victims of the war during his time in Kyiv.

For all the frustrations he is likely to encounter, the Secretary-Generals trip is a welcome development. It may require an international figure of his status and seniority to hammer out agreements to assist civilians in Mariupol and other centres of fighting, even as the war continues. Similarly, there may come a time in the war when the UNs good offices can help facilitate the de-escalation that cannot come too soon. While the Secretary-General may struggle to make near-term progress, it is essential that the UN continues to look at every avenue for easing the suffering of Ukraine.
Fire guts luxury yacht at Yacht Haven

PHUKET: A luxury catamaran was gutted by a fire and sank at Phuket Yacht Haven Marina in Thalang yesterday afternoon (Apr 23), with damage estimated at B16 million.

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By Bangkok Post

Sunday 24 April 2022, 09:30AM

Smoke and flames rise from the Jimmy Blue as it burned at Yacht Haven Marina on Saturday (Apr 23). Photo: Supplied

The fire was reported about 1pm, said Pol Lt Col Sornthip Chukaew, an investigating officer at the Tha Chatchai Police Station, reports the Bangkok Post.

Firefighters and civilians helped put out the flames, which spread from the stern to the bow of the 12-metre craft named Jimmy Blue. Only the prow of the vessel remained above water.

There were no people on board when the fire started, and no casualties were reported.

Oil boom barriers had been placed in the water to prevent potential oil spills.

The catamaran can carry up to 17 people  14 passengers and three crew members. It was permitted to sail in local waters between Ranong and Satun provinces after receiving a licence in 2014.

Following an inspection, officials said the blaze might have originated from an electrical short-circuit.

Further investigation was underway to determine the cause of the fire.
Fury beats Whyte to retain world heavyweight title

BOXING: Tyson Fury retained his WBC heavyweight crown yesterday (Apr 23), stopping Dillian Whyte in round six of an all-British bout at a delirious Wembley Stadium before repeating his suggestion that he would now retire.

Boxing

By AFP

Sunday 24 April 2022, 11:19AM

Tyson Fury (right) celebrates after knocking out Dillian Whyte in the sixth round to win their WBC heavyweight title fight at Wembley Stadium last night (Apr 23). Photo: Adrian Dennis / AFP

The win for the self-styled Gypsy King, fighting on UK soil for the first time in four years, was witnessed by 94,000 fans in London - a post-war British record crowd.

Unbeaten Fury, 33, had said this would be his last fight and announced immediately afterwards: This might be the final curtain for the Gypsy King. And what a way to go out.

After a cagey opening the defending champion took the initiative, controlling the fight and landing some telling blows to the head and body of his opponent.

Whyte could have few complaints at a halt being called with just one second remaining before the fight reached the midway point as he was clearly on unsteady legs after the first significant strike of the bout, a brutal right uppercut from Fury.

The 6 feet 9 inch (206-centimetre tall) Fury was able to use his considerable height and reach advantage to keep Whyte at bay while the challenger was made to look clumsy and cumbersome.

Whyte, cut over his right eye after an accidental clash of heads, was first installed as the WBCs number one contender nearly four years ago but he was unable to impose himself.

Im overwhelmed with the support, said Fury. I cant believe that my 94,000 countrymen and women have come here tonight to see me perform.

I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, Thank you so much to every single person who bought a ticket here tonight or stayed up late to watch it on TV.

Unification bout

If Fury does follow through with his plan to quit, he would spurn the chance to face either Oleksandr Usyk - the current WBA, IBF and WBO champion - or fellow British fighter Anthony Joshua for the undisputed crown.

No boxer has held all the major world heavyweight belts since Britains Lennox Lewis, who became the undisputed champion in 1999.

But Fury, now unbeaten in 33 fights, appears to be sticking to his guns.

I promised my lovely wife Paris of 14 years that after the Wilder three fight, that would be it, he said.

And I meant it. We had a war. It was a great trilogy. And I meant that. But I got offered to fight at Wembley at home, and I believe that I deserved - that I owed it to the fans.

Jamaica-born Whyte, 34, was greeted with boos as he emerged into the cavernous stadium, dressed in black.

Excitement levels hit fever pitch as Fury entered to the strains of Don McLeans American Pie, which accompanied a video montage of his career.

Fury, wearing a white and red robe and gloves featuring the Cross of St George - the flag of England - sat on a gold throne as fireworks shot into the air before jogging to the ring.

After delighting the crowd with his victory, he led them in another rendition of American Pie.

Fury hailed Whyte as a warrior, predicting he would be a world champion one day but said his opponent had met a great in the sport.

Im one of the greatest heavyweights of all time, he said. And unfortunately for Dillian Whyte, he had to face me here tonight. Theres no disgrace.
New push to vaccinate school kids this term

BANGKOK: The Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) has held talks with the Ministry of Education on distributing vaccines for school kids, ahead of the new term which begins next month.

CoronavirusCOVID-19healthVaccine

By Bangkok Post

Sunday 24 April 2022, 10:26AM

Photo: Bangkok Post

Schools nationwide will provide on-site study this academic year; however, any student who tests positive for COVID-19 or is considered a high-risk contact will need to be quarantined, CCSA spokesman Taweesilp Visanuyothin, said on Friday (Apr 22).

He said schools will need to follow the Sandbox Safety Zone in School (SSS) scheme, which involves isolation for infected and high-risk contacts. Any student or staff who fall into these categories will need to undergo home isolation for five days, reports the Bangkok Post.

Meanwhile, at least 1-metre social distancing needs to be observed in classrooms.

The Ministry of Public Health will work with the Department of Health in distributing as many vaccine doses as possible for students before the term starts.

Vaccinations among children aged five to 11 have only reached 50% of the estimated goal.

Among the 5.1 million in this age group, 2.5mn have received their first dose and 290,000 their second. Meanwhile, 4.3mn children aged from 12 to 17 have received their first dose and 3.9mn are fully vaccinated.

Education Minister Trinuch Thienthong said the ministry backs the policy of a return to classrooms as long as circumstances allow it. It will not set requirements for students to be vaccinated before attending school.

However, she added the ministry will encourage students from elementary to high vocational certificate levels to receive more doses. Also, schools need to strictly follow infection prevention measures such as social distancing, mask-wearing, hand-washing, and testing, among others.

The ministry and CCSA agreed we need to categorise students into two groups: Students who can study on-site and will have to maintain social distancing; and those who still need to study from home, Ms Trinuch said.

Schools will have to provide materials for them to study online or offline, depending on the students needs, she added.

Students who cannot afford online study equipment such as computers will be provided with school supplies.
Phuket Opinion: Final test for Thailand Pass

PHUKET: The latest round of easing entry restrictions for foreign tourists wanting to come to Thailand bodes well for Phukets battered tourism industry, yet the widely criticized Thailand Pass system remaining in effect may continue to deter tourists who simply do not want to bother with the extra administration required just to take a holiday.

opiniontourismeconomicshealth

By The Phuket News

Sunday 24 April 2022, 10:00AM

Two men wear their respective Thailand Pass QR codes emblazoned on their T-shirts on arriving at Phuket International Airport. Photo: HKT Quarantine

Under the announcement by the Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) on Friday, from May 1 all international travellers  vaccinated and unvaccinated  will no longer be required to show proof of a pre-arrival negative RT-PCR test and will not be required to undergo a test on arrival.

However, they will be still required to register for a Thailand Pass (via https://tp.consular.go.th/) with a Certificate of COVID-19 Vaccination and a COVID insurance policy with coverage of no less than US$10,000 (reduced from US$20,000).

For vaccinated travellers, once they arrive in Thailand, they will be allowed entry and will be free to go anywhere in the country.

Likewise, unvaccinated travellers who submit proof of a negative RT-PCR test within 72 hours of travel to the Thailand Pass system will be allowed entry and will be free to go anywhere in the country.

However, unvaccinated international travellers  and that includes those deemed to be not fully vaccinated  who do ont submit proof of a negative RT-PCR test will be still required to submit to the Thailand Pass system evidence of a five-day hotel booking. Further, once they arrive in Thailand, they must observe five days in their accommodation quarantine and undergo an RT-PCR test on Day 5 of their stay.

The new measures, yet to be ratified in the Government Gazette, finally bring Thailand into line with many competing tourist destinations in the region. However, the current state of play internationally begs the question whether the Thailand Pass approval is still needed at all.

The reason given for holding off any major easing of restrictions a month ago was the potential fallout of COVID infections expected during the Songkran holidays. Of note, while officials have been reporting record numbers of infections post-Songkran, they have neglected to mention in those same reports their own figure of 95% of infections resulting in slight to no symptoms at all.

Hence for Phuket, even after the Songkran mass water fights on Bangla Rd that made national news, the worst spike in infections rose to only 180 infections officially reported on Thursday (Apr 21)  the highest number of infections recorded in a day since the mass water fights on Apr 12-13.

If officials are to believe their own statistics, that means a grand total of nine people in Phuket suffered infections deserving hospital treatment on the islands worst day for COVID infections in the fallout from Songkran. Thats nine serious infections reported on one day, on an island with more than half a million people.

That figure alone deserves serious attention when it comes to understanding the real effect of infections spreading throughout the country today  especially when the easing of restrictions is being intentionally delayed.

The latest easing is of course much-welcomed news for Phuket, especially for those who have struggled for the past two years to still have a business to eventually reopen. Yet the coming month will soon let everyone know what key tourism figures have been warning for months now: it may be a matter of too little, too late.
UN chief Guterres to visit Moscow and Kyiv

NEW YORK: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres will tomorrow (Apr 25) visit Turkey, an important mediator seeking an end to Russias war against Ukraine, before heading to Moscow and Kyiv, the UN said in a statement.

RussianUkraineviolencedeathmilitarypolitics

By AFP

Sunday 24 April 2022, 11:01AM

Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, speaks during a press conference at the United Nations Visitors Plaza in New York on Apr 19. Photo: AFP

The Secretary-General will visit Ankara, Turkey, where, on 25 April, he will be received by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the UN said late yesterday.

Guterres will then head to Moscow on Tuesday to meet with Russian President Vladmir Putin, followed by a trip Thursday to Kyiv in an effort to mediate an end to Russias invasion, which has killed thousands and driven over 10 million Ukrainians from their homes since Feb 24.

The trip comes as the war enters its third month, with fierce battles continuing in the countrys east and scores of civilians and Ukrainian soldiers trapped in the besieged port city of Mariupol.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday criticised Guterress decision to head to Moscow before Kyiv, saying there is no justice and no logic in this order.

The war is in Ukraine, there are no bodies in the streets of Moscow. It would be logical to go first to Ukraine, to see the people there, the consequences of the occupation, Zelensky said.

Turkey has been trying to negotiate an end to the conflict, hosting meetings between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul, as well as a summit between the two countries foreign ministers in Antalya.

Ankara is now trying to arrange an Istanbul summit between Putin and Zelensky, although Turkish officials concede that the prospects of such talks currently remain dim.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. Member of the Congress of Deputies (lower house of parliament) of Spain Jon Inarritu says he believes that the reason behind Spain not having officially recognized the Armenian Genocide yet is the pressure exerted by Turkey.

In an exclusive interview to ARMENPRESS, the legislator expressed hope that the situation will change soon.

ARMENPRESS: This year marks the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. More than 30 countries have formally recognized the Armenian Genocide. However, Spain is not among them. Whats the reason behind it?

Inarritu: Firstly, I have to say that in Spain there are several parliaments such as the Basque Parliament or the Catalan Parliament that have already recognized the Armenian Genocide. Unfortunately, the Spanish Congress has not done until now. Secondly, I am hopeful that soon this can change and the Spanish Parliament recognizes the first genocide of the 20th century.

I believe that the reasons why Spain and other some States have not recognized it to this day, is the pressure exerted by Turkey, but if historically the facts are evident, it makes no sense that this is not recognized by his name: genocide.

ARMENPRESS: More than a century after the Genocide Turkey still continues its policy of denial. How would you assess the behavior of Ankara to avoid the historical truth?

Inarritu: The facts of denial and historical relativism in relation to the Armenian Genocide I think are very unfair and humiliating to the Armenian people and other minorities such as Assyrians or Pontic Greeks, but in the same way I think they do not benefit the Turkish society.

ARMENPRESS: A process has started aimed to normalize the relation between Armenia and Turkey. In your opinion, can the process succeed if one of the parties refuses to accept the historical truth and admit the crime of genocide committed by his ancestors?

Inarritu: Hardly, I know Turkey and I lived a short period of my life in Turkey and it is a fascinating State, but I think that acknowledging of the historical facts in relation to Armenians would help to consolidate a better relationship with Armenia, and at the same time, it would be an act of historical justice.

I think that Turkey should follow the example of Germany to deal with dramatic events in its own history. That would not weaken Turkey, it would make Turkey more dignified and stronger.

ARMENPRESS: Impunity emboldens the perpetrators of the crimes. We recently witnessed it in Artsakh, where the Azerbaijani military tortured, killed and mutilated unarmed captive Armenian soldiers and civilians. Dont you think theres a lack of proper reaction from the international community?

Inarritu: The war crimes committed in Artsakh by the Aliyevs Regime and its allies are evident. I myself witnessed what was happening. The responsibles for these acts should be brought to the International Justice. The best way to prevent similar events, I believe, would be that the international community recognize that Artsakh is a clear Remedial Secession case. That would prevent new crimes, allow the Armenians of Artsakh to live in peace in their ancestral land, and to improve relationships between the South Caucasus peoples and States.

Finally, I want to express my solidarity and support for the Armenian people on the day of commemoration of the Genocide.
FILE - Television personalities Kris Jenner, from left, Kylie Jenner and Khloe Kardashian attend the NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment 2015 Upfront at The Javits Center on Thursday, May 14, 2015, in New York. On Monday, April 18, 2022, Kris and Kylie Jenner, along with Kim and Khloe Kardashian, sat in the front row of a Los Angeles courtroom as prospective jurors aired their feelings about the famous family and the four women, all defendants in a lawsuit brought by Rob Kardashian's former fiancee Blac Chyna.


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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  Is it OK for free-range chickens to not range freely?

Thats a question free-range egg producers have been pondering lately as they try to be open about their product while also protecting chickens from a highly infectious bird flu that has resulted in the death of roughly 28 million poultry birds across the country.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that chickens be moved indoors to protect against the disease, but while some are keeping their hens inside, not everyone agrees.

John Brunnquell, the CEO of Indiana-based Egg Innovations, which contracts with more than 50 farms in five states to produce free-range and pasture-raised eggs, said any of his chickens in states with bird flu cases will stay in confinement mode" until the risk passes.

We will keep them confined at least until early June," Brunnquell said. If we go four weeks with no more commercial breakouts then well look to get the girls back out.

Bird flu cases have been identified in commercial chicken and turkey farms or in backyard flocks in 29 states, according to the USDA. Spread of the disease is largely blamed on the droppings of infected migrating wild birds.

The farms Brunnquell contracts with are in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Wisconsin, all of which have had at least once case of bird flu.

But some, like Mike Badger, the executive director of the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association, are taking a different approach.

Badger, whose Pennsylvania-based nonprofit group has about 1,000 members across the country, believes birds kept outdoors are at less risk of infection than chickens and turkeys raised amid thousands of others in large, enclosed barns.

We put them outside and they get in touch with the environment so I think they have a better immune system to be able to fight off threats as they happen, Badger said.

Research has not clearly proven significant immune system differences in chickens housed outdoors versus indoors. And Badger speculates that lower density of animals, air movement and less sharing of equipment and staff in pasture-raised operations may contribute to a lack of virus infections.

He said the decision whether to bring hens inside to wait out the annual migration of wild waterfowl is a farm-to-farm decision based on the comfort level with the risk acceptance.

Commercial outdoor flocks make up only a small percentage of U.S. egg production. About 6 million hens, or 2% of national flock, are free-range and about 4.2 million hens, or 1.3% of U.S. egg production, are from pasture-raised chickens.

Chickens are categorized as free-range or pasture-raised primarily by the amount of time they spend outdoors and space they are provided.

Free-range chickens typically must have at least 21.8 square feet (2 square meters) of roaming space outdoors and remain out until temperatures drop below around 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 1 Celsius), according to the American Humane Association, which certifies egg operations. Pasture-raised chickens typically must have 108 square feet (10 square meters) outdoors each and remain outside most of the year except during inclement weather.

The certifying organizations have protocols for high-risk situations and allow for temporary housing indoors  a time period not specifically defined  once a farm documents an outbreak near an outdoor flock. Certification agencies monitor farms to ensure they dont use bird flu as an excuse to keep birds inside too long.

Brunnquell said none of his farms had infections during the last big outbreak in 2015, and he hasn't had any cases this year.

Farmers in Europe have been dealing with the bird virus longer than those in the U.S., with cases reported as early as last December.

The United Kingdom has ordered free-range hens to be housed inside to protect them from the avian flu, and that has forced changes to how those eggs are labeled in stores. Free-range packaging is still used but must be marked with an added label of barn eggs, according to a communications representative for the British Free Range Egg Producers Association. Each egg also is stamped with a No. 2 that denotes barn rather than No. 1 for free-range.

For U.S. consumers, it means the free-range eggs they buy at a premium price could come from a chicken being temporarily kept inside. But producers say they think people who pay more for pasture-raised or free-range eggs have animal-welfare concerns and don't want the chickens to be endangered the virus.

Brunnquell also noted that the certification agencies monitor farms to ensure they don't use bird flu as an excuse to keep birds inside too long.

Eggs of all kinds have grown costlier recently thanks to bird flu concerns and a national spike in food costs.

Last week, prices for conventional eggs increased by 40 cents per dozen to $1.47 while cage-free egg prices rose 3 cents to $2.40 per dozen, according to the USDA. Organic eggs, which are from chickens required to have access to the outdoors, were selling for a national average of $4.39 a dozen last week, up from $3.65 the week before.

The price of eggs used by bakeries and other food products soared to a record high on April 8.

So-called breaker eggs, which will later be broken by processors and sold in containers weighing up to 50 pounds, peaked at $2.51 per pound, said Karyn Rispoli, egg market reporter for Urner Barry, a New Jersey-based food commodity market research and analytics firm. Many of the egg layers that have died from bird flu were on farms contracted to provide breaker eggs used as food product ingredients, Rispoli said.

Bird flu likely will remain a problem for at least several more weeks as migrating waterfowl will remain on the move in the Mississippi Flyway until June. In the past, warmer weather and the end of migration brought an end to bird flu cases, allowing turkey and chicken farmers to begin the monthslong process of replenishing flocks and resuming production.

___

Associated Press writer Courtney Bonnell contributed to this report from London.

___

This story was first published on April 21. It was updated on April 24 to make clear that bird flu has led to the deaths of about 28 million poultry birds in the U.S., but that most of those were killed to prevent the disease from spreading and didnt die of the disease.
Everywhere you look, people seem to be losing rights. Texas Senate Bill 8, which its legislators passed last year, was perhaps the most shocking example of this anti-rights wave. Its one of the most severe restrictions on abortion rights in the United States, banning abortions after six weeks, before many people know they are pregnant, and its effects are already being felt throughout the state. But its all the more alarming for its unique method of enforcement.

Rather than being enforced by the state government, which would be a clear violation of Roe v. Wade, the law gives Texas residents the right to sue those who aid or assist an abortion. Although this vigilante provision is described as a way to work around the Roe precedent, another way of thinking about it is as a new form of social citizenship in America.

S.B. 8s vigilante provision is not just about finding a new way to reduce womens rights, but also about creating new rights, or a superordinate category of citizenship, for men. That new status is achieved through the act of policing.

Looking at it this way, S.B. 8 falls into place alongside a plethora of public policies that use policing as a vehicle for a new kind of citizenship status.

In Florida, the governor signed House Bill 1557, known as the Dont Say Gay bill. It primarily restricts speech and educational content about LGBTQ issues. But it also contains a provision akin to Texas S.B. 8: It empowers parents to file complaints against schools based on their educational content. This gives these parents a new set of powers that elevates them in relation to those who will not or cannot use these powers. It hardly needs mentioning that in both S.B. 8 and H.B. 1557, the people who will use these powers will be those opposed to abortion and those opposed to LGBTQ educational content, which is not exactly a cross-section of American society.

But this phenomenon of giving some people policing powers and elevating their status relative to that of others is neither new to this year nor confined to these states.

All across the country, local municipalities have passed crime-free and nuisance housing ordinances that empower neighbors to surveil and file complaints about others in their communities. Take Faribault, Minnesota, as an example. After an influx of Somali immigrants, the city passed crime-free and nuisance housing ordinances that empowered its residents to surveil and police their neighbors.

One Black woman and her family were evicted after her white neighbors, one of whom told her to go back to where you came from, summoned the police to her home 82 times. They didnt call to report criminal activity but rather to complain about barbecues, birthday parties and children playing on the trampoline  things people take for granted as part of suburban life.

The same pattern has played out in California, Illinois and Ohio. Its also recognizable in the incidents of white people calling police on Black citizens barbecuing at the park, sitting on a bench, bird-watching and so on. In incident after incident, often caught on camera, these individuals seem to realize they can weaponize police against their fellow residents and then consciously proceed to do so. They do not have to call the police, and in many instances, they seem aware that their calls are frivolous. That they call anyway shows that policing is not just about the law but also about status.

Someone who can engage in policing is recognizably different from and, in this context, elevated above, one who is policed or who can neither engage in policing nor rely on police services. The act of policing another person  whether a pregnant person, schoolteacher or neighbor  produces and communicates a subordinate status to the policed while simultaneously producing and confirming ones own superordinate status. This is the other side of the new wave of laws targeting abortion and education across the country.

If the civil rights era represented a time when people whom the law made formally subordinate at least symbolically caught up to the rights of those at the top, the ensuing decades have been marked by constant efforts by the American right to erode those legal gains.

But to focus only on how the right has weakened the citizenship of others is to miss how it has produced new forms of status and citizenship. Policing is a way to reassert status hierarchies that have been threatened over the past decades of social change.

Its a dangerous dynamic and one that will lead to a more policed, less free society.



Rahim Kurwa is an assistant professor of criminology, law and justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago.



Chicago Tribune
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New Mexico faces a long and potentially devastating wildfire season, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said Saturday, as Southwestern wildfires cause destruction and force people from their homes.

Hundreds of structures were lost in a growing number of wind-driven blazes across drought-stricken New Mexico, Lujan Grisham said Saturday.

Over 20 active wildfires were burning in at least 16 of the state's 33 counties, in the wake of winds that gusted up to 90 mph (145 kph) on Friday, Lujan said during a briefing streamed online. So half the state has a fire issue."

With so many fires burning in April, well before the normal May or June start of the wildfire season, our risk season is incredibly and dangerously early," Lujan Grisham said.

Wildfire has become a year-round threat in the West given changing conditions that include earlier snowmelt and rain coming later in the fall, scientist have said. The problems have been exacerbated by decades of fire suppression and poor management along with a more than 20-year megadrought that studies link to human-caused climate change.

New Mexico as of Saturday had the most major wildfires burning of any state, though neighboring Arizona also had large fires that included one that burned 30 homes near Flagstaff on Tuesday.

Winds and temperatures in New Mexico diminished Saturday but remained strong enough to still fan fires, and dozens of evacuation orders remained in place.

Over 200 structures have burned, Lujan Grisham said, not providing specifics on locations or the numbers of homes included in that count.

With fires still burning and charred areas too dangerous to enter, it's not safe for you or us to have a complete assessment to date," she said, indicating that the number of lost structures would rise.

She appealed to residents to refrain from using fireworks or burning trash and to evacuate when fire warnings are issued. You need to leave. The risks are too great," she said.

The largest blazes were concentrated in northern New Mexico, where two major fires merged and numerous villages were threatened by advancing flames as residents heeded calls to leave.

Maggie Mulligan said Friday her dogs could sense the panic while she and her husband packed them up, agonized over having to leave horses behind and fled a fast-moving wildfire barreling toward their home.

We dont know whats next, she said. We dont know if we can go back to the horses.

Mulligan and her husband, Bill Gombas, 67, were among the anxious residents who hurriedly evacuated their homes Friday ahead of ominous wildfires fueled by tinder-dry conditions and ferocious winds.

The merged fires burned some structures but no figures were available, said fire information officer Mike Johnson. They were able to save some structures and we know we lost other structures that we werent able to defend.

Wind-blown clouds of dust and plumes of smoke obscured the skies near the fires, said Jesus Romero, assistant county manager for San Miguel County. All the ugliness that spring in New Mexico brings  that's what they're dealing in."

An estimated 500 homes in San Miguel were in rural areas of Mora and San Miguel counties covered by evacuation orders or warning notices, Romero said.

Elsewhere in the region, the fire danger in the Denver area on Friday was the highest it had been in over a decade, according to the National Weather Service, because of unseasonable temperatures in the 80s combined with strong winds and very dry conditions.

Lena Atencio and her husband, whose family has lived in the nearby Rociada area for five generations, got out Friday as winds kicked up. She said most people were taking the threat seriously.

As a community, as a whole, everybody is just pulling together to support each other and just take care of the things we need to now. And then at that point, its in Gods hands, she said as the wind howled miles away in the community of Las Vegas, New Mexico, where evacuees were gathering.

Areas ordered Saturday to evacuate because of another large fire still growing in northern New Mexico included Philmont Scout Ranch. Meanwhile, the nearby town of Cimarron remained on notice for possible evacuation, according to Colfax County officials.

The scout ranch, owned and operated by the Boy Scouts of America, attracts thousands of summer visitors, but officials said no scouts were on the property and staff were previously evacuated because of poor air quality.

The Flagstaff-area fire also burned numerous other buildings when the flames blew through rural neighborhoods Tuesday.

A shift in wind had crews working Saturday to keep the fire from moving up mountain slopes or toward homes in rural neighborhoods near areas that burned Tuesday, fire information officer Dick Fleishman said. It has got us a little concerned."

____

Davenport reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writers Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Arizona, Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada, and Colleen Slevin in Denver contributed to this report. Attanasio reported from Las Vegas, New Mexico, and is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Attanasio on Twitter.
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JERUSALEM (AP)  Israels foreign minister on Sunday accused the Hamas militant group of orchestrating recent unrest at Jerusalems most sensitive holy site, responding to criticism that Israeli police used heavy-handed tactics to quell the violence.

Yair Lapid made the comments following days of clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians at the contested holy site, which is revered by Jews and Muslims. The confrontations have come at a time of heightened tensions following a string of deadly attacks inside Israel, arrest raids in the occupied West Bank and rocket attacks into Israel launched from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. It is the worst violence to shake the region since an 11-day war last year.

Speaking to foreign reporters, Lapid accused Hamas of hijacking the activities at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and encouraging young Palestinian men to throw stones and fireworks at Israeli security forces.

They have done this to create the provocation to force the Israeli police to enter the mosque and set off a regionwide conflict, he said.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third-holiest site in Islam and an emotional symbol for the Palestinians. It sits on a sprawling esplanade that also is the holiest site for Jews, who call it to the Temple Mount because it was the location of the biblical Jewish Temples. The competing claims to the site lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have sparked numerous rounds of violence in the past.

The Palestinians have accused Israel of provoking the latest violence by allowing large numbers of Jewish pilgrims to visit the site. Last week, Jews celebrated the festival of Passover, a time when tens of thousands of people visit Jerusalem.

Under longstanding agreements, Jews are permitted to visit the compound, but they are barred from praying. But in recent years, an increasing number of religious extremists have begun to quietly pray in violation of the rules, sometimes with Israeli police watching on. The Palestinians fear that such actions are part of an Israeli plot to take over or divide the site.

Lapid rejected such accusations, saying that Israel is committed to maintaining the status quo at the site.

There is no change. There will be no change. We have no plans to divide the Temple Mount between religions, he said. He called on Israels allies in the Muslim world to act against these fake news and to help calm the situation.

Lapid also rejected suggestions that Israeli police have used excessive force to disperse the demonstrations at the Al-Aqsa site.

On Friday, Israeli riot police stormed the compound after Palestinian youths hurled stones at them. Palestinian social media have been filled with videos showing Israeli police hitting people with clubs and firing tear gas and stun grenades. Israeli police, meanwhile, have released their own videos showing Palestinians inside the mosque hurling stones and explosives.

After midday prayers on Friday, a small group of Palestinians waving Hamas flags marched in protest and tried to break into an empty police post inside the compound. Israeli police used a drone to drop tear gas on them, sending crowds of people scattering across the esplanade.

During Ramadan, Israel ensured that hundreds of thousands of Muslims could go to the Temple Mount and pray at Al-Aqsa, Lapid said. Despite provocations by terrorist organizations, despite attempts to stoke violence: We have done, and continue to do everything to enable peaceful prayer."

Despite the Israeli pledges to protect freedom of worship, it has maintained restrictions that bar entry to the mosque for hundreds of thousands of Muslim Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel says such restrictions are a security measure.

In Cairo, the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates  three countries that have full diplomatic relations with Israel  met Sunday to discuss the tensions in Jerusalem.

A statement after the talks said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates, called for calm in Jerusalem and for Israel to respect the status quo of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

They also urged Israel to stop all measures that undermine the two-state solution, and to find away to return to serious negotiations with the Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has ruled out peace talks and opposes Palestinian independence, but has pledged to reduce tensions by taking steps to improve living conditions in the West Bank and Gaza.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum blamed Israel for the violence.

The one who bears full responsibility for detonating the situation in Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque is the occupation government, which brutally attacks defenseless worshippers on a daily basis, prevents them from reaching Al-Aqsa and tries to impose the project of Judaization, he said.

The string of events in recent weeks has raised fears of a repeat of last year, when protests and violence in Jerusalem eventually boiled over, helping to ignite an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas and communal violence in mixed Jewish-Arab cities inside Israel.

The rocket fire out of Gaza in recent days has been the heaviest since last years war. None of the rockets have caused any damage or injuries inside Israel, but they have set off sirens in parts of southern Israel and angered residents there. A misfired rocket also landed inside Gaza on Friday, exploding near a home and U.N. school and lightly wounding two people, according to local officials.

On Sunday, Israel closed its crossing with Gaza, barring some 12,000 Palestinians from going to work in Israel. The job permits have been an economic lifeline for thousands of Gazan families and were considered to be a key factor in maintaining stability before the latest fighting broke out.

The Gaza workers union accused Israel of imposing collective punishment on people who were not involved in the fighting. Israel has not said when it will reopen the crossing.

___

Associated Press writers Wafaa Shurafa in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed reporting.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  The leaders of the rival Koreas exchanged letters expressing hope for improved bilateral relations, which plummeted in the past three years amid a freeze in nuclear negotiations and North Koreas accelerating weapons development.

North Koreas state media said leader Kim Jong Un on Wednesday received a personal letter from outgoing South Korean President Moon Jae-in and replied on Thursday with his own letter appreciating Moons peace efforts during his term. Pyongyangs official Korean Central News Agency said Friday their exchange of letters showed their deep trust.

Experts say North Koreas announcement of the letters, which came as Kim possibly prepares for a nuclear test and other major provocations, is aimed at dividing public opinion in South Korea and discouraging Seouls new government from taking a hard line toward Pyongyang after its inauguration in May.

KCNA said Moon told Kim he would continue to campaign for Korean reunification even after he leaves office next month, basing his efforts on their joint declarations for peace issued after their summit meetings in 2018.

Kim and Moon shared views that inter-Korean relations would improve and develop as desired and anticipated by the (Korean) nation if the (North and the South) make tireless efforts with hope, KCNA said.

Moons office confirmed the exchange of letters shortly after KCNAs report, but spent hours before releasing its version of what was said, which indicated that the North didnt coordinate with Seoul before announcing the exchange. KCNAs report wasnt published on the North's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper, read by its domestic audience, showing that the message was intended for the South.

According to Seoul, Moon in his letter to Kim acknowledged setbacks in inter-Korean relations but insisted that their aspirational vows for peace during their summits in 2018 and an accompanying military agreement aimed at defusing border area clashes remain relevant as a foundation for future cooperation.

Moon also expressed hope for a resumption of nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang and for Kim to pursue cooperation with Seouls next government led by conservative President-elect Yoon Suk Yeol, Moons spokesperson Park Kyung-mee said.

While sending a letter to the North's leader is a courtesy as the South's leaves office, analyst Cheong Seong-Chang at the Souths private Sejong Institute said, the North publicized the personal exchange with an aim to create division in South Korea ahead of a government change.

Considering indications that North Korea is preparing for its seventh nuclear test, its questionable whether it was appropriate for President Moon to send a letter to Chairman Kim to express his warm greetings, Cheong said.

Yoon, who takes office on May 10, has harshly described Moons foreign policy for being subservient toward North Korea and said he wouldn't pursue talks for talks sake. He has vowed to strengthen South Koreas defense in conjunction with its alliance with the United States, which he says would include enhancing preemptive strike capabilities and anti-missile systems to deter North Korean attacks.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have risen since a series of North Korean weapons tests this year, including its first flight-test of an intercontinental ballistic missile since 2017 in March, reviving the nuclear brinkmanship aimed at forcing the U.S. to accept it as a nuclear power and to remove crippling sanctions.

South Koreas military has also detected signs that North Korea is rebuilding tunnels at a nuclear testing ground it partially dismantled weeks before Kims first meeting with then-President Donald Trump in June 2018, a possible indicator that the country is preparing to resume nuclear explosive tests.

Staking his single presidential term on inter-Korean rapprochement, Moon met Kim three times in 2018 and lobbied hard to help set up Kims meetings with Trump. But the diplomacy never recovered from the collapse of the second Kim-Trump meeting in 2019 in Vietnam, where the Americans rejected North Koreas demands for major sanctions relief in exchange for dismantling an aging nuclear facility, which would have amounted to a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.

Kim has since vowed to bolster his nuclear deterrent to counter gangster-like U.S. pressure and sped up his weapons development despite limited resources and pandemic-related difficulties.

North Korea also severed all cooperation with Moons government while expressing anger over the continuation of U.S.-South Korea military exercises, which were curtailed in recent years to promote diplomacy with the North, and Seouls inability to wrest concessions from Washington on its behalf.

Analysts say North Korea is likely to escalate its weapons demonstrations in coming weeks or months to force a reaction from the Biden administration, which has been focused on Russias war on Ukraine and a rivalry with China.

Bidens special envoy for North Korea, Sung Kim, traveled to Seoul this week for meetings with senior South Korean officials and said they agreed on the need for a strong response to counter North Koreas destabilizing behavior.

After maintaining a conciliatory tone for years, Moons government objected more strongly to North Koreas weapons tests this year, criticizing Kims government for ending its self-imposed suspension of long-range missile testing and urging a return to diplomacy.

Seoul has also accused North Korea of destroying South Korean-owned facilities at the Norths Diamond Mountain resort where they ran tours together until 2008. Kim in 2019 called the South Korean facilities there shabby and ordered them destroyed, though the work was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
The latest request by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who was elected after a 2014 Leftist revolution there and supported by a media oligarch billionaire, is for $50 billion in new funding from the West and a personal visit by Joe Biden. The White House responded no, but only to the part about Biden visiting.

Biden and Congress have already granted the liberal Ukrainian politicians 13.6 billion American dollars. But Zelensky is back, asking for more than three times that much this week in the form of grants or loan guarantees by the United States, with no end in sight for how much this will ultimately cost Americans.

Biden has entangled the United States in this conflict far worse than Congress ever authorized him to. By sending weapons to Ukraine, Biden has wrongly put our country and Americans at risk of deadly retaliation by Russia, as Russian President Vladimir Putin recently warned could happen in unexpected ways.

Some Republican candidates for office in upcoming primary elections are not supporting this as entrenched politicians in D.C. are. One of the skeptics, J.D. Vance, was just endorsed by Trump for a pivotal open U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, which has its primary in a mere two weeks.

The retiring Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, is co-chair of the Senate Ukraine Caucus. A crowded Republican group of many talented candidates compete for Portmans seat amid the worsening Russia-Ukraine war.

Many immigrants from Ukraine settled in Ohio, beginning around 1900, but most have assimilated into American culture as other waves of European immigrants from that period have done. It seems doubtful that there are many Republican primary voters who support Bidens mishandling of this conflict.

The anti-Trump candidate, state senator Matt Dolan, is polling in a distant fourth in this race. He appeared on the Today show on Monday to declare that he wants the United States to accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, to start off with.

That approach could lead to the United States taking in upwards of a million refugees, particularly if Dems think they will vote their way. Poland has accepted more than 2.5 million Ukrainian refugees and seeks to relocate them.

Last Friday Donald Trump enthusiastically endorsed J.D. Vance, who has criticized Biden for spending so much time on Ukraine. In an interview with Steve Bannon on February 19, Vance stated that I think its ridiculous that were focused on this border in Ukraine.

Trumps endorsement of Vance was gutsy, as he trailed in third place by a polling average of 7 points behind the front-runner. Vance is a conservative populist like several other candidates Trump has endorsed, and Trump proves again that hes not interested in backing only the leaders in polls.

A Marine veteran endorsed earlier by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, Vance campaigns on rejuvenating manufacturing in Ohio, which once had thriving automobile parts and steel industries. Both are ravaged by the phony policies of free trade that have also devastated its neighboring states.

Vance stands in contrast with rival candidate Mike Gibbons, who declared last year that the middle class is somehow not paying its fair share of taxes. Vance responded by saying that Republicans should defend middle-class people being able to raise a family and do it on a single income.

Vance wants to break up Big Tech, which would help end the suffocating censorship that emanates from the Left Coast. Not even the wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, can stop the censorship imposed by the liberals who control Twitter as its Board of Directors adopted a poison pill to thwart his takeover bid.

Vance fully supports Trumps platform to end the illegal immigration streaming over our southern border, and to build a wall. A recent grim story about how smugglers, called coyotes, left a woman to die ensnared in rope while trying to climb over a border wall in Arizona demonstrates how ruthless the immigration smuggling operation is.

Several congressmen, also in contested primaries, have been outspoken against giving Leftist politicians in Ukraine a blank check at the expense of Americans. Both Reps. Madison Cawthorn, R-North Carolina) and Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, have been leaders in opposing Bidens senseless entanglement in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Once marginalized as "far-right," Marine Le Pen has skyrocketed in French popularity by urging against an escalation in hostilities with Russia. She stunningly made the final runoff for the presidency of France, and cautions against pushing Russia into a closer alliance with communist China that already opposes the liberal cultural influence of Hollywood.

China recently ordered a movie studio to delete pro-LGBTQ dialog from the childrens animation "Fantastic Beasts: Secrets of Dumbledore," and the studio dutifully pandered to the communists. This contrasts with how Disney today aggressively undermines American cultural norms, unlike the patriotism of its founder Walt Disney.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.
CAYCE, S.C. (AP)  A police K-9 officer, volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician in central South Carolina was shot and killed while responding to a domestic disturbance early Sunday, police said.

Roy Andrew Drew Barr, 28, had just begun talking to a man outside the house when someone inside opened fire shortly before 3 a.m., said Chief Chris Cowan of the Cayce police department at a news conference. He said Barr was hit by one bullet.

The man who shot Barr killed himself after seven-hour standoff, said the South Carolina state police, which has been asked to investigate the shooting. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division's statement listed Barr's age as 27.

Barr became a police trainee in 2016 and a K-9 officer in October 2020, Cowan said. He was paired with a black Labrador and posed with her for his official department photo.

He loved his dog, Molly, and he loved his job. He loved being a K-9 officer and he was good at it, Cowan said.

Barr didnt have a wife or kids and instead was committed to serving his community, he said.

He was married to this profession, Cowan said.

Barr had survived a shooting in 2017, when he was still a trainee, news outlets reported. The gunman in that case is serving a total of 30 years in state and federal sentences.

Cayce is a suburb of nearly 14,000 people just west of Columbia.

Our hearts are breaking in Cayce," Mayor Elise Partin told reporters earlier Sunday. Officer Drew Barr has been an important part of the Cayce family since 2016.

The Monetta Volunteer Fire Department said Barr was the captain of their department in Aiken County, WSPA-TV reported.
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TIJUANA, Mexico (AP)  When a woman gashed her leg in mountains inhabited by snakes and scorpions, she told Joel Ubeda to take her 5-year-old daughter. Ubeda refused to let the mother die, despite the advice of their smuggler and another migrant in a group of seven, and helped carry her to safety by shining a mirror in sunlight to flag a U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopter near San Diego.

The motorcycle mechanic, who used his house in Nicaragua as collateral for a $6,500 smuggling fee, says the worst day of his life was yet to come.

Arrested after the encounter with U.S. agents, Ubeda learned two days later that he could not pursue asylum in the United States while living with a cousin in Miami. Instead, he would have to wait in the Mexican border city of Tijuana for hearings in U.S. immigration court under a Trump-era policy that will be argued Tuesday before the U.S. Supreme Court.

President Joe Biden halted the Remain in Mexico policy his first day in office. A judge forced him to reinstate it in December, but barely 3,000 migrants were enrolled by the end of March, making little impact during a period when authorities stopped migrants about 700,000 times at the border.

Ubeda, like many migrants at a Tijuana shelter, had never heard of the policy, officially called Migrant Protection Protocols." It was widely known under President Donald Trump, who enrolled about 70,000 migrants after launching it in 2019 and making it a centerpiece of efforts to deter asylum-seekers.

It's a frightening experience, Ubeda said after a telephone call with his mother to consider whether to return to Nicaragua to reunite with her, his wife and his daughter. He was perplexed that a vast majority of Nicaraguans are released in the U.S. to pursue asylum, including the woman he saved and her daughter.

Nearly 2,200 asylum-seekers, or 73% of those enrolled through March, are from Nicaragua, with nearly all the rest from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador and Venezuela. Yet even among Nicaraguans, the policy is small in scope. U.S. authorities stopped Nicaraguans more than 56,000 times from December to March.

Criticisms of the policy are the same under Biden and Trump: Migrants are terrified in dangerous Mexican border cities and it is extremely difficult to find lawyers from Mexico.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, in an October order to end Remain in Mexico, reluctantly conceded that the policy caused a drop in weak asylum claims under Trump but said it did not justify the harms.

Emil Cardenas, 27, said he bloodied his foot and drank his urine after running out of water on a three-day hike in mountains near San Diego with a smuggler who took a $10,000 installment toward his fee and stole his passport, phone and other identification.

Cardenas hoped to live near his brother, a Catholic priest in New Jersey, while seeking asylum but waits at the Tijuana shelter for his first hearing in San Diego on May 18. He is disheartened to see others at the shelter on their third or fourth hearing.

One has to find a way to get across, said Cardenas, a Colombian who had attempted twice to enter the U.S. I'm thinking about what to do.

While waiting for hearings, men at the shelter are attached to smartphones  reading, watching videos and occasionally calling friends and family. A large television facing rows of tables and plastic chairs helps defeat boredom.

Many have been robbed and assaulted in Mexico, making them too scared to leave the shelter. Some chat in small groups but most keep to themselves, lost in thought.

Carlos Humberto Castellano, who repaired cellphones in Colombia and wants to join family in New York, cried for two days after being returned to Tijuana to wait for a court date in San Diego. It cost him about $6,500 to fly to Mexico and pay a smuggler to cross the border, leaving him in debt, he said.

I can't leave (the shelter) because I don't know what could happen, said Castellano, 23, recalling that his smuggler took a photo of him. Getting kidnapped is the fear.

The issue before the Supreme Court is whether the policy is discretionary and can be ended, as the Biden administration argues, or is the only way to comply with what Texas and Missouri say is a congressional command not to release the migrants in the United States.

Without adequate detention facilities, the states argue the administrations only option is to make migrants wait in Mexico for asylum hearings in the U.S.

The two sides also disagree about whether the way the administration ended the policy complies with a federal law that compels agencies to follow certain rules and explain their actions.

A ruling is expected shortly after the administration ends another key Trump-era border policy, lifting pandemic-related authority to expel migrants without a chance to seek asylum on May 23. The decision to end Title 42 authority, named for a 1944 public health law, is being legally challenged by 22 states and faces growing division within Biden's Democratic Party.

Due to costs, logistics and strained diplomatic relations, Title 42 has been difficult to apply to some nationalities, including Nicaraguans, which explains why the administration has favored them for Remain in Mexico.

The administration made some changes at Mexico's behest, which may explain low enrollment. It pledged to try to resolve cases within six months and agreed to shoulder costs of shuttling migrants to and from the border in Mexico for hearings.

As under Trump, finding a lawyer is a tall order. U.S. authorities give migrants a list of low- or no-cost attorneys but phone lines are overwhelmed.

Judges warn migrants that immigration law is complicated and that they face longer odds without an attorney. Migrants respond that calls to attorneys go unanswered and they can't afford typical fees.

I've seen lots of people in your situation who have found attorneys, often for free, Judge Scott Simpson told a migrant this month in a San Diego courtroom before granting more time to hire one.

Victor Cervera, 40, gave up on low-cost attorneys after his calls went unanswered. The Peruvian's online search for those who take Remain in Mexico cases yielded one find  a Miami lawyer who charges $350 for an initial phone consultation.

Nearly all migrants tell U.S. authorities they fear waiting in Mexico, entitling them to a phone interview with an asylum officer. About 15% are spared when the officer agrees their worries are well-founded, while others are excused for reasons deemed to make them vulnerable in Mexico, like gender or sexual orientation.

Those sent back wonder why they were chosen when so many others are released in the U.S to pursue their claims.

It's a raffle, said Alvaro Galo, 34, a Nicaraguan man who cleans and cooks meals at the shelter to keep his mind busy.

___

Associated Press writer Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. It is important to educate the world about the horrors that hapenned over a hundred years ago, and most importantly, to learn from those lessons to ensure we do everything we can to make sure they are not repeated again in the future, Tim Loughton, the head of the Great Britain -Armenia Parliamentary Friendship Group, said in an exclusive comment for ARMENPRESS.

Loughton noted that he is impressed with his recent visit to Armenia, One of the most moving parts of that trip was the visit to the Armenian Genocide memorial in Yerevan, where I was privileged to lay flowers on behlaf of the parlaimentary group.

The Armenian Genocide is an atrocity which happened over a hundred years ago in a distant corner of Europe. It is really important that we do not forget these events, that we educate the world about the horros that happened all those eyars ago, and most importantly, to learn from those lessons to ensure we do everything we can to make sure they are not repeated again in the future, the British MP said.

According to him, no matter how many years ago or in which remote corner of Europe the Armenian Genocide took place, these are important lessons of history.We will do whatever we can to make sure that in this country the public are educated and are aware of the horros of the Armenian Genocide. We learn the lessons from them and we all strive together to make sure justice comes to the victims and their families. We must make sure that we do everything so that those horrors do not revisit our continent again, Tim Loughton said.
WFO NORMAN Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Saturday, April 23, 2022

_____

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING

The National Weather Service in Norman has issued a

* Severe Thunderstorm Warning for...

Southeastern Jackson County in southwestern Oklahoma...

South central Kiowa County in southwestern Oklahoma...

Northwestern Tillman County in southwestern Oklahoma...

Northwestern Wilbarger County in northern Texas...

* Until 830 PM CDT.

* At 748 PM CDT, a severe thunderstorm was located near Fargo, moving

northeast at 55 mph.

HAZARD...60 mph wind gusts and quarter size hail.

SOURCE...Radar indicated.

IMPACT...Hail damage to vehicles is expected. Expect wind damage

to roofs, siding, and trees.

* Locations impacted include...

Vernon, Snyder, Tipton, Mountain Park, Headrick, Fargo, Humphreys,

Tom Steed Reservoir and Hess.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A Tornado Watch remains in effect for the warned area. Tornadoes can

develop quickly from severe thunderstorms.

For your protection move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a

building.

_____

Copyright 2022 AccuWeather
IVY GOODMAN, Stonington, Girls, Lacrosse, Senior; Goodman scored 12 goals and had 13 assists in three games. Her seven assists in the Bears win over Waterford established a school record. She surpassed the 50-goal mark for the season in Stoningtons victory over Ledyard.

DEAN PONS JR., Westerly, Baseball, Senior; Pons, a senior, struck out 14 batters in the Bulldogs five-inning win against Wheeler School/Rocky Hill. Pons had an assist on the remaining out, throwing out a runner on a groundout. Pons allowed just one hit and walked only two.

KATIE PIERCE, Wheeler, Girls, Lacrosse, Sophomore; Pierce scored five goals and the Lions beat Griswold to earn their first victory of the season. Wheeler avenged an earlier loss to the Wolverines this season with the 15-4 victory.

WEEKO THOMPSON, Chariho, Girls, Track Sophomore; Thompson, a sophomore, bettered her school record in the discus at the Classical Classic meet. She finished first in the event and also won the shot put.

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What a weird world we live in. As we report, internet giant Amazon has decided to make its mighty presence felt on our high streets with stores that are as clinically efficient as they are soulless. But only after driving many retailers out of business with its online assault on our shopping habits.

I predict here and now that by the time my hair turns white  three, maybe five years' time  every City centre and bustling town will have an Amazon store. Perish the thought.

While Amazon sees a future on the high street, the banks are giving up. As we have exclusively reported in recent weeks, 180 bank branch closures have already been announced this year  and more, for sure, are on the way.

Looking ahead: What will the next big thing on the high street be? Amazon Bank

Yet, the banks are undermining their branch networks in other devious ways  by reducing opening hours, shutting them on specific days, and restricting access to counter services at certain times.

Santander has just gone down this route. Having axed 111 outlets last year, it has now made 'changes to branch opening hours'  banking code for reducing them.

Nearly all of its 450 high street sites will have their weekday opening times clipped by one and a half hours every day, while no branch will be open on a Saturday for more than half a day.

While the bank says these measures are in response to declining branch usage, it's not as black and white as it paints.

If banks make it more difficult for people and small businesses to use their branches, it's inevitable that customers will be pushed down the digital route.

As Derek French, a long-standing campaigner for shared branches, told me on Friday: 'The current strategy of reduced opening hours and restricted counter access will simply drive more of us to digital banking  willing or not.'

As ever, French is bang on the money. Maybe, in the fullness of time, we will see Amazon venture into high street banking. Weirder things have happened.

Good to see Newcastle BS giving shared branches a go

Talking of shared branches, it is good to see Newcastle Building Society giving them a go. It is piloting the idea in two locations  Knaresborough, North Yorkshire and Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne.

It will mean that personal and business customers of all the big banks will be able to use the branches to withdraw and deposit cash.

If the pilots prove popular, the technology will be rolled out across Newcastle's 30-strong branch network.

'We champion the high street and believe in its vital role in supporting vibrant local economies,' Newcastle boss Andrew Haigh told me on Friday.

'Decisions made by banks have been at the expense of many vulnerable people who are reliant on cash and as a result they risk being disenfranchised from the financial system.'

Well said that man.

Regulation of prepaid funeral plans market cannot come soon enough

Although I am not a big fan of the Financial Conduct Authority, its regulation of the prepaid funeral plans market cannot come soon enough.

For too long, unscrupulous providers have been given licence to ride roughshod over customers.

As we exclusively reported earlier this month, a big chunk of customers' money  supposedly safe in a trust fund  was skimmed off by former directors of provider Safe Hands for their own financial benefit.

It means some 47,000 customers now have no idea whether the funeral they paid for in advance will be delivered when the time comes round (Safe Hands is in administration).

The FCA will take over regulation at the end of July. It is hoping to publish soon a list of plan providers that it is minded to authorise.

It is also giving those providers which do not wish to continue post-regulation a little bit more time (until the end of October) to transfer their plans to a company that wishes to be authorised.

Both are sensible steps.

What is obvious is that the funeral plans industry will consolidate around a number of big players  the likes of Dignity and the Co-op.
Energy giants BP and Shell are preparing to stomach the mammoth cost of severing ties with Russia, which threatens to overshadow bumper profits they have raked in from the surging price of oil and gas.

Campaigners have blasted the FTSE100 firms for making huge profits as households battle a cost-of-living crisis. Trading profits are expected to show they made as much as 120million a day in the first quarter.

But the combined cost of exiting their Russian partnerships is likely to be booked early next month. The total impact will reach as much as 24billion as they digest the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Gathering storm: BP and Shell's combined cost of exiting their Russian partnerships is likely to be booked early next month

BP is expected to write down up to 20billion for ditching its near-20 per cent stake in Kremlin-owned oil firm Rosneft. The eye-watering sum will be included in BP's update to the market in the first week of May as a 'material charge'.

Rival Shell could also book impairment charges of up to 3.5billion. It has said it will exit its joint venture with Gazprom, Russia's state gas giant, including its stake in the Sakhalin-2 gas project. The costs of ditching the partnerships will be reported as exceptional 'paper losses'.

That means it will hamper headline profits, although it is unlikely to impact the ability to continue paying dividends to shareholders.

But it could distract from both companies' profit bonanzas  which they have reaped from runaway oil and gas prices.

BP will unveil its figures on May 3, while Shell will report the same week on May 5. But the boom in underlying trading profits is bound to anger ordinary Britons struggling with rocketing fuel bills. It will also renew pressure on the Government to introduce a one-off windfall tax on North Sea oil producers to help households battle with spiralling prices.

MPs representing Labour and the Lib Dems  plus some Tories  have joined campaigners urging Ministers to bring in a windfall tax. These calls intensified in February after BP and Shell reported combined profits of 25billion for 2021.

They later revealed huge pay packets for their bosses. BP chief executive Bernard Looney previously described his company as a 'cash machine' when a rebound from the pandemic turbocharged its earnings.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has so far dismissed the demands for a one-off levy.

The latest sharp escalation in trading profits will almost certainly exasperate desperate families facing an unprecedented financial squeeze.

The cap on average home dual-fuel tariffs was increased by more than half to 1,971 earlier this month and the invasion of Ukraine triggered another spike in wholesale gas prices  which are around 275 per cent higher than at this time last year.

Energy chiefs have warned 40 per cent of Britons could fall into fuel poverty this winter. Businesses are also struggling to keep up with their bills. Simon Cran-McGreehin, head of analysis at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said: 'I'm sure when BP and Shell's profits come out there will be some very justified anger about this. From our polling, the public's perception is that oil and gas producers are profiting from this crisis.'

Tax Justice UK Executive Director, Robert Palmer, said: 'Despite the hit from Russia, these companies should not be let off the hook.' He said: 'The extraordinary profits being raked in by these energy giants shows this isn't a cost of living crisis, it's a cost of living scandal.'

The war in Ukraine also led to another oil rally as supplies from Russia, which is one of the world's top exporters, were disrupted by sanctions.

Brent crude surged as high as $130 a barrel last month, the highest since July 2008. It is a sharp reversal from the nosedive to $19 a barrel in April 2020, when lockdowns sent demand tumbling as travel and industry worldwide were brought to a standstill.

The jumps in the oil price  which now stands at $107  have sent petrol prices to new records. Unleaded petrol is on average 162p per litre and diesel at 176p at the pump.

In a note, RBC brokers said: 'The energy sector continues to be well-placed to benefit from the current environment, and we believe recent geopolitical events have put a renewed focus on core oil and gas businesses.'

Analysts at RBC estimate BP will unveil first-quarter profit of 4billion at its results on May 3. The bank believes Shell will report a 6.7billion profit on May 5.

According to Refinitiv, analysts also expect both oil giants to hike their dividends this year.
Under fire: Andy Hornby faces a backlash from the restaurant chain's shareholders

Andy Hornby, chief executive of The Restaurant Group, has been blasted for taking a bonus while the Wagamama and Frankie & Benny's owner received tens of millions in taxpayer support.

Hornby, who led Halifax Bank of Scotland before it was rescued by taxpayers during the financial crisis, collected a 578,000 bonus, taking his total pay to 1.2million.

The payout comes despite the significant state aid handed to his firm last year to support it through the third Covid lockdown. The restrictions forced its 400 sites, which also include the Chiquito brand, to shut.

Campaigners say that the 'inappropriate rewards' fail to take into account those who paid for vital financial life support, including the restaurants' customers.

In its annual report, TRG said it had received 43.2million through the Government-funded furlough scheme last year. That was on top of 123.5million in 2020.

It also benefited from a 50million loan through the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme, repaid in 2021, and millions in business rates relief.

Hornby's payout puts him on a collision course with shareholders who have said that companies which drew on public support during the pandemic should not pay large bonuses to executives.

Asked about Hornby's pay, top 20 shareholder Legal & General Investment Management said it had a 'very clear policy' on opposing bonuses in these circumstances. The asset manager said: 'If companies have faced liquidity issues due to Covid-19 to an extent they had to suspend dividends, accept Government support in the form of loans, suspension of rates or furlough and they reduced headcount, then company bonuses to executives should not have been paid.'

Hornby ran HBOS from 2006 to 2008, when it had to be rescued by Lloyds Banking Group in the financial crisis. Lloyds was bailed out by the taxpayer the following month.

TRG had suffered even before the pandemic amid intense competition in the casual dining sector. It was forced to close 125 sites in 2020 affecting 3,000 jobs. It tapped shareholders for 232million to weather the Covid storm and says it furloughed '95 per cent' of its employees for 'significant periods' of 2020 and 2021.

The chair of TRG's pay committee, Zoe Morgan, said it had 'debated at length the appropriate bonus award for strong performance once trading resumed in 2021' and was 'cognisant of the significant Government support received'. But Morgan said the fact no bonuses had been paid for the previous two years had fed into the decision to agree a reduced payout.

She said Hornby's 963,333 bonus was cut by 40 per cent. TRG finance chief Kirk Davis also saw his payout trimmed, to 271,000. But campaigners said paying a bonus at all was not acceptable given the significant state support. Andrew Speke, of the High Pay Centre, said: 'Investors are right to call this out for what it is  a company taking public money with one hand, and handing out generous bonuses to executives with the other. If the remuneration committee respect their customers, British taxpayers, they should take heed of their investors' disquiet and reverse their decision to pay these inappropriate rewards.'

The issue is likely to ignite TRG's annual shareholder meeting next month. A significant proportion of investors voted against Hornby's pay package at its last two investor votes.

His 2021 payout is the first bonus paid by TRG to a chief executive since the one paid to Hornby's predecessor Andy McCue in 2017. TRG said directors also waived a portion of their salary in the first year of the pandemic. Listed companies face a stormy summer of investor rebellions over corporate pay.

This month it emerged Alison Brittain, boss of Premier Inn owner Whitbread, agreed to give up her 729,000 bonus after the MoS revealed concerns over the delayed award. Whitbread drew on 370million of pandemic support. Carnival saw 36 per cent of its investors vote against boss Arnold Donald's 11.4million pay. That was paid despite the cruise giant using the furlough scheme, not paying dividends and axing jobs.

WH Smith saw 46 per cent of its investors vote against boss Carl Cowling's 550,000 bonus. The board said his bonus had already been cut by 22 per cent which was 'proportionate compared with pandemic support'. But the retailer took 40million in business rates relief and 11million in payments through the furlough scheme in the year to September 2021.

WH Smith and Carnival join the executive pay 'list of shame', overseen by the Investment Association trade body, for firms where 20 per cent of shareholders oppose bosses' earnings. Sandwich maker Greencore and cinema operator Cineworld have faced similar criticism.

Ladbrokes owner Entain also risks a backlash. Betting shops closed in lockdown, but its revenues were boosted as bored Britons switched to online gambling. Entain repaid 44million of furlough for 2021, but kept 57.5million claimed in 2020, as new boss Jette Nygaard-Andersen landed a 2.5million package, including a 1.8million bonus.
City forecasts for British Airways owner IAG have been cut 'significantly' after a string of cancellations and spiralling fuel prices.

Brokers at Peel Hunt halved their annual forecasts for the FTSE100 group  which also owns Aer Lingus and Iberia  from 997million (839 million) to 495 million 416million).

Analyst Alex Paterson warned that passengers might 'book elsewhere', turning to rival airlines, after IT failures and mass cancellations led to travel misery for thousands of Britons over the Easter break.

Struggle: Recent data shows BA cancelled more flights than any other airline during the first week of April

The disruptions came at a crucial time as the industry entered one of the first major holiday periods since the easing of pandemic travel restrictions.

Recent data shows BA cancelled more flights than any other airline during the first week of April. Many of these were due to staff shortages and sickness following another spike in Covid infections.

Budget airline easyJet also came under fire for cancellations.

IAG may have to earmark cash for paying compensation in future should any more disruption arise, he said. It may also be forced to hike its marketing budget to help 'diffuse customer concerns' in that event.

Rapidly increasing jet fuel bills have also been a headache for carriers after oil prices spiked to multi-year highs at the start of the year. Brent crude rebounded last year when Covid lockdowns lifted, but it rallied even further following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Oil started the year at less than $80 a barrel then jumped as high as $130 in March.

IAG has hedged much of its fuel prices for the year  meaning it has locked in prices and is less vulnerable to big swings.

But Paterson warned that IAG was less hedged than many other airlines and believes its fuel bill will jump.

Peel Hunt has increased its forecast from 5.9billion to 6.3billion (5.3billion). This eye-watering sum is close to IAG's annual turnover of 8.5billion (7.2billion) last year, with price pressures potentially sparking ticket price hikes. Peel Hunt forecast IAG's revenue this year will be 21.3billion (18billion).

The broker also said BA's technical blunders are not something its rivals are facing.

The company, which is led by Spanish businessman Luis Gallego, will release a trading update for the first quarter on May 6.

Stephen Furlong, an analyst at Davy, said the 'number one reason' for analysts' profit downgrades will be the oil price. He told The Mail on Sunday: 'There is no question that the higher oil price is a huge headwind for the airline industry.' Davy recently lowered its forecasts for IAG's full-year profit from 992million (834billion) to 704million (592billion). This was before the most recent travel chaos.

IAG's giant debt pile is expected to grow in 2022 as the airline boosts investment for the post-pandemic travel rebound. Furlong said: 'IAG had a pandemic where it prioritised efficiency, but now they are prioritising investment.'

Examples of recent spending include IAG's plans to draft in 25 new aircraft, as well as BA leasing four planes from FinnAir. These are set to operate out of Heathrow with FinnAir cabin crew from May to August, which could ease some of BA's recent staffing issues.

John Strickland, from JLS Consulting, an independent air travel consultancy, warned that increased wages are also adding to airlines' costs at a time of fuel hikes. 'They are looking at a strong summer but part of the trade-off in meeting demand is incurring a likely increase in staff costs,' he said.

BA, which recently launched its new short-haul operations from Gatwick, is offering a welcome bonus of 1,000 to poach trained crew from rivals. IAG was contacted for comment.
Vision: OakNorth's Rishi Khosla says his mission is to help entrepreneurs

He may not be as famous as his namesake in Number 11 Downing Street, but Rishi Khosla has some impressive achievements under his belt. Since 2015, the 46-year-old chief executive of OakNorth Bank has built up a 3.8billion lender, using slick technology to offer loans to small firms.

Small businesses, he says, have been 'ignored' by mainstream banks since the financial crisis. Stepping into the breach, he has created one of the UK's leading fin-tech businesses and is now eyeing a stock market float, with London the most likely venue.

'We're very driven in our mission to help entrepreneurs and small businesses,' says Khosla, who co-founded the bank. 'We've helped create 30,000 new jobs in the UK,' he enthuses, referring to the employment generated by the companies his bank has backed.

OakNorth is a name with a familiar ring to followers of political spats. The bank was at the centre of a Westminster storm after it emerged that former Chancellor Lord Philip Hammond, who took on a role as an adviser at OakNorth in 2020 after quitting frontline politics, had contacted the Government on its behalf.

Lobbying is a sensitive subject after the scandal over former Prime Minister David Cameron's efforts on behalf of failed finance firm Greensill. In this case, Hammond had mentioned OakNorth's lending services for businesses hit by the pandemic to a senior Treasury official. Khosla points out that these services were being offered on a not-for-profit basis.

Hammond was rebuked for his behaviour although he was cleared of breaching the lobbying rules. 'Our view was we were trying to do something good,' says Khosla. 'It's unfortunate that there was a trip in the process.'

On a happier note, OakNorth is one of the few start-ups to have quickly turned a profit. It reported a 73 per cent jump in pre-tax profits last year to 134.5million.

The bank uses cutting-edge technology to assess the risks of lending sums of between 250,000 and tens of millions of pounds to firms. So far, it has dished out 7.5billion to businesses, including high street restaurant chain Leon.

It uses advanced algorithms to help predict how potential borrowers will fare against rivals and in different economic climates.

The lender  set up by Khosla and his business partner Joel Perlman, in 2015  was among the tide of digital banks that surfaced after the financial crisis to fill the gaps left by the big banks as they shied away from business perceived as risky.

'We wanted to build a bank using state of the art technology that allowed us to serve businesses who were just getting ignored by the commercial banks, who I call the missing middle,' Khosla explains.

The company raised $440million (340 million) from investors including Japanese investment giant SoftBank in 2019, making it Europe's most highly valued tech firm at the time.

So what's it like working with one of the world's biggest tech investors and its billionaire founder, Masayoshi Son? 'Masa is a pretty unique character,' says Khosla. 'He looks for businesses that can be very large, disruptive, can have an edge. And clearly he's not afraid to take risks.'

OakNorth is now making waves in the US, licensing its loan software to other finance firms, including credit card giant Capital One. The technology helps banks to monitor their loan books to keep a check on potential defaults, which has been especially useful during the pandemic.

'Our ambition is to help solve the way commercial banking works, so [they] can better service entrepreneurs,' Khosla explains. 'We have $420billion of US commercial lending data through our systems which monitor the loans.'

OakNorth has prided itself on very few of its loans turning sour. But once the pandemic took hold, it set aside 21.6million to cover potential bad debts. The situation improved last year, though, and OakNorth was able to claw back 3.7million of the money set aside.

Does Khosla expect more defaults given the state of the economy? 'If you're in the lending business, of course you can expect defaults. It would be abnormal not to have defaults on a regular basis, because that's the business we're in,' he says. 'The fact we went six and a half years with just over a dozen defaults I think is exceptional. Do we think we'll continue to have low defaults? Absolutely. But will we have defaults and losses? Absolutely.'

Khosla, a Tory donor and an avid collector of fine art, is a tech entrepreneur to his bones and dresses the part. He can be spotted in the bank's trendy Soho offices wearing a hoodie and walking on his treadmill desk with attached workstation. But he also knows when to don a tailored suit, notably at soirees with other Tory donors and politicians.

He grew up in West London and attended the prestigious Merchant Taylors' school. 'My father used to work incredibly hard, so while he was doing his main job, he was setting up a business in the evenings and weekends. He would regularly go to sleep at 2am and be on a 7am train to London, to his office.'

An initial public offering of the company's shares to investors may be on the cards 'some time in the future', Khosla says. Will OakNorth list in London? 'To be decided,' he chuckles. 'Probably. When you look at what London has today in terms of tech growth firms, there are some, but it's still pretty limited.'

A float would be welcomed by the City after the quiet deferring of a series of potential listings. The UK already lags the US and China, accounting for just 5 per cent of global listings from 2015 to 2020.

The other Rishi  Sunak  has been very keen to encourage tech firms in the UK to emulate the giants of Silicon Valley.

To that end, Khosla lauds a Government-commissioned plan to overhaul the stock exchange by allowing entrepreneurs, potentially including himself, to keep greater control of their company.

He says such a plan could prompt more firms to list in London. 'The approach taken by the Government is super positive,' he enthuses. 'By doing this, you're attracting good businesses to stay listed in the UK.'

Then he says, they are more likely to focus on this country when creating jobs and growth.
Ministers have been urged to intervene to keep renewable energy jobs in the UK after a big contract for floating wind farms was given to a Middle East-based group.

Dubai-based Lamprell signed an early stage deal this month to fabricate 200 turbines for the farms, to be installed west of Shetland.

Vanishing act: Dubai-based Lamprell signed an early stage deal this month to fabricate 200 turbines for the farms, to be installed west of Shetland

But the GMB union said the deal meant the Government's Energy Security Strategy had 'fallen at the first hurdle' as UK workers missed out on jobs on the multi-billion pound project.

Gary Smith, GMB general secretary, said: 'It's a national scandal that UK workers and communities are being forced to watch as multi-billion pound contracts for offshore wind farms are sent overseas to companies in authoritarian regimes.'

The union has written to politicians in Westminster and Holyrood calling for a joint review.

It wants emergency legislation to stop work going abroad.

Lamprell is listed in London but much of its work is focused in the Middle East.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. The President of the Maat Foundation Ayman Okeil calls on the international community to form a fact-finding group and recognize the Armenian Genocide.

107 years after the Armenian Genocide, there is still no international consensus on the recognition of this crime, the perpetrators of which have not yet been punished, although according to paragraphs III of articles (B) and (c) of the Genocide Convention the genocide of the Armenian people took place, and what is happening in Karabakh now can also be qualified as a crime of genocide since starting from September 27, 2020 (09/27/2020) until now, violating international humanitarian law and violating the ceasefire agreements, despite international pressure to cease hostilities, Azerbaijani forces have been carrying out direct attacks on the internationally recognized borders of the Republic of Armenia, firing at infrastructure and civilians with heavy-caliber weapons, ruthlessly murdering women and children. Azerbaijan has violated all international norms recognizing the protection of civilians and their right to live, therefore, in memory of the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and the systematic and targeted killings of Armenians, we call for respect for international humanitarian law and remaining faithful to international treaties, and we call on the international community to form a fact-finding group and recognize the Genocide, Okeil said in a video message to ARMENPRESS on the occasion of the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. For a century, little or no pressure was put on Turkey by Europe and the US to recognise the genocide and achieve reconciliation, and this was a tragic mistake, just as the current approach to Turkey, which privileges business at the expense of human rights, is wrong and counterproductive, Italian journalist, writer Simone Zoppellaro told ARMENPRESS when asked whether actions other than calls and resolutions are needed given that Turkey continues its policy of denial 107 years since the Armenian Genocide.

Since I studied at the University of Bologna, twenty years ago, I have seen the attention paid to this subject grow year by year. A topic that, also due to the Cold War, was still little known and studied outside the Armenian communities in the last century. Today much has changed. The denialist theses are now very little accepted in the academic and political world, and even ordinary people, thanks also to successful films and books, have at least a general idea of the issue. A not insignificant fact, moreover, is that the awareness of the Metz Yeghern has contributed to the popularization of the concept of genocide, as elaborated by Raphael Lemkin.

For a century, little or no pressure was put on Turkey by Europe and the US to recognise the genocide and achieve reconciliation. This was a tragic mistake, just as the current approach to Turkey, which privileges business at the expense of human rights, is wrong and counterproductive. Now, it is crucial to work on different levels. Culture undoubtedly plays an important role in this. Turkish writers and directors, together with many activists, took important steps in this direction years ago. All this ended up being stifled by Erdogan's new dictatorial drift. Many Armenians have also made important contributions. I am thinking of Pietro Kuciukian, who collected dozens and dozens of stories of the Turkish Righteous who opposed the genocide. But, once again, how can these figures be promoted in an authoritarian context such as the current one? Europe must get rid of all its autocrats, including Erdogan. A part of Turkish civil society, I say this also from personal experience, is ready to recognize the genocide. But this will never happen as long as their voice is silenced by the state, Zoppellaro said.

Asked on his opinion on when and under what circumstances Turkey would recognize the Armenian Genocide, as well as the current process of normalization between Armenia and Turkey, the Italian journalist said: The recognition and acknowledgement of genocide by a state that is heir to its perpetrators is always a long process. The philosopher Gunther Anders told us how, even at the end of the 1970s, the majority of Germans did not want to face the Shoah. Now, Erdogan's Turkey is not the Federal Republic of Germany, and it would be crucial for the state to commit to a path not yet taken. The circumstances you ask about, I am afraid, are not the present ones, but a possibility may soon open up, although I doubt very much that there is the will to go all the way through what the Germans call Schuldfrage, the question of guilt.

Now, a new Turkey that acknowledges the Armenian genocide and the crimes of the Ottomans would undoubtedly be able to dialogue with its minorities, starting with the Kurds, and have a more constructive approach to its neighbours. And it would be able to live in peace and prosperity, as has rarely happened in Turkey in the last century.

A rapprochement would be essential, but I well understand the fears of many Armenians. Today's Turkey is authoritarian and violent, Erdogan unreliable, and his role in the aggression in Karabakh is unquestionable. If such a rapprochement were to become a reality, it would be an important step towards a possible common memory and peace. But beware, let us take the case of Italy and Slovenia, two democracies that are part of the European Union, and the crimes committed during the Second World War: a common memory is still lacking in many respects, and tensions have not been absent, even recently. So we should not spread false optimism in this regard. Whatever happens, it will be a long road and not without obstacles.

As Gabriele Nissim writes, it is necessary to translate the 'never again' into a here and now, recalling the example of Raphel Lemkin. What is the point of commemorating if, even today, we remain indifferent to crimes against humanity and genocide? The new millennium has already seen at least one genocide, the one against the Yazidis, and it will certainly not be the last if we do not activate prevention mechanisms in our parliaments and international institutions. The Milan-based foundation I work with, Gariwo, made some important proposals to our parliament last year: Appoint an Italian genocide advisor in Parliament to work in collaboration with the UN Special Advisor on Genocide Prevention and EU institutions; to commit the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament to draw up an annual report presenting to public opinion the dangers of new genocides in the world and the possible measures to be taken to prevent them; the creation in Italy of an autonomous and independent human rights agency, as proposed by the European Union, which, in collaboration with the International Criminal Court, would permanently investigate the state of rights in the world and crimes against humanity. We need a commitment that links past and present, and that goes from education to culture and politics. We cannot know our future, but we must go deep into our past, especially the most terrible pages, to ensure that they do not recur. Unfortunately, the events of recent months suggest the worst for our future. That is why it is more important than ever to remember and act.

Interview by Anna Gziryan
The Upper East Tennessee Fiddlers Convention will take place on Saturday at Flag Pond School. Registration to compete begins on-site at 8 a.m., and the youth competition begins at 10 a.m.
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Crisafulli Bros. Plumbing and Heating is a repeat winner for best plumber since 2007.

Andrea Crisafulli, the companys president and owner shares how the company has successfully kept up with an evolving industry leading to numerous wins.

Q: How does it feel being a repeat winner?

Crisafulli: It's amazing, especially for my team. They just get such energy from it. What I love the most about it is just how they take it to heart and celebrate it like crazy. I'm super-proud of them. It's a nice reassurance that we're doing everything right.

Q: Whats the secret to your companys success?

It's kind of like a three-pronged approach of winning. We make it about the employees, the customers and the community.

We give back to the community through (Crisafulli Cares program) and we really put our employees first. Our environment in the office is definitely lighthearted. My goal has always been for it to be a place where people want to come and work. There's cornhole, darts, billiards, things for people to just sort of engage with one another and enjoy work.

We train a lot. We really hire people who are mechanically inclined but at the same time have really good soft skills so they know how to treat our customers. People skills  and relationships are important. That's definitely a basis of our company and our company culture.

Q: How have you dealt with competition over the years?

(We) play our own ball. I compare ourselves to ourselves all the time and just doing better by who we are and what my standards are more so than what my competitors are doing. We know what's right. We do what's right by our employees, our community, and our customers. And that's kind of how I measure our success, not so much by our competition.

Q: How have you seen the business change in the last 25 years?

The industry hasn't changed, our approach to the industry has changed.

Our approach when we go to your home is to look at your entire system. That approach has changed somewhat where it used to be a break-fix environment. You would call and say that your kitchen sink isn't working and we would just go in, look at your kitchen sink and fix it. But now, time is people's commodity.

We really go in with eyes wide open (and) assess the entire home and situation. Then we give recommendations to what we suggest we do. When the customer agrees to it, we perform the work. We don't charge you until you know what we're going to do when you approve for the work to be done.

Q: How has demand for plumbing, heating and electrical services changed?

Demand, because people are home, certainly has changed (due to the coronavirus). Conditions like what temperature your home is may mean a lot more now than it did when you were at work for eight hours a day.

Your facilities are used more, that's another piece. Were installing a lot more generators now because people can't be without electricity if they're working from home.

We have a commercial services group and we rebranded this year as home services (and) added electrical to our portfolio. Our approach is full-service when we come to your home.

Q: Has it been hard to attract and attain talent?

It's difficult to find it. We probably have no less than 12 entry-level people right now  just learning either plumbing, heating or electrical, working side by side.

You have to just bring them in and train them. Because of our size, we've been able to fragment.

You really just don't have the amount of people entering the trades that can do everything like 10 years ago. Now, we're training certain teams. We have the water heater heroes, for instance. They are a group of plumbers who only do water heaters.

Because we don't have people entering the trades, we sort of specialized peoples skill sets.

I'm on several boards, QUESTAR BOCES (and) Hudson Valley Community College. Some of our folks do trainings for some of the classes and we will recruit out of those.
What would it be like if Robert Langdon, acclaimed professor of symbology at Harvard University (and fictional hero of Dan Browns best-selling novels, including The Da Vinci Code) explored hidden symbols and secret codes buried in music instead of art and architecture? The answers will be made known in Sub-Rosa: Secrets Revealed a program of choral music with the Skylark Vocal Ensemble on Saturday, April 30 at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, Mass. The concert is presented by Close Encounters with Music.

The concept of the program arose about five years ago during conversations between Matthew Guard, Skylarks founder and artistic director, and Gregory W. Brown, a well-recognized composer who is Dan Browns brother. It turns out theres lots of music in the Brown family. Their mother was a church organist while their father was a math teacher. Early in his professional life Dan Brown pursued being a pop songwriter. He readily agreed to be part of the choral music project.

Sub Rosa will have a strong visual element with photographs, illustrations, and animations that accompany the music. Think Tom Hanks as Langdon with his PowerPoint. But rather than Hanks/Langdon, the smart fellow unlocking and explaining the esoterica will be author Dan Brown himself via video also with several other experts. Guard, the conductor, doesnt promise the presentation will be quite as well-paced as a Robert Langdon page-turner, but he says so far its been fun and interesting.

Skylark has a well-earned reputation for creative programming and has been nominated for three Grammy Awards during its 10-year history. In putting together the components of Sub-Rosa, Guard may have outdone himself in terms of the historical breadth of repertoire. The music stretches from the medieval with Hildegard Von Bingen to contemporary times, with music by four living composers. Also on the bill are Guillaume Dufay, Benjamin Britten, Edward Elgar, and Per Norgard among others. Gregory W. Brown and Melissa Dunphy wrote new works specifically for the program, which is being performed by the 16-voice ensemble in three locations in eastern Massachusetts during the week prior to coming to the Berkshires.

Long-forgotten historical connections have been buried in manuscripts of choral music over the centuries, and I think our audiences will be fascinated to experience them, says Guard.

Sub Rose: Secret Symbols takes place at 6 p.m. Saturday, April 30, at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, 14 Castle St., Great Barrington, Mass. Tickets are $28-$52. Call (413) 528-0100 or visit: Mahaiwe.org

AGO CENTENNIAL

Also on Saturday, April 30, the eastern New York chapter of the American Guild of Organists is celebrating its centennial with a free concert at 3 p.m. at St. Peters Episcopal Church in Albany. The featured artist is Joey Falla, who is director of music at University Presbyterian in Chapel Hill.

Falla was raised in Hawaii and took a circuitous route to becoming a professional organist that includes significant time spent in the Capital Region. Falla studies at RPI in Troy where he earned a bachelor's degree in architecture and a master's in lighting, while serving as organist at First United Presbyterian in Troy. He then turned fully toward music and took a master's in performance from Yale. He has also been a resident scholar at Duke.

A highlight of Fallas program will be a new work with an Albany twist. Al Fedaks An Albany Processional is based on the hymn tune Albany, which was written in 1886 for the citys bicentennial by John Albert Jeffery (1855-1929), organist at All Saints Episcopal Cathedral. Fedak is an internationally known composer of sacred music and currently serves as organist at First Reformed in Scotia. Its not hard to imagine that future generations might one day pay tribute to his music in the same manner.

Theres a familiar footnote to this event listing. It was planned to take place in 2020 but the pandemic got in the way. The AGO chapter was founded in September 1920 and currently consists of over 100 organists, choir directors, and organ enthusiasts in the greater Capital District.

The organization provides professional networking, support and fellowship and produces a few concerts annually. Keep up with the group at: enyago.org.

Joseph Dalton is a freelance writer based in Troy.
Jeffrey Collins/AP

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  The South Carolina Senate is getting ready to debate its version of the state's $12.6 billion spending plan.

The budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year is built around $1 billion in income tax rebates and another $1 billion in cuts, compared with the $600 income million tax cut proposed by the House.
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SCHUYLERVILLE  For four years, everything Claire Pelletier-Hoblock has done was aimed at getting into the U.S. Naval Academy.

Every class she took, extracurriculars and even her part-time job were all chosen in a well-researched effort to get that acceptance letter.

It was just my life, especially the last year and a half. Everything I did was because of it, she said.

And since the academy has a 9 percent acceptance rate, she hedged her bets by applying to the other two military academies that involve seafaring: the U.S. Merchant Marine and the Coast Guard academies.

Last week, all that effort won her the trifecta: she was accepted into all three schools.

Shes the first female student from Schuylerville High School to get into one military academy, much less three. Shell have to get used to that, she said: only 28 percent of the students at the Naval Academy are women.

She was hoping to be accepted to the Naval Academy partly because she wants to operate the biggest ships on the ocean. She plans to become a surface warfare officer, a Navy career that leads to commanding ships as a captain.

I really want to be on the water, she said. I have a dream to drive big ships.

The dream was sparked by a Carnival cruise she took to the Bahamas when she was in eighth grade. She loved the ship so much she preferred being onboard rather than going on excursions. She started imagining what it would be like to command the cruise ship, and her mother noted that she could learn to do that in the Navy.

She spent ninth grade researching and determined how to maximize her chances of getting in. She applied for and attended summer programs at the Naval and Coast Guard academies to impress officials with her work ethic.

One of the points at which many prospective students fail is the need for a nomination, usually from a member of Congress. So she started working for U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, her congresswoman.

I knew if I worked hard for her, shed be more likely to nominate me, she said. She noticed my hard work. So when I asked her for the nomination, she had no hesitation.

In the meantime, Pelletier-Hoblock found a new passion. Now she plans to major in political science.

I had so much fun on the campaign, she said.

Another point she focused on was passing the physical exam.

A lot of women apply and (the academies) dont take them, she said. Ive been working since January 2020. I got into the best shape of my life preparing for these.

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

That will help with her next hurdle: Plebe Summer, a program that consists of rigorous physical and mental training, a process the Academy says turns "civilians into midshipmen."

She graduates from high school on June 24 and leaves for the Naval Academy on June 29. For the following six weeks, she must surrender her phone and can make just one call.

Its going to be really hard. They definitely break you down, but this is what Ive always wanted, she said.

Shes looking forward to meeting the other students, because she doesnt know anyone who is as driven as she has had to be as she went through the years-long process.

These students are going to become my family, she said. And we all went through the same process, so thats helping.

Shes been warned that shell need internal motivation to get through the summer. Shes ready to do whatever it takes to get onto those big ships.

I love to be a leader, she said. My grandfather was in the Coast Guard. He was stationed on Cape May. We go almost every summer and climb the same lighthouse he served in. Its always the highlight of my summer.

This year she wont be able to go. But she can already see herself following in his footsteps, and that will be enough.
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BEIRUT (AP)  For journalist Amer Matar, a decade-long search for his younger brother has defined him and changed the course of his life, now dedicated to researching and documenting crimes committed by the Islamic State group in Syria.

His brother, Mohammed Nour Matar, vanished in Syrias northern city of Raqqa in 2013 while reporting on an explosion that hit the headquarters of an insurgent group. His burnt camera was found at the scene of the blast, and his family soon after got word he was in an IS prison. But there has been no other sign of him since.

Mohammed Nour is among thousands of people believed to have been seized by the Islamic State, the extremist group that in 2014 overran large parts of Syria and Iraq, where it set up a so-called Islamic Caliphate and brutalized the population for years.

Three years after its territorial defeat, thousands are still missing and accountability for their captors remains elusive. Families of the missing feel abandoned by a world that has largely moved on, while they struggle alone to uncover the fate of their loved ones.

These violations may constitute crimes against humanity, war crimes, and even genocide in some cases, the Washington-based Syria Justice and Accountability Center said in a report published Thursday. These families have the right to know the truth about the fate of their loved ones.

The rights group says that between 2013 and 2017, when IS ruled much of northern and eastern Syria, the militant group detained thousands who remain missing and whose families continue to live in a state of grief and uncertainty.

In its report titled Unearthing Hope: The Search for the Missing Victims of ISIS, SJAC said that approximately 6,000 bodies have been exhumed from dozens of mass graves dug by IS in northeast Syria, and retrieved from buildings destroyed by airstrikes of the U.S.-led coalition during the military campaign that eventually brought down IS.

This may amount to approximately half of the total number of missing people in the northeast, according to the group, although estimates of the missing vary.

Mohammed Nour Matar had become a citizen journalist during Syrias civil war, and he was often out with his camera documenting the conflict. He went missing on Aug. 13, 2013 while covering an explosion in Raqqa that went off outside the offices of the Ahfad al-Rasoul faction, one of several insurgent groups that were rivals of IS. He was 21 at the time and was working on a documentary about Raqqa and its residents opposition to IS.

Four months later, Raqqa became Syrias first provincial capital to fall under the full control of IS. When the extremists declared a so-called caliphate in June 2014, the city became their de-facto capital. The group ruled Matars hometown of Raqqa with fear, setting up scores of detention centers in different parts of the city, brutalizing opponents and even placing heads of beheaded victims in the citys Naim Square  Arabic for Paradise.

In the report, SJAC documented for the first time the vast web of detention facilities that were central to IS disappearances. Different wings of the IS security apparatus systematically used this network of 152 police stations, training camps, and secret security prisons to detain kidnapped civilians and members of rival armed groups, in some cases before issuing death sentences or summarily executing them.

It listed 33 detention facilities in the city of Raqqa alone.

SJAC says alleged perpetrators who may hold evidence necessary to identify remains are languishing in prisons of the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces with no fair judicial procedures in sight. It says other former IS members live in their home countries where they returned after the group was defeated.

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

The permanent defeat of ISIS cannot be secured without justice for the victims of the organizations crimes, including those who remain missing, it said.

Amer Matar, who now lives in Berlin with his parents and siblings, said they were told at one point that Mohammed Nour was being held in a jail in the city. Some former prisoners who had seen him there provided personal details that only the family knew.

But as of 2014, the family lost any proof of life.

Amer Matar has traveled to Syria several times over the past years to try get information about his brother, even going to mass graves as bodies were being removed.

The International Commission on Missing Persons has started collecting DNA samples from families of the missing but they are moving slowly, and Matar said his family has not given samples yet.

Also a journalist, Matar began a few years ago collecting thousands of IS documents and 3D photographs of IS detention centers. He now works with activists from Syria, Iraq, Germany, France, Japan and the U.S. to set up a virtual museum about the extremists.

He said the aim is to have a platform where the families of the missing can find information about their loved ones, where they can walk virtually inside the jails, see names of detainees, read documents and witness sites of mass graves and information about those buried there, whether in Syria or in Iraq.

Asked if his family has hope, Matar said that the most difficult question is about hope. Sometimes I lose hope because logic says there is no hope.

Asked if in his research he found evidence about Mohammed Nour, Matar said, My mother asks me this question every month or every few weeks. My answer regrettably is, We found nothing.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. Turkeys Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who is on a visit to Uruguay, mocked demonstrators outside the Turkish diplomatic representation who gathered to demand recognition of the Armenian Genocide on the eve of the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

A video posted on Twitter shows how demonstrators were shouting asesino  meaning murderer in Spanish, when Cavusoglu exited the building and was about to be driven away.

Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu salutes the protestors marching for the Armenian genocide anniversary in Uruguay with the grey wolf sign.



Symbolising the Turkish nationalism, mainly used by the MHP, right wing nationalists. pic.twitter.com/QB0Lj7uL3Z  Ragp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) April 23, 2022

Then, Cavusoglu is seen smiling and making the gesture of the ultranationalist Turkish Grey Wolves organization, taunting the demonstrators.

The gesture used by the Turkish ultra-nationalists was banned in Austria in 2019. In Germany, the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the Left party also proposed to ban the use of the symbol, describing it as fascist.
When she opened the apartment door, her modern Western appearance startled me. She had two little ones wrapped around her legs, tykes peering out with open curiosity at the stranger.

It was 1990. I was in Moscow. I spoke no Russian; I had learned to say please and thank you on the plane.

As were the teenagers I was chaperoning, and my colleagues, I had been whisked away from our welcoming reception by my host family to begin an almost two-week stay in the heart of what was then the Soviet Union. We were engaged in an early email telecommunications project linking New York and Soviet schools.

By coincidence, my host teacher Sergeis wifes name was Marina; mine, Maureen. I was a librarian; so was she. She spoke perfect English. The family was multi-generational: her parents, her teenage brother, her husband - my new teacher colleague - and the two little ones, close in age to my own youngest son.

I have thought of them often over the years, these strangers who took me in with gracious warmth and hospitality. I have never thought of them more than during these last few weeks, this family who joyously toasted in Russian every one I had ever loved or known in joyous camaraderie around their dining table.

Marinas parents are undoubtedly gone. They had cried openly one night in front of me as a documentary about the impact of their war in Afghanistan on Russian troops aired for the first time on state television. We had no idea they repeated over and over. The then-teenage Kirill was proud beyond measure to have a job in the first McDonalds to open in Russia, proud to be mistaken for an American. His parents, even in front of a stranger, were in open lament at his uncertainty about going to university because such a decision would ensure he would be conscripted. Kirill is undoubtedly a father himself now, in fear for his own sons fate.

I had left on this trip with my family somewhat disconcerted; fears engendered by the Cold War lingered. I came home full of hope  the reality confirmed that the human heart beat to the same drum, a shared and common longing for solidarity and peace and a secure future for our children.

The connections established between the teens involved were strengthened when the kids from Moscow came here to stay the following year. Where are they now, these once-hopeful teens? Are they perhaps watching their own sons made cannon fodder, experiencing the fast shuttering of doors and windows to the world that had opened for their generation?

On a field trip with our guests to New York City , one Russian student had cried when she thought she might not pass the Dakota where John Lennon had lived and died. Imagine.

What else but a failure of imagination has brought us to this horrific moment where young Russian soldiers are ordered to lay siege to cities, soldiers whose parents in 1990 were still bringing up the horrors of the siege of Stalingrad in casual conversation?

What else but a failure of imagination led us in the brief moment of Russian glasnost and perestroika to impose a shock-and-awe economic framework as oligarchical and international greed and corruption raped and pillaged the Russian economy and engendered chaos and fear, paving the way for the rise of an embittered authoritarian like Vladimir Putin.

In that beautiful moment when the Iron Curtain fell, why didnt the West seize the opportunity to envision new kinds of inclusive European security frameworks, ones that looked to the common threats to human wellbeing such as climate disruption, nuclear proliferation and profound global economic inequality  threats which called to East-West common cause. As the Russian economy crumbled, why didnt we envision a kind of Marshall Plan outreach, one tied to the development and progress of civil society institutions and the embrace of democratic values? Why didnt we take advantage of a growing fondness among the people for the West? Why did we strengthen and expand a security arrangement born out of fear of an ascendant USSR even as the empire was erased, a no-longer existent threat.

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Instead, we solidified an arrangement that insured the arms manufacturers of the world an endless succession of client states and fed a gnawing sense of encirclement and enfeeblement in Putin and his advisers.

This failure to see in new and different ways has led us to spend trillions, fortunes upon fortunes in preparation for war, on ever more mind-numbing weaponry while we have reduced endlessly our commitments to diplomacy and statecraft. It leads us even now to a budget that enshrines the modernization of nuclear weapons, weapons whose threat give many of us pause as we open the morning news. Truly the current call for the re-arming of Europe is a call to devolution and ultimate demise.

The what-might-have-been list is long, but if any good is to come from the horror of the current moment when yet more of our planetary family suffers untold nightmares, it must be in the clear call to a renewed understanding that our peace and futurity on a global scale demands that we work to align the political imagination and will with the beat of the human heart. The present moment underscores what an uphill battle this is, made even worse by the bitterness and rage now surely engendered. In spite of all the forces that align against it, one must hope that the horrors of the moment will help focus the imagination on the imperatives contained in such a vision.

I am sure that even as my heart longs for this for my grandchildren, Marina and Sergei and Kirill are doing the same.

Maureen Baillargeon Aumand of Colonie is a member of Women Against War and Grannies for Peace.
It's been an enormous, sweaty, vein-popping week for extravagant demonstrations of manliness.

Moving backwards in time from the sublime to the ridiculous: Friday brought the release of "The Northman," a Viking epic based on the same story that inspired Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and starring Alexander Skarsgard (who has already played Tarzan) as a decidedly grubbier incarnation of the vengeance-minded young prince. My son and I saw the trailer last weekend playing before "Everything Everywhere All at Once," which is your average woman-centered science-fiction martial-arts family drama, and we both agreed that Skarsgard looked pretty cut.

Indeed, the actor looked like he had been cast from the same front office that had provided the personnel for another trailer, this one for an upcoming "Tucker Carlson Original" documentary, or "documentary." Another product of the Fox News grievance workshop, the extended clip is so ridiculous that it seems impossible to satirize. We first see archival footage of President John F. Kennedy using the bully pulpit to push physical fitness and talk smack about "soft, chubby, fat-looking children," followed by his nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  reviled in his own family for his conspiracy-mongering  warning of a catastrophic drop in sperm count.

And then comes the peroration: Against the unsubtle bombast of Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra," the viewer is subjected to slo-mo images of shirtless guys doing pushups; a shirtless guy firing a large-caliber weapon; a guy reaching for a cow's udder, his intentions and possible shirtlessness unclear because of the angle; a hand turning what appears to be meat on a barbecue; and two shirtless guys wrestling.

These shots are all very short  but then we get a slow pan up to a naked male figure standing on a rocky plinth in front of what appears to be a charging station for his genitals, which are illuminated by the device. One possible explanation: Carlson subsequently did an interview about the potential salubrious effects of exposing one's testicles to "red light"  apparently an element of what's known as "bromeopathy."

Oh, you want more? We next get images of a shirtless guy flipping over one of those big truck tires that seem to exist only as Crossfit props; an especially jacked shirtless guy swinging a well-polished ax; a maybe-shirtless guy taking an outdoor ice bath; and a guy drinking deeply of a glass containing ... well, something. Vodka? Raw eggs and prairie oysters? His own tears?

"Once a society collapses, then you're in hard times," intones a suspiciously British voice as these images unspool. "Well, iron sharpens iron, as they say, and those hard times inevitably produce men who are tough, men who are resourceful, men who are strong enough to survive  and then they go on to reestablish order, and so the cycle begins again." The final image shows the back of a shirtless guy in soft focus against what looks like the wall of a disco flexing his biceps as the title appears: "The End of Men."

The reaction was swift, and probably wasn't what Carlson's team was going for. "This is so gay," actor and noted gay icon George Takei said on Twitter.

The author Mark Harris (whose World War II history "Five Came Back" is one of my favorite books on American cinema) wrote on the same website, "I am sitting here next to my gay husband living my gay life reading a gay novel as research for my new gay book ... and yet I am not and will never be as gay as whatever is haunting Tucker Carlson's fantasies."

The trailer contains no significant images of men doing anything with, y'know, women  like embracing them, or working alongside them, or surreptitiously letting the air out of their tires in order to get them into your car so you can attempt to ensorcell them even though you're married to someone else. If that last one seems both problematic and rather specific, it's because that was the form of male behavior modeled by Carlson's Fox News colleague Jesse Watters in the very same week on an episode of "The Five."

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Watters revealed that he used this technique on his current wife back when she was merely a much-younger co-worker and he was a married father of twin daughters. "So you're basically the Zodiac Killer," the equally odious Greg Gutfeld told Watters.

Watters, of course, used to work for Bill O'Reilly, who in 2017 was jettisoned after the New York Times reported that he and/or Fox News had settled five-count-'em-five lawsuits in which women connected to his show  as employees or guests  had made sexual misconduct allegations against the host. (Later the same year, Watters was obliged to inform his bosses about his affair after his wife filed for divorce.)

O'Reilly later said his one regret was not fighting back after a horde of advertisers abandoned his show in the wake of the Times' reporting.

Also last week, it was revealed that O'Reilly had been recorded earlier this month profanely bullying a JetBlue employee. (Youre threatening me with violence, man, the worker says at one point, to O'Reilly's sputtered denials.)

These are, apparently, some of the things that men do.
It's not in the news very often but locals might do well to understand that we're in an economic war with a nuke super power AND tech threats to local government persist from a variety of sources.



Accordingly, here's the word from a KICK-ASS TKC TIPSTER on the impact of a recent attack across the state line . . .



"Few are talking about it, but the Unified Gummint has suffered a Ransomware attack! Court employees had to be trained how to file pleadings manually, with paper and ink. Judges working remotely with Zoom have to come into the court house since the encoding of ALL their data by Russian players. No more Zoom court for Wyandotte County!



"This is the only mention I have seen of it . . ."





Wyandotte County working to restore services after cybersecurity attack KANSAS CITY, Kan. - The Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas is working through a full review on the impact of services from a recent cybersecurity attack on its systems over the weekend.

"As a matter of policy, the UG refuses to pay the ransom that might restore their data. It is estimated that the court will remain in the 20th century, pre-1990 era, until at least December . . . "



Developing . . .


The Kansas City murder count continues to escalate and push past last year's historic pace.

Last year at this date . . . There were only 45 killings by this date in April in what was the 2nd highest historic homicide count in KCMO history.

In 2020, the worst year for Kansas City homicides in recorded history, there were only 44 killings near this date on the calendar.

Here is the 1st report . . .



Homicide 4100 Block Of McGee

This evening at about 8 PM, officers were dispatched on a shooting in the 4100 block of McGee. Upon arrival officers entered an apartment and found an adult male who had been shot and was unresponsive. Officers began CPR at that time. EMS arrived and pronounced the victim deceased. A subject of interest has been taken into custody.



Detectives and crime scene personnel have responded to the scene and are actively canvassing for witnesses and processing the scene for evidence. If you have any information please call the Homicide unit at 234-5043. If you wish to remain anonymous you can call the TIPS hotline at 474-TIPS, with up to a $25,000 reward for an arrest in this case.

###########



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

One dead after shooting on McGee Street Police vehicle, lights (file photo) SOURCE: KMBC One person has died from their injuries in a shooting in the 4100 block of McGee Street.Kansas City police officers were dispatched to the area just after 8 p.m. Saturday.No suspect information has been released at this time.KMBC 9 News will bring you more information once updates are available.

KCPD investigating fatal shooting in 4100 block of McGee KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department is investigating a fatal shooting around 8 p.m. Saturday in the 4100 block of McGee. Officers arrived at an apartment and found an adult male suffering from a gunshot wound. The victim was unresponsive as officers began CPR.

Developing . . .
We don't expect much critical coverage of the tragic war from cowtown newsies.



So far we notice that most of the reports focus on personal connections and humanitarian efforts.

Apropos for Sunday . . . Here's a peek at locals attempting to send a bit of local love to a war zone . . .



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com links . . .

Stand With Ukraine KC hosts benefit auction for medical supplies, humanitarian efforts KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Stand With Ukraine KC hosted a benefit auction Saturday to send proceeds to Ukraine. All money raised will provide medical supplies and critical humanitarian aid to those in war zones. Event organizer Nataliia Hieronymus says all auction items were donated by Kansas City-area locals.

One couple's journey from Ukraine to St. Charles, Missouri: 'The people here are very kind' About a week into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Viktor and Svitlana Zribnyak got a phone call from their son in St. Charles that would change their lives. Volodymyr Zribnyaktold his parents they had an hour to pack what they could and leave their home of 40 years.

Grandview man from Ukraine reflects on humanitarian efforts in war-torn country GRANDVIEW, Mo. - During the month Yaro Rudenko spent in his home country of Ukraine, he witnessed several heart wrenching and frightening moments. "Where I was staying at, every five minutes a bomb would go off, one time at 3 a.m.," Rudenko said.

Developing . . .
There are very few critical questions about "fully accredited" Kansas City Public Schools in the aftermath of a tragic middle-school stabbing.

An inconvenient fact . . .

VIOLENCE HAS PLAGUED KCPS FOR DECADES AND SERVES AS ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS FOR THE MASS EXODUS OVER MORE THAN A GENERATION!!!

And so . . .

We're disheartened that this pattern of violence and nearly daily student assaults has been ignored by local journalists who would rather focus on urban hopelessness rather than listen more closely to the salient complaints of parents, friends & family regarding lackluster protection for students inside KCPS buildings.



Here's the word for Sunday . . .



"More than 100 people gathered at Passantino Bros. Funeral Home to say goodbye to Manuel Guzman, a 14-year-old student fatally stabbed by another 14-year-old at a Northeast Middle School on April 12."

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .
This week a popular right-wing Twitter account generated quite a bit of controversy amongst mainstream journalists.

Thanks to KICK-ASS TKC READERS with eagle eyes . . . Our blog community notes a local connection.



About the quick mention . . . We're familiar with the youngster literature from the Kansas 3rd district politico and her book really isn't that controversial. In fact, our quick TKC nitpick is that the politico didn't reference her MMA fighting career which would have interested youngsters and possibly taught an important distinction about fighting with fists vs. confronting challenges with ideas.



However, it was interesting to see a local name check amid this week's politically charged ruckus . . . Here's a peek at the mention of our high ranking local elected Representative . . .



Okay, there wasn't a direct mention but we did see her book that still, obviously, has garnered the scorn of conservatives.

Now, here's one summary of the controversy . . .

Libs of TikTok, which has more than 882,000 followers on Twitter, has drawn the attention of everyone from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to Fox News personality Tucker Carlson. And this week its in the middle of a firestorm brought on by a report in The Washington Post.



Technology columnist Taylor Lorenz used the power of the Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper to wage war on the account, and in doing so, published the name and profession of the account owner, who had chosen to tweet anonymously. The newspaper initially even linked to her real estate license, which listed an address.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com links . . .

One of Twitter's most popular right-wing hatemongers was unmasked. Good. On Tuesday, a Washington Post report unmasked the person behind Libs of TikTok, a wildly popular, right-wing social media account that often posts anti-LGBTQ content and peddles disinformation about Covid and the 2020 election. According to the Post, a woman named Chaya Raichik operates the account, whichhas been labeled by progressive watchdog group Media Matters for America as Fox News' "wire service for anti-LGBTQ attacks."

Perspective: Where an article about the 'Libs of TikTok' went wrong The woman running the "Libs of TikTok" account on Twitter has a way of finding the most mind-blowing content posted by progressives on the internet. Chaya Raichik's posts go viral, not because of anything she says, but because the videos showcase the ideology and agenda of the far left in their own words.

Influencer with same name as 'Libs of TikTok' user blames Taylor Lorenz for cyberbullying Taylor Lorenz was blasted by an Instagram influencer who said she was being cyberbullied because she has the same name as the operator of the right-leaning Twitter account "Libs of TikTok" who was allegedly "doxxed" by the Washington Post reporter on Tuesday.

Orthodox rabbis demand apology from Washington Post after identifying Libs of TikTok owner as Orthodox Jew A coalition representing more than 2,000 Orthodox Jewish rabbis is calling on the Washington Post to apologize after "doxxing" the owner of Libs of TikTok and identifying her as an Orthodox Jew.

Meet the woman behind Libs of TikTok, secretly fueling the right's outrage machine Placeholder while article actions load On March 8, a Twitter account called Libs of TikTok posted a video of a woman teaching sex education to children in Kentucky, calling the woman in the video a "predator."

You decide . . .
Provincial parties including the New Democrats are pledging improvements to Scarborough Health Network's Centenary campus, shown here, as well as its Birchmount site in Agincourt. - Metroland file photo
BEIJING, April 24 -- The Chinese PLA Navys hospital ship Peace Ark, designed and built independently by China, is the worlds first specialized far-sea hospital ship with the full displacement exceeding 10000 tons. Since joining the PLA Navy in 2008, the Peace Ark has visited 43 countries and regions, providing medical service for 230,000 persons around the world.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. Cyprus marked the 107th anniversary of the Armenian genocide on Sunday with statements of support for the people of Armenia and the community in Cyprus.

In a statement released by Cyprus Mail, Presidential Commissioner Photis Photiou said April 24 was established as the Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide in which 1.5 million died so that humanity would never forget one of the most heinous crimes that led to the cleansing of a people in a systematic and massive way.

One hundred and seven years have passed since then and, as every April 24 , we especially honour the memory of the innocent victims and express our respect and support to the people of Armenia who resisted with vigour and dignity and suffered enormous consequences from the genocide perpetrated against them, he said.

Turkey, he added, still unpunished, continues to deny its crime against the Armenian people which, unfortunately, have led to attitudes and behaviours on its part that blatantly violate due respect for every concept of law.

Cyprus, he said, was one of the first countries in the world to recognise and condemn the Armenian genocide, and supported every effort to restore and recognise the one and only historical truth.

Political parties also issued statements in remembrance and to condemn Turkey.
Controversy over the redistricting of state and congressional maps continues, with a GOP call for the impeachment of Maureen O'Connor, the Republican chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court.

OConnor and three Democrat justices ruled against the maps, riling the GOP.

"In Ohio, Republican politics there seems to be this belief that everyone should mindlessly follow the political party,'' said David Niven, a professor at the University of Cincinnati's School of Public and International Affairs. Niven has been a vocal critic of the Republicans majority on the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

Impeachment seems unlikely, given that OConnor is retiring in 8 months. ,

Read the article

Featured image at top David Mark/Pixabay.
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Michael Jackson wanted to live for 150 years.He appointed 12 doctors at home who would daily examine him from hair to toenails.His food was always tested in laboratory before serving.Another 15 people were appointed to look after his daily exercise and workout.His bed had the technology to regulate the oxygen level.Organ donors were kept ready so that whenever needed they could immediately donate their organ . The maintenance of these donors were taken care of by him.He was proceeding with a dream of living for 150 years.Alas ! He failed.On 25th June 2009, at the age of 50, his heart stopped functioning. The constant effort of those 12 doctors didn't work.Even, the combined efforts of doctors from Los Angeles and California too couldn't save him.The person who would never put a step forward without the doctors suggestion for his last 25 years, couldn't fulfil his dream of living 150 years.Jackson's final journey was watched live by 2.5 million people which is the longest live telecast till date.On the day he died,i.e. 25th June '09 at 3.15 pm, Wikipedia, Twitter,AOL's instant messenger stopped working. About 8 lakh people together searched Michael Jackson on Google.Jackson tried to challenge death but death challenged him back.The materialistic life in this materialistic world embraces materialistic death instead of a normal one. This is the rule of life.Now let's think.Are we earning for the builders,engineers,designers or decorators?Whom do we want to impress by showing expensive house,car and extravagant wedding ?Do you remember the food items in the wedding reception which you had attended couple of days ago?Why are we working like an animal in life ?For the comfort of how many generations do we want to save?Most of us have one or two children. Have you ever thought how much do we need and how much do we want?Do we consider that our children won't be able to earn much and so its necessary to save some extra for them?Do you spend some time with yourself, family or friends in the week?Do you spend 5% of your earning on yourself?Why don't we find happiness in life along with what we earn ?If you think deeply, your heart might fail to work. You will suffer from slip disc, high cholesterol, insomnia etc. etc.Conclusion : Spend some time for yourself.*We don't own any property.* its only in some documents that our name is written temporarily and we leave them for other people to take over by time we are no more.When we say  this is my property , God just smile our foolishnessDon't create an impression on a person seeing his car or dress. Our great mathematicians and scientists used bicycle or scooter for commuting.Its not a sin to be rich, but too, it's morally wrong to allow richness to take over you.Control life or else life will control you.The things which really matter at the end of life is contentment and satisfaction, humility and compassion, peace and tranquillity.Sadly,these cannot be bought.Source - *QUORA*
Russian invaders call a multi-storey apartment house in Odesa city, in which eight civilians were killed in a missile strike, a military facility.

"I have behind me what the occupiers call a 'military facility', what they struck with their high-precision weapon, Odesa Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov said in a video commentary, Ukrinform reports.

He confirmed that eight people were killed in the strike, including a three-month-old girl.

"An Odesa resident who has never seen life. You, beasts, will burn in hell," the mayor summed up emotionally.

According to Russian media reports, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that the purpose of the missile strike on Odesa on April 23 was "a logistics terminal at a military airfield... where a large batch of foreign weapons from the United States and European countries was stored."

Read also: Odesa cemetery damaged by Russian missile

Today, at about 14:35, a Russian missile fired from the Caspian Sea hit a 16-storey residential building in Odesa. Eight people, including a three-month-old child, were killed and 18 more were injured. About 1,000 sq m of a city cemetery were destroyed as a result of the missile strike.

Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine

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YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh issued a statement on the occasion of the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the ministry said.

The statement reads:

Today, the entire Armenian people and generally all the people, for whom the ideas of humanity are of special importance, commemorate the innocent victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide.

107 years ago, on April 24, the Genocide of 1.5 million Armenians was planned and carried out in the Ottoman Empire. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were deported, settling in different countries, thus forming a large Armenian Diaspora.

The Armenian Genocide was the first ever Genocide in human history committed at the state level. Later, Turkey committed the genocides and forced deportations of Greeks, Assyrians, Yezidis and Kurds, as a result of which millions of innocent people perished.

The international communitys improper and belated assessments of the crime became, in fact, a carte blanche not only for Turkey, but also for other countries to commit new crimes. The Nazis, dictatorial and nationalist regimes took advantage of this, committing new genocides, massacres and violence.

Having consistently denied the Armenian Genocide for 107 years and trying to neutralize any attempt by the international community to recognize it, Turkey and Azerbaijan still do not stop their criminal policy towards Armenians.

Since 1988, the Armenian people have repeatedly faced manifestations of genocidal policy  the pogroms and massacres of the Armenian population in Sumgait, Baku, Maragha, the Turkish-Azerbaijani aggressions against Artsakh in 2016 and 2020 are vivid examples of Armenophobia.

The Armenian Genocide is an unhealed wound for us. It is also a political, legal and moral stigma on the world community, which can be erased only through the international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide.
Since the launch of the full-scale Russian invasion, Poland has handed over more than $1.6 billion in defense aid to Ukraine.

This was stated at a press conference by Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki, Ukrinform's own correspondent reports.

"Poland is also acting on military aid, which is estimated at about 7 billion zlotys (over $1.6 billion - ed.). It was sent so that Ukrainians could defend themselves, as Ukraine is currently pursuing a line against the Russian totalitarian regime, Morawiecki said.

He noted that Ukraine has been defending itself extremely bravely for almost two months, although Russia planned to end the war in three to four days.

"They are fighting for us, for Europe, for freedom, for peace in Europe, and let everyone be aware of that," said the head of the Polish Council of Ministers.

Morawiecki noted that Ukrainians must have a lot of weapons, as it allows them to repel the Russian occupiers. He added that it would be difficult to counter the aggressor, who has a significant advantage in the number of weapons.

"We are trying to help our neighbors in all these areas," he said.

On February 24, Russia launched a new phase of its war against Ukraine  a full-scale offensive. The enemy has been massively shelling and bombing Ukrainian towns and villages, resorting to mass terror in the temporarily occupied territories.

The Ukrainian military is repelling the enemy's attack, inflicting heavy losses on the Russians. As of April 23, about 21,600 Russian invaders have been eliminated.
In Belgorod region, 60 km east of Ukraines state border, the enemy deployed Iskander-M tactical missile launchers.

Thats according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Ukrinform reports.

The enemy forces are regrouping and expanding missile and artillery units to support offensive operations, continuing to launch missile and bomb strikes on military and civilian infrastructure, reads a war update as of 6:00 Kyiv time on April 24.

In the Volyn and Polissya directions, the enemy undertook no active efforts. Belarusian forces are working to cover the Ukrainian-Belarusian border in Brest and Gomel regions. In the areas of Grabovka, Hlybotske and Kalinino, Gomel region, engineering works are underway to strengthen positions.

In the Siversky direction, no changes were observed. Russian border guards are covering the border in Bryansk and Kursk regions, fortifying positions at a distance of up to three km from the state border of Ukraine.

In the Slobozhansky direction, the enemy is increasing the grouping of troops by transferring and massing additional units in Belgorod region. According to available intelligence, some 60 km from the state border of Ukraine, Iskander-M tactical missile launchers have been deployed, the report reads.

Read also: Ukrainian air defense units destroy 17 air targets over past day

The enemy continues to partially block Kharkiv, firing on the positions of the Ukrainian forces and critical infrastructure. In order to complicate the movement of Ukraines units near the village of Korotychi, the enemy remotely mined the area.

The Russian army is shelling the positions of Ukrainian troops in the areas of Kurulka and Nova Dmytrivka. Russian Orlan-10 UAVs are conducting aerial reconnaissance of the Ukrainian Army positions in the areas of Barvinkove, Kurulka, and Husarivka.

In the Donetsk and Tavria directions, the enemy fires at the positions of the Ukrainian military using mortars, artillery, and MLR systems along the entire line of contact. They intensified offensive and assault operations in the Sieiverodonetsk, Kurakhiv, and Popasna directions. There are battles ongoing in the areas of Zarichne, Rubizhne, and Popasna. In the Sieiverodonetsk direction, the enemy launched pontoon crossings across the Krasna River. They are enhancing their air defense system in the Avdiyivka direction.

In the Mariupol direction, the enemy continued to fire on and block Ukrainian defense units in the Azovstal area. The enemy has launched air strikes, including from long-range aircraft. Using the railway, the invaders are making attempts to establish logistical support for their troops.

In the direction of Pivdenyi Buh, the enemy continues to hold its ground, in some areas trying to improve the tactical position, opening fire on the positions of Ukrainian troops and civilian infrastructure.

Ukraines forces over the past day downed 17 aerial targets: nine UAVs, three warplanes, and five cruise missiles.

In Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the Ukrainian military has repulsed 12 attacks by the Russian army, destroying four tanks, fifteen armored and four other vehicles, as well as five artillery systems.

Russian military death toll stands at about 21,200 as of Aril 22.
The Russian Federation is spreading a fake report about a chemical attack thats allegedly being prepared, targeting Ukraines Pivdenny seaport area, cynically accusing Ukraine of the plot.

Thats according to a spokesman for the Odesa Regional Military Administration, Serhiy Bratchuk, Ukrinform reports.

"Odesa and the surrounding region remain in a major focus of Russiasspecial psyop forces, which have so far resorted to using an information alibi, warning of possible provocations in Ukrainian cities during Easter, including Odesa," said Bratchuk.

Read also: Center for Countering Disinformation releases new selection of fakes from Russian propaganda

According to the spokesperson, Russian propaganda had started spreading disinformation about Ukrainian chemical weapons in early March when the Kremlin claimed that in Ukraine, allegedly in the framework of joint programs with the Pentagon, laboratories for the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons were operating. This outright lie was refuted by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine on March 9.

The spin about the Pivdenny port attack is also part of a psyop, a piece of purposeful misinformation circulated by Russia, designed to divert international attention from their bloody crimes.

Bratchuk called on the local residents to verify the news they are consuming.

"The enemys goal is to sow panic among the people. Its about psychological pressure, first of all  on the civilian population. Its also about justifying their own future provocations, which they may have prepared for us," the official added.

It should be noted that the Russians have already tried to launch a missile attack on the facilities in the Pivdenny port, which was successfully countered by Ukrainian air defense units on Saturday night as two Russian cruise missiles flying toward the port were downed.

As Ukrinform reported, on April 23 the enemy fired missiles on Odesa. The strike took eight lives, leaving at least 18 civilians injured.
Russian troops have killed 213 children in Ukraine since February 24, according to data provided by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office.

More than 602 children suffered in Ukraine as a result of Russias armed aggression. In particular, 213 children were killed and more than 389 were injured. These figures are not final, as work is underway in the areas of active hostilities, in the temporarily occupied and liberated territories, the PGOs press service wrote on Telegram, Ukrinform reports.

The largest number of victims has been recorded Donetsk region - 122, Kyiv region - 114, Kharkiv region - 91, Chernihiv region - 66, Kherson region - 44, Mykolaiv region - 43, Luhansk region - 37, Zaporizhzhia region - 27, Sumy region - 17, Kyiv city - 16, and Zhytomyr region - 15.

Thus, on April 23, a mother with a three-month-old child died in Russian shelling of a residential area in Odesa. On the same day, it became known about the death of two girls - young actresses of the Donetsk Regional Drama Theater. The girls died in Russian shelling of Mariupol.

On April 22, a 17-year-old boy was killed in enemy shelling of civilian infrastructure in the village of Kamianske, Vasylivka district, Zaporizhzhia region. On the same day, during the recording of criminal offenses committed by the occupiers in the Bucha district of Kyiv region, the body of a 16-year-old boy with shrapnel wounds was found.

On April 23, near the village of Novokyivka, Snihurivskyi district, Mykolaiv region, a 9-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl received mine injuries and shrapnel wounds in a mine explosion.

In addition, regular air strikes and shelling of civilian infrastructure and residential areas by the Russian armed forces damaged 1,500 educational institutions. Of which, 102 were completely destroyed.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the beginning of the full-scale invasion into Ukraine. Russian troops have been shelling and destroying key infrastructure facilities, conducting massive shelling of residential areas of Ukrainian cities and villages using artillery, multiple rocket launchers and ballistic missiles.

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Russia continues its offensive operations in the eastern operational zone. In the Kharkiv region, the enemy tried to carry out assault operations, but those attempts were unsuccessful.

According to Ukrinform, the press service of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported this on Facebook.

"The enemy's offensive in the eastern operational zone is underway to defeat a grouping of the [Ukrainian] Joint Forces, establish full control over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and secure a land bridge to the temporarily occupied Crimea," the statement said.

In the Volyn and Polissia areas, the enemy was not active. Up to seven battalions of the Belarusian Armed Forces protect the Ukrainian-Belarusian border in the Brest and Gomel regions. Weapons and military hardware of the Russian Eastern Military District, mostly damaged, are being transported from Belarus to Russia.

In the Sivershchyna area, the border service of the Russian Federal Security Service continues to intensify the protection of the Ukrainian-Russian border in the Bryansk and Kursk regions.

The General Staff also said that the regrouping of units of the Russian Central Military District is underway. The enemy plans to move the anti-aircraft gun division of the 14th Guards Army from the Kursk region to the Belgorod region.

In the Slobozhanshchyna area, the enemy transfers the enemy's weapons and military equipment to the Kupyansk area. The occupiers continue to partially block the city of Kharkiv.

The enemy is also intensifying offensive and assault operations in the areas of Pashkove, Dovhenke and Velyka Komyshuvakha. The enemy was unsuccessful, suffered losses and was forced to retreat to previously occupied frontiers.

In the Donetsk and Tavriya directions, the enemy is increasing control and air defense systems, firing on the positions of Ukrainian troops from mortars, artillery and multiple rocket launchers along the entire line of contact. Operational-tactical aircraft are used to launch air strikes.

In the Sievierodonetsk area, the enemy tried to carry out assault operations in the direction of the settlements of Lyman and Yatskivka, but those attempts were unsuccessful. The occupiers established control over part of the village of Zarichne. The enemy tried to gain a foothold in the western, northwestern and eastern parts of Rubizhne, but failed. The enemy began advancing towards the settlements of Orikhove and Nyzhnie.

In the Popasna area, the occupying forces tried to gain a foothold on the achieved frontiers. The enemy also regrouped and replenished personnel and ammunition.

In the Kurakhove area, with the support of artillery, the enemy attempted an offensive in the direction of the settlements of Novomykhailivka and Marinka.

In the Mariupol area, the invaders continued shelling and fighting in the area of the Azovstal steel works. The enemy launched air strikes on civilian infrastructure. The occupiers carried out assault operations towards the settlement of Vremivka, suffered losses and retreated to previously occupied positions.

The General Staff also noted that in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, the Russian occupiers are introducing measures restricting the rights and freedoms of civilians, including freedom of movement.
The number of refugees who have left Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion has reached 5,186,744.

That's according to data provided by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as of April 23, Ukrinform reports.

More than 1.151 million Ukrainians left Ukraine in April, while 3.4 million left the country in March.

Most Ukrainians went to Poland and there are 2.9 million of them there. Some 774,094 people left for Romania, 489,754 for Hungary, 433,214 for Moldova and 354,329 for Slovakia. According to UNHCR, 578,255 Ukrainian refugees travelled to the aggressor country.

On February 24, Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine. The invaders have been shelling and bombing peaceful cities, towns and villages in Ukraine, torturing and killing civilians.

The EU, US and other countries have imposed strong sanctions on Russia as an aggressor.

Photo: CTK Photo
Russia has used about 70% of its arsenal of high-precision missiles, although the country is able to produce them independently.

This was stated by Christo Grozev, an investigative journalist, executive director and chairman of the board of the Bellingcat platform, who spoke with Ukraine 24 TV, Ukrinform reports.

"They have about 30% of what they started the war with. There is also the question: who is operating these missiles? After all, the resource that can work with these missiles is also limited. Our intelligence suggests this is about 30 to 40 people. After all, Ukraine is working not only to shoot down and destroy missiles, but also to identify persons who can program these missiles. Therefore, I wont be surprised if not only hardware but also so-called software runs out in Russia,Grozev said.

Read also: Five Russian missiles hit infrastructure in Poltava region

Commenting on Russia's attempts to capture Mariupol, the journalist noted that even if the battle for Mariupol is now tactically lost, it doesnt mean defeat in the battle, as the reason for not being able to retain control of Mariupol is the lack of weapons, not the Army or lack of motivation. Currently, time is working for Ukraine, as high-precision weapons are being supplied every week, and what Ukraine could not do a week ago will most likely be possible in two to three weeks, Grozev believes.

"At this stage, 19 nations are ready to provide high-tech weapons to Ukraine, which gives reason for hope," he said.

As previously reported, Ukrainian defenders have eliminated about 21,800 Russian invaders as of April 24. The enemy also lost 873 main battle tanks, 2,238 armored combat vehicles, 408 artillery systems, 147 MLR systems, 69 air defense systems, 179 aircraft, 154 helicopters, 1,557 motor vehicles, eight ships/cutters, 76 fuel tankers, 191 operational and tactical-level UAVs, 28 units of special equipment, and four tactical missile launchers.
The memorandum on strengthening cooperation in the railway sector with Poland will help dramatically increase the rail transportation of Ukrainian exports to the EU and world markets through Europe.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal reported this on Telegram after the signing of a respective memorandum with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, according to Ukrinform.

"I met with a great friend of Ukraine  Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. We discussed the recovery of our country from the consequences of Russian aggression. A memorandum on strengthening cooperation in the railway sector was signed. After Russia unleashed a full-scale war, Poland became a key logistics hub for aid to Ukraine. Particularly close cooperation is taking place at the level of the railways of the two countries, and such cooperation should be strengthened," Shmyhal said.

According to him, the memorandum provides for the creation of a joint logistics company by the two countries. This will help dramatically increase the rail transportation of Ukrainian exports to the EU and world markets through Europe.

"By blocking Ukrainian ports, Russia is trying to provoke a global food crisis. We must prevent this. The signed memorandum on strengthening cooperation in the railway sector between Ukraine and Poland will help increase our export capacity, including agricultural products. Convenient logistics solutions for Ukrainian businesses will help quickly deliver the necessary goods to any part of the world. This is very important for the stability of our economy," the Ukrainian government's press service quoted Shmyhal as saying.

According to the statement, both parties also stressed the importance of modernizing the border infrastructure, including the development of transport hubs and border crossings.
Ukrainian refugees who want to stay abroad for a long time could be a positive factor for Europe which will experience labor shortages in the medium term.

"In the long run, Ukraine wants refugees to return. The sooner this happens, the better. However, some of the refugees may stay for a long time, and this will be a positive factor for Europe as Europe will experience labor shortages in the medium term," Alfred Kammer, Director of the European Department at the International Monetary Fund, said in an interview with the Voice of America, Ukrinform reports.

The war in Ukraine has had the greatest impact on Eastern European emerging economies, in part because they accept many refugees, he stressed. Therefore, the economic outlook of such countries (excluding Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Turkey) worsened.

"We downgraded the economic growth forecast of Eastern European countries (except Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Turkey) this year by 1.5 percentage points. For advanced economies, we downgraded this forecast by 1 percentage point, so those countries are much more affected by the crisis. However, it is important that this happens after the significant recovery of Eastern European economies with emerging markets. This recovery was much greater than in advanced European economies," Kammer said.

According to the UN data, about 5.034 million people fled Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion as of April 19. Another 7.1 million Ukrainian citizens are considered internally displaced persons.

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Canada is considering resuming the work of its diplomatic mission in Kyiv.

This was stated by Deputy Prime Minister of Canada Christia Freeland, who spoke at a press conference in Washington, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Were talking about it, the deputy prime minister said when asked by reporters about the prospects for reopening the embassy in Ukraines capital, adding that Canada is listening to Ukrainian friends.

She noted that she had discussed this issue during a meeting with Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal in Washington. Speaking about the meeting, she said a wide range of issues was discussed, while her Ukrainian counterpart told her about the Ukrainian governments efforts to restore normal life in the capital," said the deputy prime minister of Canada.

Read also: Canada delivers M777 howitzers to Ukraine

Freeland added that upon her return to Canada, she would share with her government what the head of the Ukrainian Cabinet had told her.

Shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Canada temporarily relocated its embassy to Lviv and later evacuated all diplomats to Poland, where they remain to date.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. Member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies Giulio Centemero says it is time for Turkey to look in the eyes of its past.

Recognizing the mistakes of the past helps in building a better future. I come from a country in which the Shoah was perpetrated during fascism and many crimes were committed by our army during the colonial wars. We are not denying them: we are actually recognizing our mistakes, they are a part of our collective memory so that they wont happen again in the future, the lawmaker said in an exclusive interview to ARMENPRESS on the occasion of the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Talking about the actions of the international community, he said the international community should work in creating a culture of historical truth and freedom of speech.

I think the Turkish society is ready. The international community just have to go on talking about the genocide and one day also Turkish institutions will face the historical truth. Many Turkish people recognize it and I think it is time for Turkey to look in the eyes of its past, he said.

Touching upon the tortures and killings made by the Azerbaijani army against the Armenian soldiers during the 2020 Artsakh War, the Italian lawmaker said: I think the pandemic and other factors distracted the international community that didnt dedicate enough attention to the tragedy we all witnessed. International prosecutors should leave no crime unpunished or new crimes will happen again and again.
The Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Ministry has been disappointed with a statement made by Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg about Ukraines European future.

The relevant statement was made by Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko in a commentary to Ukrinform.

We consider it [statement  Ed.] to be strategically short-sighted and not in the interests of the united Europe. Such statements also ignore the fact that the vast majority of the population of the EU founding member states support Ukraines membership, Nikolenko said.

In his words, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has already noted that the Ukrainian people are paying a high price for the mistakes made by many European governments. Their biased perception of reality has already led to Europes political and economic weakening, and enabled Russia to undermine stability in the EU and implement hybrid aggression against European countries, Nikolenko stressed.

It seems that the current war, casualties and destructions are not enough for them. Postponing Ukraines EU membership under various excuses or seeking an alternative means indulging Putins aggressive plans and slowing down EUs strengthening with Ukraines capabilities, Nikolenko noted.

According to Nikolenko, Ukraine has every reason to demand that its merits and the strategic role for the EU are recognized objectively.

Thanks to the indomitable will and courage of the President of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, Europe can live in peace now. Without exaggeration, our state has become an outpost for the protection of EU security, European freedom and European values, Nikolenko stressed.

A reminder that, during a European media summit in Lech am Arlberg, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg stated that Ukraine should not receive EU candidate status this June and should not be offered EU membership.
The current sanctions policy against the Russian Federation is insufficient. New sanctions need to be developed constantly.

The relevant statement was made by Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak in an interview with Frances TF1 TV channel, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

The fact that the war in Ukraine continues, our people, our children are being killed, makes it clear that the current sanctions policy is insufficient. It needs to be strengthened. It needs to be updated; new sanctions need to be developed constantly, Yermak told.

In his words, the EUs support for a full embargo on energy, Russian gas and oil, as well as sanctions against all Russian banks, are very important to Ukraine.

According to Yermak, it is important to elaborate sanctions recognizing Russia as a country that sponsors terrorism.

Also, in my opinion, the issue of including Russia in the FATF blacklist should be considered, following the example of other countries to which such measures have already been applied, Yermak added.

A reminder that, on March 29, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky initiated the creation of an expert group at the Office of the President of Ukraine to analyze the real impact of sanctions implemented against the Russian Federation.

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The current sanctions policy against the Russian Federation is insufficient. New sanctions must be imposed constantly.

"The fact that the war in Ukraine is ongoing, that our people, our children are being killed makes it clear that the current sanctions policy is insufficient. New sanctions must be imposed constantly," Head of the President's Office Andriy Yermak told French TV channel TF1 in an interview, Ukrinform reports.

EU's support for the imposition of a full embargo on energy, Russian gas and oil, as well as sanctions against all Russian banks is very important to Ukraine, he stressed.

According to him, sanctions on recognizing Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism must be drafted.

"I also believe that the issue of putting Russia on the FATF blacklist must be considered, following the example of those countries to which such measures have already been applied. And much more," Yermak added.

As reported, on March 29, President Zelensky announced the creation of a group of experts at the Presidents Office to analyze the impact of sanctions imposed on the Russian Federation. On the Ukrainian side, the group is headed by the Head of the Presidents Office Andriy Yermak, on the international  former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.

On February 24, the Russian Federation launched a new phase of the war against Ukraine  a full-scale invasion. Russian invaders shell and bomb Ukrainian cities, towns, and villages, torturing and killing civilians.

The United States, the European Union, and other countries have imposed and continue to impose sanctions on Russia.

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President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky held a phone call with President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, underscoring the need to immediately evacuate civilians from Mariupol.

Had an important phone conversation with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. On the eve of his talks with Putin, I stressed the need for the immediate evacuation of civilians from Mariupol, including Azovstal, and immediate exchange of blocked troops, Zelensky posted on Twitter.

In addition, the leaders discussed the course of the negotiation process and coordination of security guarantees for Ukraine with Turkey and other countries.

As the President noted, the issues related to Ukraines defense capabilities and global food security, which is under threat due to the blocking of navigation in the Black Sea, were raised.

As reported, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will pay a visit to Turkey on April 25 ahead of the visits to Russia and Ukraine.

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The United States will continue to assist Ukraine in its fight against Vladimir Putin's aggression, U.S. President Joe Biden stated via Twitter, Ukrinform reports.

Two months after Putin launched an unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine, Kyiv still stands. President Zelenskyy and his democratically-elected government remain in power, Biden wrote.

"We will continue to support Ukrainians in their fight to defend their homeland," the U.S. president stressed.

Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, Putin reportedly planned to seize Kyiv and establish a puppet Kremlin-supervised government.

Within a month, Russian troops attempted to occupy the capital before being pushed back by the Ukrainian Army and forced to retreat to Belarus.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. Deputy Minister of Defense Arman Sargsyan says the ongoing reforms in the military are aimed at having a stronger army.

During 1,5 years, if we were to compare, huge work was done in the direction of solving both social issues of servicemen and security matter, Sargsyan told reporters at the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial.

He said that as a result of the latest war a change of border took place, and that the new borderlines have always been constructed, reconstructed and modernized.

Sargsyan said that on April 24 the Armenian people are addressing their call for restoring justice to the international community. We must always remember and wait for the day when the entire world will understand what genocide is and that it never happens again, he said.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. Representatives of national minorities in Armenia are calling upon the international community to recognize and condemn the Armenian Genocide.

The President of the Jewish community of Armenia Rima Varzhapetyan warned that whats not being recognized gets repeated. We are calling upon the entire world, namely the countries that havent yet recognized the Armenian Genocide. The Armenian Genocide must be recognized and condemned so that it never happens again, she said at the Tsitsernakaberd memorial.

The President of the Yazidi National Union Khdr Hajoyan said it is everyones duty to pay tribute to the memory of the innocent victims. He also said it is the duty of everyone to call on the international community to forceTurkey abandon its policy of denial. The non-condemnation of genocide leads to new crimes, he said.

The Co-Chair of the Kurdistan Committee Slo Drboyan said superpowers must condemn Turkeys policy against Armenians, Kurds and Assyrians.

We havent learnt lessons from our mistakes yet. The Turkish fascist regime adopted a policy of extermination against the Kurdish people, and we want to stand up for our rights, he said.
Nairobi, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Apr, 2022 ) :More than 500 UN peacekeepers from Ethiopia's war-torn Tigray region have refused to return home, citing fears for their safety and highlighting deepening ethnic fissures as they request political asylum in Sudan.

Until last year, Ethiopian forces accounted for the vast majority of the around 4,000-member peacekeeping mission in Abyei (UNISFA), a disputed border region between Sudan and South Sudan.

The Ethiopian contingent was replaced by a multinational force as ties between Addis Ababa and Khartoum deteriorate over a territorial dispute and Ethiopia's mega-dam on the Blue Nile, which Sudan fears will threaten its access to water.

Most of the Ethiopian forces have returned home, but some have now requested asylum, a UN peacekeeping spokesperson told AFP in New York.

"A number of peacekeepers have chosen not to return and are seeking international protection. They are being protected by the UN in a secure location," the spokesperson said.

"The responsibility to grant asylum lies with the Sudanese authorities who are being assisted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in receiving these individuals." A total of 528 Ethiopian soldiers from Tigray have requested asylum in Sudan, according to Major Gebre Kidane, a Tigrayan ex-peacekeeper -- a figure confirmed by two of his comrades also contacted by AFP.

"It's not secure to go back to Ethiopia and we want to be the voice of the people of Tigray" before the international community, the 40-year-old told AFP in a telephone interview from Abyei, explaining his decision to apply for asylum in early March.

Since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray in November 2020 in response to what he said were rebel attacks on army camps, the conflict has divided the multi-ethnic nation.

An early victory against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) -- which ruled Ethiopia for nearly 30 years until 2018 -- was followed by a rebel comeback last June, when they took back control of Tigray and expanded into neighbouring regions.

Since then the war has dragged on, with essential services shut in Tigray for several months while aid trickles in at a snail's pace after both sides agreed to a conditional humanitarian truce in late March.

The region of six million people -- around six percent of Ethiopia's population -- has been under a de facto blockade, according to the UN.

- 'Living in darkness' - Tigrayan officers were purged from Federal army ranks soon after the war erupted while ordinary Tigrayans have described being subjected to arbitrary arrests in Addis Ababa.

"Peacekeepers from Tigray previously went back to Ethiopia. Some of them were arrested, some killed," said Gebre Kidane, who has been based in Abyei since July 2020.

"The people of Tigray have been living in darkness and the international community is watching in silence. We want to make the international community... pay attention." The Ethiopian government has not responded to AFP's calls for comment on the troops' request for asylum.

A second Tigrayan officer told AFP that he too had asked for asylum like his comrades but refused to say anything further for fear of reprisals against his family.

A third soldier, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity for similar reasons, said he had asked for asylum "to express my strong opposition" to the federal government's treatment of Tigrayans.

Furthermore, he said senior officers like him "have a military background and knowledge... therefore we are considered as a main challenging force by the government." "So we are being targeted to be eliminated," he said.

His children understood his reasons for staying out of Ethiopia, he explained: "If I go there, they know what will happen (to me).""We are now in the good hands of UNHCR," he said, adding: "I hope for the better tomorrow to come."
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Ministry of Defense is denying the Azerbaijani State Border Services accusations claiming that Armenian military units attempted a sabotage.

The statement released by the Azerbaijani State Border Service on sabotage actions by Armenian military units in the evening of April 23, namely an attempt to access territory under Azerbaijani military control in the south-eastern direction of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border is false, the Ministry of Defense said.
Tokyo, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Apr, 2022 ) :Rescuers said on Sunday they had found nine people, most of them unresponsive, from a boat that sank off at Japan's northern coast with 26 on board a day earlier.

"As of 11am (0200GMT), coastguard aircraft have rescued four people, local police aircraft rescued four people and a Self Defence Force aircraft rescued one person from waters or rocky coastal areas," Japan's coastguard said in a press release.

Earlier, local officials and media said those retrieved so far were unresponsive, though the exact condition of all nine was not immediately clear.

Those rescued so far were being taken to medical facilities, with national broadcaster NHK showing at least one person on a stretcher being moved by rescue workers from a helicopter to an ambulance.

Search and rescue operations were continuing for others still missing from the Kazu I, which sent a distress signal at 1:13 pm (0413 GMT) on Saturday saying it was sinking in the frigid waters off Japan's northeastern coast.

The sightseeing boat with 24 passengers, including two children, and two crew on board said its bow was flooded.

The coastguard sent seven vessels and five aircraft for the search and rescue mission Sunday, joined by police and military helicopters as well as other local fishing boats.

- High winds and waves - The Shiretoko Peninsula was designated a UNESCO world heritage site in 2005. It is well known for its unique wildlife, including the endangered Steller sea lion, as well as migratory birds and brown bears.

Sightseeing boat trips in the area are popular for visitors hoping to spot whales, birds and other wildlife, as well as drift ice in the winter.

Japan's borders remain closed to tourists because of Covid-19 rules, so sightseeing in the country is effectively limited to residents and Japanese citizens.

Conditions on Saturday were rough, with high waves and strong winds that reportedly prompted some local fishing boats to return to shore early.

The daytime water temperature in the area was around two to three degrees Celsius.

The Kazu I ran aground in shallow water in June last year, becoming stranded with 21 passengers and two crew members on board, according to Japanese media.

The boat was able to leave the shallows on its own and returned to the port, but police investigated its captain for endangering traffic by negligence in the conduct of business.

Japan's coastguard has been involved in a variety of search and rescue missions around the archipelago, including the successful discovery last November of a 69-year-old man who spent 22 hours drifting in open water off southwestern Kagoshima.

In September 2020, a cargo ship with 43 crew onboard sunk after being caught in a typhoon off Japan's southwest coast.

Two survivors were rescued, while a third crew member was found unresponsive and declared dead. The search operation was called off a week later.

hih/sah/leg
(@FahadShabbir)

COLOMBO, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Apr, 2022 ) --:Sri Lanka will appoint advisors to help with its debt restructuring in the next 20 days, Finance Minister Ali Sabry has said.

The minister told local media on Saturday from Washington via video link that restructuring the country's unsustainable external debt is a major condition to obtain financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Sabry said that the discussions he started with IMF officials in Washington would end on Sunday, and that there are a lot more discussions to be held ahead.

Meanwhile, IMF's mission chief for Sri Lanka Masahiro Nozaki on Saturday welcomed Sri Lanka's planned negotiations with creditors.

"The IMF team welcomed the authorities' plan to engage in a collaborative dialogue with their creditors," he said.
Kyiv, Ukraine, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Apr, 2022 ) :Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday criticised a decision by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to visit Moscow on Tuesday, before heading to Kyiv.

"It is simply wrong to go first to Russia and then to Ukraine," Zelensky told reporters in the Ukraine capital. "There is no justice and no logic in this order," he added.

"The war is in Ukraine, there are no bodies in the streets of Moscow. It would be logical to go first to Ukraine, to see the people there, the consequences of the occupation," he said.

In the Kyiv region alone, more than a 1,000 civilians had been killed, he added.

Guterres is due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, then Zelensky on Thursday.

The UN chief also plans to meet UN staff on staff to discuss stepping up aid for Ukrainians.

Since Guterres accused Russia of violating the UN charter by sending troops into Ukraine, the Russian leader has refused any contact with him.

The UN chief has had little contact with Zelensky either, apart from a telephone conversation on February 26 two days after the Russian attack began.

On Tuesday, Guterres once again denounced the Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine, calling on both sides to stop fighting and observe a four-day humanitarian truce over the Orthodox Easter, which is on Sunday.
CARACAS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th April, 2022) Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused his Colombian counterpart, Ivan Duque, of planning sabotage attacks against law enforcement officers on the territory of Venezuela.

"Ivan Duque has activated joint plans with criminals and gangs," Maduro said in his Saturday speech broadcast on state tv, adding that infiltrating groups of criminals will "attack the police and military first," after crossing the Colombia-Venezuela border.

Venezuela severed diplomatic relations with Colombia in February 2019, after an attempt by opposition activists led by Juan Guaido to truck alleged humanitarian aid across the border.

The Venezuelan government said this was an invasion attempt.

Caracas has repeatedly accused Bogota of consistently destabilizing the internal situation in Venezuela, including by means of "attempted invasions" and the infiltration of armed terrorist groups across the border. In August 2018, Venezuela accused Colombia of being behind the assassination attempt on Maduro.
(@FahadShabbir)

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th April, 2022) Voter turnout in the second round of the French presidential election reached 26.41% as of 10.00 GMT, the French Interior Ministry said on Sunday.

Polls opened at 6.00 GMT on Sunday in France, where the final second round of presidential elections is taking place. Emmanuel Macron, the current president, and Marine Le Pen, right-wing National Rally leader, are fighting for the right to lead the country for the next five years.

According to the ministry, this year's turnout as of 10.00 GMT was lower than in the last two presidential elections at the same time.

"In 2017, the turnout rate at 12:00 (10.00 GMT) for the second round of the presidential election in metropolitan France was 28.23%. In 2012, this rate was 30.66% at the same time," the ministry said.

The French president is elected for a five-year term directly by the country's citizens age 18 and over, living in France and abroad. To become a candidate, one must be nominated by at least 500 elected officials. The election is held in two rounds. The first one took place on April 10. In the first round Macron received 27.84% of the vote against Le Pen's 23.15%.
On Divine Mercy Sunday, 24 April, Bishops of Cameroon led thousands of Cameroons Catholic faithful in re-consecrating the conflict-torn nation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Paul Samasumo  Vatican City.

The overnight weekend pilgrimage to the Marian Shrine of Marienberg culminated in the consecration on Sunday morning.

Pope Francis appeal for peace in Cameroon

In his Regina Coeli appeal on Sunday, Pope Francis not only appealed for peace in Ukraine but also threw his support behind the national pilgrimage in Cameroon.

Read also 24/04/2022 Ukraine: Pope Francis renews appeal for Easter truce Pope Francis renews his appeal for an Easter truce to the war in Ukraine, as Eastern-rite Catholics and Orthodox faithful celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord.

The Bishops and faithful of Cameroon today are making a pilgrimage to re-consecrate their nation to the Mother of God and entrust it to her protection, said Pope Francis. He added that Catholics in Cameroon were praying for the return of peace in their country, which has been wounded by violence in several regions for five years, the Holy Father said.

Imploring the Blessed Virgin Mary to intercede for Cameroon.

Become apostles of reconciliation and peace

Bishop Abraham Boualo Kome of Bafang Diocese, in his role as President of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon, presided over the Eucharist on Sunday. The Archbishop of Bamenda Archdiocese and Apostolic Administrator of Mamfe Diocese, Andrew Nkea Fuanya, preached at the Divine Sunday Mass.

Be apostles of reconciliation and peace

Archbishop Nkea said the Catholic faithful in Cameroon needed to become apostles of justice and peace if the country was to return to peaceful co-existence it once had. The pilgrimage, he said, had only one scope: To implore the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary for reconciliation and peace in Cameroon.

Speaking earlier, when the Marienberg national pilgrimage and prayer vigil was announced, Bishop Kome told journalists, The National Pilgrimage and Prayer for Peace to take place in Marienberg is an expression of solidarity of all our brothers and sisters towards the people of the troubled regions of our country that suffer in a visible way, he said.

Cameroons five-year war that no one is winning

There are hardly any headlines about the conflict in Cameroon. In fact, there are several conflicts happening in the country.

According to crisisgroup.org, Cameroon is beset with two major violent conflicts but also faces rising ethno-political tensions on and offline. The bigger conflict between the government and separatists from the English-speaking minority started in 2017 and has killed over 6 000 people. It has displaced 765 000 people, of whom over 70 000 are refugees in Nigeria. According to the UN, 2.2 million of the Anglophone regions four million people need humanitarian support. At the same time, about 600 000 children have been deprived of effective schooling because of the conflict. The country also faces a reinvigorated jihadist insurgency with deadly attacks in the Lake Chad area. The war with Boko Haram, centred in the Far North, has killed over 3 000 Cameroonians, displaced about 250 000 and triggered the rise of vigilante self-defence groups. Nascent ethnic clashes along the border with Chad have displaced thousands too. Elsewhere, and particularly following the October 2018 presidential election, ethnic discourse is heightening political tensions on and offline.

Re-consecrating the country to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

The Marienberg weekend vigil

Cameroons Marienberg Shrine is a remote location that sits on the outskirts of Edea, Littoral Region, in Cameroon.

The weekends pilgrimage started on Saturday, 23 April, with the arrival of various delegations from various dioceses of Cameroon. Most of Saturday afternoon was centred around the recitation of the rosary, meditation, confessions, silence, personal prayer and adoration before the Blessed Sacrament.

In the evening, at 20.30, the overnight prayer vigil commenced and continued right up to early morning, in time for people to prepare for the procession and Sunday Mass.

The vigil comprised prayers animated by various devotional groups and teaching on what consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means.
An Orthodox priest blesses traditional Easter baskets after Mass in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia (AFP or licensors)

Pope Francis renews his appeal for an Easter truce to the war in Ukraine, as Eastern-rite Catholics and Orthodox faithful celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord.

By Devin Watkins

As Oriental Christians who follow the Julian calendar celebrate the great feast of Easter, Pope Francis took the opportunity to call for a truce to the war in Ukraine.

Speaking at the Regina Coeli prayer in St. Peters Square on Sunday, the Pope warmly greeted Orthodox Christians and Eastern-rite Catholics, and lamented the atrocities of war which have wounded peace.

May Jesus grant peace, which has been wounded by the barbarity of war, he said.

As Sunday marks two months since Russias invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, the Pope noted that the war has grown more violent.

It is sad that these days, which are the holiest and most solemn for all Christians, we hear the deadly noise of weapons rather than the sound of bells announcing the Resurrection. It is sad that arms are taking the place of words.

Easter truce in Ukraine

Pope Francis then renewed his appeal for an Easter truce, calling it the least and most tangible sign of a desire for peace.

May attacks cease so as to come to the aid of suffering people, he said. May we stop and obey the words of the Risen One, who on Easter day told His disciples: Peace be with you.

The Pope went on to urge everyone to pray for peace and have the courage to say that peace is possible.

May political leaderspleaselisten to the voices of your people, who desire peace and not an escalation of conflict.

Cameroon pilgrimage for peace

Separately, the Pope threw his support behind a pilgrimage in Cameroon to reconsecrate the African nation to the Virgin Mary and pray for peace.

"The Bishops and faithful of Cameroon today make a pilgrimage to the Marian Shrine of Marienberg to reconsecrate the nation to the Mother of God and entrust it to her protection, he said.

Catholic in Cameroon, he added, are praying for the return of peace in their country, which for five years has been wounded by violence in several regions.

Pope Francis also invited all Christians to join in their prayer, so that that God, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, may grant a true and long-lasting peace soon to this beloved nation.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. The Prime Minister of Greece Kyriakos Mitsotakis released a statement on the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

107 years passed since the Armenian Genocide began, and the systematic extermination of 1,5 million people. We respect the memory of the victims. The commemoration of the pasts black chapters is a guideline for preventing such crimes in the future. Our main concern is to ensure a peaceful future and mutual respect for everyone," the Greek PM said.
Music Time in Africa is VOAs longest running English language program. Since 1965, this award-winning program has featured pan African music that spans all genres and generations. Ethnomusicologist and Host Heather Maxwell keeps you up to date on whats happening in African music with exclusive interviews, cultural information, and of course, great music -- including rare recordings from the Leo Sarkisian Library of African Music.
The haunting story of a young woman left on the side of a highway late at night in northern Mexico ended in sorrow, with her decomposing body found in a subterranean water tank at a motel.

Assistant Public Safety Secretary Ricardo Mejia said Friday that the woman's body  apparently unrecognizable after what may have been nearly two weeks in the water  had a crucifix necklace and clothing that Debanhi Escobar was wearing the night she disappeared.

Despite what authorities in the border state of Nuevo Leon described as a massive search for her, the story ended the way it often does in Mexico: when her body was found by local people.

Escobar's case made headlines because of a haunting photo taken by a driver who was supposed to take her home that night. It was not clear why she got out of the car, but her father, Mario Escobar, said prosecutors told him that surveillance camera footage suggested the driver inappropriately touched his daughter.

"I suppose that my daughter did not put up with the harassment," her father, Mario Escabar, said. The driver has been questioned, though his full name has not been released. Mario Escobar said while the driver may not have killed her, he was responsible for his daughter's death.

The driver, who worked for a taxi app, took the photo to show Debanhi, 18, got out of his car alive April 8 on the outskirts of the city of Monterrey. There she was, a young woman standing alone at night on the side of a highway, wearing a skirt and high-top sneakers.

The image seemed to speak of the tremendous vulnerability, and the self-assuredness  or desperation  of the young woman.

Killings of women have increased in recent years in Mexico, rising from 977 cases in 2020 to 1,015 in 2021. And those were just cases classified as "feminicides" a legal term used in Mexico when women are killed because of their gender. Killings of women overall are much higher.

Disappearances of women are also high, with about 1,600 reported missing so far this year. Officials say 829 of them are still listed as missing, and 16 were found dead.

No one saw Debanhi Escobar until late Thursday, when investigators managed to pull her body from the 4-meter-deep water tank near a pool at the roadside motel.

Mario Escobar said, "The prosecutors didn't do their job correctly."

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Friday the case "has caused, logically, a lot of worry, a lot of concern" among Mexicans.

Critics are disturbed by the fact that even when authorities are spurred to act by public outcry, investigations are seldom very timely or efficient.

During the week that investigators said 200 personnel used drones, search dogs and reviews of security camera footage to look for Debanhi, her body was actually lying not far from where she had been last seen.

Just before Debanhi Escobar disappeared, another women was slain in Monterrey, Maria Fernanda Contreras, 27. A suspect  apparently, a friend or acquaintance of the woman  has been arrested.

During the week authorities were searching for Escobar, local media reported that the bodies of five other women and girls had been found in the state. The victims had all been reported missing around the same time as Debanhi. Four were 16 or younger.

Later, the head of the state Search Commission, Mary Balderas, said the reports were wrong. She said all five young women had been found alive.

Angelica Orozco, who leads the relatives' group United Forces for Our Disappeared in Nuevo Leon state, said the problem is not only that authorities are slow to investigate and do it badly, but that they also tend to blame the victims.

"The first thing is that they don't carry out diligent investigations or searches, and the second thing are the statements issued by authorities, in some cases linking them to illegal activities," Orozco said.

She was particularly disturbed when the Nuevo Leon state prosecutor, Gustavo Guerrero, said Thursday that most women disappear voluntarily, or as an act of "rebellion."

"The main reason for the disappearances of women is because of a lack of communication with their families, because of disputes with them, because of the rebellion of young people," Guerrero said. "The range of age of most of the women who disappear is from 14 to 25, but it's not due to a crime, but rather is a voluntary situation."

That view was disputed by Maria de la Luz Estrada of the activist group National Feminicide Observatory, who said it has become a depressing pattern that when women disappear, they turn up dead.

"It's very serious and lamentable," Estrada said of Escobar's case, "but that has been the pattern in recent years, disappearances become crimes like feminicide."

Nor is the problem limited to Nuevo Leon. Authorities in another border state, Sonora, have so many disappeared women  and men  that state prosecutors there announced they are sending mobile labs to three cities "to collect mass DNA samples" from relatives of the missing to help identify bodies found there.
U.S. President Joe Biden is returning to in-person political fundraising with the easing of coronavirus precautions that limited his exposure to large crowds. The presidents ability to draw political donations is especially important for Democrats as the face serious challenges to sustain their majorities in the House and Senate. VOAs Natasha Mozgovaya has the story from Seattle.
A former Guantanamo detainee who spent 14 years without trial and whose story was told in the hit film The Mauritanian, is suing Canada over its alleged role in his detention.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 51, claims that Canadian authorities provided false information concerning the period when he was a permanent resident in Montreal in 1999, which led to his arrest and subsequent torture at the infamous U.S. prison, according to his complaint filed on Friday and reviewed by AFP.

Slahi is seeking $28 million for the damages he suffered.

In the lawsuit, Slahi says he faced "physical beatings, sleep deprivation, forced standing, incessant noise, sexual assault, mock assassination, death threats, religious humiliation, and more" while at Guantanamo.

"Slahi's detention and maltreatment were prolonged because the receipt and use of forced confessions by Canadian authorities validated the continued torture and detention," his lawyers said in the complaint.

Slahi's story was a best-selling book that was adapted for the screen.

The film, starring Tahar Rahim and Jodie Foster, accurately depicts the extreme conditions on the American base.

Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Slahi came under suspicion of involvement in an unsuccessful plot to bomb Los Angeles in 1999.

Arrested in 2001 in Mauritania, he was then successively imprisoned in Jordan and Afghanistan, before arriving at Guantanamo in 2002, in what he called in his book a world tour of torture and humiliation. He was released in 2016.
John Lee, the sole candidate to succeed Carrie Lam as chief executive of Hong Kong this summer, has had his campaign channel suspended from YouTube in what the company said was a necessary move to comply with U.S. sanctions.

The company announced the action Wednesday, joining two other major social platforms, Facebook and Instagram, which had already banned Lee from using paid services.

According to a representative from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Lee was prevented from using payments services to comply with the U.S. law, but he can maintain a demonetized presence on those platforms.

If we identify accounts maintained by or on behalf of people on the U.S. governments list of specially designated nationals, we have a legal obligation to take certain action, the representative said.

In August 2020, the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned Lee and 10 other individuals including Lam for undermining Hong Kongs autonomy and restricting the freedom of expression or assembly of the citizens of Hong Kong. Lee was Hong Kong Secretary of Security at the time.

On Thursday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin accused certain U.S. companies of serving as the U.S. governments political tools to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

The U.S., out of political purpose, went so far as to undermine freedom of speech and information sharing as well as fair and just order in cyberspace, in order to interfere in Hong Kong affairs under various pretexts and disrupt the HKSARs sixth-term chief executive election, Wang told reporters in Beijing. The acronym refers to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Chinas umbrage at the move is ironic, given that Beijing has blocked residents of mainland China from all access to YouTube and Facebook since 2009. Instagram has been banned in China since 2016.

On Thursday, a representative for the Hong Kong government called the termination of Lees YouTube channel blatant interference in the internal affairs of China.

The political structure of the HKSAR is a matter within the purview of the Central Authorities, the representative said on a government website. The international community should fully acknowledge this fact and stop interfering in Hong Kong affairs which are internal affairs of China.

Since Lee announced his decision to stand for chief executive in next months Hong Kong election, he had been using live broadcasts and shared videos to campaign on the three social media platforms.

His campaign website has for days juxtaposed links to the three platforms. However, the YouTube link disappeared Wednesday, and the channel of his campaign office could no longer be found by searching for "John Lee" on YouTube.

Lees campaign team explained that they received a notice from Google, YouTube's parent company, saying the account violated the U.S. export and sanctions policy, so it must be terminated.

In response to inquiries from multiple media, Google said the company needs to comply with relevant U.S. sanctions.

The decision is unlikely to affect Lees candidacy, given that he is the only candidate for the post.

He called the sanctions unreasonable and bullying and said he is disappointed that he can no longer use some media, but that it will not affect his electoral engineering.

I have emphasized many times that their unreasonable behavior will only make me more convinced that what I am doing is right, Lee said.

Lee did not directly respond to whether he would punish the institutions that enforce the sanctions once elected as the chief executive. He said Hong Kong emphasizes the rule of law and will respond to Google's actions in accordance with Hong Kong law.

Francis Fong, honorary president of the Hong Kong Information Technology Chamber of Commerce, explained why YouTube felt that it had to go further than Facebook and Instagram to comply with the U.S. sanctions.

"YouTube will insert advertisements in popular videos to provide revenue to video producers. YouTube may terminate accounts to avoid automatic transactions. Facebook does not have similar functions, so it adopts different standards," Fong told VOA.

According to the advertising policies of YouTube parent Google, advertisers must comply with all U.S. sanctions and export regulations.

According to some experts, even if Lee is elected as the chief executive of Hong Kong, his tenure will not be seen as legitimate by the international community.

Kim-Wah Chung, deputy chief executive of the Hong Kong Institute of Public Opinion, said YouTube is simply following U.S. law, but that Lees removal from the platform reflects the sort of problems that Hong Kong will face after the election.

Even if John Lee becomes the chief executive, he will not be recognized by the international community at all, Chung told VOA. This will speed up the decoupling of Hong Kong from the international community.

"If Beijing attaches importance to Hong Kong as an international financial center and an international city, it should take advantage of this replacement to find some people who can go out of Hong Kong and have a voice on the international stage, Chung said.

Ronny Tong, a member of the Hong Kong Executive Council and senior barrister, issued a public statement Thursday saying Google is likely to have violated mainland Chinas Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law.

In June 2021, the Standing Committee of China's National People's enacted the law, which applies to individuals and organizations that formulate, decide and implement discriminatory measures. At a subsequent meeting in August, the Standing Committee surprised observers by failing to include the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law in Annex III of the Basic Law, Hong Kongs de facto constitution.
As Russias war in Ukraine enters its third month with details of atrocities mounting, journalists covering the conflict are taking a more cautious approach.

Several journalistsforeign and Ukrainianhave been killed since February 24, and dozens more have been wounded, either by incoming fire or being shot at while on assignment, according to media groups including the International Press Institute, or IPI.

The national union of journalists in Ukraine reports as many as 20 reporters could have been killeda figure that includes those victims where the circumstances of the deaths have not been determined.

For those who experienced near misses, such as Andriy Tsaplienko, the dangers of this conflict are making them reassess their approach.

Tsaplienko, a correspondent for the Ukrainian 1+1 news channel, was hit by shrapnel March 25, when he was covering a humanitarian corridor near the northern city of Chernihiv.

Speaking to VOA from Kyiv, Tsaplienko said he has become more cautious, because a dead journalist has little use.

Getting the story for journalists is the most important part of the job, but to do that they must stay alive, he said.

What I have realized is that the approach to filming the stories should be different at war conditions, he said. A journalist must not just be cautious, but also fast, as quick as possible while filming and move around much faster.

Advice for the wounded

Tsaplienko said he didnt stay at the hospital long enough for his wounds to fully heal.

I rushed to the border with Russia to film the flight of Russian troops, I rushed back to Chernihiv, the city where I was wounded, I went to Bucha to film the search for the dead, went to Zdvyzhivka, where a large camp of Russian troops was situated. After all that, I started to have side effects and had to go to the hospital again, he said.

And because of that, he has one piece of advice for fellow reporters wounded in Russian attacks: Your life is more important than your story.

I highly recommend getting well, getting in shape, and only then returning to work in full force, he said.

New responsibilities

The nature of reporting has also shifted.

In the beginning, most of us were just reporting on what was happening on different front lines and the movement of Russian forces, but as Russia carried out more attacks, we became more focused on what Russian troops have done against Ukrainian civilians, said Dima Replianchuk, a reporter with the Slidstvo, a team of independent journalists.

The investigative reporting website, along with other local and international organizations, has been collecting evidence from places such as the town of Bucha, near the capital, Kyiv, which Russian forces occupied for more than a month.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has opened an investigation into alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine. And rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are on the ground, working to collect evidence of alleged crimes.

According to Ukrainian officials, at least 400 bodies were found in Bucha following the Russian troop withdrawal.

This is one thing that we didnt have to work on in the early days of the invasion, because it was still unfolding and we didnt know what was happening in those places occupied by Russia, Replianchuk told VOA.

But now, he said, a lot of work needs to be done.

Take Mariupol, for example, the 27-year-old Ukrainian journalist said, Civilians that have fled from the city are still shocked, but we have a duty to interview them to document what they witnessed in the city.

Others, like Rola Alkhatib, who arrived in Ukraine just over a week ago, are trying to assess the situation on the ground.

Kyiv seems safe for now, but the problem is the situation is so fluid that we dont know whats safe and what is dangerous, said Alkhatib, a Lebanese correspondent with the Saudi-funded Al-Arabiya TV channel.

Id like to go to eastern Ukraine and report from there, although I know it is very dangerous for journalists and everyone else to be there, she said.

Russian forces have pulled back from some areas to focus on controlling eastern Ukraine, increasing their bombardment campaign of the besieged southern port city of Mariupol. Ukrainian officials expect more Russian attacks in the eastern part of the country.

Growing censorship

In Russia, authorities have sought total control over news coverage, issuing laws and directives to local media on how to cover the war and forcing the few remaining independent outlets to shut down or go into exile.

The Russian investigative news site Agentstvo estimates that more than 150 journalists have left Russia since the end of February. The government last week announced stringent visa rules on foreign media entering the country.

Yevgeny Ivanov, a deputy Russian foreign minister, said the decision was in response to moves by the European Union and other countries to make it harder for the Russian business to obtain visas.

We have responded by making it harder for journalists from unfriendly countries to obtain visas, he said. They will now get a single-entry visa and pay a higher visa fee.

The country's media regulator, Roskomnadzor, has blocked access to many news networks, including VOA's Russian Service, the BBC and others.

Moscow in March passed a law that carries a 15-year prison term for those found to have spread what it deems false news about the military. Authorities have already charged journalists and activists under the law.

Virtual Private Network, or VPN, use and other approaches including shortwave, however, are in play to try to counter those blocks. For example, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, has given mirror sites to several blocked news sites in Russia to keep access to the information flowing. Mirror sites are copies of original websites that are used through certain VPN services to circumvent blocking and censorship.

Some information in this report came from Reuters.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. President of Greece Katerina Sakellaropoulou addressed a message on the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian Embassy in Greece said.

Today we commemorate with emotion and respect the victims of the Armenian Genocide, who were inhumanly exterminated during the Ottoman Empire 107 years ago. This tragedy is the dark page of history and reminds us of the importance of the protection of life, the respect to human rights, and the importance of perception of national, religious and identity diversity and the strengthening of this perception. The constant vigilance and response to the discrimination, violence and hatred against our brothers is the duty of all of us, the main condition of the peaceful coexistence of nations and peoples, the statement says.
For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.

Recap of April 24

FIGHTING

* The U.K. defense ministry's latest intelligence update says that while Russia has made some gains, Ukraine has inflicted "significant cost" on Russian force.

HUMANITARIAN

* Pope Francis called for halt to attacks in Ukraine so aid can reach the exhausted population.

* The International Committee of the Red Cross is deeply alarmed by the situation in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

DIPLOMACY

* Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky met U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Kyiv.

* Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he held talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the need for the immediate evacuation of civilians from the besieged city of Mariupol.

* Ukraine proposed a "special" round of negotiations with Russia to be held in the shadow of Mariupol's Azovstal steel plant to discuss the fate of the civilians and Ukrainian troops still trapped in the city.

The latest developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT:

6:29 p.m.: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy congratulated President Emmanuel Macron on his re-election, calling the French president was a "true friend in a tweet early Monday.

4 p.m.: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky met U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Kyiv, his office said Sunday.

3:42 p.m.: In a video address from one of the countrys best-known landmarks, the 1,000-year-old Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered an Orthodox Easter message, saying Ukraine would overcome the darkness that Russias invasion had brought upon it.

Today, we still believe in the new victory of Ukraine and we are all convinced that we will not be destroyed by any horde or wickedness, Zelenskiy said, according to Reuters.

1:37 p.m.: Ukraine proposed on Sunday a "special" round of negotiations with Russia to be held in the shadow of Mariupol's Azovstal steel plant to discuss the fate of the civilians and Ukrainian troops still trapped in the city, an adviser to Ukraine's president said, according to Reuters. The talks would aim to establish an immediate ceasefire in Mariupol, "multi-day" humanitarian corridors, and the freeing or swapping of Ukrainian fighters trapped in the Azovstal plant, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in a video address.

11:05 a.m. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told CBS News in an interview broadcast Sunday that the current war will be finished when we clean our territories from Russian occupants."

10:00 a.m.: Pope Francis called for halt to attacks in Ukraine on Sunday so aid can reach the exhausted population and urged leaders to "listen to the voice of the people," who fear an escalation, Reuters reported. Speaking to tens of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square, he noted that the day most Eastern Christians, including Orthodox and Catholics in Ukraine and Russia, celebrate Easter coincided with the two month mark of the war. "Instead of stopping, the war has become more harsh," he said from the window of the official papal study.

9:05 a.m. Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he held talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the need for the immediate evacuation of civilians from the besieged city of Mariupol. The two spoke on the eve of Erdogans meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

8:30 a.m.: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement on the occasion of Orthodox Easter which is being marked this year amid Russias war of aggression.

7:30 a.m.: The International Committee of the Red Cross is deeply alarmed by the situation in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access is urgently required to allow for the voluntary safe passage of thousands of civilians and hundreds of wounded out of the city, including from the Azovstal plant area, an ICRC statement said Sunday.

6 a.m.: Al Jazeera reports that so far the Russian invasion has killed 213 children and injured 389 more, according to Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office.

5:13 a.m.: The Washington Post reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin attended midnight Mass for Orthodox Easter. According to Reuters, he joined other congregants in proclaiming truly [Christ] is risen."

4:14 a.m.: Sunday is Orthodox Easter, one of the most important holidays for many Ukrainians. Reuters reports that Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide, said "an indescribable human tragedy is unfolding" in Ukraine.

Reuters reports that he hoped this year's Easter would be "the impetus to open humanitarian corridors, safe passages to truly safe areas for the thousands of people surrounded in Mariupol."

3:10 a.m.: The regional head of Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region says that Russian shelling killed eight people and injured two more on Saturday, the BBC reports.

2:02 a.m.: The U.K. defense ministry's latest intelligence update says that while Russia has made some gains, Ukraine has inflicted "significant cost" on Russian forces. "Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganize forces from prior offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness," the update says.

1:07 a.m.: CNN reports that Ukraine's military says it hit 17 air targets on Saturday.

Air Force and Land Forces anti-aircraft missiles struck nine operational-tactical drones, three aircraft and five cruise missiles, a statement from the country's defense ministry read.

12:01 a.m.: Al Jazeera reports that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine will exit peace talks if Russian troops kill Ukrainians holed up in a steel plant in Mariupol or conduct referendums for independence in other occupied territories.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
Officials in southern Nigeria are investigating a site where more than 100 people have been reported killed following a powerful oil explosion.

The Imo state commissioner for information, Declan Emelumba, said officials are probing Fridays fire and explosion at an illegal oil bunkering site, or 'kpofire' in the Egbema local government area. The boundary is between Imo state and the oil-rich Rivers state.

He said officials are also investigating the extent of deaths, injuries and damages. Many of those killed are burned beyond recognition. Most of them were workers at the illegal refinery.

On Sunday, emergency teams continued their response in the affected area.

The explosion, which local officials say is the deadliest in years, is raising concerns. Energy expert Odion Omonfoman said the high rate of poverty and deprivation in the region is the reason many locals are endangering their lives.

"If you have a fuel station in a community, that community must have electricity, must have some form of energy source for cooking," he said. "Until you start addressing the basic needs of people... and you'd be shocked ...meeting their basic needs can make them go to this extreme length."

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari described the incident as a "catastrophe and a national disaster.

In a statement Sunday, Buhari offered his condolences to the families of the victims and said those responsible for the explosions must be caught and brought to justice.

Authorities are looking for the operator of the refinery.

Oil theft and pipeline vandalism have been reported in Nigeria for decades. Authorities say the country loses 150,000 barrels a day or up to $4 billion a year to these activities.

In January, authorities renewed a crackdown on illegal refineries that operated by tapping crude oil from pipelines owned by oil companies. Many suspects were arrested, and many sites shut down.

Samuel Nwanosike, a local government head in Ikwerre - one of the areas affected by the kpofire activities in the Rivers state, said it's criminality that needs to be rooted out..

"Yes, lack of jobs is part of it but it's not an avenue for you to go into criminality," he said. "With the activities that have taken the lives of over 100 people like you've seen in Egbema is clearly a criminal activity and must be declared as such. In Ikwerre local government as we speak, all 285 illegal refinery spots that have been identified have been destroyed."

Years of exploration activities by oil companies and illegal oil operators have tainted the environment in Nigeria's Niger Delta, making farming and fishing nearly impossible.

Authorities have been trying to clean up hydrocarbons but the local chief in the Rivers state, Ibiosiya Sukubo, told VOA in January that the government was not doing enough.

"The government is only interested in the proceeds of the oil and gas, but they're not interested in the people, Sukubo said.

Experts say unless authorities and communities work together, illegal refineries will continue to put many more lives in danger.
Russia bombarded eastern Ukraine Sunday, including a steel factory in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with two top American officials in Kyiv, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Ukrainian officials said Russian forces launched a new airstrike on the Azovstal steel factory in Mariupol, where Ukrainian forces have been holed up and defiantly refusing Russian demands to surrender.

Last week Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a tight blockade of the facility that Russian forces have struggled to take over from perhaps thousands of Ukraine fighters and civilians who have remained in control of the plant with its labyrinth of tunnels and passageways.

Zelenskyy announced the visit of Blinken and Austin to the Ukrainian capital Saturday evening, although Washington declined to confirm the trip of what would be the highest-ranking officials to go to Ukraine since Russia invaded its neighbor two months ago.

Late Sunday, the Ukraine president's office announced that Blinken and Austin were meeting with Zelenskyy in Kyiv.



Watch related video by Arash Arabasadi. Video contains graphic images of war.

In a lengthy Saturday night news conference in a Kyiv subway station, Zelenskyy said he was looking for the Americans to produce results, both in terms of arms and security guarantees.

"You can't come to us empty-handed today, and we are expecting not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons, he said. U.S. President Joe Biden in each of the last two weeks has approved $800 million in shipments of more arms for Ukraine, along $500 million in economic assistance.

With congressional approval for military assistance for Ukraine nearly exhausted, Biden said he would seek approval for more aid, part of the Wests arming of Ukraine in its fight against Russia that falls short of sending troops to fight alongside Ukrainian forces.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly pleaded for more heavy weapons, including long-range air defense systems, as well as warplanes.

Zelenskyys meeting with Austin and Blinken took place as Ukrainians and Russians observed Orthodox Easter. Zelenskyy is Jewish, but speaking from Kyiv's ancient St. Sophia Cathedral, he cited Ukrainians wishes for the holiday.

"The great holiday today gives us great hope and unwavering faith that light will overcome darkness, good will overcome evil, life will overcome death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win!" he said.

But the Russian bombardment remains a constant threat for Ukraine. The Russian military reported that it hit 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, mostly in the eastern Donbas industrial region, and destroyed 26 Ukrainian military sites, including an explosives factory and several artillery depots.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement Sunday that it is deeply alarmed by the situation in Mariupol, where the population is in dire need of assistance. The ICRC said, Immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access is urgently required to allow for the voluntary safe passage of thousands of civilians and hundreds of wounded out of the city, including from the Azovstal plant area.

After the Blinken-Austin visit, Zelenskyy is set to meet Thursday with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The U.N. chief is scheduled to meet with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara Monday and Putin in Moscow on Tuesday.

British officials said Saturday that Russian troops havent gained significant new ground despite announcing a renewed offensive along the eastern front, while Ukraine declared a nationwide curfew ahead of Orthodox Easter on Sunday.



Ukraine said Russian forces obstructed attempts to evacuate civilians from the besieged port city of Mariupol.

"The evacuation was thwarted," Mariupol city official Petro Andryushchenko said on Telegram, adding that about 200 people gathered at the government-appointed evacuation meeting point, but that Russian forces "dispersed" them.

Other residents were told to board buses destined for Russian-controlled Dukuchayevsk, which is about 80 kilometers to the north, Andryushchenko said.

Russia fired at least six cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa on Saturday, killing eight people including a 3-month-old baby, Ukraine officials said. Russias defense ministry said its troops conducted a missile strike on a depot in Odesa that contained weapons sent to Ukrainian troops by the United States and European countries.



Ukraine officials said Saturday that 21,600 Russian troops have died in Ukraine.

Zelenskyy renewed his call for a meeting with Putin to "put an end to the war."



I think that whoever started this war will be able to end it," Zelenskyy said in the Saturday news conference, adding that he was "not afraid to meet" with Putin if it would lead to a peace deal between their two countries.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
Six soldiers are dead and 20 wounded after Malian Army bases in the central cities of Sevare, Niono, and Bapho were simultaneously attacked this morning by suspected terrorists. An army press release says that the bases in the cities of Sevare, Niono, and Bapho were attacked by "terrorists" in kamikaze vehicles packed with explosives, and that in addition to the casualties, a helicopter was damaged.

Sevare is a town in Malis Mopti Region and the site of the former headquarters of the G5 Sahel, an intergovernmental task force with member states Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.

The headquarters were moved to Bamako in 2018 after an attack which killed several people.

The Bapho military base is less than 20 kilometers from Segou, Mali, a large regional and cultural capital more than 200 kilometers north of Bamako.

After an Islamist takeover of northern Mali in 2012, French forces intervened and took back control of the north in 2013. In the years since, insecurity has moved south into Malis central regions.

In February, France announced that it would withdraw its troops from Mali after increasing tensions between France and Malis military government.

Several governments have accused Mali of working with Russian Wagner mercenaries, a claim the Malian government denies. There have been several reports of unidentified white soldiers working with the Malian army in the Segou and Mopti regions since February.
Stymied in their calls for a renewed investigation into the killing of Emmett Till, relatives and activists are advocating another possible path toward accountability in Mississippi: They want authorities to launch a kidnapping prosecution against the woman who set off the lynching by accusing the Black Chicago teen of improper advances in 1955.

Carolyn Bryant Donham was named nearly 67 years ago in a warrant that accused her in Till's abduction, even before his mangled body was found in a river, FBI records show, yet she was never arrested or brought to trial in a case that shocked the world for its brutality.

Authorities at the time said the woman had two young children and they did not want to bother her. Donham's then-husband and another man were acquitted of murder.

Make no mistake: Relatives of Till still prefer a murder prosecution. But there is no evidence the kidnapping warrant was ever dismissed, so it could be used to arrest Donham and finally get her before a criminal court, said Jaribu Hill, an attorney working with the Till family.

"This warrant is a stepping stone toward that," she said. "Because warrants do not expire, we want to see that warrant served on her."

There are plenty of roadblocks. Witnesses have died in the decades since Till was lynched, and it's unclear what happened to evidence collected by investigators. Even the location of the original warrant is a mystery. It could be in boxes of old courthouse records in Leflore County, Mississippi, where the abduction occurred.

A relative of Till said it's long past time for someone to arrest Donham in Till's kidnapping, if not for the slaying itself.

"Mississippi is not the Mississippi of 1955, but it seems to still carry some of that era of protecting the white woman," said Deborah Watts, a distant cousin of Till who runs the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation.

Now in her late 80s and most recently living in Raleigh, North Carolina, Donham has not commented publicly on calls for her prosecution. She did not seem to know she had been named in an arrest warrant in Till's abduction until decades later, said Dale Killinger, a retired FBI agent who questioned her more than 15 years ago.

"I think she didn't recall it," he said. "She acted surprised."

The Justice Department closed its most recent investigation of the killing in December, when the agency said Donham had denied an author's claim that she had recanted her claims about Till doing something improper to her in the store where she worked in the town of Money. The writer could not produce any recordings or transcripts to back up the allegation, authorities said.

Till relatives met in March with officials including District Attorney Dewayne Richardson, the lead prosecutor in Leflore County, but left unsatisfied, Watts said. "There doesn't seem to be the determination or courage to do what needs to be done," she said.

Richardson has been in office for about 15 years and was the first Black person to serve as president of the Mississippi Prosecutors Association. He did not return phone messages or emails seeking comment about a potential kidnapping case.

Keith Beauchamp, a filmmaker whose documentary "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till" preceded a renewed Justice Department probe that ended without charges in 2007, said there's enough evidence to prosecute Donham.

"If we're saying we are a country of truth and justice, we must get truth and justice  no matter the age or gender of the person involved,'" said Beauchamp.

Stories about the events that led to Till's killing have varied through the years, but the woman known at the time as Carolyn Bryant was always at the center of it, said author Devery Anderson, who obtained original FBI files on the case while researching his 2015 book "Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement."

Till was a 14-year-old from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi when he entered the store on Aug. 24, 1955; Donham, then 21, was working inside. A Till relative who was there at the time, Wheeler Parker, told The Associated Press that Till whistled at the woman. Donham testified that Till grabbed her.

Two nights later, Donham's then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, showed up armed at the rural home of Till's great-uncle, Mose Wright, looking for the youth.

Wright testified in 1955 that a person with a voice "lighter" than a man's identified Till from inside a pickup truck and the abductors took him away. Other evidence in FBI files indicates that earlier that night, Donham told her husband that at least two other Black men were not the right person.

Authorities already had obtained warrants charging the two men and Donham with kidnapping before Till's body was found in the Tallahatchie River, FBI files show, but police never arrested Donham.

"We aren't going to bother the woman," Leflore County Sheriff George Smith told reporters, "she's got two small boys to take care of."

Roy Bryant and Milam were quickly indicted on murder charges and they were acquitted by an all-white jury in Tallahatchie County about two weeks later.

Grand jurors in neighboring Leflore County refused to indict the men on kidnapping charges afterward, effectively ending the threat of prosecution for Roy Bryant and Milam. Both men have been dead for decades, leaving Donham as the lone survivor who was directly involved.

Killinger, the retired federal agent, said he saw neither the original warrant during his investigation nor any indication that it was ever canceled by a court, and it's unclear whether it could be used today to arrest or try Donham. Even if authorities located the original paperwork with sworn statements detailing evidence, he said, courts need witnesses to testify.

"And it's my understanding that all those people are dead," Killinger said.
In advance of World Malaria Day, the World Health Organization recommends the expanded use of the first malaria vaccine, calling it a potential game changer in the fight against malaria.

Malaria is a preventable, treatable disease. Yet, every year, malaria sickens more than 200 million people and kills more than 600,000. Most of these deaths, nearly half a million, are among young children in Africa. That means every 60 seconds a child dies of malaria.

Despite this bleak news, the outlook for malaria control is promising, thanks to the development of the worlds first malaria vaccine. The World Health Organization calls the achievement a historic breakthrough for science.

A pilot program was started in 2019 in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi. Since then, the World Health Organization reports more than a million children in the three countries have received the malaria vaccine.

Mary Hamel is Head of WHOs Malaria Vaccine Implementation Program. She said the two-year pilot program has shown the vaccine is safe, feasible to deliver and reduces deadly severe malaria.

We saw a 30% drop in children being brought to the hospitals with deadly, severe malaria. And we also saw almost a 10% reduction in all caused child mortality. If the vaccine is widely deployed, it is estimated that it could save an additional 40 to 80,000 child lives each year, she said.

WHO reports Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance will provide more than $155 million to support expanded introduction of the malaria vaccine for Gavi-eligible countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The vaccine against malaria was under development before the COVID-19 vaccine was produced. Hamel said WHO has learned a lot of lessons from that effort, which could be used in the development of future malaria vaccines.

We know there have been new platforms that came forward since the COVID vaccine, including the mRNA platform and now the developers of one of the mRNA vaccines is looking forward to developing a malaria vaccine using that same platform," she said.

Last July, BioNTech, manufacturer of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, announced it wants to build on that success by developing a malaria vaccine using mRNA technology. The pharmaceutical company says it aims to start clinical trials by the end of this year.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit Kyiv on Sunday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

"Tomorrow, the American officials are coming to visit us. I will meet the defense secretary [Lloyd Austin] and Antony Blinken," Zelenskyy told reporters Saturday, in what would be the first official visit by U.S. government officials since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

A State Department spokesperson told VOA in an email on Saturday: "We decline comment." The Pentagon also could not confirm the information to VOA. The White House also declined to comment.

British officials said Saturday that Russian troops havent gained significant new ground despite announcing a renewed offensive along the eastern front, while Ukraine has declared a nationwide curfew ahead of Orthodox Easter on Sunday.

Ukraine said Russian forces obstructed attempts to evacuate civilians from the besieged port city of Mariupol.

"The evacuation was thwarted," Mariupol city official Petro Andryushchenko said on Telegram, adding that about 200 people gathered at the government-appointed evacuation meeting point, but that Russian forces "dispersed" them.

Other residents were told to board buses destined for Russian-controlled Dukuchayevsk, which is about 80 kilometers to the north, Andryushchenko said.

Russian forces tried to storm a steel plant in Mariupol, the last pocket of resistance in the besieged port city that is of high strategic value to Moscow, Ukrainian officials said. Gaining full control of Mariupol would deprive the Ukrainians of a vital port, while giving Russia a land corridor with Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 201

Russia fired at least six cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa on Saturday, killing five people, Ukraine officials said. Russias defense ministry said its troops conducted a missile strike on a depot in Odesa that contained weapons sent to Ukrainian troops by the United States and European countries.

Ukraine officials said Saturday that 21,600 Russian troops have died in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy renewed his call for a meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to "put an end to the war."

I think that whoever started this war will be able to end it," Zelenskyy said Saturday at a news conference held at a metro station in the heart of Kyiv, adding that he was "not afraid to meet" with Putin if it would lead to a peace deal between their two countries.

European arms

France and Germany have armed Russia with nearly $300 million worth of military equipment that is likely being used in Ukraine, according to an exclusive report, based on European Commission data, in The Telegraph, a British newspaper.

The hardware was sent, the newspaper reports, despite a European Union-wide embargo on arms to Russia that was imposed following the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Germany has defended the sales, saying the items were dual-use equipment and that Russia had said they were needed for civilian, not military use.

The newspaper said the equipment sent to Russia included bombs, rockets, missiles and guns. French firms also sent thermal imaging cameras for more than 1,000 Russian tanks as well as navigation systems for fighter jets and attack helicopters, The Telegraph reported.

At least 10 EU member states have sent almost $380 million worth of military equipment to Russia, The Telegraph reported, with 78% of that total coming from French and German companies.

Other European countries that sold arms to Russia include Austria, Britain, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Italy, according to The Telegraph.

Cristian Terhes, a Romanian member of the European parliament shared with The Telegraph the EU analysis of the probe into what countries have sold military goods to Russia.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy on Friday seized on remarks by a Russian general as evidence that Moscow would invade other countries if it succeeded in Ukraine. The general had said Russia aimed to capture all of southern and eastern Ukraine and link it to a breakaway province in neighboring Moldova.

"This only confirms what I have already said multiple times: Russia's invasion of Ukraine was intended only as a beginning," Zelenskyy said in his evening address Friday.

He said comments earlier Friday by Rustam Minnekayev, deputy commander of Russia's central military district, show that Russia will not stop with Ukraine.

Russian state news agencies quoted Minnekayev as saying that Moscow wanted to seize Ukraine's entire eastern Donbas region, provide a land corridor to link with the Crimean Peninsula, and capture the country's entire south as far west as a Russian-occupied breakaway region of Moldova. That would mean carrying the offensive hundreds of miles past the current lines and to the border with Moldova.

Moldova summoned Russia's ambassador Friday to express "deep concern" over the general's comments.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Jalina Porter declined to comment on the Russian general's statement but said Washington firmly supported Moldova's sovereignty.

The U.N. announced Friday that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will travel to the region next week, meeting with Putin in Moscow and Zelenskyy in Ukraine.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
Russia bombarded eastern Ukraine Sunday, including a steel factory in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with two top American officials in Kyiv, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Ukrainian officials said Russian forces launched a new airstrike on the Azovstal steel factory in Mariupol, where Ukrainian forces have been holed up and defiantly refusing Russian demands to surrender.

Last week Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a tight blockade of the facility that Russian forces have struggled to take over from perhaps thousands of Ukraine fighters and civilians who have remained in control of the plant with its labyrinth of tunnels and passageways.

Zelenskyy announced the visit of Blinken and Austin to the Ukrainian capital Saturday evening, although Washington declined to confirm the trip of what would be the highest-ranking officials to go to Ukraine since Russia invaded its neighbor two months ago.

Late Sunday, the Ukraine president's office announced that Blinken and Austin were meeting with Zelenskyy in Kyiv.

In a lengthy Saturday night news conference in a Kyiv subway station, Zelenskyy said he was looking for the Americans to produce results, both in terms of arms and security guarantees.

"You can't come to us empty-handed today, and we are expecting not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons, he said. U.S. President Joe Biden in each of the last two weeks has approved $800 million in shipments of more arms for Ukraine, along $500 million in economic assistance.

With congressional approval for military assistance for Ukraine nearly exhausted, Biden said he would seek approval for more aid, part of the Wests arming of Ukraine in its fight against Russia that falls short of sending troops to fight alongside Ukrainian forces.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly pleaded for more heavy weapons, including long-range air defense systems, as well as warplanes.

Zelenskyys meeting with Austin and Blinken took place as Ukrainians and Russians observed Orthodox Easter. Zelenskyy is Jewish, but speaking from Kyiv's ancient St. Sophia Cathedral, he cited Ukrainians wishes for the holiday.

"The great holiday today gives us great hope and unwavering faith that light will overcome darkness, good will overcome evil, life will overcome death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win!" he said.

But the Russian bombardment remains a constant threat for Ukraine. The Russian military reported that it hit 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, mostly in the eastern Donbas industrial region, and destroyed 26 Ukrainian military sites, including an explosives factory and several artillery depots.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement Sunday that it is deeply alarmed by the situation in Mariupol, where the population is in dire need of assistance. The ICRC said, Immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access is urgently required to allow for the voluntary safe passage of thousands of civilians and hundreds of wounded out of the city, including from the Azovstal plant area.

After the Blinken-Austin visit, Zelenskyy is set to meet Thursday with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The U.N. chief is scheduled to meet with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara Monday and Putin in Moscow on Tuesday.

British officials said Saturday that Russian troops havent gained significant new ground despite announcing a renewed offensive along the eastern front, while Ukraine declared a nationwide curfew ahead of Orthodox Easter on Sunday.

Ukraine said Russian forces obstructed attempts to evacuate civilians from the besieged port city of Mariupol.

"The evacuation was thwarted," Mariupol city official Petro Andryushchenko said on Telegram, adding that about 200 people gathered at the government-appointed evacuation meeting point, but that Russian forces "dispersed" them.

Other residents were told to board buses destined for Russian-controlled Dukuchayevsk, which is about 80 kilometers to the north, Andryushchenko said.

Russia fired at least six cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa on Saturday, killing eight people including a 3-month-old baby, Ukraine officials said. Russias defense ministry said its troops conducted a missile strike on a depot in Odesa that contained weapons sent to Ukrainian troops by the United States and European countries.



Ukraine officials said Saturday that 21,600 Russian troops have died in Ukraine.

Zelenskyy renewed his call for a meeting with Putin to "put an end to the war."



I think that whoever started this war will be able to end it," Zelenskyy said in the Saturday news conference, adding that he was "not afraid to meet" with Putin if it would lead to a peace deal between their two countries.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. Armenias former Minister of Foreign Affairs Zohrab Mnatsakanyan described Turkish FM Mevlut Cavusoglus Grey Wolves gesture at Armenian Genocide demonstrators as disgusting, disgraceful and racist.

Mevlut Cavusoglus grey wolves salute is disgusting, disgraceful and racist. Hitler is saluting back from his grave, Mnatsakanyan tweeted.

The former FM also addressed the normalization process between Armenia and Turkey.

Normalizing relations between neighboring nations is necessary. Sure. It implies good faith and empathy. Turkeys denialism does not qualify as a requisite of good faith. Stop denying Armenian Genocide. And, for Gods sake, stop delegating Armenian Genocide to historians. They have done their job many times over in these past 107 years. It is still your turn to show political courage and self-worth, he said.

In a separate tweet Mnatsakanyan also touched upon the non-recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Israel and Rwanda. The irony and affront to human dignity and justice is the refusal of Israel and Rwanda to recognize the Armenian Genocide. Come on, this is not a contest for the best genocide. So long as you are in denial of other peoples tragedy, your sentiments of justice and truth are hollow.

During a visit to Uruguay, Turkeys Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu mocked demonstrators outside the Turkish diplomatic representation who gathered to demand recognition of the Armenian Genocide on the eve of the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

A video posted on Twitter shows how demonstrators were shouting asesino  meaning murderer in Spanish, when Cavusoglu exited the building and was about to be driven away. Then, Cavusoglu is seen smiling and making the gesture of the ultranationalist Turkish Grey Wolves organization, taunting the demonstrators.

The gesture used by the Turkish ultra-nationalists was banned in Austria in 2019. In Germany, the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the Left party also proposed to ban the use of the symbol, describing it as fascist.
Tourist loses control of drone in Piazza Venezia.

Italian police sanctioned a tourist who crashed his drone into the roof of Palazzo Venezia in the heart of Rome on Saturday.

The tourist, a 39-year-old man from Argentina, had been piloting the drone without permission in Piazza Venezia when he lost control of the device.

Security guards recovered the drone after it crashed into the roof of the 15th-century building from whose balcony Mussolini delivered many of his most notable speeches.

Carabinieri seized the device and reported the tourist for failure to comply with the no-fly zone in force in Rome, reports Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

In 2020 a Polish tourist crashed his drone inside the Colosseum, after being told not to fly it, while last week two Mexican tourists crashed their drone into the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
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This is one of a series of interviews by Bloomberg Opinion columnists on how to solve the worlds most pressing policy challenges. It has been translated and edited for length and clarity.Clara Ferreira Marques: Brazil has seen a surge in systematic disinformation in recent years, helped along by polarization, heavy social media use and, of course, by the president, Jair Bolsonaro. Youre a journalist and the founder of Agencia Lupa, a fact-checking website that tracks and exposes fake news. With an election set for October, and Bolsonaro hoping for a second term despite an underwhelming economy, can you sketch us a picture of where we are today?

Cristina Tardaguila, founder, Agencia Lupa and senior program director at the International Center for Journalists: We knew 2022 would be a year of electoral disinformation, so thats no surprise. Then theres the pandemic, which is very significant not just because of the virus itself, and the damage it did here, but also because of government attitudes [toward combating it]. And finally, there is the war in Ukraine. Its hard to spend time on social media in Brazil without coming across disinformation on at least one of these issues. So we are fighting on three fronts and, at the same time, discussing a law to solve it all. It is very, very hard. The volume is incredible, and the election hasnt really heated up yet.

CFM: How does Brazil compare internationally, when it comes to the scale of the disinformation problem?

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CT: Its hard to compare across borders. I would say we are both lucky and unlucky, because of the language. We speak Portuguese, so we are shielded from a lot of fake news spread in English, in Spanish, in Chinese. Portuguese still acts as a barrier. But the fact that we have a less-spoken language is also a problem, because the tools devised to identify and spot false news, artificial intelligence and the like, these are not developed for Portuguese. They cant distinguish pe (the letter p) from pe (foot), or vovo (grandad) from vovo (granny). This complicates the work of those on the frontlines of this battle. So I would say that yes, we are far from the major disinformation centers because of our language, but the fight is harder because of the lack of weapons developed for Portuguese.CFM: There is also the legislation you mentioned: a bill aimed at combating fake news thats now being debated by Brazils lawmakers. There are concerns over potential privacy breaches and excessive surveillance. To what extent can anti-disinformation laws play a helpful role without opening up new risks?CT: The simple fact is that there is no data that proves the link between legislation and a reduction in the spread of false information. At the International Fact-Checking Network, where I served as served as associate director for more than two years, we had a database on these laws all over the world. In Asia, which has had fake news laws since 2019, no one has defeated or even reduced disinformation. So as fact-checkers, we just cant support something that has not been shown to be effective.

In Brazil, we came late to the disinformation fight. In 2009, there was already a Pulitzer Prize for a U.S. fact-checking initiative, but the first specialized agency here, Lupa, didnt open until 2015. Since then, the debate has evolved a lot, but we  meaning the general population, not specialists and researchers  are not at the level seen elsewhere when it comes to understanding the complexities of this debate.

This bill in particular was born at a terrible time, in the middle of the pandemic, when the then-head of the lower house was getting threatened personally. To solve his problem, a bill was born. The first version emerged in early 2020 at a time when Congress was already meeting virtually. So it all began inauspiciously, undemocratically, at a time when there were other priorities.

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In the lower house, the bill has improved significantly, focusing more on behavior, not content. But it still has unacceptable clauses, like providing immunity for parliamentarians, some of whom have contributed to vaccine disinformation. Thats unthinkable.

CFM: The law does seem to have some positive elements, like the idea of going after those who actively fund false information, rather than those who share it.

CT: The problem of this clause is that it is unworkable. Imagine you pay me to create disinformation. You would be the one they need to track. But how do they prove the link at the required speed without violating basic principles? If you want to follow judicial procedure, it will take so long that the damage will be done. But if you want to keep up, you will expose people, breach privacy and create a tool that can be used for other means.

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There is an easier way to follow the money: fine the platforms if they are paid to promote something that turns out to be disinformation. The fines have to come out of Big Tech. They must be the ones that are made to see disinformation as a liability, not a lucrative traffic generator.

CFM: Should countries make platforms ability to operate conditional on agreeing to steps like this? Brazils top electoral authority has worried in particular about disinformation spread over messaging app Telegram.

CT: We cant go after individual platforms. Laws and restrictions cannot be defined just for todays problems. If we ban Telegram, someone will come up with something ever so slightly different, and then that will then take off here. We need to have some more basic discussions. Say, the question of whether the president can block citizens on Twitter. What do we allow and not allow?

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CFM: Granted, but we are looking at elections in October, and these debates take time. What can Brazil do immediately?

CT: The first thing is to realize that we cant solve anything. We can at best minimize it.

Then, recall email spam. It was a problem in the late 1990s, a real hassle, but not any more. What happened? Journalists wrote about it, educating people not to simply click, not to engage, and did it repeatedly. We need to spread the same gospel with disinformation, teaching people what fake news is, what it looks like, that it can be real but in a misleading context. There is the technology part, just as there was with excluding spam from our inboxes. The same effort needs to go into filtering out what should not get through. Finally, we can create liability, responsibility, as we did when we made companies add unsubscribe lines to their emails.

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In the very short term, for the presidential elections, there are some very easy things. First, foster collaboration between journalists. They carry the burden, but must work together for fact-checking, as no one can fight this monster alone. Second, build links with electoral authorities, as weve already done  weve never seen Brazil fight disinformation as explicitly as this. The idea here is to amplify truth. We can only fight disinformation with an excess of information, by flooding the zone.

The third and final leg is to teach people strategic silence. People creating fake news know what they are doing, so you need to know when you are interacting with them and providing oxygen, by retweeting or forwarding their false videos or news. If its fake, leave it there, let it die with you. When Bolsonaro went to Russia, there was a meme with a cover of Time magazine saying he had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for preventing the war in Ukraine. I received it on five different WhatsApp groups, all pointing out that it was nonsense. And it was absurd, but there we were and here we are discussing it.

So youve spotted some fake news? Excellent. Now fight it by ignoring it.

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Clara Ferreira Marques is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and member of the editorial board covering commodities and environmental, social and governance issues. Previously, she was an associate editor for Reuters Breakingviews, and editor and correspondent for Reuters in Singapore, India, the U.K., Italy and Russia.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

2022 Bloomberg L.P.

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After winning a fourth consecutive general election in 1992, the U.K. Conservative Party chairman told then Prime Minister John Major that they had stretched the elastic as far as it would go. Soon after, it snapped. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight The Tories had been in power for 13 years at that point and had become arrogant and complacent. Majors government became mired in sleaze and lost its sense of purpose. In 1997, Labours Tony Blair became prime minister.

Boris Johnsons appetite for power seems to increase with every scandal, but after a fourth successive Tory triumph in 2019, the signs suggest that the elastic may once again be stretched quite far.

This week, Johnsons Tory MPs decided neither to back him nor sack him over whether he misled Parliament over the partygate scandal. That leaves him in a no mans land between being tolerated and rejected by the party he once commanded as an election-winner. Being fined by the police for breaking his own lockdown regulations made Johnson the first British leader to be found to have broken criminal law in office and the first to be investigated for contempt of the House of Commons.

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Yet the prime ministers talent for delaying may still save his skin. Only fellow Tory MPs can remove him from office, and it helps that his strongest rival, Chancellor Rishi Sunak, has fallen from grace. But personal survival hardly amounts to a coherent government program, and that gap is becoming more widely noted, even among backbenchers once loath to risk a change at the helm.

Perhaps sensing that, Johnson rallied his troops earlier this week asking them if they would prefer him  or Labour. But the more pressing question is whether they are starting to favor another Conservative. If this administration gives off a whiff of decay, then the parliamentary party exudes the stench of corruption. An alarming number of Tory MPs have fallen foul of the law in a dizzying variety of ways. The signs of unearned entitlement and drift are all there. Has the party been in power too long?

This is how seemingly impregnable governments  and Johnson has a 75-person strong Commons majority  collapse. Its not by dint of external pressure, but largely from within.

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In the early 1960s, after 13 years of Tory rule, revelations of ministerial high jinks added to the sense that Britain had lost an empire and hadnt found a role. At the tail-end of an even longer period of supremacy in the 90s, Conservative politicians made front-page news for petty speculation and sex scandals. The Cold War had been won, but reform of the welfare state was clearly beyond an exhausted Tory government.

After the last general election in 2019, Johnson got Brexit done, as he promised. But what is this governments purpose now, 12 years after the Conservatives returned to power? Johnsons allies say he has been reborn as a Churchillian war leader. A mere police fine  though it may only be the first of many  is outweighed, they claim, by his stirring defiance of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has garlanded Johnson with praise, but it is the British armed forces that deserve the real plaudits. While the politicians were talking about peace with Putin over the last six years, British (and American) soldiers prepared for war and passed on new weaponry and tactics to the Ukrainians.

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Doing the right thing by Ukraine also doesnt fill the domestic policy vacuum. Voters, while supportive of the attempt to see off an international bully, are anxious about their domestic circumstances. And Britain has changed leaders in wartime for centuries  thats how Winston Churchill, who is Johnsons hero and declared role model, got the job.

At home, the governments priorities are hard to discern. A few weeks back, it was set on solving the energy crunch, although the prime minister was too terrified of losing the support of a few rural MPs to give planning permission for cheap and rapidly built onshore wind farms.

Then 10 Downing Street claimed that leveling up the differences between the post-industrial north of England and the affluent southeast was the real deal. But there is no money to fund the policy. This week, the media were briefed that No. 10 places Brexit opportunities at the heart of the government. Is that code for a tariff war with the European Union over Northern Ireland while a real war rages in eastern Europe?

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Unsurprisingly, voters are duly unimpressed. A poll in the London Times this week reveals that the Labour party is ahead in every policy area, including the economy.

A by-election in the northern seat of Wakefield has been triggered after the previous incumbent Tory MP Imran Khan was found guilty of sexually assaulting a minor after plying him with alcohol. After Khans conviction, a veteran Conservative MP and former justice minister, Crispin Blunt, tweeted that his conviction was nothing short of an international scandal. He later apologized.

The grisly scandals keep multiplying. Another Tory MP, David Warburton, has just been suspended over multiple allegations of sexual assault. He told the Sunday Telegraph he has enormous piles of defence. Andrew Bridgen, a Conservative MP given to lurid conspiracy theories, was last week found to have lied under oath in court in a multimillion-pound family dispute. He was accused of pressuring a police inspector to investigate his brother over false allegations of fraud. (Bridgen called the ruling disappointing.)

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The party of law and order has lost its moral compass. The government has lost its way. Even though few leaders can bounce back from setbacks as defiantly as Boris Johnson, many on his own side are starting to wonder why he allows so many in the first place.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Martin Ivens was editor of the Sunday Times from 2013 to 2020 and was formerly its chief political commentator. He is a director of the Times Newspapers board.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

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Russia can increase domestic energy consumption and boost exports to new markets after some unfriendly countries have rejected Russian oil. So says President Vladimir Putin. It sounds simple, but its going to be a lot tougher in practice once the next wave of restrictions on Moscows oil trade kicks in.

So far, there has been little obvious impact on the volume of crude flowing from Russias export terminals. While seaborne shipments drifted lower during the first weeks after Russias invasion of Ukraine, there was no sudden collapse. And the rate of exports surged in the first week of April, due in part to the easing of storms in the Black Sea, which had led to a backlog of ships waiting to load at a key port.

What has changed, though, is where a lot of those ships are going. There has been a big jump in the number of cargoes heading for Asia from ports in the Black Sea, the Baltic and even, in one case, from the Arctic port of Murmansk. Flows of crude to Asian countries from Russias western ports have surged from zero in the weeks prior to the invasion to 875,000 barrels a day in the first full week of April. Thats almost as much as Russias combined daily shipments to Germany, France, Greece, Italy and the U.K. before the invasion.

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While Russian oil companies had to offer steep discounts of more than $30 a barrel to sell crude into Europe, they werent offering the same price cuts to buyers in India. Thats likely to change, though, as state-run oil refiners switch to privately negotiated deals in the hunt for better terms, instead of buying through public tenders.

But theres likely to be a limit to how much Indias refiners will buy from Russia. Increased imports of Russian crude will displace purchases from elsewhere and buyers will likely be wary of damaging relations with their traditional suppliers in the Middle East. That may put a cap on the volume they are prepared to take from Russia.

There is also a question of the chemical make-up of the crude. Every crude oil is different and refineries operate most profitably when they process a specific grade of crude, or blend of grades. Increased volumes of Russian crude would have to displace crudes of similar quality, in terms of their gravity and sulfur content, which may also limit the volumes refiners are able to take.

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Increased crude flows from ports in western Russia to India and China, perhaps offset by higher flows of Persian Gulf crude to Europe, is also going to put a strain on tanker markets. The greater distances involved will tie up more vessels for longer periods on each delivery. It takes three times as long to carry a cargo of crude from the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea to Sikka in India as it does to deliver it to Trieste in Italy.

From the Baltic, which has become Russias primary outlet for westbound shipments, the increase is even bigger. It takes a day or two to deliver crude from Primorsk or Ust-Luga to Finland, Lithuania, or Poland, and about a week to ship it to the Netherlands or Germany. A voyage to the west coast of India takes a month, to the east coast, even longer. Given Russias pre-invasion mix of destinations for its Baltic Sea crude exports, a full diversion of flows to India would require five to six times as many ships as are typically used. The increased demand will push up prices  good news for ship owners, but bad news for whoever is going to have to absorb the transport costs.

The increase is similar for shipments from Russias Arctic port of Murmansk. Most cargoes make a week-long voyage to Rotterdam. One is now on a month-long journey to Paradip on the east coast of India. More may be forced to follow, as the EU begins to toughen up its stance on Russian oil imports.

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Where else might Russia sell its crude?

One possibility is into Chinas strategic stockpile, if it is willing to offer discounts big enough to make cargoes attractive to the countrys price-conscious buyers. There have even been suggestions that Middle Eastern oil producers might buy cheap Russian crude for processing in their overseas joint venture refineries, freeing up more of their own barrels for export. Big discounts could make that an attractive proposition; the volumes might be as much as 200,000 barrels a day.

But if Europe is serious about weaning itself off Russian crude, Moscow is going to have to find markets for a lot more than that. About 1.8 million barrels a day of Russian crude was shipped to European ports before the invasion of Ukraine.

Using more within Russia only makes sense if the country has something productive to do with it  that will require boosting industry, which seems unlikely.

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Increasing sales to Asian buyers, who show no aversion to buying Russian crude, is a superficially attractive solution. But its going to be a lot more costly for Russia than selling to high-paying European buyers on its doorstep.

More From Bloomberg Opinion:

 The Frailty of Russias Fortress Economy: Marques & Johnson

 Russian Default Is a Question of When, Not If: Marcus Ashworth

 The Second Wave of the Russian Oil Shock Is Starting: Javier Blas

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Julian Lee is an oil strategist for Bloomberg. Previously he worked as a senior analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

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The Solomon Islands has sent shock waves across the Pacific by signing a security cooperation pact with China. The island nation had faced pressure from its traditional allies, Australia and the U.S., to reject the deal as they seek to counter Chinas growing influence in the region. The Solomon Islands leader told his parliament the pact wouldnt undermine the peace and harmony of our region. That hasnt squelched concerns about a possible Chinese naval base just 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from Australia.

1. Whats the pact about?

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on April 19 -- the day the pact was announced -- that the cooperation would include maintenance of social order, protection and safety of peoples lives and property, humanitarian assistance and natural disaster response, to help Solomon Islands strengthen capacity building and safeguard its own security. According to an Associated Press report, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare told his parliament in Honiara a day later that it will allow China to send police and military personnel to the Solomon Islands to assist in maintaining social order. Chinese warships also could stop in port there for logistical replenishment. Sogavare has insisted the pact would not allow China to construct a military base -- a concern that arose after a draft copy was leaked online in late March -- and has strongly asserted his countrys right to an independent foreign policy.

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2. How did the deal come about?

Chinese diplomats have been wooing Sogavare for years and he has reciprocated by strengthening relations with the Asian superpower, including a contentious decision to switch the countrys diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taipei in September 2019. That change has been one of the factors in growing domestic unrest between Sogavares government and the province of Malaita, the most-populous isle with a third of the nations 650,000 people. Daniel Suidani, who leads Malaita, has been a vocal critic of the switch to decision to cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Last year, anti-China protesters demanded Sogavares resignation, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported, while the Solomon Islands Herald said shops in the capitals Chinatown were looted and damaged. Sogavare asked for Australian troops to help quell the unrest even as he accused other powers of encouraging the anti-China sentiment. A few months later came the security pact with China.

3. Whats the significance?

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China has long been trying to beef up its presence in the Asia-Pacific, including building up its navy and constructing military facilities on disputed islands in the South China Sea. War hawks in Australia and the U.S. have warned that this security cooperation pact could pave the way for Chinese military hardware and eventually a naval base in the South Pacific, although thats not the immediate case now. In announcing the pact in Beijing, Wang Wenbin had criticized Western efforts to block it, saying: We must point out that South Pacific island countries are not a backyard of any country, still less a pawn for geopolitical rivalry.

4. What about the U.S.?

The U.S. has long touted its alliances in the Pacific as part of efforts to counter the growing economic, political and military influence of China in the region. They include a new defense accord with Australia and the U.K., known as Aukus, sealed last year and an older grouping known as the Quad that includes Australia, Japan and India. President Joe Bidens East Asia czar Kurt Campbell visited the islands on April 22 and had what a White House statement afterward called a substantial discussion with Sogavare about the pact. It said the U.S. had expressed clear areas of concern and that Sogavare had reiterated his specific assurances that there would be no military base, no long-term presence, and no power projection capability for China. It added that the U.S. would respond accordingly should such a base or capability be established. Sogavare said after the meeting that the Solomon Islands wont allow China or any other countries for that matter to establish its military base here.

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5. What does this mean for Australia?

The Australian government, to which the South Pacific region has long looked for support, expressed concern that the deal could undermine stability and make the Solomon Islands beholden to China. Prime Minister Scott Morrison echoed Campbells assertion that a de facto permanent Chinese presence would be a red line. More immediately, it could become an issue in Australias May 21 national elections. Morrison has portrayed himself as tough on national security, but the diplomatic loss is providing ammunition for attacks on his governments record. Shadow Foreign Minister Penny Wong called the signing of the security agreement the worst failure of Australian foreign policy in the Pacific since the end of World War II.

(An earlier version corrected a misspelling in headline and spelling of prime ministers first name)

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

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Hissene Habre, the former dictator of Chad whose reign of torture and political killings in the 1980s led to his conviction in 2016 on crimes against humanity, a landmark in international criminal justice, died Aug. 24 at a hospital in Dakar, Senegal, where he was serving a life sentence. He was 79.

Jean Bertrand Bocande, director of penitentiary administration, confirmed the death to the Associated Press. Local news outlets reported that Mr. Habre had recently contracted covid-19.

Chad is a landlocked Central African nation of approximately 17 million, where a dearth of natural resources, long-standing ethnic and religious tensions, and decades of repressive government have consigned its citizens to poverty, political instability and violence.

Known as Africas Pinochet  a reference to Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the brutal Chilean ruler of the 1970s and 1980s  Mr. Habre came to power in a 1982 coup and ruled for eight years. He was deposed in 1990 by Idriss Deby, who then ruled the country for three decades before his death in April from battlefield wounds sustained amid a conflict with rebels.

The son of a shepherd, Mr. Habre was educated in Paris in the years after Chads independence from France in 1960. He rose to power as a leader in the National Liberation Front of Chad, which formed in the 1970s to oust a series of post-colonial governments. Mr. Habre long enjoyed the support of the United States, which regarded Chad as a counterweight to its neighbor to the north, Libya, then under the rule of Col. Moammar Gaddafi.

Mr. Habre maintained his hold on power with the aid of a secret police service, the Documentation and Security Directorate, which reported directly to him. In 1992, a truth commission in Chad determined that his regime operated a network of prisons where 200,000 people were incarcerated and often tortured and where 40,000 died. Mr. Habre was accused of forcing women into sexual slavery for his troops and, in one instance, raping a single woman four times.

Mr. Habre, who after losing power allegedly left Chad with more than $11 million, took exile in Senegal and lived in what were described as opulent conditions. Human rights workers and victims of his regime undertook a complex and circuitous campaign to bring him to trial.

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They relied on the notion of universal jurisdiction, also applied in the case of Pinochet. According to that legal principle, some offenses, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity, are so severe that the alleged perpetrator may be prosecuted in the court of any nation, regardless of where the crimes took place or where the perpetrator or victims reside.

Indicted in Senegal in 2000, Mr. Habre was convicted 16 years later by the Extraordinary African Chambers on charges including crimes against humanity and torture. He was sentenced to life in prison. The proceedings were notable, The Washington Post reported at the time, because they represented first trial of a former African ruler in another African country, under the auspices of the African Union, and could be seen as a new model for justice on the continent.

The trial included the testimony of 90 witnesses, who described the fear induced by Mr. Habres secret police and prison apparatus. Inmates endured starvation and rampant illnesses including dengue fever. Guards subjected torture victims to electric shocks, doused them with poison gas and burned them. Some were forced to place their mouths over the exhaust pipes of running vehicles.

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One technique, called the baguettes, called for two wooden sticks to be tightened over the victims temples like a vice. The bodies of inmates who died were often left to decompose for days.

What I saw in prison is beyond human belief, one victim, Samuel Togoto, told The Post in 2000, recalling that his limbs were tied behind his back for so long that he was left paralyzed.

For victims and their advocates, Mr. Habres conviction carried a moral significance far beyond the legal precedent it set.

They arrest you and tell you not to talk, so it feels good to say it, said Ginette Ngarbaye, who was tortured at age 19 while pregnant, according to the London Guardian. Its healing.

Mr. Habre was born in 1942 in Faya-Largeau, in the northern, largely Muslim part of Chad. He worked for the French colonial military before studying in Paris and then returned to Chad, where he worked briefly for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before joining the National Liberation Front.

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The truth commissions report described Mr. Habre as a shape-shifter who exchanged alliances and loyalties to curry and maintain influence and power. He served in various governments in roles including prime minister and defense minster before taking control of the presidency.

Amid an ongoing conflict between Libya and Chad  and the Cold War pitting the United States against the Soviet Union  Gaddafis Libya received weaponry and other support from the Soviets, while the United States and France sought to bolster Chad under Mr. Habre.

Habre was a remarkably able man with a brilliant sense of how to play the outside world, an unnamed U.S. official told The Post in 2000, after Mr. Habres indictment. He was also a bloodthirsty tyrant and torturer. It is fair to say we knew who and what he was and chose to turn a blind eye.

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At the end of Mr. Habres trial, U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry described the former rulers conviction as a landmark in the global fight against impunity for atrocities  as well as an opportunity for the United States to reflect on, and learn from, our own connection with past events in Chad.

According to the Associated Press, Mr. Habre had two wives, one Chadian and one Senegalese, and kept two villas at his home in exile in Dakar, one for each family. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

Describing the findings of the truth commission, the AP obituary noted a memorable line from its final report. Despite his education, his power and his wealth, the commission found, Mr. Habres comportment and thinking [were] not much different from those of a camel thief.

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Orrin G. Hatch, a conservative Utah Republican who came out of political nowhere to win a U.S. Senate seat in 1976 and ended his career 42 years later as the longest-serving Republican in the chambers history and one of his partys most influential lawmakers of recent decades, died April 23 in Salt Lake City. He was 88.

The death was announced by the Hatch Foundation. The cause was not immediately disclosed.

Tall and slim in build and impeccable in dress, Mr. Hatch had a gentlemanly demeanor but behind it wielded strong views, high energy and a love for legislative give-and-take that made him a force on Capitol Hill.

When he retired in 2019, at the end of his seventh term, he chaired the powerful tax-writing Finance Committee and by virtue of his seniority was Senate president pro tempore. By the end of his tenure, Mr. Hatch had sponsored or co-sponsored 790 pieces of legislation that became law, more than any other senator in office at the time, according to Library of Congress data. He achieved that record in part through his willingness to work with liberal Democrats.

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He was a tough partisan, a solid conservative, but he could make strategic alliances to get legislation passed, former Senate historian Donald Ritchie said in an interview. No one questioned his ideology, so he could deal. People on his side of the aisle trusted him, and people on the other side respected him.

His most productive collaboration was with Massachusetts Democrat Edward M. Kennedy, his political polar opposite. One of the reasons I ran for the Senate was to fight Ted Kennedy, who embodied everything I felt was wrong with Washington, Mr. Hatch wrote in a Newsweek commentary shortly after Kennedys death in 2009.

Kennedy was an established Senate force when the Utah firebrand crashed onto the national scene, itching to balance the budget, overturn the U.S. Supreme Courts Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, bury the Equal Rights Amendment and otherwise steer the ship of state rightward. He was an aggressive, ambitious man who, as much as anything, resembles a minister making his rounds, a reporter for the New York Times wrote of Mr. Hatch in his first term.

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In only his second year in the Senate, Mr. Hatch joined another GOP freshman, Richard Lugar of Indiana, in filibustering a major Democratic-backed labor bill that would have eased barriers to union organizing and, according to Mr. Hatch, led the country straight to socialism. After six unsuccessful cloture votes to break the filibuster, Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) surrendered.

Mr. Hatch, a strait-laced former Mormon bishop who grew up in a working-class Pittsburgh family, could scarcely have been more different from Kennedy, a fun-loving scion of East Coast political royalty. To the surprise of both, they found common ground in their efforts to improve health care and social services.

Their best-known collaboration was the 1997 legislation creating the Childrens Health Insurance Program, which provided states with matching grants to cover uninsured children in working-poor families. The program, the largest expansion of taxpayer-funded health insurance for children since the creation of Medicaid in 1965, was instrumental in cutting the percentage of uninsured children by more than half.

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The two senators also collaborated on the 1990 Ryan White act, which funded care for uninsured and underinsured patients with HIV/AIDS. And Mr. Hatch worked closely with Kennedy and Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, the chief sponsor, to pass the landmark 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act prohibiting discrimination against  and requiring accommodations for  people with disabilities.

One factor in Mr. Hatchs transition from ideologue to pragmatist was the 1980 election, which shifted Senate control to the GOP and gave him the chairmanship of the Labor and Human Resources Committee  and with it responsibility for health-related legislation. He partnered with Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House health subcommittee, to accelerate the approval process for lower-cost generic drugs. The 1984 law, known as the Hatch-Waxman Act, is credited with significantly increasing consumers access to generics.

But while Mr. Hatch worked with Democrats on some issues, he battled them fiercely on many others. The Almanac of American Politics called him consistent in his inconsistency.

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He strongly supported the Reagan administrations muscular military and foreign policies. He opposed efforts to expand civil rights laws, supported restricting abortion rights, and worked  with some exceptions  to rein in the cost and reach of government.

During the Obama White House years, he was an untiring foe of the Affordable Care Act, and he capped his career shepherding President Trumps 2017 tax cut through the Senate, despite arguments that it would balloon the national debt.

On 28 occasions by his count, Mr. Hatch introduced a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. The high-water mark was in 1995, when the House passed the measure and pro-amendment senators led by Mr. Hatch came within one vote of prevailing.

As a member of the Judiciary Committee, which he led for eight years as chairman, he played a central role in confirmation battles over Supreme Court nominees from Robert Bork to Brett M. Kavanaugh. In 1991, he was a high-profile defender of Clarence Thomas against sexual harassment charges by law professor Anita Hill. Attacking Hills credibility, Mr. Hatch held up a copy of the horror novel The Exorcist and suggested she cribbed one of her most dramatic claims from the book.

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Mr. Hatchs reputation for bipartisan dealmaking suffered in the last years of his tenure as he tacked right in the face of growing anti-Washington sentiment among Utah Republicans.

In 2010, right-wing activists dominated the state GOP convention and denied Mr. Hatchs Republican colleague, Sen. Robert Bennett, nomination for a fourth term. Mr. Hatch, up for reelection two years later, appeared vulnerable to the same forces. Like Bennett, he had voted for a financial bailout package to stem the 2008 housing-market meltdown  a mortal sin, as tea party Republicans saw it.

Mr. Hatch went all-out to reestablish his conservative credentials. He was one of nine senators to oppose a 2011 budget deal struck to avoid a government shutdown, claiming the measure did not cut spending enough. Im prepared to be the most hated man in this Godforsaken city in order to save this country, he told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

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Although the 2012 state convention forced him into a primary with a tea-party-allied candidate, he won by a landslide.

During that campaign, Mr. Hatch told voters he would not run again. But as 2018 approached, he toyed seriously with seeking an eighth term. Trump, who had no love for Mr. Hatchs ultimate replacement, former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, pushed him to run.

But a 2016 poll of likely Utah voters found that 71 percent thought he should step aside. In a blistering editorial, the Salt Lake Tribune said that if Mr. Hatch didnt end his career, the voters should end it for him. In January 2018, Mr. Hatch announced he would not seek reelection, saying, Every good fighter knows when to hang up the gloves, a reference to his youthful experience as an amateur boxer.

In the 2016 GOP presidential primary race, Trump was Mr. Hatchs third choice after former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.). But once at Trumps side, Mr. Hatch stayed firmly affixed, despite his free-trade views that contrasted with the presidents protectionist policies.

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When court filings in late 2018 implicated Trump in an effort during his campaign to buy the silence of two women who claimed they had sexual encounters with him years earlier, Mr. Hatch dismissed the revelation as unimportant. Since hes become president, this economy has charged ahead. Were all better off, Mr. Hatch told CNN in remarks that Mr. Hatch later said he regretted. And I think we ought to judge him on that basis rather than trying to drum up things from the past that may or may not be true.

Shortly before Mr. Hatch left office, Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nations highest civilian commendation. The president had earlier shrunk the size of Utahs Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, a move sought by Mr. Hatch and other Utah officials and opposed by environmental and American Indian groups. Im approving the Bears Ears recommendation for you, Orrin, Trump told him in a 2017 phone call, Mr. Hatch reported.

'I've had to fight'

Orrin Grant Hatch was born March 22, 1934, in Pittsburgh. His parents had nine children, two of whom died in infancy. Mr. Hatchs brother Jesse was killed in World War II when his B-24 bomber went down in enemy action over Europe, a loss that the future senator, 10 years old at the time, said had a lifelong impact on him.

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His father was a metal lather and union member. The family, as the future senator often recounted, had little money and lived in a ramshackle house built by his parents out of recycled lumber, one side adorned by a large sign for Meadow Gold Ice Cream.

As a boy, he was scrawny and was pushed around by a schoolyard bully. As Mr. Hatch told the story, he filled a duffel bag with sand, hung it from a tree and spent after-school hours learning how to throw punches, later moving on to amateur bouts. My life has always been uphill, he later told the Chicago Tribune. Ive had to fight for everything I have.

Despite the familys limited resources, his mother insisted that Mr. Hatch take piano lessons, and she gave him season tickets to the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. In his Senate years, he was a prolific songwriter and lyricist, frequently collaborating with Janice Kapp Perry, a Utah composer of inspirational music. Many of his pieces had a religious or patriotic message, but he also wrote love songs.

Mr. Hatchs output also included two books on his religious beliefs and a 2002 autobiography, Square Peg: Confessions of a Citizen Senator.

After fulfilling a Mormon mission in the Midwest, Mr. Hatch graduated in 1959 from Utahs Brigham Young University, the first in his family to complete college. Three years later, he received a law degree from the University of Pittsburgh.

At BYU, he met Elaine Hansen, a fellow student; they married in 1957 and had six children. Survivors include his wife, children and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Mr. Hatch was a lawyer in Pittsburgh until 1969, when he moved his family to Salt Lake City. There, he continued to practice law.

Mr. Hatch, who started out as a Democrat, became a Republican in law school and grew convinced in Utah that the nation was headed toward economic and moral ruin. When he decided to challenge the states three-term Democratic U.S. senator, Frank Moss, almost no one but Mr. Hatch thought he had a chance.

He had lived in Utah only seven years, had never sought elective office and faced four better-known Republicans for the partys nomination. Aided by Ronald Reagans endorsement, he won and advanced to the general election.

Moss was active on consumer and health issues and was well regarded in Washington. But Mr. Hatch hammered him as out of touch with the increasingly Republican state. What do you call a senator whos served in office for 18 years? You call him home, he said, a line that resurfaced in public memory as his own tenure stretched far beyond Mosss. Mr. Hatch won with 54 percent of the vote and, except for his 2012 scare, cruised to reelection afterward.

His one electoral defeat came in 2000, when he ran for the Republican presidential nomination. I believe in miracles, and it will take one to elect me, Mr. Hatch quipped of his poorly funded campaign. In Iowa, he drew 1 percent of the vote in the states GOP caucuses. He immediately withdrew and supported front-runner and future president George W. Bush.

Undiminished passion

Republican Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was a senator for more than 47 years when he retired at age 100 in 2003. But he served the first nine as a Democrat, allowing Mr. Hatchs 42 years to rank as the longest Republican tenure. (Byrd holds the all-time Senate longevity record: 51 years, 5 months.)

Mr. Hatch confessed to making mistakes over his long career, among them his vote against creating a national holiday to honor the slain civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. Another mistake, an innocent one in his telling, was a 1990 floor speech that he made defending the Justice Departments controversial settlement with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International on money laundering charges.

The speech was largely written by Robert Altman, a BCCI lawyer and official who was later indicted but ultimately acquitted of fraud charges stemming from the scandal. The speech and subsequent disclosure of Mr. Hatchs ties to BCCI personnel generated unfavorable media attention  much of it unfair, Mr. Hatch contended  and sent him into what he called ethical purgatory. In 1993, the Senate Ethics Committee cleared him of misconduct.

By the end of his Senate tenure, Mr. Hatchs once-brown hair was gleaming white, but his fondness for dark suits, starched-collar shirts and colorful ties remained intact. And while generally soft-spoken, he also remained fully capable of holding his own.

During Finance Committee deliberations on the Trump tax bill, Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown insisted the legislation was designed to help the rich. Slamming down the gavel, his voice rising, Mr. Hatch angrily dismissed the charge, adding, I come from the lower middle class originally. We didnt have anything. So dont spew that stuff on me. I get a little tired of that crap.

Thirteen months later, when he delivered his farewell speech on the Senate floor, it was Mr. Hatchs softer side that spoke. Invoking his relationship with Kennedy, he called for a return to collegiality, good will and acceptance. Pluralism, he said, is the adhesive that holds together the great American mosaic. It is the idea that we can actually be united by our differences, not in spite of them.

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YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. Spanish congressman Anton Gomez-Reino called on the Spanish government to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide.

The genocide perpetrated against the Armenian people destroyed with its violence an ancient culture which was always able to co-exist in harmony with other cultures. Killings, deportations and torture. Recognize the Armenian Genocide so that it never happens again, the Spanish lawmaker tweeted.
Adriana Stacey and her children play at their home in Fayetteville, Ark. (Terra Fondriest for The Post)

The vast majority of teens and tweens today have smartphones. These parents said no.
Youve likely seen the performance and visual art duo known as the Huxleys before; their penchant for glitter, wild costumes and disco balls make them hard to miss. In one of their Bloodlines pieces for international photo festival Photo 2022  to appear at the Centre for Contemporary Photography  they pay homage to the influence of the late artist Keith Haring, an AIDS patient, mimicking his famous heart-themed artworks by wearing head-to-toe glittery red costumes with certain, um, parts of their anatomy dressed up in sequinned finery as well. And in a series of photos that will appear in light boxes at Birrarung Marr, The Huxleys are dressed as gigantic sea creatures  we loved the idea that a lot of sea creatures are gender fluid  in outlandish fluorescent costumes that they hope will bring viewers joy.

Although The Huxleys (made up of Will and Garrett Huxley) works have appeared in London, Berlin, Moscow and Hong Kong, its Melbourne where they found the safest landing. Before then, they did not always find a place that understood their brand of androgyny, queerness and high camp. Says Will Huxley: I very much agree that theres a sense of freedom in Melbourne, in particular. We both grew up really struggling to express ourselves as queer people and not really fitting in; it wasnt until I moved to Melbourne [from Perth; partner Garrett is from the Gold Coast] that I felt that freedom to just be who I wanted to be. I came out here, and that part of me that I had always hidden was celebrated. All the things I was scared of or couldnt express have now become the things that make us who we are as artists.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone, the Huxleys. Credit:The Huxleys

Photo 2022s theme of being human incorporates 90 exhibitions and outdoor artworks throughout Melbourne and regional Victoria, not just from local artists but also renowned photographers such as Cindy Sherman and Helmut Newton. Some of the Melbourne-based artists have based themselves here after somewhat tumultuous or fraught pasts in other cities and countries  and they feel like there is something about the city that has not only encouraged them to express their identity through art, but has helped further their careers too.

Melbourne has this beautiful queer community in the performing and visual arts, and its inspiring because we didnt have that growing up, says Will Huxley. Our art is all about breaking those boundaries. It doesnt matter what gender you are; in our art, we like to confuse people.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size After finishing the new ABC surf drama, Barons, lead actor Jillian Nguyen jumped on a plane to Europe. Did she go for a holiday in Positano perhaps, or maybe a job in Prague? Ive been at clown school outside Paris for three months, she says, as she settles in for her interview with Sunday Life. Seriously? Yes, I wanted to challenge myself. After Barons, I was like, Okay, why do I love what I do? For me, its just about having fun. This clown school is in fact Ecole Philippe Gaulier, a prestigious theatre school in the village of Etampes. Jillian trained under Philippe Gaulier himself, who is regarded as a master clown. His teachings are based on the idea that play, or le jeu, is the core of making and performing theatre. Among his famous alumni are Sacha Baron Cohen, Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham-Carter. I did pure clown in the first week, which I absolutely adored  its the art of the clown, Jillian says. Then we had vaudeville and bouffon, which I was terrible at. Bouffon is kind of like if Chris Lilley and Sacha Baron Cohen made a subject. I was actually okay at pure clown but Philippe is notorious with his feedback in a very funny way. Jillian puts on a growling French accent:

That was orrible, she says, breaking into laughter. So if you get not bad or not horrible, thats like really good. I even got a good once or twice. But with bouffon, he was like, Okay, maybe Jillian, your career wont be in bouffon.  What did Jillian Nguyen do after wrapping filming on Barons? Clown school of course. She wears the Gather the Girls top by Maggie Marilyn, $636. Credit:Simon Lekias Fortunately her latest role in Barons didnt require her to have the hard-to-master bouffon skills. The series is set in 1971 Australia and centres on a group of best friends during a time when surfing counterculture collides with enterprise.

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Loading Jillian plays Tracy Dwyer (nee Chan), a high-school art teacher and partner to Bill Trotter Dwyer (Sean Keenan), who is launching his surfwear company, LightWave. The story is fictional but has parallels to the early days of rival surf brands Billabong and Quiksilver. Set in a time of liberation and social change, the series also examines the changing roles between men and women, with Tracy caught in this cultural rip tide. Shes a superwoman, says Jillian of Tracy. Shes a business owner. Shes a wife. Shes a mother figure to her brother. Besides being creative and resilient, she is generous and maternal. Jillian plays Tracy Dwyer (nee Chan), a high-school art teacher and partner to Bill Trotter Dwyer (Sean Keenan), who is launching his surfwear company, LightWave. While her character is Chinese-Australian, 29-year-old Jillians parents were born in Vietnam with Chinese heritage on her mothers side. She first arrived in Australia as a baby in 1994, a fact that made her question if women like Tracy truly existed here in the 1970s. When I think of the 70s, I just think of white Australia, to be honest, she says. And then when this came along, I was like, Okay, does this woman exist? And then, as I was doing my research, it was Jenny Kee who was the beacon. Jenny opened up my whole world. We hear all the time about how important it is to have diversity, being represented, being visible, and it shows it just takes one person to make you feel like you belong. That was Jenny for me, to reassure me that someone like Tracy is a real woman.

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Jillian also started trawling through videos on YouTube from that era and was surprised by what she found. I was watching footage of the movement for womens liberation in the 70s, and amongst the sea of Anglo, white women marching, there were Chinese-Australian women. They were at the marches, too! I saw every woman around me that I grew up with and how they were treated by their male counterparts. And even though these women were also powerful, they made themselves smaller. While the carefree, 70s-surfer lifestyle in Barons offers a nostalgic view of the times, the series doesnt shy away from the blatant racism and sexism of the era. Sadly, its something Jillian says still exists today. Times change as time goes by, but human nature is always inherently quite the same. I mean, obviously theres been so much progress, but theres still something innately the same. Jillians parents escaped Vietnam in the 80s before settling in Melbourne. She wears the Joslin Diane dress, $880. Credit:Simon Lekias Although its the 70s, it made me see my parents in the 90s. I saw every woman around me that I grew up with and how they were treated by their male counterparts. And even though these women were also powerful, they made themselves smaller. Jillians parents escaped Vietnam in the late 80s when they were both 19, and met at the Sungai Besi refugee camp in Malaysia. They spent 5 years there, welcoming their baby daughter (originally named Huyen Dieu) before finally leaving for Australia, where they had Jillians brother seven years later.

Her parents applied for asylum in Australia as theyd heard about the warm climate. They were told, dont go to Denmark or Japan, its really cold and boring, Jillian says, letting out her infectious laugh, which peppers the interview. Theyre just the most courageous people I know, she adds, proudly. At the time, there was a lot of compassion shown towards the Vietnamese refugees. Its changed since then for other refugees. The family settled in the inner west of Melbourne where Jillian says they enjoyed being part of a diverse mix of cultures  Vietnamese, Chinese, Italian, Greek, Ethiopian, and others. That was my childhood until I was 19, then my world changed, she reflects.

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Jillian began studying for an Arts degree at Melbourne University and felt like a minority among the predominantly white, middle-class students. But it was around this time that she fell in love with acting. If youd met me when I was in my teens, I just wanted to be Australian, she says. I didnt care about my heritage. I felt embarrassed to speak Vietnamese. And then, when I was 20, I did an Asian Film subject and was exposed to all these amazing directors, like Wong Kar-wai [who directed] In the Mood for Love  a gorgeous, subtle, beautiful, arty film. And they were Asian! That propelled me on the journey Ive taken for the past six years. If youd met me when I was in my teens, I just wanted to be Australian. After finishing her degree, Jillian attended the 16th Street Actors Studio in Melbourne, and soon scored a walk-on role in Justin Kurzels film The Kelly Gang. Next came key parts in the SBS original drama Hungry Ghosts, and a romantic sci-fi feature, Loveland (aka Expired), alongside Ryan Kwanten and Hugo Weaving. Jillian Nguyen in romantic sci-fi feature Loveland, where she starred alongside Ryan Kwanten and Hugo Weaving. Credit:Ivan Sen As much as Jillian appreciates her rapid-fire success, it has left her with nagging imposter syndrome. Sometimes I feel like a con artist. Oh, my god, am I a con artist? she asks. These feelings are possibly rooted in her parents doubts about her chosen profession. She says they would have preferred her to be a doctor, dentist or lawyer. The classic immigrant stuff  the stereotype is real, she says, laughing. Jillian has a philosophical approach to her work: I cant be stressed. I need to be calm, be a good person, do good work and hopefully it works out. Jillian wears the Anna Quan Charissa dress, $350. Credit:Simon Lekias

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As one prominent moderate, Victorian Liberal woman observed: There was never any thought that he would ditch her because it was calculated. He wanted her because it enables him to reinforce a message that has quite significant support in growth areas. Katherine Deves, the Liberal Partys contentious candidate for Warringah. The episode will do no favours for Liberal MPs like Trent Zimmerman in North Sydney, Dave Sharma in Wentworth and Katie Allen in Higgins. All three MPs crossed the floor of parliament in the interest of transgender children, in the religious freedom debate. The bigger issue is that Morrison did what he did knowing it would make political life more difficult for them. The PM this week made clear what he is willing to give up for a bigger prize. The question this raises, one now being openly discussed inside the Liberal Party, is whether a Coalition government could be turfed out of its inner-city electorates in Sydney and Melbourne but take enough ground in the suburbs and regions to stay in power. To some Liberals, this is electoral madness. We want to represent the city, NSW Senator Andrew Bragg says. These people are an important part of our history and future. Electorally I dont accept the premise that they are gone, or they are gone because there are not enough seats to replace them elsewhere. The electoral map is very clear; its a path we cant go down.

Senator Bragg is also concerned at what the potential loss of MPs like Josh Frydenberg, who is facing an intense battle to hold his seat of Kooyong against teal independent Monique Ryan, would mean for the Party and its politics. Kooyong was the seat of Robert Menzies and Frydenberg, the Treasurer and Liberal Deputy Leader, is considered the Liberal most capable of keeping everyone under what Bragg describes as the Partys great big tent. Frydenberg spent part of this week campaigning in Sydney with Sharma, who sees no evidence that Wentworth has been abandoned by his party. I have got no doubt the division of the party are working really hard and providing me the resources that I need to make sure I retain the seat of Wentworth, Sharma says. Josh Frydenberg with Liberal candidate for Wentworth Dave Sharma at World of Whisky in Double Bay in early April. Credit:Steven Siewert To other, more conservative Liberals, the future lies elsewhere. To lose Kooyong would be a huge, emotional loss for the party, but it is just a seat, said one. It is certainly not the jewel in the crown anymore. The abandonment of the Liberal Party by its traditional base of tertiary educated voters is not a new phenomenon. Nor is the partys appeal to less educated, disengaged voters on the edges of capital cities whose aspirations are anchored in cost-of-living concerns.

The long-standing tension between these disparate constituencies is being exploited by the independent movement which, if successful, would purge the party of MPs most closely aligned to the stated values of their candidates and supporters. This would in turn hasten the partys shift away from urbane, secular liberalism to a more populist, moral conservatism. About one third of Victorian Liberal Party members are registered to branches in Kooyong, Higgins and Goldstein. A Liberal Party without these Melbourne seats, Curtin in Perth and Wentworth and North Sydney would represent a radical redrawing of Australias political boundaries. But one well-connected Liberal points out, those boundaries are being redrawn anyway, by forces beyond the control of the party. To see where centre-right politics in Australia is potentially heading, look to the red/blue divide of America, Boris Johnsons previous success in dismantling of the red wall in England and this weekends extraordinary presidential run-off vote in France. None of these political systems are the same as ours but in all these countries a potent mash-up of right-wing populism has found a warm embrace in less educated voters who feel spurned by big-city elites and institutions. Compulsory voting and proportional representation are suppressing the electoral impact of the shifting fault lines in Australia, but the great divide within the Liberal Party is no longer over economic policies, as it once was, or even climate change, but social issues and identity. This is why Morrison sees value in the likely short-lived political career of Deves. It is also why moderate Liberals fear that a loss of urban seats will lead to a further coarsening of the political debate and alienation of educated voters.

Goldstein takes in some of Melbournes most affluent bayside suburbs and has been a safe Liberal seat since its creation. The emergence of Zoe Daniel, a former ABC journalist endorsed by Climate 200, has left sitting MP Tim Wilson facing a serious challenge to hold the seat. Wilson is not a conservative and rejects the term moderate. As he puts it: My liberalism doesnt come in moderation, nor did I join the conservative party. In his 2020 book The New Social Contract: Renewing the Liberal Vision for Australia, he writes that Australia has allowed the foundations of liberalism to erode. What would it mean if Goldstein were to go independent? Governments set the agenda, parliaments vote on it, so if a community deals itself out of a government party their representation is limited to responding to those that chose a government MP, he tells The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. The less urban communities support the party of government the more the voice of suburban and regional communities gain political weight. Aspiring candidates will always claim their communitys voice will be amplified with them, but it wont be heard around the Cabinet table and will largely be the diluted echo around an empty House of Representatives chamber. Candidates for Goldstein: Independent candidate Zoe Daniel and Liberal MP Tim Wilson. Credit:Simon Schluter

How is the battle going on the ground? Former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett, a Kooyong elector, says it feels as though every house in his neighbourhood suburb has been obliterated by signs for either Frydenberg or Ryan. If you click onto the University of Queenslands election ad dashboard you can follow the money on in the online campaign. Three days ago, Ryan was spending $4 for every $1 by Frydenberg on sponsored Facebook posts. By Friday, Frydenberg had matched her and then some. Their combined spend in Kooyong dwarfs all other seat campaigns. Kooyong independent Monique Ryan at her campaign launch earlier this month. Credit:Aaron Francis The Liberal Party has spent much of this week portraying the Holmes a Court-endorsed candidates as fake independents who are only in it to replace the Coalition government with a Labor one. These are not centre right people, Greg Hunt says. They are GetUp! In teal rather than orange. Its an undeclared party of the left. Allegra Spender, the independent seeking to win Wentworth, rejects this. She says she has always held traditional liberal values. It is the party, not her, which has shifted.

Spenders father John was a Liberal MP for North Sydney who ironically, was unseated by an independent, and her grandfather Sir Percy Spender was a minister in Robert Menzies cabinet. She says the party they served was small-l, rational and business focused. Liberal MP Dave Sharma and independent rival Allegra Spender shake hands at this weeks debate in the seat of Wentworth. Credit:Richard Dobson My values havent changed and Wentworths values havent changed, she says. We have always been pretty socially progressive, we are environmentally focused and people that I talk to dont think there has to be a choice between the environment and the economy. For Spender, the dumping of Malcolm Turnbull, the partys self-styled champion of centrist rationalism, was the decision that estranged her from the Liberals. This was also the event that prompted Kerryn Phelps, a member of the Climate 200 advisory council, to stand as an independent candidate for Wentworth at the subsequent byelection. The dumping of Turnbull was also acutely felt in Victorias Liberal heartland. At a state election held three months after Morrison became Prime Minister, the Liberals lost the state seat of Hawthorn, which falls within Kooyong, and were hammered in Brighton, in the centre of Goldstein.

Phelps describes herself as politically dead centre and says that when she decided to run as an independent in 2018 she was motivated by anger and frustration at the direction the Liberal Party had taken, rather than any expectation she would win. From a standing start, Phelps won the seat against Dave Sharma with swing of nearly 20 per cent. Sharma reclaimed Wentworth at the 2019 election and Liberals point to this and the fate of other single-term independents as evidence that the teal candidates, even if successful, will be nothing more than a flash in the polls. Labor figures see the Liberal identity crisis as a variant of the long-standing problem they face in trying to bridge the divide between inner-city progressives and what remains of Labors traditional, blue-collar base. Loading Kos Samaras, a former Victorian ALP campaign strategist and assistant state secretary, has been watching seats like Kooyong and Wentworth for the past two years. His political consultancy RedBridge is providing polling to the teal independents.
By Gao Hongbao and Sun Xiaoshun

GAO, Mali, April 24 -- On April 22, the 9th Chinese peacekeeping medical contingent to Mali held a seminar for professional exchanges at Sector East of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). Representatives of the peacekeeping contingents from various countries stationed in the mission area spoke highly of the event.

The security situation in Mali is grim under frequent terrorist attacks. In this regard, the 9th Chinese peacekeeping medical contingent to Mali had systematically sorted out and set up a database of typical cases and treatment experience after their deployment, laying a solid foundation for optimizing the diagnosis and treatment process and improving the treatment level.

During the exchange activity this time, the Chinese peacekeeping doctors introduced such treatment experience through typical case analysis, and had exchanges and discussions in the following Q&A with their UN counterparts.

Commander and Chief of Staff of the Sector East of the MINUSMA, as well as representatives of the peacekeeping contingents of various countries stationed in the mission area, attended the event at invitation. All the participants spoke highly of the event, indicating that it would facilitate the improvement of their ability to deal with emergencies and guarantee the security of peacekeepers.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. The Uruguayan Foreign Ministry summoned the Turkish ambassador Hussein Muftuoglu after the visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tried to taunt Armenian demonstrators in Montevideo by flashing a salute of the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves organization.

According to El Pais, the Turkish ambassador will head to the foreign ministry for explanation on April 25.

During a visit to Uruguay, Turkeys Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu mocked demonstrators outside the Turkish diplomatic representation who gathered to demand recognition of the Armenian Genocide on the eve of the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

A video posted on Twitter shows how demonstrators were shouting asesino  meaning murderer in Spanish, when Cavusoglu exited the building and was about to be driven away. Then, Cavusoglu is seen smiling and making the gesture of the ultranationalist Turkish Grey Wolves organization, taunting the demonstrators.

The gesture used by the Turkish ultra-nationalists was banned in Austria in 2019. In Germany, the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the Left party also proposed to ban the use of the symbol, describing it as fascist.
The lead Country Liberal Senate candidate for the Northern Territory, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, has backed Warringah candidate Katherine Deves views about transgender women and womens sport.

Standing alongside Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Alice Springs today, Price said she had plenty of experience with Australian rules competitions in the Territory.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price speaking at an event in 2019. Credit:Edwina Pickles

The girls here put on a hard hit playing AFL, but if you have to go up against [someone who wasnt born a girl], thats potentially life-threatening, the Senate candidate said.

This is what were talking about and this is what Katherine Deves is talking about when shes standing up for the rights of women.

Being pro-women is not anti-trans as far as Im concerned.

Deves has come under fire in recent weeks for past comments made on her now-deleted social media accounts, including several comparisons to Nazi Germany, references to groomer gender zealots, and a description of transgender children as surgically mutilated.

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Asked if she supported that kind of language, Price said: Her language on standing up for womens rights, I agree with.

The Senate candidate added that if the majority of people dont back a white woman from the affluent suburbs of Sydney, then the voices of other women, marginalised Indigenous women, voices of ethnic women who deal with their own cultural issues when it comes to patriarchal cultures, they dont get to have a voice, either. The seat of Warringah centres around Mosman and Sydneys Northern Beaches region.

While some high-profile Liberals (like the NSW treasurer) have suggested Deves needs to be disendorsed, others  such as the PM  have backed her candidacy.

Last week, Morrison suggested that the majority of people would sympathise with Deves views, even if they were poorly put. However, research conducted in Australia, England and Canada suggests the majority of women athletes support the inclusion of transgender women. A minority of women believe trans women have an unfair advantage, according to the research.

with Broede Carmody
PM: Because we felt safe in Biloela and we had a peaceful life with our family. And my children were born there. And we had a really peaceful and happy life. Biloela is our home. And we love the community because they were always friendly people. So we were very lucky to have those people in our lives. It was such a lovely community that there was a quick connection between us and them. They helped give us hope and they are the reason we are still fighting to get back there, to our home. Our daughters ask all the time, When will we be going back to Biloela, to our safe and happy life, to our home? Fitz: What do you remember of the time in 2018 when the Australian Border Force raided your home at dawn, to put you all in detention? Biloela locals have rallied around Nades and Priya Murugappan. Credit:Paul Harris PM: It was horrific and terrible. I dont have the words to put it. You know I was still in my nightdress and my children were still in bed. And 50 people, with police officers, arrived at dawn. And we were put in a vehicle, and they didnt even allow us to pack or change. I was put in police car, in my nightdress. It was horrific. They treated us very badly and without humanity. We couldnt even get a bottle for the baby, or a change of clothes. Fitz: What was Christmas Island like?

PM: That was a life that is not suitable for children. We were put in a box and not allowed to go outside, other than to school [with guards accompanying my daughter]. The whole family had to stay in one room, with one bed. There were a lot of other issues too: not enough medical facilities and I felt harassment. It was a very terrible way to live. Fitz: Your youngest daughter, Tharnicaa, was medically evacuated to Perth last June. Is she recovered from her medical woes? PM: Thank you. She is still affected from the pneumonia she had. She is still seeing a doctor sometimes, as she lost weight and was not feeling normal. But she is slowly getting better. Thank you. Fitz: Tharnicaa, four years old, is now in community detention without a visa. Why, of the four of you, is she the one who is regarded as a danger to shipping? Why cant she get a bridging visa too? PM: I dont know. It seems a very unjustified thing to do, that is done to justify the punishment already done to us. I dont know why they happen to be so cruel to us, to a four-year-old, who was born in Australia. I feel this is like a punishment to us.

Fitz: When the girls are older and they ask you Mum, why did the Australian government spend $60 million to keep us out of Australia when we had a community to go to and when we were not dangerous, what will you reply? Loading PM: I will tell them we as a family are not responsible for that money being spent. We were being used to support government policies. It was never about us. It was about the government staying in power. I have recorded videos and photos and everything of how we live our life in detention. So I will show them so they dont forget. This is how we were put in a box with one bed and had a very limited life. They say they are spending the money on refugees, but the reality is that they just paying for the guards. We were treated very badly. And I will make clear to my girls that this what happened to us. Fitz: The Australian government has said you are not genuine refugees, saying you are unlawful non-citizens. In your view, what would happen if you were to be sent back to Sri Lanka? PM: We are genuine refugees. We face torture if we go back. I have faced horrible things in my life and I am still carrying the scars. Theres just one department deciding whether or not we are legal refugees or not. Not even the court decides that. I feel like the justice system is broken.

Fitz: The last asylum seekers and refugees who were transferred to Australia for medical treatment were released in Melbourne last week. Why are the last four left? PM: I dont know whats going on with our situation but I think they are holding us back to justify what they have done to us so far, destroying my childrens hope. I go to bed every night with tears and am waking up with hope, but every time our hope is destroyed and at night it is tears again. It is a very unpredictable situation for us. Fitz: You have been in community detention. Labor has said if it wins this election, you will be granted visas and be allowed to go back to Biloela. Do you feel like your familys fate rests on the election result? PM: We do hope that our situation will change because its been four years weve been punished by this government. But I feel hope in next election and that it will bring some hope to our family. Fitz: Do you ever feel bitter at your treatment?

PM: I feel disgust at the way we have been treated. Its not the way you treat humans. Sometimes I feel really depressed. Its got to me and I ask God: why has this happened? We have not done anything wrong, so why is my family being punished? We respect Australia, and have respected its rules and regulations. We had a wonderful life in Biloela, with that community. We love them and we respect all laws. So why are people from outside treating us like that. So I have got that question. Why? What have we done? Joke of the week My Kid: I feel like youre always making up rules and stuff. Me: Like what? My Kid: Like if I dont clean my room a portal will open and take me to another dimension.

Me: Well thats what happened to your older brother. My Kid: What older brother? Me: Exactly. Tweet of the week Deidre Chambers! Greg Jericho on twitter, in response to the PM denying any knowledge of how Premier Dominic Perrottets texts to him, supporting his outrageous stance on trans athletes, leaked into the media

Quotes of the week We want to take a cautious and proportionate approach as we enter the colder months when we know that we might have flu circulating at higher levels. We have to coexist with COVID-19, but we cant ignore it. NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant about the relaxing of COVID rules this week My opponents, parts of the left media and twittersphere have been unrelenting in calling for me to be disendorsed because of past statements. I have been bullied in the most vile way and received death threats. Im not going anywhere, as the prime minister said yesterday. Katherine Deves, Warringahs Liberal Party candidate, hanging on for grim death. And the trans athletes Ms Deves? You dont think your comments help legitimise the bullying they have suffered? Im pleased she apologised and would encourage her to sit down and work with the trans community and their families to get a better understanding of how these kinds of comments can impact them. MP Trent Zimmerman, trying hard to sound balanced and reasonable about Katherine Deves. As you all know it takes enormous woman and manpower to operate this important annual event. And like many businesses and organisations we have been impacted by COVID. Tracy Bonfante for the Country Womens Association, announcing on Monday that the NSW CWAs tearoom at the Royal Easter Show had been closed because some of its volunteers had contracted COVID-19, which meant no scones.

These dangers are small, but poorly understood and not yet well managed. Toby Ord of Oxfords Future of Humanity Institute, being cautious about a NASA proposal to reveal Earths location. Researchers at the US space agency have backed a broadcast message, dubbed the Beacon in the Galaxy, intended to greet extra-terrestrial intelligences. Beam me up, Sco . . . Oh, wait! The draft business case will be reported to the audit, risk and improvement committee, and also presented to a councillor workshop, before being reported to the ordinary council meeting in June 2022, along with a plan for community engagement. Inner West Council general manager Peter Gainsford explaining how easy it will be for reluctantly merged inner city councils to de-merge themselves. $46 a week. Scott Morrison, asked in Perth if he knew what the JobSeeker rate was. (Its $46 a day) I misspoke. Scott Morrison asked later how he got it wrong. I wish they would stop talking about historical issues like stopping the boats. What are they doing about the present  like the people left homeless by the floods in Lismore. Fiona Lewis, giving her view as an audience member at the first debate between Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese.
John Curdie OAM became president of the Epping sub-branch of the Returned Services League when his granddaughter Brittany Evans was two years old.

Whenever we had a street parade or a function, ever since she was a tiny tot, she was very keen to be marching with me, Curdie said.

For Evans, 24, attending the marches with her grandfather, now 85, are among her earliest memories.

RAAF Veteran John Curdie with his granddaughter, Private Brittany Evans. Credit:James Alcock

Papa would always let myself and my siblings be involved with the march and the veterans, and it was nice to get so excited about it, she said. Id worry that I was doing the right marching technique and all that sort of stuff.
Skov accepted the position of island manager for a timber company in Vanikoro in 1936. Ships would arrive from Melbourne four times a year to collect the logs and deliver supplies. It was an island outpost, she said in an interview, where giant butterflies chased birds and crocodiles would snatch the pet cat.

Ruby Olive Jones was born in Sydney in 1891 and was working as a saleswoman when she married laundry operator Skov Boye, who had previously lived in the Solomon Islands. They had two boys, Don (Phills father) and Ken.

Amid allegations of failure of foreign policy, the eve of Anzac Day merits the telling of the achievements of a remarkable woman who was Australias only female Coastwatcher during the Second World War.

Asked if he believed Australia had taken its eye off the ball, he said: I guess you could say that. Thats a fair enough statement. I think she [Ruby] would probably feel the same way. That was a very hard-fought area in that part of the Pacific, the battles right nearby were pretty horrific.

With the outbreak of war in 1939, Vanikoro formed part of a Coastwatching network in the South Pacific. The two boys were sent for schooling in Sydney and the island was evacuated. When the radio operator left, a 50-year-old Mrs Boye took on the role. She and her husband were the only non-Solomon Islanders remaining.

In an interview on Snapper Island in Sydney in 1978, she said: I learnt how to read the panel of instruments for the weather reports, there were plenty of storms and hurricanes. Soon after, there was news of Pearl Harbor being bombed [on December 7, 1941] and we were a bit scared about that.

I was sending messages to Tulagi [in the Solomons] where they were compiled, then Tulagi was bombed, so I was advised through coded messages to use Morse code, which I had been practising since a Jap had called me and told me to get out or else.

They [the Royal Australian Navy] thought it was best for me to be in a uniform and the navy appointed me as an honorary third officer in the WRANS [Womens Royal Australian Naval Service]. It was just in case I was captured because I would be classed as a spy otherwise. It was dropped by parachute and it came down like a big pearl into the sea. They also sent cosmetics. I sent a message back saying, Thanks for the goodies, I am now a raving beauty.

It was very scary. We would hear the throbs of submarines on the reef. We would see Jap planes flying over. Later on, they bombed one of the aircraft tenders that were in the harbour.
High-profile advocacy group GetUp has earmarked the contested seat of Goldstein as its top election priority in Victoria, announcing a climate change campaign aimed at toppling Liberal incumbent MP, Tim Wilson.

The campaign has received a lukewarm reception from independent candidate Zoe Daniel who is already under fire from Wilson and the Coalition over outsider activist support for her candidacy.

GetUp members are taking their climate action agenda to the voters of Goldstein.

GetUp national director Paul Oosting said Goldstein was the groups main interest in Victoria as part of a $2.5 million national election campaign, followed by Kooyong, held by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

Other seats targeted include those hit by climate-affected disasters or where climate is a key issue, including Macquarie, Eden-Monaro, Gilmore, and Page in regional NSW, Mackellar in Sydney and Ryan in Brisbane.
Perths podcast boom is gathering speed, with more and more locals jumping on the bandwagon.

WTF Is It Like? is the latest, launching Tuesday.

WTF is it like? host Rebecca Winyard with a podcast guest.

Creator Rebecca Winyard said it would involve sharing prominent peoples stories, and how they achieved their success.

Rather than just speaking about how well someones doing, I want to know what struggles they went through to get there, she said.
It was on a rough desert track that Barry Eggleton spotted the two tiny dingo pups, like balls of pale fluff, huddled in the middle of the remote Strzelecki Track in South Australia.

After an unsuccessful search for a parent dingo, Eggleton discovered a third pup nearby, too dehydrated to move. He gave the pups water, left them in the desert and drove his company car to the closest airport, then flew to Sydney and drove to Newcastle to pick up his wife, Lyn, and their family vehicle.

Sandy, the wild-born desert dingo whose genome was mapped, was found in the South Australian desert as a pup in 2014. Credit:

They drove 2500 kilometres back to the isolated spot where Eggleton had left the pups. Incredibly, the three desert dingoes were still there. They brought them home and hand-reared them.

Now, an international research consortium led by La Trobe University has sequenced the genome of one of the wild-born dingo pups, named Sandy Maliki, and revealed the evolutionary position of the mysterious Australian mammal.
Since the inception of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in 2013, two complex and concerning issues have dominated discussion about this vital service for disabled Australians.

One is whether the existing system is financially sustainable. The other is the quality and fairness of service the NDIS provides to participants and their families. Both were implicit in a question asked during the leaders debate last week.

Catherine Yeoman, whose young son has autism, wanted Prime Minister Scott Morrison to outline what the future of the NDIS would look like under the Coalition, considering many participants, such as her family, had experienced cuts to their funding allocations.

Morrisons remark that he was blessed not to have disabled children incited a furore that crowded out the vital question every disabled person, their families and supporters might be asking in this election: what does the Coalition or, indeed, Labor have in mind for the future of the NDIS?

Those who fund the program and focus on budgets  the federal and state governments  may well be concerned about the rising number of NDIS participants and the obvious implication that has for the cost of the program.
Former prime minister John Howard has savaged the high-profile teal independents running in once-safe Coalition seats as anti-Liberal groupies, urging traditional Liberal voters to stick with the party even if they feel disgruntled.

Howard was speaking at a campaign event in his former seat of Bennelong, which Labor is targeting as a prime pick-up opportunity after the retirement of long-time Liberal member John Alexander.

Former prime minister John Howard, campaigning for the Liberal Party in his former seat of Bennelong. Credit:Renee Nowytarger

During the campaign rally Howard also blasted Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese for forgetting the unemployment rate in the first week of the campaign, a dramatic departure from his original reaction of so what? when asked about the gaffe.

These men and women are all posing as independents, Howard said of independent candidates such as Allegra Spender in Wentworth, Kylea Tink in North Sydney and Zoe Daniel in Goldstein. All are backed by businessman Simon Holmes a Courts Climate 200 fundraising group.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has confirmed his view that a family of Tamil asylum seekers should be returned to their home in the Queensland town of Biloela as friends of the family call for them to be given refugee status before the May 21 election.

Joyce said on Sunday he had not changed his view that the Murugappan family should be allowed to return home from their community detention in Perth and hinted his discussions inside the government had played a part in preventing them from being sent back to Sri Lanka.

Nades and Priya Murugappan with their daughters Kopika and Tharnicaa.

My position remains the same  I try to remain cognisant of this, the position I have in Biloela or central Queensland is the same I have in Canberra, he said.

But Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Immigration Minister Alex Hawke are leaving the familys fate to be decided by the courts, while Joyce would not comment on whether a government decision might be made before the election.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. Today, on the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative announced the names of 2022 Aurora Humanitarians, chosen for their exceptional impact, courage, and commitment to putting themselves at risk to help others. A US $1,000,000 award is given on behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors in order to address on-the-ground humanitarian challenges around the world with the focus on helping the most destitute. The announcement was made in the Matenadaran, the national repository of ancient manuscripts located in Yerevan, Armenia. One of the Humanitarians will later be named the 2022 Aurora Prize Laureate, ARMENPRESS was informed from the website of Aurora Humanitarian Initiative.

Such exceptional modern-day heroes remind us that even in the darkest times, a brighter future is in the hands of those who believe in it and are willing to do extraordinary things to protect it. Many of us may feel overwhelmed by the seemingly endless tide of human sorrow and suffering we face today, but the Aurora Humanitarians remain beacons of compassion, guiding and inspiring humanity. It is an honor for me to be part of the Initiative that recognizes and supports them, said Lord Ara Darzi, Chair of the Aurora Prize Selection Committee and Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London.

The 2022 Aurora Humanitarians are:

Jamila Afghani (Afghanistan), a peace activist and founder of the Noor Educational and Capacity Development Organization (NECDO) who has dedicated over 25 years of her life to giving the women of Afghanistan access to education. After the Taliban took over her country, Jamila Afghani was forced to flee her homeland  but she hasnt given up on its people.

Hadi Jumaan (Yemen), a peace activist, mediator, and body collector from Yemen who regularly risks his life to facilitate the exchange of prisoners of war and recover human remains from the frontlines. As the country continues to experience a prolonged political and humanitarian crisis caused by the civil war, Mr. Jumaan brings to the families the only solace left to them  the knowledge that their loved and lost ones may finally rest in peace.

Mahienour El-Massry (Egypt), a lawyer and political activist from Egypt who promotes political freedoms and human rights in the country by organizing peaceful protests and defending political prisoners in courts. In Egypt, voicing disagreement with the official policy can be dangerous, and Mahienour El-Massry has been detained and put in jail several times for her activism. Nevertheless, she remains optimistic about the future of her country and committed to being an agent of positive change.

As one of the Aurora Prize Laureates, I have witnessed the impact of support and recognition on the international level. The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative gives activists and human rights defenders, often operating on their own, a way to promote and elevate their work so they can achieve even more. I would like to congratulate the 2022 Aurora Humanitarians and wish them all the best in their activities, said 2021 Aurora Prize Laureate Julienne Lusenge, co-founder of Women's Solidarity for Inclusive Peace and Development (SOFEPADI) and Fund for Congolese Women (FFC).

Nominations for the 2022 Aurora Prize officially opened on April 24, 2021. A total of 633 submissions were received from 62 countries including Armenia, Brazil, Czech Republic, Georgia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, USA, and Ukraine. The Aurora Prize Laureate is honored each year with a US $1,000,000 award that gives them a unique opportunity to continue the cycle of giving and to support the organizations that help people in need.

Every year, Im in awe of the outstanding heroes that Aurora empowers and their work. They are dealing with immeasurable challenges in unimaginable circumstances where the odds are stacked high against them, and yet their humanity, their faith, their courage allows them to keep moving forward. It is my ardent hope that the world learns from them, as it would definitely make it a much better place, noted 2017 Prize Laureate Dr. Tom Catena, Chair of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative and Medical Director of the Mother Mercy Hospital inSudan.

In accordance with the tradition, the names of the 2022 Aurora Humanitarians are inscribed in the Chronicles of Aurora, a unique 21st century manuscript containing the depictions of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative activities, and the tome will be displayed for the public in the Matenadaran.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is resisting calling his Solomon Islands counterpart despite a top-level delegation from the United States arriving in the country to warn it against allowing China to establish a military base.

The White House said on Saturday it would expedite the opening of an embassy in the Solomon Islands and warned the Pacific nation that it would respond accordingly if steps are taken allowing China to set up a permanent military presence.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne have faced questions over their handling of the Solomon Islands-China deal. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Days after the Solomon Islands sent shock waves across the Pacific by signing a security cooperation pact with Beijing, the American delegation  led by National Security Council Indo-Pacific Coordinator, Kurt Campbell, and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Daniel Kritenbrink  met with members of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavares government for 90 minutes to discuss their concerns.

Morrison has also only spoken to Sogavare once during the past month, and did not call him in the days leading up to the signing of the agreement.
September 21, 2021 was a busy day for Katherine Deves. After firing off dozens of tweets about gender identity  including one that called it a toxic religion-without-a-god that comes for our children [and] infects our society  Deves submitted an application to rejoin the Liberal Party.

Almost three months later, on December 13, Deves application was accepted by the Fairlight branch. That day, asked why trans women should be accommodated in womens sport, Deves tweeted: Because the feelings of addled and entitled men are far more important than the inescapable, lived reality of little girls, teenage girls, young women and older women.

Katherine Deves, Liberal candidate for Warringah, enters the Forestville RSL for an event on Friday April 22. Credit:James Alcock

Those remarks about trans people and gender identity are relatively tame compared to some of Deves other tweets and comments unearthed in recent weeks after she was selected by Prime Minister Scott Morrison as the Liberal candidate for Warringah. Held by independent MP Zali Steggall, the Liberal Party has generally regarded the seat as unwinnable at this election.

Too numerous to recount in full, Deves now-deleted tweets involved many references to groomer gender zealots, several comparisons to Nazi Germany and a description of transgender children as surgically mutilated. In other forums she called LGBTQ initiative Wear It Purple Day a grooming tactic and speculated that shadowy interests paid actor Elliot Page to come out as transgender.
Federal Liberal candidate for Warringah Katherine Deves says her family has left Sydney due to death threats received following her comments about transgender people.

Deves, who opposes inclusion of trans women in womens sport, broke her silence in an interview with SBS News on Sunday night in which she detailed alleged death threats.

Liberal candidate for Warringah Katherine Deves gave an interview to SBS News on Sunday night from a secret location. Credit:SBS

I have had to have the police and the [Australian Federal Police] involved, she said. My safety has been threatened. My family are away out of Sydney because I don't want them to witness what I'm going through and nor do I want their safety put at risk.

Deves has been criticised over a series of since-deleted Twitter posts, including one in which she claimed half of all males with trans identities are sex offenders.
Labor will target national security concerns about Liberal MP Gladys Liu in advertisements in the ultra-marginal seat of Chisholm at the same time as leader Anthony Albanese accuses the government of failing to curb Chinese influence in the Pacific.

The federal opposition has spent days attacking the Coalition for failing to use diplomatic pressure to stop Solomon Islands signing a pact with China that could allow the superpower to establish a military base on Australias doorstep, labelling it the worst failure of Australian foreign policy in the Pacific in almost 80 years.

Chisholm MP Gladys Liu campaigning in Box Hill last week. Credit:Joe Armao

Liu, the Hong Kong-born MP who won the seat in Melbournes eastern suburbs by about 500 votes in 2019, last week said the Coalition government had handled the issue very well.

As recriminations continue and the US attempts to thwart the agreement, Labor will pay for ads on Facebook, Google, YouTube and Instagram to remind voters in her electorate about Lius record.
The landmark security deal between China and the Solomon Islands, which could see Chinese forces stationed less than 2000 kilometres from Australias east coast, has thrust Australian diplomacy into the heart of a domestic political campaign.

Its also prompted questions about Marise Paynes handling of the Australian governments response to the deal, her performance as the countrys top diplomat and even her political future.

Foreign Minister Marise Paynes colleagues say shes smart and on top of her brief but is reluctant to front media. Credit:Steven Siewert

Labor has sharply criticised the media-shy foreign minister for not travelling to Honiara and compared it unfavourably with the United States decision to send its Indo-Pacific Chief, Kurt Campbell.

The failed mission here is the last nine years of this government ... and the chief person responsible for doing that ought to be the foreign minister, deputy leader Richard Marles said Saturday.
The signing of the security pact between China and Solomons Islands represents one of the gravest Australian diplomatic and intelligence failures in more than half a decade. This failure didnt just happen, nor is it the result of a particular leader or party.

Australians, of course, want to know what happened. Understandably, there will be many commentators and academics who will point the finger of blame now and into the future. However, its far more critical that Australias next government provides a clear picture of what they will do about this development.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, left, and Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare in Beijing in 2019. Credit:AP

The origins of this failure can be found in arrogance and hubris that extends across more than 20 years. For two decades, Australia was busy fighting the war on terrorism. This war and global ambitions around being a middle power drew our attention away from the Pacific.

Various governments over this time had assumed that the Pacific family bond was so strong that they could return to the region and start where they left off when and if they needed. They were wrong.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. Ruben Vardanyan, co-founder of the "Aurora" humanitarian initiative, considers 2020 a very difficult year not only for Artsakh, Armenia, but also for the whole world. "After the 44-day war in Artsakh, a number of programs were implemented for Artsakh within the framework of the" Aurora" humanitarian initiative," Vardanyan said in a live broadcast from the Artsakh capital Stepanakert, adding that 65 locals and International partners supported them, more than 70 projects have been implemented, 21 of which are currently underway.

Ruben Vardanyan considered it symbolic that the laureate of "Aurora" of the last year decided to allocate 250 thousand dollars to the programs being implemented in Artsakh. "This was a very important investment. Artsakh is important not only for Armenians, but also for other nations. We are with Artsakh, we are ready to implement more programs for the sake of peace in Artsakh," he added.
05:51:24 AM

Today

Clear skies and chilly temps as winds diminish after dark.

Tonight

Clear skies and chilly temps as winds diminish after dark.

Tomorrow

Plenty of sun, seasonably mild, and still a bit breezy.
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YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. The Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia Aram I issued a message on the occasion of the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, ARMENPRESS reports, citing "CiliciaTv", Catholicos Aram I first expressed his concern over the recent events in Armenia and Artsakh.

"Our nation is in crisis. There are uncertainties over independent existence of Artsakh. The territorial integrity of Armenia, even its independence, is endangered. Our demands are facing serious challenges," said Catholicos Aram I.

According to Aram I, first of all, the Armenian nation must unite around the supreme and general ideas, interests and values.

"Indeed, by repeating slogans and ignoring each other, one cannot defend the right, build a homeland and strengthen a state. It is necessary for the nation to unite all its manpower and potential and mobilize and put into action it in all spheres, on the internal and external fronts, against the alarms surrounding us, around the visions of the future," Aram I emphasized.

His Holiness considers it necessary to reject any proposal or agreement that could jeopardize Armenia's independence.

"We know that the current geopolitical conditions are not in our favor. We agree with the establishment of comprehensive peace in the region, but not against Armenia's security, territorial integrity and independence, not just by making concessions and negotiating from weak positions," Aram I stressed.

According to Aram I, it is necessary to have the courage to reject any proposal, coercion or agreement that could threaten the security of the Armenians of Artsakh and question the right of the people of Artsakh to freely express their will.

"No one has the right to ignore the right of the people living on their historical lands to self-determination, which is clearly emphasized in the Declaration of Human Rights. Independence is an absolute value; it should not become subject for bargaining," said Aram I.

According to His Holiness, the demand of the Armenian people should get a new emphasis and scale, in line with the current geopolitical conditions and challenges.

"Turkey, using the vast capabilities of the state, continues its policy of denial in a more organized way, establishing chairs of Turkish studies in Western universities, establishing information centers denying the Armenian Genocide and other means. Therefore, it is necessary that the Armenian state, the church and the bodies of the Armenian Cause continue to pursue our cherished cause with more vigor through division of labor and harmonious cooperation. This is a nationwide obligation, Aram I concluded.
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP)  Far from home and unsure when or even if they will ever get back, Ukrainians displaced by war gathered at churches across Eastern Europe on Sunday to celebrate the Orthodox Easter holiday in safety and to pray for an end to the fighting with Russia.

Orthodox worshipers hold candles during the Easter religious service at the Brancusi Parish Church in Bucharest, Romania, Sunday, April 24, 2022. The religious service was also attended by dozens of Ukrainian refugees living in a social center belonging to the church. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP)  Far from home and unsure when or even if they will ever get back, Ukrainians displaced by war gathered at churches across Eastern Europe on Sunday to celebrate the Orthodox Easter holiday in safety and to pray for an end to the fighting with Russia.

Hundreds of believers crowded into the Church of Saint Michael in Hungary's capital of Budapest to take part in a liturgy delivered by a Ukrainian priest, a sermon that focused on the cohesion of the Ukrainian people and prayer for those left behind.

"As Ukraine celebrates this holiday, for us Ukrainian Christians, it is also a celebration that gives us hope that with the resurrection will also come victory in Ukraine, and that good will prevail over evil," said priest Damien Habory after the one-hour service.

An Orthodox worshiper holds a candle during the Easter religious service at the Brancusi Parish Church in Bucharest, Romania, Sunday, April 24, 2022. The religious service was also attended by dozens of Ukrainian refugees living in a social center belonging to the church. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

The Easter holiday, observed by Orthodox followers according to the Julian calendar, comes as nearly 5.2 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee the violence unleashed on their country by Russia's invasion.

Most have entered countries on Ukraine's western border: nearly 2.9 million Ukrainians have fled to Poland, while 775,000 others have fled to Romania and 490,000 have crossed into Hungary since the war began two months ago.

In Bucharest, the Romanian capital, dozens of Ukrainian refugees as well as Romanian faithful came to the Brancusi Parish Church for the Easter liturgy, and to hear a choir sing religious songs in Ukrainian. A priest chanted "Christ is Risen!" to the worshippers, to which they responded, "Indeed he is risen!"

Following the service in Budapest, worshippers lined the street in front of the church with Easter baskets packed with offerings of hand-dyed eggs, candles and pasca  a traditional Easter sweet bread. Habory greeted the worshippers and blessing their Easter baskets with holy water flicked from a liturgical brush used for blessings.

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Yaroslava Hortyanyi, chairwoman of the Hungarian Ukrainian Cultural Association, said that bringing Ukrainians together for the Easter holiday was an opportunity for them to pray for themselves and for those they left behind.

"We are all happy for the resurrection of Christ, but we don't have happiness in our hearts because at the same moment Ukrainian children, Ukrainian soldiers and Ukrainian people are dying," Hortyanyi said. "People who believe in God believe that this is a way for God to test them ... They believe that their prayers will help their husbands and parents that they left at home."

Kate Gladka, 31, who came to Hungary from Ukraine's capital of Kyiv a month ago, said she had struggled to hold back her tears during the Easter service, which for her is usually a time for celebration.

"We have new meaning this year because we may be the most alive nation in the world now, and we understand what it means to arise all the time," she said.

___

Follow all AP stories on Russia's war against Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP)  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ' deepening feud with Walt Disney World is testing the limits of his combative leadership style while sending an unmistakable message to his rivals that virtually nothing is off limits as he plots his political future.

FILE - In this Jan. 9, 2019, photo, guests watch a show near a statue of Walt Disney and Micky Mouse in front of the Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, part of the Orlando area in Fla. Floridas Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' decision to punish Disney World, took his fighter mentality to a new level. In retribution for Disney's criticism of a new state law condemned by critics as Don't Say Gay, DeSantis signed legislation on Friday, April 23, 2022, stripping the theme park of a decades-old special agreement that allowed it to govern itself. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP)  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ' deepening feud with Walt Disney World is testing the limits of his combative leadership style while sending an unmistakable message to his rivals that virtually nothing is off limits as he plots his political future.

The 43-year-old Republican has repeatedly demonstrated an acute willingness to fight over the course of his decadelong political career. He has turned against former aides and rejected the GOP Legislature's rewrite of congressional maps, forcing lawmakers to accept a version more to his liking and prompting voting rights groups to sue. He's also leaned into simmering tensions with Donald Trump, which is notable for someone seeking to lead a party where loyalty to the former president is a requirement.

But DeSantis' decision to punish Disney World, one of the world's most popular tourist destinations and one of Florida's biggest private employers, took his fighter mentality to a new level. In retribution for Disney's criticism of a new state law condemned by critics as Don't Say Gay, DeSantis signed legislation on Friday stripping the theme park of a decades-old special agreement that allowed it to govern itself.

To critics, including some in his own party, such a raw exercise of power suggests DeSantis is operating with a sense of invincibility that could come back to haunt him. Others see an ambitious politician emboldened by strong support in his state and a mountain of campaign cash grabbing an opportunity to further stoke the nation's culture wars, turning himself into a hero among Republican voters in the process.

When you listen to Ron DeSantis, it's righteous indignation: 'Here's why you're wrong and here's why I'm right,'' said Florida Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, a former state GOP chairman. And it is that righteous indignation and that willingness to fight back that endears people to Ron DeSantis' message. As long as he keeps on showing that he's willing to fight, people are going to continue to keep flocking to him."

FILE - Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Feb. 24, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. In taking on Disney, Floridas Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is testing the limits of his combative leadership style while sending an unmistakable message to his rivals: There is nothing or no one he wont fight as he plots his political future. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

DeSantis is up for reelection in November. But in the wake of his scrap with Disney, he will introduce himself to a key group of presidential primary voters this week when he campaigns for Nevada Senate candidate Adam Laxalt. The appearance marks his first of the year in a state featured prominently on the presidential calendar, although DeSantis aides insist it is simply a trip to help out a longtime friend.

Disney drew DeSantis wrath for opposing a new state law that bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. The DeSantis-backed bill has been condemned by LGBTQ activists nationwide as homophobic, although the measure, like others dealing with transgender athletes and racial history in schools, has emerged as a core piece of the GOPs political strategy.

The Disney legislation, which does not take effect until June 2023, could cause massive economic fallout for the company, the surrounding communities and the millions who visit the Orlando amusement park every year.

There are risks to DeSantis' embrace of the legislation, particularly if his antagonism towards Disney threatens the GOP's standing with independents and women, who could play crucial roles in the fall campaign. Jenna Ellis, a former Trump administration attorney, called the DeSantis-backed legislation vengeful.

Democrats who are facing a tough election year are eager to highlight DeSantis' moves as a way to portray the GOP as a party of extremists. In an interview, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison described DeSantis attack on Disney as a continuation of a divisive agenda geared toward booking interviews on conservative media at the expense of his constituents.

The people of Florida deserve a governor whose first priority is them, not his own political ambition, Harrison said.

FILE - A new billboard welcoming visitors to "Florida: The Sunshine 'Don't Say Gay or Trans' State. is displayed April 21, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. The Florida Legislature has passed a bill to dissolve a private government controlled by Disney that provides municipal-like services for its 27,000 acres in the Sunshine State. The proposal has been pushed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, and is largely viewed as retribution for Disneys criticism of a new state law that bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

President Joe Biden said at a party fundraiser in Seattle that this is not your father's Republican Party.

I respect conservatives, Biden told donors on Thursday. Theres nothing conservative about deciding youre going to throw Disney out of its present posture because ... you think we should be not be able to say, gay."

In a statement, DeSantis' spokesperson Taryn Fenske, called the governor a principled and driven leader who accomplishes exactly what he says he will do.

Indeed, DeSantis' friends and foes in the GOP agree that his crackdown on Disney is a major political victory among Republican base voters already enamored by his pushback against pandemic-related public health measures over the past two years. They suggest it also taps into a growing Republican embrace of anti-corporate populism and parental control of education that resonates with a wider swath of voters.

Republican pollsters have been privately testing DeSantis' political strength beyond Florida for several months, finding that the only Republican consistently with more support than DeSantis among GOP voters is Trump himself. At the same time, DeSantis is sitting on more than $100 million in campaign funds.

Hes a very smart guy in what hes doing and how hes doing it, Republican strategist David Urban, a close Trump ally, said of DeSantis.

Those close to the Florida governor say there is one message above all to take away from the Disney fight: that DeSantis, one of the few high-profile Republicans who has not ruled out running against Trump in a 2024 presidential primary, is not afraid of anybody, anything or any fight.

Tensions between the two men have been building for months.

In a Washington Post interview last month, Trump took credit for DeSantis' rise. And last weekend, longtime Trump loyalist Roger Stone released a video clip in which Stone calls DeSantis an expletive while greeting Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club.

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So far, Florida voters seem to be on DeSantis' side.

Nearly 6 in 10 Florida voters approved of DeSantis' job performance in a February poll conducted by the University of North Florida. The poll also asked registered Republicans about a hypothetical presidential primary between Trump and DeSantis. The result? Trump and DeSantis were about even.

Brian Ballard, a Florida lobbyist and a major Republican fundraiser, said DeSantis has a combination of popularity and instincts that is shaping the modern-day GOP.

No other elected official, maybe in the country, has the Republican base support that Ron DeSantis has. So hes incredibly powerful, not only a powerful politician, but a powerful government leader, Ballard said. The guy really has the reins of power in his hands.

___

Peoples reported from New York. Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this report.
LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP)  An opposition liberal party convincingly won Sunday's parliamentary election in Slovenia, according to early official results, in a major defeat for populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa, who was accused of pushing the small European Union country to the right while in office.

Slovenia's Prime Minister Janez Jansa addresses the media outside a polling station in Sentilj, Slovenia, Sunday, April 24, 2022. Slovenians cast ballots in a parliamentary election that is expected to be a tight race between Prime Minister Janez Jansa's ruling right-wing populists and liberals in the politically divided European Union nation. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP)  An opposition liberal party convincingly won Sunday's parliamentary election in Slovenia, according to early official results, in a major defeat for populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa, who was accused of pushing the small European Union country to the right while in office.

The Freedom Movement won nearly 34% of the votes, compared with around 24% for the governing conservative Slovenian Democratic Party, state election authorities said after counting over 97% of the ballots.

Trailing behind the top two contenders were the New Slovenia party with 7%, followed by the Social Democrats with more than 6% and the Left party with 4%.

The results mean that the Freedom Movement, a newcomer in the election, appears set to form the next government in a coalition with smaller leftist groups. The party leader addressed supporters via a video message from his home because he has COVID-19.

Tonight people dance, Robert Golob told the cheering crowd at the party headquarters. Tomorrow is a new day and serious work lies ahead.

A member of electoral commission inspects ballot boxes at a polling station in Sentilj, Slovenia, Sunday, April 24, 2022. Slovenians cast ballots in a parliamentary election that is expected to be a tight race between Prime Minister Janez Jansa's ruling right-wing populists and liberals in the politically divided European Union nation. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

Jansa, an ally of right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, congratulated the relative winner of the election in a speech.

The results are as they are, Jansa said, praising his government's work. Many challenges lie ahead for the new government, whatever it may look like, but the foundations are solid.

A veteran politician, Jansa became prime minister a little over two years ago after the previous liberal premier resigned. An admirer of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Jansa had pushed the country toward right-wing populism since taking over at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Voters walk past posters on their way to a polling station in Sentilj, Slovenia, Sunday, April 24, 2022. Slovenians cast ballots in a parliamentary election that is expected to be a tight race between Prime Minister Janez Jansa's ruling right-wing populists and liberals in the politically divided European Union nation. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

Reflecting strong interest in Sunday's election, turnout was higher than usual  around 67% of Slovenia's 1.7 million voters cast their ballot, compared with 52% in the previous election in 2018.

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Golob, a U.S.-educated former business executive, came out as a frontrunner shortly after entering the political scene. The Freedom Movement party has advocated a green energy transition and sustainable development over Jansa's nation-centered narrative.

Liberals had described Sundays election as a referendum on Slovenias future. They argued that Jansa, if reelected, would push the traditionally moderate nation further away from core EU democratic values and toward other populist regimes.

Opinion polls ahead of the vote had predicted that the leading parties would be locked in a tight race.

Jansa's SDS won the most votes in an election four years ago, but couldn't initially find partners for a coalition government. He took over after lawmakers from centrist and left-leaning groups switched sides following the resignation in 2020 of liberal Prime Minister Marjan Sarec.

Jansa, in power, faced accusations of sliding toward authoritarian rule in the Orban style, drawing EU scrutiny amid reports that he pressured opponents and public media, and installed loyalists in key positions for control over state institutions.

The Freedom House democracy watchdog recently said that while political rights and civil liberties are generally respected (in Slovenia), the current right-wing government has continued attempts to undermine the rule of law and democratic institutions, including the media and judiciary.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  The death toll from accidents in recent days at two coal mines in southern Poland has increased to nine after four miners were brought to the surface and pronounced dead, authorities said Sunday.

Rescuers going to join the search action for 10 miners gone missing after a powerful underground tremor and methane gas discharge at the Borynia-Zofiowka coal mine in Jastrzebie-Zdroj, southern Poland, Saturday, April 23, 2022. It was the second colliery accident in just four days in the Jastrzebie-Zdroj coal mining region, near the Czech border. (AP Photo)

WARSAW, Poland (AP)  The death toll from accidents in recent days at two coal mines in southern Poland has increased to nine after four miners were brought to the surface and pronounced dead, authorities said Sunday.

The miners were among 10 missing since an underground tremor and methane gas discharge at the Borynia-Zofiowka mine early Saturday. Six miners there remain missing, but there is no contact with them, and rescuers continue their search.

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At the nearby Pniowek mine, five workers died and seven are missing after repeated methane blasts that started Wednesday. The search for the missing there was suspended Friday after new explosions late Thursday injured 10 rescue workers, some seriously.

Both mines are operated by the Jastrzebska Spolka Weglowa, or JSW, in the Jastrzebie-Zdroj region, close to the Czech border.

The majority of Poland's energy comes from coal, a proportion that is drawing criticism from the European Union and environmental groups who are concerned about CO2 emissions and meeting climate change goals. Most Polish coal mines are in the southern Silesia region. Many are characterized by the high presence of methane in the rock.

Poland has been scaling down the use of coal and recently Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki ordered coal imports from Russia and its ally Belarus discontinued  in response to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, but also as part of Polands years-long drive to reduce its dependence on Russian energy sources.

___

Follow all AP news about climate change issues at https://apnews.com/hub/climate
PARIS (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macron comfortably won a second term Sunday, triggering relief among allies that the nuclear-armed power won't abruptly shift course in the midst of the war in Ukraine from European Union and NATO efforts to punish and contain Russia's military expansionism.

Presidential campaign posters of French President and centrist candidate for reelection Emmanuel Macron, left, and French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, in Salies de Bearn, southwestern France, Saturday, April 23, 2022. French President Emmanuel Macron is facing off against far-right challenger Marine Le Pen in France's April 24 presidential runoff. (AP Photo/Bob Edme)

PARIS (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macron comfortably won a second term Sunday, triggering relief among allies that the nuclear-armed power won't abruptly shift course in the midst of the war in Ukraine from European Union and NATO efforts to punish and contain Russia's military expansionism.

The second five-year term for the 44-year-old centrist spared France and Europe from the seismic upheaval of having firebrand populist Marine Le Pen at the helm, Macron's presidential runoff challenger who quickly conceded defeat but still scored her best-ever electoral showing.

Acknowledging that "numerous" voters cast ballots for him simply to keep out the fiercely nationalist far-right Le Pen, Macron pledged to reunite the country that is "filled with so many doubts, so many divisions" and work to assuage the anger of French voters that fed Le Pen's campaign.

"No one will be left by the side of the road," Macron said in a victory speech against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower and a projection of the blue-white-and-red tricolor French flag. He was cheered by several hundred supporters who happily waved French and EU flags.

"We have a lot to do and the war in Ukraine reminds us that we are going through tragic times where France must make its voice heard," Macron said.

Centrist candidate and French President Emmanuel Macron, left, and his wife Brigitte Macron walk on the beach in Le Touquet, northern France, Saturday, April 23, 2022. French President Emmanuel Macron is in pole position to win reelection Sunday, April 24, 2022 in France's presidential runoff. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

During her campaign, Le Pen pledged to dilute French ties with the 27-nation EU, NATO and Germany, moves that would have shaken Europes security architecture as the continent deals with its worst conflict since World War II. Le Pen also spoke against EU sanctions on Russian energy supplies and faced scrutiny during the campaign over her previous friendliness with the Kremlin.

A chorus of European leaders hailed Macron's victory, since France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and is supplying weapons to Ukraine.

"Democracy wins, Europe wins," said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

A man is about to cast his ballot in Sevres, near Paris, France, Sunday, April 24, 2022. France votes in a presidential runoff election Sunday with repercussions for Europe's future, with centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron the front-runner but fighting a tough challenge from far-right contender Marine Le Pen. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

"Together we will make France and Europe advance," tweeted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi called Macron's victory "splendid news for all of Europe" and a boost to the EU "being a protagonist in the greatest challenges of our times, starting with the war in Ukraine."

Macron won with 58.5% of the vote to Le Pen's 41.5%  significantly closer than when they first faced off in 2017.

French far-right contender Marine Le Pen casts her vote in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, Sunday, April 24, 2022. France began voting in a presidential runoff election Sunday with repercussions for Europe's future, with centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron the front-runner but fighting a tough challenge from Marine Le Pen. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

Macron is the first French president in 20 years to win reelection, since incumbent Jacques Chirac trounced Le Pens father in 2002.

Le Pen called her result "a shining victory," saying that "in this defeat, I can't help but feel a form of hope."

Breaking through the threshold of 40% of the vote is unprecedented for the French far-right. Le Pen was beaten 66% to 34% by Macron in 2017 and her father got less than 20% against Chirac.

A woman pushes a dog in a buggy as she arrives to cast her vote in the second round of the French presidential election in Marseille, southern France Sunday, April 24, 2022. Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and centrist candidate and French President Emmanuel Macron are facing each other in a rematch of the 2017 presidential election runoff. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

She and hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, one of 10 candidates eliminated in the first round on April 10, both quickly pitched forward Sunday night to France's legislative election in June, urging voters to give them a parliamentary majority to hamstring Macron.

Le Pens score this time rewarded her years-long efforts to make her far-right politics more palatable to voters. Campaigning hard on cost-of-living issues, she made deep inroads among blue-collar voters in disaffected rural communities and in former industrial centers.

Le Pen voter Jean-Marie Cornic, 78, said he cast his ballot for her because he wanted a president who would prioritize "our daily lives  salaries, taxes, pensions."

French President and centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron waves from his car after casting his vote in Le Touquet, northern France, Sunday, April 24, 2022. France began voting in a presidential runoff election Sunday with repercussions for Europe's future, with centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron the front-runner but fighting a tough challenge from far-right contender Marine Le Pen. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

The drop in support for Macron compared to five years ago points to a tough battle ahead for the president to rally people behind him in his second term. Many French voters found the 2022 presidential rematch less compelling than in 2017, when Macron was an unknown factor.

Leftist voters  unable to identify with either the centrist president or Le Pen  agonized with Sunday's choice. Some trooped reluctantly to polling stations solely to stop Le Pen, casting joyless votes for Macron.

"It was the least worst choice," said Stephanie David, a transport logistics worker who backed a communist candidate in round one.

A man arrives at a the polling station to vote in the second round of the French presidential election in Lyon, central France, Sunday, April 24, 2022. France began voting in a presidential runoff election with repercussions for Europe's future, with centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron the front-runner but fighting a tough challenge from far-right rival Marine Le Pen. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

It was an impossible choice for retiree Jean-Pierre Roux. Having also voted communist in round one, he dropped an empty envelope into the ballot box on Sunday, repelled both by Le Pens politics and what he saw as Macrons arrogance.

"I am not against his ideas but I cannot stand the person," Roux said.

In contrast, Marian Arbre, voting in Paris, cast his ballot for Macron "to avoid a government that finds itself with fascists, racists."

People queue to vote at a polling station in Lyon, central France, Sunday, April 24, 2022. France began voting in a presidential runoff election with repercussions for Europe's future, with centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron the front-runner but fighting a tough challenge from far-right rival Marine Le Pen. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

"Theres a real risk," the 29-year-old fretted.

Macron went into the vote as the firm favorite but faced a fractured, anxious and tired electorate. The war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic battered Macrons first term, as did months of violent protests against his economic policies.

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In celebrating victory, Macron acknowledged a debt to voters who helped get him over the line, "not to support the ideas I hold, but to block those of the extreme right."

French President Emmanuel Macron celebrates with supporters in front of the Eiffel Tower Paris, France, Sunday, April 24, 2022. Polling agencies projected that French President Emmanuel Macron comfortably won reelection Sunday in the presidential runoff, offering French voters and the European Union the reassurance of leadership stability in the bloc's only nuclear-armed power as the continent grapples with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (AP Photo/Rafael Yaghobzadeh)

"I want to thank them and tell them that I am aware that their vote obliges me for the years to come," he said. "I am the custodian of their sense of duty, of their attachment to the Republic."

___

Associated Press journalists Sylvie Corbet, Elaine Ganley, Angela Charlton and Thomas Adamson in Paris, Sam Petrequin in Brussels Michel Spingler in Henin-Beaumont, and Alex Turnbull in Le Touquet, contributed.

___

Follow APs coverage of the French election at https://apnews.com/hub/french-election-2022
The people in these photos are of interest and may be able to provide police with information about these offences. These images are released for identification purposes only. The subjects may or may not be responsible for the crimes indicated.

If you are able to identify someone pictured, contact Winnipeg Crime Stoppers at 786-TIPS (786-8477), text @ TIP170 & (your message) to CRIMES (274637) or leave a secure tip on line @ www.winnipegcrimestoppers.com
Manitobans grappled with flooded basements, highway closures and power outages as a mix of rain and snow drenched the province over the weekend.

Manitobans grappled with flooded basements, highway closures and power outages as a mix of rain and snow drenched the province over the weekend.

"Soggy." Thats how Environment Canada meteorologist Dave Carlsen described the last few days.

"It was a very moisture-laden system  a Colorado low as weve been talking about, and it actually overperformed a little bit, in terms of the precipitation that we got out of it," Carlsen said, noting Saturday set a new record for the greatest rainfall in Winnipeg on April 23 since 1938.

A total of 70 millimetres was recorded at The Forks in recent days, while Altona received a whopping 76 millimetres.

Stalled cars sit on a flooded and closed Pandora Avenue East. (John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press)

Forecasters had predicted the regions hit hardest by the storm would receive up to 50 millimetres of precipitation.

A rainfall warning remained in effect for Winnipeg for the majority of the weekend; it was anticipated to end before today.

East St. Pauls Lori Kraynyk awoke Sunday to discover she now owns "a lakefront property."

The resident on Pritchard Farm Road said she and her family members felt claustrophobic because they were trapped inside their home, unable to leave due to the high water level on the street. She witnessed several vehicles stall as they attempted to drive down the giant puddle that became of her road.

"We cant leave the house. Our cars will go underwater Its probably as deep as an above-ground swimming pool. Its crazy," she said.

Cars drive through water on Sherbrook Street on Sunday. (John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press)

In order to manage water levels in the capital, the Red River Floodway was activated Saturday.

"Its a fairly significant storm. You can just tell that by the number of customers that are out," said Bruce Owen, public affairs officer for Manitoba Hydro. "The hardest hit areas are in western Manitoba, southwestern Manitoba up into the Parkland, where starting (Saturday), we started seeing ice on lines with a dip in the temperatures."

Windy conditions blew wires around and in some cases, the weight of icicles on lines took down poles, Owen said, adding flooded and mucky roads caused delays in fixing issues across the province.

By 5:30 p.m. Sunday, upwards of 20,000 customers remained affected by nearly 800 outages.

In Southdale, homeowner Bridgette Parker spent the majority of her weekend pumping water out of her basement. So did many of her neighbours  if their local Canadian Tires sold-out sump pump stock is any indication.

Stalled cars sit on Pritchard Farm Road in East St. Paul Sunday. (John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press)

"Its been stressful, but also just a little bit defeating in that weve put a lot of work into the basement and now, were ripping it all out and essentially need to start over," said Parker, who indicated that when she opened an insurance claim, an employee told her they had been swamped with calls about storm-related damage.

Throughout the weekend, the Winnipeg Police Service advised members of the public that the use of certain roadways and underpasses could be limited because of water levels.

Winnipeg Transit redirected several bus routes as rainfall resulted in flooding on city streets.

Flood warnings were put in place for the Red River Valley, from Emerson to the floodway inlet just south of the capital, and a large swath of southern Manitoba. A high water advisory was also issued for the Whiteshell lakes area.

In an alert Sunday, the province reminded Manitobans to stay off waterways due to high flows, debris and cold temperatures presenting "a significant safety risk."

Motorists navigate deep water and a large hidden pothole on Route 90 just north of Dublin Avenue in Winnipeg on Saturday. (Daniel Crump / Winnipeg Free Press)

The release reminds motorists to adjust driving habits for winter road conditions and remain alert when following or approaching highway snowplows.

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"Heavy winds and snow accumulation could limit visibility and create challenging driving conditions. Manitobans in the affected areas are advised to travel only when necessary or wait until road conditions are safe to do so," it states.

At least one school announced it would be closed Monday, as a result of the storm.

"Due to weather and unsafe road conditions due to flooding, buses will not run and classes are cancelled for Monday," states a tweet from Ecole Morden Middle School.

As of Sunday evening, the Red River near the James Avenue pumping station in Winnipegs Exchange District sat at 17.84 ft. This time last year, it sat at 3.12 ft.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
CAIRO (AP)  Tribal clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs in Sudans war-ravaged Darfur region Sunday killed 168 people, a local aid group said, one of the deadliest bouts of violence in the country in recent years.

CAIRO (AP)  Tribal clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs in Sudans war-ravaged Darfur region Sunday killed 168 people, a local aid group said, one of the deadliest bouts of violence in the country in recent years.

The fighting in West Darfur province comes as Sudan has been plunged into turmoil since a military coup last year. The takeover upended the countrys transition to democracy after a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

The tribal clashes also raise questions over whether military leaders are capable of bring security to Darfur, which has been wracked by years of civil war. In 2020, the U.N. Security Council ended its peacekeeping mission known there.

Adam Regal, spokesman for the General Coordination for Refugees and Displaced in Darfur, said Sundays fighting in West Darfurs Kreinik area also wounded 98 people.

The fighting grew out of the killing of two people by unknown assailants Thursday, he said.

Early Sunday, large numbers of people armed with heavy weapons launched a major attack on Kreinik, torching and looting properties, Regal said. The fighting lasted for several hours and forced thousands of people to flee their homes, he said.

Regal, whose group provides food and other assistance to displaced people in the region, shared footage of destroyed houses in the area, with some images showing pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns.

The clashes eventually reached Genena, where militias and armed groups attacked wounded people while they were being treated at the citys main hospital, said Salah Saleh, a doctor and former medical director at the hospital.

The area was burned down, and many people were killed ... There was no intervention from the local government to stop the fighting, he said.

Authorities said they deployed more troops and a military aircraft to the region since the fighting on Thursday that left eight dead and at least 16 wounded.

Volker Perthes, the U.N. envoy for Sudan, deplored the heinous killings of civilians ... as well as the attacks on health facilities in West Darfur.

He called for an in-depth and transparent investigation and to hold those responsible accountable.

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Darfur has seen bouts of deadly fighting between rival tribes in recent months as the country remains mired in a wider crisis following the October coup. Kreinik was the scene of clashes in December that killed at least 88 people.

The Security Council terminated the peace-keeping mission UNAMID on Dec. 31, 2020. Since then, sporadic intercommunal clashes have increased in the region.

In December, Human Rights Watch urged the U.N. to deploy monitors to Darfur, saying that the departure of UNAMID caused a gap in monitoring the abuses fueled by impunity for atrocities committed in in the region.

The yearslong Darfur conflict broke out when rebels from the territorys ethnic central and sub-Saharan African community launched an insurgency in 2003, complaining of oppression by the Arab-dominated government in the capital, Khartoum.

The government of al-Bashir responded with a campaign of aerial bombings and raids by the janjaweed militias, which have been accused of mass killings and rapes. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes in Darfur over the years.

Al-Bashir, who has been in prison in Khartoum since his ouster, is wanted by the International Criminal Court over charges of genocide and crimes against humanity related to the Darfur conflict.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. A year after President Biden rejected Turkeys gag-rule on honest U.S. remembrance of the Armenian Genocide, Armenian Americans look for concrete U.S. action to secure justice for this crime and prevent a second genocide resulting from Turkey and Azerbaijans ongoing threats and attacks against Armenia and Artsakh, ARMENPRESS was informed from the website of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

President Bidens second Armenian Remembrance Day statement  issued on April 24th, the international day of remembrance of this crime  once again mourned the one and a half million Armenians who were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination. The statement continued, As we reflect on the Armenian genocide, we renew our pledge to remain vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms. We recommit ourselves to speaking out and stopping atrocities that leave lasting scars on the world.

ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian stated, In the year since President Biden first joined Congress in commemorating the Armenian Genocide, he has approved continued U.S. military aid to Azerbaijan  U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance that materially strengthens and morally emboldens an oil-rich dictatorship hell-bent on completing this crime against the Armenian homeland, a landlocked, blocked genocide-survivor state.

President Bidens record, sadly, reflects the letter but not the true spirit of genocide recognition. No sustained pressure on Turkey to reckon with its present-day responsibilities, no confrontation of Azerbaijans genocidal violence against Artsakh, no forceful challenge to Ankaras ongoing denial of this crime, no active support for U.S. educational programs. He can and must do better, concluded Hamparian.

In 2021, just one day prior to recognizing the Armenian Genocide, President Biden waived Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act, allowing continued U.S. military aid to Azerbaijan, an authoritarian regime that, along with Turkey, launched a devastating 44-day war against Armenia and Artsakh in 2020. Azerbaijan continues its attacks against Artsakh and has illegally stationed troops on sovereign Armenian territory. The ANCA and a coalition of U.S. faith-based, ethnic, and human rights organizations have called on President Biden to stop arming Azerbaijan.

The Congressional Armenian Caucus, in an ANCA-supported letter to House Appropriations Committee leaders set to go out early his week, is calling for zeroing out military aid to Azerbaijan and expanding U.S. aid to Artsakh and Armenia to $150 million to address the ongoing humanitarian toll of the Turkey/Azerbaijan attacks which forced 100,000 indigenous Armenians from their Artsakh homes, creating an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.

Earlier this week, building on U.S. presidential and congressional recognition of the Armenian Genocide, Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) introduced the Armenian Genocide Education Act. The measure seeks to provide $10 million in funding over five years for the Library of Congress to educate Americans about Ottoman Turkeys systematic and deliberate state-sponsored mass murder, national dispossession, cultural erasure, and exile of millions of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Arameans, Maronites, and other Christians, between 1915 and 1923. The ANCA-backed bipartisan bill already has over 50 cosponsors.

On April 27th, Armenian Americans will be joining Congressional leaders at the annual Capitol Hill Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide. The event will take place at the Rayburn House Office Building Gold Room from 6:00pm to 9:00pm EST.
Family is everything to Jacqueline (Jacky) Beltran

After losing her father to cancer her senior year of high school, the connection between her, her mother and her now 5-year-old little sister became even stronger. Love carried them through the tragedy.

So when she began applying to colleges, the idea of moving away from their Waukegon, Illinois, home definitely wasnt an option. The farthest shed ever traveled was just over the border into Wisconsin. But the opportunity to be one of Saint Marys Universitys First Generation Initiative Scholars eventually persuaded her to step out of her comfort zone.

Established in 2010, the Saint Marys First Generation Initiative (FGI) was designed to address a growing academic achievement gap, particularly in under-resourced, diverse communities. The program helps ensure academic success for high-potential, first-generation students in partnering schools. Programming supports students from middle school through college graduation. FGI Scholars receive scholarship support not covered by financial aid.

Beltran was not part of the high school Countdown to College summer preparation program. Instead, she was introduced to the FGI program by her high school guidance counselor. She hadnt thought much about college in middle school, but at Cristo Rey St. Martin College Prep, with encouragement, she realized a college education would brighten her future.

I had never thought going out of state was an option because I am really attached to (my family), she said. I applied to two other schools in Illinois. Id never been this far from home. Once I heard about the scholarship at Saint Marys, I knew it was an opportunity I had to take.

When Beltran heard she was accepted as a First Generation Initiative Scholar, she admits, it was emotional for her and her family. I read the email like 30 times, she said. When I got it, I was in shock and called my mom, and we both cried on the phone. My mom had encouraged me. It was a future she wanted, and she wasnt able to get for herself. It was an opportunity I was very thankful for and am still thankful for.

Beltrans father also proudly learned of his daughters accomplishment before his passing. He hugged me. He didnt see me cross the high school graduation stage, but he saw my diploma. It was an emotional roller coaster.

Once she settled in Winona, Beltran quickly found the FGI program was about more than a scholarship. The sophomore psychology major says the community support and relationships have helped her grow and accomplish things she never would have otherwise.

Being an FGI Scholar is an awesome opportunity, she said. Im not very social. I wouldnt have been interacting as much on campus without the encouragement and support Ive received. Im thankful Im more involved on campus. Im a guided study learner and peer learning assistant. Im also the social media manager for the psychology club and next semester Ill serve as vice president.

Not one to normally reach out for help, she said she also found the support she needed at Saint Marys. They helped me with questions personally or academically, she said. If I was struggling with a class, they guided me to resources like tutoring or connected me with upper classmen. Its a small community and professors are really supportive. Last semester I had a tough time mentally. I was homesick. Faculty here acknowledge you and pay attention to whats going on in your life.

If it were not for the FGI program, I wouldnt be where I am in my life. Im very thankful. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I feel like theyre really helping us accomplish our dreams and our families dreams. Theyre brightening our future.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech via video at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2022, on April 21, 2022. [Xinhua/Huang Jingwen]

BEIJING, April 23 (Xinhua)  Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday proposed a Global Security Initiative to promote security for all in the world, further enriching the global security governance with Chinese wisdom.

In a keynote speech via video at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2022, Xi called for staying committed to the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, and work together to maintain world peace and security.

Xi has put forward his thoughts and vision on security governance on multiple occasions, some of which were reflected in the set of books "Xi Jinping: The Governance of China."

As the world is marking the World Book Day 2022 on Saturday, it is of special significance to refer to the classic set of books and review the highlights of Xi's thoughts in this regard.

On Jan. 28, 2013

"The Chinese nation loves peace," Xi said at the third group study session of the Political Bureau of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.

"To abolish war and achieve peace has been the most pressing and profound aspiration of the Chinese people since the advent of modern times," he said, adding that "what we abhor is turbulence, what we want is stability and what we hope to see is world peace."

"Whether we will succeed in our pursuit of peaceful development to a large extent hinges on whether we can turn opportunities in the rest of the world into China's opportunities and China's opportunities into those for the rest of the world so that China and other countries can engage in sound interactions and make mutually beneficial progress," he said.

Soldiers on the Chinese contingent to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) are awarded the United Nations Peacekeeping Medal during a medal parade ceremony in southern Lebanon, June 16, 2021. [Photo by Liu Xiongma/Xinhua]

On March 24, 2014

In a speech at the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, Xi said, "We must follow the approach of enhancing security for the sake of development and promoting development by upholding security, and bring the goals of development and security in alignment with each other."

"We need to foster a peaceful and stable international environment, encourage harmonious and friendly relations between countries, and conduct exchanges among different civilizations in an amicable and open-minded manner," he said.

On May 19, 2014

"Seeking political solutions is the right path to address the seemingly endless sequence of international flashpoints," Xi said in talks with then United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

"Exerting pressure won't work, and external military intervention will make things worse," noted the Chinese president, stressing that both the UN and the rest of the international community should adhere to political solutions to all conflicts.

A China-Europe freight train carrying medical supplies bound for Madrid of Spain departs the city of Yiwu, east China's Zhejiang Province, June 5, 2020. [Photo by Lyu Bin/Xinhua]

Jan. 17, 2017

"Today, mankind has become a close-knit community of shared future. Countries have extensive converging interests and are mutually dependent. All countries have the right to development. At the same time, they should view their own interests in a broader context and refrain from pursuing their interests at the expense of others," Xi said in a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum 2017 in Davos.

"Countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are all equal members of the international community. As such, they are entitled to participate in decision-making, enjoy rights, and fulfill obligations on an equal basis," Xi said, noting that "emerging markets and developing countries deserve greater representation and voice."

Photo taken on Sept. 14, 2020 shows the United Nations (UN) flag flying outside the UN headquarters in New York, the United States. [Xinhua/Wang Ying]

Jan. 18, 2017

In a speech at the UN office at Geneva, Xi pointed out, "Sovereign equality has been the most important norm governing state-to-state relations over the past centuries, and the cardinal principle observed by the United Nations and its agencies and institutions."

"The essence of sovereign equality is that the sovereignty and dignity of all countries, whether big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, must be respected; their internal affairs brook no interference, and they have the right to independently choose their social system and development path."

"When we have sincerity, goodwill, and political wisdom, no conflict is too big to settle and no ice is too thick to break," Xi noted.

(Source: Xinhua)
New High Sheriff of Clwyd vows to work with schools and young people across the region

The new High Sheriff of Clwyd has pledged to work with schools to help support young people across the region.

Zoe Henderson, 60, a former executive with the giant US-based Dow Chemical Corporation, has hit the ground running by arranging a series of meetings with head teachers at the areas secondary schools.

She held the Declaration to begin her year in office at historic 15th century Nantclwyd y Dre, in her home town of Ruthin.

Her own education began at Llanbedr village school in the Vale of Clwyd before going on to Ysgol Brynhyfryd in Ruthin and she joined Dow after graduating from Wye College, part of London University, with a degree in Agricultural Economics.

She spent many years in sales and marketing roles across the USA and latterly back in Europe before stepping down from Dow, buying the family farmhouse, historic Caerfallen near Ruthin, from her parents and restoring it.

Zoe said: I plan to take a particular interest in what causes young people to get into trouble with the law and what can be done to prevent this.

The last thing you want is for a child in their teens looking forward to a wonderful life in the world of work to then see that future blighted by involvement in some sort of crime.

I was very inspired recently by a visit to my old school, Brynhyfryd, to discuss local issues and Im looking forward to visiting other Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham schools to discuss the issues faced by young people.

She succeeds former Airbus UK executive Steve Thomas, from St Asaph, but the origins of the office date back to Saxon times when the Shire Reeve was responsible to the king for the maintenance of law and order within the shire, or county, and for the collection and return of taxes due to the Crown.

The Queen appoints the high sheriff of each county of England and Wales by pricking the vellum, a custom dating back to the reign of Elizabeth I who signified assent by piercing the vellum or parchment by each name and signing the document.

It was in the reign of Elizabeth I that Zoes home at Caerfallen was built as the residence of Robert Turbridge, an earlier royal appointment as Baron Exchequer of North Wales with the job of collecting the taxes in recognition of his constant diligence about the Queens affairs in said counties.

Her duties as High Sheriff will also include supporting the Lord Lieutenant, Henry Fetherstonhaugh, in the event of any Royal visits to North East Wales and to sitting with and supporting judges and magistrates.

Her involvement in legal affairs will be supported by the Under-Sheriff of Clwyd, Sarah Noton, Managing Director of North Wales and Cheshire law firm Swayne Johnson.

Zoe added: The official charity of High Sheriffs is Crimebeat and Crimebeat North Wales celebrates 20 years this year and in that time has issued grants worth more than 130,000 to projects mostly run by young people and aimed at cutting crime, supporting the victims of crime and improving life in communities across North Wales.

I want to continue that work and also from my business background ask if we can promote that work better and do some things differently which might be more effective.

I think I can do that and it gives me a real focus on ensuring that Crimebeat is fit for the future and for the differing needs of different parts of North Wales.

Zoe, a keen horsewoman who has ridden all her life including during her time in the USA where she lived in Indiana in the Mid West, has kept busy since leaving Dow, first on the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board and more recently on the Board of Natural Resources Wales as well as doing business consultancy work.

She has also been gradually restoring Grade Two Star-listed Caerfallen and its buildings, including a 16th century barn which is now a beautifully appointed holiday property.

For more information on the office of High Sheriff of Clwyd go to https://highsheriffs.com/clwyd/ and for the work of Crimebeat North Wales go to http://www.crimebeatnorthwales.co.uk/
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. On the eve of the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglus nationalist gesture to members of the Armenian community in Montevideo is a reprehensible act and in no way contributes to the establishment of dialogue and atmosphere of mutual understanding between the two peoples, ARMENPRESS reports Eduard Aghajanyan, Chairman of the Standing Committee on Foreign Relations of the National Assembly of Armenia, wrote on his Facebook page.

"We welcome the immediate response of the Uruguayan side of immediately summoning the Turkish ambassador for explanations," the statement said.
Israeli security forces again attacked Palestinian worshippers as angry clashes broke out at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem early Friday, at the end of the third week of Ramadan. Using drones they fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets, injuring at least 57, of whom 14 were hospitalized.

The mosque compound, holy to Jews and Muslims, has been occupied illegally along with the West Bank, Gaza and Syrias Golan Heights since the 1967 Arab Israeli war. It is under the custodianship of the Jordanian government. Israel has broken longstanding agreements that allow Jewish visits but bar Jewish worship at the site, as extremists groups demand access to pray there.

Israeli security forces take position during an attack on Palestinians demonstrators at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, April 15, 2022 (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

The police said they were responding to stone-throwing and fireworks set off by masked rioters. Israeli officials have blamed Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated group that controls Gaza, saying it and other parties are stoking tensions by claiming that Israel aims to change the status quo at al-Aqsa.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an investigation of Israeli police actions, with spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani saying, The use of force by Israeli police resulting in widespread injuries among worshippers and staff in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound must be promptly, impartially, independently and transparently investigated.

Fridays attack follows weeks of rising violence that have led to the deaths of 14 Israelis since March 22, while raids by Israeli security forces have killed more than 18 Palestinians since the start of Ramadan on April 2 in the biggest wave of violence, outside of a full-scale war, in several years.

The previous Friday, Israel stormed the mosque compound, injuring more than 150 worshippers. Since then, there have been almost daily attacks amid a febrile atmosphere in Jerusalem and the West Bank that threatens political stability on both the domestic and international arenas.

On Sunday morning, Israeli police allowed hundreds of Jews to enter the compound while blocking Muslim access for several hours, leading to clashes, the arrest of at least 18 Palestinians and the wounding of at least 17, five by rubber-tipped bullets according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

On Tuesday, thousands of far-right settlers marched to Homesh in the occupied West bank, under the protection of Israeli soldiers who blocked a Palestinian counterdemonstration after Defence Minister Benny Gantz reversed initial military warnings that soldiers would not protect the marchers. Homesh has since 2005 functioned as the site of a yeshiva, a religious seminary, becoming an unauthorized settler outpost. Last year an Israeli settler was killed by Palestinians, making Homesh a rallying point for hardline Zionists.

Among those attending the march were Idit Silman, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Naftali Bennetts Yamina Party who recently resigned from his fragile coalition government, ending its majority, saying it did not adequately represent Zionist and Jewish values, and fascistic lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir. Security forces fired tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades to disperse angry crowds protesting the march, injuring 79 Palestinians.

On Wednesday, hundreds of Jewish nationalists marched through Jerusalem chanting anti-Palestinian slogans such as death to the Arabs. Among the marchers were Lehava, an extremist group that seeks to prevent any mixing of Jews and non-Jews, and Ben-Gvir, who was greeted by the mob as their next prime minister. The march went ahead despite a lack of approval from Israeli police and warnings by Shin Bet, Israels domestic spy agency, that allowing Ben-Gvir to participate could ignite massive unrest and another war with Gaza.

Early Thursday morning, Israel carried out air strikes on Gaza in response to a rocket fired from the besieged enclave that caused no injuries or even damage as it landed in an open area near Sderot in southern Israel. This in turn prompted further rocket and gunfire from Gaza. Israel called its attack on Gaza, supposedly aimed at a facility manufacturing rocket motors, the most significant since last May, when Israel launched a murderous assault on Gaza following its storming of the al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan and brutal suppression of protests in East Jerusalem over the threatened eviction of six Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah. Palestinian militants fired two more rockets from Gaza Friday night.

On Thursday morning, security forces again attacked worshippers and attempted to raid the al-Aqsa mosques main prayer hall before allowing Jewish settlers to enter the compound.

As well as attacks in East Jerusalem and Gaza, Israels security forces have also continued their raids on towns and cities across the West Bank, arresting and shooting Palestinians. They have largely focused on the northern town of Jenin, a centre of Palestinian opposition to the repressive regime of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), where Hamas influence has grown. This week, two young Palestinians died from wounds sustained earlier when Israels security forces invaded the Jenin area.

Security forces have twice attacked the Palestine Technical Universitys Kadoorie campus in Tulkarem city in the northern West Bankinjuring four people in the first attack and two 21-year-old students and a security guard a day later.

The rise in tensions has exacerbated Israels political crisis as Mansour Abbas, the leader of the four-member United Arab List (the Raam), an Islamist party, announced the party was suspending its membership of Bennetts coalition. With parliament in recess until May 8, the government is in no immediate danger. But should Raam fail to rejoin the coalition, opposition parties would have a 64-56 majority in the 120-seat parliament, enough to bring down the government and send Israel to its fifth election in three years.

Bennetts coalition, brokered last year by the incoming Biden administration after the fourth elections, brings together parties from across Israels narrow political spectrum, including Raam. The parties have little in common beyond their opposition to former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and desire to avoid a fifth election.

Raams decision on whether to rejoin the government ultimately depends on whether Israel wages another war against Hamas, which has gained increasing support in the West Bank as opposition to the PAs subservience to Israel and deteriorating social conditions grows. Under pressure from Egypt, Hamas has sought to prevent another all-out war. But as Bennett seeks to placate his religious and settler support base through provocations against the Palestinians, Hamas is stepping up its rhetoric, forcing Raam and Mansour Abbas to withdraw from the government.

The PA in the West Bank is being challenged by workers, with teachers carrying out a four-week partial strike and protests over the failure to pay an agreed cost of living and family allowance and late payments of their salaries. Teachers have rejected the agreement between the General Union of Palestinian Teachers (GUPT) and the Ministry of Education to end their action.

Israels provocations have infuriated its new Arab allies, the Gulf and Moroccan monarchies as well as Jordan.

Jordan, the custodian of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, has seen mounting opposition to the corrupt regime of King Abdullah and deepening poverty and social inequality, with weeks-long protests by the unemployed in front of the royal palace, as well as an attempted coup last year by the kings half-brother. It has called on the Biden administration, the European Union and leaders of Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, to put pressure on Israel to stop sending security forces onto the mosque compound. It has requested the UN Security Council debate events at the compound. Abdullah is anxious to prevent Israel providing Saudi Arabia with an excuse to assert its authority over the site, a demand Riyadh made of former US President Donald Trump in return for joining his deal of the century plan for the Middle East.

So precarious is Abdullahs position that US Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Yael Lempert and Deputy Assistant Secretary Hady Amr were sent to the Middle East last week in a bid to shore up the beleaguered regimes in Jordan and the West Bank. They went first to Amman to meet Jordans Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, before going to see Israels Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, PA President Mahmoud Abbas and senior Palestinian officials in Ramallah, with a final stop in Egypt.
On Saturday, the day before polling in the French presidential elections, WSWS journalists interviewed workers and young people in the working class north Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis about the vote between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.

Farida, a mother, wanted to alert on the extent of police violence in the cities of France. She explained, I live in the city of Franc-Moisin, and every night there are police officers who come on motorcycles and on foot. They throw tear gas canisters at parents with babies. I was shopping and saw the police coming in like savages, firing tear gas at us, and I had two small babies at the market. When I told the police that we need to be respected, they said, We dont give a shit.

Farida [Photo: WSWS]

She particularly highlighted the violence and disrespect for residents of the housing estates during police interventions.

She said, The police come in like gorillas in the housing project, theyre aggressive. Whoever they catch, they beat up. They catch a 12-year-old kid, and there will be 60 of them. You think thats normal? Youve caught him, thats good. Why are you dragging him by the hair and clothes? Afterwards, we parents get angry when we see the police dragging a 12-year-old, a 15-year-old kid that we know. Then they tell us, Get back, get back or we shoot. I say, Go ahead and shoot. Were out there defending our kids!

Farida listened with interest to WSWS reporters on the Socialist Equality Partys (Parti de legalite socialiste, PES) call for an active boycott of the elections to mobilize workers, reject both candidates and prepare workers for a fight against the next president, whether it is Macron or Le Pen.

She responded, Between Le Pen and Macron, its death and suicide, plague and cholera. While she said she was leaning more towards a Macron vote, Farida expressed her hostility to Macrons Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin, With Le Pen, its clear, open[you] know what she wants. Darmanin is the same, or almost. We need to clear them out.

She called for the international unity of workers in France. Le Pen, we know she does not like us; she only likes the native French. But France, it is built by whom? With immigrants. The Portuguese, the Arabs, the blacks. Who works for a miserable salary? Its the foreigners. So if she is going to get rid of them, how does she expect to get by? Are she and her family going to do the work of others?

As WSWS reporters criticized both candidates alignment with NATOs policy of waging war on Russia in Ukraine, Farida expressed her concern: The Russian president can turn against us, for sure. And there would be many victims. France doesnt have the means, and if it sticks its nose into something where it has no business, its better that it withdraws than cause harm.

She continued on the role of the police in dealing with inner city workers. I have adult children. I have two grown girls and two boys, one 22 and one 21. Yesterday, I sent my son to buy bread. When they came home, one of my sons who was outside was taken away by the police. I yelled at them, I told them I sent him to buy bread, and the officer told me, Shut the ** up. I asked him, Did I disrespect you? And he said, No, I have every right to do it. But why does he have every right? Its because he has a gun.

He said, Why dont you keep your children at home? I said, Hes 22 years old, cant he go buy a baguette? I think its absurd what they do, calling people names and saying, Dirty Arab, Dirty black, its not fair. Do we call them Dirty French policeman? We dont have the right to insult each other.

Farida noted that she tells her children not to pick a fight or be provoked by police officers but that the outrageous behavior of the police creates a lot of anger. My son he tells me, Mom, when we walk down the street, they grab you to search your underwear. Stop grabbing people like that! The police can talk with their mouths but not grope people.

She added, The city police used to be unarmed. But now they think they are real police. They talk down to people, if anything, they call people scum. But the youth and children who walk in the street are not scum. They have a mother, a father, they have the right to speak as they want. You cant insult them like that, call them dirty Arabs.

WSWS journalists noted that workers are facing the challenge of uniting against a capitalist state that, since the 2015-2017 state of emergency, is moving more and more toward using in mainland France the methods it used during the Algerian War.

Farida replied, I am African, I am Arab. Yes, I am originally from Algiers. I have lived here; my parents who have since died lived in Algeria. My father was from the year period of the war; he fought in the French war. If we live here, it is because we are French. My husband was born before 1955, he is French. But we respect all people, Africans, Arabs, Japanese, all kinds. Thats how France normally works, everyone respects each other. If we dont respect each other, we will live like in the jungle.

Guillaume, a 24-year-old product design student, told WSWS reporters he would not be able to vote because he was registered to vote in another district outside of Paris but that if he could, he would have voted blank.

I dont feel represented at all. The candidates who would possibly have been more left and represented me more I dont trust them 100 percent. There is very little transparency. I wanted to vote blank to say that this isnt OK. I dont want to vote for someone because I dont want to find out what they are going to do afterwards. They can spring anything they want after the election. I think maybe some people will vote for Le Pen, although she is so right-wing, because they are hoping she will just be different.

WSWS reporters also spoke to August, a librarian in St Denis. He explained that he had voted for Melenchon in the first round of the elections, like more than 34 percent of other young people in his age range of between 25 and 34 years old. I voted for him even if I didnt really believe in it. In the last election [in 2017], I abstained.

August said he would vote for Macron though he was opposed to his policies because I think there is a real danger that she [Le Pen] is going to get elected here. But even if he wins, it is not a step forward. Macron is [Interior Minister Gerald] Darmanin, and [he advocates] a very extreme-right policy. Even during the recent debates the Macronists have made a fair number of right-wing and racist statements. And while Le Pen talks about the Burqa, that ban was first put in place by [Socialist Party President] Hollande.

August responded to the PES call for an active boycott to prepare for a struggle against the incoming government by an independent movement of workers: I think its true what you say, that its the social movement that can really change things and that we cant expect anything from the next government. Even if Melenchon was elected, I would have many reasons to join protests against him.
President of Artsakh Arayik Harutyunyan addressed a message on the occasion of the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, his Office said.

April 24, 2022, 09:56 For the sake of the memory of our holy martyrs, Artsakh should always be Armenian. Artsakh President

STEPANAKERT, APRIL 24, ARTSAKHPRESS: The message reads as follows:

Dear compatriots,

In Artsakh, as in Mother Armenia and in various parts of the world, where at least one Armenian lives, we mourn and commemorate the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide, the 1.5 million innocent Armenians who fell victim to a monstrous plan carried out by the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

It was a crime not only against the Armenian people, but also against the whole of humanity, a stigma for all those who have not yet acknowledged and condemned it, paving the way for new massacres and crimes.

Over a centennium onward, we are once again facing serious challenges, once again having to fight for national and universal values, for the protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms, for the full realization of our natural right to live freely and independently on our own soil.

Today, in front of the whole world, Azerbaijan continues to explicitly pursue an anti-Armenian and belligerent policy towards the people of Artsakh, grossly violating and trampling all the norms and principles of universally accepted and recognized international law.

The progressive mankind of the world must stand by the peaceful population of Artsakh, because we have no alternative, we are determined in our decision to live and create on the land of our ancestors, a land sanctified by the blood of thousands of sons of the Armenian people.

For the sake of the memory of our holy martyrs, for the sake of the future of our generations, Artsakh should always be Armenian, standing and invincible.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh issued a statement on the occasion of the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the ministry said.

April 24, 2022, 10:08 Turkey and Azerbaijan still do not stop their criminal policy towards Armenians  Artsakh MFA

STEPANAKERT, APRIL 24, ARTSAKHPRESS: The statement reads:

Today, the entire Armenian people and generally all the people, for whom the ideas of humanity are of special importance, commemorate the innocent victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide.

107 years ago, on April 24, the Genocide of 1.5 million Armenians was planned and carried out in the Ottoman Empire. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were deported, settling in different countries, thus forming a large Armenian Diaspora.

The Armenian Genocide was the first ever Genocide in human history committed at the state level. Later, Turkey committed the genocides and forced deportations of Greeks, Assyrians, Yezidis and Kurds, as a result of which millions of innocent people perished.

The international communitys improper and belated assessments of the crime became, in fact, a carte blanche not only for Turkey, but also for other countries to commit new crimes. The Nazis, dictatorial and nationalist regimes took advantage of this, committing new genocides, massacres and violence.

Having consistently denied the Armenian Genocide for 107 years and trying to neutralize any attempt by the international community to recognize it, Turkey and Azerbaijan still do not stop their criminal policy towards Armenians.

Since 1988, the Armenian people have repeatedly faced manifestations of genocidal policy  the pogroms and massacres of the Armenian population in Sumgait, Baku, Maragha, the Turkish-Azerbaijani aggressions against Artsakh in 2016 and 2020 are vivid examples of Armenophobia.

The Armenian Genocide is an unhealed wound for us. It is also a political, legal and moral stigma on the world community, which can be erased only through the international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide.
Members of the Performing Arts Department at Pensacola State College rehearse Monday, March 5, 2-18. for an upcoming production of George Orwell's "1984." Showtimes for the Orwellian classic are Thursday through Saturday 8 p.m and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.

Big Brother Is Watching You.

That was the pervasive punch line in British writer George Orwell's novel 1984. Developments in business and government give fresh currency to the classic.

Orwell, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, was a committed socialist. Unlike many on the left today, however, he had personal involvement with working people, because he was one. He stressed egalitarianism, while warning about dangers of concentrated power in government as well as corporations.

Technologies today provide unprecedented opportunities to gather personal information about, while curtailing freedom of, individuals.

Colorful capitalist Elon Musk has been a magnet for controversy throughout his remarkable, successful business career. Currently, he is fighting to buy social media giant Twitter, while complaining about the behemoths heavy-handed censorship practices.

Twitter representatives react to such criticism with shock, and not in the cynical Casablanca sense. In that classic movie, Captain Renault expresses artificial outrage about gambling going on in Ricks Cafe.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Twitter's largest shareholder, now wants to buy the social media company.

Twitters arbitrary censors sanctimoniously believe in their bullying. People they deem inappropriate include former President Donald Trump, who though now out of office remains Public Enemy No. 1 for much of our news and infotainment media.

Simultaneously, Twitter ignores truly evil hate speech. As one prominent example, Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei regularly calls for the destruction of Israel, which he terms a cancerous growth. In Twitter Land, that is acceptable political expression while Trumps statements inspire harm.

A photo of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs projects behind current CEO Tim Cook on Sept. 12, 2017. Apple has become the first U.S. company to be valued at $1 trillion.

Apple cofounder  and rescuer  Steve Jobs advocated both free speech and privacy. Not long before Jobs 2011 death, he strongly emphasized protecting customer privacy in announcing a new version of the iPhone.

In 2016, Apple strenuously resisted U.S. government efforts to force cooperation to secure cell phone data. A married couple who carried out a horrific mass murder in San Bernardino, California, had the phone. The murderers personally supported Islamic terrorist groups.

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Arthur I. Cyr

President Barack Obama publicly endorsed FBI efforts to force Apple to cooperate in breaking encryption on that phone. He transformed a gruesome local crime into a major international incident by discussing the matter in a formal speech from the Oval Office. He then travelled to Southern California.

Obama opened the door for the Islamic State plausibly to take credit for the killings. The terror group immediately did so. There is no evidence the killers had ties to terrorist groups.

Apple loyalty to Jobs important legacy involved taking tremendous, threatening heat from the Feds. The FBI eventually broke the encryption, with outside tech help. That agency should focus on improving internal skills, not harassment.

A wit quipped that 1984 was really about 1948, a reference to the Stalinist Soviet Union. In the late 1940s and well into the 1950s, intense anti-communism seriously distorted U.S. domestic politics and our wider society.

Left-wing and other intellectuals found their careers damaged and in some cases destroyed. Blacklisting of writers became a feature of this intimidation. That era passed but ominous concentrated power remains.

In our fascinating, fantastic global information revolution, institutions committed to following the law and protecting personal privacy deserve our support. Here, nonprofits are particularly important.

More: Arthur Cyr: The Arctic, Ukraine War and Russias expansion

More: Arthur Cyr: Ambassador Caroline Kennedy highlights Australias importance

Subscribe: Get unlimited access to our local coverage

Jobs, Musk and other entrepreneurs who resist concentrated arrogant power also deserve support.

Government and corporate snoops pry, corporate and government bullies try to intimidate, today as through history. Today, these powerful entities control unprecedented technologies, but our U.S. Constitution provides essential protections.

Meanwhile remember:

You have a right to privacy.

Big Brother has not abolished that,

Not yet,

But he'd like to.

 Arthur I. Cyr is author of After the Cold War. Contact acyr@carthage.edu.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Arthur Cyr: Elon Musk advocates freedom  and hes right
US President Joe Biden releases Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day statement

April 24, 2022, 16:08 US President Joe Biden releases Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day statement

STEPANAKERT, APRIL 24, ARTSAKHPRESS: On April 24, 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thus began the Armenian genocideone of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century. Today, we remember the one and a half million Armenians who were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination, and mourn the tragic loss of so many lives.

As we reflect on the Armenian genocide, we renew our pledge to remain vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms. We recommit ourselves to speaking out and stopping atrocities that leave lasting scars on the world. And, as we mourn what was lost during the Meds Yeghern, let us redouble our efforts toward healing and building the better, more peaceful world that we wish for our children. A world where human rights are respected, where the evils of bigotry and intolerance do not mark our daily lives, and where people everywhere are free to pursue their lives in dignity and security.

This is also a moment to reflect on the strength and resiliency of the Armenian people. After enduring a genocide, the Armenian people were determined to rebuild their community and their culture, so often in new homes and new lands, including the United States. Armenian Americans are a vital part of the fabric of the United States. They make our nation stronger and more dynamic, even as they continue to carry with them the tragic knowledge of what their ancestors endured. We recognize their pain and honor their story.

Today, 107 years later, the American people continue to honor all Armenians who perished in the genocide, President Biden said in the statement published by the White House.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine on Feb. 24, approximately 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers and 2,000 Ukrainian civilians have died and four million Ukrainians have fled the country and 6.5 million have been internally displaced. This didnt have to happen.

Our U.S. policy makers failed to understand that despite Russias history as a communist state, it still had a legitimate need for national security, just as we do. The prospect of Ukraines becoming a member of NATO and its accepting missiles systems to be directed toward Russia, would be very much like if Canada decided to belong to the Russian Federation and Russia was threatening to place missiles near Montreal or Toronto directed toward New York City or Cleveland. What would be the response of the United States? We might also want to head off that possibility by invading Canada.

The Minsk agreement, if implemented, could also have averted the war. On Feb. 12, 2015, the Minsk II agreement was signed between Ukraine and Russia as brokered by France and Germany. It would have stopped the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine between Russian Separatists and the Ukrainian military and would have granted a degree of autonomy to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of the Donbas that had voted for independence from Ukraine after the 2014 coup in Ukraine. The basic problem with Minsk II was that the Ukrainians refused either to let the Donbas republics become independent or to pass the laws on autonomy which were necessary in order to implement the Minsk agreement.

A Ukrainian serviceman walks along a trench at a position on the front line with Russia-backed separatists near the settlement of Troitske in the Lugansk region on Feb. 22, 2022, a day after Russia recognized east Ukraine's separatist republics and ordered the Russian army to send troops there. The recognition of Donetsk and Lugansk rebel republics effectively buried the fragile peace process regulating the conflict in eastern Ukraine, known as the Minsk accords.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy defeated Petro Poroshenko in the 2019 election on a platform that included making peace with Russia and signing the Minsk II Agreement. Unfortunately, he came under intense pressure, to which he succumbed, not to implement Minsk II, pressure from the far right ultra-nationalists including neo-Nazi parties that have large power that is disproportionate to their small support. Zelenskyy abandoned his campaign peace promise and refused to talk to the leaders of the Donbas and implement the Minsk Agreement.

The United States and the UN both endorsed the Minsk agreement in 2015. But the West did nothing to push the Ukrainians into implementing it. And Ukraine also refused to offer a treaty of neutrality. Nothing can excuse the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But the U.S. and the Ukrainians tragically and inexcusably missed numerous diplomatic chances of averting this war.

Andrew Mills lives in Lower Gwynedd.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Guest Opinion: The war in Ukraine didn't have to happen
Secretary of State David Scanlan was named in the lawsuit.

Five New Hampshire voters have filed a lawsuit challenging the states congressional district maps and asking Hillsborough County Superior Court to draw the voting districts.

Filed last week, the complaint argues that New Hampshires current congressional district maps that have been in place for the past 10 years are no longer constitutional given the latest census data released in August.

The Legislature is tasked with redrawing these maps, or redistricting, every 10 years to reflect population changes in the state. The lawsuit argues that the process has reached an impasse now that Gov. Chris Sununu has vowed to veto congressional maps proposed by Republican lawmakers. Plaintiffs believe the process will not be completed in time for the 2022 elections and have asked the court to intervene and draw a new map of its own.

More: After promising veto, Sununu offers own NH congressional redistricting map

Plaintiffs include former New Hampshire House speaker Terie Norelli, and the lawsuit names New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan.

In addition to congressional districts, the Legislature is also responsible for redrawing the voting districts for state Senate, House, Executive Council, and county commissioner seats. Voting rights advocates in the state expect the maps to face additional legal challenges.

This story was originally published by New Hampshire Bulletin.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: NH voters file lawsuit, want court to draw congressional district maps
From a young age, all Jaime King knew was pain.

"What I was taught is, if you're a woman and you menstruate, it's painful and it sucks and you just deal with it," the actress recently detailed to E! News. "Like, cramps, headaches, throwing up, this and that, it's just sort of par for the course."

With conversations around painful periods, really any periods, largely "stigmatized," she continued, "I just assumed that's how s--tty it wasthat three weeks out of every month, I'm going to be really sick and not know what's going on with me and have a hard time sitting, standing, walking, moving, just functioning throughout my life."

Being unable to walk three-quarters of the month not being super conducive to the thriving modeling career she'd launched at age 14posing for the likes of Vogue, Allure and Seventeen while strutting down Chanel and Christian Dior runwaysthe Nebraska native began seeking out answers. But after years of playing physician bingo, it wasn't until she consulted with obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Randy Harris, "my ninth doctor," she noted, that she finally received a proper diagnosis.

Stars Open Up About Pregnancy Loss

Then 26, she remembered watching as Harris spent two hours on the phone with her mom capturing a detailed family history: "He said, 'I'm going to examine you, but I already know what it is that you have.'"

Following the check-up that, indeed, confirmed his suspicions, she was hit with another bombshell. In addition to diagnoses of endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome and adenomyosis, Harris informed her she was expecting. "'But the baby's not in the right place and I'm putting you on ectopic warning,'" King recalled him telling her of the life-threatening pregnancy. "There was so much information that I was like, 'Wait, wait, wait. What are these things?'"

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Michael Bezjian/Getty Images for The Artists Project

As confounding as it felt to undergo a crash course in PCOSa hormonal disorder that can cause irregular periods and affect fertilityand endometriosis, where tissue grows outside of the uterus, causing pain and more fertility issues, "He was the first doctor that's ever said to me, 'Women are not supposed to be in pain,'" she raved of Harris. "I finally felt seen for the first time."

Now she's hoping to hold that mirror up to others in her same position.

Even coming from "a place of privilege" in her hunt to find answers, it took years, she noted. "It's completely unacceptable that you spend years and years and years and years of your life suffering because there has been no education, no awareness," King said.

So many women have no idea what they're dealing with, she continued, "or they don't know until it's too late and they're in the emergency room because they have a cyst that ruptured and fluids filling your belly. It's insanity."

Hence her decision to team with Allara, a chronic care platform providing comprehensive virtual care to women dealing with PCOS. "You get a whole team of people that support you," she raved. "You can get your lab work done, you can actually get more than 10 minutes with a doctor, you can message with them. It takes a village when you have what I call this silent disease."

As the brand's new director of impact, she's hoping to amplify the condition bringing awareness to women, particularly those in marginalized communities. "It was kismet the way that we found each otherI've been dreaming of something like this for over a decade," she said of the partnership. "So much of women's health is severely overlooked and nothing has ever been created like this before. It was like, 'Hallelujah' to say the leasta big hallelujah."

These days, the 43-year-old has plenty of reasons to use the figurative praise hands emoji. Raising sons James Knight, 8, and Leo Thames, 6with estranged husband Kyle Newman"is the greatest gift," she gushed.

But getting to this place was quite the journey.

Told at 26, "you'll never have children," she shared, the journey to learning she was expecting James Knight involved "over 60" intrauterine inseminations, five rounds of in vitro fertilization and five miscarriages.

Instagram

"It was awful," she recounted. "It was humiliating. It was painful. It made me feel like something was broken in me. I think that women are taught that somehow our capacity to be able to give birth and carry a child is the only reason why we're here."

Compounding that pain, the actress continued, was the struggle to commit to the intense schedule of medication and shots while logging 15- to 18-hour days on the set of Hart of Dixie.

"On my trigger day," she detailed, referencing the carefully timed shot prior to egg retrieval, "I was too afraid to even ask to leave. Then I lose that whole cycle just because I didn't have the freedom to say, 'By the way, it's my trigger day, let me leave set right now and go handle my business.'" While she acknowledged that line of thinking may have changed since then, "I was too afraid it would have been seen as a sign of weakness or that I was being unprofessional."

Instagram

So she was equal parts terrified and thrilled when she discovered in early 2013 that she had conceived naturally.

"When I got pregnant with James Knight, I had already gone through so many losses that it was one of those things where you count the days," she shared. "You're like, 'Okay, if I can make it through this day, and this day, then I can get through this week and then this week.'"

King can still remember in detail the moment she knew she'd be holding her eldest son in her arms.

Relaxing at Northern California's Skywalker Ranch following a film shoot, "It was the middle of the night and he was awake, and like kicking, kicking, kicking, kicking," she described. "And I'll never forget that moment. I was like, 'Oh, this baby boy is coming and it's going to be magical.' And it is."

Her experience carrying his younger brother was more unnerving than it was enchantingthe combination of Leo Thames' serious congenital heart issue and her continued preterm labor meaning "I was essentially living in Cedars-Sinai for months," she revealed. "They had, thankfully, a team of doctors that were brilliant. But I did have to have an emergency delivery and then he had an open heart surgery at four days old."

These days struggles revolve more around Zoom schooling and piecing together a "tiny, beautiful little village of other mothers and families that have definitely been there" as she balances parenting with an upcoming film schedule that includes Man's Son, At First Sight, Lady and one "that I wrote, that I'm directing called Polar Season."

Her goal in bringing up her sons, she said, is "to listen to them, to respect their feelings, to raise conscious, kind, compassionate children and young boys. My main thing is that they feel safe and really secure to be who they want to be."

Instagram

Because it was her support system that made her feel comfortable speaking openly about her PCOS diagnosis for the first time.

The night before that 2014 interview was set to publish, "I was like, 'S--t, do I do this?'" she shared of calling up pal and fellow PCOS sufferer Lena Dunham. "I was like, 'Dude, I'm freaking out, I'm having a panic attack. Everyone's going to think I'm this infertile hag, they're going to think I'm broken and the studios are going to think I'm too sick to work.' All these crazy thoughts started going through my brain because of the way that we've been conditioned."

Of course her openness did the opposite, connecting her to the legions of women dealing with the same issues who were grateful to hear that someone else had come out the other side. "I just needed that extra, like, 'Don't freak out,'" she explained. "And then once it was out, I was like, 'Game on. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.'"
WASHINGTON  Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle spoke Sunday about the leaked audio in which Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader and supporter of former President Donald Trump, is heard saying he would advise the former president to resign following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol.

During an interview Sunday on CNN, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a staunch progressive, had harsh words about McCarthy.

"Kevin McCarthy is a liar and a traitor," the Massachusetts senator told CNN's Dana Bash. "Shame on Kevin McCarthy."

McCarthy on tape: McCarthy said he would urge Trump to resign after Jan. 6 Capitol riot, according to new audio

The audio is part of a phone call between McCarthy, R-Calif., and Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., that took place days after the insurrection. In the recording, which was first reported on by journalists for The New York Times and aired on MSNBC on Thursday, McCarthy is heard saying, "The only discussion I would have with (Trump) is I think this (impeachment) will pass, and it would be my recommendation that he should resign."

The recording contradicts a prior statement from McCarthy's spokesperson Mark Bednar, who told the Times, McCarthy never said hed call Trump to say he should resign.

That is really the illness that pervades the Republican leadership right now. That they say one thing to the American public and something else in private," Warren told Bash.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., speaks about the American military withdrawal in Afghanistan, during a meeting with House Republicans, including those who served in the military, on August 30, 2021 in Washington, D.C.

McCarthy responds: GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy scrambles to contain fallout from leaked tape on Trump and Jan. 6

GOP Sen. Roy Blunt gave his Republican colleague the benefit of the doubt. During an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Blunt told host Kristen Welker that McCarthy may have been thinking out loud when he suggested resignation.

"My guess is you don't remember every conversation you're in exactly the way it occurred," the Missouri senator said. "And maybe you remember it the way you want it to occur. But you know, I'm only one of two people in the history of the country who've been elected leaders in both the House and Senate. I've never been in a leadership meeting where you felt like you couldn't think out loud. And apparently they have a leadership where you can't think out loud."

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Blunt also said that suggesting Trump resign was not a "realistic suggestion" to make to a president with only 10 days left in his term.

Blunt was not the only lawmaker to propose that McCarthy was simply weighing his options. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told "Fox News Sunday" that the GOP leader "is in very good shape."

"You have to put it in the context of when it was given. This was literally right after Jan. 6. It was a very dark day. It was a very shocking day. A lot of emotions flying high. What Kevin was doing was gaming out various options that hey, what if he got impeached in the House and then the Senate convicted? Would it be better for him to resign prior to that? But the fact is, he never had that conversation with President Trump," McCaul said.

More: GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy scrambles to contain fallout from leaked tape on Trump and Jan. 6

The Texas Republican also said McCarthy is focused on taking back the House.

"He has worked tirelessly to get the majority back. I can tell you the support in the conference is very strong for him and this is a little Beltway bubble blitz, if you will. I don't think it's going to have any long term consequences."

Before the call recording was released, McCarthy posted a statement on Twitter Thursday calling The Times' reporting "totally false and wrong."

McCarthy, who hopes to someday become speaker of the House, has rushed to contain the damage from the released phone recording. The House GOP leader continues to publicly support Trump.

Reach out to Chelsey Cox on Twitter at @therealco.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: McCarthy on Trump: Lawmakers weigh in on House GOP leader, leaked call
Editor's note: This page recaps the news from Ukraine on Sunday, April 24. Follow here for the latest updates and news from Monday, April 25, as Russia's invasion continues.

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv Sunday night, according to Ukraine's presidential adviser.

The adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, said in an interview on Ukrainian TV late Sunday that the talks are going on right now. Blinken and Austin's meeting with Zelenskyy is the highest-ranking visit to Ukraine by a U.S. delegation since Russia began its invasion.

According to The Associated Press, Blinken and Austin told Zelenskyy and his advisers that the United States would provide more than $300 million in foreign military financing and had approved a $165 million sale of ammunition.

They also said that President Joe Biden would soon announce his nominee for ambassador to Ukraine and that American diplomats who left Ukraine before the war would start returning to the country this coming week, AP reported.

Reporters who accompanied Austin and Blinken to Poland were barred by Pentagon and State Department officials from reporting the Kyiv visit until the two men physically left Ukraine. U.S. officials cited security concerns.

FROM POTEMKIN TO PUTIN: What a centuries-old myth reveals about Russia's war against Ukraine

WHAT WEAPONS ARE BEING USED IN RUSSIA'S INVASION OF UKRAINE? A visual guide to key military equipment and locations

Latest developments:

The Ukrainian military said it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.

French President Emmanuel Macron cruised to a second term Sunday, beating back a stronger-than-expected challenge from far-right populist Marine Le Pen, who has attacked the European Union and NATO and expressed support for Russia.

Speaking in St. Peters Square, Pope Francis lamented the "barbarity" of the war. It is sad that these days, which are the holiest and most solemn for all Christians, we hear the deadly noise of weapons rather than the sound of bells announcing the Resurrection," the pope said. "It is sad that arms are taking the place of words.

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The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe said it is "extremely concerned" that several mission members are being held in eastern Ukraine. The Vienna-based agency said it is using "all available channels to facilitate their release" but did not specify the number of people being held or who was holding them.

Russian missile and artillery troops hit 423 targets in Ukraine overnight as part of the special military operation, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said Sunday. He said 26 Ukrainian command posts, 367 "places of the amassment of manpower and military equipment" and 25 gun lines were hit.

Worshippers light candles at the Saint Volodymyr's Cathedral during Orthodox Eastern celebrations in Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 24, 2022.

French priest investigates 'horrific' Russian war crimes

A French priest is investigating alleged, "horrific" Russian war crimes in the southern Ukraine city of Mariupol and warns that result could show worse brutality than what was discovered in the town of Bucha.

"Every Ukrainian is now a witness to the horrific crimes of the Russian Federation," Father Patrick Desbois says on the website of his organization, Yahad-In Unum. "If you have witnessed Russian troops shelling a peaceful neighborhood or destroying civilian infrastructure, your testimony will be very helpful in the investigation."

Desbois, who promises anonymity, is known for his investigations of the mass shootings in Eastern European countries  including Ukraine  occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II. He told The Washington Post he believes Mariupol will be worse than Bucha," where hundreds of residents were apparently massacred during Russia's assault on and occupation of the city.

Desbois told the Washington Post he does not believe there is enough evidence yet to label Russian behavior as genocide, as President Joe Biden has said.

Sadly, it will depend on what happens next, he told The Post.

Ukraine celebrates Easter hoping 'our sunrise will come soon'

Ukrainians marked Orthodox Easter in the capital, Kyiv, on Sunday with prayers for those fighting on the front lines in the Donbas region and others trapped in cities such as Mariupol. But President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians not to let anger at the war overwhelm them.

All of us believe our sunrise will come soon, he said.

The Eastern Orthodox church follows the Julian calendar, first proposed by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, rather than the Gregorian calendar adopted by Catholic Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. This means the holiday typically falls later than Easter Sunday in Western Christian tradition.The deputy commander of the nationalist Azov Regiment, which has been battling separatists in the Donbas since 2014, recorded a video address chastising the Russian military for failing to observe the holy day.

"The enemy continues to drop air bombs, ship artillery fires, guns are fired," Captain Sviatoslav Palamar said.

Mariupol 'almost wiped out' but Ukraine military hanging on

The southern Ukraine city of Mariupol is "almost wiped out," but a top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denied Sunday that Russia controls the beleaguered city.

Igor Zhovkva told NBC News' "Meet the Press" that weapons delivered by the U.S. and its allies so far have been what the country needs to fight Russia, but it now also needs weapons to defend its skies. Noting NATO has declined to imposed a "no-fly" zone over the country, Zhovkva said Ukraine needs anti-missile systems and anti-aircraft systems "because daily and nightly Ukraine cities are bombarded by the cruise missiles."

Zhovkva denied the Russian claim that it controls the entire city, now believed to be home to about 100,000 remaining civilians. But he said the Russians control part of it.

"Ukrainian armed forces are still in town," he said. "They are concentrated now mainly on the Azovstal steel plant. And they are concentrated there together with the civilians. And many of the Ukrainian soldiers are wounded."

He criticized the U.N. secretary general's request to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, saying he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the Ukrainian government

"This is not a good idea to travel to Moscow. We do not understand his intention to travel to Moscow and to talk to President Putin."

Austrian opposition to Ukraine membership in EU 'shortsighted'

The Austrian foreign minister's comments that Ukraine should not be offered membership in the European Union is drawing stiff criticism in the besieged nation. Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said he supports closer ties between Europe and Ukraine short of full membership. One option would be allowing Ukraine to join the EU's economic zone, he said.

"We are disappointed with the statements of the Austrian Federal Foreign Minister on Ukraine's European future," Ukraine Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said Sunday. "We consider them strategically short-sighted and not in the interests of a united Europe."

Bipartisan support for new Ukraine aid package

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said they would stand behind another $800 million in aid to Ukraine unveiled by President Joe Biden last week. The aid package includes heavy artillery weapons, tactical drones and additional economic support.

If President Biden asks for more money in order to support Ukraine, either militarily or for humanitarian relief, then I will support him in that, and I believe all of the Democrats will, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., told CNN SOTU host Dana Bash on Sunday.

Republican Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz also expressed enthusiasm for the aid package while speaking to Bash from Kyiv. But the Ukrainian-American said she hasnt seen how humanitarian aid from the Biden administration has helped on the ground in Ukraine.

I haven't seen them do even humanitarian missions. Nothing is happening here. So, I think they do need more security assistance, but we also need to ask some questions," she said. "What's happened with another $10 billion that we provided? Because I haven't seen it on the ground anywhere at all.

Kharkiv feels wrath of Russian invasion

While the world mourns the battering taken by Mariuspol, 260 miles to the north the city of Kharkiv has quietly been overwhelmed by Russian artillery. The vast majority of Kharkiv's 1.4 million residents have fled. Mayor Ihor Terekhov says Russia is "furiously bombing" his city as shells and rockets continue to smash Kharkivs historic center and residential areas in the most intense assaults outside Mariuspol. Mayor Ihor Terekhov says Russia is "furiously bombing" his city, that an estimated 2,000 high-rise buildings have been destroyed.

Oleksandr Zuiev 46, said he never believed Russian forces would target civilians  and never expected his own apartment to come under fire.

"I was wrong," Zuiev told the Kyiv Independent. "Its still hard to believe that this is happening in the 21st century."

US official: Russia has 'already lost'

Deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said Sunday that from the U.S. perspective, Russia "has already lost" in Ukraine, noting the many ways Russian President Vladimir Putin has not achieved his goals.

"They have intended to divide the West. They have resulted in a West and a NATO alliance that is much more united than it's ever been," he said. "They thought that they would unsettle and undermine and maybe even overthrow the Ukrainian government. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is firmly entrenched in power and Ukrainian democracy continues."

Finer said Russia is more isolated in the world, its economy is weaker, and its military is "failing at virtually every one of their initial objectives. And our objective is going to be to continue that trend."

He also would not confirm that there is evidence of a new mass grave in the embattled city of Mariupol but said such an allegation "is wholly consistent with everything that we've seen Russia doing and it should stop."

Zelenskyy, Turkish president speak ahead of Erdogan talks with Putin

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he spoke by phone Sunday with Turkish President Erdogan, one day before Erdogan was scheduled to meet with Putin.

"I stressed the need for immediate evacuation of civilians from Mariupol, including Azovstal, and immediate exchange of blocked troops," Zelenskyy said. He said the men also discussed the peace talks process, ways to guarantee security for Ukraine and global food supply issues damaged by the war.

On Saturday, Turkish officials said Ankara will close Turkish airspace to Russian civilian and military flights between Russia and Syria. But Turkey, a NATO member that has good relations with Russian and Ukraine, has balked at joining the West in its strong economic sanctions against Russia.

British intelligence: Ukrainian resistance strong in Donbas

Ukraine repelled numerous Russian assaults in the Donbas last week, the British Defense Ministry reported Sunday. Russia did make some territorial gains, but Ukrainian resistance was strong "across all axes" and inflicted significant cost on Russian forces, the intelligence report said.

"Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganize forces from prior offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness," the report said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has steadfastly maintained that the war is going according to plan.

Russia rejects concerns that it will use chemical, nuclear weapons

The United States is preparing to falsely accuse the Russia of using chemical, biological, or tactical nuclear weapons, a top Russian military leader says. Chief of Russian Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Protection Force Igor Kirillov said the alleged plan is a reaction to Russias success in its "special operation" in Ukraine  Russia has refused to describe its invasion as a war. Western intelligence officials had warned that Russia might resort to internationally banned weaponry if its invasion continues to face setbacks.

"In March-April of this year alone, the leadership of Western countries regularly made provocative statements about the possibility of Russia using weapons of mass destruction," he said.

Ukrainian officials: 6 dead in Russian strike on Black Sea port city of Odesa

At least six people were killed, including a 3-month-old infant, in a Russian strike in the Black Sea port city of Odesa, Ukrainian officials said Saturday.

The war started when this baby was 1 month old. Can you imagine what is happening? President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. They are just bastards. ... I dont have any other words for it, just bastards.

Russia's firing of cruise missiles on the region came on the eve of Orthodox Easter.

"Nothing sacred," said Andriy Yermak of the president's office on Telegram.

PUTIN CLAIMS A WIN IN MARIUPOL: What does that mean in a war in Ukraine that Russia is losing?

A NUCLEAR RISK 'NIGHTMARE'?After seizing Chernobyl, Russian troops exposed themselves to radiation.

Contributing: The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Lloyd Austin , Antony Blinken promise more aid to Ukraine
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty

As the United States and other NATO countries send Ukraine weapons to fight Russian invaders, some left-wing critics have denounced the effort as warmongering escalation.

For example, linguist professor and activist Noam Chomsky described American policy as praising ourselves for heroism while fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian. I fault no one for lamenting the destruction and hoping for peace, but that assessment misunderstands this war and Americas role in it.

The decision of when to stop fighting for Ukraine is up to Ukrainians. Helping them, while balancing other risks, is the best path to peace.

Chomsky, however, argued that America should push Ukraine to accept Russian demands: You can sympathize with [Ukrainian President Zelenskys] positions. But you can also pay attention to the reality of the world. That reality, he says, is neutralization of Ukraine, some kind of accommodation for the Donbas region, and taking the status of Crimea off the negotiating table. He compares Russia to a hurricane, and argues that concessions are the alternative to the destruction of Ukraine and nuclear war.

The Results Are in on the Worlds Handling of the War in Ukraine

The linguistics professor and longtime antiwar activist drew criticism for denying both Ukrainian and Russian agency, and for sounding like a Putin apologist, but he also has his defenders. Heres how Ben Burgis explained it in a column for The Daily Beast last week:

Chomskys analysis is that the options are, on the one hand, a serious push for Russia, Ukraine, the U.S., and other powers to sit down and hammer out a negotiated settlement to end the fighting or, on the other, continued escalation in which, at best, countless additional Ukrainian lives will be lost. At worst, the regional war could escalate into a broader conflict that could lead to World War III.

Thats a false choice. The options are not serious diplomacy that ends the fighting or military escalation. Ukraine is the primary actor here, and its choice is acquiescing to Russian dominationwith cities surrendering, the Zelensky government abdicating, and a pro-Russia leader installed (as Russias original push for Kyiv attempted)or resisting. Ukraines elected leaders, and a large percentage of its population, chose to fight back.

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At that point, its not diplomacy or war. Its and.

War, explains political scientist James Fearon, is a bargaining process. Two sides have incompatible demands, so they cant make a deal, but they dont really know what they can force the other to accept. The fighting thus reveals information, showing what the militaries can accomplish (or not), and this keeps going until at least one side changes its demands enough to make a settlement possible.

Ukrainian and Russian delegations met days after the invasion started, but didnt reach an agreement. As recently as April 19, Russia rejected ceasefire proposals from both Ukraine and the United Nations to allow civilian evacuations. The main reason the war hasnt ended is not the United States trying to fight to the last Ukrainian, its Russia demanding a lot more than Ukraine is willing to give.

In a broader sense, America arguably bears some responsibility by welcoming former Soviet republicssuch as Poland and Estoniainto NATO after the Cold War, and keeping open the possibility of Ukrainian membership. Its reasonable to argue that NATO expansion made Russia perceive a geopolitical challenge it needed to counter. But its also plausible that post-Soviet Russia would have wanted to reassert itself in its near abroad regardless. As International Relations professor Daniel Nexon argues, there are many factors involved, and many possible alternative histories. We dont know, we cant know, and while some hypotheticals may seem more plausible than others, we cant change the past.

Regardless, massacring Ukrainian civilians is not a reasonable response to geopolitical concerns about NATO expansion.

Attributing the current violence to American ambition and willingness to sacrifice Ukrainians requires the assumption of a lot of unknown outcomes. It requires assuming as certain thatas Russian forces in January massed at Ukraines bordershad the U.S. only said, Ukraine will never be in NATO, and everyone should consider it within Russias sphere of influence, that would have satisfied the Kremlin.

Considering Russias maximalist demands, and how little Putin and his spokespeople mention NATO in public justificationsfocusing instead on claims that Ukraine isnt a real country, and oft-shifting lies about a genocide against Russian-speaking Ukrainians, hidden WMD programs, and a government with a Jewish president secretly run by Nazisthats not especially plausible.

The U.S. is a significant player in this situation, but not the main character. Russia chose to demand Ukrainian government abdication and national demilitarization at gunpoint. Ukraine, which has been fighting Russia-backed separatists in the Donbas region for eight years, chose independence over abdication. Russia then chose to launch a full-scale invasion. Acknowledging Russian and Ukrainian agency means accepting that the U.S. is not the primary cause of this war, and probably could not have stopped it.

The Ukraine war will end with a negotiated settlement, as most wars do, but the details will be shaped by military results that remain uncertain. Ukraine has already achieved greater success than many expected, thwarting Russias attempt to capture Kyiv and other major cities. Far from a futile resistance down to the last, Ukraines war effort, aided by Western weapons, has secured its independence.

What Chomsky calls the reality of the world is not a fait accompli. Russia is not an unthinking force of nature, like a hurricane, but a state with finite resources, led by human beings with finite will. Theyve already been forced to scrap regime change and pursue the less ambitious goal of controlling Donbas and southern Ukraine.

Ukraine is fighting back, and if they win the battle of Donbas (like they won the battle of Kyiv), they can improve their negotiating position, and maybe even last long enough to exhaust the Russian offensives. Maybe they can get something like the pre-invasion status quo, or better.

Or maybe not. But since the Ukrainians want to try, its not surprising theyd be insulted by outsiders willingness to trade away Ukraines territory and ability to choose its own international relationships, not least because they worry abdication now could mean Russia pockets the gains, reconstitutes forces, and returns in a few years to finish the job. Having seen Russian forces rape, torture, steal, and kill throughout their country, few Ukrainians, from Zelensky on down, appear interested in giving Russia things they dont have to, even as they surely realize continued fighting means more death.

Even if Russia Uses a Nuke, We Probably Wontbut Putin Would Still Pay Dearly

That means Americas choice is not between diplomacy and war, but between honoring Ukraines request for help and telling them theyre on their own.

With NATO openly aiding Ukraines war effort, there are serious risks of escalation that could spin out of control and lead to a nuclear exchange. But Biden administration policy shows a healthy appreciation of that risk. The president has not, and insists he will not, send in American troops, rejected calls for a no fly zone, blocked a transfer of fighter jets from Poland to Ukraine, and avoided reacting to Russian missile tests and other nuclear provocations. The U.S. is walking a careful line, helping Ukraine as much as possible while minimizing the risk of a wider war.

Whether to settle with Russia, and on what terms, is Ukraines decision to make. If they like a deal, the U.S. should support it, even if it means removing economic pressure that Putin critics have advocated for years.

But as long as the Ukrainians choose to fight, the path to peace is Ukrainian military success. That improves Ukraines negotiating position, and disincentivizes future international aggressionnot just by Russia, but China, tooby showing that the costs outweigh the benefits.

A settlement is possible when Russia accepts Ukraines independence, not before.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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A Chinese businessman was charged with torture and sentenced to 20 years in prison by a court in Rwanda after he was filmed beating a local worker who was tied to a pole last year.



Sun Shujun, 43, is seen in a video yelling at the Rwandan man hunkered on the ground and whipping him with a rope while other men in orange jackets watched.





A Rwandan court sentenced the Chinese man seen in this video, Sun Shujun, to 20 years in prison for brutally beating one of his employees last year. Sun said he was "frustrated and fed up of them constantly stealing minerals. He has 30 days to appeal: https://t.co/QBWEjHBRbv pic.twitter.com/Es9Yf22U8T

 The China Africa Project (@ChinaAfrProject) April 21, 2022







Sun was arrested after the video circulated online in August 2021. He was later released on bail.



Renzaho Alexis, a Rwandan man who is considered by the court to be an accomplice in the beating, was also sentenced to 12 years in prison.



Judge Jacques Kanyarukiga said that Sun had tortured the victims and issued corporal punishment with malicious intent, and this is a grave crime.



While prosecutors accused Sun of assaulting four people, he only admitted to assaulting two workers. He said he beat them because he was frustrated and fed up of them constantly stealing minerals.



Witnesses told the court that workers suspected of stealing from Sun were tied and whipped.



Sun, a manager of a mine that produces cassiterite in the Rutsiro district, said that his two victims received compensation of more than 1 million Rwandan francs (approximately $1,000) and a reconciliation letter.



Prosecutors, however, argued that the victims only accepted his payments because they were traumatized and afraid of him.



In a statement, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Rwanda wrote, The Chinese Embassy in Rwanda has taken note of the recent ruling of 20 years imprisonment by a Rwandan court regarding a Chinese citizen. The Embassy always asks Chinese citizens in Rwanda to abide by local laws and regulations.



Meanwhile, the Embassy calls for the case to be handled appropriately in a rational, fair and just manner, and requests the legitimate rights of Chinese citizens to be properly protected, the spokesperson added. The Embassy will continue to follow the case. The Chinese Embassy remains committed to promoting relations between the two countries and friendship between our people.



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The spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Rwanda responds to media inquiries on the recent ruling regarding a Chinese citizen. See the picture below for full text: pic.twitter.com/ZCPKBLHavm

 Chinese Embassy in Rwanda (@ChinaEmbinRW) April 20, 2022







Sun can appeal to a higher court, according to Rwanda courts spokesman Harrison Mutabazi.







Featured Image via @ChinaAfrProject

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At least five U.S. sailors who served on the same aircraft carrier in Virginia have died by suicide in the last year, including three who died within a week earlier this month, military officials said Thursday.

The string of suicides among USS George Washington sailors may indicate a larger mental health problem, according to experts, and it comes less than three years after a similar cluster of suicides on another Navy vessel.

Each death is tragic in its own right, regardless of how, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters Thursday. Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to the families and, frankly, the shipmates because they're affected, too.

On April 9, Retail Services Specialist 3rd Class Mikail Rayshawn Sharp died by suicide off-base in Portsmouth, said his mother, Natalie Jefferson. The next day, Interior Communications Electrician 3rd Class Natasha Huffman also died by suicide off-base in Hampton, according to the Navy and the state chief medical examiners office.

Image: Mikail Rayshawn Sharp (U.S. Navy via Natalie Jefferson)

On April 15, a sailor was found unresponsive aboard the USS George Washington, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Robert Myers said. The cause of death of the sailor, identified by officials as Master-at-Arms Seaman Recruit Xavier Hunter Mitchell-Sandor, was suicide, the state chief medical examiners office said.

Details about the other two suicides in the last 12 months were not immediately clear.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service and local authorities are still investigating the three April deaths, the Navy said. Those three shipmates worked in different departments, Myers said. Roughly 2,700 sailors serve the aircraft carrier, he added.

Kirby cautioned against jumping to conclusions about what might have led USS George Washington sailors to take their own lives.

Its just human nature to want to point to something and say, Well, thats the reason. Its this problem, or this culture, or its because the ship is doing this instead of that, he said. What compels an individual to take their own life is, its individual, and its complex.

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The news comes less than three years after a similar cluster of Navy suicides. In 2019, three sailors who served on the USS George H.W. Bush died by suicide within a week in separate instances off-base, the Navy said at the time.

Jefferson, who lived with Sharp in Norfolk, Virginia, said she didnt think she had any reason to worry about her sons mental health. She said Sharp, a 23-year-old newlywed, must have hidden his struggles every day he came home from work.

He was the life of the party, she said. He never showed his pain.

Jefferson urged other military members to seek out help, whether from family and friends, other shipmates or military resources.

Dont be afraid to talk to anybody, she said, because the last thing any parent wants to do is bury their child.

The Navy said it has sent a special psychiatric rapid intervention team to counsel those serving the USS George Washington.

Suicide is one of the Navy's top three causes of death annually, Navy officials said in a March news release about its Navy Sailor Assistance and Intercept for Life program, which helps active-duty sailors who are contemplating suicide.

"Many Sailors who have suicidal thoughts or struggles refuse to seek help," the news release said. "When asked, they believe they will receive the help they need but are also afraid of being treated differently, losing the trust of their leadership and having their career negatively impacted."

In 2020, the most recent year for which full data is available, 580 military members died by suicide, a 16 percent increase from 2019, when 498 died by suicide, according to the Defense Department. Nineteen out of every 100,000 Navy sailors died by suicide in 2020, compared to members of the Army, who had the highest rate, at about 36 per 100,000, Pentagon statistics show.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.
A Colorado man died after setting himself on fire outside the Supreme Court building on Friday.

Police said Saturday that Wynn Bruce, a 50-year-old man from Boulder, Colorado, had died from the injuries he suffered during the self-immolation, NBC News reported.

No one else was injured in the incident. Emergency personnel were called to the scene around 6:30 p.m. Friday. The Supreme Court was not in session at the time.

Several police forces in Washington, D.C., said they would investigate Bruces actions.

Self-immolation is often seen as an act of protest worldwide. Its been most common in Tibet. The famous Arab Spring protests of 2011 were started by a man in Tunisia, Mohammed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire outside a government office.


Nashville police are searching for a man who faces a criminal homicide charge after a fatal Saturday morning shooting in Antioch.

An arrest warrant was issued for Juan Hernandez, 41, after the shooting death of his roommate Jesus Camillo Perez, 33, according to the Metro Nashville Police Department.

The shooting occurred around 9:50 a.m. Saturday in the 2900 block of Mossdale Drive., MNPD said. Police found Perez at a neighbor's house, where he ran for help. He was suffering from a gunshot wound to the abdomen and taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he died.

Anyone with information on the shooting or Hernandez can call Crime Stoppers at 615-862-8600. Callers can remain anonymous and may qualify for a cash reward.

Rachel Wegner contributed to this story.

Cassandra Stephenson covers Metro government for The Tennessean. Reach her at ckstephenson@tennessean.com or (731) 694-7261. Follow Cassandra on Twitter at @CStephenson731.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville police search for man charged in roommate's fatal shooting
Two women saints come to the fore: one in this month of April and one next month in May: St. Faustina Kowalski of Poland, known for promoting the Divine Mercy Devotion, which we celebrate today at St. Hyacinth Church; and St. Gianna Beretta Molla, from Italy, a pro-life saint, who will be featured on Sunday, May 15, at St. Francis of Assisi Church. Both churches make up SS. Mary & Martha Parish in Auburn.

Maria Faustyna Kowalska (born Helena Kowalska, Aug. 25, 1905, to Oct. 5, 1938), known as Sister Maria Faustyna Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament (popularly spelled Faustina), was a Polish Roman Catholic nun and mystic. At the age of 20 years, she joined a convent in Warsaw but was later transferred to Pock and then to Vilnius. Throughout her life, Faustina reported having visions of Jesus and conversations with him, which she noted in her diary, later published as "The Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul."

Her apparitions of Jesus Christ inspired the Catholic devotion to the Divine Mercy of Jesus. With the help of her spiritual direction, she commissioned an artist to paint the first Divine Mercy image, based on her vision of Jesus. Sister Faustina was canonized as a saint on April 30, 2000, by Pope John Paul II, who declared the second Sunday of Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday.

Divine Mercy Sunday is traditionally celebrated at St. Hyacinth Church, 63 Pulaski St., Auburn. The celebration of Divine Mercy will take place this afternoon, April 24, consisting of Eucharistic Adoration from noon until 3 p.m. Confessions with four priests will be available from 1 to 2:30 p.m., and the event will conclude at 3 p.m. with the sung Divine Mercy Chaplet and Solemn Benediction. All are welcome at St. Hyacinth Church this afternoon.

Gianna Beretta Molla (Oct. 4, 1922, to April 28, 1962) was born in Magenta, Italy, in the Archdiocese of Milan. She was a wife, a mother and a pediatrician. During her second month of pregnancy with her fourth child, she developed a fibroma on her uterus. She refused an abortion or a hysterectomy in an effort to save her unborn child. A week after the baby was born, Gianna died of septic peritonitis. Her daughter Gianna Emanuela still lives and is a doctor of geriatrics.

Molla's medical career followed the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church; she believed in following her conscience while coming to the aid of others who required assistance. Molla also dedicated herself to charitable work among the elderly, and also aided the St. Vincent DePaul Society in its outreach to the poor and less fortunate.

She was canonized in Rome on May 16, 2004, by Pope St. John Paul II. She is the first working mom and woman doctor to be canonized. Her husband and their children were present at the canonization. It was the first time that a husband had ever witnessed his wife's canonization. St. Giannas feast day is April 28. She is a pro-life witness in our day and age.

This year, 2022, is the 100th anniversary of her birth and the 18th anniversary of her canonization. In commemoration of these anniversaries, St. Francis of Assisi Church has erected an outdoor shrine in honor of St. Gianna Berretta Molla. The dedication of this shrine will take place on Sunday, May 15, during the regular 8:45 a.m. Mass at St. Francis of Assisi Church, 303 Clark St., Auburn, with a procession to the shrine at the conclusion of Mass for the prayer of dedication.

In celebration of the event, breakfast will be served in Nacca Hall afterwards, consisting of eggs, bacon, ham, home fries, fresh fruit salad, cake and coffee. The Mass, dedication and breakfast are open to the public and all are invited.

The Rev. Frank E. Lioi is pastor of St. Marys Church and SS. Mary & Martha Parish (St. Francis and St. Hyacinth churches) in Auburn, Our Lady of the Snow Parish (St. Joseph Church, Weedsport, and St. Patrick Church, Cato) in northern Cayuga County, and dean of the East Region (Cayuga and Tompkins counties) of the Diocese of Rochester. He can be reached at flioi@dor.org.

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Abramovich (second from left) has been engaging in peace talks with Putin's permission. Alexei Nikolsky/AP

Abramovich failed to make a breakthrough with President Zelenskyy's chief of staff, per Bloomberg.

Sources said the White House is under renewed pressure to sanction the oligarch as talks stutter.

Abramovich has avoided US sanctions at Zelenskyy's request as he continues peace talks with Ukraine.

Russian Oligarch and would-be peacemaker Roman Abramovich looks increasingly likely to be sanctioned by the US as Kyiv peace talks between Abramovich and Zeleskyy's chief of staff failed to make progress, sources told Bloomberg.

Three people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that Abramovich carried out talks in Ukraine's capital with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, rather than the president himself.

Two of the sources said Zelenskyy was increasingly pessimistic about the prospect of peace as further information about atrocities in towns like Bucha and Mariupol came to light.

Two White House insiders told Bloomberg the US was under increasing pressure to hit Abramovich with sanctions, which were reportedly drawn up weeks ago.

Abramovich, Yermak, and the White House did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment outside regular working hours.

Abramovich has avoided sanctioning by the US so far while he unofficially brokers peace talks with Ukraine, after being granted consent by Russian President Vladimir Putin in early March.

"Roman Abramovich is involved in enabling certain contacts between the Russian and Ukrainian sides," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said. Zelenskyy had asked US President Joe Biden to drop proposed sanctions against Abramovich as a sign of goodwill that appears to be running out.

At peace talks on March 3, Abramovich was allegedly poisoned along with Ukrainian officials, which prompted him to ask if he was dying.

Despite his continued involvement in peace talks and conversations with Putin, Abramovich has consistently distanced himself from having financial ties to the Kremlin, denying any special relationship with Putin and avoiding Russian politics. These are claims that Western officials widely dispute.

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Skeptics in Ukraine have questioned whether Abramovich's motivations for participating in peace talks are sincere or weighted towards protecting his finances from sanctions.

Abramovich, who is well known in the UK as the owner of Chelsea Football Club, was sanctioned by the country on March 10. The British government seized the club after the oligarch put it up for sale at a rumored 2.5 billion.

In a statement from Chelsea FC, Abramovich said he would put the proceeds from the sale into a fund "for the benefit of all victims of the war in Ukraine."

Sources later told The Guardian the money would not just go to Ukrainians but could also be used to help Russians, debunking Abramovich's ambitious claim.

Bloomberg reported that Abramovich was house-hunting in Dubai, which is not engaged in sanctions against Russia. The United Arab Emirates has seen a surge of wealthy Russians buying homes to seek refuge from sanctions.

As the war rages on, the UN has accused Russia of committing "a horror story of violations" in Ukraine, including rape and civilian killings. The accusations prompted US President Biden's declaration that Russia was committing "genocide."

The failed talks suggest that the atrocities committed, alongside new Russian offensives in the south and east of Ukraine, have made hopes of a withdrawal or peace look increasingly dim.

Read the original article on Business Insider
In a poignant scene of Bad Axe, director David Siev steps in front of the camera to define why his latest documentary film is a love letter to his hometown.

Bad Axe is the small town in the Michigan Thumb where Sievs immigrant parents settled in pursuit of the American dream. Its the place where the duo raised four kids and opened Rachels, a restaurant that has served traditional American cuisine and specialty dishes that nod to the familys Mexican and Asian American roots for nearly 25 years.

Filmmaker David Siev, who directed a documentary about his Bad Axe, Michigan family and their restaurant Rachel's as they navigated the pandemic and a tumultuous 2020.

"Growing up in Bad Axe has just shaped so much of who our family is," Siev says.

Its the place Siev left to pursue better opportunities in film in Los Angeles and New York after graduating from the University of Michigan in 2015, and the place to which he returned in March 2020 while the film industry was on hiatus. Its also the name of the documentary, which follows the Siev family through the COVID-19 pandemic, and screens at the Freep Film Festival April 28.

In a fitted sweatshirt embossed with a skeleton graphic and his dark hair peeking from beneath a slouchy gray beanie, Siev addresses his familys concerns about whether a film that captures the social and political turbulence of the town could be perceived as a love letter by its loyal residents.

"It's a love letter to Bad Axe because even though our family has our frustrations with Bad Axe, we still wouldn't be where we are today if we didn't have the community of Bad Axe," Siev explains in the film. "It's the people that have supported us that continue to support our business and allow us to achieve this American dream, and it's the people who haven't supported us that have forced us that much closer together as a family. And for that, I'm thankful."

Filmed in 2020 during the height of the pandemic, the racial reckoning incited by the killing of George Floyd and deep partisan divides amid a presidential race, the film holds a magnifying glass to the nation's most complex nuances through the lens of a multicultural family living in Bad Axe. The documentary unearths racism and neo-Nazi beliefs brimming in the conservative city.

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Michigan restaurant owner Chun Siev prays in the documentary film "Bad Axe" by his son David Siev. The film focuses on the family and their restaurant Rachel's in Bad Axe, Michigan as they navigate the pandemic and a tumultuous 2020.

The Siev family embodies many of the communities hardest hit by the pandemic. Helmed by a Cambodian father  Chun Siev escaped the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s  and a Mexican mother, both with pre-existing health conditions, the Sievs share their fears about contracting the virus, which presents a higher risk among minority communities and individuals with underlying medical concerns.

As the operators of Rachels, they endure the hardships of many small businesses, namely restaurant owners navigating COVID-19 restrictions and the uncertainty of new norms like high takeout demand and social distancing protocols. In conservative Bad Axe, mask mandates and catering order cancellations at Rachel's were met with resistance.

The younger generation of Sievs, David, along with sisters Jaclyn and Raquel, represent the bold and outspoken community of allies who chose to stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. In conservative Bad Axe, the Sievs were met with death threats. And as former President Donald Trump coined the term the China virus, the Sievs were on the receiving end of Asian hate.

Sisters Jaclyn, left, and Raquel Siev working in the kitchen at Rachels, a family restaurant that's the subject of the documentary film "Bad Axe," which will be screened at the Freep Film Festival.

Still, Siev considers Bad Axe a love letter to his hometown. Its a display of unconditional love of a place, even in its ugliest moments  perhaps a tough love that reflects Bad Axes flaws in an effort to help it heal and evolve.

And like all great loves, an overwhelming show of support from the Bad Axe community has reciprocated that unconditional love. Despite some opposition after the release of the trailer, Siev said the film would not have been possible without the support of the larger community.

So many people rallied behind the crowdfunding campaign and our family, Siev said in an interview with the Free Press, that we were able to go above and beyond the initial fundraising goal and that is credit to the community of Bad Axe. It is unfortunate that we did receive the negative voices and the negative comments and the hate mail. It's far and few but it speaks volumes, unfortunately.

Chun Siev, photographed with his children David, Jaclyn and Raquel. The family is the subject of of the documentary film "Bad Axe" by David Siev. The film focuses on the family and their restaurant Rachel's in Bad Axe, Michigan as they navigate the pandemic and a tumultuous 2020.

Beyond Bad Axe, there is little division on the matter: Bad Axe is a film to love. At the 2022 SXSW Film Festival, Bad Axe took home the Audience Award for Documentary Feature as well as the Special Jury Recognition for Exceptional Intimacy in Storytelling. IFC Films has also acquired the documentary, which gives the film a theatrical release, a streaming partner and the opportunity to reach audiences across the globe, which Siev said gives the film a life beyond festival season.

It gets really meta. When I was on stage accepting the Special Jury Award at South by Southwest, there was this moment where I felt like I captured this story of the American dream and keeping it alive, Siev said pensively, and it was very emotional because I realized I am also part of that American dream being on the stage with this film. It was just crazy thinking about world outside of the film itself.

On April 28, Sievs 29th birthday, Bad Axe will join the Freep Film Festival for its Michigan premiere, a milestone that the director is anticipating with great Michigan pride.

What a great birthday present to be able to bring Bad Axe home to Michigan and to celebrate it with so many loved ones that will be there," Siev said.

'Bad Axe

7 p.m. Thursday, Detroit Film Theatre at the DIA. Detroit. Buy.

5 p.m. Saturday, Frame. Hazel Park. Buy.*

*"Bad Axe" is one of the Freep Film Festival's special food-and-film events as a part of the 4 Nights. 4 Films. 4 Chefs series in partnership with Frame in Hazel Park. The screening will be paired with dinner from chefs of Rachels, featuring such menu items as coconut cream salmon and sweet bourbon pork belly.

More: Top metro Detroit chefs prepare movie-themed meals at Frame's series; tickets on sale today

Contact Lyndsay C. Green at LCGreen@freepress.com

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 'Bad Axe' makes its Michigan premiere to the Freep Film Festival
Christian Pulisics last-minute goal handed Chelsea a 1-0 Premier League win over 10-man West Ham and spared Jorginhos penalty blushes.

Second-half substitute Pulisic swept home Marcos Alonsos low cross at Stamford Bridge to seal Chelseas first home win in four matches in all competitions.

The USA forwards crisp finish also offered Jorginho a major reprieve, with the Italy midfielder having missed a penalty with just four minutes left on the clock in an incident that also saw West Ham reduced to 10 men.

Look what it meant!  pic.twitter.com/AeKWVoqsZW  Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) April 24, 2022

Craig Dawson was sent off for hauling back Romelu Lukaku in the box, gifting Chelsea the perfect chance to turn a dispiriting performance into a much-needed win.

Jorginho stepped up and delivered his trademark hop, skip and side-footed penalty effort  only to see Lukasz Fabianski guess correctly and pull off a comfortable save.

Former Napoli man Jorginho missed two crucial penalties against Switzerland as reigning European champions Italy failed to qualify for this years World Cup.

Jorginho saw his penalty saved by West Ham United goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski (John Walton/PA)

But just when another penalty failure looked set to haunt the 30-year-old at Stamford Bridge, up popped Pulisic with a vital rescue act.

A win to keep Chelsea solidly in third place in the Premier League table, but given its dramatic nature also a result that ought to boost some weary bodies and minds in west London.

Manager Thomas Tuchel admitted on Friday that his players are fragile, tired and running short of ideas on how to fix their ailing home form.

West Ham held Chelsea at bay for much of the contest (John Walton/PA)

A dismal first half devoid of any invention or quality did absolutely nothing to disabuse anyone in the ground of those notions.

The much-changed Hammers were content to sit in two banks of four and invite Chelsea to break down their regimented set-up.

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The Blues had no answers before the break, and turned around as flat as they were frustrated.

HALF-TIME Chelsea 0-0 West Ham No goals in this one yet, with neither side showing the quality to break the deadlock#CHEWHU pic.twitter.com/HsXwGbiNgG  Premier League (@premierleague) April 24, 2022

The hosts finally upped the ante and the tempo after the interval, with a deflection helping Fabianski to keep out NGolo Kantes strike.

Trevoh Chalobahs 20-yard drive forced Fabianski into another save, but still Chelsea failed to fire.

The Blues malaise was encapsulated by Thiago Silva powering between West Hams lines and picking his spot with a shot  only to see team-mate Timo Werner deflect his effort wide. Werner was flagged for offside just for good measure.

Craig Dawson was sent off for bringing down Chelsea striker Romelu Lukaku (John Walton/PA)

Dawsons fine block thwarted Mason Mount and Werner could only blast wide after collecting the loose ball in the six-yard box.

Werner was then presented with the chance of the match as the ball dropped to him just eight yards out, but the Germany forward could not connect properly at full stretch, allowing Fabianski a straightforward save.

Pulisic, Lukaku and Hakim Ziyech replaced Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Kai Havertz and Werner for the final 15 minutes as the Blues went for broke.

Chelsea claimed the points in the end (John Walton/PA)

The triple substitution paid off in the end, but not without further drama.

Lukaku thought he had produced a vital act by drawing the penalty from Dawson, only for Jorginho  so often so secure from the spot  to miss again.

Pulisic stepped into the break as the super sub instead then, making no mistake when racing onto the ball with the goal at his mercy.
We are just days away from the Tennessee Titans making their first pick in the 2022 NFL Draft and there is about as much uncertainty around the NFL as ever before.

Usually by now we at least know who the first overall pick of the draft will be; however, this year even that is up for a valid debate as of right now.

The Titans enter the draft owning seven selections, including the 26th pick, which could be used on a handful of different players. Another avenue the Titans could explore is trading back and acquiring an extra pick or two depending on how far they decide to go.

In this particular mock, I traded out of the first round and gave up the right to a future fifth-year option in order to collect an extra premium pick. The trade values were based on the modern-day version of Jimmy Johnsons infamous draft pick value chart.

Having said all that, lets take a closer look at how this scenario plays out in my final mock draft that involves a trade back.

The trade

AP Photo/Mark Zaleski, File

TRADE: Titans trade picks Nos. 26 (223 points) and 131 (20 points) to the New York Giants for picks Nos. 36 (166 points), 67 (75 points), and a 2023 7th round pick (1-3 points).

Trade Rationale

Danielle Parhizkaran/NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK

The Titans give up their right to select in Round 1, but they get an early second-rounder (No. 36), along with an early third-rounder (No. 67) in return.

For the Giants, they get aggressive with their embarrassment of riches to give Brian Daboll his quarterback of the future at a more reasonable spot than inside the top 10.

When its all said and done, the Giants still end up selecting three times in the first round (Nos. 5, 7, 26), once in the third round (No. 81) while still collecting another fourth-rounder from Tennessee (No. 131).

Now, a look at the picks, and then some analysis of the Titans haul after that.

Round 2, Pick 36: WR George Pickens, Georgia

Joshua L. Jones-USA TODAY NETWORK

Round 3, Pick 67: TE Trey McBride, Colorado State

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Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports

Round 3, Pick 90: IOL Cole Strange, U-T Chattanooga

AP Photo/Darron Cummings

Round 4, Pick 143: RB Kyren Williams, Notre Dame

Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports

Round 5, Pick 169: OT Matt Waletzko, North Dakota

AP Photo/Butch Dill

Round 6, Pick 204: WR Tyquan Thornton, Baylor

Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Round 6, Pick 219: S Smoke Monday, Auburn

Marvin Gentry-USA TODAY Sports

Picks analysis

Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

With my first pick, I went ahead and selected one of the wide receivers I would have been tempted to take had I stuck at No. 26 overall.

Georgias George Pickens is one of the most underrated prospects in this entire draft class. Pickens has some of the strongest ball skills and most reliable hands in this class.



George Pickens' drop rate is great, but combined with a reel of absurd, spectacular catches makes it special. Best hands in the draft?pic.twitter.com/Qph96UqMFF  Sam Monson (@PFF_Sam) April 18, 2022

Pickens also possesses legitimate 4.4 speed at 6-foot-3, and he plays the physical brand of football that would fit in well with Mike Vrabel and the culture hes built in Tennessee.

All aboard the George Pickens hype train  pic.twitter.com/K1Pmo0dKR9  PFF (@PFF) April 21, 2022

The Georgia product will immediately give the Titans a formidable wide receiver trio, along with A.J. Brown and Robert Woods.

My next pick then went to arguably the best tight end in the entire draft, Trey McBride. The Colorado State product has three-down potential as a blocker and a pass-catcher.

I figured it wouldnt be fair to just show Trey McBride as a blocker So heres a two minute cut-up of his receiving chopspic.twitter.com/dxxiHKk2Oz https://t.co/OxmGcbdeRI  Kendall Mirsky (@MirskyKendall) April 21, 2022

Last season, the Titans ran the majority of their offense out of 11-personnel (three wide receivers) and 12-personnel (two tight ends). Those first two picks ensure that those packages will be more dynamic and talented.

I concluded Day 2 by selecting one of the most athletically fluid interior linemen in this entire class, Chattanoogas Cole Strange.

PRO-DAY UPDATE

Fast ascending Day 2 Tennessee-Chattanooga C/G Cole Strange worked out for OL coaches from Titans, Giants, Panthers, and Giants this morning. Strange only did position drills after putting up stellar Combine numbers (5.03 40-yd, 31x BP, 10-0 BJ, 7.44 3C). pic.twitter.com/rjIXBPZNrC  Jim Nagy (@JimNagy_SB) March 31, 2022

Cole Strange is having a good week pic.twitter.com/KyRAqvsnqN  Billy M (@BillyM_91) February 3, 2022

Strange would instantly join the starting competition at left guard with Jamarco Jones and Aaron Brewer, which ideally would also allow 2021 second-round pick, Dillon Radunz to solely focus on right tackle.

I then began Day 3 by giving the Titans a third-down running back with more overall upside than Dontrell Hilliard. Despite his limited athleticism, many believe that Kyren Williams has the best blend of pass protection, route-running, and pass-catching abilities out of all running backs in this class.

You could make a mixtape off of Kyren Williams blocking highlights alone. Hes got that dog in him. pic.twitter.com/691wODT8eR  Kenny G. (@Gritz_Blitz) March 2, 2022

The Notre Dame product also offers legitimate upside as a runner and could develop into a complete three-down running back with proper guidance and patience.

I then went ahead and drafted an athletic offensive linemen with a massive 7-foot-1 wingspan who dominated his level of competition in Matt Waletzko. The North Dakota product possesses all the traits that you look for in a project tackle. He is worth the shot there in Round 5.

In a league valuing tools above anything else these days, too many still sleeping on North Dakotas Matt Waletzko. @matt_waletzko has rare get-around reach (85 6/8 wingspan was longest at @seniorbowl) and quietly had great Combine with 5.03 40-yd dash, 30.0 VJ, and 9-5 BJ.  pic.twitter.com/syauc5ko0l  Jim Nagy (@JimNagy_SB) March 17, 2022

I concluded the draft by adding two players in Round 6 who could contribute to special teams and either offense or defense.

Tyquan Thornton is a dynamic athlete whose speed and versatility would be a valuable asset to the Titans wide receiver room and special teams units as a potential returner.



#Baylor's Tyquan Thornton is the fastest WR in the 2022 draft class (4.28), and has the 6'2 length to threaten as a complete outside WR. Check the  below: hand strength to finish and outstanding redzone ability, all while showing the game speed matches thespeed. #NFLDraft pic.twitter.com/AHqliLHONP  Eric Galko (@EricGalko) April 20, 2022

Lastly, I give the Titans a physical presence on defense and special teams that they can develop.



Smoke Monday is as well-rounded a Safety as there is  In 2021, he was the only SEC Safety with 77+ Grades in  Run Defense (78.2)

 Pass Rush (78.2)

 Coverage (77.0) pic.twitter.com/teaTVL66YB  PFF Draft (@PFF_College) February 6, 2022

Smoke Monday is a passionate tone-setter in the run game, and with the Titans being in the same division with Jonathan Taylor, its smart to have someone who can physically enforce things in the box.

Plus, as an added bonus, Monday has the coolest name in the draft and his addition would continue the Titans recent trend of picking players with cool names in the sixth round, like Brady Breeze and Racey McMath.

More 2022 NFL draft coverage

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Grading Reuters picks in 7-round mock

Titans among teams getting least value from picks

Every No. 219 pick since 2012

Final Titans mock draft round-up

Top 5 prospects at Titans positions of need

What Robinson, Vrabel said in pre-draft presser

Every teams biggest needs going into draft

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Abdominal pain is a symptom of bowel cancer (Getty Images)

The health secretary is urging men over the age of 60 to take up the NHS free tests for bowel cancer.

Sajid Javid, whose father died of the disease a decade ago, has highlighted that bowel cancer can be cured if caught in the early stages.

Around 43,000 people are diagnosed with the cancer across the UK each year, and it is responsible for 16,5000 deaths annually. It is the second most common cause of cancer deaths after lung cancer.

But the NHS predicts that just one in 20 people would go to the doctor if they had symptoms, with just 47 per cent of men taking up free screening compared to 56 per cent of women.

I know all too well how devastating this disease is having lost my dad to bowel cancer 10 years ago. If he had been diagnosed earlier, he may still be with us today, Mr Javid said.

Earlier this year, the government opened a call for evidence to inform an upcoming 10-year cancer plan which will look at how technologies are used in treatment and how to improve patient experiences.

As well as launching a 10-year Cancer Plan to deliver world-leading cancer care, I want to see more eligible people coming forward for bowel cancer screening, which saves at least 2,500 lives every year, Mr Javid added.

As bowel cancer is more common in older people, a home testing kit called the Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) is automatically sent to people aged 60-74 every two years.

The test is quick to use and means that patients do not need to go to hospital for screening.

If the test finds anything unusual, people may be asked to have further tests to confirm or rule out cancer.

The NHS says this regular screening for cancer reduces the risk of dying from bowel cancer by at least 25 per cent.

Earlier this month, research by charity Bowel Cancer UK found that almost half of UK adults cannot name a single symptom of the disease.

A survey of more than 2,000 people found that 45 per cent cannot name any symptoms of the disease, while just 35 per cent could identify the main red flag symptom, which is blood in faeces.

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Other key symptoms of bowel cancer include a change in bowel habits, pain in the abdomen, unexplained fatigue and weight loss.

The charity said men were less likely to be able to name a symptom, with 55 per cent failing to name any compared to 36 per cent of women.

Additional reporting by PA
A disservice to public servants

Trash piled next to the dumpster. Human waste and abandoned vehicles polluting adjacent wetlands. A speedboat on its trailer blocking access. Self-appointed guards chasing away passersby. Crime and threats to campers and nearby businesses rising. The illegal RV park on Ed Cone Boulevard had to be cleared.

This was not a self-regulated settlement by people desperate for a place to stay. Despite the city-provided Port-a-Potties and dumpsters, the environment had deteriorated into a social and physical slum.

For subscribers:Eugene 'bailing out Titanic with a teacup' helping people living in vehicles and addressing impacts

Yes, we must do better as a community. Everyone deserves a safe place to roost and the chance to become a good neighbor. When we tell people they cant park on private property, we should have public places to send them.

But The R-G portrayal of the removal of RV campers from Ed Cone Boulevard did a disservice to the public servants tasked with cleaning up a mess that did not have to be made. We must stop assuming that poverty and homelessness excuse criminal behavior that affects public health and safety. We must stop blaming the people we pay to enforce laws for doing their jobs. And we must start reporting such stories fairly, with the details that show the whole picture.

Mary Leighton, Eugene

The test of policy is how war ends

The story by Oleksander Stashevsky on the Ukraine war impels me to prop up moral reality. The editorial is all about confrontation and civilian massacres. But do we and NATO know where this is going?

Since returning from active duty in WW2, I have watched eight wars (Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria) begin with much enthusiasm and public support, none of which we knew how to end, three of which we withdrew from unilaterally. The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins.

Far too often, the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown, whether Ukraine is to survive or thrive it must not be either side's outpost against each other. Instead, Ukraine should function as a bridge between them. Russia must accept trying to force Ukraine into satellite status, and thereby move Russia's borders again, would doom Moscow. That would only repeat its history of self-fulfilling cycles of reciprocal pressures with Europe and the U.S.

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The West must understand that.

Bill Sarnoff, Eugene

But he didnt mean it

President Bidens offhand remark regarding Putin not remaining in power was heartfelt and human, if ill-advised. Marc Thiessens suggested response for President Bidens staff was far better than what was actually said and, for once, I agree with Mr. Thiessen (R-G, April 10).

However, to excoriate the president for being empathetic to the horror unfolding in Ukraine is a strong overreaction. He stated the presidents staff had to walk back what the president had said.

Did Thiessen have the same response every time Trumps spokespeople had to walk back his words? I long ago lost track of how many times they said, Oh, he was just kidding or many other variations of He didnt mean it.

Just a few examples: He was just jesting when he asked Russia for Hillary Clintons missing email; he didnt really mean we should ingest or inject disinfectant; he was only joking when he told officials to slow down coronavirus testing; he was just kidding when he said Obama was the founder of ISIS; he was just making a joke when he suggested Democrats who didnt applaud him were guilty of treason.

I could go on. You get the picture. Does Marc Thiessen?

Trudi Diffendaffer, Creswell

Cheers to hospice volunteers

Lets take National Volunteer Appreciate Week to remember the dedicated people who care for our families and neighbors during their end-of-life journeys. Hospice volunteers are essential for making our patients and families feel the comfort of support as they live their last days. They show up with hearts wide open to be with you. They are there to help with errands, companionship, tasks or bereavement care.

The hospice benefit provides care and comfort to people in their homes, care facilities or Pete Moore Hospice House. People who receive hospice care live longer than folks who do not receive hospice care. The hospice team consists of the medical director, nurses, aides, social workers, chaplains, bereavement counselors, office staff and trained volunteers who care for you and your family/friends during your final journey. I am grateful for having been a part of the team at Cascade Health as a nurse, massage therapist and volunteer for the past three decades.

Cheers to my kindred spirits!

Maggy Rose, Eugene

For research only?

I couldnt agree more with George Hermach (Letters, April 10), who questions the real outcome of the Elliott State Forest as a research forest by the passage of SB 1546. This forest harbors some of the last remaining Oregon old growth and should be locked up for protection and wildlife enhancement in perpetuity, not allow so-called research purposes including timber harvesting. Revenue will be used to manage the forest?

This is reminiscent of the Convention for International Trade of Endangered Species mandate to ban all whaling with the exception of research harvesting, which Japan takes full advantage of. Mary Peabody, Eugene

Time to look at the urban growth boundary

The new efforts to regulate landlords seems to be just another attempt for government to deal with an issue it is at least partially responsible for. How? Instead of a new layer of regulations on landlords, if there were more rental properties open for renters, landlords would be more inclined to behave properly with potential tenants.

Tenants would have more of an upper hand with more rentals available. When there is a shortage of rental units, landlords can take advantage of renters and rents will increase when supply is constrained.

Related:Landlords, tenants weigh in on Eugene's proposed renter protection policies

Why is there not a greater surplus of rental properties? The root cause of this is the lack of inexpensive land for development. Oregons long-standing land-use regulations that created the urban growth boundaries decades ago are the reason we do not have more housing at more reasonable prices. Some regulations have, over time, developed unintended consequences. This is one. With continued population growth in the state, its time to take a new look at the UGB rule and open the doors to more affordable housing.

John F. Quilter, Eugene

Thoughts on myriad problems

Regarding the myriad problems of today, I offer the following thoughts.

To the restless relocators: Take heed of your role in escalating home prices in popular, growing locales.

To businesses up and down the supply chain: Take stock of whether you need to raise prices before doing so because "everybody else is."

To landlords and home sellers: Consider setting a reasonable price instead of asking top dollar, especially when prices are rising fast.

To motorists: Try alternative modes of transportation such as walking, biking or riding the bus or train; consolidate trips into as few as possible, practice staying close to home for leisure and vacations.

To those of an ideological bent: Be humble and listen to others. There is wisdom and knowledge in unexpected places.

To those who focus on their personal rights: Try looking instead at our societal obligations.

To today's youth: Heed the above lest ye exacerbate today's multitudinous problems; examine what you can do about climate change, social injustice and financial inequities in lieu of expecting others to pave the way.

To all: Practice self-restraint, thoughtfulness, sacrifice and compassion. To stay the current human course will only court needless suffering and disaster.

Tom Happy, Eugene

Letters should be 200 words or fewer and sent with the writers name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to rgletters@registerguard.com. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and maybe published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Letters: Ukraine, homelessness, and Eugene's urban growth boundary
Editorial use only Mandatory Credit: Photo by Snap/Shutterstock (390882bf) FILM STILLS OF 'WIZARD OF OZ' WITH 1939, ANIMALS (WITH ACTORS), CHARACTER, DOG, DOROTHY: WIZARD OF OZ, VICTOR FLEMING, JUDY GARLAND IN 1939 VARIOUS

Snap/Shutterstock

There's no place like a (new) home!

One of the gingham pinafore dresses worn by Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz will go up for sale in an upcoming auction.

The costume, worn by the ruby-slippered, tornado-transported Dorothy in the 1939 film, was considered lost for nearly four decades before its re-discovery last year in the collections of the drama department at the Catholic University of America.

Auction house Bonhams will put up the dress for sale in Los Angeles on May 24 as part of their Bonhams Classic Hollywood: Film and Television sale.

In a news release, Bonhams estimated the dress' value at between $800,000 and $1.2 million.

RELATED: Judy Garland's Missing Wizard of Oz Dress Unearthed After Disappearing More Than 4 Decades Ago

Photo by: Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx 11/23/15 Walt Disney's WWI scrapbook goes on sale in New York - Bonhams' 'TCM presents...Treasures from the Dream Factory' sale, featuring the only known existing scrapbook of original cartoons drawn by a 17-year-old Walt Disney, estd $150,000 - $200,000. The scrapbook, created during the close of World War I when Disney was serving as an ambulance driver, features 13 cartoons of war and animal characters. Other highlights include Steve McQueen's racing suit from 'Le Mans', estd $200,000 - $300,000, a Judy Garland-worn 'Dorothy' dress from 'The Wizard of Oz', estd $800,000 - $1.2 million, and a 'golden ticket' from the 1971 movie 'Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory', estd $10,000 - $15,000

Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx

Bonhams also said the dress is one of only four of the original costume in existence and one of only two still including the white blouse.

This particular dress, according to the auction house, has been pinpointed as the one Garland wore in the scene where Dorothy confronts the Wicked Witch of the West in her castle.

The dress first came to Catholic University back in the 1970s, as a gift to the former head of the drama department, Father Gilbert Hartke. But after just a year at the Washington, D.C., campus, it was reported to have mysteriously gone missing.

It wasn't until May 2021, nearly four decades later, that, in a moment of chance, the dress was found again. In a story published by the university at the time, staff member Matt Riva said just how lucky the discovery was ... and what an odd spot the dress was ultimately found in.

Never miss a story  sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Editorial use only Mandatory Credit: Photo by Snap/Shutterstock (390882bh) FILM STILLS OF 'WIZARD OF OZ' WITH 1939, CHARACTER, DOROTHY: WIZARD OF OZ, VICTOR FLEMING, JUDY GARLAND IN 1939 VARIOUS

Snap/Shutterstock

"I had looked in our archives, storage closets, etc. to no avail. I assumed it was a tall tale (of which many exist for Father Hartke)," Ripa explained then. "Our building is in the process of renovations and upgrades, so I was cleaning out my office to prepare. I noticed on top of the faculty mailboxes a trashbag and asked my co-worker to hand it to me. On the trashbag was a note for our former chair stating that he had found 'this' in his office and that he must have moved it when he moved out of the chair's office"

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Ripa said he never could have expected what "this" turned out to be.

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"I was curious what was inside and opened the trashbag and inside was a shoebox and inside the shoe box was the dress!! I couldn't believe it," he said. "Needless to say, I have found many interesting things in the Hartke during my time at CUA, but I think this one takes the cake."

RELATED VIDEO: See Renee Zellweger's Amazing Transformation Into Judy Garland for New Movie

Proceeds from the dress auction will go toward supporting the Department of Drama at Catholic University.

In a statement, Jacqueline J. Leary-Warsaw, dean of the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art said that while sending the outfit somewhere over the rainbow wasn't going to easy, Catholic University was "proud" to share its benefits.

"While parting with this dress is bittersweet, the proceeds are going to help support future generations training for professional careers in theatre," Leary-Warsaw said. "It might just be that the funding helps to prepare the next Mercedes McCambridge or Judy Garland!"
Thousands of Michigan GOP leaders gathered in Grand Rapids on Saturday to decide which candidates will make it onto November's ballot, delivering two victories for former President Donald Trump in a major test for his hold over the state party.

Both Trump-endorsed candidates, Kristina Karamo for secretary of state and Matt DePerno for attorney general were endorsed by Michigan Republicans in two of the most closely watched races of the weekend.

Trump made his presence known in the state, endorsing candidates up and down the ballot, mainly focusing on whether or not they believe his baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

MORE: The midterms are coming. Here are some key races to watch.

DePerno, a lawyer, filed suit seeking to audit the 2020 election results in Antrim County; however, those efforts were dismissed by a Michigan court Thursday. Karamo was part of the Supreme Court lawsuit that was eventually rejected seeking to overturn the 2020 results after claiming she personally witnessed election fraud in Detroit.

Karamo sailed to victory Saturday earning 67% of the vote among delegates, according to preliminary results. She will now face incumbent Jocelyn Benson in the general election.

Things weren't as clear in the attorney general race. No candidate cleared the 50% of votes needed, sending the race into a second vote where DePerno emerged triumphant. He faces a general election battle against Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel.

PHOTO: Shadows of attendees are seen on a riser during a rally held by former President Donald Trump in Washington Township, Michigan, April 2, 2022. (Emily Elconin/Reuters)

Trump chimed in on Saturday's event, vowing to fight for both candidates during the general election and doubling down on his false claims the 2020 Election was fraudulent. "Michigan is one of the worst on Election Fraud and corruption, and they will put an end to it. At the same time, theyll get to the bottom of the 2020 Election Fraud," he said in a statement.

Trump has also endorsed 10 candidates for seats in the state legislature.

The success of Karamo and DePerno are part of a broader national trend of election-denying candidates seeking top posts in battleground states. If these candidates are successfully elected, they will be directly involved with validating the results of future elections.

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"It's true that any past party president, you know, would be a very influential endorsement," Matt Grossmann, a political science professor at Michigan State University, told ABC News. "What is not routine at all is that the president is making a decision on the basis of people's views of whether the last election was stolen or not."

PHOTO: Former President Donald Trump arrives at a rally on April 02, 2022 near Washington, Michigan. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Some in the party have signaled they want to shift away from focusing on 2020. On April 11, Michigan counties held conventions to choose the delegates who will represent them at this week's state convention. In Macomb County, people were seen on video shouting over each other and trading insults. The night ended with a vote removing the county party chairman and staunch supporter of the former president, Mark Forton.

Amid the infighting among the two wings of the party, Portela says Saturday's decision was ultimately determined by who has the best chances of winning in the midterms.

"Voters showed up to make their voices heard and they want change at the top. That change starts this November by electing Republicans up and down the ballot," he said.

In Michigan, party delegates nominate candidates for most statewide offices at party conventions rather than holding primaries. The party will formally nominate those candidates in August.

This is the earliest Michigan Republicans have ever held the convention as the party looks to maximize its chances of flipping seats in the battleground state. Trump lost Michigan in 2020 by about 150,000 votes.

MORE: Battleground GOP Senate candidates diverge over Scott plan

"These candidates need the time really to make the case as to why you should be elected," Gustavo Portela, communications director for the Michigan Republican Party, told ABC News. "It also gives the party an opportunity to back them financially."

Trump-endorsed candidates emerge victorious in Michigan GOP convention originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Apr. 24OXFORD  Brad Cumbest's struggles to find what to say are few and far between.

He didn't hesitate in the preseason to hype up Mississippi State's expectations  claiming this team's offense could be better than the one from last season's national championship run.

There was little hesitation in his sharing of his hatred toward Ole Miss after Saturday's series-clinching 7-6 win  where Cumbest's solo shot in the 11th proved to be the game-winner.

He said all the right things postgame, as he typically seems to do, but in a brief moment he couldn't find the words when asked what this series win means for an MSU team scratching to get back into the postseason picture.

"Uh, woof," Cumbest exhaled. "Words can't describe what this means for this team. The way we competed last weekend and rolling over to this weekend, man, it's something we need to carry over weekend to weekend."

Mississippi State did itself few favors in the three-game set against Ole Miss. The Bulldogs had a crucial first-inning error in the series opener which led to a three-run home run.

Preston Johnson allowed back-to-back-to-back home runs to open Friday's game. And after leading for four innings, a two-run home run off the bat of Jacob Gonzalez in the ninth sent the finale into extra innings.

But across an SEC season, mistakes are plenty. Good teams find ways to battle through them. Teams such as Ole Miss have found ways to lose, even in a crucial series against rivals.

"We just keep playing the game," Cumbest said. "Toughness. Coach (Chris) Lemonis talks about it all the time. Toughness wins."

Mississippi State has had plenty of obstacles to overcome in its first season as defending champions. Season-ending injuries to Landon Sims, Stone Simmons and Brooks Auger have diminished the pitching staff.

High-level prospects Tanner Allen and Rowdey Jordan left a gap atop the lineup. And yet, State has battled through and left its opponents speechless, too.

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"I don't know if there are any words for this one, guys," Ole Miss outfielder Kevin Graham said postgame. "Yeah, it's tough right there. It's a tough one to take."

Lemonis has talked about the Bulldogs getting punched in the face often, both on and off the field. MSU's inability to bounce back from the early blows  such as the series sweep against LSU two weeks ago  put the team in a spot where postseason aspirations are still far from clinched.

But Lemonis has learned something about his team moving forward. It comes from the gritty at-bats freshman Hunter Hines tops off with three-run blasts. It comes from KC Hunt, a starter to open this season, entering the game in the ninth after a crushing home run and pitching 2 2/3 scoreless innings. It comes from Cumbest, who grew up in this rivalry, delivering a punch back.

"I grew up hating these guys," Cumbest said. "This is awesome. This is the story of any Mississippi kid's life."

Ole Miss (22-17, 6-12 SEC) entered the series among D1Baseball's final four teams in the NCAA postseason picture. Mississippi State (24-17, 8-10 SEC) was completely out.

A series win for the Bulldogs  a sixth straight against the Rebels  flips the script. And it suddenly gives State a clear path to a regional.

Four SEC series remain. The first is a trip to SEC bottom-feeder Missouri. Then, State returns home to face a struggling Florida team.

A crucial trip to Texas A&M follows before closing out the regular season against No. 1 Tennessee at Dudy Noble Field.

What's ahead is unknown, and Lemonis reverts to coach-speak with his one-game-at-a-time mentality. But in a statement made in a rivalry he admits means more than other SEC games, Lemonis found a quality in his team which could determine the fate of the 2022 Mississippi State baseball team.

"They're invested," Lemonis said. "They're coming to the ballpark every day. We've had trials and tribulations, and they just keep fighting through it."

STEFAN KRAJISNIK is the Mississippi State athletics reporter for the Daily Journal. Contact him at stefan.krajisnik@djournal.com.
Apr. 23Former Chattanooga City Councilman Larry Grohn was nearly prevented from running for school board this year because of missing campaign finance paperwork from his last run for office, when he unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2017.

Grohn received 4,941 votes in his run for mayor, losing to then-Mayor Andy Berke, who received 11,991 votes in his bid for a second term. Grohn's campaign failed to file the final paperwork from that effort, election officials informed him when he attempted to run for school board.

Grohn, seeking to run as a Republican from East Ridge in the newly partisan elections for school board, went before the Hamilton County Election Commission in January to try to sort the matter out.

"It is not pleasant for me to get in front of you and tell you I failed in my responsibilities as a candidate," Grohn told the commission at the meeting Jan 12.

The next day, Grohn filed the required paperwork, disclosing that the defunct mayoral campaign had a balance of $17,447, after spending $1,498 on an election night party at Puckett's restaurant.

Grohn will vie for the District 8 seat to represent East Ridge, Concord and Brainerd Hills. He will be the uncontested Republican candidate on the May 3 ballot. On Aug. 4, he will face the winner of the Democratic primary between Sandy Norris Smith and Katie Perkins.

Although Grohn disclosed the remaining mayoral campaign funds as required, Grohn told the commission he doesn't know where the leftover funds are, saying he left the state after the campaign as a result of a family matter and left the funds in the care of his former campaign manager, Dalton Temple, and former treasurer, Austin Sams.

Grohn told the commission that he had tried for six weeks to contact both and locate the funds but was unsuccessful.

"Mr. Temple is claiming I closed the account and absconded to another state with these funds. I'm contending that it's impossible for me to have closed this account down because I didn't even know what bank it is in, and it's not under my Social Security number," Grohn said at the Jan. 12 meeting.

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"So, he's saying you took the money, and you're saying he took the money?" Chairman Michael Walden asked Grohn.

"I'm saying he had complete control, and I have to admit to my foolishness to put my complete trust in this individual. I never saw the checkbook. I never had a check register," Grohn responded.

In a statement to the commission, Temple said Grohn and his wife left for Texas after the campaign ended. He claimed Grohn told him in a phone call that Grohn had emptied the account and taken the funds. Temple also said he was never compensated for his services and is owed roughly $25,000.

"When Mr. Grohn was billed for the final invoice, he replied by email to state that I should have known I would only be paid if he had won, and that he would not pay the debt. In response, it was stated that he owed this money, and Mr. Grohn replied stating he would not pay. Since Mr. Grohn has started to contact me, he claims that I did the campaign for free. This is against the law and not something tat I could then or now agree to," Temple wrote in his statement.

Temple said in the letter that he had spoken with Election Commission officials in late 2017 after they had contacted him regarding the campaign disclosure paperwork. He told them Grohn had left him with "unpaid bills" and he did not know where Grohn had moved to in Texas. He said it wasn't until November 2021 when he heard again from Grohn, asking for help "clearing up" the financial disclosure for the mayoral campaign.

According to Temple's statement, Grohn's attorney, Joe Manuel, emailed him in December 2021 asking for copies of the campaign bank statements. Temple replied saying he did not have bank statements, the bank name, the bank account number nor access to the account "in any way."

Grohn asked the commission to involve the District Attorney's Office and the state Registry of Election Finance for further investigation. Commissioners voted unanimously to do so.

"I checked with that bank, and there is no account under my name, my wife's name, either of our Social Security numbers or a Committee to Elect Larry Grohn. There's no record at First Tennessee, First Horizon or at eight other banks," Grohn told election commissioners Jan. 12.

The DA turned the case over to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which later returned findings to the DA for review.

"Our office reviewed the case and found no criminal wrongdoing. We also reported those findings to the TBI," DA Communications Director Bruce Garner said in an email, adding that all money had been accounted for.

Garner said the case is closed and there are no investigations ongoing into Grohn's mayoral campaign.

"I'm still missing around $16,000," Grohn told the Times Free Press.

Grohn said he left for Texas in June 2017 to "take care of some family business." According to him, the funds were drained without a trace after he moved.

"The account was zeroed out," he said. "And it was done in two transfers to checking accounts. And I don't know what bank they went to or who they went to."

Temple's attorney, Zac Greene, said Temple never touched the account.

"Mr. Temple denies any wrongdoing. And it is our understanding that the investigation has been closed and that no wrongdoing was identified," Greene said.

Temple currently manages the campaign of Virginia Anne Manson for the District 11 seat. She is a Republican from Lookout Mountain.

Grohn said he plans to pursue the matter in civil court following election season and believes he has a strong case.

The Times Free Press was unable to locate Sams for comment.

Contact Carmen Nesbitt at cnesbitt@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327. Follow her on Twitter @carmen_nesbitt.
TEHRAN, April 4 (Xinhua) -- Iran is ready to resume talks with Saudi Arabia to solve differences, the Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman announced Monday.

"We are ready for the continuation of talks and for the settlement of differences. We have submitted our views in written form to the Saudi side, and they should express their views," Saeed Khatibzadeh said in his weekly press briefing.

Repeating Iran's welcome of a cease-fire in Yemen, he said this "should be completed with the beginning of intra-Yemeni dialogue and we should wait for the results."

Following the UN-backed two-month truce in Yemen, Khatibzadeh on Saturday expressed hope that the peace initiative can be a prelude to completely lifting the siege on the Yemeni people and the establishment of a permanent cease-fire to find a political solution to the crisis.

Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014 when the Iran-backed Houthi militia seized control of several northern provinces and forced the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa.

According to the United Nations, the war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 4 million, and pushed the country to the brink of starvation. 
April 24, 1997

AUBURN  After years of teaching kids about black holes, it appears the Southern Cayuga Atmospherium and Planetarium just escaped falling into one.

"It looks like the planetarium will be open for business next year based on preliminary budget requests from several school districts," said Greg Hinman, assistant superintendent for instruction at the Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES.

Topping the list of school districts is Auburn, reinstating planetarium services in its budget after a several-year absence.

"There was a lot of public support this year for getting the planetarium back into our budget, so we decided to go wit hit," said John Sroka, Auburn school board president. "It seems like a program that would benefit our kids a great deal."

Sroka said just one grade level for the entire district will probably be selected to attend the planetarium next year. But he said it hasn't been determined which grade it will be.

Hinman said at least two other BOCES member districts, Jordan-Elbridge and Union Springs, will probably include planetarium services next year along with Auburn.

 Compiled by David Wilcox

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A Marder armoured infantry fighting vehicle of the German army Bundeswehr is pictured at Rukla military base

ZURICH (Reuters) - Neutral Switzerland has held up German arms deliveries to Ukraine by blocking the re-export of Swiss-made ammunition used in Marder infantry fighting vehicles that Kyiv would like to get, Swiss paper SonntagsZeitung reported.

The news comes as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz faces growing criticism for his government's failure to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine to help it fend off Russian attacks, even as other Western allies step up shipments.

The Marder, made by German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, uses ammunition manufactured in Switzerland, the paper said. Switzerland restricts the re-export of such war materiel to conflict zones.

The paper quoted a spokesperson for the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) as saying it had received two inquiries from Germany about transferring to Ukraine munitions it had got from Switzerland.

"Both of Germany's requests were answered in the negative with reference to Swiss neutrality and the mandatory rejection criteria of the war material legislation," it quoted the spokesperson as saying.

SECO was not immediately available for comment on Sunday outside of regular business hours.

Switzerland has departed with past practice and adopted European Union sanctions designed to punish Russian for invading Ukraine, but has said its neutrality does not permit providing arms in conflict zones.

Last month it rejected Poland's request for arms to help neighbouring Ukraine.

(Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand  A tiny island chain in the South Pacific has Western governments scrambling after it agreed to a security pact with China that the United States and its allies fear could enhance Beijings military power in this strategically important region.

The deal between China and the Solomon Islands, a nation of 700,000 people that had deadly riots last year, poses serious risks to a free and open Indo-Pacific, officials from the U.S., Australia, Japan and New Zealand said in a statement on Wednesday.

Alarm in Washington and other capitals is so high that on Friday the highest-level U.S. delegation in years visited the Solomon Islands. Kurt Campbell, the top White House official for Asia, and Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, met with Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare in Honiara, the capital.

Campbell had been expected to warn Sogavare against the deal, the details of which have not been publicly disclosed, but that was pre-empted days before his visit when Beijing and Honiara announced they had already signed it. According to a draft leaked online in March, the deal allows China to send police and armed forces to the Solomon Islands to assist in maintaining social order and Chinese warships to make stopovers there.

Image: SOLOMONS-US-CHINA-DIPLOMACY-SECURITY (Mavis Podokolo / AFP - Getty Images)

The deal is a game changer, said Anne-Marie Brady, a China expert at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

The U.S. is the main target of this move, as it aims to counter U.S. containment strategy in the Indo-Pacific, she said. But it also directly threatens the security and autonomy of the island states of the Pacific, as well as Australia and New Zealand.

Among their concerns is that the deal could enable China to set up a military base  its first in the Pacific  less than 1,300 miles from Australia, whose relations with Beijing are at their lowest point in years. The Solomon Islands also sit on key shipping lanes between the U.S. and Asia.

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Leaders from the small island nations in the Pacific, the site of some of the fiercest battles in World War II, have expressed worries they could once again be drawn into a conflict among major powers. In an open letter last month, Federated States of Micronesia President David W. Panuelo implored Sogavare to consider the far-reaching and grave security implications of the China agreement.

At their meeting on Friday, Sogavare assured the U.S. delegation the deal would give China no military base, no long-term presence and no power projection capability, according to a White House statement. The Chinese Foreign Ministry also says the agreement is about maintaining stability in the Solomon Islands and is not targeted at any third party.

Normal law enforcement and security cooperation between China and Solomon Islands, two sovereign and independent countries, is consistent with international law and customary international practice, ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a news conference last month.

Beijing has accused Washington of promoting a cold war mentality in the Indo-Pacific through initiatives such as Aukus, a security partnership with Australia and Britain that the Biden administration announced last year. Even before the China agreement was leaked online, the U.S. said it planned to reopen its embassy in the Solomon Islands for the first time since 1993.

The Solomon Islands has grown closer to China under Sogavare, giving Beijing a major win in 2019 when it severed long-standing diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Unease about Chinas role in the countrys affairs, and claims of Beijing-linked corruption, contributed to violent unrest in November that targeted the capitals Chinatown and left four people dead. Australia sent peacekeeping forces under its own security agreement with the country.

TOPSHOT-SOLOMONS-UNREST-RIOTS (Charley Piringi / AFP via Getty Images file)

According to Sogavare, the security pact with Beijing is needed in part so Chinese police can protect Chinese-funded infrastructure. But opposition leader Matthew Wale said he feared Sogavare, who has tried to postpone the 2023 general election, could use Chinese forces to prop up his government.

The Solomon Islands Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not reply to an email request for comment.

The stakes are very high, Cleo Paskal, a U.S.-based Indo-Pacific analyst, said of the deal.

The links with China are centered on one individual, Sogavare, and are increasingly unpopular across Solomons. The country is one free and fair election away not just from abrogating the security agreement, but from flipping back to Taiwan, she said.

This raises concerns that a security incident will happen or be created that is used as a pretext to cancel the elections and invite in P.R.C. security forces, she added, using the initials for Chinas formal name, the Peoples Republic of China.

Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, a political scientist at the University of Hawaii who is from the Solomon Islands, said Sogavares government would not allow Beijing to build a military installation and was simply seeking to exploit global rivalries.

The West is really, really anxious about Chinas growing influence in the region, he said, and its playing into the Solomons governments hands. Theyre trying to create a situation where they can leverage the West as well as the P.R.C. to see if the country can gain as much from it as possible.

While it is likely to have some military presence in the Solomon Islands, Kabutaulaka said, China doesnt need its own base there.

If their ships and navy can acquire access to the Solomons, they will not need a permanent physical presence, he said. And any military base would cause a lot of debate that could become a political liability for the governments in both Honiara and Beijing.

Iati Iati, Pacific security fellow at the Center for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, told NBC News he doesnt see the same level of alarm among Pacific island nations as in Australia and New Zealand.

Those two countries, which see the Pacific as their backyard, will not influence their neighbors if they continue to act in a high-handed and condescending manner when issues like this arise, Iati said.

The Pacific has already been militarized, he said, citing a new U.S. military base being built in Micronesia and upgrades to a naval base in Papua New Guinea being funded by the U.S. and Australia.

They speak about respecting Pacific Island countries sovereignty, but then assert that they know whats best for these countries security needs, Iati said. Responses from Australian and New Zealand government circles reek of neo-colonial sentiments that Pacific island countries appear to have grown tired of.

Image: SOLOMONS-US-CHINA-DIPLOMACY-SECURITY (Jay Liofasi / AFP - Getty Images)

The reaction to the China-Solomon Islands security agreement has been especially sharp in Australia, where an election campaign is underway. One commentator called it Australias Cuban missile crisis and said Australian forces should invade the Solomon Islands if necessary to block the deal. An Australian government minister flew to the Solomon Islands this month to try to persuade Sogavare not to move ahead with it.

Kabutaulaka said the way Australia and other countries think about the Pacific has not kept up with reality.

China is a power that is in the region to stay, he said. The challenge for Pacific island nations is to manage both the relationship with China and the Western countries in ways that benefit them and ensure that they are not trampled on.
Weather Alert

...FREEZE WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 2 AM TO 8 AM PDT TUESDAY... * WHAT...Overnight temperatures expected to drop into the low to mid 30s with sub-freezing temperatures as low as 30 to 32 in the cold prone areas of these zones. * WHERE...In Washington, Kittitas Valley and Yakima Valley. In Oregon, Foothills of the Northern Blue Mountains of Oregon and Foothills of the Southern Blue Mountains of Oregon. * WHEN...From 2 AM to 8 AM PDT Tuesday. * IMPACTS...Frost and freeze conditions will kill crops, other sensitive vegetation and possibly damage unprotected outdoor plumbing. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Sensitive plants and vegetation should be protected. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Take steps now to protect tender plants from the cold. To prevent freezing and possible bursting of outdoor water pipes they should be wrapped, drained, or allowed to drip slowly. Those that have in-ground sprinkler systems should drain them and cover above- ground pipes to protect them from freezing. &&
A lot of towns might envy the challenges Union Gap is facing. In a sense, the historic city on Yakimas southern edge is a victim of its own success.

The problem, if thats what youd consider it, is that commercial development has outpaced residential growth for a number of years. A bustling city of 25,000-30,000 by day, things fall quiet when everybody goes home and the population shrinks back to 7,000.

The Valley Mall, blocks of big-box retailers and rows of factories and warehouses have flourished in the past quarter century, bringing in jobs, tax revenue  and lots and lots of heavy-truck traffic.

The Regional Beltway Connector project, underway for six years now, should help, Mayor John Hodkinson told the Washington State Transportation Commission last week. Meeting in person for the first time in two years, the commission staged two days of talks in Union Gap.

The regional beltway offers a safer and more direct route for cars and trucks between I-82 and a rapidly developing commercial and retail area, the mayor said in a welcoming address to the commission on Tuesday. (It) will cut down traffic on Main Street and make things safer by our school.

A $34.4 million state Department of Transportation rebuild of the Interstate 82/U.S. Highway 97 interchange in 2019 has helped, too. The project gives eastbound and westbound traffic from the freeway access to the south end of Union Gap.

The $3.65 million first phase of the citys project stretched Longfibre Road south, connecting it to a roundabout that links to Goodman Road. Eventually, another road will extend east from the roundabout and tie into the I-82/U.S. 97 interchange.

When the works all done, Union Gap should have roads that are designed to better accommodate heavy volumes of big rigs without clogging up Main Street, residential streets or school zones.

That all sounds good. But we cant help feeling a little nostalgic for the days when Union Gap was more than just a thriving industrial hub.

The towns character emerged early, when it was an 1800s railroad stop. For years, its been a place of commerce where business ventures are welcomed warmly.

But its also been a place thats hung onto a lot of its history. Its the home of the Central Washington Agriculture Museum, the site of annual Civil War re-enactments and the fall Agri-copia. Its a town with an Old Town Road and a Main Street with old-fashioned mom-and-pop shops and all sorts of unexpected, quirky enterprises.

Incongruously, theyre all a stones throw away from the mall and sprawls of big new box stores.

Its hard not to think that as city officials have focused on business development, quality of life and preservation considerations might have lagged some. Maybe thats part of why the towns residential growth hasnt kept up with its commercial successes.

To be healthy, you need to have residents and you need to have commercial, city Public Works Director Dennis Henne said during last weeks talks. Until WinCo, we didnt even have our own grocery store in Union Gap  Were starting to be a community again.

That sounds good, too.

Blocks of national megastores with familiar logos might be great for the local economy, but we hope Union Gap doesnt forget its local history and character.

Its a great place to work and shop. It could also be a great place for more people to live.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)  A recent court ruling has opened the door to the release of psychological treatment records of priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany accused of child sexual abuse.

The Albany Times-Union reported the ruling came in a lawsuit by an alleged abuse victim from the 1980s who sought records detailing the treatment received by the Rev. Edward Pratt and other priests.

The diocese had argued that the records were subject to patient-physician privilege, but the appeals court wrote last Thursday that the privilege was waived because the priests' records had been shared with then-Bishop Howard J. Hubbard.

The appellate court also upheld a lower court judge's decision that ordered the diocese to turn over personnel records of dozens of priests determined to have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse from the 1940s through the 1990s, as well as notes of investigators hired by the diocese to look into sexual abuse allegations, the newspaper reported.

The claims of the victims-survivors remain the highest priority of the diocese. The guidance and orders provided by the courts are respected and followed with compliance, the diocese said Thursday in a statement, the Times-Union reported.

Last month, the same lower court judge ordered the release of a deposition taken last year in which Hubbard acknowledged covering up allegations of sexual abuse against children by priests.

Hundreds of people have sued the Albany diocese over sexual abuse they say they endured as children, sometimes decades ago. In his testimony, Hubbard said part of the reason he didnt report allegations of sexual abuse was to avoid scandal and protect the reputation of the diocese.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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New Delhi: Clothing retailer Central has been asked to pay a compensation of R 21,000 to a customer for charging him Rs 12 for a carry bag. The decision taken by Andhra Pradesh's Vizag citys consumer court is one of the many such orders taken against offline retailers that charge for carry bags.

Central, which is a division of Future Lifestyle Fashions, was also directed by the Members of the Visakhapatnam District Consumers Commission-I to pay the Rs 12 back to the complainant named Seepana Rama Rao. Notably, Rao himself is an advocate and resides in Vizag city.

The commission has also directed the store to pay Rs 21,000 towards compensation for mental harassment. According to a report by The Times of India, the store was also ordered to pay Rs 1,500 towards the legal cost.

Rao had reportedly purchased clothes worth Rs 628.96 from Central on July 14, 2019. However, the store cashier asked him to pay an extra Rs 12 for the bag in which his clothes were kept.

Initially, Rao resisted paying for the carry bag. He noticed that the carry bag had Centrals logo on both sides, and he explained to the store manager that charging for a carry bag that advertises a brand was illegal. But the store manager reportedly didnt give two hoots about its request.

Moreover, the cashier kept insisting on the payment, and after speaking with the store manager, who also refused to provide the bag for free, paid for the carry bag. He finally decided to file a complaint and approached the consumer forum seeking compensation for mental harassment.

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New Delhi: Yes Bank co-founder Rana Kapoor has told the Enforcement Directorate that he was "forced" to buy an M F Husain painting from Congress' Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and the sale proceeds were utilised by the Gandhi family for the medical treatment of Congress president Sonia Gandhi in New York, as per the chargesheet filed by the federal anti-money laundering agency in a special court here.

Kapoor also told the ED that he was told by the then petroleum minister Murli Deora that the refusal to buy the M F Husain painting will not only prevent him from building a relationship with the Gandhi family but also prevent him from getting the 'Padma Bhushan' award.

The statements of Rana Kapoor are part of the second supplementary chargesheet (overall third) filed in the special court here recently against the Yes Bank co-founder, his family, Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL) promoters Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan, and others in a money laundering case.

Stating that he had paid a cheque of Rs 2 crore, Kapoor claimed that "Milind Deora (son of the late Murli Deora and former Congress MP) later conveyed to him confidentially that the sale proceeds were utilised by the Gandhi family for the medical treatment of Sonia Gandhi in New York".

Kapoor also told the ED that Ahmed Patel, a close confidante of Sonia Gandhi, had told him that by supporting the Gandhi family at an opportune time for medical treatment of Sonia Gandhi, I (Kapoor) had performed a good deed for the family and it would be duly considered for the 'Padma Bhushan' award.

Murli Deora had tried to convince Rana Kapoor that the refusal to purchase the painting will also not permit him ever to build a relationship with the Gandhi family. It will also prevent him from getting the 'Padma Bhushan award, as per the chargesheet.

The late Deora had told Kapoor at dinner that the failure to purchase the painting could have "adverse repercussions" on him and Yes Bank, Kapoor has claimed in his statement to the ED.

The banker is currently in judicial custody following his arrest in the case in March 2020.

"First of all I wish to state that it was a forced sale for which I was never ready", the chargesheet said about the painting Kapoor allegedly purchased from Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

Milind Deora had made several visits to his (Rana Kapoor's) house and office to persuade him for purchasing an MF Husain painting from Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

"He had even made me several calls and messages also in this regard from multiple mobile numbers. In fact, I was very much reluctant to go for this deal and I had tried also to avoid this deal several times by ignoring his calls/messages and personal meetings," Kapoor told the ED, as per the chargesheet.

"Despite my best efforts to avoid this deal they were exceptionally persistent to finalise the deal rapidly," Kapoor claimed.

He further stated that later, in the year 2010, Murli Deora forced him to meet him for a vegetarian dinner (Marwari dinner) at his Lodhi Estate Bungalow in New Delhi.

He was Petroleum Minister at that time and had been allotted this bungalow in that capacity, Kapoor said, as per the chargesheet.

"During the meeting, the late Murli Deora told me in no uncertain terms that any further delay in purchasing the above-said painting could have adverse repercussions on me and my Yes Bank and it could jeopardise my relationship with the Deora family," Kapoor said.

"Simultaneously, he had tried to convince me that it will also not permit me ever to build me a relationship with the Gandhi family," the banker added.

Further, in the statement, Kapoor claimed, "He (Murli Deora) had also told me that any deviation on my part for the lack of closure of the deal will definitely prevent me from getting awarded the 'Padma Bhushan' for which, according to him, I was highly deserving at that time".

"Under this threat and against my family's wishes, since we are not high-value Art Collectors, I could not afford to invite any form of enmity with the two powerful families involved and thus I had to hesitatingly proceed given the looming and overhanging threat involved," Kapoor told ED, as per the chargesheet.

Kapoor told the ED that formalities for closing the deal were held at Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's office.

"Milind Deora had actively coordinated this final closing meeting. I wish to state that for this deal, I had made a payment of Rs 2 crore through a cheque of my personal account in HSBC Bank," he added.

Kapoor said a few weeks after the deal, Milind Deora conveyed to him confidentially that the sale proceeds were utilized by the Gandhi family for the medical treatment of Sonia Gandhi in New York.

"After a few months, while I (Kapoor) was visiting the residence of (late) Ahmed Patel, a close confidante of Sonia Gandhi, I was informed independently by him that by supporting the Gandhi family at an opportune time for medical treatment of Sonia Gandhi I had performed a good deed for the family and it would be duly considered for the 'Padma Bhushan' to me," the chargesheet said.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has alleged that Rana Kapoor and Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL) promoters Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan had siphoned off funds worth Rs 5,050 crore through suspicious transactions.

The ED had started its investigation after recording ECIR on March 3, 2020, and after the probe began, Rana Kapoor aggressively tried to dispose of his overseas properties to save them from being attachment by the ED under PMLA, the charge sheet said.

The POC involved in this case is Rs 5,050 crore. While Rana Kapoor is the founder of the said company namely DUVPL, his three daughters are 100 per cent shareholders therein. Also Read: Nirmala Sitharaman in US: IMF chief Gita Gopinath discusses 'challenging times' with FM

Rana Kapoor is currently in judicial custody following his arrest in the case in March 2020. The Wadhwans too are in jail custody after their arrest in another case. Also Read: Garena Free Fire MAX redeem codes for today, April 24: Get free gifts by following simple steps

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New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is on their visit to IMF- WB (World Bank) spring Meeting 2022 in Washington DC. On the sidelines of the event, Sitharaman, earlier this week, met International Monetary Funds Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath.

Gopinath has now shared pictures of her meeting with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on the microblogging platform Twitter. In the caption of the photographs, she said that the two discussed the important role India can play to forge solutions on debt, climate, and IMF quota review.

She also pointed out that these are challenging times for the membership. These are challenging times for the membership, and I was happy to reconnect with Finance Minister of India @nsitharaman. We discussed the important role India can play to forge solutions on #debt, climate, and IMF quota review, she said on Twitter.

These are challenging times for the membership, and I was happy to reconnect with Finance Minister of India @nsitharaman. We discussed the important role India can play to forge solutions on #debt, climate, and IMF quota review pic.twitter.com/wAf4XpvnlJ  Gita Gopinath (@GitaGopinath) April 23, 2022

Earlier this week, the Finance Ministry had also shared insights from the meeting. The ministry had said that the two discusses a wide range of issues. The areas of discussion included the upcoming India G20Presidency.

They had a discussion on a wide range of issues, including upcoming India #G20Presidency and the need for furthering the engagement of @FinMinIndia and @IMFNews," the Finance Ministry said in a tweet. Also Read: HDFC Bank declares 1550% dividend for shareholders

India will hold the Presidency of the G20 from December 1, 2022, to November 30, 2023, culminating with the G20 Summit in India in 2023, according to a PTI report. For the unversed, G20 is the premier forum for international economic cooperation that plays an important role in global economic governance. Also Read: Garena Free Fire MAX redeem codes for today, April 24: Get free gifts by following simple steps

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Ola Electric has started testing an autonomous vehicle (self-driving) which will be launched in the global market in about two years time, said Ola Founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal on April 23. At Ola FutureFactory in Krishnagiri district in Tamil Nadu, Aggarwal said that Ola will look forward to launching a car with indigenously-developed autonomous technology that will be a mass-level vehicle.

"Ola Electric began testing an autonomous vehicle nearly six months ago and will launch it in global markets by late 2023 or early 2024," he said. According to him, Ola Electric will aim to launch a car for around Rs 10 lakh so that more people can afford it.

Also read: Ola Electric recalls 1,441 S1 Pro e-scooters after Nitin Gadkari's warning on fire incidents

At its 500-acre electric two-wheeler manufacturing facility at Pochampalli town in Tamil Nadu, the company also showcased a self-driving cart that uses LiDAR, short for light detection and ranging technology, which will be exported to other countries. The cart can be used in hospitals, malls, offices, and public places.

Aggarwal added that Ola Electric is also planning to launch a lower-priced Ola S1 scooter later this year. He had earlier said that the company may recall a few batches of electric scooters if they are found faulty.

(With inputs from IANS)

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New Delhi: Hollywood star Will Smith`s recent visit to India weeks after slapping Chris Rock at Oscars 2022 has caught everyone`s attention.

Like several netizens, actor and stand-up comedian Vir Das, too, commented about the same.

Taking to Instagram, Das welcomed Smith with a joke, indirectly making a reference to Indian comedians who have faced lawsuits for hurting the sentiments of people with their acts.

In fact, in 2021, Das landed in a legal soup over his controversial `I come from two Indias` performance.

"Will Smith is in India? Good. He can learn to stop slapping comedians with his hands and start slapping them with legal cases," Das posted.

Das`s "welcome note" for Smith garnered a lot of reactions from social media users."LOL," a netizen commented."Hahahha savage," another one wrote.

For the unversed, while presenting the best documentary feature award at the 2022 Oscars, comedian Chris Rock made a joke about Smith`s wife Jada Pinkett Smith`s shaved head.

Rock said he couldn`t wait to see Pinkett Smith, who has alopecia areata, star in `G.I. Jane 2` which led Smith to go up on stage and slap Rock.

Smith returned to his seat and shouted, "Keep my wife`s name out of your fu**ing mouth!"

A few minutes after the incident, Smith was announced Best Actor at the 94th Academy Awards.

While accepting his first-ever Oscar for best actor (leading role) in `King Richard`, Smith apologised to the Academy and fellow nominees but did not mention Rock.

However, after receiving backlash for his disorderly behaviour, Smith issued an apology to Chris Rock and Academy on his social media handle.

On March 29, there was a short virtual meeting between Smith, Rubin and Academy CEO Dawn Hudson, initiated by Smith.

A few hours later, Smith announced his resignation from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, claiming he "willfully accept any and all consequences for my conduct."

The Academy then moved up its meeting, where it banned Smith from its events for the next 10 years.

And interestingly, on April 23, he was spotted at a private airport in Mumbai.

He was seen dressed in an oversized white T-shirt that he teamed with the same coloured pants over which he donned knee-length black shorts.

The viral photos also showed a `mala` around his neck.It is believed to be Smith`s first public appearance since his Oscars controversy. The purpose of his trip has not been publicised.
New Delhi: Tiger Shroff's dialogue from 'Heropanti' has been going viral all over the internet and netizens are enjoying a meme-fest on social media. His popular dialogue 'Chhoti Bacchi Ho Kya' has caught the fans' attention and the buzz is refusing to die down. Now, condom brand Durex has jumped onto the trend bandwagon and released an Instagram ad with their own twist to Tiger's iconic line.

They tweaked the dialogue and wrote, "Kitni baar kaha hai protection use karo, chhote bacche ho kya karne hai kya? " They further wrote 'pulling out' is not equal to 'Heropanti' referring to the actor's film.

Take a look at Durex's post:

Netizens were quite impressed by the condom brand's post and praised them for their creativity. Earlier, Durex had shared an ad referring to Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt's marriage which had also gone viral.

While one user wrote, "haha. Good one," another commented, "this is out of universe advertisement that's why I always prefer you".

Sajid Nadiadwala's franchise 'Heropanti' has given us Tiger Shroff as a new action hero to our industry.

Written by Rajat Arora and music by A R Rahman, Sajid Nadiadwalas Heropanti 2 is directed by Ahmed Khan.

The movie is scheduled to release in theatres on 29th April 2022 on the auspicious occasion of Eid.
Amritsar: Sikhs supreme temporal seat Akal Takht has taken strict notice of the alleged deliberate distortion of Gurbani while printing the Saroop of Sri Guru Granth Sahib (SGGS) by US-based SikhBookClub.com and has convened a Panthic gathering at Akal Takht solely to discuss the issue on May 3 and take appropriate action even as the US body has approached the Akal Takht urging to exercise restrains and take any decision for the sake of the unity of Sikhs worldwide.

The officiating Jathedar of Akal Takht Giani Harpreet Singh had accused the Thaminder Singh of SikhBookClub.com of using extra 'lagan-matravan' (punctuations of Gurmukhi) and 'bindis' (dots) by changing the original verses of Gurbani which he said was a violation of Sikh Rehat Maryada (Sikh code of religious conduct). He had stated that Sikhs wouldnt tolerate any distortion of Gurbani.

Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) which opposes the printing of the Saroop of SGGS by any other organization has also urged the Akal Takht Jathedar to take appropriate religious action against Thaminder Singh.

President of SGPC Harjinder Singh Dhami said that Thaminder Singh had committed an unacceptable act by making changes in the original verses of Gurbani which couldnt be tolerated.

Printing of the Saroop of SGGS by private publishers had mostly been controversial. In the past questions were raised as to how the two prominent Sikhs of Canada managed to procure a pen drive having a digitized copy of SGGS for printing the Saroop matching with the version of SGPC even as they were asked to reveal the source of procurement of pen drive having PDF of SGPC approved version of SGGS.

Earlier, Pakistans Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) had also decided to print the Saroop of SGGS under the guidance of Akal Takht to avoid violation of Maryada while the transportation of the holy scripture but the ETPB had to drop its decision of printing the Saroop of SGGS in Pakistan following objections raised by Sikh bodies including a section of Sikhs in Pakistan.

Giani Harpreet Singh maintained that the Sikh Book Club had used extra lagan-matravan (punctuations of Gurmukhi) and bindis (dots) by changing the original verses of Gurbani which was a violation of Sikh Rehat Maryada.

Ahead of May 3 meeting at Akal Takht, Thaminder Singh has approached the officiating Jathedar of Akal Takht stating "As a Jathedar of the important institution, you should be building consensus. Several of your committees over years and other organizations have reported printing lapses and errors and nothing was done over it."

He also gave example of how the Muslims solved the problem of multiple versions of the Quran by calling all the experts and created a unanimous solution by dialogue.

"You have access to the best of the Sikh thinkers, Missionary Colleges, and the work of former Jathedar of Akal Takht Giani Joginder Singh Vedanti and other Sikh scholars to come up with the consensus solution," said he adding that Changes were sometimes unpalatable but were important to keep the sanctity of the Gurus Bani.

He also gave an example of Sikh Misls who despite having differences with each other were unanimous on Gurmatta.

"Sikh Misls did not get along well with each other, but in Gurmatta they were all one. With this unity, they were able to lay the foundation of the Sikh empire. Sir, you are at an important juncture where all are looking towards you for guidance, please do what Sikh Misls had done in the time of crisis. From that unity rose the Sikh empire and this unity will be a stepping stone for the global Sikh empire," writes Thaminder Singh to the Akal Takht.

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Controversial Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sakshi Maharaj on Sunday asked Hindus to keep bows and arrows at their home, saying police will not come to their rescue when a crowd arrives to carry out "jihad".

He also posted a picture of a crowd wearing skull caps and holding sticks on his Facebook page with the comment.

"If this crowd suddenly comes to your street or house, then do you have any way to save yourself? If not then make some arrangement. Police will not come to your rescue, they will hide somewhere to save themselves," he said in his Facebook post.

"Police will come only when these people return after carrying out jihad. The matter will go to an inquiry committee and it will end there after sometime. For such guests, keep a couple of boxes of cold drink and some original bows and arrows in every house. Jai Shri Ram," he added.

When asked about the post, Sakshi Maharaj said he completely agrees with its content.

The BJP MP did not give any direct reply as to why the post was needed but said, "Are Hindus only to take a beating."
New Delhi: An explosion was reported in a field 12 km away from the venue for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rally in Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday.

The blast took place in Laliana village in Jammu district today. The Jammu and Kashmir police have initiated an investigation into the nature of the blast.

Jammu | "Suspected blast" reported by villagers in open agricultural land in Lalian village, Bishnah Suspecting it to be a lightning strike or a meteorite; Investigation is underway, say police. pic.twitter.com/6PFaD8hHN0  ANI (@ANI) April 24, 2022

A suspected blast was reported by villagers in open agricultural land in Lalian village, Bishnah, Jammu. Police is suspecting a lightning strike or a meteorite. Investigation underway: Jammu & Kashmir Police pic.twitter.com/Eyi25d59pf  ANI (@ANI) April 24, 2022

A crater was believed to have been created in the Laliana village by a meteorite or lightning, said Chandan Kohli, senior superintendent of police, Jammu. The police also informed that the explosion doesn't seem to be terror-related.

Security has already been tightened in Jammu and Kashmir after a terror attack on a bus with security personnel on board in Sunjwan on Friday, in which two Jaish terrorists and one security personnel died.

Jammu & Kashmir | Security checks are underway at the venue in Palli village in Samba from where PM Modi will address the panchayats across the nation on the occasion of Panchayati Raj Diwas pic.twitter.com/Z3MDqDcjSO  ANI (@ANI) April 24, 2022

Amid multi-tier security, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday will dedicate India's first 'carbon neutral panchayat' to the nation apart from inaugurating and laying foundation stone of development projects worth over Rs 20,000 crore to give fillip to speedy development of Jammu and Kashmir.

Modi is arriving here to attend the Panchayat Raj Diwas at Palli Gram Panchayat in Samba district. This is the Prime Minister`s first visit to J&K after the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019.

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When New Yorkers voted in 2014 to craft new legislative districts without partisan bias, they expressed their resolve in the most ironclad way  an amendment to the state Constitution.

What better method, proponents argued, than constitutionally assigning to an Independent Redistricting Commission the reapportionment process mandated by the decennial census, and away from partisan legislators.

Now  eight years later  a panel of New York's highest-ranking judges will finally interpret just exactly what voters approved in the 2014 amendment. And when the Court of Appeals on Tuesday morning considers the complicated case filed earlier this year by Republicans claiming they were shut out of the process, some now wonder if even the state's high court can insulate itself from the nation's increasing political polarization.

"It's highly unfortunate that people have become so cynical when they believe the prior political affiliation of judges matters when they take the oath of office to uphold the Constitution," said former Rep. John J. Faso, spokesman for the Republican group challenging as hyperpartisan the congressional and legislative districts ultimately fashioned by Albany Democrats.

Appeals court rules New York congressional map to be unconstitutional "The 2022 congressional map was drawn to discourage competition and favor Democrats," the court concluded.

"It's very unfortunate that President Trump can criticize someone who is an 'Obama judge,' or it's noted that a 'Trump judge' overturned the mask mandate," he added. "Anyone comes to any job with an inherent point of view, but the role of a judge is to weigh the facts and apply the law. I feel confident we will get a fair hearing and hopeful we will win."

Indeed, whether a judge carries an "R" or "D" in their label seems to enter the complicated case that on Thursday resulted in a 3-2 decision by the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Rochester, upholding Republican Justice Patrick F. McAllister of Steuben County. He ruled in March that legislative Democrats violated the State Constitution by drawing congressional maps favoring their own party.

Two Democrats were among the three appellate judges who voted to uphold the GOP argument on Thursday. And now, it escapes nobody's notice that all seven Court of Appeals judges were appointed by Democratic Governors Andrew M. Cuomo and Kathy Hochul, or that U.S. Supreme Court decisions often break along 5-4 partisan lines.

After the Thursday ruling in Rochester, meanwhile, the very real possibility of a delayed primary election looms if the Republican argument also prevails in the state's high court. Faso said his plaintiffs in the case will seek moving the scheduled June 28 primary to make time for a non-partisan reapportionment process, even though delaying it until the 2024 election could be possible.

But he believes that option gives those who crafted partisan lines a "free chance" in 2022. Faso says his team believes a primary should take place in August, and could be scheduled until as late as Aug. 23.

"Yes, it would be inconvenient, but it would be more inconvenient to vote on unconstitutional district lines," he said.

Faso, the former Assembly minority leader from Columbia County who ran for governor in 2006, believes the strength of the case his team of lawyers has offered explains their success so far. He points to support from non-partisan groups like the League of Women Voters, which submitted arguments to the court backing the Republican case.

"Indeed, as is evident from the Amendments text, the very purpose of the IRCs creation and duties was exactly to check and limit the Legislatures power over redistricting," the League said.

Democrats ranging from Hochul to Assembly Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins to Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie said in initial court arguments that the GOP case is flawed because legislators are protected by a state version of the U.S. Constitution's "speech and debate" clause.

That provision prohibits legislators (and by extension, they argued, the governor) from being held accountable for their actions outside the Legislature. The Attorney General's Office argued the privilege is "absolute," and that past cases have established the precedent.

But so far those arguments have not convinced any judges all the way through the appellate process, though the Rochester panel upheld Democratic arguments regarding maps for the State Senate and Assembly (while upholding the GOP argument for House of Representatives lines). The judges ruled the Legislature can assume a new redistricting task if it wants to.

Still, much of New York's legal and political community will be riveted on the arguments before the high court on Tuesday, especially because so much is at stake. James R. Gardner, a professor at the University at Buffalo's School of Law, notes a decision is highly anticipated because it will finalize for New York how best to accommodate the voters' desire to end gerrymandering.

"What we've seen this cycle is essentially the complete failure of that," he said. "The Independent Redistricting Commission has been so riven by partisan bickering that they were unable to do their job. It looked good on the drawing board, but in reality, polarization has paralyzed them."

The New York experience mirrors what occurred in other states, he said, despite real optimism. And while he recognizes the political polarization preventing reformed reapportionment, and "nationwide erosion of liberal democracy," he does not believe the divisions will extend to the Court of Appeals.

"I like to think New York has been a bit insulated because of the commitment by the people and their officials to maintain liberal democracy, and that brings with it a judiciary with impartiality as a goal," he said. "The public should have confidence in the Court of Appeals and the Fourth Department."

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New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education conducted a Live Webcast on modalities for conduction of CBSE Term 2 Exams 2022 on Monday (April 25, 2022) at 11 AM.

The teachers, students and the officials can access the webinar on the YouTube channel 'BoardExams@CBSE' or the through link provided in the official notification.

Watch the webcast here

Releasing the notification for the webcast on Sunday the CBSE said, the webcast will deliver the important information to functionaries for the smooth conduction of CBSE Term 2 Exams. "All schools will compulsorily make arrangements to watch the Live Webcast under the supervision of Principal," said CBSE in a statement.

Notably, the CBSE is conducting the board exams for classes 10 and 12 in two terms. CBSE term 1, which comprised MCQ (Multiple choice questions), was already conducted in the month of January and CBSE term 2 will commence on April 26, 2022.

The CBSE term 1 exam consisted of objective questions. Students were expecting the same for term 2, however, CBSE term 2 papers will include subjective questions, which means students will be required to write answers on the examination sheets.

ALSO READ- CBSE Term 2 Exam: Last-minute tips from experts to prepare and ace the test

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Puducherry: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday (April 24) said culture was the common thread binding the citizens of the country across different regions and once India is started to be seen as a "geocultural" country, all the problems will be solved automatically.

In his address at the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Sri Aurobindo in this union territory, Shah heaped praises on the latter for his contributions to the nation and said to understand India, one has to read or listen to him.

"From Kashmir to Kanyakumari to Dwaraka to Bengal, there is one culture that binds--Constitution is important...Country should run on this. But if there is a bonding, it is the culture. The culture is its soul. This will be understood as soon as you read Sri Aurobindo," he said.

Shah further said most countries came into existence due to a coalition or alliance and were therefore geopolitical in nature.

"There is one country in the world that is geocultural that is based on culture which has no boundaries and that is our India...And if one starts to look at India as a geocultural country, then all the problems will be automatcially solved," he claimed.

There is no concept of border in our culture and in the Vedas, Upanishads and literature there is no mention of a country. "We work for the welfare of all, the world," he said.

Paying rich tributes to Sri Aurobindo, Shah also recalled his role in the country's freedom struggle, including his incarceration in the Alipore bomb case and hailed his vision for the country.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to celebrate the 75th year of independence as "Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav" was driven by the consideration to honour even the unknown freedom fighters and take all those involved in the freedom struggle to the younger masses and reinvigorate a sense patriotism among them.

It is also an effort to inspiring people to strive towards making India a top country in all aspects between the 75th and 100th years of independence, Shah added.

"We may have been born after independence and may not be part of the army and while we could not sacrifice ourself for the country, none can stop us from living for the country. Today during 75th year of independence and 150th birth anniversary of Sri Aurobindo we all should resolve towards achieving this," he said.

Shah also recalled Aurobindo's close association with his native state Gujarat. Shah further hailed the role of Bal Gangadhar Tilak in the freedom movement thru the Ganesh Chathurthi festival.

The minister earlier visited the Aurobindo Ashram and paid homage at the memorials of Aurobindo and his spiritual collaborator, The Mother.

"Sri Aurobindo was a great intellectual and spiritual giant. He made lasting contributions to India's freedom struggle. Sri Aurobindo's works and thoughts remain relevant for all and he continues to be our guiding light," he said in a tweet.

Shah also visited the Mahakavi Bharathiyar Memorial Museum here and the hailed national poet and freedom fighter as the "epitome" of patriotism.

"Subramania Bharathi is the epitome of patriotism, unity & social reforms. His patriotic songs motivated countless people to join the Indian freedom movement. His ideas continue to motivate us all," Shah said in a tweet. He paid floral tributes at a portrait of Bharathi at the memorial.

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Delhi on Sunday reported 1,083 fresh COVID-19 infections with a positivity rate of 4.48 per cent, while one person died due to the disease, according to the health department. A total of 25,177 COVID-19 tests were conducted in the city a day ago.

The infection tally in the national capital now stands at 18,74,876 and the death toll at 26,168. The capital had reported 1,094 COVID-19 infections on Saturday, highest since February 10, with a positivity rate of 4.82 percent and two deaths.

It had logged 1,042 cases with a positivity rate of 4.64 per cent and two fatalities due to the infection on Friday. On Thursday, the city reported 965 COVID-19 cases and a single fatality with a positivity rate of 4.71 per cent.

With the national capital witnessing a spurt in COVID-19 cases in the past few days, the number of active cases of the disease in the city has now increased to 3,975 from 601 on April 11.

However, the hospitalisation rate has so far been low, accounting for less than three per cent of the total active cases, according to the data.

There are 80 COVID-19 patients admitted at hospitals in Delhi at present, while 2,812 are recuperating in home-isolation.

Of the 9,379 beds available for COVID-19 patients in various hospitals, just 107 (1.14 per cent) are occupied, the data showed.

In the wake of rising cases, the Delhi government had on Friday issued an order directing authorities to impose a fine of Rs 500 on people not wearing masks at public places. The fine will not apply to people travelling together in private four-wheelers, it said.

The government had lifted the fine for not wearing masks on April 12 because of a decline in the number of daily cases.

The decision to bring back the mask mandate at public places and impose the fine on violators came at a meeting of the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA), which devises Covid management policies for the national capital.

The city health department said that from Thursday, Delhi has started providing free COVID-19 precautionary doses to beneficiaries in the 18-59 age group at government vaccination centres.
A private school in Uttarakhands Dehradun was shut for two days after an 11-year-old student tested positive for Covid-19, ANI reported quoting Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Manoj Upreti.

U'khand | Education Dept has directed Dehradun's Brightlands School authorities to close the school for two days after an 11-yr-old student tested positive for COVID19. All schools directed to follow protocol of wearing masks, physical distancing&hand hygiene: CMO Dr Manoj Upreti  ANI UP/Uttarakhand (@ANINewsUP) April 24, 2022

Education Dept has directed Dehradun's Brightlands School authorities to close the school for two days after an 11-yr-old student tested positive for COVID19. All schools directed to follow protocol of wearing masks, physical distancing&hand hygiene: CMO Dr Manoj Upreti, ANI tweeted.

Meanwhile, on the covid front, India on Sunday reported 2,593 new Covid-19 cases, which is a marginal increase over the 2,527 infections registered the previous day, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Affairs said.

Also in the same period, an additional 44 Covid fatalities increased the nationwide death toll to 5,22,193.

The number of India`s active caseload has increased to 15,873, accounting for 0.04 per cent of the country`s total positive cases.

The recovery of 1,755 patients in the last 24 hours took the cumulative tally to 4,25,19,479. Consequently, India`s recovery rate stands at 98.75 per cent.

Also in the same period, a total of 4,36,532 tests were conducted across the country, increasing the overall count to 83.47 crores.

While the weekly positivity rate stood at 0.54 per cent, the daily positivity rate reported a considerable spike to 0.59 per cent.

As of Sunday morning, India`s Covid-19 vaccination coverage exceeded 187.67 crores, achieved via 2,30,29,745 sessions.

Over 2.65 crore adolescents have been administered a first dose of Covid-19 jab since the beginning of the vaccination drive for this age bracket.

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GMC polls 2022 results: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance on Sunday secured a clean sweep in the 60-seat Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) elections. The saffron party won 58 seats, while one each went in favour of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Asom Jatiya Parishad (AJP).

According to the initial results announced by the Assam State Election Commission, the BJP (52 wards) and its ally Asom Gana Parishad (six wards) won in 58 wards, including the three which were earlier elected unopposed by the saffron party candidates.

AAP candidate Masuma Begum won ward number 42, while AJP nominee Hukum Chand Ali secured victory in ward number one defeating the BJP candidates. The main opposition Congress this time could not open its account in the GMC elections, which were held after a gap of nine years.

In all, 197 candidates had contested the elections in 57 wards. The GMC election was held after a gap of nine years. In 2013, Congress won the prestigious GMC elections but due to internal wrangling several elected councillors had shifted to BJP facilitating the saffron party to form the municipal board.

Besides the ruling BJP and the main opposition Congress, the AAP has fielded 38 candidates, giving added importance to the polls. Around 52.80 per cent of the 7,96,829 voters exercised their franchise in the polls on Friday.

Electronic Voting Machines were used in the politically important elections.
Panipat: Remembering the supreme sacrifices of Guru Tegh Bahadur, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Sunday (March 24) made several announcements to commemorate his memory at a state-level function here to mark the 400th Parkash Purb.

The ground where the function was held will be named after Guru Tegh Bahadur, besides naming the upcoming Government Medical College in Yamunanagar after the ninth Sikh guru who stood up against forcible conversions by then Mughal ruler.

"An exhibition of weapons used by Guru Tegh Bahadur would be showcased across the country. For this, we have also decided to provide a vehicle to carry these relics," Khattar, who had donned a turban, said.

Congress leader Bhupinder Hooda also participated in the programme, besides Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala and Uttarakhand Governor Lt General Gurmit Singh (retd).

Before addressing tens of thousands of devotees converged to attend the function, the Chief Minister first went to the main `pandal` and paid obeisance to the Guru Granth Sahib.

Khattar said Guru Tegh Bahadur had made a supreme sacrifice while raising his voice against religious atrocities and injustice.

"Today we are celebrating the 400th Prakash Purab of Guru Tegh Bahadur as a part of ongoing celebrations of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, an initiative of the government of India to celebrate and commemorate 75 years of independence.

"The main purpose of organising such a grand event is to ensure that the inspiring stories of the supreme sacrifices made by `Hind Ki Chadar` Guru Tegh Bahadur should reach every sphere of the country and our future generations can take inspiration from him," he said.

He said Guru Tegh Bahadur sacrificed himself for religious freedom and humanity.

"History tells that how a delegation of Kashmiri Pandits went to meet Guru Tegh Bahadur to save them from forced conversion. Then, Guru Tegh Bahadur had said this would need a great sacrifice, it was when Guru sahib`s son, Guru Gobind Singh, had said who will be worthier than you to make such a sacrifice.

"After this, Guru sahib challenged Aurangzeb and after severe torture of Guru-ji, Aurangzeb beheaded him and Guru Tegh Bahadur made supreme sacrifice of his life for religious freedom."

The Chief Minister said Guru Tegh Bahadur always shared a special bond with Haryana as during his lifetime, he had travelled six times through the area. Guru Tegh Bahadur visited 32 gurdwaras in what is now Haryana.

He said the state government is celebrating the birth anniversary and Parkash Purabs of all saints and great men so as to ensure maximum reach of their teachings.

Former Chief Minister Hooda said Guru Tegh Bahadur is revered not only by one religion but by the entire humanity. He sacrificed for the country, religion and humanity at a time when the people were facing atrocities.

Hooda demanded the government set up an international-level college and research centre in Dhamtan Sahib in the memory of a great personality so that the poor could be served.

He said it is a matter of pride that Haryana is celebrating the Parkash Purb. "Guru Tegh Bahadur was an example of courage, sacrifice and mutual love, which the mankind will never forget. Guruji`s teachings and principles are relevant even today."

The two-time Chief Minister said this unique example of sacrifice is not found anywhere in the history of the entire humanity.

Meanwhile, the devotees got a glimpse of the glorious history of Guru Nanak Dev, Baba Banda Bahadur and other Sikh gurus through an exhibition organised here.

In the exhibition, the inspiring stories of the supreme sacrifices made by the Sikh Gurus were displayed through more than 100 panels.

The life history, philosophy and teaching of Guru Tegh Bahadur remained the key attraction of the exhibition. In the exhibition, panels were set up in three languages -- Punjabi, Hindi and English -- to enable the visitors to get enlightened.

Thousands of books related to the life and teachings of Guru Tegh Bahadur were distributed free of cost among visitors.



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25 more people tested positive for Covid-19 at IIT Madras on Saturday taking the total toll to 55, the Tamil Nadu government said on Saturday.

"The cases have increased to 55. The samples have been sent for genomic sequencing analysis (to identify the variant of the virus)... We expect the result to be out in two-three weeks...," principal Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan told PTI.

RIn a video shared by the health department, Radhakrishnan can be seen interacting with the students.

"Do not worry. The IIT-M has taken all measures for your safety. There is also a reserve hospital within a 3 km radius from here (King Institute of Preventive Medicine and Research). At this point in time, no one requires hospitalisation. Everyone is identified with mild symptoms...But at the same time you should not be overconfident," Radhakrishnan is seen telling them in the clip.

Positive students have been asked to immediately inform the authorities if they experience any unusual symptoms or discomfort.

Covid protocols in place

"We are enforcing COVID-19 compliance rigorously with student volunteers. In addition to this, all students are fully vaccinated. IIT Madras has handled three waves (of COVID-19) effectively, and we believe that the lessons learnt will help us handle the current cases effectively", IIT Madras said

Later, addressing reporters at the institute, Radhakrishnan said the IIT-M has stepped up adherence to Covid-19 protocols laid down by the government on its campus and added that this should be practised even when the cases are low.

Reiterating his earlier comments that the XE variant was not detected in Tamil Nadu, Radhakrishnan said the state is geared up to handle the infections with adequate infrastructure.

"About 1.17 lakh beds to treat COVID-19 patients and oxygen generators are available. But at the same time, nobody requires hospitalisation. Only one COVID-19 patient in Salem is under hospitalisation while the rest of the affected patients (in Tamil Nadu) are under home isolation", he noted.

(With PTI inputs)

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Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday asserted that India would not hesitate to act against terrorists who target the country from across the border.

Speaking at a programme, where Assam-based veterans of the 1971 India-Pakistan War were felicitated, Singh said the government was working to wipe out terrorism from the country.

"India has been successful in giving out the message that terrorism will be strongly dealt with. We will not hesitate to cross borders if the country is targeted from outside," he maintained.

Praising the valour displayed by Indian soldiers in the recent standoffs with China, he said, "I am of the firm belief that no power in the world can do anything to bow down the head of Bharat Mata' (Mother India)."

Taking a dig at a section of opposition leaders who had questioned the Army's role in the matter, Singh said such criticism demoralised soldiers and hurt the sentiments of people.

"I am regularly in contact with chiefs of our armed forces. I told them what I had to and they did what they had to. They have kept Bharat Mata's head held high," he added.

Singh also said that the eastern boundary of the country was currently experiencing more peace and stability compared to the western frontier, with Bangladesh being a friendly neighbour.

"The tension that India experiences on the western frontier does not exist along the eastern boundary as Bangladesh is a friendly country," he noted.

"The problem of infiltration has almost ended. There is peace and stability at the border (in the eastern frontier) now," the minister said. The defence minister praised the Border Road Organisation (BRO) for its efforts in building the strong boundary infrastructure, needed for defence preparedness.

"We have stronger border infrastructure now, but more has to be done and we are working on it, he stated.

On the recent withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) from different parts of the northeast, the defence minister stated that the government did so whenever the situation in a place improved.

He said, "When I was the Union home minister, AFSPA was lifted from Arunachal Pradesh (most parts) and Meghalaya. Now under Amit Shah, it has been withdrawn from 23 districts of Assam and areas under 15 police stations each in Manipur and Nagaland.

"Durable peace and stability have ensured that AFSPA gets withdrawn from the northeast and the role of chief ministers in the region has also been commendable, with Assam's Himanta Biswa Sarma taking the leading," he noted.

Maintaining that there was a "public misconception" that the Army always wanted AFSPA to remain in force, Singh contended the Army's job is not to look after internal security but to guard the borders.

On the continued imposition of AFSPA in Jammu and Kashmir, the minister said. The situation is responsible for it, not the Army.

Lauding the role of serving soldiers and veterans in protecting the country, the defence minister said.

The soldiers are our strength and the veterans and veer naris' (widows of martyrs) are our inspiration.

"Even when a soldier retires and becomes a veteran, the warrior inside him lives on and it can be seen in his 'tevar' (attitude), body language," he added.

He also called on the general people to ensure that brotherhood is maintained within the country while the soldiers keep peace on the borders.

"We don't notice religion when a person dons the uniform and becomes a soldier for the country.

"People of different religions had worked together in the 1971 War this social harmony of Assam, India should not be broken," he said, felicitating war widows, families of martyrs, prisoners of war and former personnel who had suffered injuries in the 1971 battle.

He also inaugurated an exhibition by the Directorate of Sainik Welfare, showcasing the valour and supreme sacrifice of armed forces in the liberation war.

Later in a tweet, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that nine war widows were honoured with Rs 10 lakh each, eight personnel who had suffered injuries with Rs 5 lakh each and two ex-prisoners of War with Rs 2.5 lakh each.

An amount of Rs 2 lakh each was also given to 86 other veterans of the liberation war, he added.

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Lucknow: With the efforts of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-led government in Uttar Pradesh, India`s first `Amrit Sarovar` has been completed in Rampur`s Gram Panchayat Patwai.Under the Amrit Sarovar initiative, 75 water bodies will be developed and rejuvenated in each district as part of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav.

A pond in Rampur has been cleaned and rejuvenated in a few weeks. Now this pond has become a big centre of tourism in the rural area. Seventy-five ponds in Rampur were selected to be developed as Amrit Sarovar. Out of the selected ponds, the work of pond of village panchayat Patwai of development block Shahbad was completed.

Now the work on the pond having the largest area (1.67 hectare) in Gram Panchayat Singan Kheda has also started. In the next three months, this pond, which is littered with garbage, will become a centre of rural tourism in the form of `Amrit Sarovar`.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday in his 88th monthly radio broadcast `Mann ki Baat` emphasised on water conservation in the country while stating that it`s key to the progress of the country. PM Modi hailed the efforts made by a Panchayat in Uttar Pradesh by rejuvenating a pond that used to be filled with garbage.

"I have come to know about Gram Panchayat Patwai of Rampur in UP. There was a pond on the land of the Gram Sabha, but it was full of filth and heaps of garbage. With a lot of hard work, with the help of local people, with the help of local school children, that dirty pond has been transformed in the last few weeks," he said.

"Now, many arrangements have been made on the banks of that lake like retaining wall, boundary wall, food court, fountains and lighting. I congratulate the Patwai Gram Panchayat of Rampur, the people of the village, the children there for this effort," he added.

"I am eager to inaugurate the Amrit Sarovar initiative which marks a special moment in the collective endeavours to rejuvenate our water bodies and conserve every drop of water. Under this initiative, 75 water bodies will be developed and rejuvenated in each district," PM Modi tweeted.

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New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders on Saturday (April 23, 2022) protested in Delhis Sriniwaspuri area, claiming that the central government has begun a move to demolish a temple in Sriniwaspuri.

Kalkaji MLA Atishi held a protest near the Neelkanth Mahadev Mandir and condemned the move. During the protest, which was joined in by several party leaders, Atishi vowed not to let the BJP government demolish it.

The BJP has so far been using bulldozers to threaten and extort the common man, but now its Gunda Raj has reached to such an extent where they are not even sparing Bhagwan Shri Ram, Atishi charged.

This protest, this procession is not merely an Aam Aadmi Party initiative, but an agitation which is led by the people here, by the women of Sriniwaspuri, and the entire population of Delhi against BJP's injustice and they have resolved to not let anyone attack their abode of faith at any cost, she added.

Atishi also shared on Twitter an eviction notice recently issued by the Union Urban Affairs Ministry's Land and Development Office to the unauthorised occupants of the temple, and said the BJP government would not just demolish the temple in Sriniwaspuri using bulldozers but also the faith of the crores of people.

AAP presented a purported notice by the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs, which read, It has been noticed that you have erected/occupied the said religious structure at the project site of Sriniwaspuri. It is an established fact that this is Government of India/L&DO land and you have unauthorisedly occupied/encroached upon this Government Land. Further, as per the Honble Supreme Court of India judgment dated 29.09.2009, it has been decided that no unauthorised construction shall be carried (out) or permitted in the name of the temple, church, mosque, or gurdwara, etc on public streets, public parks or other public places, etc.

Another AAP MLA Madan Lal said people of the Sriniwaspuri area are baffled at the sheer disrespect shown by the Union government for the temple as the ?demolition notice? has came.

This protest will continue until we are sure that this sacred temple faces no threat from the BJP. This Neelkanth Mandir is a symbol of faith for thousands of people, and was not established yesterday, he said.

Later in a statement, the AAP said the BJP's real face got exposed after its government at the Centre issued notice for the demolition of the temple.

As soon as the news came to the fore, the Aam Aadmi Party reached to the spot to protect the temple from the demolition and staged a protest, the party added.

(With agency inputs)

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Shanghai (Gasgoo)- DENZA, a premium auto brand majority owned by BYD, named its all-new MPV model D9, which is expected for delivery in the second half of this year, the automaker said on April 22 via its twitter-like Weibo account.

The letter D stands for Dream as the automaker said it aims to build the model into a Dream Car that will help DENZA's users create a beautiful life.

Previously, Zhao Changjiang, general manager of Denza's sales division, disclosed through his personal Weibo account that DENZA is going to launch another two new models, a full-sized SUV and a mid-sized SUV, in 2022 in addition to the aforesaid MPV.

DENZA D9; photo credit: DENZA



Mr. Zhao said the MPV would feature a pretty wide price range as it would come with both EV and DM power solutions, and both all-wheel-drive and two-wheel-drive variants. The DM version is capable of 200-km range on battery power alone and features a combined range of 800-1,100km. The BEV version's battery pack is able to deliver a range of 500-800km.



DENZA D9; photo credit: DENZA

According to the images released by DENZA, the MPV rides on a chassis installed higher than that of a common car, while lower than an SUV. It will adopt a 2-2-3 seating arrangement with an overall seating space larger than that of a conventional oil-fueled model. The rear bench seat can lay flat to allow passengers to have a rest. Besides, all variants of the MPV will come standard with power sliding doors, double-glazed windows, and double sunroofs.

BYD Auto Industry Company Limited, a subsidiary of BYD Company Limited, and Daimler Greater China Limited, signed an agreement on Dec. 24, 2021 for the stake transfer in Shenzhen DENZA New Energy Automotive Co., Ltd.

After the deal, BYD will have a 90% stake in DENZA while Daimler will hold the rest 10%. The deal is expected to be completed in mid-2022 as it is subject to the approval by relevant regulators.
Three terrorists were killed in the ongoing encounter in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama today, bringing the total number of killed terrorists to 8 in the last four days. The latest encounter took place in Pahoo village of Pulwama district.

IGP Kashmir Vijay Kumar told Zee News: "three terrorists were killed in Pahoo village of Pulwama whose, identification is being ascertained while as search operation is on in the area."

A cordon and search operation was launched by joint search party in the Pahoo village on a specific input about the presence of terrorists in the area, a police official said.

He added as the searching party cordoned the suspected spot the hiding terrorists fired on searching party which was retaliated, and an encounter started.

In last 4 days it's the 3rd encounter security force have managed to kill 8 terrorists in those operations including 2 Pakistani terrorists and one lashkar commander.

It's pertinent to mention that this is 40th anti-terror operation since January of this year and Security forces have managed to kill 59 terrorists this year in Kashmir valley till now While 28 active terrorists and 169 terrorists' associates were arrested this till now.


Lakhimpur Kheri: Union Minister Ajay Mishra`s son Ashish Mishra, an accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence case, surrendered before the magistrate at the district jail on Sunday (April 24). The accused surrendered a week after Supreme Court cancelled his bail and asked him to surrender in a week.

The top court set aside the Allahabad High Court order dated February 10, 2022, and remit the matter back to the High Court. It said that the order of the Allahabad High Court cannot be sustained and has to be set aside and bail bonds of the respondent/accused are cancelled.

The Court clarified that it has not expressed any opinion either on facts or merits, and said that "all questions of law are left open for the High Court to consider and decide." Eight people, including four farmers, were killed in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence on October 3, 2021.

Mishra allegedly ran over the farmers who were protesting against the Centre`s three farm Laws. He was arrested on October 9 and granted bail in February 2022.

Family members of the victims of the Lakhimpur Kheri incident moved the Supreme Court challenging the Allahabad High Court order, which granted bail to Ashish Mishra.

Earlier, the Supreme Court had appointed a committee headed by retired Punjab and Haryana high court judge Rakesh Kumar Jain to monitor the probe into the Lakhimpur Kheri violence.

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed his monthly radio programme 'Mann Ki Baat' on Sunday (April 24, 2022). During his Mann Ki Baat address, PM Modi urged the people of the nation to strengthen UPI payment system in the country.

People should go for 'Cashless Dayout', now even in small villages & town people are using UPI. It's benefitting both shopkeepers & customers. Online payments are developing a digital economy, everyday Rs.20,000 Cr online transactions are taking place, said PM Modi.

People should go for 'Cashless Dayout', now even in small villages & town people are using UPI. It's benefitting both shopkeepers & customers. Online payments are developing a digital economy, everyday Rs.20,000 Cr online transactions are taking place: PM Modi during Mann Ki Baat pic.twitter.com/C7ld1jRGqi  ANI (@ANI) April 24, 2022

Now even in small towns and in most villages people are transacting through UPI itself. A culture is also being born in the country from Digital Economy, he added.

PM Modi also noted that people from across the country have written letters and messages to him about the Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya inaugurated on April 14, the birth anniversary of Babasaheb Ambedkar.

There can be no better time than 75 years of India's Independence to remember the contribution of prime ministers, Modi said.

The country has got a 'Pradhan Mantri Sanghralay', it has been opened for the people of the country. It's a matter of pride that we are remembering the contribution of PMs, it's connecting the youth of the country with them, said PM Modi.

He also urged people to visit a local museum during holidays and share their experiences using the hashtag 'MuseumMemories'.

This was the 88th episode of PM Narendra Modis monthly radio programme. "Mann ki Baat" is the Prime Minister's monthly radio address, which is broadcast on the last Sunday of every month at 11 am.

PM Modi's Mann Ki Baat can be heard on All India Radio, Narendra Modi Mobile app, and Door Darshan. Akashvani will broadcast 'Mann Ki Baat' in regional languages immediately after the Hindi broadcast.

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Kolkata: A major fire broke out at garage in central Kolkata's Tangra area on Sunday afternoon, officials said.

Eight fire tenders were working to douse the blaze at the garage on Christopher Road which was used as a godown, they said.

No one was injured in the blaze that broke out around 3 pm, they added. "The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained," an official said.

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Amravati MP Navneet Rana and her MLA husband Ravi Rana were sent to the 14-day judicial custody by Mumbais Bandra Magistrate's Court on Sunday, hours after they were arrested for causing unrest following the announcement that they will recite Hanuman Chalisa outside Uddhav Thackerays residence Matoshree, reported ANI.

Amravati MP Naveneet Rana & husband MLA Ravi Rana sent to 14-days of judicial custody by Bandra Magistrate's Court, ANI tweeted.

A bail hearing will be held on April 29. The couple can file a bail plea by April 27, added the court.

Also Read: Shiv Sena's gundas attacked my car, wanted to kill me, says BJP's Kirit Somaiya amid Hanuman Chalisa row

The political duo was arrested on Saturday and an FIR under 153A, 35, 37, 135 sections of the Bombay Police Act have been filed against Navneet Kaur Rana and Ravi Rana.

Navneet and Ravi are both being represented by advocate Rizwan Merchant, who has represented Sanjay Dutt in the past.

After the hearing, the couple's lawyer addressed the media and alleged political discrepancies in the case.

"After the FIR was registered by Khar PS on the complaint of Navneet & Ravi Rana against the other side, a second FIR appears to be registered by the police against Navneet Kaur Rana & her husband Ravi Rana i.e. charge of 353 IPC," ANI quoted Merchant as saying.

"If the charge of 353 IPC was made out with respect to the incident at the residence, there's no reason why that charge couldn't have been added in the first FIR of 500. The arrest memo also does not show the charge of 353," Merchant added.

MP Navneet Rana and her husband Ravi Rana, who is an independent MLA, on Saturday announced that they will recite Hanuman Chalisa outside Matoshree (Uddhav Thackerays residence).

Soon after Ranas claim, Shiv Sena workers began protesting outside her residence following which security has been ramped up both at Matoshree and Ranas residence.

The couple was arrested late at night on Saturday after their announcement of Hanuman Chalisa recital outside Uddhav Thackerays residence Matoshree triggered massive protest and unrest in Mumbai.

Calling the Rana couple's arrest illegal, Merchant added, Both of them were locked inside their house, honouring section 149 notice. So, the arrest is absolutely illegal. As per my instruction to my client, a complaint has been registered against those who tried to attack outside their residence.

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The political unrest in Maharashtra continues as Amravati MP Navneet Kaur Rana and her MLA husband Ravi Rana on Sunday were taken to the Holiday and Sunday court of the Metropolitan Magistrate, hours after their arrest, reported ANI.

Also Read: Shiv Sena's gundas attacked my car, wanted to kill me, says BJP's Kirit Somaiya amid Hanuman Chalisa row

Mumbai Police take Amravati MP Navneet Rana & her husband MLA Ravi Rana to Holiday and Sunday court of Metropolitan Magistrate, Bandra Visuals from Santa Cruz police station Advocate Rizwan Merchant will represent the Rana couple during remand proceedings today pic.twitter.com/kXlIkcqTwH  ANI (@ANI) April 24, 2022

The couple was arrested late at night on Saturday after their announcement of Hanuman Chalisa recital outside Uddhav Thackerays residence Matoshree triggered massive protest and unrest in Mumbai.

Advocate Rizwan Merchant, who has represented Sanjay Dutt in the past, will represent the Rana couple during remand proceedings on Sunday.

Addressing the media on the case, Merchant said,  A lot of time is being given to the Maharashtra govt to take back this illegal arrest, otherwise, if this matter goes to the Court, we'll take the release order via the Court's proceedings... They were attacked even after they took back their protest.

Calling the Rana couple's arrest illegal, Merchant added, Both of them were locked inside their house, honouring section 149 notice. So, the arrest is absolutely illegal. As per my instruction to my client, a complaint has been registered against those who tried to attack outside their residence.

FIR filed against Ravi Rana & Navneet Rana u/s 153A, 35, 37, 135 of Bombay Police Act. They've been arrested; offense is bailable,but my clients say the arrest is illegal &unconstitutional as both of them are public servants- MP &MLA: Rizwan Merchant, lawyer of Ravi &Navneet Rana pic.twitter.com/geQwDMyq8p  ANI (@ANI) April 23, 2022

The Speaker's permission should've been taken before arresting them, but no permission was taken. As per Supreme Court, a notice of section 41A should be given within 14 days prior to the institution of the case, which wasn't given, he added.

An FIR under 153A, 35, 37, 135 sections of the Bombay Police Act has been filed against Navneet Kaur Rana and Ravi Rana.

MP Navneet Rana on Saturday announced that she will recite Hanuman Chalisa along with her husband Ravi Rana outside Matoshree, CM Uddhav Thackerays residence.

The statements caused a huge uproar among Shiv Sena that protested in strength outside Matoshree and Ranas house. Later, the duo was arrested.
Srinagar: National Investigation Agency (NIA) Chief Kuldeep Singh visited the Jammu terror attack spot where Two Jaish-e-Muhammad Fedayeen who were killed on April 22 attacked a CISF bus just two days ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Jammus Samba.

NIA chief was accompanied by the Inspector General of CRPF, Jammu and other top security officials who briefed him about the attack and retaliation of security forces.

A team of the NIA also visited the encounter site yesterday and collect first-hand information. The agency is likely to take over the case for a thorough investigation, sources said.

Yesterday, in a predawn encounter, security forces managed to kill two Jaish fedayeen who attacked a Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) bus killing an officer and injuring several others. The encounter happened near Sunjwan Military Station, Jammu. It's the third time when terrorists tried to attack the camp, but alert forces foiled it all times.

DGP Dilbag Singh yesterday said, the two fedayeen were part of a suicide squad of Pakistan-based JeM and their infiltration could be a "big conspiracy" to sabotage the prime minister's visit to Jammu and Kashmir.

The PM is scheduled to visit Samba district's Palli village, 17 km from here, on National Panchayati Raj Day on April 24. And will address a gathering there too.

Ahead of the prime minister's visit, Jammu Kashmir is on high alert and a three-tier security setup has been put in place. PM is scheduled to address around 30 thousand Panchs, Sarpanchs on national Panchayati day which is for the first time being celebrated in Jammu Kashmir. It's for the first time PM Modi is visiting Jammu Kashmir after the abrogation of article 370.

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A 17-year-old teenage boy, who went missing from on 16th April, was among the three LeT terrorists Killed in Pulwama Encounter, police said today. Natish Shakeel Wani went missing from Srinagar's Khaniyar area 8 days ago, and today, his dead body was recovered from the encounter spot in Pulwama's Pahoo village. According to police, he was one of the three LeT terrorists who were killed in a gunfight in Pulwama.

Kumar confirmed that the teenager Natish Shakeel Wani of Baba Demb (Khanyar) was among the killed terrorists. The teenager had left for afternoon (Zuhr) prayers on April 16 and had been missing since then. While family had issued appeal to him to return, he apparantly joined terrorist ranks.

His family appealed him to return home through a video which was social media.

Kumar added: "The two other terrorists include Arif Hazar alias Rehan who was deputy to the outfit's top commander Basit, while the third militant has been identified as Haqqani of Pakistan."

IGP Vijay Kumar told Zee News: "Rehan was recruited by LeT(TRF ) ex-chief Abbas Sheikh, who got killed earlier, and was part of killer group of Late terrorist Mehran. After killing of Mehran, Bashit became no 1 and Arif Hazar @ Rehan no 2".

The IGP also identified other militant as Arif Hazar and said that he was involved in the killing of inspector Parvez, Sub Inspector Arshad and mobile shop owner in Srinagar.

Arif Hazar alias Rehan, deputy of LeTs top cmdr (Basit) killed in Pulwama Encounter. (He was) involved in killings of Insp Parvez in front of mosque, SI Arshad & 1 mobile shop owner in downtown. Several FIRs against him in Srinagar city, IGP Kashmir said in a tweet.

Top police officer said that the youth joining terrorist leads to destruction of families and nothing else.



Srinagar police Tweeted: Teenager from Khanyar, Srinagar who joined (terrorists) ranks a week ago killed in an encounter in Pulwama, Longwith two other, Active (terrorist) exploit gullible youths for their own ulterior motives. Such madness by youths leads to destruction of families and nothing else, it added.

It's the second teenager who got killed in last 4 days earlier a 17-year-old Faisal got killed in encounter in Malwah village of Baramullah along the top lashkar commander Mohammad Yosuf kantroo. His family were seen screaming and appealing him to surrender. Even his father was facilitated by police to make surrender appeal on loudspeaker to him.
Hours after high voltage drama following politician couple Navneet and Ravi Ranas Hanuman Chalisa announcement and their arrest, Mumbai witnessed another political controversy after BJP leader Kirit Somaiya alleged that he was attacked by 100 Shiv Sena workers who were trying to kill him.

In a series of tweets, the Maharashtra leader alleged that the attack took place in the presence of police personnel and said that the law and order situation in the state is devastated.

I am shocked, in the presence of 50 police persons, in the compound/campus of Khar Police Station, Shivsena's 100 Gundas assault me with Stones, Wanted to KILL Me. What the Police Commissioner is doing? How so many Mafia Sena Gundas allowed to gather in police station?, Somaiya wrote on Twitter.

I am shocked, in presence 50 police persons, in the compound/campus of Khar Police Station, Shivsena's 100 Gundas assault me with Stones, Wanted to KILL Me What the Police Commissioner is doing? How so many Mafia Sena Gundas allowed to gathered in police station? @BJP4India  Kirit Somaiya (@KiritSomaiya) April 23, 2022

The BJP leader also alleged that this was the third time he was assaulted by Shiv Sena workers in an attempt to kill him.

This in 3 rd time Uddhav Thackeray's Gundas tried to KILL Me, first at Vashim than Pune & now at Police Station ( Khar Mumbai) itself@BJP4India  Kirit Somaiya (@KiritSomaiya) April 23, 2022

This in 3 rd time Uddhav Thackeray's Gundas tried to KILL Me, first at Vashim than Pune and now at Police Station ( Khar Mumbai) itself, he added.

About the attack, the BJP leader alleged that he was attacked by Shiv Sainiks, who pelted stones and broke the window of his car outside the Khar police station, where he went to meet the Navneet Kaur and Ravi Rana.

CM Udhhav Thackeray ke Gunda logo ko Police ne Khar Police Station par ekatha hone diya. Mai bahar nikla tab in Gunda logo ne Pathabaji ki, Car ka window glass meri side ka tuta, muze laga bhi hai. Police ke supervision me ye hamala @BJP4India pic.twitter.com/ixj0WMk915  Kirit Somaiya (@KiritSomaiya) April 23, 2022

In the video posted on his Twitter handle, the leaders face can be seen bleeding.

Mumbai police refused to register my FIR- Somaiyas other big allegation

The BJP leader levelled another big allegation and said that the Mumbai police had refused to register his FIR after the assault.

Mumbai Police refused to Register My FIR. 70/80 Shivsena's Gundas tried to KILL Me & Thackeray Sarkar refuses to take any action or register My FIR @BJP4India @Dev_Fadnavis  Kirit Somaiya (@KiritSomaiya) April 23, 2022

Mumbai Police has refused to lodge my FIR, instead, they lodged a bogus FIR stating that only 1 stone was hurled; 70-80 Shiv Sainiks attacked me, no action by Khar Police despite intimation.3rd attempt by Uddhav Thackeray to take my life-Washim, Pune & now Khar, ANI quoted Somaiya as saying.

BJPs reaction

Meanwhile, former Maharashtra CM and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis condemned the attack on colleague Kirit Somaiya and said he will talk to the home minister pertaining to the attack.

I will speak with the home secretary and home minister today over the attack on Kirit Somaiya, and will also write a letter to take action against the police, who are working as political workers, Fadnavis told ANI.

Pune | I will speak with the home secretary and home minister today over the attack on Kirit Somaiya, and will also write a letter to take action against police, who are working as political workers: Former Maharashtra CM and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis pic.twitter.com/uiD7Gd3LUa  ANI (@ANI) April 23, 2022

Despite Kirit Somaiya informing Khar Police prior about the possibility of an attack & seeking Z+ protection, the police didn't take any action. Instead, they permitted Shiv Sena goons to carry out the attack under state govt's pressure, he added.

This comes after Maharashtra MP Navneet Kaur Rana on Saturday announced that she will recite Hanuman Chalisa outside Uddhav Thackerays residence Matoshree along with her husband Ravi Rana, who is an independent MLA.

The announcement triggered a huge protest by Shiv Sena workers outside Matoshree and later, the duo was arrested.

A case has also been filed against Shiv Sena workers.
Washington: After certain bombshell testimonies, Kris Jenner has made a shocking revelation about a volatile 2016 argument she heard about between her son Rob Kardashian and his then-girlfriend Blac Chyna. "He had a gun put at his head," Jenner said on Friday while testifying amid Chynas USD 100 million lawsuit against the famed reality TV family, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The momager, 66, testified for the second day from the witness stand in a Los Angeles courtroom on Friday that she believed Chyna attempted to murder her son.

As per the outlet, she said "she was told that Chyna pointed a gun at Kardashians head, tried to strangle him with a phone cord and hit him with a metal pole while intoxicated."

"It was complete chaos. It was scary," said Jenner.

Jenner is the first of four defendants, a group that also includes her daughters Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, to testify in Blac Chyna's USD 100 million lawsuit alleging the women conspired to have her reality show Rob and Chyna cancelled and damage her celebrity status.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, Chyna testified that she was joking with her fiance when she wrapped a phone cord around his neck and grabbed his unloaded gun off a nightstand.

But Kris Jenner said putting a gun to her son`s head was "not a joke."

"He was a mess. I could only imagine how he felt. ... This was a horrible situation. I was heartbroken," Jenner recalled while talking to her son after the incident on December 15, 2016.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jenner started crying while recalling the Rob Kardashian-Chyna spat, which happened months after Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint in Paris. She said knowing that both her children had a gun pointed at them within the same year was traumatizing for her.

The outlet reported that Kris Jenner said her "boyfriend Corey Gamble separated her son and Chyna -- who she says smashed an expensive television in the master bedroom. But after Gamble pulled them apart and asked Rob Kardashian to leave, she was told that Chyna smashed a chair on the windshield of her sons car.

"In her questioning, Chynas lawyer, Lynne Ciani, asked why Jenner or anyone else did not call the police. Jenner said her security team-- former Los Angeles Police Department officers helped defuse the intense ordeal. She said she wanted to help Chyna and arguments between the couple were an "ongoing theme" in their relationship that included "alcoholic beverages and drugs".

"We didn't put Chyna on the show and give her this fabulous life to be taken away, we created other opportunities. I was hopeful that it would be OK. That's why I didn't call [the police]," she said.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, Ciani also tried to gain clarity about a text message sent from Jenner to `Rob and Chyna` showrunner that read Chyna "beat the [expletive] out of Rob`s face.

"She said the phrase was used as a figure of speech and compared her reference to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock during the recent Oscars.

"It's like youre at an awards show, and you get slapped," Jenner said.

Ciani asked about another text she sent to the showrunner that read "We need to ditch this [expletive]" after her sons altercation with the Chyna.

Jenner said she was very angry and upset at the time, but she claims she never had any involvement in hampering Chynas time on the show, reported the outlet.

Chynas lawsuit, filed in 2017, alleges defamation and interference with contracts.

It accuses Kris Jenner of being a ringleader who used her daughters in a campaign to defame Chyna as abusive to Rob Kardashian.

Kris Jenner would be an executive producer on the couple's `Keeping Up with the Kardashians` spinoff, `Rob and Chyna`, which premiered on the E! Network, later in September of 2016.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, Jenner said she had nothing to do with the network deciding to not pick up the reality show for a second season.

For the unversed, Chyna and Rob Kardashian share a daughter named Dream.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Evergrande Auto, the electric vehicle (EV) unit of Chinese property giant Evergrande Group, recently established a sales subsidiary in Beijing with a registered capital of 100 million yuan ($15.5 million).

According to the business data inquiry platform Qixinbao, the new company, dubbed Hengchi Guorui New Energy Vehicle Sales (Beijing) Co., Ltd., was incorporated on April 20 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hengchi New Energy Vehicle Sales Co., Ltd (Hengchi NEV Sales Co., Ltd.). It features a business scope that covers the sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs), the distribution and appraisal of used cars, the operation of EV charging infrastructures, information system integration service, and ride-hailing service.

Qixinbao's data show that the parent, Hengchi NEV Sales Co., Ltd. is wholly controlled by Evergrande New Energy Automobile Investment Holdings Group Co., Ltd. On March 24, it set up a similar wholly-owned subsidiary in Shanghai, which features the same registered capital and business scope as that of the newborn Beijing-based one.



Hengchi 5; photo credit: Evergrande Auto



Evergrande Auto has been permitted to sell its first production model, the Hengchi 5, as the BEV model was included in the Announcement on On-road Vehicle Manufacturers and Products issued by China's MIIT in March.

The Hengchi 5 is being produced at Evergrande Autos manufacturing plant in Tianjin. The automaker plans to begin the presale of the model in the second quarter of 2022 and then start scale delivery in the third quarter.

Evergrande Auto posted job listings earlier this year, which revealed the company intended to hire salespersons in 15 cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Zhengzhou, Hangzhou, and Nanjing.

In March, the EV unit of Evergrande Group unveiled a plan to build 36 flagship showrooms, 1,600 dealerships, and 3,000 maintenance service centers across China, but didn't give the a timeline for either target.

The first flagship showroom is set to be launched before the Hengchi 5 becomes available for presale, according to a local media outlet, citing a person with knowledge of the matter.
New Delhi: Any salaried individual wishes to have a healthy retirement fund. Employees in both the private and public sectors can contribute to the Employee Provident Fund Organization, and the Centre has also introduced a retirement system for those in the unorganised sector.

On May 9, 2015, the Centre announced the Atal Pension Yojana, a major initiative for workers in the unorganised sector. Nearly 4 crore people have signed up for the scheme so far. The retirement system, which is managed by the central government through the National Pension Scheme (NPS) architecture, ensures retirement returns.

Minimum age

Any Indian person who works in the unorganised sector and has a bank account.

The person should be between the ages of 18 and 40.

Investors will begin to receive benefits from the scheme when they reach the age of 60.

Until they die, investors receive a monthly pension.

If the investor dies, his or her spouse is entitled to a pension until the investor's death.

The retirement corpus is transferred to the nominee's account in the case of the investor's and spouse's death.

Heres how to earn Rs 60,000 pension by investing Rs 7 each day in the scheme

Anyone as early as 18 years old can invest in the Atal Pension Yojana. When they retire, they can invest Rs 210 per month for 42 years and receive a Rs 5,000 monthly pension.

The investment of Rs 210 will yield a daily return of Rs 7, and the investor would receive a Rs 60,000 pension after a year.

Anyone interested in joining the scheme, however, should be aware that they would be required to pay a monthly premium of Rs 210 in order to receive the monthly income.

Heres how to invest in the Atal Pension Yojana:

Step 1: Visit the official website of the Atal Pension Yojana at https://enps.nsdl.com/eNPS/NationalPensionSystem.html.

Step 2: Fill in your personal and Aadhaar card information.

Step 3: Use OTP verification to double-check the information. The OTP will be sent to the Aadhaar-linked cell phone number.

Step 4: Enter the account number and IFSC code for your bank account.

Step 5: After the process is done, the account will be activated.

Step 6: Fill in the nominee's information and choose the premium payment type.

Step 7:Your Atal Pension Yojana registration will be complete once you e-sign the form.

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New Delhi: In a move that could reshape the online world dominated by Big Tech, the European Union (EU) has agreed on Digital Services Act (DSA) that will force tech giants to take greater responsibility for content on their platforms, else face fines of up to six per cent of their annual turnover for non-compliance.

Google, Meta and other platforms will now have to explain their algorithms.

The DSA sets out an unprecedented new standard for the accountability of online platforms regarding illegal and harmful content.

It will provide better protection for internet users and their fundamental rights, as well as define a single set of rules in the internal market, helping smaller platforms to scale up, the European Commission said in a statement.

"The DSA will upgrade the ground-rules for all online services in the EU. It will ensure that the online environment remains a safe space, safeguarding freedom of expression and opportunities for digital businesses. It gives practical effect to the principle that what is illegal offline, should be illegal online," said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Online platforms should now be transparent about their content moderation decisions, prevent dangerous disinformation from going viral and avoid unsafe products being offered on marketplaces, added Executive Vice-President for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age, Margrethe Vestager.

The DSA is different from the Digital Markets Act (DMA) which was agreed upon in March.

While the DMA focuses on creating a level-playing field between businesses, the DSA deals with how companies police content on their platforms.

"With the agreement we ensure that platforms are held accountable for the risks their services can pose to society and citizens," said Vestager.

The regulators said that with the DSA, the time of big online platforms behaving like they are "too big to care" is coming to an end.

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New Delhi: Garena Free Fire MAX redeem codes for today, April 24, have been released. Players can use the codes to get free in-app rewards such as skins for characters and weapons. For receiving such rewards, all they need to do is visit the official redemption portal and enter a12 digit alpha-numeric Garena Free Fire MAX redeem code. The complete procedure can be checked below.

Garena Free Fire MAX is a popular battle royale game, which is actually an improved version of Garena Free Fire. But since the Indian government had banned Garena Free Fire, many gamers had flocked to Garena Free Fire MAX to continue enjoying a similar gaming experience.

Garena Free Fire had gained popularity in India after the Central government had banned PUBG Mobile India in 2020 on grounds of national security and safety of users in the country.

However, as of now, Garena Free Fire MAX is only available on Google Play Store, meaning that you can enjoy playing the title if you have an Android smartphone. The app was reportedly removed from the App Store.

Garena Free Fire MAX redeem codes for today, April 24:

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How to redeem Garena Free Fire MAX redeem codes for today?

Step 1: You will first need to visit Garena Free Fire Max redemption link- https://reward.ff.garena.com/en.

Step 2: You will need to log in to the portal via either Facebook, Google, Apple ID, Huawei ID, or VK ID.

Step 3: You will need to enter 12 digits redeem codes into the text box. Click on the Confirm button. Also Read: Blue Aadhaar Card: Here's how to get it and who can avail one

Thats it! Your Garena Free Fire MAX code will be redeemed within 24 hours. In case of successful redemption, you will receive an email and reward in your game account. Also Read: HDFC Bank declares 1550% dividend for shareholders

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin were to visit Kyiv on Sunday to discuss Ukraine`s request for more powerful weapons after two months of combat with invading Russian forces. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced the visit.

FIGHTING

* Senior Ukrainian negotiator and presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said Russian forces were continuously shelling Mariupol and urged Moscow to agree a "real Easter truce".

* Russia`s defence ministry said its high-precision missiles struck nine Ukrainian military targets overnight, including four arms depots in the Kharkiv region where artillery weapons were stored.

* Eight people died in Russian attacks in Ukraine`s Luhansk region on Saturday, regional Governor Serhiy Gaidai wrote in a post on social media.

* Russia has deployed Iskander-M mobile battlefield missile launchers within 60 km (40 miles) of the Ukrainian border, Ukraine`s military said. The mobile system`s two ballistic missiles have a range of up to 500 km (300 miles) and can carry conventional or nuclear warheads.

* Ukraine has repelled numerous Russian assaults along the line of contact in Donbas this week, a British military update said.

ORTHODOX EASTER

* Zelenskiy vowed in an Orthodox Easter message that no "wickedness" will destroy the country and prayed that God returns happiness to children and brings solace to grieving mothers.

* Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide, called overnight for the opening of humanitarian corridors in Ukraine where he said "an indescribable human tragedy is unfolding".

DIPLOMACY

* United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will visit Ankara before heading to Moscow next week to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and then to Ukraine for talks with Zelenskiy, a U.N. statement said on Saturday.

QUOTES

* "I want to see the sun because in here it's dim, not like outside. When our houses are rebuilt we can live in peace. Let Ukraine win because Ukraine is our native home," said an unnamed boy speaking on a video released by the Azov battalion showing civilians holed up in a steel works in Mariupol.

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Kyiv: Zelenskiy said he would meet U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin in Kyiv on Sunday and that he hoped to secure heavy weapons he said were vital for Ukraine to eventually retake Russian-occupied territory.

FIGHTING

Russia resumed its assault on the last defenders in giant steelworks in Mariupol, a Ukrainian official said, days after Moscow declared victory in the southern port city and said its forces did not need to take the factory.

At least five people were killed and 18 injured in a missile strike on Odesa, Ukraine said.

An artillery strike on the frontline town of Zolote in the eastern Luhansk region killed two civilians and wounded two others, the regional governor said.

Russia said it shot down a Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet and destroyed three MI-8 helicopters at an airfield in Ukraine`s Kharkiv region.

DIPLOMACY, CIVILIANS

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Ukraine had asked for "a comprehensive list of equipment" to operate its nuclear power plants, including radiation measurement devices, protective material, computer-related assistance, power supply systems and diesel generators.

A new attempt to evacuate Ukrainian civilians from war-torn Mariupol failed, an aide to the city`s mayor said, blaming Russian forces. The official said 200 residents of Mariupol had gathered to be evacuated but the Russian military told them to disperse and warned of possible shelling.

Germany must do everything in its power to help Ukraine win the war against Russia but without endangering its security and NATO`s defence capability, Finance Minister Christian Lindner said.

QUOTES

"I want to see the sun because in there it`s dim, not like outside. When our houses are rebuilt we can live in peace. Let Ukraine win because Ukraine is our native home," said an unnamed boy speaking on a video released by the Azov battalion showing civilians holed up in a steelworks in Mariupol.

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Utah: Pornography will be the focus of an entire class at a private institution in Utah, US, beginning with the current academic term. Details of the course, titled "FILM 2000: Porn," were posted on Westminster College's official website that said the students would be required to "view pornographic films together" and engage in experimental, radical discussions about the sexualization of race, class, and gender.

As a result of widespread media coverage and online discussion, the course, however, has now been pulled off the college's official website but not before stirring up controversy on social media.

More information was added later, and a college administrator later informed the media that the course would not be removed, stating that it will still take place as planned.

The description for the course thats being discussed here explicitly states that it examines how pornography reinforces sexual inequalities, so congratulations, I think youve found it. pic.twitter.com/mGuTY1e9MF  Nichard (@DoSomeCusses) April 21, 2022

The college's Chief Marketing Officer, Sheila Rappazzo Yorkin, was quoted as saying in a media report that the course is not new at the college and that in the past, it was offered several times, but was paused due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Usually around 20 students are enrolled," she said.

The college's course catalogue lists a four-credit course called "Sex on Film," in which students, with the help of a teacher, examine traditions relating to law, science, politics, and religion.

According to a media report, the pornography class will meet twice a week for three hours over a four-week term and students will be "thinking seriously about this media"..

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Kyiv: As the Russia-Ukraine war rages on, President Volodymyr Zelensky is hoping Asian countries will "change their attitude" towards Ukraine as Europe has done.

Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, Zelensky said that NATO`s decision not to accept Ukraine as a member was a "gross mistake" and that some of the alliance`s European member states had underestimated the country.

Ukraine`s "strength" against Russia`s military operation "managed to change the attitude of the alliance and the European member states" toward the country, he added.

"I want very much want the Asian countries to change their attitude to Ukraine as well," Zelensky was quoted as saying by The Hill.

Without naming any country, Zelensky singled out nations that are closer to Russia due to their past ties to the Soviet Union.

"Therefore, after the fall of the Soviet Union they historically were close to, the Russian Federation was the successor of the Soviet Union and the biggest country as part of former the Soviet Union, that`s why their relations remain strong with Russia," he said.

These remarks come as the US and other Western allies are attempting to pressure India to join them in condemning its close defence partner Russia.

India has called for a cessation of violence but refrained from joining any US-led sanctions against Russia. Meanwhile, China has refused to condemn Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and has accused the US of exacerbating the whole situation by supplying arms to Ukraine.

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Beijing (Gasgoo)- On April 24th, Pony.ai announced that the company has become the first autonomous driving company to secure a government-approved taxi transport service permit in China as it won the bid in Guangzhou, Nansha district.

Photo credit: Pony.ai



Getting the permit means that autonomous vehicles are officially included in the category of vehicle transportation operation and management under the national unified taxi standardized management. This marks a major breakthrough in the autonomous driving commercialization progress. Now, Pony.ai is permitted to conduct paid Robotaxi service in Beijing and Guangzhou.

Starting May, Pony.ais autonomous driving fleet of 100 vehicles will initiate paid Robotaxi services in all 800 square kilometers of area in Nansha district. Passengers can hail and pay for a ride through the PonyPilot+ mobile application, during its business hours from 8:30 to 22:30. The rates are in line with the unified price setting of taxis in Guangzhou.

Pony.ai plans to branch out to cover more areas in Guangzhou as the business grows larger. Furthermore, the company disclosed that it will launch its Robotaxi service in other first-tier cities in China by 2023, and gradually reach more regions by 2025.
Beijing (Gasgoo)- Chinas autonomous driving company WeRide deployed its Robotaxis and Robobuses to the newly founded V2X pilot area in Boao Dongyu Island, Hainan province.

WeRide's fleet; photo credit: WeRide



As partners, the fleet is co-provided by WeRide, China Unicom, and its subsidiary China Unicom Smart Connection.

As previously reported by Gasgoo, the pilot area covers a total of 17km of open roads, connecting the Boao Airport and Dongyu Island. The project is an integration of L4 autonomous driving technology, C-V2X, and 5G connectivity, covering multiple stations under various scenarios, including airport, scenery sights, and parks.

The project has been up and running since April 14th. Users can hail a WeRide Robotaxi via the WeRide Go mobile application upon arrival at the Boao airport from 9:00 to 18:00. Meanwhile, on Dongyu Island, the company offers micro circulation bus service with its driverless Robobuses. Users can get real-time information about the buses' whereabouts via the app or on the intelligent bus stop displays on site.

As one of the leading companies in autonomous driving commercialization, WeRide strives for technology R&D and practical application. By the end of January 2022, the company has accumulated over 10 million kilometers of autonomous driving mileages, while carrying out normalized tests and operations in dozens of cities worldwide.
On Thursday, Eric Jackson was fighting flames on the northern line of the Tunnel Fire when his crew members motioned for him to come take a look at something they had found. A small, black animal was scrounging over the torched landscape.

We initially thought it was a javelina, Jackson said. But Im from Sedona. I see javelina all the time. I said, 'No, that looks like a domestic pig.'

Jackson was right. The pig was in rough shape. Northern Arizona Animal Search and Rescue (NAASAR) had received a report of two pigs that fled the Tunnel Fire on Tuesday, and this appeared to be one of the two. As far as Jackson could tell, she had been wandering the charred fire scar for the last two days. Now she was weary and panting with exhaustion.

I believe she was searching for her mate, Jackson said. She looked really distressed and extremely lost.

The firefighters put out a makeshift bowl of water and some leftover food in hopes of luring the pig. Jackson said she was reluctant at first, but eventually came to the bowl and drank heavily. It could have easily been the first sip of water she had had in two days.

She was extremely dehydrated, he said.

At this point, Jackson and his crew mates, Tom Silas and Note Louis, radioed division leader Preston Mercer to advise him of the pig situation. Mercer made a merciful call.

Secure the pig if you can, Mercer told Jackson and crew, and suddenly they had a new mission.

What ensued was an operation of greater complexity than any of the firefighters could have anticipated. They repurposed a tie down from the engine as a pig snare. One of the crewmen attempted to distract the pig while she focused on drinking so that Jackson and the other crew member could try to grab and hold her.

The first two attempts were unsuccessful, and the pig, weary as she was, evaded capture by the firefighters. The third time, Jackson was able to get her in a bear hug.

Then I rolled on my back kind of lifted her up, he said.

Squealing in Jacksons arms, the crew deemed that the pig would likely escape if Jackson let go, so they helped Jackson and pig off the ground and into the bed of the truck. Then, the pig seemed to realize that she was being rescued.

She went limp and calmed down. She wasn't squealing anymore, Jackson said. Later, she put her head on my shoulder and kind of kissed me like a dog would have.

The pig was eventually delivered into the care of NAASAR. Jackson and crew resumed their duties and tried to locate the male, but were unsuccessful.

On Friday, Arizona Game and Fish officers Holt and Miller were patrolling an area near Elden Springs road, when they found pig No. 2. He was in even worse shape than the first, having been out a day longer, and was fearful and aggressive. The officers managed to capture the pig and calm it by covering its eyes with a jacket. They rendezvoused with NAASAR, and the two pigs were reunited at the Coconino Humane Association outpost at Fort Tuthill.

Were glad theyre safe, said Theresa Schumann of NAASAR.

The home that the pigs fled unfortunately did not survive the Tunnel Fire, but Schumann reported that anytime an animal is found unharmed, its a small victory. The two pigs are destined to travel together to a family farm in Rimrock.

A GoFundMe to benefit pig's owner, Jordan Isaac, and his family can be found at

Sean Golightly can be reached at sgolightly@azdailysun.com

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Update, 9 p.m.: The Coconino County Sheriff's Office announced that they were lifting the GO order as of 9 a.m. Sunday morning. The incident team has determined that the fire is no longer an imminent threat at this time and has recommended that residents be allowed to return to their homes.

Those returning will still be in SET status.

Returning residents should report to the north parking lot of the Silver Saddle Trading Post, 9001 N. US Highway 89. Residents will be required to show ID or proof of residence before being allowed entry.

Original story: The hundreds of households evacuated by the Tunnel Fire may soon get to return home, but questions remain about how officials let what originally started as a small fire grow into an uncontrollable blaze that destroyed dozens of homes.

Saturday's community meeting at Sinagua Middle School was a mix of highs and lows for those in attendance. The news that evacuees may get to return home as soon as the morning was met with joy.

Coconino County Sheriff Jim Driscoll said he wanted to make a decision Saturday night after hearing the recommendation from the Type 1 incident management team, which officially took command of the 20,924-acre fire Saturday morning after a day of shadowing the local team.

Driscoll said his office will let the public know if and when that happens. However, they're also forced to consider a number of other competing factors, including the fire itself, the weather and other potential hazards. If people are allowed back in, Driscoll urged them to remain in "SET" status -- ready to go at a moment's notice if conditions were to turn again.

Numerous county officials addressed what would happen when evacuees finally got to return home, ranging from how to dispose of expired food and hazardous waste -- there will be special disposal bins available for spoiled food and all hazardous waste should go to the Cinder Lakes Landfill -- and how to pick up detoured packages and safely deal with the smoke anticipated in the coming days.

Highway 89 will remain closed for a few hours after residents are allowed to return home to give them enough time to get back in and assess whatever condition they find their community in.

"At this point, we're asking you to please take it easy when we blow the whistle on that reentry," Driscoll said.

Things seemed hopeful with the takeover of the Type 1 team. The fire remains at 3% containment and Saturday's favorable conditions helped. Brian Klimowski, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Bellemont, said the lighter winds and cooler temperatures were beneficial on the firefighter front.

Those lighter northern winds will continue in the coming days, shifting to the northeast on Sunday and the east on Monday with gusts of up to 20 mph. The wind will bring smoke to the Doney Park area and Klimowski urged residents to remember that doesn't mean the fire is any closer.

Flagstaff's signature spring winds were expected to be back in force next week starting Tuesday with strong winds from the southwest and gusts of up to 35 mph. But that's days away, and the new incident management team plans to have a lot done by then.

"Success for us is to respond when asked, to engage the incident in a safe and effective manner, provide for your safety and the safety of our responders, mitigate the incident to the best of our ability and then leave," said Randy Johnson, head of the Type 1 incident management team. "We want to get that done as fast and safely as possible -- get you back to your normal life, get your community back to you and calm things down as best we can."

A total of 334 personnel were working to contain the fire, including nine crews, 18 engines, five dozers, one air attack plane and three helicopters.

Fire crews were still patrolling and mopping up hot spots in the Timberline and Wupatki Trails subdivisions Saturday, as well as along the southern flank of the fire along Forest Road 545. Officials said they also planned to focus on the spot fire on 89 Mesa Saturday along with fireline construction using bulldozers and hand crews around the edge of the fire between O'Leary Peak and Black Mountain.

On the east edge of the fire, crews worked on constructing a line in the Strawberry Crater Wilderness north from Forest Road 545 to better containment.

The good news wasn't enough to deter multiple questions and repeated allegations that local agencies didn't do enough to stop the fire when it was first reported.

Matt McGrath, Flagstaff District Ranger for the Coconino National Forest, explained crews were out there when the fire was first called in on Easter Sunday. It was declared contained when crews left Sunday night and they tended to it again Monday. Then it got out of control Tuesday, with the high winds. He clarified that it was never a controlled burn and the exact cause of the fire is still under investigation.

"There was never a time when we thought we'll just let this sit and not worry about it," McGrath said.

It didn't seem to be enough of an answer for residents.

"They should have been out there at all times trying to get that fire under control," resident Barbara Baretell said. "We don't deserve this. We need some better service here."

Coconino County Supervisor Patrice Horstman assured the crowd that the investigation's findings will be shared with the public.

Anyone with questions about their property, evacuations or available resources should contact the Tunnel Fire Call Center at 928-679-8525.

Reporter Bree Burkitt can be reached at 928-556-2250 or bburkitt@azdailysun.com.

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The European Union (EU) has already announced five rounds of sanctions against Russia, including an import ban on Russian coal.





But according to Hungarian political scientist Csaba Moldicz, the sanctions will most likely not reach the desired effect of ending the current conflict in Ukraine.





Following the west's imposition of sanctions on Russia, Moscow has started to explore new markets for its exports and ways to ensure its economic stability. India has reportedly bought at least 13 million barrels of crude oil from Russia since Feb. 24, compared with nearly 16 million barrels in the entire year of 2021. In early March, the value of the ruble, the Russian Federation's currency, reached a low point, but since then it has staged a dramatic recovery to near pre-conflict levels.

The concerns raised by Moldicz appear to be justified. In March 2022, the Food Price Index of the United Nations' (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) hit its highest level since 1990. On April 14, the UN released 100 million U.S. dollars for hunger hot spots in six African countries and in Yemen to mitigate the spillover effects of the Ukraine conflict.





Produced by Xinhua Global Service




Coconino County authorities lifted the evacuation order Sunday morning for residents living in neighborhoods along Highway 89 after fire management officials determined the Flagstaff-area wildfire no longer posed a threat.

Officials asked those residents to remain in SET status even after returning.

The Tunnel Fire was listed at 21,164 acres as of Sunday morning, with containment still at 3%.

"Caution is advised as there will be increased traffic as firefighters continue patrolling and mopping up areas of heat," according to a Coconino National Forest press release. "The landscape is very dynamic immediately after a fire and travel within the fire area can be hazardous. Examples of hazards include fire weakened trees that may fall without warning, loss of ground vegetation can loosen rolling debris and rocks and ash pits from stumps may look benign, but will hold hot ash for quite a while and can cause severe burns if stepped in."

Firefighters plan to continue work Sunday within the Timberline Estates and Wupatki Trails subdivisions, while crews construct line between O'Leary Peak and Black Mountain and continue monitoring the spot fire on 89 Mesa, among other operations.

After allowing time for residents to return to the area, Highway 89 was set to reopen at 1 p.m. on Sunday, barring any changes.

The National Weather Service forecast called for more favorable conditions Sunday, with a high of 59 degrees and mostly tame winds throughout the day. The spring winds are expected to return by Tuesday, however, with gusts up to 34 miles per hour and high temperatures near 70 degrees through the middle of the week.

"Success for us is to respond when asked, to engage the incident in a safe and effective manner, provide for your safety and the safety of our responders, mitigate the incident to the best of our ability and then leave," said Randy Johnson, head of the Type 1 incident management team working the Tunnel Fire. "We want to get that done as fast and safely as possible -- get you back to your normal life, get your community back to you and calm things down as best we can."

A total of 334 personnel were working to contain the fire, including nine crews, 18 engines, five dozers, one air attack plane and three helicopters.

Meanwhile, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has signed emergency declarations as 20 wildfires continued to burn Sunday in nearly half of the states drought-stricken 33 counties.

One wildfire in northern New Mexico that started April 6 merged with a newer fire Saturday to form the largest blaze in the state, leading to widespread evacuations in Mora and San Miguel counties. That fire was at 84 square miles Sunday and 12% contained.

An uncontained wind-driven wildfire in northern New Mexico that began April 17 had charred 81 square miles of ponderosa pine, oak brush and grass by Sunday morning north of Ocate, an unincorporated community in Mora County.

Winds and temperatures in New Mexico diminished Saturday but remained strong enough to still fan fires. Dozens of evacuation orders remained in place.

Fire officials were expecting the northern wildfires to slow Sunday as cloud and smoke cover moves in, allowing the forests to retain more moisture. But they added that the interior portions of the fires could show moderate to extreme behavior, which could threaten structures in those areas.

More than 200 structures have been charred by the wildfires thus far and an additional 900 remain threatened, Lujan Grisham said.

Fire management officials said an exact damage count was unclear because its still too dangerous for crews to go in and look at all the homes that have been lost.

We do not know the magnitude of the structure loss. We dont even know the areas where most homes made it through the fire, where homes havent been damaged or anything like that, said operation sections chief Jayson Coil.

Some 1,000 firefighters were battling the wildfires across New Mexico, which already has secured about $3 million in grants to help with the fires.

Lujan Grisham said she has asked the White House for more federal resources and shes calling for a ban of fireworks statewide.

We need more federal bodies for firefighting, fire mitigation, public safety support on the ground in New Mexico, she said. Its going to be a tough summer. So thats why we are banning fires. And that is why on Monday I will be asking every local government to be thinking about ways to ban the sales of fireworks.

Wildfire has become a year-round threat in the West given changing conditions that include earlier snowmelt and rain coming later in the fall, scientist have said. The problems have been exacerbated by decades of fire suppression and poor management along with a more than 20-year megadrought that studies link to human-caused climate change.

The wildfire near Prescott began last Monday and was at 4.8 square miles and 15% contained as of Sunday morning as helicopters and air tankers dropped water and retardant to slow the fires growth.

The cause of the wildfires in New Mexico and Arizona remain under investigation.

New Mexico faces a long and potentially devastating wildfire season, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said Saturday, as Southwestern wildfires cause destruction and force people from their homes.

Hundreds of structures were lost in a growing number of wind-driven blazes across drought-stricken New Mexico, Lujan Grisham said Saturday.

Over 20 active wildfires were burning in at least 16 of the state's 33 counties, in the wake of winds that gusted up to 90 mph on Friday, Lujan said during a briefing streamed online. So half the state has a fire issue."

With so many fires burning in April, well before the normal May or June start of the wildfire season, our risk season is incredibly and dangerously early," Lujan Grisham said.

Winds and temperatures in New Mexico diminished Saturday but remained strong enough to still fan fires, and dozens of evacuation orders remained in place.

Over 200 structures have burned, Lujan Grisham said, not providing specifics on locations or the numbers of homes included in that count.

With fires still burning and charred areas too dangerous to enter, it's not safe for you or us to have a complete assessment to date," she said, indicating that the number of lost structures would rise.

She appealed to residents to refrain from using fireworks or burning trash and to evacuate when fire warnings are issued. You need to leave. The risks are too great," she said.

The largest blazes were concentrated in northern New Mexico, where two major fires merged and numerous villages were threatened by advancing flames as residents heeded calls to leave.

Maggie Mulligan said Friday her dogs could sense the panic while she and her husband packed them up, agonized over having to leave horses behind and fled a fast-moving wildfire barreling toward their home.

We dont know whats next, she said. We dont know if we can go back to the horses.

Mulligan and her husband, Bill Gombas, 67, were among the anxious residents who hurriedly evacuated their homes Friday ahead of ominous wildfires fueled by tinder-dry conditions and ferocious winds.

The merged fires burned some structures but no figures were available, said fire information officer Mike Johnson. They were able to save some structures and we know we lost other structures that we werent able to defend.

Wind-blown clouds of dust and plumes of smoke obscured the skies near the fires, said Jesus Romero, assistant county manager for San Miguel County. All the ugliness that spring in New Mexico brings  that's what they're dealing in."

An estimated 500 homes in San Miguel were in rural areas of Mora and San Miguel counties covered by evacuation orders or warning notices, Romero said.

Elsewhere in the region, the fire danger in the Denver area on Friday was the highest it had been in over a decade, according to the National Weather Service, because of unseasonable temperatures in the 80s combined with strong winds and very dry conditions.

Lena Atencio and her husband, whose family has lived in the nearby Rociada area for five generations, got out Friday as winds kicked up. She said most people were taking the threat seriously.

As a community, as a whole, everybody is just pulling together to support each other and just take care of the things we need to now. And then at that point, its in Gods hands, she said as the wind howled miles away in the community of Las Vegas, New Mexico, where evacuees were gathering.

Areas ordered Saturday to evacuate because of another large fire still growing in northern New Mexico included Philmont Scout Ranch. Meanwhile, the nearby town of Cimarron remained on notice for possible evacuation, according to Colfax County officials.

The scout ranch, owned and operated by the Boy Scouts of America, attracts thousands of summer visitors, but officials said no scouts were on the property and staff were previously evacuated because of poor air quality.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Steve Kenney had no idea what he was going to do when he was seriously injured in a river-guiding accident and needed a hip replacement.

It was 10 years ago. He had moved into the Grand Canyon scene as a guide and was running a river in Idaho when he wrecked his boat and got dragged in high water.

He could barely walk and was intense pain. He was turned down by every physician he approached.

I was at my wits end, Kenney said. And then someone said, Why dont you call the Whale Foundation?

He did, and he got his hip replacement.

The Whale Foundation, based in Flagstaff, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing confidential access to mental and physical healthcare professionals and a network of support services designed to restore, promote and celebrate the well-being of the Grand Canyon River Guiding Community, according to the organizations website.

Sam Jansen, executive director, said that the organization was created in 1996 when a river runner and guide Curtis Whale Hansen, a Vietnam veteran, took his own life.

He was a great fellow, and his friends were surprised, Jansen said, adding that Whales friends were determined not to let that happen again. So, they created a place for people in the river-guide community to turn. The idea is based on a similar program started in Idaho

The effort started off with a hotline for people to call, but it has grown every year since. Jansen said. The Whale Foundation now provides access to counselors, scholarships, mentoring services to help transition people in the guiding community to other fields and more.

Kenney, a river guide for 24 years, has been a recipient of services from the Whale Foundation three times, and for the last four years, he has served as a member of the Whale Foundation board of directors.

I wanted to give something back, he said. I was just so blown away by what this nonprofit organization can accomplish.

Kenneys first call to the Whale Foundation when he needed the new hip befuddled the executive director at the time. Could it be done? He decided to call physician Nate Avery, a former river guide and pediatric brain surgeon. Avery immediately called his network of physicians who could help and found one within 10 minutes. Before the day was through, Kenney said he had a physician and an appointment.

I had the hip surgery, he said. I literally I dont know what I could have done without the Whale Foundation. Its a reflection of this town of Flagstaff.

Kenney never got to meet Dr. Avery before his untimely death in an accident at Lake Powell.

Kenneys other two calls to the Whale Foundation were for counseling services. Hed lost a dear friend on the river.

The sessions were incredibly helpful for me, he said. If youve been in this industry long enough, you run into issues, and you run into challenges. Its a hard way to make a living.

Jansen said that the organizations annual budget is approximately $100,000 and serves about 50 individual clients. The services are free. Last year, the Whale Foundation logged more than 280 counseling sessions in that program.

The main fundraiser for the Whale Foundation, popular with longtime Flagstaff residents and newcomers alike, is the annual Wing Ding, which includes dinner, local art, camaraderie, raffles, an auction and more.

The hope for the organization is pretty simple, Jansen said: The basic hope is to help people make their lives work better.

Jansen, himself a river guide in the past, said the Canyon, without a doubt, is one of the most spectacular, beautiful places in the world. The river-guide community is small, tight-knit.

You get to live fully, and its very meaningful, Jansen said. Its a place where you get to be your best self, and the world responds in kind.

For more information about the Whale Foundation, to donate or to volunteer, visit whalefoundation.org.

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Update: 24-04-2022 | 08:12:20

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on April 23 attended and proposed three groups of measures to enhance international cooperation at the fourth Asia-Pacific Water Summit.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh attends the fourth Asia-Pacific Water Summit virtually

The summit is being held in Japans Kumamoto city from April 23-24, with the participation of the countrys Emperor and Prime Minister, and the heads of State and Prime Ministers of Asian-Pacific countries, including six other ASEAN nations, namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and the Philippines.

In his online remarks, Chinh stressed that the unprecedented synergistic effects of global challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, climate change, and over-exploitation of natural resources, including water, have been leaving serious and multifaceted consequences for today and future generations, thus requiring a global approach and solution.

In order to proactively respond to and minimise the negative impacts of these challenges, and also promote green, sustainable, inclusive and transnational economic growth, especially the post-pandemic recovery process, each country's efforts are a key and decisive factor, but international cooperation is important and breakthrough.

In that context, the Vietnamese Government leader proposed three groups of measures to be carried out in the region.

Firstly, it is necessary to intensify regional and international cooperation in an open, transparent, substantive and mutually beneficial manner, he said, adding that the international community should seriously and effectively implement international commitments on water resources, especially the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030, the Paris Agreement and commitments at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.

Secondly, Japan and developed countries should pay attention to, share with and support developing ones in experience, finance, technology, governance, human resources training, basic investigation and planning on the use of water for the effective management, sustainable exploitation and equitable allocation of water resources.

Last but not least, it is important to boost cooperation and support the operation of organisations and cooperation mechanisms on transboundary river basin management such as the Mekong River Commission, and focus on promoting comprehensive solutions including digital transformation, encouraging the participation of businesses and people, promoting public-private cooperation, and strengthening smart water governance.

For Vietnam, water resources are at risk of decline due to over-exploitation, over-development of hydroelectricity in many places, along with the impacts of climate change and sea level rise, Chinh emphasised, adding that the country, therefore, always identifies water as a strategic resource that needs to be managed and used appropriately, safely and effectively to promote development in a green, circular and sustainable direction, helping ensure the harmony and rationality between economic growth, environmental protection and climate change adaptation.

The Government leader also affirmed that over the past time, Vietnam has actively participated in and contributed to the common effort at all levels of international cooperation, especially with countries that share water sources with it such as Laos, Cambodia and China and other foreign partners to manage, develop, protect and use water resources from rivers sustainably and efficiently and for mutual benefit.

He took the occasion to thank international partners, including Japan, for their valuable support and wish to receive more effective support and cooperation from other countries, international organisations and business communities. He also affirmed his backing for the Kumamoto Declaration issued by the Government of Japan at this summit./.

VNA
Martha Mitchell spoke out against Richard Nixon  and his involvement in the Watergate scandal  at a time when it wasnt considered appropriate. As a result, political insiders tried to undercut her credibility any way they could.

Behind the scenes? Another story. In Gaslit, a STARZ limited series, producers attempt to show what kind of intrigue was afoot in the Nixon White House.

Mitchell, played by Julia Roberts, wasnt hiding anything.

Back then, (public figures) were very stiff, Norman Rockwell versions of themselves, says Betty Gilpin, who plays Maureen Dean. Now, were inundated with people being their true, authentic, loud, brash selves. Martha Mitchell was sort of refreshing, even to people who didnt agree with her politics.

Mitchell went on talk shows, told her truths and was viewed as someone who was unstable.

Based on Slates podcast, Slow Burn, the eight-episode series, looks at those whistleblowers who werent in the spotlight. While Watergate pulled the Mitchells apart (John Mitchell served as Nixons campaign chair and former Attorney General), it brought John and Maureen Dean closer together. Dean, the White House counsel for Nixon, pleaded guilty for his role in the cover-up. Today, he works as an author and political commentator, warning about the actions President Trump took during his tenure.

Gaslit, Executive Producer Robbie Pickering says, doesnt focus on the minutiae of the case, but the two marriages and how complicity either destroys or binds relationships together. We like to think of it as a relationship drama as well as a political thriller.

The women in many of the films made about Watergate after the scandal were largely ignored, according to Executive Producer Sam Esmail. Until you listened to that podcast and watch this show, you (dont realize) what actually went on.

Pickering says Martha Mitchell was the first person to publicly blow the whistle on those involved in Watergate. Hopefully, we can correct the record a little bit with this show.

Dan Stevens, who plays John Dean, says he did a deep dive into the Watergate era. What he found was how the human stories lifted off the page  what you dont read on Wikipedia or any history books is about the wives and daughters of these men who were mentioned.

Gilpin says when you see the Watergate story from the female perspective you realize they are women in 1972 struggling with the obstacles that women of the time dealt with. I think thats also why we dont hear about it. Even the heroes of the story were racist and sexist and marginalizing the people whose stories should have been told.

Says Pickering: Martha was like every Fox News personality rolled into one. She was a total conservative cheerleader and a segregationist. I have always been fascinated by conservative women like that. Its like you want to root for them because a woman in this movement is kind of punk rock but also its like, youre punk rock for horrible things. A lot of it was she was doing it because she was jealous of the hold Nixon had over her husband, which is kind a selfish motivation, but thats the way heroes are made.

Mitchell, he adds, wasnt some drunk, crazy lady. She was the first person to publicly blow the whistle on these people. Hopefully, we can correct the record a little bit with this show.

Gaslit begins April 24 on STARZ.

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Dangerous wildfire spread rapidly across areas of southern Nebraska for a second time this month, scorching thousands of acres and prompting forced evacuations from several towns.

Cambridge, Bartley, Indianola and Wilsonville, communities in Furnas and Red Willow counties, were under evacuation orders Friday evening after a fire began to spread north and eventually west as strong winds gusting over 70 mph fueled the flames.

Kearney station NTV, citing comments from Holbrook Volunteer Fire Chief Wesley Hock, reported one person had died during the evacuation efforts. No further information was immediately available.

Evacuation orders were lifted for all towns around 12:30 p.m. Saturday. However, around 1:15 p.m., officials said the fire flared up again south of Cambridge, along the border of Furnas and Red Willow counties. Residents of Cambridge were told to be on standby for the evacuation order to be reinstated.

Some roads are closed due to the fire, and where they are open, drivers are urged to use caution due to decreased visibility from smoke and blowing dust.

Anyone who is not a first responder is asked to stay away from the area.

The latest fire blazed across an estimated 47,000 acres, starting near the Kansas state line and extending north to near the Harry Strunk Lake dam, the Valley Voice newspaper said.

Fire departments from across the region are fighting the fire with assistance from the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, which called in Nebraska National Guard units including a hand crew, two UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, one UH-72 Lakota helicopter and several ground support trucks.

Residents of surrounding communities -- including people from Arapahoe, whose homes were threatened in a wildfire earlier this month -- stepped in to provide food and shelter for those evacuating their homes.

Arapahoe Public Schools served as one location where evacuees were provided with food, water and cots to stay the night.

Many of those who evacuated were able to take only valuables as they fled their homes.

Steve Ervin, a longtime Cambridge resident, grabbed photos, prescriptions and a few antiques and other sentimental items to take with him.

Ervin evacuated his home west of Cambridge around 6:15 p.m. Friday and headed to stay with his son and daughter-in-law.

He feared it would be the last time he would see his house, which sits across from a field enrolled in a federal land conservation program.

He returned home Saturday morning, however, to find his house still standing.

Emotions were high," Ervin told the Journal Star in a Facebook message. "You just kept wondering, do we have a home? If not, how do you start over at 70 years old?"

The fire that burned Friday night was stopped just 20 feet from Ervin's house, but consumed a shed, vehicle and a shelter belt.

Losses, yes, we had losses of mainly woodworking tools," Ervin said. "But we have a house to go back to. God is good.

Reach the writer at 402-473-2657 or jebbers@journalstar.com

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Mountain Alarm wants to be clear about one thing.

"We are local," said Dirk Bauwens, the company's vice president of business development. "We are here to serve."

Last week, Yellowstone County building officials expressed concern about their ability to manually lockdown the courthouse in an emergency. Mountain Alarm runs the security system there and helped the county solve the problem on Monday.

County officials also expressed some worry about how quickly Mountain Alarm could dispatch a technician after hearing news that the company sold to Pye-Barker Fire & Security in Atlanta in December.

Bauwens acknowledged the concerns  he's been in the security business for 42 years and has seen it grow and change in ways that were unimaginable when he started. His career began in 1973 when Ken Brown launched Kenco Security in Billings with Bauwens as part owner.

When Kenco sold to Utah-based Mountain Alarm in 2014, Bauwens was then president and COO. With the sale, he transferred his shares and became a part owner of Mountain Alarm. By 2020, they had built new headquarters for the Billings operation, moving from downtown to the West End.

When Mountain Alarm was bought by Pye-Barker Fire & Security in December, Bauwens again transferred his shares and became part owner of the new company  albeit a very small one, he said with a laugh.

His point was that Mountain Alarm is still a local company with a Billings-based staff of eight technicians, five customer-service representatives and a sales team all working from their West End facility.

"First and foremost is local service," he said.

"We rarely have hold times," added Christy Schumer, the Billings office manager, talking about their daily calls from clients. "And we're happy to help."

The county has been a client of the company for decades, and Bauwens said it's long been a strong working relationship.

The lockdown issue at the courthouse was connected to the county's computer server, which runs Mountain Alarm's security system. Every time the county server reboot itself the security system moved to full automation, meaning the county lost manual control over the system.

County officials worried that if an emergency erupted at the courthouse while the server was rebooting they'd lose the ability to manually lockdown the building. On Monday, Mountain Alarm's technician was able to go in and help the county solve the problem.

"You're only as good as the infrastructure you're running on," Bauwens said.

Jeff Guenthner, Mountain Alarm's general manager in Billings, believes the technicians and office staff at the Billings office are responsive and professional. He hopes county officials understand they can call anytime.

In fact, the main phone number for their Billings office is the same number the company has been using since 1973.

"We're not hard to get ahold of," Guenthner said with a laugh.

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The past eight months have passed about as smoothly as a kidney stone for Donald Babbin, the inaugural chief for the Hardin Police Department.

Babbin, a Massachusetts native, arrived in Montana last summer. Since then, hes overseen the hiring, equipping and mobilizing of a police force several years in the making.

The Hardin Police Department was born out of demand from the city's residents. Since its formation, officers on the city police force have responded to calls including missing people, shots fired and an attempted jail break at the Big Horn detention facility.

In January, however, a wedge formed between city and county authorities, starting with placing restrictions on city officers entering the county sheriff's office, and most recently excluding the police department from 911 dispatch calls made in Hardin. An accusation of excessive use of force on the part of a Hardin officer prompted the decision and cleaved the gap wider.

Ive been a cop for over 25 years. Ive had my fair share for excessive use of force investigationsSince Ive been in Hardin, it has been an uphill battle. Every single step has been an issue, said Babbin.

Fixing 'a lack of officers'

The City of Hardin set to work forming a local police department in February 2020 when its city council approved a municipal police department and a three-person police commission in a 5-1 vote. The city had previously contracted with the Big Horn County Sheriffs Office to respond to crimes within the city limits at a cost of $490,000 a year. The February vote also signaled an end to the contract tying the Big Horn County Sheriffs Office to the city. The Montana Interlocal Cooperation Act expired last summer after being in place for decades.

Those hopeful for police on patrol in Hardin have been disappointed before. In 2009, a convicted fraudster under the alias Michael Hilton left town abruptly, taking with him a fleet of Mercedes SUVs stenciled with City of Hardin Police Department on their sides. The city never recognized Hilton, or his bogus company, American Police Force, as the legitimate law enforcement agency for Hardin. Two years after his ignominious exit, the three people hired by the city to become police officers had resigned.

Hardin Mayor Joe Purcell, sworn in for his second term in January, has lived and worked in Hardin for the past three decades. When he entered office, a city-wide survey underscored one of his top priorities for Hardin residents: public safety.

Basically, what it came down to at the time was a lack of officers [in Hardin]And at the beginning everyone was very cooperative about the new department, including county commissioners and the sheriffs office, who were wanting to put officers in other places like Fort Smith and Decker, Purcell said. It was all pretty positive up until about a year ago.

A tense beginning

Around that time, negotiations on payments made to the sheriff's office stalled. Payments would not halt altogether, according to the initial contract submitted by Hardin city officials, but would taper off on an annual basis as the city bolstered its police force. The sheriffs office demanded payments every six months.

In the midst of these negotiations, Hardin officers began their first patrols on New Years Eve 2021. A four-person committee that included the mayor and city attorney selected Babbin, who had previously worked as a police officer in Massachusetts and Georgia, as chief.

The department launched with four officers, along with Babbin. Since then, well over 250 reports have come out of the department. Within a week of operations, the sheriffs office informed Babbin that the Big Horn County Sheriff's Office would be primary agency responding to missing persons, stolen vehicles, stolen firearms, death scene investigations and DUIs.

They were telling me that I cant respond to death scenes. Where I come from, we had a shooting a day. Ive worked several murders, several rape cases. Ive worked undercover, and the countys going to tell me that I cant respond to certain calls? I was hired to do a job here and Im going to do it, Babbin said.

The list of crimes was adjusted later that same day, according to a letter provided to the Gazette, with the sheriffs office clarifying that it would be the primary agency investigating missing persons, stolen vehicles and stolen firearms.

Less than a week later, another letter for Babbin arrived informing him that Hardin police officers would not be allowed into the sheriffs office, or the dispatch center. Concerns brought to Sheriff Lawrence Big Hair and Jail Administrator Victoria Oldson spurred the announcement, dated Jan. 13, 2022. The letter did not specify what those concerns were.

The verbal version I got was an officer went in with a suspect and wanted a criminal history report, Purcell, the mayor, said. He was looking to make sure this suspect had no warrants and was told no. I guess the officer cussed. One version says he said the F-bomb, according to another version he said, B.S. Its just little things being blown out of proportion.

None of this was anticipated. We started with the department Jan. 1, and by Jan. 13, theyre locking us out of the building, Purcell said.

The relationship among the officers in both agencies has not suffered from the animosity between their leadership, Purcell said. Purcell cited coordination in the recent search for a missing man and an attempted jail break at the county jail as evidence that county and city law enforcement can operate effectively side-by-side.

During the first few months Hardin officers were patrolling the town of less than 4,000 on the border of Crow Country, they were being dispatched without any kind of formal agreement between the city and the county dispatch board. County commissioners voted in October 2020 to transfer county dispatch from the sheriffs office to the independent Big Horn County Emergency Communications Dispatch Center.

Services cut off

Dispatch services to the Hardin Police Department ended March 8, according to an announcement from Big Horn County Attorney Jay Harris.

Two days earlier, a city officer entered the Town Pump in Hardin on March 6, according to Chief Babbin and reporting from Big Horn County News, after getting a report of an unruly customer who refused to leave. The officer spoke with the suspect, later identified as Elery Royce Crooked Arm, who was allegedly smoking in the gas station and destroying merchandise. When the officer attempted to arrest Crooked Arm, who had previously served time in prison for rape, he allegedly punched the officer in the face.

The officer used a Taser on Crooked Arm and brought him to the ground, according to police. While putting Crooked Arm in handcuffs, the officer reportedly struck Crooked Arm several times on the back of his head and neck. A complaint was filed against the officer, and the case was taken up by the state Division of Criminal Investigation. Crooked Arm is currently in custody at Big Horn County Jail.

As of March 9, the DCI had completed its investigation and the case is currently under review for possible prosecution, the county attorney said. Along with announcing dispatch services to Hardin police being severed, Harris submitted a list of expectations to Hardin City Attorney Jordan Knudsen for the department to implement before being reinstated.

"These expectations are for not only city citizen safety, but officer safety as well and reflect standard operating procedures for law enforcement agencies. Importantly, these expectations were ratified by the County Dispatch Board on March 22, 2022, and remain County policy," Harris wrote in the announcement.

Among the five requirements were that the officer under investigation be put on administrative or light duty. The city attorney, mayor and chief have all objected to the idea.

Although I understand why they would ask for it, it is a personnel matter. Its confidential and I dont think 911 has anything to do with whether an officer has been put on light duty, been disciplined or not, and what that discipline was. Us contractually agreeing to that would be a violation of that officers due process rightsand it would be a violation of our personnel policies. It would be more or less us giving up our authority to discipline our officers. It would also be a violation of state law as the mayor and chief of police are in charge of the police department and the officers, Knudsen said.

Knudsen, who as city attorney typically prosecutes misdemeanors that include assault, disorderly conduct and DUIs, said his caseload has taken a nosedive since police were shut out of dispatch service. Although officers are still on patrol, they can only respond to crimes they witness, or if a resident reaches out to the department's office line.

"Im disappointed that its come down to thisWe were all surprised that they just cut off dispatch. Im disappointed that the county has taken that action to the detriment of residents," Knudsen said.

Mayor Purcell told the Gazette the breakdown between county and city authorities has resulted from the sheriffs office attempting to micromanage the young department. In an attempt to ease liability concerns brought by the county, city officials have drafted an indemnity agreement, submitted to the county along with an agreement to allow HPD to access 911 dispatch services. The indemnity agreement would effectively hold the city responsible for any civil liability cases, such as an officer being accused of excessive use of force.

Weve been waiting for the last three months for a signatureThen they tack on these five mandates for us to follow, and thats not going to happen. Until they can drop their five mandate piece, at this time, were at a standstill. What were doing now is looking at a whole other dispatch option, Purcell said.

A new option

The Hardin City Council approved the implementation of 911 iNet on April 8. The private communication service, whose headquarters is in Alabama, will allow Hardin officers to operate through a dispatch system that utilizes cell towers rather than radio. With grant funding, each officer and HPD vehicle has a cell phone, and the service is now in full effect. The cost of the service, which Purcell said amounts to about $66,000 for the equipment and software, will be paid for through a rural development grant given to the city last year.

Another officer has also been hired within the past week, Babbin said, taking the place of a man who quit the department out of fear for his safety. The police chief anticipates two more officers joining by the end of the month, allowing HPD to once again be on call 24-hours a day by the first week of May.

County Attorney Harris said, to his knowledge Big Horn County has never tried to micromanage either the City of Hardin government or its police department. Writing to the Gazette via email, Harris said it would be irresponsible for the county to ignore the conduct issues on the part of the police department. County authorities have decided that dispatch services cannot continue unless protective measures are met by HPD.

"The public would certainly benefit from constructive, good faith dialogue between City and County authorities, which unfortunately has seemingly been at a minimum recently. The distance between the parties insofar as the acceptance of basic facts (which is a foundational prerequisite to constructive, good-faith dialogue) may be an unfortunate local reflection of greater modern issues in our society...We live in a high crime jurisdiction and cannot settle for anything less than lawful, top quality law enforcement services," he wrote.

At this time, no 911 calls in Hardin are being dispatched to its police department. Hardin residents wanting to connect to HPD can do so by calling 406-665-7900.

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Located directly between Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks, Montanans are proud to recognize our land of natural splendors as the nations last best place.

Our pride is justified, even though it is not of our own making. An idea, however, that is a creation of the human mind and is of incalculable significance, is our historically unique system of public education.

Early in our development as a free people, Thomas Jefferson observed freedom and self-governance were dependent on a society that was educated and freethinking.

In keeping with Jeffersons vision, Congress has repeatedly renewed national support for public education. Examples are the Land Grant Act which has provided significant support for Montana State University as well as for the University of Montana and Montana Tech; the Enabling Act which established Montana statehood and in doing so set aside sections 16 and 36 of every township within the state boundaries for the support of common schools; and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which since 1965 has provided broad federal support for public education in all states. In Montana a coordinated system to ensure a foundation of support for all Montana public schools has been in effect for three-quarters of a century.

Without question there has been a firm and ongoing recognition in both our nation and our state that education is a human right. In no other part of the world has such a commitment been made.

Free, public education was a major reason that millions of European immigrants fled a dead-end existence of ignorance and poverty in the old world to seek opportunity in the new world. The key to opportunity here was public education. The burgeoning American economy of the 1800s had an overwhelming need for literate workers. Those who could cipher and read the language were far more productive than those who could not. They would soon become not only the backbone of American labor, but also the entrepreneurial creators of countless private enterprises that have resulted in perpetual job creation, and thus a continual cycle of opportunity and prosperity.

This land of the American dream could not have happened without the universal opportunity for education. Most of the elite in the old world hated the concept of public education. Prosperity there was confined to the inheritors of wealth and power. The privileged classes alone enjoyed the opportunity to an education. If the masses were educated, they feared, the resulting questioning minds within the working class would pose a direct threat to the perpetual domination of the ruling class.

As an alternative to the competition for wealth and power that an educated workforce would inevitably create, the European gentry decided on the creation of a welfare state, the prototype of which occurred under the leadership of Germanys Iron Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck. By providing for basic human needs at public expense, Bismarck concluded that the masses would have little reason to overthrow the existing system as they had been doing in Europe since the guillotine time of the French Revolution.

The public welfare concept was adopted to some degree in much of the rest of Europe. It is no accident of history that upward mobility producing systems of public education did not emerge there until after the upheaval of two world wars.

While we have our inequities, and the American way remains a work in progress, Americans retain our self-governing freedom to adapt and reform. We have a high standard of living as well as a social safety net. Our productivity produces tax revenue, which makes possible our public services. The foundation of all of this  universal public education  has made creating and sharing in the American dream a tangible reality for those fortunate enough to live here.

Particularly insulated from a less fortunate world, we Montanans have more than most of humankind to be grateful for. Our fortunate circumstances are due in large part to our ongoing commitment to public education. On May 3 we will have the opportunity as free people to again renew our commitment to our time tested educational birthright by supporting our public schools.

Bob Brown is a former Montana Secretary of State and State Senate president.

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Student opportunities for on-the-job learning through employment are numerous and diverse thanks to initiatives across Yellowstone County and the Billings Public Schools Career Outreach Program. A booming Billings economy and burgeoning building industry all point to the importance of these programs and bright futures for students who take advantage of them.

Three such opportunities available to students this year include the Langlas Trades Internship Program through the Education Foundation for Billings Public Schools, the Yellowstone County Summer Jobs Program through BillingsWorks and the Billings Chamber, and the Build Montana Program, a partnership of the Montana Contractors Association, RDO Equipment, Tractor & Equipment Company, Knife River, and COPP Construction.

The Langlas Trades Internship Program and Yellowstone County Summer Jobs Program provide paid internships or jobs connecting current and recently graduated students with workforce mentors and allowing them to develop relevant skills. These programs represent win-win collaborations for both businesses and students. Students gain practical skills and experience, develop professional networks, and get to explore careers and industries. Businesses have the opportunity to address workforce shortages all while supporting local growth and community success.

Build Montana is in its second year of programming in Billings and is focused on construction equipment operation, jobsite safety, and site development. The program is open to high school seniors and gives students school credit for completing an online curriculum and a series of field experiences with construction companies and on job sites throughout the community. The program opens doors not only through networking opportunities, but also through certification that helps students qualify for employment opportunities and scholarship programs upon completion.

These programs are only a few of the career readiness opportunities available to Billings students. To learn more, reach out to the Education Foundation for Billings Public Schools and we will connect you with these wonderful resources in our community.

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A joint funeral service will be held Monday for two brothers who served during World War II, farmed near each other for years, and died just hours apart last week.

Anton Tony Hatzenbuhler, 100, died April 18. His brother Mathias Matt Hatzenbuhler, 96, died a few hours later on April 19. They will be buried at the North Dakota Veterans Cemetery with military honors.

They were both in great shape right up until the end, said Donna Hatzenbuhler, Tony Hatzenbuhlers daughter-in-law. Their health failed in the last two months, she said.

Tony was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942. He was an airplane mechanic and served for 3  years. Tony married Helen Schmidt in 1947, and in 2021 they were honored as the longest-married Catholic couple in North Dakota.

Matt also was drafted into the Army during World War II. He was a baker and was stationed in Japan. He and Anna (Haider) were married for 70 years before her death in February.

Tony and Matt grew up on a farm near Fort Rice. They farmed near each other for many years as adults and lived just blocks apart when they moved to Mandan in retirement. Both were lifetime members of the American Legion.

A younger brother, Christ, 92, survives them. He served in the Army as a tank driver in Korea from 1951-53. A fourth brother, John, also served in the military during World War II. He died in 2017 at age 97.

Tony, Matt and John were chosen for a North Dakota Honor Flight to Washington, D.C., in 2009.

Reach Travis Svihovec at 701-250-8260 or Travis.Svihovec@bismarcktribune.com

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COLOMBO, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Russia's flag carrier Aeroflot is to resume flights to the Maldives from May 13, the Maldives Civil Aviation Authority announced on Sunday.

The civil aviation authority said Aeroflot would operate one daily flight between the Maldives and Russia on an A330-300 aircraft.

Aeroflot suspended flights to the Maldives on March 8.

The suspension led to a significant drop in tourist arrivals from the Russian market, which accounted for 15.8 percent of total arrivals between January and March, according to the civil aviation authority.

Russian authorities had asked the Maldives Civil Aviation Authority whether they can assure that Russian planes would be serviced.

The civil aviation authority gave the requested assurances, saying that there was no obstacle to resuming operations under the civil aviation agreement between the Maldives and Russia. 
There are different views of the movement. Just a few examples:

https://twitter.com/TGTM_Official/status/1518031719344992257?cxt=HHwWgsCr1cnzkJEqAAAA

I would say the translation is good, but where is the "lie" part? I don't think any word in the original Chinese or translated English indicate it is a "lie". Of course, the person translating can have the opinion that what she says is a "lie", but that is the personal opinion of the translator, does not necessarily mean what she says is true or false. So the translator just translated something then "appended" some personal opinion.

https://twitter.com/yanwangtanbing1/status/1516405563281747968?cxt=HHwWgMCt7eq0rYsqAAAA

This is a typical case of incorrect translation which can leave very different impression for the user. "" basically is the equivalent of congressperson in US, like the senators and representatives in US congress. So the newspaper simply reported an invertivew, just like a certain US senator or representative said something to a reporter in US. Someone in the legislative branch said something, isn't that most normal in a free society? Didn't we say it is ok for congress person to announce views even seems "wrong", as this is escentially their job? There are US congress representatives saying all kind of wacky things on media all the time.

However, "Deputies" is "a person whose immediate superior is a senior figure within an organization and who is empowered to act as a substitute for this superior.", which would indicate this is a more "formal" view of the executive branch of the government and would/could indicate a future policy. Also, the translation used "deputies", not "deputy", indicating this would be a group of person expressing a common view, not a single person expressing personal view.

The following content in the translation correctly identified the person interviewed as the "representative" of the national congress, so why would the title suddenly change to "deputies"? Also, "Deputies to the congress" would mean the group of person expressed the view to the national congress (indicating the formalness of the view), while the report is only a representative express the view to a reporter in a random interview. Is this fabricating a title for the article to create fake news?
A gentleman better known for creating controversy by flying the Confederate battle flag over his home, Joseph Ryan, once again demonstrated who he is by filing suit against the County of Los Angeles in an attempt to stop the return of beachfront real estate stripped from a black family, the Bruces, almost a century ago.

The County continues forward with restoring the land to its rightful owners.

Easy Reader News:

Joseph Ryan, an attorney from Palos Verdes Estates, filed a complaint with the court in November seeking an injunction against the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Ryan argued the land transfer does not serve a public purpose and the state law recently enacted to enable it, S.B. 796, is therefore unconstitutional under California law. The Bruce family joined the County in defending against the lawsuit. Judge Mitchell Beckloff, in a ruling issued April 14, rejected Ryan's argument, paving the way for the land transfer. The Bruce's are expected to take ownership of the land within months. The judge wrote that redressing a past governent wrong in order to remedy racial discrimination serves a public purpose.  Ryan did not respond to a request for comment. He drew attention four years ago for his practice of raising Confederate battle flags over his PVE home, which upset some neighbors. He is a Civil War buff who publishes a blog called "Joe Ryan's American Civil War." In a 2018 Daily Breeze article about his Confederate flags, Ryan noted that he also flies Union flags and said that he was simply trying to bring attention to the racial underpinnings of American history. "I don't really give a damn about the politics of liberal idiots who want to look at that flag and say, 'Oh that's racist,'" Ryan told the Daily Breeze. "The last person you can call a racist is me."

Apparently, Mr. Ryan and I disagree on what a racist is.
An $18.16 mistake  made over and over again  has put the Community Action Organization of Western New York in a half-million dollar bind.

The organization mistakenly added a weekly charge of $18.16 when billing Medicaid for many of those in its outpatient chemical dependence services program, according to an audit by the New York State Office of Medicaid Inspector General.

Extrapolating the mistaken charge for all 271,809 claims during a three-year audit period, the audit estimated the CAO overcharged the government potentially as much as $992,268.

The office said the CAO could settle the matter by paying back $491,508. But the nonprofit, which spends millions of state and federal dollars fighting poverty, spent the improper reimbursements and does not have the money to repay the amount, according to a lawsuit it recently filed in State Supreme Court.

The CAO blamed the overbilling on its software vendor, TenEleven Group Inc. of Amherst. The lawsuit alleges the vendor "lulled CAO staff into complacency by making false and misleading representations."

The lawsuit seeks "not less than $1 million" from TenEleven Group.

"The complaint speaks for itself," said attorney James J. Zawodzinski Jr., who represents the CAO. "Because the matter is in litigation, we are limited in the comments we can make."

The lawsuit relates to billings and services provided by TenEleven Group from 2014 to 2016.

"Audit findings are common, and these findings are a relatively small percentage of the agencys overall billings," Zawodzinski said. "The litigation seeks to recover the resulting audit finding from the software vendor who the complaint alleges made errors which caused the bulk of the audit finding."

TenEleven Group said it's not responsible for the mistaken billing.

CAOs lawsuit is nothing more than a deflection tactic, seeking to cast blame on a third party for CAOs own failure to ensure it followed proper billing practices and appropriately handled public funds," the company said in a statement. "TenEleven merely provided software to CAO, and is not, nor was it ever responsible for CAOs billing, processing, accounting, or reporting practices to state and federal agencies. We believe the lawsuit is meritless and intend to vigorously defend against the allegations in the complaint.

It is not clear from the CAO's lawsuit whether any overbilling occurred after the audit period, and if so, how much. If the improper $18.16 charges continued after the audit period, the organization has the ability to report overpayments through the inspector general's self-disclosure program.

Thomas Kim, president and CEO of the CAO, did not return messages seeking more information about the overcharges.

"To date, TenEleven Group has not responded to, in any meaningful fashion, CAO's attempts to resolve the present dispute," according to the CAO's March 22 lawsuit.

The Office of Medicaid Inspector General audited a random sample of claims from January 2014 through December 2016 submitted by the CAO's Drug Abuse and Treatment Program. In all, the program submitted 271,809 claims totaling $7.9 million during the period.

Audit of CAO opioid treatment program New York State's Medicaid inspector general audited a random sample of Medicaid claims submitted the the CAO of Western New York's Drug Abuse 

Most of those receiving services in the program are enrolled in Medicaid, the federal-state health care insurance program that helps pay for health care for low-income people of any age.

When the DART clinic provides services to those on Medicaid, it bills Medicaid for reimbursement.

For years before the audit, TenEleven Group provided software to CAO under an agreement that both sides modified from time to time. In May 2014, TenEleven Group and CAO amended it to put in place "an enhanced suite" of software and services, according to the lawsuit. The software included an upgraded billing component enabling reimbursement claims to be submitted electronically.

In its lawsuit, the CAO said it paid "substantial sums" for the software package, including licensing fees and ongoing maintenance costs.

The CAO, according to the lawsuit, relied on, and continues to rely on, TenEleven Group's software to manage billings, primarily for the Medicaid program. CAO employees continue to input weekly billings for services provided to DART clinic patients into the TenEleven Group billing and financial module. TenEleven Group's software transmits the nonprofit's claims to the electronic Medicaid New York claims system portal in CAO's name for payment directly to CAO, according to the lawsuit.

Staff at the DART clinic became aware the software had "a significant defect" after using the upgraded software for a period of time, according to the lawsuit. After learning of the $18.16 additional weekly charge, the staff alerted TenEleven Group, according to the lawsuit. Either an error in the software or in the billing submissions protocol appeared to trigger additional payments from Medicaid for which the CAO had not submitted claims for reimbursement.

TenEleven Group investigated the source of the overcharges and offered assurances the DART staff was correctly inputting claims information, according to the lawsuit.

TenEleven Group told the CAO that it had identified the cause of the defect and addressed it with Medicaid and "repeatedly assured" the CAO that the billing software "was functioning properly" and transmitting accurate information to the eMedNY claims system, according to the lawsuit.

The CAO renegotiated its agreement with TenEleven in 2018, paying higher services fees to continue using the software.

The CAO's lawsuit alleges TenEleven Group "fraudulently induced CAO to continue as a customer ... despite knowing that they had not mitigated the defect CAO previously brought to their attention."

"TenEleven failed to disclose what is now apparent: that whatever actions TenEleven, through its representatives, may have been taking, those actions were not effective either to rectify the software defect or to reduce CAO's now-expanding liability to the Medicaid program," according to the lawsuit.

The CAO received $36.9 million in government grants, according to a 2019 tax filing.

The CAO in 2018 served 642 people in its outpatient opiate treatment clinic, according to the tax filing. The DART clinic conducted 177,252 dispensing visits and 14,883 "clinical episodes of care" that year, and it reported that 78% of those in the program established and maintained abstinence from drug and alcohol use.

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The latest color-coded map from federal health officials detailing Covid-19 spread across the United States has sobering news for this part of the country: Upstate New York is an apparent hot spot for transmission of the virus.

Most of the country is covered in green, meaning those counties are considered to have low levels of community spread as measured by case counts and hospitalizations.

But a large swath of upstate, running from Erie County to the Vermont border, is colored either yellow, for medium transmission, or orange, for high transmission. In fact, of the 40 counties across the country with high Covid-19 levels, 23 are in upstate New York  including Erie, Niagara and Orleans.

Public health experts contacted Sunday said they didn't know precisely why Covid-19 is spreading so rapidly here, compared with the rest of the country, though they suggested weather, behavior and variant types all are likely factors.

As noted in recent weeks, officials said they're not terribly worried about the recent rise in Covid-19 cases here and across the state because it hasn't been accompanied by a corresponding rise in hospitalizations  yet.

But they did say it's another reason people  especially those who aren't fully vaccinated or who are at higher risk of serious illness from the virus  should take precautions such as putting on a face mask in crowded public spaces.

Erie County remains in 'high' Covid level, significant rise in hospitalizations has not followed Despite the surge of cases from variants of the Omicron strain, county hospitalizations remain low. The Health Department said, as of Thursday, county hospitals had 86 Covid-19 patients, 34 of which were admitted due to the virus.

"I'm concerned but not troubled. What I would say is, when the individual risk goes up from low to medium to high, pay attention. Just as you would if it's getting colder outside, you put on a jacket," said Dr. Nancy H. Nielsen, a senior associate dean at the Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo.

Erie County saw its Covid-19 community transmission level rise from medium to high late last week.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looks at per-capita Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations in determining whether a community is at a low, medium or high level of transmission.

The 40 counties identified with high levels of Covid-19 transmission make up 1.25% of counties nationwide. The 228 counties with a medium level of spread account for 7% of the nation's counties.

In Western New York, Erie, Niagara and Orleans counties were at high levels, Genesee and Wyoming were at medium levels, and Chautauqua, Cattaraugus and Allegany were at low levels.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, in recognizing the shift to high transmission, said a return to restrictive public-safety measures wasn't warranted because of the still-lower hospitalization numbers. But he did recommend people take precautions.

Dr. Thomas Russo, chief of infectious diseases at the Jacobs School, pointed out the entire pandemic has been marked by waves of higher spread, often driven by a new variant, followed by periods when cases and hospitalizations calmed down.

However, he noted, while infections spiked following spring holidays and travel in 2021 and again this year, hospitalizations for serious Covid-19 illness aren't on the same path.

For example, 303 people were hospitalized in Erie County with Covid-19 on April 20, 2021, while just 89 were hospitalized one year later, including many who didn't show symptoms but tested positive for Covid after entering the hospital for another reason.

With local Covid-19 cases rising, Erie County releases recommendations for staying safe With Covid-19 cases on the rise, the Erie County Department of Health on Thursday released some safety recommendations for individual residents and households to follow as a means of slowing the spread of the virus.

Similarly, 78 people were in a hospital intensive care unit one year ago and just 11 were in an ICU on Friday, Russo said.

Compared with a year ago, more people today are fully vaccinated, including booster shots, and more people have acquired immunity through an infection, particularly from the fast-spreading Omicron variant, Russo said.

That's why Russo believes Western New York should see a similar trend, as in previous years, of warmer weather sending more activity outside and leading to fewer cases of Covid-19.

"I'm hoping to turn the corner on this, and we'll just have to see. I mean, this virus has thrown us a curveball or two," Russo said.

As to why upstate New York is seeing more spread than parts of the Midwest and Upper Plains, which see similar levels of hibernation during the winter and spring, Russo and Nielsen couldn't say for sure.

"I think people got very casual about the risk," Nielsen said.

Behavior drives community spread, of course, and people here and across upstate largely have thrown caution to the wind in recent months, though this area likely isn't any more pandemic-fatigued than other parts of the country.

Other factors may be the presence of Omicron subvariants, which spread even easier than the variant itself and have been detected in Central and Western New York, and vaccination rates, the doctors said.

Kara Kane, a spokeswoman for the Erie County Health Department, said she couldn't comment on the upstate numbers, deferring to her counterparts at the state Health Department.

"It is still too early to comment on the trends," Jeffrey Hammond, a spokesman for the state DOH, said in an email Sunday.

While Hammond declined to say whether Gov. Kathy Hochul would consider safety mandates to address the rising Covid-19 levels upstate, Russo and Nielsen said urging personal responsibility is a more productive approach to take for now.

"I really don't think the sky is falling," Russo said. "But I think the message out there is we got a lot of Covid in our community. If you go to public venues, without a mask, or if you have gatherings in your house without masks, you have a good chance of getting infected."

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This year might mark the end of sleepy school election days.

It won't be because of budget proposals, not when New York State came through with a record amount of aid, giving every district at least a 3% increase.

But school board races are another matter.

A key factor is that parents weary of pandemic schooling and lost learning, as well as those vehemently opposed to face-masking requirements and other mandates are planning to make their voices heard.

Petitions filed by school board candidates in 31 districts in Erie and Niagara counties show candidates running unopposed in six districts. That's compared with 19 uncontested races in 37 districts last year. And in 2019, 15 districts had contested races while candidates in 22 others were unopposed. Candidates had to file petitions in most districts Monday, but candidates for school boards in small cities have until Wednesday to file their petitions with district clerks.

Increased attention and interest in school boards is a pattern seen across the country, where school board meetings have become a place for skirmishes in the culture wars.

Some local school boards have seen contentious meetings in the past year, with parents in the audience demanding the board members and superintendents allow students to remove their masks. Some boards abruptly adjourned their meetings when members of the public defied state mask mandate and refused to wear masks.

Energized by mask mandates and quarantines, groups coordinate to take School Board seats Energized by the fights against face masks and other pandemic mandates, candidates in a number of local districts are running with the help of groups who have platforms such as parent partnered curriculum and medical freedom.

No one liked watching children struggle with remote learning, but parents gained new insight after seeing what their children were being taught. Some didn't like what they saw, and are expressing their frustrations by wanting to overturn the status quo.

And they believe running for unpaid school board positions at least gives them a seat at the table where decisions are made.

"School boards are democracy at its most grassroots level. Many of the decisions made by school boards will impact people in their community in a bigger way than decisions made at the state and federal levels. And yet we see a very low turnout for these elections and very low interest," said David Albert, spokesman for the New York State School Boards Association.

Renewed interest by candidates may mean renewed interest by voters. The state School Boards Association has launched a campaign to encourage communities to support local school boards in "providing a quality educational experience for every student."

"Typically weve seen a very low turnout for school board elections. They average about 8% of registered voters turnout both for school board members and their school budgets," Albert said.

Instead of candidate platforms of the past that called for low taxes and high academic standards, some candidates are specific when they call for more parental input into curriculum.

One Clarence candidate said on her Facebook page she is running to "ensure that critical race theory and radical gender ideology never reach the realm of our elementary, middle, and high schools." Others call for "parent partnered" curriculum and medical freedom.

The past two years have been difficult for school board members, and six districts have no incumbents seeking re-election. And one, North Collins, has two openings but no candidates. The positions will be filled by write-in ballots.

Some say they just don't have enough time to do the job.

Peter Kwiatkowski is finishing up one term on the West Seneca Central School Board. He said his work has changed, and he is not seeking re-election.

"I've become far too busy to put the time I feel is required to be a good board member," he said.

After attending board meetings for about three years before he ran for office, he said he had a good idea of how the district ran. But he said prospective board members should know there's a lot to digest.

"There's a lot of information, a lot of reading and collaboration," Kwiatkowski said. "It's a lot, and it never ends."

Dennis Toth has been on the Starpoint School Board for 12 years.

"It's time for some new, younger blood to come in," he said. "It's time; all my kids are gone from Starpoint."

One of the rare unopposed candidates is Mary Ann Costello. A longtime teacher and administrator at Frontier Central, she was elected to the board when she retired five years ago.

"I was surprised a bit," Costello said of being the only candidate, but she said she believes things are going well in the district.

Frontier has had a few rowdy meetings where residents expressed their anti-mask views.

"We thanked them for their comments. We told them we were following the recommendations of the state," she said. "We're all in this together. We all want to do what is best."

She said being a board member sometimes takes her back to her administrative days.

"At times we all get weary. Most people don't come and tell you you're doing a great job. They only come when they're concerned or upset, but that's why we're there," Costello said. "And then you have those moments when you say 'Why am I doing this?' I am retired, but I've never been a quitter."

This year's school elections May 17 are a turning point, Albert said.

"We've had a tumultuous 2 years that has been marked by remote learning, and masks and vaccines," Albert said. "I think we want to look at where were at today as a turning point and say were going to need the support of communities. School boards are going to need the support of their community as they move forward."

"There's a really important local community connection to the school boards and we want to make sure that light shines on the both school board and the education system within that local community," said Robert Schneider, executive director of the state school boards association.

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Late on the afternoon of March 27, 2020, five hours into an online firestorm engulfing Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, CEO Candace Johnson emailed a colleague who had checked in with her.

ThanksI have put out a statement and she is administrative leave pending investigation and most likelyI will have to fire her, Johnson replied. you have no idea how bad this has become."

Johnson was referring to a senior executive, Laura Krolczyk, who had posted on Facebook a jibe about how President Donald Trumps supporters should respond to the coronavirus.

The broad outline of what happened next is well known.

Trump partisans hammered Krolczyk online in the hours and days to come. Amid the uproar, the cancer center suspended and then fired her.

Now, emails obtained through a public-records request detail what happened behind the scenes as Roswell Park was pulled into this public-relations crisis.

The controversy was a particular concern because the region's leading cancer center, relies on elected officials, donors and community goodwill for public funding and private contributions.

The nearly 200 emails show Roswell Park and its top officials trying to limit the damage from the outcry on Twitter and Facebook, fend off further news coverage and appease influential supporters who demanded swift action.

A central figure in the episode was prominent GOP operative Michael Caputo, then an East Aurora resident.

Caputo, who later joined the Trump administration before his five-month tenure ended in controversy, used his wide reach on social media to stir up outrage toward Krolczyk. The emails reveal Roswell Parks strategy to counteract him.

And it wasnt just conservatives who blasted Roswell Park; the messages show liberals responding with their own frustration upon learning of Krolczyks termination.

Krolczyk had not commented since she left Roswell Park. Her separation agreement, also obtained by The Buffalo News, requires Krolczyk and the cancer center to avoid speaking ill of each other.

However, Krolczyk did grant an interview for an HBO Max cyberbullying documentary, executive produced by Monica Lewinsky, which relates her experience at the center of a social-media maelstrom.

I just became this comedic thing on the internet, she said in the documentary, 15 Minutes of Shame. And people were just tearing me apart.

The prelude

Krolczyk, a Cheektowaga native, had overseen the regional offices for Sens. Hillary Clinton and Kirsten Gillibrand. Krolczyk said she wanted to help women get elected to office  particularly to the presidency.

She joined Roswell Park in 2010, moving up to director of state relations and then, in 2017, to vice president for external affairs, earning $226,580 two years ago.

Used to working behind the scenes, Krolczyk came under intense public scrutiny on March 27, 2020.

This was shortly after the world had shut down, a period when it was unclear how long Covid-19 would upend lives and how deadly the virus would prove to be.

But partisan lines over the pandemic already had formed.

Friday March 27

That morning Krolczyk said she went on social media mommy groups to find toilet paper, a necessity then in short supply.

But frustrated by the debate over buying ventilators for Covid-19 patients, she shared an article on Facebook about the administration's reluctance to put $1 billion toward ventilator production.

She pointedly added: vote trump.

Soon after, Lisa LaTrovato, director of development at Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, responded: "But will waste more than that on a wall and space force."

Krolczyk replied: "Trump supporters need to pledge to give up their ventilators for someone else ... and not go to the hospital."

LaTrovato responded: "I think they should be the only ones in packed churches on Sunday."

Krolczyk then said: "They should barricade themselves in there and ride this out."

LaTrovato replied: "Yup."

Krolczyk signed off social media to spend some time with her children. And when I came back, everything was just, lit up, she said on the documentary.

My friends were telling me, Its Michael Caputo whos going after you,  she recalled. Then I got scared."

Caputo was an East Aurora-based political operative known for his no-holds-barred work on behalf of the Trump 2016 presidential bid, Carl Paladinos 2010 gubernatorial run and other GOP campaigns. He regularly appeared on cable talk shows and sparred with liberals on social media.

Then I start to get calls and Im getting text messages from people I dont know. And its like literally my whole world is vibrating, Krolczyk recalled. I issue an apology right away. But the frenzy just kept growing.

Roswell Park learned of the Facebook posts just after 12:30 p.m., when Spectrum News asked for comment on whether the Krolczyk-LaTrovato exchange  which, a reporter wrote, was brought to my attention  was "appropriate," according to emails provided in response to a Freedom of Information Law request.

Spokeswoman Annie Deck-Miller forwarded the email to Senior Vice President Laurel DiBrog, Roswell Parks chief marketing and communications officer, who would help craft the institutes response to the controversy.

Deck-Miller wrote: If she deletes them, we would simply respond to Spectrum: Those comments, which were posted on a personal Facebook account, have been deleted. 

Just before 1 p.m., DiBrog wrote to Krolczyk, copying Johnson, the CEO: Since we work for a major corporation that relies on federal dollars, under our current US leadership, I would prefer you to not post these kinds of posts that position Roswell Park through you as opposing President Trump. We dont need this kind of media attention ever.

Krolczyk replied that she had taken the comments off her personal page.

DiBrog, again to Krolczyk and Johnson, wrote: Annie is reviewing everything you have out there and will provide a statement to the news. Candace does not need phone calls coming in from the republicans on any of our boards or major donors.

Natasha Allard, then an integrated marketing communications manager, at 1:27 p.m. flagged several posts by Caputo and wondered if Roswell Park should directly respond to him: He is not slowing down and keeps tagging us and he has a lot of followers.

Caputo throughout Friday thrashed Krolczyk, LaTrovato and their employers on social media.

He tagged both Hauptman-Woodward and Roswell Park in a tweet: Is it your public health policy to assure Trump voters are infected with COVID? Why are your senior executives advocating this sick strategy online? For the love of God, you both exist to fight disease.

In a recent interview, Caputo said Krolczyks post, meant to be viewed by her connections on the site, was fair game because there is no private on Facebook.

The post did not name Caputo. Why did he respond to it so aggressively?

I stand right, shoulder to shoulder, with every Trump supporter. And when she said Trump supporters should get Covid, she was saying that directly to me, Caputo said.

His followers reacted with outrage.

Allard at 1:31 p.m.: 8-10 tweets just rolled in. I cant keep up with these  all the same sentiment.

DiBrog, one minute later: Annie is drafting something from the Institute now  annie dont take more than five minutesplease.

The post blows up

Deck-Miller and DiBrog then crafted an apology for Krolczyk. It included: I will work to learn from this mistake, and I commit to more productive and respectful conversation from this moment forward.

At 2:40 p.m., a supervisor alerted the public-relations team: I now have Michael Caputo on the line asking to speak with Dr. Johnson  please advise asap.

Caputo said he did not talk to Johnson that day.

Joe Lorigo, a Conservative and the Erie County Legislatures minority leader, also called Roswell Park and did speak to Johnson. He said he reached out after receiving concerned phone calls from constituents but did not demand Krolczyks termination.

I have no opinion on that, Lorigo said. She didnt work for me.

By 2:54 p.m., Johnson wrote to Roswell Parks board of directors and Alliance Foundation to reveal she had placed Krolczyk on administrative leave and asked human resources officials to investigate.

Allard, meanwhile, wrote: Its going to blow up even more  it was just retweeted by a major right wing influencer, Jack Posobiec, with 600k+ followers.

At 3:02 p.m., DiBrog: I spoke with some of my media friends  they said dont feed Mike Caputo.

Michael Joseph, Roswell Park's board chair, replied to Johnson: I am sorry this had to happen, Laura is good at her job, but this isnt acceptable behavior from a high level executive at a publicly owned institution that depends on a great deal of public purse and goodwill to successfully pursue its mission. Mike

By 3:14 p.m., Jenine Trzewieczynski, then Roswell Parks major gifts officer, wrote:

I just received a voice message from one of our major donors  Robert Stevenson  Eastman Machine Company. He himself had seen the tweet mentioned below and was outraged. He stated, if this isnt addressed in an appropriate manner  if even dismissal  they would no longer support Roswell Park.

Allard at 3:05 p.m. warned her colleagues: Remove anything about roswell if you dont want to be roped into the Caputo thing  he is searching and publicizing anyone who has roswell marketing or social in their bio.

A spokeswoman said Stevenson was unavailable to comment for this article.

Dr. Philip McCarthy, a professor of oncology and internal medicine, wrote to Johnson at 5:42 p.m. to offer his support, noting: (I am a Democrat BTW and while I am appalled by the Trump administration and the CDC response, asking people to die however flippant is bad for us.)

Johnsons reply five minutes later included the first indication that she would fire Krolczyk.

McCarthy responded it was ugly on Twitter: As much as I despise Caputo for who he is and what he does, we are in a very bad situation.

DiBrog wrote to her team at 5:05 p.m.: Annie and I have handled all local media trying to kill the story and my team is working on monitoring social conversation happening out there.

Roswell Park officials thought the tempest would die down. They were wrong.

Saturday March 28

At 9:41 a.m. March 28, Deck-Miller sent DiBrog a set of talking points to share with executives, board members and influential donors.

Soon after, The News reached out to Deck-Miller.

DiBrog wrote to Johnson at 12:50 p.m.: We are preparing for it all to begin again with the Buffalo News story. Had to give a heads up to Laura.

By 1:43 p.m., The News reported that Krolczyk had been fired following an internal investigation, and that Hauptman-Woodward had suspended LaTrovato.

And then our newspaper did a story saying I was fired, Krolczyk said. And thats how I found out I was fired.

The documentary highlights numerous screen grabs of vile, obscene and threatening social media posts directed at Krolczyk.

I was at the bottom of this avalanche, except I didnt know I was in an avalanche, she said. And I was immediately so humiliated. I went to a dark place.

Her termination generated blowback, however.

By 4 p.m., cancer center employees were reading a script to callers angered by Krolczyks firing that the posts were a violation of Roswell Parks social media policy.

At 4:27 p.m., Cindy Eller, a senior development officer, wrote to a group, in part: We will get past this. we are planning a communication on Monday asking people to reconsider not donating to be reminded of our mission.

Next week

On March 30, Dr. Greg Daniel, a developer who serves on the board of directors, continued an exchange with Johnson after he objected to Krolczyks termination: I thought it would have been a great teaching moment to bring unity in a time of crisis. Now you have a bunch of pissed of democrats to deal with.

Johnson replied to Daniel on March 31: I hear ya Greg.....this has really been a learning experience for me cause the social media response was like nothing I have ever experienced......they were threatening my family.....both republicans and democrats.....my son was actually afraid someone might come to our house and hurt us .

On April 1, Fox News personality Sean Hannity devoted part of his highly rated show to the controversy.

Krolczyk said she had hoped the online storm would pass.

Then I get a call from a friend who said, You were on Sean Hannity last night. Oh great, she said.

The aftermath

By April 3, Roswell Park and Krolczyk produced a 12-page draft separation agreement, including confidentiality and nondisparagement clauses.

Krolczyk received $240,364 in severance, required fringe benefit payments and compensation for unused vacation days and for the duration of a noncompete clause, Roswell Park disclosed.

The evening of April 15, an official alerted colleagues that Caputo had been hired as spokesman for the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Angry emails still came in: Your obeying complaints and orders from the right wing has led me to not support your center any longer, not for 1 second.

Deck-Miller, on April 29, reported to several colleagues on news coverage and social media commentary throughout the controversy.

The summary of social media mentions ran for 90 pages. Highlights of news articles and blog posts ran for 64 pages. A media impact report found 138 mentions in outlets reaching an audience of 34.3 million.

Today, Caputo stands by his relentless criticism of the Facebook post and has little sympathy for Krolczyk.

Whatever her company decided to do because she broke their rules, thats something she has to deal with," he said.

Assemblyman Pat Burke, D-Buffalo, said it was a coordinated Republican attack, driven by Caputo, against a former Clinton staffer who didnt exercise the best judgment but didnt deserve to lose her job. Burke said Roswell Park handled the situation poorly.

It was seen by many as catering to Trump extremists, he said. And I let leadership at Roswell know how I felt about it.

Roswell Park folded Krolczyks duties into those of its vice president of government affairs.

The cancer center declined to comment for this article beyond a brief statement: We have always been a cancer center for everyone, and always will be.

Hauptman-Woodward suspended LaTrovato for about a month but did not fire her.

She declined an interview request but wrote: That was a different time, and I apologized. Im happy that this is behind us all.

Krolczyk also declined to speak to The News. She now works at a locally based lobbying firm.

Krolczyk, who never says the words Roswell Park in the documentary, told its producers she received treatment for acute post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from her ordeal.

I feel like I was just clickbait, Krolczyk said.

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More than 225 police officers and jail guards in Western New York have been suspended, fired or resigned while facing allegations of misconduct in the last five years.

A Buffalo News investigation of more than 1,300 police records that until recently were concealed from public view revealed that 15 of Erie and Niagara counties' largest police departments:

Employed at least 166 officers who were suspended and 59 officers who were fired or resigned after facing allegations of misconduct since 2017. Some officers had multiple suspensions and were counted more than once.

Allowed some officers to keep their badges despite serious misconduct ranging from using excessive force on civilians to using racial slurs.

Rarely determined their officers had used excessive force. Officers were found to have used excessive force in only 14% of those cases.

Had a mixed record of making disciplinary files public. Some agencies turned over hundreds of files while others found ways to conceal them or delay their release, despite the 2020 repeal of a state law that had shielded them in secrecy.

The News analysis represents the broadest public review ever conducted of police misconduct cases in Erie and Niagara counties. The total number of officers who were suspended, fired or who resigned while under investigation for misconduct is likely even higher than The News' tally because The News did not seek records from the smallest law enforcement forces.

Members of law enforcement  while acknowledging that such incidents were inexcusable and warranted discipline  cautioned that they were not representative of the hundreds of police officers who have served with honor.

A Buffalo News analysis showed the roughly 225 officers who were suspended for misconduct, were fired or resigned while facing discipline in the last five years comprised 12% of total officers in those departments as of 2019.

The vast majority of officers in Western New York, they try very hard to do the right thing every day, said Thomas A. Beilein, a former Niagara County sheriff. Theres a few that cause most of the problems, and they usually are frequent flyers when it comes to discipline.

Police reform advocates said The News findings disappointed them  but did not surprise them.

I think its consistent with everything else Ive seen about police discipline, said attorney Miles Gresham, a member of the Erie County Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative Task Force, which was appointed by Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz to review the Sheriff's Office. Generally, police are rarely held accountable for their actions, and when they are, the disciplinary action is almost always too light.

Records were off-limits

The scope of police misconduct in New York has been hidden for years, shielded by an obscure part of state law that made police personnel records off-limits to the public. That statute, known as Civil Rights Law 50-a, was repealed in 2020 after the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.

After the laws repeal, The Buffalo News filed Freedom of Information Law requests to local government agencies for the disciplinary records of officers and other law enforcement personnel who are paid with tax dollars.

Sheriffs in Erie and Niagara counties and police in the towns of Cheektowaga, Tonawanda and Hamburg have in some ways lived up to the laws new promise of transparency, releasing spreadsheets and summaries of internal affairs cases that shed new light on how police agencies police their own.

The Buffalo Police Department had such an antiquated system of record-keeping that leaders originally said it would take months to provide files on its more than 800 officers. The department has since turned over basic disciplinary records on hundreds of officers who were suspended or fired.

But there is delay and hesitancy in other departments to turn over their disciplinary records.

The New York State Police said The News record request  which asked for sustained allegations against all troopers in Western New Yorks Troop A  was too broad and could not be fulfilled because troopers often move between different troops or areas of the state.

For 17 months, the Niagara Falls Police Department failed to release a single disciplinary record in response to The News Freedom of Information request. City officials in October 2020 said the request for police disciplinary records would be granted or denied within 20 business days, though they said response times would be affected by Covid-19.

More than 350 business days passed before the city  after follow-up inquiries by The News  produced a ledger of more than 200 misconduct cases dating back to 2015.

Through a spokesperson, Niagara Falls Mayor Robert Restaino said the citys law department was responsible for the delay. Police Chief John Faso said the police department did not oppose the release of the records.

Cheektowaga Police Chief Brian J. Gould said the new law, along with the proliferation of body-worn cameras, has ushered in a new era of transparency for law enforcement in New York.

Its been a challenging thing for police officers to get used to that change, but I think it does absolutely help with public confidence in the profession, Gould said.

But Cheektowaga  after originally releasing hundreds of files to The News on many of its officers  has, after consulting with attorneys, begun to deny some FOIL requests on the grounds that the records contain technical violations that do not involve interactions with members of the public or are not of public concern.

At the same time, we have to answer to our employees, Gould said.

The New York State Public Officers Law states that for police disciplinary records, "a law enforcement agency may redact records pertaining to technical infractions." The law defines technical infractions as rule violations that "do not involve interactions with members of the public, are not of public concern, and are not otherwise connected to such person's investigative, enforcement, training, supervision, or reporting responsibilities."

Building a database

The News took the paper and digital records of more than 1,300 internal affairs cases provided by local police departments and entered them into a database to identify trends in how law enforcement agencies police their own.

In addition to the departments named above, there are also records from police agencies in Amherst, Lancaster, the City of Tonawanda, West Seneca and the Niagara Frontier Transit Authority Police.

The database also includes records of some case de-certifications involving New York state police, Lackawanna police and Lockport police that came from the State Division of Criminal Justice Services.

The database of allegations includes excessive use of force, false arrests, sleeping or drinking alcohol on duty, sick time abuse, domestic disputes, drunken driving, allowing prisoners to escape, falsifying records, insubordination and workplace harassment.

The News did not include in the database cases where the outcome was not clear, where the allegations were withdrawn or where the cases are still being reviewed by police agencies.

When supervisors determined there was misconduct by their officers, the most common punishments were verbal or written reprimands, which were given 52% of the time. Thirty-nine percent of cases resulted in suspensions, which ranged from one shift to 60 days. Less than 10% of the time the officers were fired, resigned or retired while facing disciplinary measures.

Roughly 200 cases involved allegations of police officers using excessive force on civilians.

When police internal affairs units investigated the use of force, they either exonerated their fellow officers or said there was not enough evidence to prove wrongdoing 86% of the time. Police agencies found their officers used excessive force 28 times in a five-year period.

Excessive force in Tonawanda

One excessive force case involved Adam Cruz, a City of Tonawanda police officer.

Cruz, a Tonawanda native who said it was his lifelong ambition to be a police officer, was hired in 2017 and caught a burglar in the act just one week after he completed the police academy.

He received notoriety for that arrest, but a series of incidents involving the escalating use of force later cost him his job.

In 2018, he was reprimanded for acting hastily in arresting three men who were suspected of damaging road closed signs. Supervisors said Cruz and his partner should only have arrested two of the men.

Two years later, Cruz deployed his Taser while officers were trying to handcuff a man. One of the Taser prongs attached to the mans hand but another prong hit a fellow officer.

PO Cruz owned up to the mistake and realizes he should not have used the Taser with officers in extremely close proximity to the target, his supervisor wrote.

But on June 1, 2020, Cruz stopped a vehicle after receiving a report of a Molotov cocktail being thrown out of a cars window on the Niagara Thruway.

After the driver and one passenger exited the vehicle on Cruzs orders, a second passenger  a girl under the age of 18  stepped out of the vehicle with her arms above her head. Police said the girl failed to turn around when ordered to, so Cruz charged at the woman and used his leg to perform a front push kick striking [redacted] in the chest which knocked her against the car, causing her to fall to the ground and sustain injury.

One witness told police that she was pretty sure the girl "was knocked out cold before she hit the ground. I then watched her get dragged by her sweatshirt hoodie across the road.

The woman later told police that she must have blacked out after Cruz struck her. A female officer asked her if she needed medical attention. She said she had injuries to her head, face, legs, knees, heels, neck and jaw.

Officer Cruzs use of force on the occupant was unnecessary, as she was of no immediate threat to any of the officers at the scene, a supervisor wrote, adding that he did not need to rapidly escalate the situation.

Cruz was suspended for 15 days. He signed an agreement with the Tonawanda mayor stating that although he committed various acts of misconduct, the city would provide Cruz one last chance to keep his job if he stayed out of trouble.

But less than six months later, Tonawanda police notified the state that they were removing Cruz for cause for incompetence or misconduct pursuant toan employee's resignation or retirement while a disciplinary process has commenced.

The city and Cruz are also named as defendants in a lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court after Cruz left the force. Video shows Cruz in 2019 tackled a vendor at Canal Fest. Police at the time said Cruz was breaking up a fight, but the man said the tackle was unprovoked and that he was seriously injured.

Reached by phone, Cruz declined to comment about his discipline record. Tonawanda Police Capt. Fredric Foels said the city's police chief declined to comment on Cruz, other than to say he left the department in October 2020.

Sheriffs deputy used racial slur

Misconduct allegations may have led Cruz to turn in his badge, but other officers who were found to have committed misconduct kept their jobs.

Niagara County Sheriffs Deputy Joseph Flagler was one of them.

Flagler wasnt disciplined for anything he did in uniform. But the words he used during an off-duty incident with a motorist were so totally unacceptable that sheriffs officials were compelled to act, disciplinary records stated.

In July 2017, Flagler was involved in a dispute during which Flagler yelled at a man, using the worst racial slur that can be aimed at Black people.

His superiors wrote to Flagler, This type of language is totally unacceptable in any circumstance and certainly qualifies as a derogatory comment in regards to the citizens race or national origin.

Flagler was suspended without pay for seven days. Now retired, he said in an interview with The News that he regrets the incident.

I dont want something like that to define me, because thats not who I am, Flagler said.

Flagler said he was in a hurry when a car cut in front of him while he was exiting the driveway of a business.

I had a lot of things on my plate to get done, and I got cut off coming out of that driveway, and I yelled out my window, and they turned around and stopped in front of me and confronted me in the middle of the street, he said.

The driver of the vehicle was Black and the two passengers were white, but Flagler said he did not realize the driver was Black when he made the comment. He said he is not a racist.

No, Im not, he said. You dont define someone from a 5-minute action.

Gresham, who is a policy fellow at the nonprofit Partnership for the Public Good, said police officers who use racial slurs should not be able to keep their jobs.

When asked about the incident, Niagara County Sheriff Michael J. Filicetti  who was undersheriff at the time  said in a written statement, This is not the type of conduct that is expected or tolerated from a member of this office. This complaint was handled swiftly and with appropriate discipline.

Officers rarely fired

Even the excessive force allegations that were substantiated by police departments rarely resulted in the firings or resignations of officers, The News analysis showed.

Of the 28 sustained excessive force cases reviewed by The News, six officers were fired or resigned.

The other 22 officers were either suspended for one or more days, counseled or reprimanded by their superiors.

Beilein, the former Niagara County sheriff, said state civil service laws, powerful police unions and arbitrators who often side with police make it difficult for police chiefs and sheriffs to fire officers who have crossed the line.

Is this a person whos been there 15 years and its the first time youve ever disciplined him? Youre probably not going to be able to sustain a firing unless its very egregious, he said.

Gresham said the lack of consequences for police officers in high-profile misconduct cases is one reason public trust in police has fallen in recent years.

If police officers as a class are being held in a lower regard, its primarily because most police departments protect their worst officers as vigorously as they do their best ones, Gresham said. If you got rid of those officers  I think public opinion towards the police would change significantly.

News staff reporters Matthew Spina and Aaron Besecker contributed to this report.

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Williamsville may shrink the size of the village Planning Board from seven to five members.

Village officials say the Planning Board is the largest of the three panels that make decisions on land use in Williamsville, with the Historic Preservation Commission and the Zoning Board of Appeals each at five members already. The Planning Board also has two alternate members.

Planning Board Chairwoman Amy Alexander in March asked the Village Board to consider downsizing the Planning Board to ease issues with attendance and quorums, Keaton DePriest, the village's community development director, said in an email Sunday.

Four members must participate to make a legal quorum for the seven-member board which, even with the alternates, has had issues at times reaching that number, DePriest said.

A downsized, five-person board would require just three to conduct regular business and bring Williamsville closer in size to the Kenmore and Orchard Park village planning boards.

The Village Board is set to vote Monday to hold a public hearing on the downsizing on May 9.

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INDEPENDENCE, Ohio (AP)  Former President Donald Trumps late endorsements in hypercompetitive Republican Senate primaries in Ohio and Pennsylvania have unlocked a flood of support for his chosen candidates, including millions in cash.

But the endorsements have also provoked backlash from some Republicans who believe Trump has betrayed his core supporters by backing Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance in Ohio and TVs Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania. Both candidates have been criticized for time spent outside their states and being insufficiently committed to the former president and his America First agenda.

The blowback included calls by a major conservative group aligned with a Vance rival to boycott the rally Trump held in Delaware, Ohio, Saturday night, where he urged his supporters to get behind Vance, calling him the man with by far the best chance to defeat the radical Democrat nominee for the U.S. Senate this November."

If you want to deliver a historic victory for America First here in Ohio and also a historic defeat for the people that are destroying our country, JD Vance is your guy," he told the crowd.

Its unclear whether Trumps support will be enough to pull Vance and Oz across the finish line in races that will serve as key early tests of the former presidents clout in this years midterm elections. But the endorsements pose a risk to Trump, who has staked his status as a GOP kingmaker on his ability to mobilize his supporters as he eyes another White House run in 2024.

In Ohio, Trump's support has already been a major boon to Vance, who had been trailing in the polls before Trumps intervention. While allies concede Trump's announcement at 5 p.m. on Good Friday, less than three weeks before the May 3 primary election, may not have been the most desirable timing, the campaign nonetheless reported a 300% increase in online donations  a majority from new donors.

Protect Ohio Values, the super PAC supporting Vance, said it had brought in $5 million since Trump's endorsement, including a $3.5 million check from venture capitalist Peter Thiel.

Both groups are using that money to air new ads trumpeting Trump's endorsement that they expect to run exclusively through the rest of the campaign.

We want to make sure 100% of people know about it. And were going to go all out on that," said Luke Thompson, who runs the super PAC, which has found that Vance's support rises when voters are made aware that he is Trump's pick.

Ohio strategists and rival campaigns had long conceded an endorsement from Trump, who remains deeply popular with Republican voters despite his 2020 election defeat and his role in inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, was likely to push any candidate to the front of the pack. Vance aides see the endorsement as particularly useful for their candidate given that the chief line of attack lodged against him has been his past criticism of Trump.

Trump addressed those comments head-on Saturday night, joking that if he refused to support anyone who had criticized him, he wouldn't have anyone to endorse.

Ultimately, I put that aside, he said. I have to do what I have to do. We have to pick somebody that can win.

But the endorsement has sparked deep resentment from those backing Vance's rivals, who launched a furious, last-ditch effort last week to try to change Trumps mind. Trump has called on his supporters to rally around Vance, but Vance's chief rivals, including the Trump-aligned Club for Growth, which supports former state treasurer Josh Mandel, have so far refused to stand down. They have instead continued to run anti-Vance ads, drawing anger, in particular, from Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who has been campaigning for Vance and is set to return to the state Monday for a full day of events.

Ohio Value Voters, a conservative group that has also endorsed Mandel, had called for a boycott of Trumps Saturday rally, saying Trump had made a terrible decision and calling on those who did attend to boo Vance when he was introduced.

The states tea party movement, which overwhelmingly supports Trump, had also planned to protest outside.

For him to endorse JD Vance really seemed like President Trump was out of touch with whats going on in Ohio and what his supporters here want, said Tom Zawistowski, a leader of the group.

Zawistowski warned the endorsement could wind up splitting Trumps base of support in the state primary three ways among Vance, Mandel and Cleveland banker Mike Gibbons. He said that could open up a path to victory for former state GOP chair Jane Timken or even moderate state Sen. Matt Dolan, the one candidate in the race who has not promised to support Trump and his positions if elected.

So far, some voters are siding with Trump.

Linda Davidson, a retired financial consultant from Kirtland, said Trumps endorsement very much crystallized her vote for Vance.

I was actually waiting. I couldnt decide, she said after an event in the Cleveland suburb of Independence on Wednesday. I was kind of confused on who to vote for.

But at a Mandel event near Cleveland on Thursday, Jeanine Hammack, the campaign chair for the Strongsville Republican Party, said Trumps endorsement will not at all influence her vote.

We love Trump. Always will, she said, adding that she's sure the former president has his reasons for picking Vance, but that she knows Mandel better.

In Pennsylvania, Oz is seeing a similar bump since Trump's surprise April 9 endorsement in his close race against former hedge fund CEO David McCormick. The week following Trumps endorsement was the best digital fundraising week for Oz since his campaign launched late last year, with the campaign bringing in nearly three times as much money as it had the week before, said campaign manager Casey Contres.

Some supporters concede that Oz could still lose the May 17 primary with Trump's backing, but argue he likely wouldn't have been able to win without it. His team has shifted its ad strategy for television and digital pitches to focus on the former presidents announcement.

It is a game changer," said John Fredericks, a talk radio host who had urged Trump to back the celebrity doctor.

Trump's endorsement has given people a chance to stop and think and go, Wait a minute. Ive seen this guy on TV helping people for 30 years. Trump sees it, too. And now I'm going to take a second look,'" Fredericks said.

Oz acknowledged the impact during a virtual town hall Trump held Friday night to rally support for his candidate.

"Mr. President, there are a lot of voters who are passionate about you who have said that theyre coming out to see me because of your endorsement," Oz said, before asking Trump if he would mind easing peoples fears by vouching for Oz's conservative credentials.

It was an acknowledgement of the fact that Trump's endorsement of a man who has little history with the Republican Party  not to mention Pennsylvania, after living in New Jersey for the past two decades  has roiled party activists who aren't sold on Oz and believe that he is insufficiently conservative on issues like guns and abortion.

While some county party officials said the endorsement had no further divided Republicans than they had been already, given the seven-candidate primary field, some county party officials reported a tide of angry calls.

The conservative Trumpers are very upset over his endorsement, and they cannot understand it, said Arnold McClure, the Republican Party chair in rural Huntingdon County, where Trump won 75% of the vote in 2020. The Trump era is over in Pennsylvania because of his endorsement of Dr. Oz.

Colvin reported from New York and Levy from Harrisburg, Pa. AP video journalist Patrick Orsagos in Ohio contributed to this report.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Cryptocurrency mining operations are underway or in process at sites in Niagara Falls and North Tonawanda. North Americas largest crypto mining company, Foundry, is located in Rochester.

Drawn to upstate New York for its abundance of inexpensive power, the cryptocurrency industry promises to bring good-paying jobs to cities and towns sorely in need of economic growth, but its a business fraught with risks to the environment.

Bitcoins are not physical coins. Cryptocurrency mining does not mean digging for something in the ground. Blockchain technology, NFTs, Web 3.0  the terms seem part of a foreign language.

The arcane terminology and confusing aspects of the digital currency industry have allowed it to get ahead of government regulators and establish a foothold in Western New York and elsewhere upstate. However, more lawmakers are catching up in response to concerns about possible threats to the environment caused by the new businesses. At minimum, New York State needs a cost-benefit analysis of having digital currency entrepreneurs grow their businesses here.

Last month, a bill in the State Assembly advanced to the Ways and Means Committee that would put a two-year moratorium on proof-of-work cryptocurrency mining. Thats an energy-intensive process by which computers race against each other to solve math puzzles to process and validate blockchain transactions. The bill would also require the state Department of Environmental Conservation to complete within one year an environmental impact statement on crypto operations throughout the state.

The two-year moratorium may be a step too far, potentially stunting the growth of an industry that could benefit the upstate economy.

An alternative bill, which is co-sponsored by Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes of Buffalo, would require creating a task force to study the impact of cryptocurrency in New York and assess whether the industry is compatible with the states climate goals.

Whether its a task force created by the Legislature or a study by the DEC, New York needs to understand the trade-offs involved in having an ever-increasing presence of the crypto industry.

Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club want Bitcoin mining banned in the state, citing harms to the environment. Bitcoin, the most popular of all cryptocurrencies, uses as much energy in a year as Norway and Sweden.

Crypto industry representatives say those claims are overblown and that crypto miners are increasingly moving to the use of renewable energy resources, a process that will accelerate as renewables come down in price.

The CEO of Foundry, Mike Colyer, recently met with The Buffalo News editorial board. Colyer said that 20% of all Bitcoin mining is done through Foundrys pool software. Participants in their pool, he said, get 73% of their power through renewable energy.

Its because in Bitcoin mining, the algorithm drives miners to the lowest cost energy and the lowest cost energy is renewable energy, Colyer said.

Still, even as miners choose renewables, the large amounts of electricity they consume can take away from the supply of renewable power available for homes and other businesses.

New York State set ambitious goals in the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which calls for steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in coming years. By 2040, the state is to generate 100% of its electricity from clean-power sources. Once a state task force is established, the cryptocurrency industry must show that its power-hungry computers can coexist with New Yorks climate goals.

Ground zero in the battle between the crypto mining industry and environmentalists in New York State is in the small village of Dresden in the Finger Lakes. Thats where Greenidge Generation, a cryptocurrency data center and power generation company, bought a retired coal plant, converted it to a 106-megawatt natural gas plant and uses it to power its crypto mining business. Burning natural gas puts carbon in the air.

Greenidge has applied to the DEC for renewal of its air emissions permit. The agency has put off a decision while it studies information submitted by Greenidge Generation about its greenhouse gas mitigation strategies. The decision is likely to shape decisions on how the state treats other crypto mining operators.

Theres plenty of enthusiasm in the state for digital currency and its economic potential. New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said he wants the city to become the center of the cryptocurrency industry. Niagara Falls has several crypto mining businesses putting down roots.

Upstate needs new sources of prosperity when it can be achieved without throwing New Yorks climate goals into an incinerator.

A crypto glossary

Bitcoin: The first and most valuable cryptocurrency, launched in 2009 as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.

Blockchain: A digital ledger in which each transaction is verified by a network of computers and added as a block to the chain. It is the technology behind cryptocurrencies.

Decentralized finance (DeFi): Financial activities conducted without the involvement of an intermediary, like a bank or government.

Ethereum: The second largest cryptocurrency by trade volume.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs): Units of value used to represent the ownership of unique digital items like art or collectibles.

Proof-of-work: It allows a party to use computers to solve a cryptographic puzzle to validate a transaction in mining.

  

Whats your opinion? Send it to us at lettertoeditor@buffnews.com. Letters should be a maximum of 300 words and must convey an opinion. The column does not print poetry, announcements of community events or thank you letters. A writer or household may appear only once every 30 days. All letters are subject to fact-checking and editing.
In the April editorial, Senecas should stop the hyperbole about its casino debt and focus on the future, The News hits it on the head and gets it all wrong, in the same sentence. Writing: Still to be resolved is the separate question of whether the compact extension complied with federal law. But the question of the payments is resolved.

Payments come from the compact extension. If the compact extension does not comply with federal law, neither do the payments. To date there is still no resolution. Thats why the Seneca are calling foul.

When the Seneca Nation requested the Department of Interior review the compact extension, New York declined. The state had something to lose: the disputed payments. Nothing could force the state into the review, so the extension has gone unaddressed. That review still needs to happen, as is acknowledged in the piece. Thank you for that.

The board also said, That left the Senecas with more than $2.2 billion and The Senecas are correct that they have provided many jobs in the region. Its impossible to provide jobs, be a regional economic engine and pocket all of the money. Thats money that went to thousands of workers, service providers, contractors and vendors; and then poured into the region.

The board casually states, New York applied a law that froze their bank accounts. That was no light matter. If the Nation had not conceded the payment a few days later, the drastic action would have negatively impacted thousands of lives in Western New Yorkers; not just Seneca lives.

The ruthless money grab by Gov. Kathy Hochul was an extreme overreach. The Seneca had placed the disputed monies in an escrow account, ready for payment, if, and when final determination came. Its still outstanding.

The Buffalo News may consider the claims of some Seneca as exaggerated. Theres nothing exaggerated about calling for the requisite federal review and calling the states actions foul.

Stephen Watt

Allegany territory
A golden egg in a nest

Written by Adam Othman at The Motley Fool Canada

The Canadian government introduced the Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) to encourage better savings practices in Canadian households. You can use the account as a regular savings account to hold cash for wealth growth through interest income. However, the account offers so much more if you make better use of the available contribution room.

TFSA investing with high-yielding, income-generating assets can be an excellent way to build a solid self-directed retirement portfolio. The TFSA is an ideal investment vehicle for Canadians who want to create a portfolio for retirement.

The account is flexible in that you can withdraw funds from your account without incurring any penalties for early withdrawals. Any amount you withdraw will be added to the contribution space for the following calendar year.

Many Canadian retirees love the tax-free earnings they can earn through TFSA investing. Retirees using their TFSAs as additional passive-income streams do not have to worry about moving to a higher tax bracket and triggering a clawback on their Old Age Security (OAS) income.

The TFSA contribution limit increased by $6,000 in the 2022 update. The cumulative contribution room since the accounts inception stands at $81,500.

Dividend stocks are an excellent pick for investors who want to build retirement funds in their TFSAs. Today, I will discuss a high-yielding dividend stock that could be ideal to begin building such a TFSA portfolio.

TC Energy

TC Energy (TSX:TRP)(NYSE:TRP) is a $70.87 billion market capitalization pipeline company headquartered in Calgary. The company owns and operates one of the largest energy commodity pipeline networks in North America. The company owns and operates energy infrastructure in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico.

Its portfolio includes natural gas transmission assets, oil pipelines, and power-generation facilities. The companys natural gas network spans over 90,000 km, and it boasts extensive storage capacity.

Story continues

As the world slowly shifts towards renewable energy, many investors might not consider investing in energy companies as a viable long-term investment. However, many renewable power-generating assets can be unpredictable.

Weather conditions can impact production in solar, hydroelectric, and wind-power facilities. Gas-fired power generation can produce the necessary power without environmental impact as drastic as oil and goal.

Foolish takeaway

Many countries are shifting to natural gas power production, and the demand for this commodity is slated to grow in the coming years. TC Energy boasts a gas pipeline network that could be instrumental in fulfilling the demand for years to come.

TC Energy also boasts a $24 billion capital program underway to boost its revenue and cash flow growth in the next few years. TC Energy stock trades for $72.26 per share at writing, and it boasts a juicy 4.98% dividend yield. The companys board raised its dividend payout by 3.4% in 2022, and it is likely to deliver further dividend hikes in the next few years.

Buying and holding shares of TC Energy stock in your TFSA can help you generate significant and tax-free long-term wealth growth through its reliable shareholder dividends .

The post 1 Top TSX Dividend Stock to Start a TFSA Retirement Nest Egg appeared first on The Motley Fool Canada.

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2022
CBC

For months, Peter Joy spent part of each day soaking his aching foot in a bucket of ice water to help ease the burning pain. He couldn't work. He couldn't walk. He couldn't even swim  one of his preferred types of exercise  because of the excruciating pain in the big toe of his left foot. "Even the resistance with kicking in the water would increase the toe pain," he said. "My life was taken away from me." Joy was put on a referral list in November to see the first available surgeon, and was t
Ukrainian refugees sit on a shuttle bus after crossing the Ukrainian border with Poland at the Medyka border crossing, southeastern Poland, on March 27, 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP/Getty Images - image credit)

A lucky Ukrainian family made it to safety in Saskatoon on Tuesday, but many visa applicants have been waiting in Ukraine and neighbouring countries for more than a month to come to Canada.

According to numbers from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), more than 100,000 Ukrainians are waiting to get visas to come to Canada.

"IRCC has received over 163,747 applications from Ukrainian nationals between March 17 and April 19 and has since approved over 56,633 applications," the department said in a statement.

Yaroslav Kravchuk and his family, who arrived in Saskatoon this week, are among the lucky ones. He fled Kyiv with his wife and three kids to a village near Bucha.

"It was very close to all shots, bombing and everything," Kravchuk said.

Submitted by Yaroslav Kravchuk

The family traveled to Poland to work on their applications for the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) immigration stream.

It took them eight hours to complete the applications. They had to consult YouTube for help, as the process is only available in English or French.

"I didn't find any available biometric appointment. Online service was overloaded. We went in person and my wife stood waiting from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m.," he said.

After submitting their passports, it took two weeks to get visas since "families with little children were on priority."

"But it's not very fast now, as it's taking almost six weeks of wait," he said.

On Easter Sunday, after a month's wait, North Battleford resident Maryna Shkarupa finally met her 16-year-old niece Kateryna Derevianko, who fled with her grandmother from Kryvyi Rih.

Shkarupa had immediately informed her niece of a passport pick-up place in Warsaw when she received the email on April 12. Derevianko was staying in Poznan, three hours' drive away from Warsaw.

"My niece was allotted the 229 number and got later informed by the visa centre that she doesn't have a chance that day as they were still processing people from the past two days," Shkarupa said.

Story continues

Submitted by Maryna Shkarupa

Halfway back to Poznan, her niece came across information on Telegram channels saying the centre was giving out passports for numbers below her. Derevianko returned but still did not receive her passport that day.

"A 16-year-old girl, all by herself in a strange country. We all were worried. Next day she was there at 8 a.m. and by 10, she got her passport with a visa," she said.

"We were lucky, as many people are still waiting. My friend submitted passports for her family a day later than us, but they are still waiting in Warsaw."

Waiting for more than a month

Tetiana Chudiiovych fled Kyiv shortly after the Russian invasion and made it to safety in Italy with her two children. They submitted their visa applications on March 18, a day after the new CUAET immigration program was announced, but are still waiting.

"It has been more than a month. We're just waiting. I've changed my flight four times by now," the 39-year-old said.

When she last spoke with CBC, Chudiiovych was hoping to arrive in Saskatoon by early April. She had initially booked her flight for April 14, but now is worried about postponing her plans for May 14.

Besides that expenditure, she has to bear the expenses of staying in Italy, including 200 euros for medical insurance. Chudiiovych said many people went back to Ukraine while waiting for visas, as they couldn't bear Europe's high prices.

Submitted by Tetiana Chudiiovych

She said calling the IRCC's helpline number means waiting for hours to connect with "an agent who just has general information."

"It's a psychological stress when there's war in my country and the other country tells me please wait while we figure out what we do with you and your children," she said.

"I don't want to begin a new life, I want to continue my life."

IRCC said it is taking a risk-based approach to biometric screening while closely monitoring the operational capacity of its offices and visa application centres (VACs) in Europe.

"Additional biometric capacity has been added to the Visa Application Centre network and Canadian missions in Poland, Austria, Romania and Germany," the department said.

"IRCC has opened new temporary VACs for biometric collection in Warsaw, Poland, and Bratislava, Slovakia, and additional locations are scheduled to open soon in Budapest, Hungary and Krakow, Poland."

All the families CBC Saskatchewan spoke with a week after the CUAET was announced are still waiting to come. CBC also spoke with Ukrainians waiting to come to Canada from Berlin and Spain who reported faster processing times.

"The system works strangely. People who took biometric after us have already received a visa, but those who gave biometric before us, still haven't received even a confirmation," Daria Zaporozhets said from Poland.

Zaporozhets fled Kyiv with her family, her two big dogs, four cats and two non-poisonous snakes. It took eight hours of traffic to cross the city to finally get to the border.

"We stood for nine hours at the Polish border with all my pet crates. I feel like I'll die from the tiredness," she said.

The family of three finally made it to a refugee camp in Poland.

She said the applications "were even difficult for people in Canada to understand." They submitted their passports on April 1.

"More than 10 days passed, we heard nothing. We didn't know where the passports were. No communication, complete silence, we just waited," she said.

On Friday morning, she heard that her visa was on the way, but the family still is waiting to come to Saskatoon.

Wait putting vulnerable people in harm's way: Canadian helping fleeing Ukrainians

Oksana Bushai and Hanna Bincheva have been friends since they were five and attended the same school in Zaporizhzhia, a city in southeastern Ukraine.

The 22 -year-olds connected with CBC from Vienna with the aid of a translator.

"We wanted to leave because the situation is dangerous in our city and there are no jobs," Bushai said.

The two traveled from Zaporizhzhia to Lviv in a crowded train, despite the train workers informing them "their safety isn't guaranteed and the train can be shot anytime."

"The windows were all closed. We were traveling inside a dark train in the night to come to Lviv. In the morning, 30 minutes away from Lviv, my mom called to inform us that the city was under attack," Bushai said.

Submitted by Oksana Bushai

The duo made it to Uzhhorod, four kilometres away from the Slovakian border, crossed the border and took a bus to Bratislava.

"In Bratislava, we took tickets to Vienna where we finally met a Montreal woman who helped us with applications," Bushai said.

All this while, Brienna Buchanan-Cordell from Collingwood, Ont., who will be hosting the women, kept tracking them on iPhone.

Submitted by Hanna Bincheva

They submitted their applications on March 25. While Bushai has already received her passport, Bincheva is still waiting.

"I'm very upset waiting. I'm worried it might get lost. I want to come to Canada soon, learn English, get a job and support my family and do some painting," Bincheva said.

Buchanan-Cordell also spoke with a visa official on Bincheva's behalf, but was told "to wait 20 days before they inquire again".

The women say they almost got duped by a B.C. man in a Facebook group who vouched to pay for travel and accommodation them with a promise of jobs.

"He sent us his documentation and the group's administrator, Kelly Glass, also reached out to him. Kelly found that his passport had expired," Bushai said.

Submitted by Kelly Glass

Kelly Glass said the man's identification was questionable, and since he said he was going to host four girls under the age of 23 in a remote B.C. community, she intervened and connected the girls with Buchanan-Cordell.

"Individuals in super vulnerable positions are more susceptible to predatory behaviour," Glass, who aids fleeing Ukrainians seeking help in her Facebook group, said.

"Many are struggling with the visa process and barriers like language and courier process are adding to the delay. There's minimal support on the ground for these individuals."

Submitted by Brienna Buchanan-Cordell

While Buchanan-Cordell has already prepared her basement for the women's arrival, she has spent close to $3,000 just changing their Airbnbs and started a fundraising page for them.

"It's very expensive and exhausting but I feel for them. I can't imagine doing all this and still not getting any updates on applications," Buchanan-Cordell said.

'Not so fast'

CUAET was billed as a speedy process to bring displaced Ukrainians as temporary residents.

"Only 10,000 people have actually arrived in Canada when over 100,000 applications have been submitted," Mary Mokrushyna, director at Ukrainian Diaspora Support Canada (UADSC), a non-profit in Ottawa assisting fleeing Ukrainians, said.

She said there is a lack of standardization and uniformity across various visa centres in Europe, since places like Vienna are faster than Warsaw.

Mokrushyna said they had 1,100 Ukrainians on their list but "only 89 people are ready to fly."

"Ten per cent in two months when the government originally said it would take only 14 days to process is a big stretch," Zack Nethery, another director at UADSC, said.

"People in Poland are hosting people thinking it will be two weeks when it's starting to be two months. That welcome is starting to wear."

Submitted by Zack Nethery

UADSC aids applicants with language assistance to fill out forms. Nethery said the requirement to send passports via courier is causing further delays.

"The supply chain is so bad that the couriers are jammed up that they're doing the services once a week, causing an extra delay of a week for applicants," Nethery said.

"Even within Canada, the information isn't spread evenly. I can only imagine internationally."

He said booking biometric appointments is similar to early days of booking a COVID vaccination.

"With COVID vaccination, they told you to check constantly, whereas here you're left figure out yourself."
Ukraine has repelled numerous Russian attacks in the Donbas region of eastern Urkaine that borders Russia , according to British military intelligence.

Russian forces are now focused in the two month war on achieving gains in Ukraines east.

Ukraine has repelled numerous Russian assaults along the line of contact in the Donbas region, the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week said Russia had started the battle for Donbas, for which they have been preparing for a very long time. He said Moscow had an entire army focused on the assault.

The Ukrainian president, however, vowed that Kyiv would defend its territory no matter how many Russian soldiers are driven there.

The U.K. defense ministry on Sunday said that While Russia has made some territorial gains, Ukraines resistance has been strong and had inflicted significant cost on Russian forces.

The British intelligence update also said Russias poor morale and limited time to reorganize are likely hampering Moscows offensive.

Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganise from poor offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness, the ministry wrote.

The intelligence update comes in the eighth week of Russias invasion of Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24. After failing to take control of Kyiv, Moscows forces repositioned its offensive to target the south and east of Ukraine.

Zelensky on Sunday said eight people were killed and at least 18 were injured that day when a Russian missile strike hit Odesa, which is in southern Ukraine. A three-month-old baby girl was among those killed in the attack.

Today Russia launched another missile strike at Ukraine, at Odesa. As of now  8 dead. At least 18 wounded. Ordinary peaceful people. Among those killed was a 3-month-old baby girl. How did she threaten Russia? It seems that killing children is just a new national idea of the Russian Federation, Zelensky said in an address.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Former California congressman Devin Nunes defamation lawsuit filed in Albemarle County regarding a story published in a California newspaper by a California newspaper chain, has been denied an appeal by the Supreme Court of Virginia.

Nunes suit charged that the McClatchy Co.  which owns several newspapers across the country, but none in Virginia  conspired with Virginia-based center-right operative Elizabeth Mair to defame the congressman and interfere with his investigations into Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign and alleged Russian election interference.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Nunes, a former Republican congressman from California, by Charlottesville attorney Steven Biss in Albemarle Circuit Court in April 2019.

Though Nunes, The Fresno Bee and McClatchy are all based in California and McClatchy does not operate any papers in Virginia, Biss filed it in the county arguing that the company distributes to the state physically, digitally and via broadcast.

This case involves McClatchys delivery to and publication of defamatory statements in Albemarle County and throughout Virginia, and the publication of false and defamatory statements by McClatchy and its agents and co-conspirators who were, at all relevant times, physically present in Virginia, Biss wrote

McClatchy was later non-suited after the company filed for bankruptcy in July 2020. The complaint was dismissed against Mair following a hearing in June 2021. Nunes subsequently appealed the case to the Supreme Court of Virginia, which refused his petition for appeal.

Upon review of the record in this case and consideration of the argument submitted in support of, and in opposition to, the granting of an appeal, the Court is of the opinion there is no reversible error in the judgment complained of, the refusal reads. Accordingly, the Court refuses the petition for appeal.

Some legal experts have claimed that Nunes may have filed the lawsuits in Virginia in an effort to get around Californias anti-Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation statute.

Anti-SLAPP statutes are intended to protect journalists accused of defamation and libel from expensive lawsuits intended to censor content, experts said. Although Virginia has an anti-SLAPP statute, it isnt as robust as Californias.

Similarly, some legal experts say Johnny Depp, an actor best known for his roles in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, may have filed his libel suit against his ex-wife Amber Heard in Virginia for similar reasons.

Depps lawsuit is currently in the midst of a trial in Fairfax County Circuit Court, near the offices of the Washington Post. The Post published an opinion piece written by Heard in 2018 which Depp claims falsely implied he physically and sexually abused her.

According to the Associated Press, last month a Fairfax County judge ruled that Heard can argue to a jury that she should be protected from a libel lawsuit because her op-ed deals with a matter of public interest.

Nunes Supreme Court of Virginia petition for appeal, filed Sept. 27, argued that the decision to grant dismissal in early stages of the lawsuit was improper. The petition argues that the county circuit court erred when it found that the statements published by Mair and her conspirators were not defamatory.

Following the Supreme Courts March decision to dismiss the suit, h, Mair issued a statement in which she thanked the court for upholding the First Amendment and my  and all Americans  rights of free speech.

I hope that this judgment will dissuade other government and political figures from attempting to use litigation as a cudgel to stifle free speech, Mair wrote. This lawsuit did not succeed in silencing me, and nor should lawsuits like it be allowed to silence other Americans exercising their God-given rights to free speech especially where they do so in an effort to hold their government accountable.

The lawsuit and appeal both cited a May 2018 article from The Fresno Bee  initially titled A yacht, cocaine, prostitutes: Winery partly owned by Nunes sued after fundraiser event  that details a 2016 lawsuit filed against Alpha Omega Winery, a California organization partially owned by Nunes.

In the suit, a former employee alleged she suffered civil rights violations, intentional infliction of emotional distress and sexual harassment while working a charity cruise.

The article did not claim Nunes was on board the cruise and clarifies that it is unclear whether he was aware of the 2016 lawsuit or the cruise. Alpha Omega Winery later settled the womans suit for an undisclosed sum, according to the article.

Accusations against Mair  who was also named alongside two anonymous Twitter users in a similar defamation lawsuit in Henrico County  were largely based on her reposting the yacht story. Nunes alleged a conspiracy existed between her, McClatchy and Fusion GPS, a commercial research and strategic intelligence firm not named as a defendant.

Mair was accused of providing false narratives and egregious soundbites to the newspaper reporter, who simply republished [them] without fact-checking them.

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The health of students and staff at Franklin School K-8 suffered after asbestos was removed from the flooring  considered a routine construction project for many schools in the Corvallis School District  over spring break, leaving behind foul-smelling air in the hallways.

Resulting complaints included headaches, nausea, dizziness, sore throats and runny noses. Some parents pulled their children out of school in response. Even worse, say some parents, was how the district managed the incident.

For their part, district officials say the process was strictly regulated by the Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency, and that people with varying sensitivities may have reacted differently to the chemicals used.

The project

The district contracted Oregon-based PBS Engineering & Environmental to approve the safety plan and NetCompliance of Vancouver, Washington to do the actual abatement, which consisted of removing floor tiles throughout the building and disposing of asbestos materials. The effort cost the district more than $500,000.

On March 28, students, staff and teachers returned from spring break to a work in progress. The new tiles have not yet been installed.

They noticed a strong odor wafting throughout the classrooms and hallways, according to parents, speaking both to the school board at its April 14 meeting and in interviews.

The fumes were a result of the off-gassing  a term used to describe noxious gasses coming from building material  of the Safeguard Low Odor product used to remove the adhesive of the previous flooring, according to the district.

It wasnt long after school resumed that staff and students started to experience symptoms.

Because the schools HVAC system works only in the classrooms but not in the hallways, two commercial exhaust fans were placed in the building to circulate outside air into the hallways and mitigate off-gassing from the product, according to district Director of Facilities and Transportation Kim Patten.

Informing parents

On March 31, concerned third-grade teacher Stacey Reese sent an email to her students parents, informing them of the construction project and the residual odor throughout the building.

Reese wrote that she herself had been impacted  she had virtually no voice left  and that more than half of her students were symptomatic or out sick.

For some parents, her email was the first they heard of the project. Franklin Principal Craig Harlow said he emailed a video message to parents and staff on Feb. 18 informing of the project, but many said they missed it.

A day after the teachers email went out, Patten and the schools custodian team came to Franklin and scrubbed the floors, provided more ventilation and planned a safety response meeting.

On April 3, an industrial hygienist with PBS Engineering & Environmental tested for volatile organic compounds, a very broad set of chemicals, in the hallways and classrooms. The hallways tested 2 to 3 parts per million, while in the classrooms the volatile organic compounds were undetectable.

The Oregon Occupational Safety and Health permissible exposure limit is 50 parts per million, but that is for workers who are around these chemicals all day for their job.

'Degraded air quality'

At the April 14 school board meeting, Franklin School PTA board member Troy Brandt requested a full chemical accounting for the "degraded air quality."

Patten said the district continued to air out the building by keeping doors open between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. every day, in addition to daily testing for volatile organic compounds and cleaning the floors every weekend.

The odor was atypical in our experience, Superintendent Ryan Noss said. Typically when weve removed floor tiles in the past, there hasnt been a residual smell like that.

At this point, the Franklin School PTA began conducting their own research into the air quality situation.

PTA member Rigel Woodside found out the Safeguard Low Odor product had been reformulated in early 2021 by replacing one ingredient with a similar ingredient. This new ingredient, called 2-(2-butoxyethoxy)ethanol, does not yet have established occupational exposure levels by Oregon Occupational Safety and Health.

It is unclear whether the district used the old or new formula in the asbestos abatement project at Franklin.

Brandt told school board members the reformulation was purposefully designed to to address health concerns. The old formula had higher VOC levels.

"Exposing our teachers, staff and students to unknown chemicals and then not taking appropriate measures to understand the exposure is unacceptable and should not require parents to uncover the health risk our students were exposed to," Brandt told the board. He declined an interview.

Meanwhile, the same project was underway at Adams Elementary over spring break, and Adams office manager Theresa Dawley said there were no reported concerns with an odor at that school.

One explanation

Noss said one potential explanation that the odor was experienced only at Franklin is that it is one of the older buildings in the district and that the cement slabs may have absorbed the product in such a way that a smell stuck around.

Although the district made an effort to mitigate the fumes after symptoms and parent concerns were reported, some Franklin parents do not feel the district took responsibility soon enough.

For example, in an April 3 email from Harlow to parents and staff, the principal insinuated that those who were symptomatic may have been experiencing allergies, rather than acknowledging a correlation between the fumes and the illnesses.

As with other pollutants, the extent and nature of the health effect will depend on many factors, including level of exposure and length of time exposed, Harlow stated in the message. Its also important to know that pollen levels in Corvallis last week were high with a pollen count of 8.8 on both Tuesday and Friday.

Eating on the floors

The following week, middle school students ate lunch sitting down on the floors in the very hallway where the asbestos had been removed. Harlow said he made this call because the weather became too cold for the students to sit outside and the cafeteria was for elementary students only throughout the pandemic to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

When parents learned their children were eating in the offensively smelly hallway, they brought their concerns to the principal and district. The students stopped taking their lunch in that spot soon after.

Jonathan Stoll has two daughters at Franklin and said he found the principals communication dismissive and the decision to have lunch in the hallway a poor risk assessment.

Youre going to trust the school, he said. Why would they lie to me?

His confidence shaken, Stoll kept his first- and third-graders out of school for a week.

Communication from the district is damage control at this point, he said.

Rigel Woodside, who has three students at Franklin, took issue with his child eating in an unfinished construction zone.

I havent been vocal until this happened, Woodside said. But this is really wrong because my kid got sick.

He said the fumes triggered migraine headaches for his eighth-grader, who stayed home for an entire week because of the smell. His younger children experienced headaches as well.

Woodside wishes the project had been done over summer break, saying he believes this type of work needs more than a week to settle before kids are brought back into the building.

Noss told Mid-Valley Media that while this is not industry standard, the district will start testing for volatile organic compounds before children enter a building that has just been worked on.

We are really committed to making sure that we continue to move forward and learn from this situation, Noss said. We want our schools to be great places for kids, and we're going to continue to communicate as we move through this.

Joanna Mann (she/her) covers education for Mid-Valley Media. She can be contacted at 541-812-6076 or Joanna.Mann@lee.net. Follow her on Twitter via @joanna_mann_.

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Students on the Benton side of Linn-Benton Community College can now utilize Chinook Hall for their studies, a $14.5 million building that fulfills the college's final promise to the voters of the 2014 bond measure.

Chinook Hall, 931 NW Reiman Ave., was named to honor the Chinook tribes in the Pacific Northwest. It has six classrooms, two classroom laboratories and one lab prep room. Additionally, the hall has two large and two small conference rooms and collaborative spaces, staff offices and student gathering areas.

The hall is primarily for students in the Degree Partnership Program, which allows students to be dually enrolled in LBCC and Oregon State University.

"Completing the new Chinook Hall is a milestone moment for LBCC, and for the people of Corvallis," said LBCC President Lisa Avery. "It greatly expands our ability to serve the community with accessible, quality education, including stronger resources for our students who are dual enrolled with LBCC and OSU, community members taking personal enrichment classes, and organizations needing collaborative work space."

Saturdays ribbon cutting ceremony began with the LBCC Choir singing Build the Sky as a way to celebrate making dreams a reality, said choir director Raymund Ocampo.

Corvallis School Board Co-Vice Chair Dr. Luhui Whitebear gave a land acknowledgement and spoke about the Chinookan peoples after whom the building was named. Avery and OSU President Dr. Becky Johnson spoke about their schools collaboration, followed by Simon Date, President of the Corvallis Chamber of Commerce, and Jeff Davis, Benton Center Director.

LBCC Student Poet Laureate Sophia Griffith recited a poem she wrote for the opening of the new hall.

Over the years,the building itself has served as a frozen vegetable processing plant, a bus barn and now an educational building. No matter the purpose, it has remained a staple in Corvallis, serving the community in various ways.

Construction began in May 2020, but the planning started well before then. A whole second level was added to the building, as well as many built-in energy efficiencies.

There are several new parking spots outside of the building, which will help with the overflow of the original Benton Center across the street, a building Avery said the college had outgrown.

Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Corvallis Gazette-Times.

Guests at the ceremony had the chance to walk through the new space and learn about the various programs LBCC offers while enjoying refreshments and music.

We want students to feel at home in a space that brings talent and opportunity together," Avery said.

Joanna Mann (she/her) covers education for Mid-Valley Media. She can be contacted at 541-812-6076 or Joanna.Mann@lee.net. Follow her on Twitter via @joanna_mann_.

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It took Christopher Arnold and his fiance Anna Somak 40 days to escape her war-torn home country of Ukraine. But to them, it felt like years.

Arnold, a self-taught video game designer and lifelong Albany resident, first met Somak online two years ago when he was connecting with Vietnamese game artists and she was working in the country as an English teacher and model.

After they ended up on mutual friends' lists, the two began talking every single day, and their long-distance relationship turned serious within a year.

In that time, Arnold received what he calls a crash course in Ukrainian culture, which came to a head this year with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February.

"Ukraine has a culture worth protecting," Arnold said. "It's really sad to see it starting to be erased."

Growing up, Somak wanted to see the world. After graduating college with a degree in English and literature, she traveled Asia modeling and teaching English on the side.

Back at home in late February, everything changed.

"I woke up and felt like something was going to happen, but I didn't know what," Somak said. "I couldn't believe this was happening when I saw the news on the internet."

Somak and her sister, Olga, lived in Zaporizhia, a city of some 722,000 people in Southeast Ukraine. It is home to a nuclear plant that saw heavy combat. Somak was forced to leave it four days after war broke out on Feb. 24.

It was common to see families separated at local train stations under government rules prioritizing women and children for public transit, Somak said.

She recalled a young woman crying into the shoulders of authorities as her husband was led away from their children.

"I felt very sad for her," Somak said. "I will never forget that image of her."

Since then, thousands of people have fled the city, and a train station minutes from where Somak's grandmother lives was bombed and rebuilt.

At Arnold's insistence, Somak and her sister caught the first train out of Zaporizhia they could when bus lines and highways shut down.

One of the only possessions she brought with her from home is a necklace bearing a small crucifix. She was wearing it when she survived a mugging some years ago and she carries it with her always.

"I just believe that Christ saved me then and helps me now," Somak said.

The next 30 hours spent traveling to the Polish border by train were what Somak called the worst of her life.

The whole way, she said, dozens of refugees like herself were packed into a car, standing room only the entire trip.

Meanwhile, Arnold raced to Ukraine with little more than a pack of plain clothes, a laptop, a credit card and a chessboard for his fiance, all inoffensive items he thought would pass border security.

Arriving at a train station in Ukraine and seeing Somak face-to-face for the first time, Arnold said he didn't know whether to smile or cry as they and Somak's sister embraced, surrounded by hundreds of families who also had lost everything.

Huddled together on trains for days, they all fell ill during their journey. Finding simple medications like Tylenol was almost as difficult as finding sleep elbow-to-elbow with their fellow passengers.

Arnold considers them all fortunate for not contracting COVID-19. The few hospitals left standing only had room for soldiers.

Their escape route was circuitous. The three spent most of their time in capital cities far from the fighting, such as Warsaw, Poland, as well as the Croatian port town of Zadar. They lived off of what they could scrounge up from local markets, stretching their money as far as it could go.

Leapfrogging from country to country took its toll. Every three or four days, Arnold said, they were adjusting their plans and riding by the seat of their pants, literally and figuratively.

"We always expected something to go wrong," Arnold said. "We always carried our documents, and we always had backup plans."

The war followed them as far as Croatia, Arnold said, where the three witnessed a combat drone crash three countries away from the fighting.

All three made it to the U.S. in early April, crossing through Tijuana, Mexico along with thousands of Ukrainian refugees seeking asylum.

The Biden administration has expedited the immigration process for Ukrainian refugees, but Arnold said that didn't mean it was easy. In Mexico, Somak's sister was detained for at least two hours by border authorities, leaving Arnold and Somak at their wits' end.

"We didn't know why she was taken away," Arnold said. "They wouldn't tell us anything, and they wouldn't tell us when she'd be out."

Making it to the U.S. is a tall order Arnold said most Ukrainians will never accomplish on their own. The trip set him back more than $5,000, most of which came from his unspent COVID-19 stimulus checks.

"It's hard, and it's very expensive," Arnold. "I don't think most Ukrainians will have access to that kind of money."

For Somak, living in the U.S. will mean starting over again. She arrived only with a large suitcase stuffed with nothing but clothes and bathroom supplies.

Over the coming months, Arnold expects some legal hurdles for the three of them: getting visas, jobs and health insurance for Somak and her sister.

Their plan, according to Arnold, is to eventually move to Portland, where he hopes Somak can find teaching work once his son and daughter, ages 13 and 11, are grown and out of the house.

The United Nations estimates up to 4.8 million people have fled Ukraine since the war began. It remains to be seen if they can or will return.

The rest of Somak's family remain scattered across Ukraine. Many live in Mariupol at the mouth of the Kalmius River where Ukrainian forces are expected to make a last stand defending the country's industrial heartland.

Arnold said he intends to go back to Ukraine for Somak's extended family if safe passage is possible again. He and Somak talk with them daily, and, for now, they're healthy and out of danger.

Should the war end, he expects Somak's family will want to remain to help rebuild.

"There's a lot of unity there to keep going and keep living," Arnold said. "They're very strong and also very kind. They know themselves."

Today, sister Olga is living in Pasadena, California, where she plans on continuing her career as a teacher, according to Somak.

Somak said she is very grateful to be in America and is excited to discover what Oregon has to offer.

She said her parents, who work as police officers in Zaporizhia, are duty-bound to remain and maintain order.

Somak hopes her story reminds people abroad how much the war will cost people for a long time to come.

"I really just want more people to know about what's happening Ukraine and not to get used to the war," Somak said. "People in Ukraine can't get used to it."

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include quotes from Anna Somak and additional information.

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A GOP debate at the Linn County Expo Center in Albany on Friday night proved not all Oregon Republicans see eye to eye in their uphill battle to win back the governors mansion.

What started out as mostly congenial ended up as fiery when a spectator was kicked out for recording the proceedings, which prompted three of the candidates to leave in protest.

Now at the end of her second term and per the state's constitution's rules about term limits, Gov. Kate Brown will step down from the office she inherited from former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber in 2015.

Thirty-three people 19 Republicans and 15 Democrats  are vying to become Oregons 39th governor in 2022.

On Friday, April 22, nine of those Republicans told Linn County voters why they deserve the Oregon GOPs nomination to govern a state Pres. Joe Biden won by some 381,000 votes.

They included political consultant Bridget Barton from West Linn, Baker City entrepreneur Kerry McQuisten, sales analyst Tim McCloud from Salem, chiropractor Amber Richardson from White City and marketing consultant Brandon Merritt from Bend.

Joining them were entrepreneur Nick Hess of Tigard, David Burch of Salem, tax protester Bill Sizemore from Redmond and ex-Alsea School District Superintendent Marc Thielman from Cottage Grove.

Absent from the debate were former Oregon House Minority Leader Christine Drazan of Canby and attorney Bob Tiernan from Lake Oswego.

Talking the talk, walking the walk

The nine candidates did agree on a host of issues, from expanding veterans services to slashing taxes across the board. Many pointed to their own personal qualities as a selling point to voters.

Barton, a charter school advocate who sat on the board of the anti-union Freedom Foundation, said she could sway independent and unaffiliated voters.

Its time for an outsider, Barton said. And what I mean by that is I have no baggage.

Sizemore, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1998, noted his political experience and knowledge of the state tax code he has repeatedly petitioned to amend.

In 2000, the Oregon Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers successfully filed a civil racketeering lawsuit against two of his political action committees in which he was not named as a defendant or party.

Among the more controversial candidates onstage Friday night was Thielman, a vocal anti-vaxxer who pushed his former school district to lift its mask mandate weeks before it was lifted by the state. That cost the district $43,000 in fines from Oregon Occupational Safety and Health.

He is also at the center of multiple complaints and lawsuits against the school district alleging he fostered a hostile work environment and regularly harassed his female colleagues.

Thielman has denied the allegations, calling them lies manufactured to ruin his name and his run for governor.

Im the dangerous candidate, Thielman said in an interview. I tell the truth.

Thielman rallied at the Oregon state capitol building in Salem during his gubernatorial campaign where Neo-fascist groups, including the Proud Boys, attended in support.

In an interview, Thielman said he was unaware the Proud Boys, who were part of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, held any extremist views.

Im not a Proud Boy, so I wouldnt know how to define one, Thielman said. What is a white supremacist? What that may mean to one person may mean something different to someone else.

Free speech or fair speech?

Early into the debate, a woman who appeared to be recording the debate on her smartphone threatened to upend the initial party unity on display.

The woman, who was escorted out of the building by two Linn County Sheriffs deputies without incident, was accused by debate organizers of violating the debates rules against recording and amateur photography.

Everybody knew coming to this event that this was going to be a professionally photographed, professionally (filmed) event, Linn County GOP debate moderator Adam Keaton said. This is a private event open to the public.

The woman, he said, told organizers prior to the event that she planned to attend and violate the rules, even notifying law enforcement and the onsite private security beforehand.

The Linn County Sheriffs Office told Mid-Valley Media it responded to the event and took no one into custody on Friday night.

Merritt and Burch, who disagreed with the handling of the incident, erupted in heated exchanges with Keaton and Ryan Murphy, the owner of Marks in Time Photography and videographer hired to film the debate.

This lady knew ahead of time that we were going to record, and we were going to do something that looks professional for the public, Murphy told the two.

Only audio of the groups brief conversation was captured in Fridays live recording of the debate.

Richardson, Merritt and Burch left the event early thereafter, claiming that debate organizers violated the womans free speech. As he exited, Merritt said: "I'm very sorry if you're taking this personally. ... What just happened, I cannot stand for. And I don't believe as conservatives or as Republicans this is appropriate."

Before he left, Burch called the incident a "severe wake up call" for him. He said he was ashamed of what happened.

The other candidates applauded the GOP organizers response.

I think the candidates should stand up here and be mature and comply with the rules that we agreed to, McQuisten said.

The debate carried on with six candidates remaining.

Using the bully pulpit

The candidates at the debate voiced little interest in pursuing bipartisanship in Salem, promising to roll back as much Democratic legislation as possible on Day One.

Few onstage were willing to pass their agenda by fiat. Executive orders, they said, would have to be a means of last resort.

With emergency powers, you can use it to undo a lot of bad, progressive legislation, Thielman said. You have to have the courage to do it, even if it can be undone.

Hess cautioned that an obstructionist governorship would guarantee the next election would swing Democrats way.

McCloud promised to limit his executive powers to natural disasters or terrorist attacks whereas Barton vowed to pen an order banning critical race theory.

I would prefer to see fewer laws passed with more consensus that helps more people rather than passing laws by circumventing the Constitution, McCloud said.

Immigration

On immigration, several candidates said they would end Oregons sanctuary laws banning law enforcement and state agencies from assisting federal immigration authorities in deportations.

We need legal immigration, Thielman said. Legal immigrants pay taxes. Legal immigrants have merit.

Thielman also said he would send Oregon national guard troops to the Mexican border to help end the countrys pipeline of illicit drugs to America.

The IRS estimates up to 6 million undocumented immigrants file individual income tax returns every year. A 2015 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office indicates that as many as 75% of undocumented immigrants pay federal, state, and local taxes.

In 2016, undocumented immigrants made up 4% of the states workforce, most of whom were employed in manufacturing, health care and food services.

Illegal immigration is a facet of our economy, McCloud said. We need to also ensure people who seek a better life in Oregon have a way to obtain it.

Homelessness

The candidates were in agreement Oregons epidemic of drug addiction is largely to blame for the states growing homelessness crisis.

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ranked Oregon as the worst in the nation for methamphetamine and prescription opioid abuse.

Oregon ranked last nationwide for access to drug counseling in 2020. Nearly 18% of teens and adults unable to get treated that year.

The American Psychological Association reported in 2019 that alcohol abuse affects up to 40% of homeless people. Drug abuse affects about 10 to 15% of unhoused individuals, it found.

Since the passage of Measure 110, possession of illicit drugs in Oregon is punishable by a $100 fine or entry into a drug addiction program.

Barton, a recovering alcoholic now 40 years sober, said she would expand addiction services centered on individualized care rather than one-size-fits-all treatment.

When I see these people on the streets, I know, in my core, in my heart, that what we are doing is not compassionate, Barton said. Its inhumane.

She also proposed creating a database to track emergency shelter bed capacity to help Oregon comply with a 2018 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Martin v Boise, which held cities cannot enforce anti-camping ordinances without a sufficient number of shelter beds.

McCloud proposed turning abandoned buildings into transitional housing and creating more job programs. He agreed with Sizemore that Oregon needs a tough love approach to rein in drug use and the kickbacks of the homeless industry.

If someone chooses not to participate in treatment, then it shouldn't be that they can get away with a $100 fine, McCloud said.

Thielman echoed similar sentiments, saying he would give homeless Oregonians an ultimatum.

Once we have people in designated areas, we have access to them, we have data, we will give them choices, Thielman said. You can be incarcerated or you can go into treatment or you can get a first class bus ticket to Washington, D.C. or Delaware.

The environment

Candidates onstage Friday night had less to say about climate change than they did about reining in government action to mitigate it.

Im not anti-science if someone can prove something to me, Sizemore said. We don't consider the reality that somethings turning up the thermostat or turning it down, and it's not us.

Based on 2017 data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Oregon was 38th in the country for carbon dioxide emissions.

The candidates said they wanted more gasoline in Oregon, not less. Thielman said he would resurrect the Jordan Cove gas pipeline proposed by Pembinal in Coos Bay while Barton vowed to end the state gas tax.

McCloud claimed planting more trees would mitigate excess carbon emissions and went so far as to say reducing carbon pollution could be dangerous to human beings.

We're made of carbon, McCloud said. We have a right to exist.

The candidates all agreed renewable energy should be up to consumers to adopt on their own rather than through public programs, which they claimed would have no positive impact.

To tame Oregons wildfires, the candidates said they would rapidly thin the states forestland to reduce forest fuels and revitalize Oregons timber industry.

Hess said he would have the state put out every forest fire on federal land, shirking the federal governments so-called let it burn policy of allowing fires of natural origin to burn. The U.S. Forest Service has denied such a policy exists.

We will invade federal lands and put out those fires, Hess said. Theres no reason to let it burn.

Looking ahead

Few candidates were comfortable with the idea of defeat. They all agreed the GOP nominee would get their vote, if not their time and money on the campaign trail.

If I were to, by some freak of nature, lose this primary, I would enthusiastically support them, speak for them and donate money, Sizemore said. Even the worst of us would be about 100 times better than Tina Kotek, he said, referencing the former house speaker and one of the leading Democratic candidates.

May 17 is the last day for voters to return their ballots. Mailed ballots must be postmarked by election day. Ballots deposited in an official drop box must be received by 8 p.m. May 17. Residents have until Tuesday, April 26 to register to vote.

Editor's note: This article was edited to list all nine candidates in attendance and to clarify which three walked out mid-debate. Also, to spell Bob Tiernan's name correctly and to correctly identify the numbers of years of Bridget Barton's sobriety. Finally, because of editing, an error was added and has since been removed regarding term limits.

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SUNDAY

Corvallis Youth Symphony Association spring concerts, LaSells Stewart Center, 875 SW 26th St. Willamette Valley Junior Honors Symphony, 2:30 p.m.; Corvallis Youth Symphony, 4 p.m. The performances will include selections by Schubert, Sibelius and Mussorgsky, as well as the Wieniawksi Violin Concerto in D minor, performed by CYS concertmaster and young soloist Beatrice Lobscheid. Adult advance-sale tickets, $10; $12 at the door; available at cysassoc.org/tickets. Students through college and music educators will be admitted free of charge. Information: 541-766-4903 or cysassoc@peak.org.

MONDAY

Willamette Writers on the River-Corvallis Open Mic Night, 6:30 p.m. Zoom. All genres are welcome, but readings should be suitable for mixed audiences. Registration: www.willamettewriters.org/event.

Benton County commissioner forum, 7 p.m., Zoom. Commissioner primary candidates Pat Malone and Helen Higgins will speak. Moderator: Jason J. Dorsette, president of the Linn Benton NAACP Branch. Sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Corvallis and the NAACP. The Zoom link is available at lwv.corvallis.or.us/event/county-commissioner-forum.

"Holocaust Memorial Week: How Masculinity and Alcohol Fed Mass Murder," 7 p.m., Zoom. Lecture by Edward B. Westermann, Regents Professor of History at Texas A&M University. He has published extensively on World War II and the Holocaust. This talk will be based on his book, Drunk on Genocide: Alcoholism and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany. Moderated by Kara Ritzheimer. Registration: erin.sneller@oregonstate.edu. Presented by the Oregon State University College of Liberal Arts, the Center for the Humanities, donations to the OSU Foundation's Holocaust Memorial Fund, the city of Corvallis, the OSU Provost's Fund for Excellence and Beit Am.

TUESDAY

Academy for Lifelong Learning, 9:30 a.m., online. Melissa Harder, Corvallis School District assistant superintendent; Amy Lesan, CSD elementary schools coordinator; and Nikki McFarland, CSD secondary schools coordinator, will present "Inclusive Math Education in Kindergarten-Seventh Grade." Given local evidence of inequitable systems in mathematics, the district has collaborated with teachers, administrators, math professionals and students to develop a plan for inclusive math education in K-7 classrooms that is aligned to the Oregon Department of Education goal. Presenters will discuss how inclusive math education helps ensure a deep understanding of mathematical concepts and math reasoning. New math pathways at the high school level will also be presented. ALL invites nonmembers to attend one or two classes at no charge; email ALL at admin@academyforlifelonglearning.org if you are interested.

Items for this calendar are pulled from the user-generated calendar that runs on our websites. For further information, write to jane.stoltz@lee.net.

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The home owned by actor Kelly Watt and musician Phil Rosenberg-Watt was destroyed. "My takeaway is that there is no getting back what you had,' she says. 'Theres just not.'
Travelers at the Soekarno-Hatta Airport in Tangerang on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia, January 1, 2021. Photo by Reuters/Ajeng Dinar Ulfiana

The Indonesian government said Monday it would reinstate visa exemption for citizens of ASEAN member countries including Vietnam to boost international travel after two years of suspension.

Foreign visitors entering Indonesia will no longer be required to undergo polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests upon arrival if they pass body temperature screening, Jakarta Globe reported.

Its currently unclear as to when exactly these new rules would go into effect.

Foreign visitors are currently required to take a PCR test on arrival in Indonesia, and isolate until a negative result is received.

Indonesian holiday island Bali last month resumed its visa on arrival program for 23 countries including Vietnam.

From March 15, Vietnam reopened inbound tourism, with foreign travelers allowed to visit the country without booking tour packages. It resumed visa exemption policy for citizens of 24 countries including ASEAN co-members the same day.
An Giang Several vouchers and free buffets will be offered at Tra Su Ecotourism Area from April 30 to May 3.

An Giang Tourism Joint Stock Company (An Giang Tourimex) will offer several vouchers at Tra Su Ecotourism Area on Vietnam's Reunification Day April 30 and International Labor Day May 1.

During this vacation, visitors who schedule a visit to the resort by email, Zalo, or Facebook early will receive vouchers for a 30 percent discount at Art coffee counter, a 10 percent discount at Tra Su restaurant, and a 15 percent discount on melaleuca forests.

The promotion is valid from April 30 to May 3.

Tra Su restaurant is surrounded by melaleuca forests. Photo by An Giang Tourimex

Visitors to Tra Su restaurant will be treated to free buffets with more than 30 types of Vietnamese traditional cakes and fruit. In addition, visitors will enjoy the cuisine of the Mekong Delta including fish hotpot, steamed chicken with bamboo leaves, crab soup, and pancake khot.

An Giang Tourimex has improved the facilities and service quality of Dong Xuyen, Long Xuyen, and Cuu Long restaurants and motels to serve tourists on vacation.

The company has also bolstered the use of information technology and the digital transformation of tourism, promoting tourism products and services through social media.

Tourists visit Tra Su Ecotourism Area. Photo by An Giang Tourimex

An Giang Tourimex manages Tra Su Ecotourism Area, which is in Van Dao Commune, Thanh Bien District, An Giang Province. With an area of 850 hectares, this is one of An Giang's main tourism attractions.

According to a report by An Giang People's Committee, in the first quarter of 2022, the province's tourist industry performed well with 2.5 million visitors, up 54 percent compared to the annual plan.

Tra Su Ecotourism Area will introduce incentives as An Giang expects a big wave of tourists for Vietnam's Reunification Day and International Labor Day.
With the mind-boggling rise in violent crime since the Democrats turned all policing policies over to BLM, the media have become obsessed with convincing us that its all the fault of the pandemic. (At least theyre not blaming it on Putin this time.)

In its coverage of the subway shooting by a rage-filled black nationalist last week, The New York Times inserted its pandemic theory of crime into nearly every update (emphasis added):

 Shootings in New York City rose during 2022s first quarter compared with the same period last year ... the continuation of a drumbeat of violence that emerged early in the PANDEMIC, and has not ebbed with the virus.

 This years first three months have also seen rises in crimes like burglaries, robberies and grand larcenies compared to the same periods in 2020 and 2021, though experts warn against short-term comparisons, particularly during the statistic-skewing PANDEMIC.

 Mr. Lee said reports of attacks across the city, along with the violence that other Asian Americans in the city have experienced throughout the coronavirus PANDEMIC, have left him fearful.

(Id like to know if Mr. Lee cited the pandemic or  my guess  the Times helpfully threw that in.)

 The citys police commissioner announced new figures last week that showed a 36% increase in major crimes and a 16% rise in shootings over the past year  part of a rise in violence during the PANDEMIC.

No evidence is ever cited. The Times made no attempt to tie Frank James personal pandemic experience to his outburst of homicidal racism. The pandemic caused the crime wave is just repeated in article after article, like the sleep conditioning of infants in Aldous Huxleys Brave New World.

Except even in Huxleys dystopian world, the bureaucrats only needed to repeat an idea three times a week. The media authoritatively announce that the pandemic caused the crime wave about a thousand times a week.

A spate of shootings over the weekend led to another gusher of The pandemic causes crime sightings in the Times. Now its not just crime generally, but specifically mass shootings: Experts are pointing to multiple possible factors that could explain the upswing [in mass shootings], including the pandemic ...

I wonder if that includes any of the experts who spent the first 2.5 months of the pandemic telling us that the lockdowns had had the wonderful effect of virtually ending violent crime! That is, right up until the day George Floyd was killed, whereupon white people became guilty for everything, and black people responsible for nothing, including their own criminal behavior.

Thus, on April 14, 2020, a month into 15 days to slow the spread, the Times stated matter-of-factly: Violent crime has dropped precipitously. Two weeks later, on May 4, 2020, Politico reported: Major crime has plunged during New York Citys coronavirus lockdown, down 28.5% in the month of April.

Similarly, on April 23, 2020, The Denver Post reported that during the first four weeks of the pandemic, crime reports were down by a third, adding that other large cities have seen significant drops in crime during the coronavirus.

The very day that Floyd died, Voice of America announced that major U.S. cities had reported dips in burglary, assault, murder, robbery and grand larceny  all due to stay-at-home orders and fewer opportunities for crime.

How about a bigger comparison? Are there any studies of crime during the pandemic from around the globe? Why yes, there are! A study by Cambridge University of crime rates in 27 cities across 23 countries in Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East found that stay-at-home orders during the pandemic were associated with a considerable drop in urban crime.

Then, in a crazy coincidence invisible to every member of our media, on May 25, 2020, an innocent black man, just minding his own business, bothering no one, was killed by a cop in Minneapolis, and ...

BAM! As you may have seen in Twitter and YouTube videos (at least the ones that were not immediately removed by moderators), violent crime promptly exploded in cities across the nation.

Both the FBI and CDC report that murders were up 30% in 2020  the largest year-to-year increase in more than a century. The next biggest increase was back in 1968, when it went up by 12.7%. In 2021, murders were up again, 44% compared to 2019.

And it all started on the mystery date of May 25, 2020. From Jan. 1, 2020, to May 25, 2020, gun homicides increased by 14%, compared to 2019. (Democrats do control the cities.) But from George Floyds death on May 25, 2020, through the end of the year, gun homicides shot up an astronomical 41%.

Obviously, therefore, one problem with the theory that the bacchanal of violence of the last two years is the pandemics fault is that there is absolutely no evidence to support it.

As weve seen, right up until the hysteria over Floyds death, the media were fairly bristling with stories about the salubrious effect the pandemic was having on crime. In addition, as a factual matter, gun homicides nearly tripled from the period before Floyds death (B.F.) compared to the period after his death (A.D.)

A second major problem with the pandemic theory of crime is that it requires a complete mind-wipe of everything that happened in the months after Floyds death: BLM. All Cops Are Bastards. Defund the Police.

Media in unison: We have no idea what youre talking about.

Heres a reminder:

 Associated Press, May 29, 2020: Minneapolis police station torched amid George Floyd protest

 New York Times, June 12, 2020: Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police.

 770 KTTH, Aug. 25, 2020: Rioters tried to burn Seattle police alive, sealed door during fire at East Precinct

 In These Times, Dec. 15, 2020: The Best Moment of 2020: The Burning of the Third Precinct

Throughout all this, Democrats and the media celebrated as police budgets were slashed, officers hands were tied, and crime after crime was decriminalized.

No wonder they want to blame the pandemic.

Still, there are less obviously false excuses for the current crime wave than the pandemic. (Im assuming the truth is a non-starter for our media.)

You know what else happened in 2020? The Pentagon released photos of UFOs! How about replacing the pandemic with that? The media should start including clauses like this in their crime stories: ... a drumbeat of violence that emerged after the Pentagon released UFO videos and ... part of a rise in violence the year UFO videos were released.

Seriously  thats less unhinged than blaming the current, epic crime wave on the pandemic.

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A graphic simulation shows the orbiter and returner combination of China's Chang'e 5 probe after its separation from the ascender. [Photo/China National Space Administration/Handout via Xinhua]

Chinese scientists and engineers are considering sending a robotic probe to collect dust and rocks from the far side of the moon, an ambitious endeavor that will likely make it a world's first, said a senior space agency official.

Wu Yanhua, deputy director of the China National Space Administration, said on Friday that the United States, Russia and China have brought lunar substances back to Earth, but none of them has ever obtained samples from the silver sphere's far side, which never faces Earth.

Chinese researchers have suggested the administration could use its Chang'e 6 robotic mission to land on the far side and bring samples back, Wu told reporters at a news briefing at the administration's headquarters in Beijing.

"Many scientists at home and abroad told us that they are eagerly expecting us to bring samples back from the far side because such materials will be very scientifically valuable," he said. "They will enable scientists to advance their studies about the far side's age. Researchers will also analyze the samples' composition to broaden the knowledge about the far side."

The official said the substances brought back by China's Chang'e 5 probe have helped scientists find that there still were volcanic activities on the moon's near side around two billion years ago, and materials from the far side will allow them to verify the hypothesis that volcanoes became inactive about four billion years ago on the far side.

To achieve this goal, Wu said, it will be needed to transmit signals between the far side and the ground control.

"Currently, we have the Queqiao relay satellite operating in lunar orbit to transmit signals between the control center and the Chang'e 4 lander as well as the Yutu 2 rover, but it will not work long enough to support the Chang'e 6 mission. So we are mulling over the feasibility of a signal relay and navigation network above the moon," Wu said.
The figures represent a 446.8% increase in export volume and a 580% rise in export value compared to the same period last year, according to the latest information provided by the General Department of Vietnam Customs.



Belgium is Vietnams second largest coffee export market, accounting for 11.3% of total volume and 10.4% of total value in the first quarter of the year.

Coffee exports to the Belgian market witnessed a strong boom, which resulted in a positive impact for the entire industry.

March alone saw Vietnam export 29,2000 tonnes of coffee worth USD61.7 million to Belgium, marking a rise of 440.7% in volume and 571% in value against the same period from 2021.

Furthermore, in March the average price of Vietnamese coffee exported to Belgium reached USD2,111 per tonne, an annual rise of 24.1%.

Typically the country mainly exports Robusta coffee to the Belgian market./.




Phu Quoc International Airport (Photo: VNA)

According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV), currently there are six domestic and 10 foreign airlines operating regular flights to/from Phu Quoc airport. Its passenger throughput reached 3.7 million in 2019, but down to 3.23 million in 2020 and about 1.6 million in 2021 due to impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recently, Deputy Minister of Transport Le Anh Tuan signed a document sent to the CAAV requesting to consider land and propose investment forms to expand the airport.

Accordingly, the Ministry asked the CAAV to actively coordinate with relevant agencies and units, including the Vietnam Air Traffic Management Corporation (VATM) and the Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV), to seek appreciate types of investment.

The Ministrys requirements came after the Prime Ministers working session with provincial leaders, during which he directed the Ministry of Transport to coordinate with the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the Ministry of Finance, and the People's Committee of Kien Giang in studying suitable investment types to expand Phu Quoc airport, with a goal of increasing its total capacity to 10 million passengers a year by 2030 so as to meet the localitys socio-economic development requirement.

Regarding investors interested in the project, recently the Imex Pan Pacific Group (IPPG) proposed the Transport Ministry allow it to participate in the Phu Quoc International Airport expansion project.

IPPG wants to invest in the airports international terminal, cargo terminal, warehouse, and runway./.
British-Ukrainian Aid (British-Ukrainian Aid) and volunteers donated two ambulances and medicines to Ukraine.

On April 17, volunteers-citizens of Ukraine and the public organization British-Ukrainian Aid (British-Ukrainian Aid) handed over two ambulances to Ukraine and representatives of the Armed Forces. In addition, medicines were handed over from English friends. Now such cars are one of the most necessary types of transport both at the front and at the rear, because minimizing damage to citizens and timely medical care will save lives.



The organizer of the delivery of cars Valery Polshkov, Alexander Bobylev and the construction company Liko-Holding. According to Valeriy Polshkov, prompt delivery of the car from Britain became possible thanks to the joint efforts of volunteers and the well-coordinated work of the state bodies of Ukraine.

I am grateful to the State Border Service and the State Customs Service for their efficient work. The cars crossed the border in 20 minutes and have already been handed over to representatives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, V. Polshkov emphasized.



Also, Oleg Chomko and his company Badzinger Auto were directly involved in the escort and transfer of cars from Britain to Ukraine.

British-Ukrainian Aid, bringing together the efforts of the UK and Ukraine, offers humanitarian and medical assistance to the wounded, veterans, orphans, the elderly, internally displaced persons, refugees and families who have lost their military breadwinner. All members of the group are volunteers and work on charitable projects after their main work.
Egypts prosecution ordered the detention of three teenagers pending investigation and placed 10 others in a probation hostel on charges of harassing two foreign girls at the Giza Pyramids during Eid El-Fitr holiday.
As the EU poises to mark its anniversary on Monday, it is morphing into a more muscular global actor, a transformation accelerated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
War-ravaged Ukraine received pledges for $6.5 billion more in humanitarian aid Thursday at an international donor's conference in Warsaw that sought to get Ukrainians urgent help while still planning for the country's post-war reconstruction.
The Decent Life initiative aims at improving standards of living, infrastructure, and services for the approximately 59 million rural Egyptians who live in 4,658 villages across the country

President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi expressed keenness to benefit from the French experience in the Egyptian project to develop the countryside as part of the national Decent Life initiative.

His remarks came in a meeting on Saturday with French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of the Baghdad Conference on Cooperation and Partnership in Baghdad, the Egyptian presidency said in a statement.

The Decent Life initiative aims at improving standards of living, infrastructure, and services for the approximately 59 million rural Egyptians who live in 4,658 villages across the country.

El-Sisi launched the first phase of the countryside-focused project at the Cairo Stadium in mid-July.

During his Saturday meeting with Macron, El-Sisi affirmed Egypts keenness to maximise available capabilities of both countries, especially in the fields of transportation, renewable energy and the manufacturing of trains and electric vehicles, the presidency added.

El-Sisi also called for enhancing political consultation with France on the regional and international issues of mutual concern, especially the issues related to sustainable development and support for peace and security in the region.

The Egyptian leader also encouraged French companies to benefit from the investment opportunities available in Egypt, transfer expertise and localise industries in Egypt, especially in terms of the mega national projects.

Macron, during the meeting, hailed Egypts firm relations with France and the unprecedented, significant progress in these relations recently in various fields, especially on the level of economic and commercial ties, the Egyptian presidency said.

The French president also stressed his countrys keenness to intensify coordination and consultation with Egypt as one of its most important partners in the region.

Macron hailed Egypts role in establishing the pillars of stability in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Africa.

He also praised Egypts role in countering terrorism, extremist thought as well as illegal emigration.

According to the presidency, the meeting discussed enhancing Frances involvement, through its developmental institutions, in Egypts priority developmental plans in various fields.

The meeting also tackled the need to boost French investments in Egypt and enhance economic cooperation between the two countries, the Presidency added.

Egypt has been intensifying economic and political cooperation with France over the past years. Trade volume between Egypt and France was estimated at $2.4 billion in 2019 and $2.2 billion in 2020 during pandemic, according to a report by the Egyptian states statistical agency CAPMAS last May.

El-Sisi held talks in May and June of this year with Frances Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire to review means of boosting French investments in Egypt and enhancing economic cooperation.

Also in June, Egypt signed development financing agreements with France that amount to 1.76 billion in light of a new financing package between Egypt and France for 2021/2026.

The agreements cover various sectors, particularly transportation.

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Egypt adopts a comprehensive strategy to enhance human rights and fundamental freedoms, said Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry on Wednesday, adding that the country succeeded in achieving a remarkable progress with regards consolidating civil and political rights.

In a recorded speech addressed to the high-level segment of the 49th session of the UN Human Rights Council, Shoukry said the session comes at a time when Egypt has achieved many developments related to the promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

This took place by achieving a real partnership with civil society with the aim of establishing a new republic that upholds the values of democracy, the principles of human rights and the rule of law, Shoukry added.

In this new republic, everyone enjoys their basic rights and freedoms without discrimination, he added, citing the launching of the national strategy for human rights under the sponsorship of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.

Shoukry highlighted another great development, which is the recent establishment of many civil society associations in Egypt.

Shoukry said El-Sisi's declaration of 2022 as the year of civil society is an indication of the importance the Egyptian state attaches to civil society as an essential partner in the development process.

He also referred to a request by the government to the parliament to extend the deadline granted to civil society organisations to settle their situations.

Shoukry also said the legal situation has been settled for more than 2,162 churches and religious services buildings, and that 74 new churches have been built under the law regulating the construction and restoration of churches.

The top Egyptian diplomat also referred to the achievements made to empower women and protect them from discrimination and crimes of violence and harassment.

He shed light on Egypt Vision 2030, which aims to secure decent housing, upgrade infrastructure, develop water, road, electricity and sewage networks, improve health and education mechanisms, and offer essential social services.

Egypt Vision 2030 also aims to empower citizens economically without any discrimination by launching many national initiatives like Decent Life and 100 Million Healthy Lives.

Promoting human rights is a continuous process and no country can claim that it has achieved perfection in this regard, he said, making it clear that there is no unified pattern that every country can follow, but rather each country sets its priorities and determines the challenges it faces according to its own circumstances.

He noted that any multilateral action should be based on consensus and dialogue while avoiding politicisation, selectivity and attempts to impose controversial visions and concepts that hamper human rights and impede achieving desired goals.

Shoukry called for handling human rights issues with utmost caution and staying away from incorrect information and reports that are circulated with the aim of achieving certain goals that have nothing to do with the promotion of human rights.

He expressed hope that the UN Human Rights Council would play its role in assisting states to ensure that their citizens enjoy all basic human rights without any discrimination, consolidate tolerance and peaceful coexistence, discard discrimination, racism and hatred speech, and respect the privacy and religious and cultural differences of societies.

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Al-Ahram Weekly reports on this weeks discussions on human rights between leading EU and Egyptian officials.

Following a meeting with the European Unions Special Human Rights Representative Eamon Gilmore who paid a three-day visit to Egypt this week, Moushira Khattab, president of the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR), issued a statement on 14 April saying that human rights in Egypt face challenges as well as promising opportunities.

During his 11-13 April visit to Egypt, Gilmore met with Foreign Minister and Chair of the Supreme Standing Committee of Human Rights Sameh Shoukri, Assistant Foreign Minister and head of the Technical Secretariat of the Supreme Standing Committee of Human Rights Khaled Al-Bakli and other officials.

Gilmore reported he had held intensive talks with members of the National Council for Human Rights, the National Council for Women, the National Council for Disabilities, the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, civil society organisations, human rights defenders, and individuals with an interest in the Egyptian human rights environment.

While pointing that in his meetings with Egyptian officials he welcomed the publication of Egypts National Human Rights Strategy 2021-26, Gilmore stressed that had drawn the attention of officials to reports of the ill treatment of detainees.

I raised individual cases of allegedly mistreated detainees, and also sought clarification on Egypts commitment to review the death penalty for certain crimes, Gilmore said.

I also held extensive discussions on the application of the NGO law and its bylaws, and received assurances that case 173 had been closed and that consequential travel bans and asset freezes are being lifted.

In case 173  known in Egypt as the foreign funding case  a number of international NGO workers were handed down prison sentences in 2013 ranging between 1-5 years.

Gilmore said he would provide feedback on his visit to the EUs High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrel. I also intend to follow up on the visit through further engagement with Egyptian officials, and I really appreciate the frank and constructive engagement I have had in Egypt over the past three days, he said.

A day after Gilmores visit ended, the EU issued a statement voicing concern over the death of economist Ayman Hadhoud in a psychiatric hospital.

In recent days reports have emerged that Hadhoud was the victim of a forced disappearance. His family say they were only notified of his death on 9 April, a month after he had died.

Hadhoud, 48, was a co-founder of the Reform and Development Party led by political activist and Deputy Chairman of the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat. The party issued a statement on 13 April saying Hadhoud had recently exhibited many unbalanced behavioural patterns.

On Monday Rawya Mokhtar, a member of the parliamentary group of the Reform and Development Party, said the party had submitted an urgent statement asking the government for an explanation of the death of Hadhoud.

I ask that a fact-finding committee be formed to investigate the truth about the internal conditions of psychiatric hospitals in Egypt, particularly after the mysterious death of economic researcher Ayman Hadhoud in one of these hospitals, said Mokhtar.

Journalist and independent MP Mustafa Bakri told Al-Ahram Weekly that despite the prosecution-generals statement on Ayman Hadhouds death making it clear that he died from a heart attack while at the Abbasiya psychiatric hospital, some people have tried to portray the case to show as one of forced disappearance.

Bakri, nonetheless, said that due to conflicting reports about Hadhouds death, he supported Mokhtars request that a fact-finding committee be formed to look into conditions in psychiatric hospitals and the circumstances of Hadhouds death.

According to a prosecutor-general offices statement on Monday an autopsy confirmed that Hadhoud died due to chronic heart disease, and the report of the Forensic Medicine Authority stated that the body of Hadhoud showed no signs of injury indicating criminal activity, violence, resistance, or any suspicious activity.

Hadhouds brother Omar is reported to have said that his brother had been suffering psychological and nervous problems caused by financial troubles and the illness of his sister, but had postponed treatment. Omar added that his brother had previously suffered twice from psychological episodes like the one leading to his arrest in February.

According to a statement issued by the prosecution on 12 April, the late economic researcher was arrested on 6 February after he was reported by a building guard in Zamalek for attempting to break into an apartment. The guard said Hadhoud was displaying erratic behaviour at the time.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 21 April, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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As many as 9,000 civilians could be buried in a mass grave in the village of Manhush outside Mariupol, the city's mayor said in a Telegram post-Thursday.

``The greatest war crime of the 21st century has been committed in Mariupol. This is the new Babi Yar,'' Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said, referring to the site of multiple Nazi massacres in which nearly 34,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed in 1941.

``Then Hitler killed Jews, Roma and Slavs. And now Putin is destroying Ukrainians. He has already killed tens of thousands of civilians in Mariupol,'' he added. ``This requires a strong reaction from the entire world. We need to stop the genocide by any means possible.''

In a separate statement earlier Thursday, Boychenko alleged the Russians had dug huge trenches near Manhush, 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) west of Mariupol, and were ``hiding their war crimes'' by dumping bodies there.

On Thursday evening, Ukrainian media published satellite photos of Manhush, showing what they said were mass graves similar to although much larger in size from the ones discovered in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. The accuracy of these claims and images could not be immediately verified.

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Ukraine needs $7 billion in month to keep its economy afloat amid the "economic losses" inflicted by Russia, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday, as the United States announced another infusion of financial aid for the country.

The "Russian military are aimed at destroying all objects in Ukraine that can serve as an economic base for life. That includes railroad stations, food warehouses, oil, refineries," Zelensky told leaders of the World Bank and IMF via video link at a meeting to discuss a financial lifeline for Kyiv.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced $500 million in aid to help Ukraine continue paying salaries, pensions and providing services.

She detailed the assistance following her meeting Wednesday with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and Finance Minister Sergiy Marchenko, saying it was necessary to help their government continue to function amid the ongoing Russian invasion.

"The needs of Ukraine are urgent, and we plan to deploy this direct aid to Ukraine as soon as possible to be used on most urgent needs," Yellen said.

"We know this is only the beginning of what Ukraine will need to rebuild. And I'm committed to working with Congress and with our international allies and partners to build on this support in the medium and long term."

The American aid follows another $500 million package of support Washington offered to Ukraine last month, and comes as Western nations along with the International Monetary and World Bank step up aid to Kyiv as fighting rages in the country's east and south.

In the forum hosted by World Bank President David Malpass, Shmyhal said the country needs a "financial bridge" of as much as $5 billion a month for the next five months.

And he called for "a recovery plan for Ukraine, similar to (the) Marshall Plan for Europe after the Second World War."

Zelensky has called for more weapons, saying Ukraine still does not have enough, despite billions in Western military aid that has forced Russia to re-focus its offensive away from Kyiv and towards the east.

He said the West should ramp up pressure on Moscow imposing more financial pain and cutting off relations with Vladimir Putin's government.

The IMF has warned of economic devastation both in Ukraine and abroad from the war.

The conflict will cause the country's economy to collapse 35 percent this year, the IMF said this week, while Russia's will drop 8.5 percent.

The "seismic" impacts of the war are spreading worldwide, lowering global growth to 3.6 percent, nearly a point lower than first estimated in January, the Washington-based crisis lender reported this week.

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In three books produced over the last five years, researcher Robert Fares explains why the Copts of Egypt can never be confined to a ghetto.

In three books produced over the last five years, researcher Robert Fares explains why the Copts of Egypt can never be confined to a ghetto, whether by force or their own volition, but instead form an integral part of Egyptian national identity.

Statements on national unity often sound like plain lip service that is offered at official celebrations or at moments following incidents of sectarian violence. However, the joint heritage that all Egyptians share in their life day-in-and-day-out show that there is a real case for national unity and against religious segregation in Egypt that keeps the national harmony despite sentiments of segregation.

This is the basic argument that researcher Robert Fares offers in his 140-page book Al-Maskout Anoh fi Alfolklore Alseyassi Llaqbat (The Disregarded Elements of Coptic Political Folklore).

The disregarded elements of Coptic political folklore (Al-Maskout Anoh fi alfolklore alseyassi llaqbat).

The book that Rawefad Publishing put out in 2016 could easily be seen as part of an extended labour that Fares, a leading figure of the Coptic Reformist Movement, has been committed to over a 25-year-long writing career. The purpose of this labour, the same as the Coptic Reformist Movement, is to encourage Copts to never hide behind the walls of their Church and to be more engaging about their faith and their history.

Ultimately, as Fares shows through the pages of this particular title, faith is integral to the Egyptian identity in a way that goes beyond the differences between Christianity and Islam. The idea of faith itself, he argues, is what makes it possible for the followers of both religions in this country to share so much in terms of the traditions  irrespective of the many differences of the two religions, which must be acknowledged.

The accounts of Rabeia Al-Adawiyah, the Sufi Saint, and Mariam Al-Massraiyah, the Coptic Saint, Fares writes, are too similar. The similarity, he suggests, could more easily be attributed to the Egyptian narrative of these two saints than to the similarities of their actual histories.

Moreover, he adds, the mausoleum of Al-Eryan, in Upper Egypt is visited for blessings by both Copts and Muslims as it is believed to be of a saint that is argued to be Copt by some and Muslim by others.

These accounts, Fares argues, are more often than not overlooked in the Coptic discourse. This, he said, should not be the case at all.

The purpose of openly examining these stories, he says, is not at all to contribute to the lip service on national unity, but to assert the shared national identity that is predominantly Egyptian rather than anything else.

The pursuit of the holistic nature of the Egyptian identity, he adds, goes against the call that some are promoting for the segregation of Copts  either by Muslims or by those Copts who believe they need to be strictly confined behind the walls of their Church.

Copts, Fares maintains, have nothing to hide from and nothing to hide. Their subscription to Egyptian identity, he added, is perfectly legitimate.

In 2021 and 2022, Fares published two subsequent books that subscribe to the same argument and which can be safely summarised by the slogan two religions and a shared identity. Last year, Rawfed Publishing put out the thoroughly researched and documented 500-page title Al-Magalat Al-Qabettiya (The Coptic Magazines). This year, it put out Awlad Haretena  Roweiya Massiheiya (The Children of the Alley  A Coptic Read).

What both books do, in parallel takes, is to present the Coptic voice on issues that go way beyond the complaints about discrimination and persecution. This, Fares does by just sharing Coptic voices and Coptic documents.

In The Coptic Magazines, Fares documents over 100 years worth of Coptic magazines in Egypt, stretching back to 1892. In her introduction to the book, political science professor Nevine Mossad said that the way Fares shared the documents and accounts in this title offered an unprecedented insight into the heart of the Coptic Church.

The Coptic Magazines, (Al-Magalat Al-Qabettiya)

Fares, Mossad writes, opens the gates of the Church and talks [honestly and freely] about the relations between the Church and the authorities and the role of the Church in politics. She argued that the objective of the author was not to glorify the Church in absolute terms but to share the history in a purposeful context that aims to dissect and not to just recall history.

Certainly, in his critique of the long history of Coptic magazines, Fares does not hesitate to say time and again that the Church often enough intervened into the editorial policy and even in the content of these magazines. At times, he writes, the Church banned certain issues of some magazines for having dared to challenge the authority of some of the clergy or the head of the Church. Egypts iconic Pope Shenouda III, he wrote, suspended the publication of Magalet Al-Keraza (The Call for Christianity Magazine) at times when he could not review or censor its content.

What Fares seems to be keen on doing is to allow the wider public to learn about the history of the Copts of Egypt and to prompt Copts themselves to think thoroughly about some segments and elements of their history with no uncalled-for sense of fear or remorse.

In his 140-page title published this year  Awlad Haretna  Roweiya Massiheiya  Fares takes the lead in examining the most contested literary text of Naguib Mahfouz through a Christian lens. Mahfouzs book was actually banned for years in Egypt due to criticism by Muslim religious authorities.

The children of the alley  A Coptic read, (Awlad Haretena  Roweiya Massiheiya

Fares approach to the text reveals how Muslim and Christian religious quarters would share the same objections to Mahfouzs novel.

Critics from both quarters, he reminds the reader, claimed that Mahfouz was referring to God through Gabalawi, the lead character in the novel. The novels title has also been translated as Children of Gabalawi. The children of Gabalawi, critics also said, are only the prophets.

Mahfouz explained himself by saying that Gabalawi is about a certain perception that some people choose to have of God.

For Fares, however, whether Gabalawi is about God or an idea of God that some people have, this novel is about the long and onerous search for identity that people have to go through.

These three books offer ample material for readers who wish to learn about a very crucial and often undiscussed issue of the Coptic battle between isolation and engagement. They are addressed to the wider audience and not strictly to a Coptic readership as they tend to be labelled at some bookstores in Cairo.

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Ukrainian officials Saturday accused Russia of thwarting a fresh attempt to evacuate civilians from Mariupol and killing six people in a strike on Odessa, all but burying hopes of a truce for Orthodox Easter.

With the war poised to enter its third month on Sunday, Ukrainian authorities said "fierce battles" were raging in the east and the United Nations said nearly 5.2 million people had fled the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for a meeting with Russian counterpart Vladmir Putin "to end the war", which began with a full-scale Russian invasion on February 24.

"I think that whoever started this war will be able to end it," Zelensky said, adding he was "not afraid" to meet the Russian leader. But he again stressed that Kyiv would abandon talks with Moscow if its troops in the besieged port city of Mariupol were killed.

Around 200 residents gathered at an evacuation meeting point announced by Kyiv in Mariupol on Saturday but they were "dispersed" by Russian forces, city official Petro Andryushchenko said on Telegram, adding: "The evacuation was thwarted."

He claimed others had been told to board buses headed to places controlled by Russia. The strategic city has been devastated by weeks of intense Russian bombardment.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk had said earlier that Ukraine would try again to evacuate women, children and the elderly from the city -- pivotal to Russia's war plans, and which the Kremlin claims to have "liberated".

Ukraine says hundreds of its forces and civilians are holed up inside a sprawling steel plant in Mariupol, and Kyiv has repeatedly called for a ceasefire to allow civilians to exit safely.

But on Saturday a Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovich, said Russian forces had resumed air strikes on the factory.

Six dead in Odessa

"Our defenders hold on regardless of the very difficult situation and even carry out counter raids," he said.

Further west, Russia said it had targeted a major depot stocking foreign weapons near Odessa on the Black Sea coast.

"Russian armed forces today disabled with high-precision and long-range missiles a logistics terminal at the military airfield near Odessa where a large batch of foreign weapons delivered by the United States and European countries were stored," the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.

Another strike on Odessa killed six people, including a three-month-old baby, Ukrainian officials said, upending the relative calm the city has enjoyed since the beginning of the war.

The country's emergency services said a missile struck a 15-storey residential building, sparking a fire that took 90 minutes to extinguish.

Odessa city hall said eight people were admitted to hospital.

"It was a terrifying night," said Yelena, with black bags under tear-reddened eyes in Ukraine's second city of Kharkiv, where residents said random Russian strikes could come at any hour, day or night.

"At 10:00 pm it all started, everything shook," she recalled. "There were two strikes, later there were more, we were no longer able to sleep and spent all night in the corridor.

The governor of Ukraine's eastern Kharkiv region, Oleg Sinegubov, said on Telegram that Ukranian forces had retaken three villages near the Russian border after "fierce battles" in which two people had been killed.

'Evacuate if you can'

In nearby Lugansk, governor Sergiy Gaiday said shelling was "round the clock" and urged people near the front to "evacuate if you have the chance".

The latest fighting comes a day after a senior Russian military officer said "the second phase of the special operation" had begun.

"One of the tasks of the Russian army is to establish full control over the Donbas and southern Ukraine," Major General Rustam Minnekaev said.

Russian forces, which withdrew from around Kyiv and the north of Ukraine after being frustrated in their attempts to take the capital, already occupy much of the eastern Donbas region and the south.

Minnekaev said the focus was to "provide a land corridor to Crimea," which Russia annexed in 2014, and towards a breakaway pro-Russian region of Moldova, Transnistria, where the general claimed Russian-speaking people were "being oppressed".

Ukrainian authorities have vowed to fight on and drive the Russian troops from their land, but they also sought an Easter pause.

"Unfortunately, Russia rejected the proposal to establish an Easter truce," Zelensky said earlier this week.

'End badly'

Ukrainian authorities urged those celebrating Orthodox Easter to follow religious services online and to respect curfews in place across the country.

"Support the defenders of Ukraine and stay at home for our security and yours," said Kyrylo Timoshenko from the president's office.

Roman Starovoit, the governor of Russia's region of Kursk, which borders Ukraine, said on Telegram that a Russian border post had been hit by Ukranian mortar fire, although there were no casualties.

Near the frontlines in eastern Ukraine, the hamlet of Lysychansk has largely turned into a ghost town but a small market is still operating, providing food and other supplies after the town's other market was bombed.

"This is going to end badly," said an elderly woman in line for vegetables, fearing a targeted strike by Russian forces similar to a deadly train station rocket attack in the nearby town of Kramatorsk on April 8 that killed at least 52 people.

Russia's change of strategic focus to southern and eastern Ukraine saw invading forces leave behind a trail of indiscriminate destruction and civilian bodies around Kyiv, including in the commuter town of Bucha.

A United Nations mission to Bucha documented "the unlawful killing, including by summary execution, of some 50 civilians there", the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

Russian forces had "indiscriminately shelled and bombed populated areas, killing civilians and wrecking hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure, actions that may amount to war crimes".

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Iran's Revolutionary Guards seized a foreign vessel smuggling fuel in the Gulf and arrested its crew members, state media said Sunday, in the third such incident reported this month.

The Guards "seized a foreign vessel carrying 200,000 litres (around 53,000 gallons) of smuggled fuel in the north of the Arabian Gulf and directed it to Bushehr (port)", state broadcaster IRIB said, quoting a statement by the Guards' Navy.

"Eight crew members of the vessel, who are foreigners, were arrested and taken to Bushehr port, where they will be handed over to the judicial authorities to complete the investigation and legal processes," it added.

The crewmen's nationalities were not specified.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is the ideological arm of Iran's military.

The incident is the latest in a series of seizures of fuel-smuggling vessels in sea lanes of the Gulf, where a large portion of the world's oil is produced and shipped.

On April 15, Iranian media reported the seizure of a boat carrying 250,000 litres of smuggled fuel and the arrest of its seven-member crew.

Another boat with 11 crew onboard was seized, in a report on April 9.

"The fight against smuggling, especially fuel smuggling, is one of the main priorities of the IRGC Navy in order to support national production and the dynamism of the country's economy," the statement said.

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The Prosecutor-General decided to release 41 pretrial activist detainees on Sunday after completing some legal procedures in their prisons, informed sources told Ahram Online.

Earlier in the day, Mohamed Abdel-Aziz, the deputy chairperson of the Human Rights Committee in the House of Representative, announced the release of a number of political activists, including Walid Shawky, Mohamed Salah, Abdou Fayed, Haitham El-Banna, and Ahmed Emam.

Political activists shared on social media platforms photos of journalist Mohamed Salah, Sixth of April activist Walid Shawky, and economic researcher Abdou Fayed after their release outside prison.

Egyptian law allows the government to hold those accused of crimes for up to two years pending a referral to trial.

Meanwhile, the liberal-oriented Reform and Development Party issued a statement on Sunday, noting that its chairperson, Mohamed Anwar Esmat El-Sadat, celebrated with the families and relatives of the released, who had been in pretrial detention on political, freedom of opinion, and expression cases, and ascribe to various political orientations.

El-Sadat has been lobbying the government to release pretrial detainees who have not been involved in terrorism-related cases.

Additionally, Moushira Khattab, the President of Egypts National Council for Human Rights (NCHR), expressed in a statement the council's optimism regarding the potential positive outcomes of the release, stressing that the upcoming period would witness further legal revisions for the conditions of a number of pretrial detainees who applied for the presidential pardon.

Khattab also lauded the recent steps taken by the Egyptian state  represented by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi  in human rights areas, noting that there is clearly a true political will to promote and enhance human rights in a way that is in line with international human rights standards and conventions in light of the new Egyptian republic, which aims to ensure a decent life for all Egyptians.

El-Sadat  who is also deputy chairperson of the NCHR  stressed that the upcoming period would witness legal and humanitarian revisions to release more of the pretrial detainees and prisoners who meet the conditions of the presidential or conditional pardon.

Moreover, according to Abdel-Aziz, the human rights parliamentary committee will expand in its activities and will include indebted men and woman besides young activists.

Last September, during the launch of Egypts National Strategy for Human Rights , the president said the Egyptian state "is committed to respecting and protecting" personal freedoms, the right of political participation, the freedom of expression and the right of the formation of civil society organizations.

He noted that Egypt "welcomes" differences in opinions as long as they respect the freedoms of others and aim, through constructive criticism, to achieve the better for the country and people.

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Fifteen people, including nine soldiers, died Sunday in two separate attacks on military units in northern Burkina Faso, the country's army said.

"Terrorist attacks" killed nine people in Gaskinde and six in nearby Pobe Mengao near the Malian border on Sunday morning as assailants targeted military bases and civilians, the army said in a statement.

Five soldiers and four civilians died in Gaskinde, while the Pobe Mengao attack left four soldiers and two civilian auxiliaries dead. Around 30 people were injured, the statement added.

"The situation in these two areas is now under control," the army said.

Security and local sources had earlier told AFP of around 10 deaths in Gaskinde and significant material damage.

Jihadist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group have regularly carried out attacks in northern and eastern Burkina Faso since 2015, killing more than 2,000 people and displacing almost two million.

Unrest linked to jihadist groups also plagues Burkina Faso's West African neighbours Mali and Niger.

Also on Sunday, a jihadist group claimed three separate attacks on army bases in central Mali that killed six and injured 20.

The latest attack in Burkina Faso comes after an incident where 12 soldiers and four civilian auxiliaries were killed on April 8.

Anger at the government's perceived mishandling of the insurgency was used by the army as a justification for a military coup that ousted former president Roch Marc Christian Kabore in January.

New leader Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba has said Burkina Faso's security situation is his priority, but attacks in recent weeks have killed more than 100 people.

The new head of state earlier this month announced the creation of local committees made up of religious leaders and traditional chiefs to initiate dialogue with jihadist groups in a bid to stem the violence.

But the state does not negotiate directly with the fighters and continues its military operations against them.

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Survivors of a doomed migrant boat blamed the Lebanese navy on Sunday for sinking it, saying a naval vessel rammed the packed ship while trying to force it back to shore.

Meanwhile the death toll of Saturday night's disaster rose to seven, with state media reporting the recovery of a body of a man from Tripoli. The incident was the latest in a growing trend involving mostly Lebanese and Syrians trying to travel to Europe from Lebanon in search of better lives.

Survivor Mustafa al-Jundi told The Associated Press that the navy tried to stop the migrant boat but it kept sailing.

``They rammed into us and made us sink then moved away,'' said al-Jundi, whose two sisters are still missing. He said the Lebanese military returned about 90 minutes later and rescued them.

Angry residents attacked a main army checkpoint in Tripoli earlier in the day, throwing stones at troops who responded by firing into the air. Some shops closed as angry men blocked several streets in Tripoli, Lebanon's most impoverished city. There were no reports of injuries.

The Lebanese military announced that 47 people were rescued, while seven bodies including one of a young girl had been recovered. They said high waves had submerged the boat, which was carrying more people than it could hold.

Col. Haitham Dinnawi, commander of the Lebanese navy, told reporters the old boat had been packed with nearly 60 people, but could only carry six. No precautionary measures were taken onboard, he added, and no one was wearing life vests.

Dinnawi blamed the captain of the migrant boat for maneuvering to avoid being forced to return back to shore, and blamed him for the collision. He showed photographs of the damage on the side and back of one navy boat, adding that the migrant boat sank within seconds after the accident.

``It was a crime to take people on such a boat,'' Dinnawi said, adding that it was manufactured in 1974 and carrying 15 times its capacity. He said search operations are still ongoing for the missing.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati declared a day of national mourning on Monday.

``It is appalling to see deprivation still drives people to take these dangerous trips across the seas,'' tweeted Lebanon's U.N. humanitarian coordinator, Najat Rochdi.

Several of the rescued were treated on the spot while others were taken to nearby hospitals. One person was detained on suspicion of being a smuggler involved in organizing the journey, the military said.

Search operations began Saturday night after the boat, apparently heading to Europe, sank shortly after leaving the coastal Lebanese town of Qalamoun.

For many years Lebanon was a country that took in refugees, but since the country's economic meltdown began in October 2019, hundreds of people have left on boats hoping for a better life in Europe.

Migrants from Lebanon pay thousands of dollars to smugglers to take them to Europe. Hundreds have made it to European countries, while dozens of others have been stopped and forced to return home by the Lebanese navy. Several people have lost their lives on the way to Europe over the past three years.

Lebanon, a small Mediterranean nation of 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, is in the grip of the worst economic crisis in the country's modern history. The economic meltdown has put more three-quarters of the country's population into poverty.

The World Bank describes the crisis as among the worst in the world since the 1850s. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs and the Lebanese pound has lost more than 90% of its value.

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Spanish authorities are pledging full transparency as they launch inquiries into allegations that the phones of dozens of supporters of Catalan independence were hacked with powerful and controversial spyware only sold to government agencies.

An internal probe by the country's intelligence agency, a special parliamentary commission to share its results, and a separate investigation by Spain's ombudsman will be arranged to show that central authorities in Madrid have ``nothing to hide,`` the minister for presidency and relations with parliament, Felix Bolanos, announced Sunday.

Bolanos also said the government remained committed to negotiations with separatists on the future of the restive northeastern region of Catalonia.

``We want to recover trust by resorting to dialogue and to transparency,'' the minister said in Barcelona, following a meeting with the regional chief of the Catalan presidency, Laura Vilagra.

``The government has a clean conscience and we have nothing to hide,`` Bolanos added.

Pere Aragones, a pro-independence left-wing politician leading Catalonia's government, said last week that it was putting ``on hold'' relations with Spain's national authorities after cybersecurity experts in Canada revealed ``massive political espionage.''

Aragones accused Spain's intelligence agency, known as CNI in Spanish, of the alleged hacking.

Citizen Lab, an experts group linked to the University of Toronto, said traces of Pegasus and other spyware by two Israeli companies, NSO Group and Candiru, were identified in devices of 65 people, including elected officials, activists, lawyers, European lawmakers and others.

Most infiltration took place between 2017, when a banned referendum on Catalan independence caused a deep political crisis in Spain, and ended in mid-2020, when Citizen Lab revealed the first cases of the alleged espionage.

The Spanish government has not denied nor confirmed whether it uses Pegasus or other hard-to-detect spyware, saying that any surveillance is conducted under the supervision of judges.

Rounds of talks between the central government in Madrid and Catalan regional authorities have yielded some progress in solving some of the separatists' long-term grievances, but have not resolved the fundamental issues of Catalonia's status within Spain.

Polling and recent elections show that the share of Catalans supporting independence grew since last decade's financial crisis, but have since 2017 remained divided, with majorities fluctuating recently between those in favor or against breaking away from Spain.

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French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday defeated his rival Marine Le Pen in presidential elections, projections showed, prompting a wave of relief in Europe that the far-right had been prevented from taking power.

Centrist Macron was set to win 57.0-58.5 percent of the vote compared with Le Pen on 41.5-43.0 percent, according to projections by polling firms for French television channels based on a sample of the vote count.

The result is narrower than the second-round clash in 2017, when the same two candidates met in the run-off and Macron polled over 66 percent of the vote.

The outcome, expected to be confirmed by official results overnight, caused immense relief in Europe after fears a Le Pen presidency would leave the continent rudderless following Brexit and the departure of German chancellor Angela Merkel.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi called Macron's victory "great news for all of Europe".

EU president Charles Michel said the bloc can now "count on France for five more years" while commission chief Ursula von der Leyen rapidly congratulated him saying she was "delighted to be able to continue our excellent cooperation".

In a combative speech to supporters in Paris where she accepted the result but showed no sign of quitting politics, Le Pen, 53, said she would "never abandon" the French and was already preparing for June legislative elections.

"The result represents a brilliant victory," she said to cheers.

The relatively comfortable margin of victory gives Macron some confidence as he heads into a second five-year mandate, but the election also represents the closest the far-right has ever come to winning power in France.

Macron is the first French president to win re-election since Jacques Chirac in 2002 after his predecessors Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande left office after only one term.

The 44-year-old is to make a victory speech on the Champ de Mars in central Paris at the foot of the Eiffel Tower where flag-waving supporters erupted in joy when the projections appeared at 8:00 pm local time (1800 GMT).

- High ambitions -

Macron will be hoping for a less complicated second term that will allow him to implement his vision of more pro-business reform and tighter EU integration after a first term shadowed by protests, then the pandemic and finally Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

But he will have to win over those who backed his opponents and the millions of French who did not bother to vote.

On the basis of the official figures, polling organisations estimated that the abstention rate was on course for 28 percent which, if confirmed, would be the highest in any presidential election second-round run-off since 1969.

The outcome of the first round on April 10 had left Macron in a solid but not unassailable position to retain the presidency.

Convincing supporters of the hard-left third-placed candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon to hold their noses and vote for the former investment banker was a key priority for Macron in the second phase of the campaign.

Macron will also need to ensure his party finds strong grassroots support to keep control of a parliamentary majority in the legislative elections in June and avoid any awkward "cohabitation" with a premier who does not share his political views.

- Bitter pill for Le Pen -

High on his to-do-list is pension reform including a raising of the French retirement age which Macron has argued is essential for the budget but is likely to run into strong opposition and protests.

He will also have to rapidly return from the campaign trail to dealing with the Russian onslaught against Ukraine, with pressure on France to step up supplies of weapons to Kyiv and signs President Vladimir Putin is losing interest in any diplomacy.

For Le Pen, her third defeat in presidential polls will be a bitter pill to swallow after she ploughed years of effort into making herself electable and distancing her party from the legacy of its founder, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Critics insisted her party never stopped being extreme-right and racist while Macron repeatedly pointed to her plan to ban the wearing of the Muslim headscarf in public if elected.

When Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round in 2002, the result stunned France and he won less than 18 percent in the subsequent run-off against Chirac.

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Several European leaders and politicians have swiftly congratulated French President Emmanuel Macron for his reelection, as his far-right rival Marine Le Pen conceded defeat in Sunday's presidential election.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted in French, ``together we will make France and Europe advance.''

The Dutch prime minister also tweeted in French his hope to ``continue our extensive and constructive cooperation in EU and NATO.''

In Germany, politicians around the political spectrum offered support, including from the pro-business Free Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and conservative Christian Social Union.

Many in Europe had worried Le Pen would undermine European unity and its post-war order.

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The United States' top diplomat and defence chief were Sunday set to make their first wartime visits to Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine two months ago, with fierce battles raging in the east of the country.

The trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin comes as the war enters its third month with thousands dead and millions displaced.

A series of European leaders have already travelled to Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky and underscore their support, but the United States -- a leading donor of finance and weaponry -- has yet to send any top officials.

In his daily video address Saturday night, Zelensky said he was preparing for "tomorrow's important talks with American partners". The State Department declined to comment on the highly sensitive trip by two of President Joe Biden's top cabinet members.

Their visit comes as Russian forces show no sign of easing their attacks and after a missile strike on the southern city of Odessa that Ukraine said killed eight people, including an infant.

"Among those killed was a three-month-old baby girl. How did she threaten Russia? It seems that killing children is just a new national idea of the Russian Federation," Zelensky said.

He also accused Russia of being a terrorist state and of acting like Nazis in the shattered port city of Mariupol, which has been devastated by weeks of intense bombardment.

"New facts about the crimes of the occupiers against our Mariupol residents are being revealed. New graves of people killed by the occupiers are being found. We are talking about tens of thousands of dead Mariupol residents," he said.

Offer To Meet Putin

The latest of many attempts to evacuate civilians from Mariupol failed Saturday, and an embattled unit of Ukrainian fighters holed up in tunnels under a sprawling steel mill there appeared in increasingly desperate straits.

Zelensky also issued a new call Saturday for a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin "to end the war."

"I think that whoever started this war will be able to end it," Zelensky said, adding he was "not afraid" to meet the Russian leader, who attended an Orthodox Easter service in Moscow.

But he again stressed that Kyiv would abandon talks with Moscow if its troops in Mariupol were killed.

Zelensky also criticised a decision by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to visit Moscow on Tuesday, before heading to Kyiv.

"There is no justice and no logic in this order," he said.

"The war is in Ukraine, there are no bodies in the streets of Moscow. It would be logical to go first to Ukraine, to see the people there, the consequences of the occupation," he said.

Around 200 residents gathered at a designated evacuation point in Mariupol on Saturday but were "dispersed" by Russian forces, city official Petro Andryushchenko said on Telegram, adding: "The evacuation was thwarted."

He claimed others had been told to board buses headed to places controlled by Russia.

Mariupol, which the Kremlin claims to have "liberated", is pivotal to Russia's war plans to forge a land bridge to Russian-occupied Crimea -- and possibly beyond, as far as Moldova.

'Our Defenders Hold On'

In its latest analysis, the US-based Institute for the Study of War said Russian forces did not appear to be pausing to refit or mass their troops as they redeployed and were likely to step up their offensives.

"Russian forces will likely increase the scale of ground offensive operations in the coming days, but it is too soon to tell how fast they will do so or how large those offensives will be," it said.

Ukraine says hundreds of its forces and civilians are holed up inside the Mariupol steel plant. Kyiv has repeatedly called for a ceasefire to allow civilians -- many barely surviving with little or no access to food or water -- to exit safely.

But on Saturday a Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovich, said Russian forces had resumed airstrikes on the factory.

"Our defenders hold on regardless of the very difficult situation and even carry out counter-raids," he said.

Odessa Missile Attack

Further west, a missile struck a residential building in the Black Sea port of Odessa, killing eight people and wounding at least 18, according to Zelensky, who said five missiles hit the historic city.

"We will identify all those responsible for this strike; those responsible for Russia's missile terror," he said.

Russia's defence ministry said it had targeted a major depot stocking foreign weapons near Odessa, attacks that upended the relative calm the city has enjoyed since the beginning of the war.

The ministry also charged that Ukrainian special services in Odessa were preparing a "provocation with the use of toxic chemical substances" that could then be blamed on Russia.

Western powers have accused Russia in the past of making such accusations as a cover or diversion for attacks its own forces are planning.

The latest fighting came a day after a senior Russian military officer said they aimed to take full control over the eastern Donbas region and southern Ukraine.

Russian forces, which withdrew from around Kyiv and the north of Ukraine after being frustrated in their attempts to take the capital, already occupy much of the Donbas and the south.

'What Could Be Worse'

After changing their strategic focus to southern and eastern Ukraine, Russian forces left behind a trail of destruction around Kyiv, including in the commuter town of Bucha.

A United Nations mission to Bucha documented "the unlawful killing, including by summary execution, of some 50 civilians there", the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

Russian forces had "indiscriminately shelled and bombed populated areas, killing civilians and wrecking hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure, actions that may amount to war crimes".

Tania Boikiv, 52, said Russian troops took her husband from their home in Bucha, held him for two weeks, and then beat him to death as they retreated.

"The most terrible thing in my life is that my husband, my loved one, is gone," she told AFP. "I don't know what could be worse."

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Britain on Sunday said "it would be good to see more from France and Germany" to support the Ukraine war effort, warning that a Russian victory has "always been a possibility".

Minister Oliver Dowden told the BBC that the West should "continue to tighten the ratchet on Russia" as Moscow ramps up its offensives in the south and east of Ukraine.

"The West has to respond in turn and we are willing to do so," he added.

"There is a desire for us all to do it but it would be good to see more from France and Germany as well."

Asked whether he thought Russia could emerge victorious, he said: "That has always been a possibility that Russia could come out of this victorious. We don't want that to happen."

The United States' top diplomat and defence chief were Sunday set to make their first war-time visits to Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine two months ago, with fierce fighting casting a long shadow over Orthodox Easter.

The trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin comes as the war enters its third month with thousands dead and millions displaced.

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The number of Ukrainians who have fled the country since Russia's invasion two months ago is approaching 5.2 million, the UN refugee agency said Sunday.

The total figure of 5,186,744 is an increase of 23,058 over Saturday's data, the UNHCR said.

More than 1,151,000 Ukrainians have left during April so far, compared with 3.4 million in the month of March alone.

The latest figures come as Ukrainians mark Orthodox Easter Sunday.

"For the people of Ukraine, and those forced to flee the country, it will be another day of fear, anguish, loss and separation from loved ones, as the war continues to rage without mercy," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi wrote on Twitter.

"May strength and courage be with them."

Today we think of all those celebrating #OrthodoxEaster.



For the people of Ukraine, and those forced to flee the country, it will be another day of fear, anguish, loss and separation from loved ones, as war continues to rage without mercy.



May strength and courage be with them.  Filippo Grandi (@FilippoGrandi) April 24, 2022

The UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) said an additional 218,000 citizens of third countries -- largely students and migrant workers -- have also escaped to neighbouring countries since the February 24 invasion.

Women and children account for 90 percent of those who have fled abroad, with men aged 18 to 60 eligible for military call-up unable to leave.

Beyond the refugees, the IOM estimates more than 7.7 million people have been displaced within Ukraine.

Almost two-thirds of Ukrainian children have had to flee their homes, including those who remain in the country.

Before the invasion, Ukraine had a population of 37 million in the regions under government control, excluding Russia-annexed Crimea and the pro-Russian separatist-controlled regions in the east.

Here is a breakdown of how many Ukrainian refugees have fled to neighbouring countries, according to UNHCR:

Poland

Nearly six out of 10 Ukrainian refugees -- 2,899,713 so far -- have crossed into Poland.

Many of them have travelled on to other states in Europe's Schengen open-borders zone.

Meanwhile, more than 800,000 people have crossed from Poland into Ukraine, Polish border guards said.

Before the war, Poland was home to around 1.5 million Ukrainians, chiefly migrant workers.

Romania

A total of 774,074 Ukrainians have entered the EU member state as of April 22, including a large number who crossed over from Moldova, wedged between Romania and Ukraine.

The vast majority are thought to have gone on to other countries.

Russia

Another 578,255 refugees have sought shelter in Russia, according to data last updated on April 21.

In addition, 105,000 people crossed into Russia from the separatist-held pro-Russian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine between February 18 and 23.

Hungary

A total of 489,754 Ukrainians have entered Hungary.

Moldova

The Moldovan border is the closest to the major port city of Odessa. A total of 433,214 Ukrainians have crossed into the non-EU state, one of the poorest in Europe. Most have moved on.

Slovakia

A total of 354,329 people have crossed Ukraine's shortest border into Slovakia.

Belarus

Another 24,084 refugees made it north to Russia's close ally Belarus as of April 21.

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President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi congratulated French President Emmanuel Macron on his victory in the French presidential elections on Sunday, wishing him a fruitful continuation to his career and for him to lead his country to further progress and prosperity.

Macron defeated his far-right rival Marine Le Pen in a presidential election, securing him a second five-year presidential term.

El-Sisi hailed the close, growing, and historical relations between Egypt and France, expressing his aspiration to continue consultations and mutual coordination on regional and international files of common interest.

Cairo and Paris shared financial interests that included massive arms deals. Between 2016 and 2020, French arms sales to Egypt increased by 44 percent, compared to the period between 2011 and 2015.

Egypt is the second largest customer of French arms after India, with military purchases focused on Rafale jets and advanced electronic surveillance systems.

Furthermore, France is has invested 4.6 billion in Egyptian infrastructure projects, including 800 million in government loans, 1 billion from the French Development Agency, and 2 billion in bank loans guaranteed by the French state.

Trade between Egypt and France also amounted to $3 billion in 2020  up by 20 percent from 2019. There are 160 French companies operating in Egypt, employing 40,000 workers, and investing around 5 billion.

Additionally, Egypt and France see eye to eye concerning the situation in Libya, with both countries calling for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Libyan lands.

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Hassan Allam Utilities signed on Sunday two memoranda of understanding with Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) to build hydrogen plants in the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone) and on the Egyptian Mediterranean coast.

Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and a host of government officials attended the signing ceremony.

The MoUs were signed by the Egyptian state-backed organisations: the General Authority of the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone); the Sovereign Fund of Egypt; the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company; and the New and Renewable Energy Authority,

Under the two MoUs, Masdar, one of the worlds leading renewable energy companies, and Hassan Allam Utilities, the investment and development arm of Hassan Allam Holding Group, will form a consortium to develop green hydrogen production plants in the SCZone and on the Mediterranean coast, a cabinet statement said.

The consortium is set to produce up to 480,000 tonnes of green hydrogen annually in various stages till 2030.

The MoUs were signed as part of the countrys efforts to encourage global, Arab, and local companies to step into Egypts green energy investment market, added the statement.

For his part, Madbouly assured that the country seeks to lure foreign investments into green hydrogen production as part of its ambitious plans to become a transit route for clean energy to Europe and the whole world.

Egypt has been reviewing various offers submitted by international companies to establish green hydrogen projects in the SCZone, as the country seeks to localise the production of the clean-burning fuel.

The country is also working on turning its 72-kilometre-long Suez Canal into a Green Route, to transition the international waterway to become the world's longest green canal.

Egypt is set to host the 2022 UN Conference of Parties on Climate Change (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh this November.

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KYODO NEWS - Apr 24, 2022 - 21:25 | World, All, Japan

A delegation sent by South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk Yeol arrived in Japan on Sunday for talks with Japanese officials ahead of his inauguration next month, amid expectations he will work to improve bilateral ties that have soured over wartime issues.

During the delegation's five-day visit through Thursday, its members are expected to convey to Japanese political and business leaders, including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, that the incoming leader will put an emphasis on Seoul-Tokyo ties.

"We hope to become a new bridge between the two countries and share a constructive future," Chung Jin Suk, the delegation head and deputy speaker of the National Assembly, told reporters in Tokyo.

He said earlier this month in a Facebook post that it would be "difficult to quickly turn around South Korea-Japan ties just because a new administration is launched." He cited the thorny issue of compensation orders against Japanese companies in South Korean courts for wartime labor rendered by Koreans under Japanese rule.

But as Northeast Asia faces North Korean nuclear issues and a rapidly changing international environment, the South Korean lawmaker said ramping up "strategic cooperation" between South Korea and Japan will contribute to the peace and prosperity of the region.

A member of the conservative People Power Party, Chung is a close aide to Yoon. He is one of the president-elect's earliest supporters as Yoon clashed with the government of outgoing President Moon Jae In as the nation's top prosecutor and turned his sights on the presidency.

For its part, the Japanese government intends to use the delegation's visit to have close communication with the incoming administration in a bid to return the bilateral relationship to a "healthy" state.

Arrangements are under way for Kishida to meet with the delegation, but lawmakers in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are divided over whether Kishida should do so.

As the South Korean side is said to be hoping for the Japanese premier to attend Yoon's inaugural ceremony on May 10, some LDP lawmakers are dead set against the idea of him going.

Reports have emerged that if the delegation meets with Kishida, its members may ask him to attend the inauguration.

Bilateral ties deteriorated during Moon's five-year tenure.

Japan has maintained that the ball is in South Korea's court to repair them. The stance is based on the view that the two main issues between the two countries -- "comfort women," who were procured for Japan's wartime military brothels, and compensation for wartime Korean laborers -- have already been resolved by bilateral agreements.

Related coverage:

Japan seriously considering high-level dialogue with South Korea

South Korea president-elect to send team to Japan for policy talks
KYODO NEWS - Apr 5, 2022 - 18:04 | All, Japan, Feature

Japan's unusually welcoming approach to evacuees from Ukraine who have fled Russia's invasion -- a contrast to its traditionally strict refugee policy -- reflects the government's desire to stay in line with public sentiment and show it is contributing as a Western nation, pundits say.

Ahead of the House of Councillors election slated for this summer, the government is sensitive to public opinion which is in favor of helping the evacuees, with many companies and local municipalities offering support for them.

The government is also eager to demonstrate that it is joining efforts by the United States and Europe to aid the surging number of those fleeing Ukraine, which now exceeds 4 million, in the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.

On Tuesday, 20 evacuees from Ukraine arrived in Japan from Poland aboard a government plane, traveling together with Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, who had been sent to Ukraine's western neighbor as a special envoy to support evacuees.

Prior to his return, Hayashi said the Japanese government "would reach out from a humanitarian perspective and provide maximum support (for evacuees from Ukraine) who will be far away from their homeland, so they can live peacefully in Japan."

The government said it plans to first provide them support for around six months including help with housing, employment and language lessons.

On Monday, Hayashi told his counterpart Zbigniew Rau in Warsaw that Japan would accept "as many (evacuees) as possible" from Ukraine. The Asian country welcomed 404 evacuees from the war-ravaged nation between March 2 and Sunday.

Bringing the evacuees on the government plane was a way to show "Japan's posture" in helping tackle the refugee crisis, with over 2.4 million people having crossed the border into Poland so far, a Japanese official said.

The official brushed aside the comparably low number taken in by Japan, saying, "The value of assisting does not decrease just because the number of people is low."

A senior official close to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also said that the use of the government plane was "to clearly show that we are strongly engaged in tackling this problem. We know that it was a performance."

However, some in the Japanese Foreign Ministry had called for a more cautious approach to the matter.

"What is requested from Japan is economic support for countries accepting a massive exodus of refugees, not accepting them," explained a government official, pointing to a possible expansion of the country's emergency humanitarian aid worth $200 million.

People fleeing conflicts have long found a narrow path to attaining refugee status in Japan, with the government traditionally recognizing only around 1 percent of refugee applications, a dismally low count compared to other Western nations that has earned criticism from human rights organizations.

In the latest Justice Ministry figure for 2020, out of 3,936 asylum seekers, 47 people were recognized as refugees under the provisions of Japan's immigration control and refugee recognition law. Another 44 were permitted to be in Japan for humanitarian reasons even though they were not granted refugee status.

While praising Hayashi bringing back the 20 evacuees, Eri Ishikawa, the board chair of Japan Association for Refugees, said others including refugees from Africa and the Middle East must not be forgotten.

"The situation for people who have fled from countries other than Ukraine is not changed. This must be an opportunity to rethink Japan's refugee scheme," she said

Related coverage:

20 Ukraine evacuees arrive in Japan from Poland as Hayashi ends trip

Global outrage stirred as Ukraine says hundreds killed in Kyiv region

Japan begins accepting war-fleeing Ukrainians without guarantor
Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) specialist Agapatus Gurti installs a compressed natural gas (CNG) conversion kit in a vehicle at CNG workshop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on April 12, 2022. (Photo by Herman Emmanuel/Xinhua)

DAR ES SALAAM, April 22 (Xinhua) -- Behind the facade of buildings housing the state-run Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) along Morogoro Road in Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital of Tanzania, a team of technicians are busy modifying vehicles from using gasoline to using compressed natural gas (CNG).

DIT, one of the East African nation's high learning institutions dealing with training, consultancy and innovations in different areas, is boasting about the technology to modify vehicles from using gasoline to CNG as one of its latest innovations.

Gerutu Bosinge, the CNG workshop manager at the DIT, said the technology is helping to save the environment from degradation and reduce the impacts of climate change because natural gas is clean energy.

"Natural gas has little carbon dioxide compared to (other) fossil fuels. Using natural gas reduces a lot of carbon dioxide," Bosinge told Xinhua in an interview as he supervised technicians in the workshop who were modifying a car from using gasoline to CNG.

He said fossil fuels are one of the major contributors to environmental degradation and countries around the world are finding ways to phase out the use of fossil fuels.

"In the economic sense, CNG is cheaper than fuel. When you use natural gas you save about 50 percent of the costs," he said.

Frederick Michael Sanga, a public servant working in Dar es Salaam, had his car modified from using gasoline to using CNG three years ago.

"I have not regretted the decision I made. I am saving a lot of money that I could have used for buying fuel," Sanga told Xinhua by telephone.

He said he used to spend about 60,000 Tanzanian shillings (about 26 U.S. dollars) for buying fuel in a week but now he spends less than 17,000 Tanzanian shillings a week for buying CNG, insisting that the amount paid for the modification process is cheaper compared to the benefits that one gets after one had the vehicle modified.

"With the current rising prices of fuel I cannot imagine how I could have managed to drive my car," said Sanga, adding that using CNG also makes the car to be in good condition.

According to Bosinge, DIT engaged in research work on the modification of vehicles from using fuel to CNG in 2008 until 2018 when they made a breakthrough. The modification work started in 2018 and until now DIT has converted more than 800 cars from using gasoline to using CNG and more people are making inquiries for converting their vehicles.

Bosinge said the operation of the CNG workshop in the compound of the DIT is fully covered by the institution. "DIT is fully financing the running of the workshop," he said.

The workshop has employed four full-time technicians who are assisted by the students, he said.

"It takes one to two days to modify one vehicle. But if we have two technicians they can modify two to three cars a day," he said, noting that there are some vehicles that are more complicated when it comes to refitting them from using gasoline to natural gas.

"Cars with gasoline direct injection are complicated because they need special kits. It is different from cars with gasoline indirect injection," said Bosinge.

He said the cost of converting one vehicle depends on the size of the vehicle but the minimum price is 2 million Tanzanian shillings.

As DIT is converting more vehicles that use gasoline into CNG, plans are afoot to convert vehicles that use diesel before the end of this year, said Bosinge, while appealing to authorities to reduce import duty for modification kits and gas cylinders to encourage more people to use the technology and lessen the use of fossil fuels which are detrimental to the environment.

Apart from the DIT workshop, there are two small workshops that are being managed by former DIT students in Dar es Salaam for converting vehicles from fuel to CNG.

"DIT is supporting them technically and encouraging others to do the business because this technology is being used all over the world," said Bosinge.

There are two filling stations for CNG in Dar es Salaam, with one being located at Ubungo Maziwa and the other one near TAZARA station. The government plans to establish five more filling stations for CNG in Dar es Salaam, said Bosinge.

This technology has not started to be applied in upcountry regions where natural gas is not supplied.

With Tanzania's natural gas reserves estimated at 1.61 trillion cubic meters, Bosinge feels that the future is bright when it comes to promoting the use of clean energy in the wake of environmental destruction caused by fossil fuels.

Sanga, the owner of the refitted car, said he is also contributing to saving the environment from further degradation because his car is no longer emitting gases that contribute to global warming.

"I am appealing to my fellow citizens to modify their vehicles from using fuel to using CNG in order to protect Mother Nature," he said. 

Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) compressed natural gas (CNG) workshop manager Gerutu Bosinge checks the vehicle installed conversion kit at CNG workshop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on April 12, 2022. (Photo by Herman Emmanuel/Xinhua)

Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) specialist Agapatus Gurti installs a compressed natural gas (CNG) conversion kit in a vehicle at CNG workshop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on April 12, 2022. (Photo by Herman Emmanuel/Xinhua)

A specialist of Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) installs a compressed natural gas (CNG) equipment in a vehicle at CNG workshop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on April 12, 2022. (Photo by Herman Emmanuel/Xinhua)
BEIJING, April 24 (Xinhua) -- China's waterway passenger volume saw a year-on-year decline in the first quarter of 2022, official data shows.

The country's waterway transport network handled 26.47 million passenger trips during the period, down 20.6 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Transport.

Northwest China's Gansu Province saw the sharpest year-on-year slump of 74.7 percent, followed by the provinces of Shanxi and Anhui.

Bucking the downward trend, Hainan Province registered a 77.2 percent year-on-year surge in the period.

In March, 6.67 million waterway passenger trips were made in China. 
BEIJING, April 24 (Xinhua) -- China will start engineering development of the fourth phase of its lunar exploration program this year, according to a senior official of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Sunday.

The Chang'e-6, Chang'e-7 and Chang'e-8 lunar probes will be launched successively, and the country will endeavor to make breakthroughs in key technologies and build an international lunar research station, Wu Yanhua, CNSA's deputy director, told an online launch ceremony for the 2022 Space Day of China on Sunday.

He said the Chang'e-6 will take samples from the far side of the moon. The administration is planning to set up a satellite constellation around the moon to provide communication and navigation services.

The main goal of the fourth phase is to carry out scientific exploration on the moon's south pole and set up a fundamental type of lunar scientific research station. The fourth phase will be carried out in three steps, with the Chang'e-6, Chang'e-7 and Chang'e-8 probes being launched before 2030.

At the ceremony, Wu also inaugurated an international cooperation center for satellite data and applications under the CNSA, and a data and application center for the remote sensing satellite constellation of BRICS countries.

Zhang Kejian, deputy minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China and head of the CNSA, said the administration will uphold the principles of equality, mutual benefit, peaceful use and inclusive development, and adhere to the concept of peace and cooperation.

He said that the administration will make greater contributions to the exploration of the universe, people's well-being and the progress of human civilization, and work with global partners to build a community with a shared future for humanity in outer space.

During the 2022 Space Day of China, more than 200 activities will be held, including an aerospace open day, popular science lectures, knowledge contests, exchange events and seminars. 
CHONGQING, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Xu Xianlin, a grower of water shield, proudly says he can cook different dishes with the aquatic vegetable to treat his growing number of guests since joining the booming rural tourism industry.

Xu is a villager from Balong Village, Shizhu Tujia Autonomous County of southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. More than 360 households in the village grow water shield, a medicinal and edible plant that is famous for its high nutritional value.

After three decades of development, the county has now become a major production area of water shield, with a total planting area of over 900 hectares. More than 10,000 tonnes of water shield from Shizhu county is exported to Japan and the Republic of Korea every year.

Besides water shield planting, villagers in Balong have begun to dabble in rural tourism. They run homestays and organize water shield picking and sightseeing activities to attract tourists.

"Although we have been affected by the epidemic, I still earned nearly 300,000 yuan (about 46,900 U.S. dollars) last year," said Xu.

Sitting deep in the mountains, Shizhu was once a poverty-stricken place. However, the small county has undergone huge changes due to the development of agricultural industries.

Since the local people love spicy food, farmers in Shizhu have planted chillies for hundreds of years. The county currently has more than 30,000 households growing over 6,666 hectares of chillies, and the output of the county's chilli industry has reached 700 million yuan.

To cultivate chilli with better quality, the county's chilli institute set up a scientific research team and spent five years creating a better chilli variety.

"Better quality products can attract more customers with higher prices. Therefore, farmers are willing to grow the new variety, and it will also help increase their income," said Tan Yangguo, leader of the team.

Relying on the good environment and lush alpine vegetation, Shizhu's Huangshui Township has become an important production area of coptis root, a traditional Chinese herb.

The county has built a whole industrial chain covering everything from research and development of planting technology to deep processing of the herb. There are nearly 10,000 households growing coptis for the industry, each of them earning over 30,000 yuan per year.

The county also built a large-scale coptis root trading market, and the annual trading volume of the herb accounts for about 90 percent of the country's volume.

Apart from coptis root planting, an increasing number of rural residents in the county have also begun planting other traditional Chinese herbs, further supplementing their incomes.

"We take advantage of the ecological environment and also attach importance to the production and market. The continuous improvement of Shizhu's chilli, coptis root and water shield industries, as well as the upgraded chains, will help villagers become richer and enjoy better lives," said Zhang Hua, Party chief of Shizhu county. 
A man cosplayed as Shakespeare attends a parade in celebration of William Shakespeare's 458th birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

STRATFORD UPON AVON, Britain, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday.

The celebration, with a parade of local primary and secondary school students and civic groups, began in the morning. Residents and visitors sang a birthday song to the late literary giant. The celebration was canceled in 2020 and went online in 2021 due to COVID-19.

Shakespeare was born in April 1564. The exact date of his birth is not recorded, but it is often celebrated in Britain on April 23.

This date carries other special meanings. "World Book and Copyright Day" is marked on this day. April 23 also coincides with the deaths of Shakespeare and the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes.

Paul Edmondson, Head of Research for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, said it was befitting to mark World Book Day by reading books of the greatest writers like Shakespeare and Cervantes and enjoying the theatre performances of their plays.

Ane, a resident from Derbyshire, told Xinhua that she came on a day trip to see all the festivities in Stratford and watch live performances by street entertainers.

Apart from attending celebrations, visitors descended on the town library to enjoy some quiet reading. Jake, a 17-year-old high school student, said he loves reading Shakespeare and performs in Shakespeare plays at school.

Stratford Library prepared a "Shakespeare Treasure Hunt" to encourage young readers to uncover information about Shakespeare around the library.

Christine Woollard, a sales assistant, told Xinhua that Shakespeare's books sales increased on Saturday. "Visitors overseas are coming back. We're seeing more and more, especially this year." 

Books are seen in a bookstore in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

A performer attends a parade in celebration of William Shakespeare's 458th birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Han Yan)

A man cosplayed as Shakespeare attends a parade in celebration of William Shakespeare's 458th birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Han Yan)

A woman reads in a bookstore in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

A man reads in a bookstore in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

A man cosplays as Shakespeare, holding "the Complete Works of William Shakespeare" in celebration of William Shakespeare's 458th birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

People attend a parade in celebration of William Shakespeare's 458th birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

People attend a parade in celebration of William Shakespeare's 458th birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

A girl attends a parade in celebration of William Shakespeare's 458th birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

Students attend a parade in celebration of William Shakespeare's 458th birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Han Yan)

A boy attends a parade in celebration of William Shakespeare's 458th birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

A girl attends a parade in celebration of William Shakespeare's 458th birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Han Yan)

People walk past William Shakespeare's childhood home in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

People attend a parade in celebration of William Shakespeare's 458th birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

Performers attend a parade in celebration of William Shakespeare's 458th birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Han Yan)

A man cosplayed as Shakespeare attends a parade in celebration of William Shakespeare's 458th birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

People holding rosemary attend a parade in celebration of William Shakespeare's 458th birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, April 23, 2022. Over 1,000 people gathered at Stratford-upon-Avon, the hometown of William Shakespeare, to celebrate the British playwright's 458th birthday on Saturday. (Xinhua/Han Yan)
BUENOS AIRES, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) promotes a collaborative outlook between countries and is of particular significance in today's conflict-ridden world, political observers have said.

The BFA Annual Conference 2022, held last week in south China's Hainan Province, offers an "essential" mechanism for dialogue in Asia and transcends beyond regional borders by contributing to global governance, according to Maya Alvisa, a professor of Chinese history and culture at the University of Buenos Aires.

"The forum offers an important space for regional dialogue to build a cooperative outlook that safeguards common interests at a time when the world is still being hit by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and now faces a growing crisis due to the conflict in Ukraine and policies that favor imposing regional views, unilateral sanctions and competition," Alvisa told Xinhua.

"World governance and global cooperation are today not an option, but a fundamental necessity in a highly interconnected world where events occurring in one part of the world inevitably have repercussions in other parts of the world," said Alvisa, who also teaches a postgraduate course on contemporary China at the Argentine Catholic University.

By promoting cooperation, the forum offers a valuable tool to spur development in education, public healthcare, security and defense, and in regions that deserve special attention and coordinated international efforts.

As "Asia is essential to the global economy," the forum takes on even greater significance, she said.

Alvisa said China continues to pursue a development policy that benefits the whole world and is accompanied by an "auspicious" concept of sustainable and balanced development in the pursuit of building a community with a shared future for humankind.

"The understanding of the responsibility that entails being, to a great extent, the engine of the world economy, and promoting a policy of economic openness, thinking and acting in the sense of being part of a whole, makes it an important agent that generates hope with respect to harmonious growth at a global level," said Alvisa.

Echoing Alvisa's point, Argentine government adviser Lucas Gualda highlighted China's commitment to defending multilateralism and global cooperation despite current conflicts.

At the forum, China "reminds the world that the pandemic is not over yet and to effectively control it, all nations must address the situation with the necessary urgency," said Gualda.

"This crisis has exposed the interdependence that unites the world," Gualda said, "and that impacts all aspects of our lives." 
Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech via video at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2022, on April 21, 2022. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

BEIJING, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday proposed a Global Security Initiative to promote security for everyone around the world while delivering a keynote speech via video at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2022.

Xi proposed the Global Security Initiative with the future of all humanity in mind. The initiative is another global public good offered by China, as well as a vivid illustration of the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind in the security field.

The Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative have become important global public goods provided by China, offering China's wisdom and impetus to help improve global governance.

Belt and Road Initiative

Global Development Initiative

Global Security Initiative
Photo taken on Feb. 12, 2020 shows the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. (Xinhua/Zhang Cheng)

Zivadin Jovanovic said he believed that back in the spring of 1999 he witnessed the beginning of NATO's expansion into eastern Europe. This, he said, has by now threatened Russia's borders, sparking the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.



Jovanovic said that instead of fueling the conflict further, the West should engage in a global high-level dialogue for peace and security, which would be vital to overcoming the crisis.



BELGRADE, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The decades-long eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has not only caused the crisis in Ukraine but it has also evolved into a threat to peace and cooperation worldwide, a Serbian expert has told Xinhua in an interview.

Zivadin Jovanovic, who served as foreign minister of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between 1998 and 2000, said he believed that back in the spring of 1999 he witnessed the beginning of NATO's expansion into eastern Europe. This, he said, has by now threatened Russia's borders, sparking the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

NATO's eastward push has deeply harmed the whole European continent, Jovanovic noted, by "militarizing its infrastructure, economy and even its education system." Globally, it increased the probability of local, regional and even larger conflicts, followed by impoverishment and hunger.

Jovanovic, who currently presides over the think-tank Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, said that instead of fueling the conflict further, the West should engage in a global high-level dialogue for peace and security, which would be vital to overcoming the crisis.

The bombed Radio Television Serbia (RTS) building is seen in Belgrade, Serbia, March 21, 2022. In Belgrade, there are many scars left by the NATO bombings. The NATO bombings of Yugoslavia started on March 24, 1999. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

UNPROVOKED?

According to Jovanovic, the position commonly held in the West that the conflict in Ukraine is "unprovoked" is false -- because since its 1999 aggression on Yugoslavia, NATO has deployed troops across the Balkans, added 11 countries as members and established numerous military bases across Europe.

"In March 1999, NATO launched an illegal attack -- an aggression against Yugoslavia. The publicly announced goal was to protect the rights of an endangered national minority... However, we see that the result of it all was the permanent deployment of NATO troops across the Balkans... These are undeniable facts," he said.

Since then, NATO has significantly grown by integrating a number of eastern European countries, which resulted in the deployment of NATO troops and the establishment of military bases on their territory.

"Back then (in 1999), NATO had 19 members, while now it has 30. Where is the reservoir for new member states? It is in the east of Europe, and this means increasing proximity to Russia's borders... When these bases were opened, NATO said they had a defensive purpose... However, they turned out to be missile bases, which can hold offensive weapons."

The tensions were further aggravated because, as Jovanovic pointed out, the United States has recently withdrawn from important international military agreements.

"The U.S., as the key power of NATO, has pulled out from many important agreements on arms control, intermediate-range missiles... The big question is: why did it do so and to what end?" he asked.

According to Jovanovic, in absence of responses to Moscow's initiatives to renew the arms control treaties and to stop NATO's eastward push, Russia was forced to launch a military operation to protect its interests.

The bombed Command Building of Yugoslav Air Force is seen in Belgrade, Serbia, March 21, 2022. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

ENORMOUS DAMAGE

According to Jovanovic, NATO's eastward push has endangered vital agreements that ensured a long period of peace after World War II.

"During its enlargement, NATO has violated all the agreements that existed and that are undisputable. During its attack on Yugoslavia, they violated the UN Charter, and challenged the authority of the UN Security Council... The damage done is certainly enormous. Because of NATO's enlargement strategy towards the east, the world is in a changed condition. The global system of security, peace and cooperation is in danger," he warned.

This decades-long process has, according to Jovanovic, destroyed key European values and militarized the entire continent.

"Due to NATO's enlargement to the east, the entire European continent has become militarized. There have never been more military bases, arms and military equipment in Europe than today... Europe has militarized its economy and its education system," he said.

Moreover, NATO's expansion has "shaken the entire international order" and endangered peace in the whole world, Jovanovic said.

"Enormous damage has been inflicted on the system of collective security and cooperation, not to mention how much this NATO expansion has contributed to the development of an arms race and the destruction of a whole subsystem in charge of controlling the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. This has increased the possibility of conflicts, not only local and regional ones but also global ones... It will take plenty of wisdom, time and effort to repair this," he said.

A man with a flower in his hand passes the bombed Command Building of Yugoslav Air Force in Belgrade, Serbia, March 21, 2022. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

PEACE THROUGH DIALOGUE

Jovanovic said that for the Ukrainian crisis to stop, NATO's eastward expansion must also stop. The solution, he said, lies not on the battlefield but in high-level dialogue.

"All people in the West say nowadays is that Kiev must continue the conflict and not accept any kind of agreement with Russia, that the West always delivers bigger and technologically advanced weaponry. This way they are adding fuel to the fire... There can't be any solution on the battlefield."

Commenting on the Western sanctions on Russia, he said that these further escalate the conflict and that the sanctions are "intentionally directed against civilians."

"Sanctions are illegitimate and inhumane. Such was their goal in the case of Yugoslavia... Because of this, children and people with difficult chronic diseases died across Yugoslavia, and there were shortages of everything and plenty of ordinary people suffering... Sanctions are no means to resolve conflicts. They are not a means to achieve peace but to escalate the situation further," Jovanovic said.

He said that instead of fueling further the destruction of Ukraine and forcing NATO's further expansion, the West should engage in a high-level dialogue with other global powers in order to agree on peace, cooperation and collective security.

"It takes time to prepare summits or high-level meetings, but it is necessary to talk about this and to prepare concrete initiatives for dialogue, negotiations and the cessation of the conflict," Jovanovic said.

In his opinion, peace could be pursued through acknowledging the equality of countries in security, peace and cooperation. "Everybody in the West must make peace with this: the era of expansion, dictates and commands, and the pyramidal arrangement of global relations are a thing of the past. The world is clearly striving for a multipolar world order based on mutual respect, partnership and the acknowledgment of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries." 
Medical workers talk with a senior patient in a makeshift hospital in Shanghai, east China, April 23, 2022. The makeshift hospital in Lingang is converting around 2,000 beds to treat COVID-19 patients with moderate symptoms and senior patients over 80 years old. (Xinhua/Yang Youzong)

A medical worker talks with a senior patient in a makeshift hospital in Shanghai, east China, April 23, 2022. The makeshift hospital in Lingang is converting around 2,000 beds to treat COVID-19 patients with moderate symptoms and senior patients over 80 years old. (Xinhua/Yang Youzong)

A medical worker talks to a senior patient in a makeshift hospital in Shanghai, east China, April 23, 2022. The makeshift hospital in Lingang is converting around 2,000 beds to treat COVID-19 patients with moderate symptoms and senior patients over 80 years old. (Xinhua/Yang Youzong)

A medical worker puts on a wristband for a senior patient in a makeshift hospital in Shanghai, east China, April 23, 2022. The makeshift hospital in Lingang is converting around 2,000 beds to treat COVID-19 patients with moderate symptoms and senior patients over 80 years old. (Xinhua/Yang Youzong)

A senior patient reads a book in a makeshift hospital in Shanghai, east China, April 23, 2022. The makeshift hospital in Lingang is converting around 2,000 beds to treat COVID-19 patients with moderate symptoms and senior patients over 80 years old. (Xinhua/Yang Youzong)

Photo taken on April 23, 2022 shows an oxygen tank in a makeshift hospital in Shanghai, east China. The makeshift hospital in Lingang is converting around 2,000 beds to treat COVID-19 patients with moderate symptoms and senior patients over 80 years old. (Xinhua/Yang Youzong)

Medical workers help with a senior patient in a makeshift hospital in Shanghai, east China, April 23, 2022. The makeshift hospital in Lingang is converting around 2,000 beds to treat COVID-19 patients with moderate symptoms and senior patients over 80 years old. (Xinhua/Yang Youzong)
SHANGHAI, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Tiring days, late nights and sweaty clothes, did not dampen the spirits of American student Lyu Jiaojie, as she carries out her responsibilities as an anti-epidemic volunteer undeterred.

A student at Fudan University in Shanghai, Lyu has gotten accustomed to the challenges and is discharging her duties with utmost dedication.

Fudan's campuses have been put under closed-loop management since March 13 due to the current wave of COVID-19 infections in the metropolis. Students have been asked to stay inside their dormitories and attend classes online to prevent virus transmission.

To help with epidemic prevention works and delivery of basic necessities, the university recruited a group of volunteers including 30 international students. They are tasked with distributing meals and daily supplies, disinfecting the stairs and corridors, and coordinating nuclear acid testing, among others.

"It is satisfying to help others and to feel needed," Lyu said. "I am familiar with all my fellow students living in the building. I have befriended many of them and we plan to go to a restaurant together after the closed-off management is lifted."

At present, there are about 300 international students living on Fudan campuses. To ensure proper care for these students, a notice was released in mid-March to recruit ad hoc building managers. In three hours, all the positions were filled.

Japanese student Koei Enomoto is one of the volunteer managers. Most residents in his building are girls, so he often helped them with the purchase and delivery of bottled water.

Recalling one instance, Enomoto said it took him seven trips up and down the stairs to deliver seven bottles of five-gallon water to his peers. "I will do anything that can help others."

Shanghai reported 1,401 confirmed locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 19,657 local asymptomatic carriers on Saturday, according to the municipal health commission.

According to rough statistics, there are some 200,000 foreigners working in Shanghai. With China ramping up the fight against COVID-19, many expats have joined forces to combat the epidemic.

Liyicatalina Wuxu, a Colombian student at Shanghai International Studies University, did not hesitate to sign up as an epidemic prevention volunteer for her dormitory building when there was a requirement. At 10 p.m. every night, she would check the number of students in the dormitory and register the antigen test results.

"Although I do the same work every day, I believe every minor effort can inject momentum into the fight against the epidemic," she said.

In the process of volunteering, she met a group of like-minded friends, giving her a strong sense of belongingness.

"As an international student, I deeply feel the determination and efforts of the Chinese government to control the epidemic. I also believe that my volunteer experience will be an unforgettable memory in my life," Wuxu added.

Mhdbasel Nashawati, a Syrian student at Shanghai University who is also volunteering, believes that defeating the virus requires everyone to do their own job well. "I believe that through concerted efforts, Shanghai can not only restore its original vitality but also become stronger." 
A staff member receives money from a tourist using digital RMB with a POS reader at the Happy Valley Beijing theme park in Beijing, capital of China, June 16, 2021. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

BOAO, Hainan, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Three years into the pandemic, when it is imperative for the world to reboot the sluggish economy, China has made headway in digitizing the economy to dynamic growth, according to experts and enterprises.



China fronts the world in the development of the digital economy, according to Qian Kun, senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm Technology Licensing (QTL) China. He made the remark at the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference 2022.

He envisioned that the global digital economy will rank in at 1.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2035, while China will take up over 10 percent of the total by then. "The economy will be sizable and profitable," Qian added.

AVANT-GARDE PLAYER

In China, digital economic activities have grown exponentially in the past years and have gradually become one of the dominant forces in the national economy.

In 2020, China's digital economy maintained a high growth rate of 9.7 percent to 39.2 trillion yuan (about 6.16 trillion U.S. dollars), reaching upwards of an estimated 38.6 percent of the national GDP.

As part of the digital information infrastructure, the number of 5G base stations in the country totaled 1.43 million as of early March. The number of 5G users topped 500 million.

These figures mirrored the country's constant efforts in promoting economic digitalization.

China has made the development of the digital economy a national strategy since 2012, and released detailed roadmaps and incentives to shore up the sector.

This year's government work report also included support for the digital sector, calling for strengthening overall planning for the Digital China initiative, building more digital information infrastructure, developing an integrated national system of big data centers step by step, and applying 5G technology on a larger scale.

"With these efforts, Chinese companies got the chance to give full play to their capabilities, gaining an upper hand in the global market," Qian said.

PREVENTIVE REGULATION

However, experts also warned of the risks behind the continuous emergence of cutting-edge technologies and tremendous data flows.

"Despite the high-speed growth during the past years, we must recognize that problems like data abuse, excessive data mining and disordered data processing exist," Lu Jinghui, chief security officer of Vivo Mobile Communications Co., Ltd., said at the BFA.

To govern the energetic yet nascent sector, China has rolled out multiple regulatory measures in a timely manner, preventing it from being free-wheeling while maintaining its vigor.

Two new Chinese laws dealing with data security and personal information came into force in 2021, providing more details about the data localization, data export and data protection requirements.

In an effort to rein in anti-monopoly in the digital era, the country initiated multiple anti-trust and anti-unfair competition probes as well as data security checks on major platform firms, from internet and tech giants to e-commerce companies.

China will strengthen oversight and law enforcement in the coming year in key areas, including the platform economy, sci-tech innovation, and information security, said Zhang Gong, head of the State Administration for Market Regulation, China's top market regulator.

SHARED FUTURE

China has also been active in seeking cooperation with the international community to promote digital trade and governance.

Last November, China had filed an application to join the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA), a new type of trade partnership agreement signed by Chile, New Zealand and Singapore seeking to bolster digital trade by regulating the digital economy, including digital inclusion, data flows and protection and artificial intelligence.

The application to join DEPA is in line with China's direction of further deepening domestic reform and expanding high-level opening-up, and will help the country strengthen digital economy cooperation with other members, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

"We appreciate China's application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and DEPA," said Damien O'Connor, Minister for Trade and Export Growth of New Zealand, noting that China has become New Zealand's largest e-commerce market since the bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) came into effect in 2008.

He also expected that the upgraded bilateral FTA that take effect recently will further facilitate the digital trade between the two sides.

Moreover, the country is willing to share its digital dividends with the rest of the world. The country has offered digital aid in the form of technology, equipment and services to less developed countries.

According to a white paper titled "China and Africa in the New Era: A Partnership of Equals," Chinese companies have participated in a number of submarine cable projects connecting Africa and Europe, Asia. More than half of the continent's wireless sites and high-speed mobile broadband networks were built by Chinese companies.

In total, more than 200,000 km of optical fiber has been laid, giving broadband Internet access to 6 million households in Africa, and serving more than 900 million local people, the white paper said.

Countries in the world should work together to jointly boost the development of the digital economy at this crucial juncture, said Damien O'Connor. 
Xue Feng exercises with water bottles in Shanghai, east China, April 20, 2022.

Amid challenges caused by the resurgence of COVID-19 in Shanghai, financial institutions and banks have managed to remain operational.

Bank of China Shanghai branch has entered temporary closed-loop management for employees on duty who are supported by an efficient logistics support team. The team is composed of three members: deputy general manager Wang Lianghui, director Han Hao and employee Xue Feng.

The team is in charge of purchasing and distributing living necessities, canteen management and disinfection, garbage disposal, etc. And it serves for staff work in the Bank of China building in Lujiazui area, other business offices in the Bund and related staff dormitories. (Xinhua/Li He)

Aerial Photo taken on April 21, 2022 shows a vehicle loaded with living necessities runs to a business office of Bank of China at the Bund in Shanghai, east China.

Amid challenges caused by the resurgence of COVID-19 in Shanghai, financial institutions and banks have managed to remain operational.

Bank of China Shanghai branch has entered temporary closed-loop management for employees on duty who are supported by an efficient logistics support team. The team is composed of three members: deputy general manager Wang Lianghui, director Han Hao and employee Xue Feng.

The team is in charge of purchasing and distributing living necessities, canteen management and disinfection, garbage disposal, etc. And it serves for staff work in the Bank of China building in Lujiazui area, other business offices in the Bund and related staff dormitories. (Xinhua/Li He)

Aerial photo taken on April 21, 2022 shows staff members disinfecting living materials outside a business office of Bank of China in Shanghai, east China.

Amid challenges caused by the resurgence of COVID-19 in Shanghai, financial institutions and banks have managed to remain operational.

Bank of China Shanghai branch has entered temporary closed-loop management for employees on duty who are supported by an efficient logistics support team. The team is composed of three members: deputy general manager Wang Lianghui, director Han Hao and employee Xue Feng.

The team is in charge of purchasing and distributing living necessities, canteen management and disinfection, garbage disposal, etc. And it serves for staff work in the Bank of China building in Lujiazui area, other business offices in the Bund and related staff dormitories. (Xinhua/Li He)

Wang Lianghui (L), Han Hao (C) and Xue Feng prepare living necessities to be distributed to colleagues in Shanghai, east China, April 20, 2022.

Amid challenges caused by the resurgence of COVID-19 in Shanghai, financial institutions and banks have managed to remain operational.

Bank of China Shanghai branch has entered temporary closed-loop management for employees on duty who are supported by an efficient logistics support team. The team is composed of three members: deputy general manager Wang Lianghui, director Han Hao and employee Xue Feng.

The team is in charge of purchasing and distributing living necessities, canteen management and disinfection, garbage disposal, etc. And it serves for staff work in the Bank of China building in Lujiazui area, other business offices in the Bund and related staff dormitories. (Xinhua/Li He)

Han Hao has his lunch in Bank of China building in Shanghai, east China, April 20, 2022.

Amid challenges caused by the resurgence of COVID-19 in Shanghai, financial institutions and banks have managed to remain operational.

Bank of China Shanghai branch has entered temporary closed-loop management for employees on duty who are supported by an efficient logistics support team. The team is composed of three members: deputy general manager Wang Lianghui, director Han Hao and employee Xue Feng.

The team is in charge of purchasing and distributing living necessities, canteen management and disinfection, garbage disposal, etc. And it serves for staff work in the Bank of China building in Lujiazui area, other business offices in the Bund and related staff dormitories. (Xinhua/Li He)

Wang Lianghui (L) takes nucleic acid test outside the Bank of China building in Shanghai, east China, April 21, 2022.

Amid challenges caused by the resurgence of COVID-19 in Shanghai, financial institutions and banks have managed to remain operational.

Bank of China Shanghai branch has entered temporary closed-loop management for employees on duty who are supported by an efficient logistics support team. The team is composed of three members: deputy general manager Wang Lianghui, director Han Hao and employee Xue Feng.

The team is in charge of purchasing and distributing living necessities, canteen management and disinfection, garbage disposal, etc. And it serves for staff work in the Bank of China building in Lujiazui area, other business offices in the Bund and related staff dormitories. (Xinhua/Li He)

A staff member takes food for his department at the canteen of Bank of China building in Shanghai, east China, April 20, 2022.

Amid challenges caused by the resurgence of COVID-19 in Shanghai, financial institutions and banks have managed to remain operational.

Bank of China Shanghai branch has entered temporary closed-loop management for employees on duty who are supported by an efficient logistics support team. The team is composed of three members: deputy general manager Wang Lianghui, director Han Hao and employee Xue Feng.

The team is in charge of purchasing and distributing living necessities, canteen management and disinfection, garbage disposal, etc. And it serves for staff work in the Bank of China building in Lujiazui area, other business offices in the Bund and related staff dormitories. (Xinhua/Li He)

A batch of living necessities is received at a dormitory where 30 staff of Bank of China on duty live in Shanghai, east China, April 22, 2022.

Amid challenges caused by the resurgence of COVID-19 in Shanghai, financial institutions and banks have managed to remain operational.

Bank of China Shanghai branch has entered temporary closed-loop management for employees on duty who are supported by an efficient logistics support team. The team is composed of three members: deputy general manager Wang Lianghui, director Han Hao and employee Xue Feng.

The team is in charge of purchasing and distributing living necessities, canteen management and disinfection, garbage disposal, etc. And it serves for staff work in the Bank of China building in Lujiazui area, other business offices in the Bund and related staff dormitories. (Xinhua/Li He)

Xue Feng (2nd L) prepares to take a nucleic acid test outside the Bank of China building in Shanghai, east China, April 21, 2022.

Amid challenges caused by the resurgence of COVID-19 in Shanghai, financial institutions and banks have managed to remain operational.

Bank of China Shanghai branch has entered temporary closed-loop management for employees on duty The team is composed of three members: deputy general manager Wang Lianghui, director Han Hao and employee Xue Feng.who are supported by an efficient logistics support team.

The team is in charge of purchasing and distributing living necessities, canteen management and disinfection, garbage disposal, etc. And it serves for staff work in the Bank of China building in Lujiazui area, other business offices in the Bund and related staff dormitories. (Xinhua/Li He)

Han Hao charges his smart phone before lunch in Shanghai, east China, April 20, 2022.

Amid challenges caused by the resurgence of COVID-19 in Shanghai, financial institutions and banks have managed to remain operational.

Bank of China Shanghai branch has entered temporary closed-loop management for employees on duty who are supported by an efficient logistics support team. The team is composed of three members: deputy general manager Wang Lianghui, director Han Hao and employee Xue Feng.

The team is in charge of purchasing and distributing living necessities, canteen management and disinfection, garbage disposal, etc. And it serves for staff work in the Bank of China building in Lujiazui area, other business offices in the Bund and related staff dormitories. (Xinhua/Li He)
BOAO, Hainan, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Three years into the pandemic, when it is imperative for the world to reboot the sluggish economy, China has made headway in digitizing the economy to dynamic growth, according to experts and enterprises.

China fronts the world in the development of the digital economy, according to Qian Kun, senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm Technology Licensing (QTL) China. He made the remark at the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference 2022.

He envisioned that the global digital economy will rank in at 1.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2035, while China will take up over 10 percent of the total by then. "The economy will be sizable and profitable," Qian added.

AVANT-GARDE PLAYER

In China, digital economic activities have grown exponentially in the past years and have gradually become one of the dominant forces in the national economy.

In 2020, China's digital economy maintained a high growth rate of 9.7 percent to 39.2 trillion yuan (about 6.16 trillion U.S. dollars), reaching upwards of an estimated 38.6 percent of the national GDP.

As part of the digital information infrastructure, the number of 5G base stations in the country totaled 1.43 million as of early March. The number of 5G users topped 500 million.

These figures mirrored the country's constant efforts in promoting economic digitalization.

China has made the development of the digital economy a national strategy since 2012, and released detailed roadmaps and incentives to shore up the sector.

This year's government work report also included support for the digital sector, calling for strengthening overall planning for the Digital China initiative, building more digital information infrastructure, developing an integrated national system of big data centers step by step, and applying 5G technology on a larger scale.

"With these efforts, Chinese companies got the chance to give full play to their capabilities, gaining an upper hand in the global market," Qian said.

PREVENTIVE REGULATION

However, experts also warned of the risks behind the continuous emergence of cutting-edge technologies and tremendous data flows.

"Despite the high-speed growth during the past years, we must recognize that problems like data abuse, excessive data mining and disordered data processing exist," Lu Jinghui, chief security officer of Vivo Mobile Communications Co., Ltd., said at the BFA.

To govern the energetic yet nascent sector, China has rolled out multiple regulatory measures in a timely manner, preventing it from being free-wheeling while maintaining its vigor.

Two new Chinese laws dealing with data security and personal information came into force in 2021, providing more details about the data localization, data export and data protection requirements.

In an effort to rein in anti-monopoly in the digital era, the country initiated multiple anti-trust and anti-unfair competition probes as well as data security checks on major platform firms, from internet and tech giants to e-commerce companies.

China will strengthen oversight and law enforcement in the coming year in key areas, including the platform economy, sci-tech innovation, and information security, said Zhang Gong, head of the State Administration for Market Regulation, China's top market regulator.

SHARED FUTURE

China has also been active in seeking cooperation with the international community to promote digital trade and governance.

Last November, China had filed an application to join the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA), a new type of trade partnership agreement signed by Chile, New Zealand and Singapore seeking to bolster digital trade by regulating the digital economy, including digital inclusion, data flows and protection and artificial intelligence.

The application to join DEPA is in line with China's direction of further deepening domestic reform and expanding high-level opening-up, and will help the country strengthen digital economy cooperation with other members, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

"We appreciate China's application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and DEPA," said Damien O'Connor, Minister for Trade and Export Growth of New Zealand, noting that China has become New Zealand's largest e-commerce market since the bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) came into effect in 2008.

He also expected that the upgraded bilateral FTA that take effect recently will further facilitate the digital trade between the two sides.

Moreover, the country is willing to share its digital dividends with the rest of the world. The country has offered digital aid in the form of technology, equipment and services to less developed countries.

According to a white paper titled "China and Africa in the New Era: A Partnership of Equals," Chinese companies have participated in a number of submarine cable projects connecting Africa and Europe, Asia. More than half of the continent's wireless sites and high-speed mobile broadband networks were built by Chinese companies.

In total, more than 200,000 km of optical fiber has been laid, giving broadband Internet access to 6 million households in Africa, and serving more than 900 million local people, the white paper said.

Countries in the world should work together to jointly boost the development of the digital economy at this crucial juncture, said Damien O'Connor. 
Overseas returnees visit a job fair during the 19th Conference on International Exchange of Professionals in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, April 24, 2021. (Xinhua/Mao Siqian)

BEIJING, April 24 (Xinhua) -- China is actively incorporating its long-standing employment-first approach into its pro-growth measures to help cushion the economy against potential impacts from heightened uncertainties.

China's surveyed urban unemployment rate stood at 5.5 percent in the first quarter of this year, up 0.1 percentage points from the same period last year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.

China's employment has remained generally stable since the beginning of this year thanks to its employment-first policy and ever-increasing support for struggling businesses, said NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui.

Employment and economic growth are mutually reinforcing, and thus job creation has been put high on the policy agenda. Chinese policymakers have repeatedly pointed out that job security and price stability are both key underpinnings for keeping major economic indicators within an appropriate range.

Prioritizing employment enabled China to achieve 2.2 percent growth in 2020, making it the only major economy to achieve positive expansion during a year that saw the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the country did not set a numerical target for overall growth that year, it aimed at creating over 9 million urban jobs and ended up adding 11 million.

China will be able to achieve its potential economic growth as long as it can realize maximum employment, noted Premier Li Keqiang after China's annual legislative session in March this year.

"This year, we will step up the implementation of macro policies, and focus our fiscal and monetary policies on achieving employment targets," Li said.

The job market cooled in March after a heady start in the first two months, with the urban unemployment rate edging up 0.3 percentage points from February to 5.8 percent, while the unemployment rate among those aged between 16 and 24 stood at a biting 16 percent.

The number of urban job seekers in 2022 is at the highest in years, which includes a record 10.76 million college graduates. Meanwhile, companies bearing the brunt of a complex global situation and sporadic domestic COVID-19 resurgences are cutting back on hiring.

The March unemployment figures have prompted China to make extra efforts to achieve its annual job creation goals, as during this month companies usually resume hiring following the Chinese New Year holiday, said Zeng Xiangquan, a researcher with the Renmin University of China.

China aims to create over 11 million new urban jobs and keep a surveyed urban unemployment rate of no more than 5.5 percent in 2022, according to a government work report.

To that end, Chinese authorities are striving to revitalize market entities, ensure employment for key groups, and support flexible employment.

Noting that micro, small and medium firms hold around 80 percent of the country's jobs, Yi Gang, governor of the People's Bank of China, said the central bank will continue to crank up inclusive finance for these firms.

The central bank announced cutting the reserve requirement ratio for financial institutions by 0.25 percent from Monday to strengthen financial support for epidemic-affected sectors and smaller firms.

"The main goal of China's monetary policy is keeping prices and employment stable," Yi said.

On the fiscal front, China vowed to implement a value-added tax credit refund worth around 1.5 trillion yuan (about 232 billion U.S. dollars), postpone payments of old-age insurance premiums and refund more unemployment insurance premiums, and provide one-off employment and training subsidies to small firms. These measures help save costs for firms so that they have more incentive to retain their staff.

To assist job seekers in better preparing for the labor market, China will provide them with no fewer than 1 million internship openings this year and allow localities to use the balance of the employment insurance funds to support vocational training programs.

Special attention is being given to key groups of job seekers. The country aims to add 2 million high-quality jobs for college graduates and ensure no less than 30 million people who had shaken off poverty are employed this year.

The flexibly employed, with their numbers coming in at 200 million and counting, will be eligible for stronger credit support and better protection from occupational hazards.

China aims to achieve an economic growth of 5.5 percent in 2022, with each percentage point of growth expected to help generate over 2 million jobs. 
PARIS, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The 2022 French presidential runoff kicked off at 8 a.m. local time (0600 GMT) on Sunday in Metropolitan France between incumbent President Emmanuel Macron and candidate Marine Le Pen.

Eligible voters on French overseas territories already cast their ballots on Saturday.

According to the results of the first round voting published by France's Constitutional Council, Macron won 9,783,058 votes, or 27.85 percent of valid ballots and his rival, Le Pen won 8,133,828 votes, or 23.15 percent.

During the first round voting held on April 10, 35,923,707 voters cast their ballots. 
BEIJING, April 24 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese mainland spokesperson on Sunday criticized Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authority for repeatedly using invalid historical documents to support its independence agenda.

The DPP authority acted out of its own political interests and tried to confuse right and wrong, said Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesperson with the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, in response to the DPP authority's recent statement on the so-called San Francisco Peace Treaty.

The United States had excluded China and the Soviet Union when reaching the treaty with Japan in San Francisco after WWII, Ma said.

The treaty violated relevant regulations in the Declaration by United Nations, signed in 1942 by 26 countries including the United States, the Soviet Union and China, as well as the UN Charter and basic norms of international law, he said.

"The treaty's regulations on the sovereignty and territory of China, which was not a signatory, were illegal and invalid," he said.

There is only one China and Taiwan is part of it, Ma said, adding that a number of international legal documents, including the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation, acknowledged China's sovereignty over Taiwan. 
KABUL, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The Ministry for Refugees and Repatriation Affairs distributed China-donated humanitarian assistance to 1,500 destitute people in Kabul on Saturday.

In the meantime, each needy person received a 50 kg sack of rice donated by China in humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan.

The Chinese government announced last September that it has decided to provide food, winter supplies, COVID-19 vaccines, and medicines worth 200 million yuan (about 31.4 million U.S. dollars) in emergency humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.

China has provided a total of 6,220 tons of food aid to Afghanistan.

Produced by Xinhua Global Service
TEHRAN, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy has seized a vessel allegedly smuggling 150,000 liters of fuel in the waters off the country's southeastern coast, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday.

A number of Iranian and foreign nationals were arrested, Mohammad Nozari, the commander of the IRGC Navy's Imam Ali Base in Chabahar city, was quoted as saying.

The vessel plans to deliver the fuel to a neighboring country, he said, without giving further details.

This is at least the third such seizure this month.

On April 15, the IRGC Navy announced it seized a vessel in the Gulf waters carrying 250,000 liters of smuggled fuel.

The official news agency IRNA reported in early April the IRGC Navy seized a foreign tanker carrying 220,000 liters of smuggled fuel in the Gulf and arrested its 11 crew members. 
Lao villagers stand in front of new houses at the China-aided railway relocation settlement in Buam Aor Village, Xiang Ngeun District, Luang Prabang Province, Laos, April 22, 2022. The Lao villagers resettled for the construction of the China-Laos Railway are moving into new houses built with China's aid. (Photo by Kaikeo Saiyasane/Xinhua)

by Chanthaphaphone Mixayboua, Zhang Jianhua

VIENTIANE, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The Lao villagers resettled for the construction of the China-Laos Railway are moving into new houses built with China's aid.

A ceremony on the resettlement and a calligraphy and drawing competition themed "For Shared Future" was held on Friday in Buam Aor village, Xiang Ngeun district of Luang Prabang province, some 220 km north of the Lao capital Vientiane, where a Chinese firm, NORINCO International Cooperation Ltd., has built a resettlement village for the construction of the China-Laos Railway.

The China-aided railway relocation settlement in Buam Aor village, with neatly arranged residential buildings with red roofs and yellow walls, sits between lucid waters and lush mountains. The local residents have been busy moving into their new homes.

"We have new houses, new schools, new roads. This is what the Chinese engineers have built for us," Chandy Chittakone, a grade-five pupil read her composition at the ceremony in a newly-built school located along the Mekong River.

Lao Minister of Public Works and Transport Viengsavath Siphandone and Chinese Consul General in Luang Prabang Li Zhigong, among others, attended Friday's activity.

Before the ceremony, NORINCO International donated tables, chairs and stationeries to the school. Chinese teachers had taught pupils traditional Chinese calligraphy and drawing skills, with a competition held and an exhibition displaying the artworks of the pupils.

"In the calligraphy and painting competition, the children expressed their love for the Laos-China Railway, the natural environment and the new Buam Aor village," said Philavan Simdavong, a 29-year-old kindergarten teacher.

The Lao minister said that the success of the Buam Aor Resettlement Village Project has brought well-being to the village, noting that it is a high-standard, sustainable project, and brings a huge benefit for people's livelihood.

Laos and China are friendly neighbors with a shared future, while the children are the future of the country and the relationship, and their calligraphy and drawings reflect the profound friendship between the two peoples, said Viengsavath.

"I'm very happy to find that the residents who have been resettled and relocated are now enjoying a happy life. The Buam Aor Resettlement Village Project is not only a good project to improve the people's livelihood, but also another vivid manifestation of the profound friendship between China and Laos," Chief Representative of the Buam Aor Project Jin Guofeng said.

Jin expressed hope that the project, with 107 resettled houses for 459 villagers, and the newly built village office, clinic, kindergarten and primary school, will greatly improve local infrastructure, education, medical care and living conditions, and help promote local economic development.

During the ceremony, Jin handed over a key symbolizing the new settlement to Viengsavath and a friendship tree was also planted by the Lao minister and the Chinese consul general.

Li said at the ceremony that the China-Laos Railway, which has been completed and put into operation last December, is "injecting new impetus into Laos's economic development and improvement of people's livelihood."

Thongvan Vatthanaphone, the 43-year-old village chief, told Xinhua that in the past, some villagers had to live in grass huts, but now, their cement houses are very strong and much better.

"Now the railway passes through our hometown, and the railway connects Vientiane to China. Then the goods can be easily transported to other places (from Laos)," said the village chief.

Philavan, the kindergarten teacher, said "I hope that the children here will be able to take the train to Beijing, to study or travel when they grow up." 

Photo taken on April 22, 2022 shows new houses at the China-aided railway relocation settlement in Buam Aor Village, Xiang Ngeun District, Luang Prabang Province, Laos. The Lao villagers resettled for the construction of the China-Laos Railway are moving into new houses built with China's aid. (Photo by Kaikeo Saiyasane/Xinhua)

Photo taken on April 22, 2022 shows the China-aided railway relocation settlement in Buam Aor Village, Xiang Ngeun District, Luang Prabang Province, Laos. The Lao villagers resettled for the construction of the China-Laos Railway are moving into new houses built with China's aid. (Photo by Kaikeo Saiyasane/Xinhua)

Lao pupils sit in front of a new house at the China-aided railway relocation settlement in Buam Aor Village, Xiang Ngeun District, Luang Prabang Province, Laos, April 22, 2022. The Lao villagers resettled for the construction of the China-Laos Railway are moving into new houses built with China's aid. (Photo by Kaikeo Saiyasane/Xinhua)

Lao pupils dance for a ceremony on the resettlement in the school of Buam Aor Village, Xiang Ngeun District, Luang Prabang Province, Laos, April 22, 2022. The Lao villagers resettled for the construction of the China-Laos Railway are moving into new houses built with China's aid. (Photo by Kaikeo Saiyasane/Xinhua)
HOHHOT, April 24 (Xinhua) -- North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region saw its exports grow 20.9 percent year on year in the first quarter (Q1) of the year, according to the local customs.

The region's foreign trade totaled 29.8 billion yuan (about 4.6 billion U.S. dollars) in Q1, of which the export value reached 13.1 billion yuan, according to the customs of Hohhot, the regional capital.

During the period, the region's imports and exports of processing trade surged 146.8 percent year on year hitting 2.3 billion yuan. The region's foreign-invested enterprises also saw fast growth in foreign trade, increasing by 53.2 percent year on year in Q1.

Its major export products maintained strong growth momentum, as the exports of mechanical and electrical products, agricultural products and basic organic chemicals grew 56 percent, 15.6 percent and 33.3 percent respectively in the period.

The imports and exports between the region and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) countries stood at 9 billion yuan, up 9.3 percent year on year, the customs said. 
Villagers sell milk to the Khatiz Labaniat dairy plant (Eastern Dairy) in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, April 17, 2022. (Photo by Hamidullah/Xinhua)

Selling milk to Khatiz Labaniat can change our lives, says villager Mohsen Khan.

JALALABAD, Afghanistan, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Khatiz Labaniat (Eastern Dairy) is the only dairy plant in Afghanistan's eastern region. The factory collects milk from 1,500 villagers living around Jalalabad and can process 5,000 liters of milk per day.

"The demand for our products has never been higher and the milk supply is not enough to meet it," Managing Director Khalid Khan Niamat told Xinhua recently. The factory packs milk for sale, but also produces cheese, yogurt and cream.

"Unfortunately due to shortage of milk and dairy farm, our dairy plant can't meet the demand of the market," Niamat said. "We have 20 persons directly employed here, but as many as 3,000 people work in the supply chain," Niamat said.

Villagers sell milk to the Khatiz Labaniat dairy plant (Eastern Dairy) in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, April 17, 2022.(Photo by Hamidullah/Xinhua)

The Eastern Dairy depends on cattle owners who require peace and stability to produce. "Since things became peaceful, the government has supported dairy farmers, mostly to reduce dependence on foreign goods," Niamat said.

"The milk we sell here at the dairy plant can bring change to our living condition," said cattle owner Mohsen Khan, who owns a few cows and hopes for boom of the dairy farming industry in the country.



"Supporting livestock and dairy farms will strengthen the village economy. The milk we sell to Khatiz Labaniat can change our lives," he said.

People work in the Khatiz Labaniat dairy plant (Eastern Dairy) in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, April 16, 2022. (Photo by Hamidullah/Xinhua)

Sediqullah, who works for the dairy plant, told Xinhua that it is suitable for Afghanistan to develop agriculture and farming, thus raising the people's standard of living.

This kind of cooperation between the government and the private sector will help stabilize the economy and create jobs, local analysts said, emphasizing the importance of maintaining tranquility for reconstruction in the war-torn country. 


LONDON, April 23 (Xinhua) -- London's historic Trafalgar Square became a sea of red and white on Saturday as thousands of people gathered to celebrate England's national day.

It was the first time the square, one of the top tourist spots of Britain's capital, has hosted St George's Day celebrations since 2019, with the event called off over the past two years because of the pandemic.

As well as music and dancing, a six-hour celebration included appearances by St George and his famous dragon, as well as a parade by London's iconic Pearly Kings and Queens, people who dressed in costumes adorned with thousands of pearl buttons.

Legend tells how St George slayed a dragon, becoming an instant hero.

St George's Day became a national feast day and holiday in England in 1415, but the government has resisted demands for it to be declared a public holiday.

Across England the traditional national flag, showing the red cross of St George, was flown on many public buildings.

Another major event was held in Manchester with the city's annual St George's Day parade. People marched through the city's downtown area, dressed in colorful costumes alongside horse-drawn carriages, brass bands, and a convoy of motor scooters following closely behind. The spectacle attracted thousands of spectators, lining the four-kilometer route, waving the St George's flag.

Events and parades celebrating St George's Day also took place in hundreds of towns, villages and cities across England. 
According to local sources from the area, at approximately 1:00 after midnight yesterday, Turkish occupation drone bombed a point of Damascus government forces in the village of Zour Maghar, west of Kobani.

According to the same sources, Turkish bombing did not result in casualties.

Sh-S

ANHA
MONTEVIDEO, April 23 (Xinhua) -- The foreign ministers of Uruguay and Turkey agreed here on Saturday to begin negotiations toward a bilateral free trade agreement.

Uruguayan Foreign Minister Francisco Bustillo and his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu "agreed on the need to strengthen bilateral trade ties through agreements that generate better market access conditions for exports" for both countries, Uruguay's foreign affairs ministry said in a statement.

The ministry added the top two diplomats "proceeded to sign the terms of reference to start the negotiation process leading to a bilateral Free Trade Agreement."

Cavusoglu's visit aims to strengthen bilateral relations and is part of "the signing of bilateral agreements, reciprocal visits by high-ranking authorities from both countries, (and) the opening of resident embassies," the statement said.

The foreign ministers then attended the official inauguration of the Turkish Embassy in Uruguay. 
People visit the Festival of Daffodils in Druskininkai, Lithuania, April 23, 2022. From April 22 to 24, the Festival of Daffodils was held in Druskininkai, a spa town located in southern Lithuania. (Xinhua/Xue Dongmei)

DRUSKININKAI, Lithuania, April 24 (Xinhua) -- From April 22 to 24, the Festival of Daffodils was held in Druskininkai, a spa town located in southern Lithuania.

Besides the spectacular view and fragrance of the blooming daffodils in the city's Vikyuniel Park, ambient music and light shows were also presented, making it an intense and unique experience for visitors from countries such as Poland, Latvia, Estonia as well as other regions of Lithuania.

Antanas Urbonas, the organizer of the festival, told Xinhua: "This year's daffodil festival applied lasers, music and digital technology to expand the visual space of the daffodil fields, creating fantastic video and audio-visual effects."

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, this unconventional idea came out to maintain the cultural tradition of the daffodil festival and to attract more tourists. This year's festival has been expanded on the basis of last year's practice.

"The main reason for people to see the daffodils in Druskininkai is that daffodils come together with spring," Urbonas said. "After a long winter, people can't wait to see something beautiful."

During the festival, Druskininkai also hosted a large market in the city center, where tourists could buy traditional Lithuanian goods such as food, clothes, accessories, jewelry.

In 2011, Druskininkai planted the first 130,000 daffodils in Vikyuniel Park. Today there are more than 500,000 daffodils in the park. 

People visit the Festival of Daffodils in Druskininkai, Lithuania, April 22, 2022. From April 22 to 24, the Festival of Daffodils was held in Druskininkai, a spa town located in southern Lithuania. (Xinhua/Xue Dongmei)

People visit the Festival of Daffodils in the evening in Druskininkai, Lithuania, April 23, 2022. From April 22 to 24, the Festival of Daffodils was held in Druskininkai, a spa town located in southern Lithuania. (Xinhua/Xue Dongmei)

People visit the Festival of Daffodils in Druskininkai, Lithuania, April 22, 2022. From April 22 to 24, the Festival of Daffodils was held in Druskininkai, a spa town located in southern Lithuania. (Xinhua/Xue Dongmei)

Artists perform at the Festival of Daffodils in Druskininkai, Lithuania, April 23, 2022. From April 22 to 24, the Festival of Daffodils was held in Druskininkai, a spa town located in southern Lithuania. (Xinhua/Xue Dongmei)

People visit the Festival of Daffodils in Druskininkai, Lithuania, April 23, 2022. From April 22 to 24, the Festival of Daffodils was held in Druskininkai, a spa town located in southern Lithuania. (Xinhua/Xue Dongmei)

People visit the Festival of Daffodils in Druskininkai, Lithuania, April 23, 2022. From April 22 to 24, the Festival of Daffodils was held in Druskininkai, a spa town located in southern Lithuania. (Xinhua/Xue Dongmei)

Artists perform at the Festival of Daffodils in Druskininkai, Lithuania, April 23, 2022. From April 22 to 24, the Festival of Daffodils was held in Druskininkai, a spa town located in southern Lithuania. (Xinhua/Xue Dongmei)

A child plays bubbles at the Festival of Daffodils in Druskininkai, Lithuania, April 23, 2022. From April 22 to 24, the Festival of Daffodils was held in Druskininkai, a spa town located in southern Lithuania. (Xinhua/Xue Dongmei)

People visit the Festival of Daffodils in Druskininkai, Lithuania, April 23, 2022. From April 22 to 24, the Festival of Daffodils was held in Druskininkai, a spa town located in southern Lithuania. (Xinhua/Xue Dongmei)
ISTANBUL/KIEV, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, on Sunday discussed the latest developments of the Ukraine crisis over the phone.

According to a statement by the Turkish presidential office, Erdogan said that the evacuation of the wounded and civilians from Ukraine's Mariupol, "where the situation is getting sad(der) each day," must be urgently ensured.

Meanwhile, Zelensky tweeted that he stressed the need for the immediate evacuation of civilians from Mariupol, including Azovstal plant, and an immediate exchange of blocked troops.

The two presidents also addressed issues related to the negotiation process between Russia and Ukraine.

Erdogan said that Turkey has a positive stance on the guarantor issue in principle, and that his country is ready to provide all possible assistance for the negotiation process, the Turkish presidential office said.

Following a fresh round of face-to-face talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul in March, Ukrainian negotiators named several countries, including Turkey, which could act as guarantors. 
MOSCOW, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Russia's forces have destroyed a logistics terminal at a military airfield near Ukraine's Odessa, where foreign weapons were stored, said the Russian Defense Ministry.

"This afternoon, high-precision, long-range air-based missiles fired by the Russian Aerospace Forces disabled a logistics terminal at a military airfield near Odessa, where a large batch of foreign weapons received from the U.S. and European countries were stored," said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Russia is continuing its special military operation in Ukraine.

The Russian military has destroyed 141 aircraft and 110 helicopters, 264 anti-aircraft missile systems, 541 unmanned aerial vehicles, 2,479 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 278 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,081 field artillery and mortars, and 2,321 special military vehicles. 
Bhopal: Amid the political uproar over the coal shortage and power crisis in Madhya Pradesh, the state's Energy Minister Pradyuman Singh Tomar's statement has come to the fore. On the power crisis, Energy Minister Tomar said that there are some problems which we are resolving on a war footing. There is no shortage of coal in Madhya Pradesh. The heat has increased, in such a way that the demand for electricity has also increased, then the production also needs to be increased. As much coal as is required, the amount of coal that is required will be arranged in time, the people of the State need not worry.

"Last time also questions were raised about the coal threat, we had said even then that the shortage of coal will not be allowed. He also said that if there is a natural calamity in Madhya Pradesh, then it is different, but we will not allow a shortage to happen. We have discussed it with the Railway Minister, the Union Power Minister, and the Coal Minister and we are trying day by day to make sure that we get enough coal.

He said that the consumption has increased in the summer, as the number of the procession in a wedding comes to 100 instead of 30, then we have to arrange for it. We are arranging for the sudden increase in demand. Consumers will not have any problems. Minister Tomar said that instructions have been given to the officers that wherever the lines are faulty, the lines should be replaced, the same time has been given to the officers till May 31 to fix the fall ceiling. Along with this, staff should also be deployed in all the new sub-stations that have been built recently. He said that on the lines of the ring road in Gwalior, now ring monopole power line will be laid so that all the sub-stations are connected to each other. If there is a fault in one sub-station, immediate supply can be provided from another place. At the same time, he said that in some residential areas, high tension line is suffering, and instructions have been given to change its route.

PM Modi arrived in J&K, slogans of 'Har-Har Modi, Ghar-Ghar Modi' echoed

PM Modi arrives in Jammu and Kashmir for the first time after the removal of 370, gives a gift of 20,000 crore

If zero had not been discovered, we might not have seen such scientific progress in world: PM Modi
There are many places in India where you can visit. By the way, everyone likes to travel and today, in today's time, in the hectic life, some people travel to spend moments of peace. Many people travel in India and many go abroad. By the way, travelling abroad is like a dream come true for everyone. However, it is not possible to plan due to time. But today we will tell you about the same beautiful places which are located a short distance from India and you will enjoy going there.

Nepal- Nepal is one of the most beautiful places. You can enjoy your holidays here. In fact, this country is very close to India. The snow-capped peaks here add to the pride of the country. In fact, here you can have fun in Pokhara, Nagarkot, Janakpur, Lumbini Tourism, Pashupatinath Temple and many other beautiful places.

Singapore- The second place for the foreign destination is Singapore. The beautiful view of its islands is excellent. It will make you much cheaper than other international destinations. Yes, and you can plan to visit here. Adventures, photography, artists, and backpackers can enjoy Singapore and plan their vacation here.

Dubai - Dubai is the third international destination. Dubai is very popular among tourists as they can see many places of their choice here. You can also see the high Burj Khalifa building here. Apart from this, you can also visit places like Desert Ride, Private Island, and Start Restaurant.

Thailand- You will be mesmerized to see the natural views of Thailand. Ji Darsal Thailand is the most popular place for tourists. You will not feel like coming back after going here. Here you can visit places like Khao Yai National Park, Sukhothai, Funom Rung, Mukoang Thong.

Maldives- Maldives is a very popular destination for couples. Yes, and the sea around here will please your mind. By the way, you will know that Bollywood stars also leave for the Maldives on time. This place is really good.

House will remain cool like snow even in heavy heat, just follow these 4 important measures

Do your shoes smell bad? So try these easy ways in the summer

If the eyes turn red from the sun in the heat, then adopt these home remedies.
Abuja: More than 100 people were killed in an explosion at an illegal oil refinery in southeastern Nigeria, according to information recently received. With this, dozens of people have been injured. Officials have given information in this case on Saturday. It is being told that the death toll could be above 100. Apart from this, it is also being reported that the fire caused by the blast has spread to nearby properties and that the fire spread rapidly to two illegal fuel stores, said Eimo's state information commissioner Declan Emmelumba. '

He said, "The cause of the blast and the exact number of dead is being ascertained. State Petroleum Resources Commissioner Goodluck Opia said, "The fire incident took place at an illegal bunkering site. More than 100 people were killed. These people could not be identified. This bunkering site is in the Ohaji-Egbema local government area of the state of Imo. The forests of Abeji are spread over the border of two states.''

Due to unemployment and poverty in the oil-producing Niger Delta, the refining of illegal crude oil has increased significantly. Actually, crude oil is tapped from a web of pipelines owned by major oil companies. At the same time, the product is refined in temporary tanks. In this way, many fatal accidents have taken place due to dangerous processes.

At least 25 people, including some children, were killed in an explosion and fire at another illegal refinery in October last year. At the same time, due to the oil spill, the fields, bays and lagoons have already been polluted. At the same time, the Youth and Environmental Advocacy Centre said that many vehicles that were in the queue to buy illegal fuel were burnt in the blast.

India's 'compound' men's team wins world cup archery

'Bihar will not forget RJD's rule...', Amit Shah roared in Arrah

Bodies of 1084 civilians found in Kiev region, over 300 have not been identified
OSCE staff captured by Russian forces in Donbas 24 April, 12:55 The organization is deeply concerned (Photo:REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko/File Photo))

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has said that a number of Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) staff members were captured by Russian forces in the occupied cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, the Reuters international news agency reported on April 23.

"The OSCE is extremely concerned that a number of SMM national mission members have been deprived of their liberty in Donetsk and Luhansk," the OSCE's media office said in response to a query from news agency Reuters.

"The OSCE is using all available channels to facilitate the release of its staff."

"We have received alarming reports that Russia's proxies in Donbas are threatening Mission staff, equipment and premises and that Russian forces have taken SMM staff members captive," the UK's deputy ambassador to the Vienna-based OSCE, Deirdre Brown, said in a statement from the UK government.

 

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A few years ago, the village of Narainapur in Banke, was as rural as any other village in the country. The road to the village was dreadful. Consumable goods had to be carried from Nepalgunj and some shops in the village did not even accept Nepali currencies.

Even though the village was in Nepal, it had a lot of Indian influence. The remains of that are still quite evident in the area. But as Nepal drafted the constitution in 2015 and adopted federalism in 2017, the village of Narainapur has had a makeover.

Embracing the independence

The village that had nothing has a bank and that has helped the people of the village a lot.

With the establishment of Sunrise Bank, we dont have to travel for hours for money. People who go for foreign employment directly send the money to the bank. This has helped us a lot, says Umesh Bista, a resident of Narainapur, recalling how the village was completely reliant on India a decade ago.

Basic items like rice, flour, salt and oil had to be brought from India. Why? Because getting to Nepalgunj was difficult. There was no road as the villagers had to walk for three days to get to the district headquarters.

It was after the 2017 elections that the locals demanded their local representatives to build a road joining Nepalgunj and Narainapur. The rural municipality obliged and paved a road by building nearly a dozen bridges. Today, buses run on that road regularly.

Roads have been built in almost entire rural municipality. Photo: Chandra Bahadur Ale

Things have improved over the past two years. All of our demands havent been met, but the local representatives have worked to make this rural municipality better, says Bista.

Before the road was built, people only went to Nepalgunj for administrative work or banking. For everything else, they went to India.

But, since the 2017 elections, things changed. They got roads, electricity and drinking water. With that, people started to come and set up shops around the rural municipalities. A brick kiln was also set up. The rural municipality has also started researching the possibility of starting an agriculture industry in the area to create more employment opportunities.

Small efforts

There are five brick kilns in Narainapur. Each kiln gives employment to around 200 people, says Ahmed Mukeri, the rural municipality employment coordinator. But, only half of these are Nepali.

Were asking them to hire more Nepalis from Narainapur so that we can be sustainable, says Mukeri.

He says since the Covid pandemic, a lot of people have come to his office looking for work, and he hopes that his office and the rural municipality can provide them with jobs.

Zinc sheets have replaced thatched roofs in Narainapur. Photo: Chandra Bahadur Ale

On April 4 last year, 16 families lost their houses to fire. As soon as news of the fire broke, the rural municipality sent its fire engine to control it. But, since the roofs were thatched, the fire engine could do very little to save them. To help them, the rural municipality has handed out relief materials, food and tents.

Incidents like these are common in the area and to stop them from happening, the local government has started a campaign to replace the thatched roofs with zinc sheets. It also distributed gas stoves to 1,000 families so that firewood would not cause more incidents like these in the area. But, the risk of fire gutting houses is still prevalent.

Locals agree that life has been easy thanks to the local government that helps regularly. If there had been a fire three years ago, a team from Nepalgunj would only have arrived three days after the incident. Aid would come a week later. But, due to the presence of the local government, they have not had to starve or sleep roofless.

Focus on children

Children from Narainapur rural municipality have been encouraged to go to school. Girls were handed out free bicycles to improve their participation. Photo: Chandra Bahadur Ale.

A few years ago, girls from Narainapur rarely went to school. But, with time, more and more people have started to send their daughters to school. Masud Ahmed Sah, ward chair of Nairanapur 2, says girls make up 40 per cent of the total students in his ward.

There was a time when the number of girls in our schools was zero. This change weve seen is encouraging, says Sah, claiming only 5 per cent of children from the rural municipality do not go to school today.

To encourage girls to go to school, the rural municipality has handed out free cycles to all schoolgirls. A free bus service has also been launched by the rural municipality to encourage people to send their children to go to school.

Until 2018, the rural municipality only had schooling to the 10th grade. But now, Narainapur also has a high school where grown-ups have enrolled.

A decade ago, no girl went to school in the Narainapur rural municipality. Photo: Chandra Bahadur Ale

According to Lachhuram Kumar, a teacher, since federalism, the people of Narainapur have been more aware of things happening around them. They have realised their rights, he says.

The state of schools was poor, but now, that is changing. Parents want their children to go to school, says Kumar, adding there are 21 schools and 27 madrasas in Narainapur rural municipality.

He says people are also sending their children to schools in Nepalgunj and India. But, there are people who still want them to stay at home and help out and not go to school. But, this number is few and far between, says Kumar.

Lalit Chandra Prajapati of Narainapur-4 says a lot still needs to improve including the quality of teachers in the area. He says he is contesting in the local elections this time, and if he wins, he will improve the quality of teachers in the schools in his ward.

When you dont have an education, you become a slave in this country. I dont want children from the coming generation to be slaves. I will improve the state of schools in the area, says Parajapti

Leaders wanting to lead

Locals of Narainapur want to take part in the change-making process as they have seen visible changes since federalism. Photo: Chandra Bahadur Ale

Before 2017, Narainapur did not have leaders. All they had were voters. But since the local level has reached Narainapur, people have realised how good leadership can create change in a place. Like Prajapati, there are women in Narainapur who are thinking about contesting in the local elections this year.

Prajapati is promising he will manage more teachers, and toilets in every household and provide clean drinking water to all.

Change needs to start from the local level. If I get help from political parties, great! If not, Ill contest as an independent candidate, says Prajapati.

Puja Baniya is also thinking about contesting as a ward member. But, she has not been able to share this with her husband as she fears they might not take it well. Ill ask them and if they agree, Ill give in my name, says Baniya.

There is a general feeling among the people of Narainapur that they can still do better. Weve seen a hospital, schools and roads being built. But there is a lot more we can do, says Baniya.

Looking out for opportunities

After the establishment of brick kilns in Narainapur of Banke, the locals want to create an industry to commercialise vegetables. Photo: Chandra Bahadur Ale

The citizens of Narainapur are looking for ways to develop the area too. Locals actively take part in discourses to see how they can change their locality. They have collected signatures of locals to push the rural municipality to establish an industry, says local Umesh Bista.

Its cheaper to buy than to produce. Why? Because we havent used technology and dont have a commercial market, says Bista.

The locals hope their demands can be put forward in the parliament as they hope that it will bring in more interest and development in the area.

Pleasures after the pandemic

The citizen help desk in Narainapur rural municipality, Banke. Photo: Chandra Bahadur Ale

Narainapur is located on the border area. During the first wave of Covid, the rural municipality had become the epicentre. Hundreds of people started to return to the village after losing jobs in India and other parts of Nepal.

With them, they also brought the virus which spread rapidly. But, the place did not have the infrastructure to cope with the virus. The local government tried its best. It built temporary isolation centres and used schools to treat patients.

Sure, it did create problems, but I think we also did a lot of development work in the area, says Laxmi Kanta Mishra, the disaster management chief of the rural municipality.

Mishra says the pandemic paved the way for developing infrastructures in the area. He says the local government even brought a generator to run these isolation centres in the mid of summer. Since using a generator was not practical, the local representatives then were pressurised to bring electricity to the area.

But, to take the electricity, they needed roads too. Wards 2, 3 and 4 did not have roads and since they needed electricity, roads were built.

Scarcity helped in development. Everyone from the area helped. It was a joint effort to combat Covid and develop the area, says Mishra.
Oklahoma's top education official has requested a binding attorney general's opinion on school bathroom access as a controversy surrounding policies accommodating transgender students continues to develop.

State schools Superintendent Joy Hofmeister asked on Saturday that Attorney General John O'Connor determine whether school districts have the authority to decide their own policies for restroom use.

The announcement follows requests from Stillwater Public Schools and Gov. Kevin Stitt's education secretary, Ryan Walters, for legal guidance on bathroom protocols affecting transgender students.

State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister during the Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting at the Oliver Hodge Building Thursday, September 30, 2021.

O'Connor already weighed in to a certain degree in an April 8 letter to the Stillwater school district. He said there is no legal precedent in Oklahoma that requires schools to open restrooms and locker rooms to students born of the opposite sex.

Policy allows students to use bathroom that matches gender identity

Stillwater schools have come under fire in recent weeks for a protocol allowing students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity.

The policy has existed for six years in Stillwater schools with no reported incidents of misbehavior by transgender students, the school district has said.

Walters, who called the policy a product of left-wing extremism, argued bathroom access should be limited strictly to students' biological sex. He urged the Oklahoma State Board of Education to issue "crystal clear guidance" saying so.

Hofmeister declining to issue a directive is a sign she has "gone woke," Walters said.

"This is well within the (education) department's purview," he said. "For years Hofmeister has masqueraded as a Republican, but in reality she is no better than the worst bureaucrat or politician. She refuses to lead and refuses to address the concerns around the radical rules in Stillwater."

Hofmeister switched parties this year and is now a Democratic candidate for governor.

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Ryan Walters files to run for State Superintendent during filing at the state Capitol on April 14.

Stillwater also asked the state Board of Education to get involved. The district's school board voted unanimously April 18 to encourage state board members to pass emergency rules that would create legally binding regulations on the matter.

The Stillwater board also asked that the governor approve the state Board of Education's rules.

Stillwater board members said they would not change the bathroom policy unless the state left the school district "no choice but to alter its practices."

Hofmeister asks attorney general to weigh in as matter is not an emergency

The school district's request doesn't meet the definition of an emergency, Hofmeister said in a news release. Seeking an opinion from the attorney general is the proper course of action rather than developing emergency rules, she said.

Tuesday's meeting of the Stillwater Public Schools board of education drew a large crowd for public comment as speakers spoke in support of and against a years-old bathroom policy recently called into question by State Secretary of Education Ryan Walters.

Hofmeister asked O'Connor whether school bathroom policies are ultimately a local decision by individual school districts. Her request letter also questions whether any law requires public schools to block students from using the restroom that aligns with their gender identity.

The U.S. Department of Education clarified last year that discrimination on the basis of gender identity is prohibited under federal Title IX protections.

Guidance from the Biden Administration doesn't dictate school policy on bathroom access, O'Connor wrote in his April 8 letter to Stillwater schools.

"The President can only enforce the law rather than create it, and my office (and many others) are pushing back against this attempted and lawless overreach," O'Connor wrote.

Attorney General John O'Connor.

LGBTQ+ advocates argued the controversy has been manufactured for political reasons. Freedom Oklahoma, a nonprofit supporting equal treatment for LGBTQ+ individuals, noted Walters began criticizing Stillwater's policy shortly before filing to run for state office.

Walters, a Republican, is campaigning to succeed Hofmeister as state schools superintendent.

"Trans girls are girls," the organization wrote in an April 8 social media post. "The courts have clarified again and again and again that neither schools nor states can advance policies that marginalize and target bathroom access for trans kids.

"The timing of this attack, just before filing for elected office begins, reminds us of the intentions at play here. And frankly, this effort, at any time, is inexcusable."

Appellate court rulings across the country have confirmed transgender students' rights are ensured under Title IX, Hofmeister said.

The answers to these questions will not only provide the crystal-clear guidance sought and will come in the form of a binding opinion on those in Oklahoma who have historically implemented and enforced Title IX and related laws on these matters," she wrote in her request letter.

Reporter Nuria Martinez-Keel covers K-12 and higher education throughout the state of Oklahoma. Have a story idea for Nuria? She can be reached at nmartinez-keel@oklahoman.com or on Twitter at @NuriaMKeel. Support Nurias work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Hofmeister asks Oklahoma AG to weigh in on school bathroom policies
(Bloomberg) -- As chief architect of the finance industrys biggest climate coalition, Mark Carney said banks and asset managers are doing a better job at steering capital away from fossil fuels than is implied by what he described as clickbait headlines.In an interview to mark the one-year anniversary of his launch of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, the former Bank of England governor and current vice chair of Brookfield Asset Management said that expecting banks to eliminate all financing of carbon-intensive industries is unrealistic. He also said efforts to steer capital away from fossil fuels are being slowed by Vladimir Putins war on Ukraine and its geopolitical fallout, which means greenhouse gas emissions will rise from already dangerous levels in the coming years.

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Speaking from Washington, Carney said one of the next goals is to expand GFANZ membership, which currently includes giants such as BlackRock Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and HSBC Holdings Plc. He said the $130 trillion alliance hasnt given up on Asia, where Chinese banks are the worlds biggest contributors to coal finance. And GFANZ is now developing a framework to help signatories cope with stranded assets, to track how much firms are doing to move to a low-carbon world, and to measure the level of global warming implied by investor portfolios.

If the first phase of GFANZ, GFANZ 1.0 if you will, was about getting as many firms as possible through the door, what will GFANZ 2.0 be about?

One is tempted a bit to say 1.0 is getting people to make their commitments. Now, my little caveat is that we're continuing to grow GFANZ and we're growing in Asia, and we haven't given up on that. But let's say 1.0 is the commitment. You'd be tempted to say then the next thing we're doing is all of this plumbing work; you know, how do we operationalize those commitments into net-zero plans and transition paths. And then you'd say 3.0 is actually taking the commitments and this operation and actually doing something, right. Right now the 3.0 is happening at the same time as the 2.0.

Story continues

How do you assess the achievements and accomplishments of GFANZ in its first year?

I think it's a success of GFANZ and other initiatives, whether that's the overall COP process, that the focus on the transition to net zero is now mainstream. (Michael Bloomberg, the owner and founder of Bloomberg LP, is co-chair of the alliance.)

It sounds crazy but if you go back to when we launched the Road to Glasgow [Carneys plan for the private finance sector activities at COP26], which would have been February 2020, and if you look at the language we used there, that was pedagogical for 90% of the people in the room.

It was all about the transition to net zero and how we need to build a system for that, how we need to mainstream it and to have every decision to take climate into account. And so now the dialogue, fortunately, is much more specific. It's about are we moving fast enough? Do we have the right information? How do we judge it? What about these pathways? So you know, the success is that it's moved onto the playing field toward where it needs to be in order to to get this done.

I think the other thing which is a little hard to judge is whats happening with the official sector. Theres a much greater recognition that this is fundamental. So it's not just about climate disclosure and risk, which is what the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures is about and is absolutely necessary, but it's about moving towards alignment for the transition. And the big thing we're trying to get across, and I'm not trying to say this as an excuse, but finance can take things so far.

But in the end, its an enabler. Its a catalyst. You need the other components, and weve got this orientation there now towards net zero and intentionality. And I believe that actually theres a lot of commercial opportunities with this as well, which is necessary to really pull the attention of the industry. But if policy can be clearer and more predictable, then you really can maximize the benefit of all that.

Do you see it as the function of GFANZ to look at accountability, i.e. accountability on whether members follow through on their net-zero ambitions?

I think its a very important component, but were not an enforcement agency. We are big believers in transparency, and in order for there to be accountability, you need consistency so that stakeholders can judge. And thats whats being put in place and thats why we need a consistent view of whats necessary in a net-zero transition plan for a financial institution.

Bloomberg data show that in the past year, banks have helped arrange about $600 billion of loans and bond sales for oil, gas and coal companies. Thats about equivalent to what they provided the previous year. How can we reconcile these numbers with net-zero commitments?

If you have an existing pipeline and I buy it from you and I get a loan for that, OK that's fossil-fuel financing. But is that pipeline asset part of the transition? Is it adding to emissions the fact that youve transferred ownership of the pipeline to me?

Now, part of the answer will be does the buyer of the pipeline have a transition plan and whats the horizon they are going to run the pipeline for? And is there expansion of production? Does it have hydrogen? All those sorts of elements you need to start to think about when you think about the transition to net zero.

And by the way, your number is broadly consistent with what the International Energy Agency says financing should be in the energy sector for a 1.5 degree transition, which is something that nobody puts in any of their articles because what people like to do for clickbait, to be blunt, is to say, well, the IEA said no new expansion, and so what's implied for somebody who isnt an expert in it, which is most people, is that anything above zero is too much. Well, that's not realistic. That's not what the IEA says.

In terms of the way that the capital markets, the way that the system works, people have existing assets they sell to other people. Are you taking into account the retirement of existing debt? Of course not. Because whats more interesting is to write the article that says theres this number and its supposed to be that. The brutal reality is that financing for clean-energy sources is running at a third of the rate it needs to. Its gone up a lot, its higher than the financing of fossil fuels at up to $700 billion, but it needs to be over $2 trillion.

And so whos part of the solution for that? What goes to your question around energy financing is a need for much more granularity around that and clarity on what is maintenance and what is expansion. And, you know, one of the things thats going to happen is that because of Russias unjustified invasion, and the response to that, there is going to be more investment in fossil fuels and financing of fossil fuels in the near term.

And that's part of an insurance premium or a price being paid for greater reliability. More assets will become stranded as a consequence of that, maybe all in Russia, but more broadly potentially as well. And its critical that this work on the transition horizon is completed so that judgements can be appropriately made on whether this financing is OK.

I have heard other critiques of those big headline numbers for fossil-fuel finance, with some suggesting simply including all debt to fossil companies is a crude way of approaching this since some of that money could in theory finance renewables. What would be a better approach?

You need to take account of the use of the proceeds so you know where the financing goes. And another thing Id remind you of is that its hard to be definitive about where the energy system will end up in 2050. We know where the emissions curve needs to go, but if you looked at the IEAs scenario for 2050, they have something like 24 million barrels per day of oil produced largely from plastics. Well, thats not just going to come out of the ground. There needs to be a more sophisticated approach. And then the problem is that it would be helpful to reference the right aggregate numbers. The Science Based Targets initiative recently said any finance firm that wants to get their emissions targets approved by the group will need to include clear limits on fossil-fuel financing. Do you think that that's a sensible approach?

SBTi does a lot of great work, but one area where they had not produced is on a pathway for the oil and gas sector. They just delayed again, their production.

We have got to get on with this: We need a reference, a sectoral pathway reference for the energy sector. So the SBTi isnt providing that yet, its opining on this. Im sorry, but wed like to reference it. As I say they do great work, but theyre not comprehensive. Theyre missing the most important element.

Does the war in Ukraine encourage what you might call net-zero backsliding from the finance sector?

I think that first and foremost that question goes to governments in terms of their energy plans and responses in the near term. And I said on Bloomberg TV (April 20) that near term, theres more emissions. This situation makes the job harder.

Everyone likes writing the article its finance thats the problem, but the big question is whats the medium-term response to shift the energy sector? And I think the very clear message from GFANZ is the finance for an accelerated transition is absolutely going to be there.

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Russia is the worlds second largest petroleum exporter. About 5mb/d of crude oil and petroleum products are exported to Europe. A European ban on Russian petroleum imports would have an immediate effect on >1mb/d of pipeline imports. Moreover, 4mb/d of crude and products that currently go to Europe via tankers would have to find a new home, which would create massive problems for the global refinery system. Depending on the speed of the phase-out, we could see the loss of >3mb/d of Russian production near term. Over the long run, Russian production will likely decline due to the lack of western technology transfer.

On April 8, 2022, the European Union announced that it would ban all coal imports from Russia starting in August this year. While the total value of these imports is relatively small (about $4bn per annum), this will have large implications for both European and global coal balances. Coal is transported in bulk. So in theory, the Russian coal that used to be exported to Europe could be moved by rail and by sea to buyers in China and overseas. Europe then in turn could import the coal that used to be imported by these buyers. In practice, its a bit more complicated. Russian coal is generally of high quality (high calorific value or high CV coal) and the coal that would be freed up and shipped to Europe is of low quality (low CV), which is a problem for European power plants. What makes matters more complicated is that Japan is working on replacing their Russian coal imports too. The likely effect is a tightening of high-quality coal balances worldwide. And indeed, since the announcement has been made, low CV coal prices were falling but high CV coal prices are soaring.

However, the economic impact of a ban on Russian coal imports is trivial compared to a potential ban on Russian oil and gas. A ban on imports of Russian gas is currently viewed as the most difficult to deal with for European economies. Over the past 5 years, Russian gas imports accounted for about 38% of European gas consumption. Even in 2021, the year when Russia had massively cut its exports to Europe, it was still 32%. This can simply not be replaced by LNG imports over the short run. Thus European leaders have so far been quite resilient to calls for a gas import ban. In fact, the European Union passed legislation that forces gas storage owners to fill their storage to certain levels during the summer injections season, something that is likely only achievable if imports from Russia persist.

Story continues

So far European policymakers were equally reluctant to ban Russian oil imports. However, more recently, it seems that European officials are drafting plans to phase out Russian oil and petroleum product imports. The most likely scenario is that oil imports would be phased out in stages, allowing existing contracts to expire and for European refiners to arrange for alternative supplies. It is also likely that waterborne crude and petroleum product imports would be banned first, as it is easier to replace Russian crude that arrives on tankers with other seaborne imports. Pipeline imports would probably be the last step, as many refiners depend on Russian crude from pipelines and are unable to replace those flows in the near and medium term, potentially ever. These refineries would simply become inoperable.

Europe consumes about 14mb/d of oil, most of which is imported. About 30-40% (5mb/d) of Europes petroleum consumption is met by imports from Russia (see Exhibit 1).

3.7mb/d of these imports come in the form of crude oil and refinery feedstocks while 1.5mb/d are finished products (see Exhibit 2).

Russia is producing around 11mb/d of crude oil, which is 11% of the global supply. The country is processing close to 6mb/d for this crude in its domestic refiners and exports the rest.

It then exports an additional 2mb/d of those products while the rest is consumed domestically. On net, Russia exports about 7.2mb/d of petroleum in the form of crude and products. All petroleum products are exported via tankers. About half of the crude exports are seaborne exports, the other half is shipped via pipelines.

Only a small part of Russias oil production comes from the eastern part of the country.

The eastern Siberian fields are connected through the East Siberian Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline to the export port of Kozmino, delivering crude to South Korea, Japan, and China. The trunk line has a capacity of around 1.8mb/d.

There is a bifurcation of the ESPO line into the Mainland China Branch pipeline that allows sending crude directly to Chinas Daqing refineries. The line came online in 2011 and a second pipeline has been added later. Today the two lines have a capacity of about 700kb/d.

The remaining crude that goes through ESPO is partially processed in the 100kb/d Khabarovskiy refinery and the rest is exported by sea via Kozmino. The Kozmino port has exported around 900kb/d in 2021. That would suggest there is about 100kb/d of ESPO capacity left to export through Kozmino, but it is unclear whether production from Eastern Siberia can be increased in the near to medium term. What would really be needed is that production from the western fields could be diverted to ESPO, which seems not feasible at the moment.

On top of that, there is crude production at the Sakhalin Island which is partially domestically refined and the remaining 200kb/d is exported by sea.

On net, about 1.8mb/d-1.9mb/d of eastern production can continue to be exported to Asia, even with a European import ban in place.

A big chunk of Russian production comes from the Western Siberian fields. That crude is either exported via the Druzhba pipeline to Europe or via tanker out of a seaport.

There are five main ports that export Russian crude that is produced in the West. Two of them are at the Barents Sea, two are at the Baltic Sea and one is at the Back Sea. Russia exported 2mb/d in 2021 through these ports. A further 100kb/d came through various minor ports. Current shipping data indicates that Russia hasnt meaningfully increased shipments through these ports (see table 1).

The remaining crude oil is exported via pipelines. The Druzhba pipeline is the main line to bring Russian crude to Europe. It has a capacity of around 1.4mb/d.

On top of that, crude oil from western Russia can also be exported via the Kazakh Atasu-Alashankou pipeline to China. This pipeline has a capacity of around 400kb/d, of which 100kb/d is used for Kazakh crude and about 200kb/d for Russian crude, leaving 100kb/d of unused capacity for Russian crude.

On net, in the event of a European import ban of Russian crude and petroleum product, Russia could technically still export all of its products, around 3mb/d of crude oil on tankers and 0.9-1mb/d via pipeline to China. For about 1.2mb/d of current pipeline exports, there is no alternative export route.

In reality, things would likely be a lot more difficult. First, Russia would have to find new buyers for all the seaborne crude it sends to Europe, the US, and potentially Asian buyers such as Korea and Japan. China is currently resisting taking more crude, but that could well be because the countrys appetite for oil is currently low given that one quarter of the population is in strict lockdown. Russian crude, especially the ESPO grade, is very popular among Chinese refiners. So if Russia loses traditional Asian buyers such as Korea and Japan, that crude might be picked up by China in the medium term. Its probably much more difficult to find buyers for the crude that leaves the western ports. India has probably the refining capacity to take some, but it will be much more difficult for less sophisticated refineries in other emerging markets to switch grades. We therefore believe that especially in the first months of a European embargo, many Russian barrels would remain stranded. But that also depends on how quickly Europe would phase out Russian crude. With enough time, non-European refiners will find ways to run Russian grades.

We think its likely easier to sell the finished product cargoes that currently go to Europe to somebody else, but it will cost more to ship it further and it might create a real shortage of tankers in the medium term, which could also impact Russias effective export capacity of products.

We estimate that the initial loss of Russian petroleum would be in the order of >3mb/d in case of an immediate European import ban. This would subsequently decrease and we think the permanent loss is more in the order of 2mb/d. However, should Europe decide on a very gradual phase-out over several years, there may not even be any immediate hit and by the time the full ban comes into effect, Russia would have had the time to build out the seaborne export capacity and arranged for new buyers, who had the time to retool their refineries. Thus the price impact is extremely dependent on how fast the European Union is phasing out Russian crude.

However, we think that the long-term fundamental effects of any type of further sanctions are still very bullish. The sanctions that are already in place and target the energy sector will increasingly affect Russias ability to produce and refine crude. Russian refiners particularly are dependent on Western technology. So far the sanctions do not ban western companies to be active in the Russian energy sector. But sanctions on banks, and reputational risks will likely lead to a slowdown in technology transfer even if the sanctions are not tightened. A ban on Russian crude imports would likely also come with much tougher restriction on how western firms are allowed to operate in the sector. We thus have to assume that Russian production has now peaked and will inevitably decline long term, likely at an accelerated pace. New tougher sanctions on the oi industry will further accelerate this trend.

This comes at a time when global oil balances already look extremely tight over the medium term. As we have highlighted before (see Long term oil prices beginning to reflect the coming oil shortage  Part II, 8 April 2022), global demand will likely still continue to grow over the next 5-10 years, but supply will struggle. Non-OPEC production outside the US was already expected to decline in perpetuity, even before the events in Ukraine unfolded. At the time, the market expected Russian production to grow for some time. A decline in Russian production would thus greatly accelerate the declining trend in non-OPEC (ex US) output, which has the potential to create real oil shortages medium term.

By Zerohedge.com

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In a nod to those who have served the nation's military and those who have served the local community, the theme for the Upper Arlington Civic Association's 88th July 4 parade will be "Stars, Stripes and Trailblazers."

"Its a tribute to the trailblazers of dear old Arlington: a salute to the service members, the risk-takers, the civic champions and all who honor our community by propelling it forward," said Sam Porter, who along with wife Sandi are general chairs of the UACA's 2022 July 4 Committee.

John Bergmann, who was a codebreaker for the U.S. Army during World War II, will serve as the grand marshal of the Upper Arlington Civic Association's 2022 July 4 parade.

"We want to recognize all those who carved a path through the unknown so others could succeed."

John Bergmann, a World War II codebreaker for the U.S. Army who will turn 102 on July 6, will serve as parade grand marshal.

According to information provided by the UACA, Bergmann was approached by the Army in May 1941 to be part of a top-secret 25-man team charged with traveling the world to pick up enemy radio transmissions during WWII.

His service included being sent to Burma to attempt to steal the ever-changing code scrolls from a Japanese outpost. That mission cost Bergmann his right eye; two local guides were killed when one of the guides tripped on a landmine. Bergmann continued to crack German- and Japanese-encoded messages while recovering stateside.

"His skills didnt go unnoticed," Sam Porter said. "He once met with Winston Churchill and President (Dwight) Eisenhower at No. 10 Downing St. (in England) and was friends with famous codebreaker Alan Turing.

The Upper Arlington Civic Association's theme for the 2022 July 4 parade and celebration is "Stars, Stripes and Trailblazers."

"For 38 years, he had to keep a cover story about his military service and his injuries. To his family, all they knew was that he did payroll for the Army in Washington."

Bergmann has lived in Upper Arlington for 62 years.

"I'm very proud they're recognizing my service," he said, adding that he's spent roughly two decades visiting local schools and sharing his WWII experience.

"We'd like to just ride in my own car or Jeep with my daughter (Kim Bergmann Elkovitch) driving and wave to people, he said of his 2022 parade appearance. "I'm a good citizen and I love Arlington. I just feel as though I've given something to the community."

Story continues

Bergmann also was recognized in 2008 by the Upper Arlington Senior Center for his service to seniors. He volunteers as a Senior Center Goodwill Ambassador, visiting other seniors who are sick or homebound.

The Porters said Bergmann also remains very active with several veterans' groups, including his beloved annual participation in the Upper Arlington Fourth of July parade.

"We have had the pleasure of getting to know Mr. Bergmann through this process and hes shared so many wonderful stories of his past and how he remains an ambassador to veterans and this community," Sandi Porter said. "His legacy is one that needs to be remembered and for everybody to know.

"He is living history."

Other parade details

Now that the theme and grand marshal have been announced, the UACA is sharing information about parade participation and float-building at tinyurl.com/39zh7bbf.

Sam Porter said he expects a large representation of neighborhood floats in the parade with life beginning to return to normal following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

"New neighborhoods and class reunions have reached out early to learn more about signing up," he said. "This new energy and enthusiasm is what the Fourth is all about."

Additional information about the parade and the annual Party in the Park at Northam Park are available at tinyurl.com/24nbv5eu.

The Porters said there will be few changes this year from recent celebrations.

"New this year, we are excited to provide an area for accommodations for those that may experience mobility and sensory issues toward the end of the parade route on Northwest Boulevard," Sam Porter said. "The location is to be determined, but this will allow us to create an inclusive space in the effort to reach more of our community members to offer the ability to fully experience our annual parade traditions.

"We will provide a covered tent and parking nearby for individuals with mobility issues," he said.

Sandi Porter said organizers will require the space for people with mobility and sensory issues to be quieter than the rest of the parade route.

"We (will) request that parade participants lower volume by 50%  be at half volume with music and other noises  in this space to adhere to sensory issues that some individuals may experience," she said. "We are working with some amazing families to help us spearhead this important initiative."

nellis@thisweeknews.com

@ThisWeekNate

This article originally appeared on ThisWeek: Upper Arlington Civic Association name July 4 parade theme, grand marshal
JAPAN LAUNCHES SEARCH FOR MISSING TOUR BOAT

TOKYOA tour boat with 26 people aboard was missing in the frigid waters of northern Japan on Saturday, hours after sending a distress call that it was sinking, the coast guard said.

Four people have been found after more than 10 hours of intense search involving six patrol boats, five aircraft and divers. The coast guard did not confirm whether they were rescued alive.

The 19-ton Kazu 1 made an emergency call in early afternoon, saying the ships bow had flooded and it was beginning to sink and tilt while traveling off the western coast of Shiretoko Peninsula in the northern island of Hokkaido, the coast guard said.

The tour boat has since lost contact, according to the coast guard. It said the boat was carrying 24 passengers, including two children, and two crew.

Average April sea temperatures in Shiretoko National Park are just above freezing.

ISRAEL CLOSES CROSSING TO GAZA WORKERS AFTER LATEST ATTACK

JERUSALEMIsrael said Saturday that it would close its border crossing to thousands of Gaza workers after a series of rockets were fired from the territory ruled by the militant Hamas group in recent days.

The Palestinians denounced the move as collective punishment of the impoverished territorys 2 million residents, who have lived under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces nearly 15 years ago.

The rocket fire came amid near-daily clashes at a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site over the past week, with Palestinians hurling stones and fireworks and Israeli police entering the compound and firing rubber-coated bullets and stun grenades.

The violence in Jerusalem, and a string of deadly attacks inside Israel and raids across the occupied West Bank, have raised fears of another war between Israel and Hamas like the one that broke out under similar circumstances last year.

SECOND BLAST LEAVES 10 POLISH MINERS MISSING

WARSAW, PolandA powerful underground tremor and methane gas discharge hit a second coal mine Saturday in southern Poland, forcing dozens of workers to flee the mine and leaving authorities unable to contact 10 other miners still missing, officials said.

The accident at 3:40 a.m. Saturday at the Borynia-Zofiowka mine occurred 2,950 feet underground. It was the second colliery accident in just four days in the coal mining region around the town of JastrzebieZdroj, near the Czech border.

Repeated methane blasts since Wednesday at the nearby Pniowek mine have killed five miners, left seven miners and rescue workers missing and injured dozens of others. The search for those missing at Pniowek was suspended Friday after new blasts late Thursday injured seven rescue workers, some seriously.

Rios Carnival parade returns

RIO DE JANEIROColorful floats and flamboyant dancers are delighting tens of thousands jammed into Rio de Janeiros iconic Sambadrome, putting on a delayed Carnival celebration after the pandemic halted the dazzling displays.

Rios Sambadrome has been home to the parade since the 1980s, and is a symbol of Brazils Carnival festivities. During the pandemic, it was a shelter for 400 homeless people and also served as a vaccination station.

Brazils first cases came in mid-March 2020, just after that years Carnival festivities ended, and the 2021 edition was cancelled due to the rise of the delta variant. Over 663,000 people have died from COVID-19 in Brazil, the second highest of any country in the world.

EXTREMISTS state claim for blast blast in somalia

MOGADISHU, SomaliaA bomb blast by Somalias Islamic extremist rebels hit a popular seaside restaurant in Somalias capital, Mogadishu, killing at least six people, ambulance service officials say.

The explosion was detonated by a suicide bomber who had been denied access inside the restaurant where the Somali Police Commissioner and several lawmakers were having dinner, Somali Police Spokesman Maj. Abdifatah Aden Hassan announced at a press conference Saturday.

Somalias al-Shabab Islamic extremist group has claimed responsibility for the explosion.

The Associated Press
ITS OFFICIALlast year was a deadly one on Virginia roads.

Fatal crashes in the state hit a 14-year high in 2021, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles reported in a news release last week.

The DMVs records show 968 people died in crashes on Virginia roads last year, up 14.3% compared to 2020, which also was no picnic as fatal crashes piled up despite lighter traffic during the pandemic shutdown.

Last years Virginia roadway death tally was the highest since 1,026 people died in crashes in 2007, DMV said.

On the good side, DMVs data show fatalities dropped in crashes involving alcohol, distracted drivers and unbelted drivers or passengers.

But statewide fatalities increased in various categories:

Speed-related: 445 in 2021 vs. 406 in 2020

Commercial vehicle-involved crashes: 115 vs. 102

Motorcyclists: 102 vs. 87

Pedestrians: 125 vs. 114

Bicyclists: 16 vs. 8

Teen drivers: 42 vs. 27

Older drivers: 145 vs. 126

The DMV noted that Virginias deadly roadway crash data mirrors a startling national trend.

DMV cited the National Highway Traffic Safety Administrations preliminary data covering the first nine months of 2021, when more than 31,000 people died in crashes, up 12% from the same period in 2020 and the most fatalities since 2006.

Unfortunately, deadly crashes are just as bad locally, as crashes, injuries and deaths spiked in 2021 in Fredericksburg, as well as Spotsylvania and Stafford counties.

In 2020, there were 22 fatal crashes in the city and the two counties, according to DMV data. Last year, there were 29 fatalities. So far this year, there have been 11 deadly crashes in the region.

Things dont look good so far this year statewide, as the DMV reported that 245 people have died in crashes on state roads, a 12% increase compared to the same time period in 2021.

This trend is poised to continue unless Virginians take action, Acting DMV Commissioner Linda Ford said in the release. Most people want to contribute to something greater; by driving safely, you can truly make a difference, not just in your life, but in the lives of everyone with whom you share the road.

Transportation projects

Anyone interested in a firsthand glimpse of local projects in the state transportation Six-Year Improvement Program will get a chance to do that Monday.

The Commonwealth Transportation Board is on a nine-meeting tour across the state to take part in public meetings, where residents get a chance to see and hear about projects in the fiscal year 202328 plan.

Transportation officials also want to hear from the public, and that can be done at the meeting.

The local public meeting begins at 4 p.m. Monday at James Monroe High School in Fredericksburg.

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Two retired combat veteranswhose old-school skills have helped numerous veterans and first responders cope with PTSDjoined forces Saturday to build a wooden footbridge across a Civil War battlefield creek.

Well still do some timber framing when we do the handrails, so well do mortis and tenon joinery and stuff like that, but the majority of it will be pressure-treated wood, Roger Lintz said.

Lintz, who retired as an Army colonel in 2014, opened Old School Timber Framing of Virginia last December to help himself and other veterans find relief from PTSD through woodworking classes held every Saturday at his home. Lintz said the new bridge at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park near Locust Grove replaces an older, decayed footbridge that he broke down and hauled off the battlefield last week.

Its going to be 36 feet long and about 40 inches wide, Lintz said. I have three structural engineers who are volunteering on this project.

About a dozen volunteers showed up for the bridge-building job Saturday, including Steve Hotz, a medically retired Army sergeant who served in the Gulf War with the 325th Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division.

Hotz said he came to Spotsylvania on Saturday to help support Lintz, who he said is providing a valuable resource for veterans in the region.

This is a great program that Roger has done, Hotz said. We want to show support in any way we can.

Like Lintz, Hotz found his own post-traumatic stress disorder solace with hand tools as a blacksmith and opened Black Horse Forge in Stafford several years ago. The forge focuses on supporting veterans and first responders by helping them learn the blacksmithing trade. Much like the art of timber framing, members of his forge use their hands to create elaborate knives, tomahawks, jewelry and art, but many also create the handles needed for the axes, blades and other tools they create.

Steves forge work and my timber framing work dovetail very nicely, said Lintz.

Hotz said Lintz reached out to him about the battlefield bridge project months ago to ask if members of the forge would be willing to partner in the bridge-building endeavor.

Im all about supporting anybody thats helping vets in any way, Hotz said. A lot of guys who come to my forge go to his program.

On Saturday, workers from the forge and the timber framing shop hauled in extension cords, generators, gasoline, sawhorses, worktables, piles of wood stock, metal hardware, shovels, hammers, tables saws, drills and other power tools through heavy woods to do the job.

Im honored. I really am, Lintz said. This was a dream of mine I talked about last year and they never forgot it.

The new bridge spans a stream along the 3.6-mile-long Federal Line Trail of the Wilderness battlefield. Lintz said the way the previous wooden bridge was constructed, water would frequently rise, completely submerging the structure, which eventually led to its demise. Lintz said a new cable system will be added to the new bride, which he said will allow the span to swing like a gate when the water rises.

So if the river rises, this bridge should swing downstream and not be destroyed, Lintz said. When the water recedes, you should be able to just ratchet it right back into place using come-alongs.

Lintz poured concrete footers for the bridge last week ahead of Saturdays job to give the new structure a more permanent, stable platform to rest on.

John Storke, chief of maintenance for the military park, said the new bridge is one of many built by park volunteers, who range in age from Cub Scouts to retirees who racked up about 4,000 hours of volunteer work at the Civil War park last year.

Were blessed with lots and lots of volunteers in this area and theyre really good to us, Storke said. We have over 8,000 acres and we just dont have enough staff to watch over everything.

Dave Harding, an Army veteran who lives in Crozet, said hes been participating in timber framing classes for about two months and was determined to get to work Saturday.

It impressed the heck out of me what (Lintz) is doing for the community, for veterans, for himself and just sharing his time with people, Harding said. When he called out for people to help him I figured it was the least I could do to come up here and give him a hand after all hes done for everyone else.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Mark Grasse of Bristow found Lintz after reading a December article about Lintz and his timber framing classes in The Free LanceStar.

Ive been looking forward to this, Grasse said. To me, I like doing the construction, I like thinking trough the problem solving of it and I like the idea that were doing it in a battlefield.

Rod Taylor of Lake Ridge, who served in the Marine Corps from 1989 to 1993, spent his first couple hours Saturday morning preparing the metal plates workers would later use to join segments of the bridge together. Taylor did the work with some of the skills he learned at Black Horse Forge.

I enjoy building things, learning new things and working with my hands, Taylor said. The opportunity to do something like this with Roger and Steve, I just jumped on it.

Since December, Lintz has hosted free timber framing workshops at Old School Timber Framing, located at his Stafford County home. During these daylong sessions, he teaches veterans, first responders, or anyone with a desire to learn the art of timber framing.

Lintz, who was severely injured in a helicopter mishaps while on active duty, said timber framing freed him of his own PTSD almost immediately after he took up the hobby.

For me, theres something peaceful about using a chisel on a piece of wood, Lintz said. It takes time, patience, and when youre done, youve got something really beautiful that will outlast you and many generations after you.

Hotz said he plans to soon teach a class on how to forge custom timber framing chisels for students to use at Lintzs woodworking classes or at an actual jobsite, like Saturdays bridge build near Locust Grove.

Theres pride in that, because the guy made the chisel that hes now using his hands and its something he can pass down, or she can pass down to a family member, Hotz said. An heirloom piece, so to speak.

Hotz, who offers a range of free classes at his forge for veterans, active duty and first responders at Black Horse Forge, said old school trades like timber framing and blacksmithing can effectively combat PTSD, but he said PTSD is still a very real thing, citing a significant uptick in PTSD cases since the U.S. withdrawl from Afghanistan last August. Hotz said since opening the doors of his forge nearly four years ago, nearly 12,000 men and women have found relief from PTSD through his blacksmith programs.

But heres my biggest number. We have zero suicides, Hotz said. Out of all the numbers, zero is my favorite.

James Scott Baron: 540/374-5438 jbaron@freelancestar.com

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Is it possible to talk about politicians going beyond the pale in their behavior? The increasingly outrageous levels they are willing to go to gain an edge over opponents, political and otherwise, would suggest the answer is no.

So it is, perhaps, refreshing that in our community, were having a robust debate about what is acceptable behavior for a public official when speaking from the dais.

The debate was sparked Tuesday at the Stafford Board of Supervisors meeting. In the lead-up to the vote on the countys new tax rate, board chair Crystal Vanuch took the opportunity to criticize two laws from 2014 and 2016 that severely limited counties ability to accept proffersoften cash paymentsfor each new home built in the county.

This is money that, prior to 2016, counties used to build infrastructure and schools to handle the stress these new homes and their residents place on a countys existing infrastructure.

Doing a couple of rough, back-of-the-envelope-type calculations, Vanuch concluded that these two acts resulted in a loss of about $57 million to Stafford County.

Its a legitimate concern, and one that should be shared by county officials statewide. Lost proffers mean the counties have to find the money for these services elsewhere, and that means tax increases.

So, yes, the effect of these laws is a debate worth having in Virginia.

There would be no complaints had Vanuch left it there. But she went a step further.

We have a state senator who supported both these pieces of legislation, Sen. Bryce Reeves, and this is a $57 million tax increase on Stafford residents, and I would like to hashtag it, The Bryce Reeves Tax Increase.

This raises eyebrows, of course, because Vanuch and Reeves are locked in a competitive race to represent the Republican party for the congressional seat in the newly redrawn 7th District. And theres little more toxic in Republican circles than being accused of raising taxes.

Pressing the issue further, Vanuch asked Supervisor Meg Bohmke and Supervisor Monica Gary for a friendly amendment to send a letter to Sen. Bryce Reeves and a bill for $57 million asking for these two pieces of legislation to be fixed.

Two problems emerge. First, Vanuch is using a public forum, broadcast on local television and over the web, to launch #TheBryceReevesTaxIncrease. This has the appearance of a move to boost her campaign for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Congress.

Vanuch strongly denies that argument.

Speaking with The Free LanceStar, Vanuch said: This isnt about the campaign. Its laughable. They must be afraid of me. It has nothing to do with the seat he is running for and I am running for. This is about whats affecting our local community right now.

Reeves disagrees: She should not use her office to make a political ad, paid for with public funds and no legal disclosure.

Vanuch notes that supervisors have called out state politicians from the dais before. However, in none of the examples she provided The Free LanceStar was she involved in a political campaign with the individual being called out.

Supervisor Tinesha Allen also expressed concern with Vanuchs action. You are not allowed to use your chairmanship to advance your political career, she said. I was disgusted.

After voting, Allen walked off the dais.

The second issue is sending a bill to Reeves for $57 million.

Asked if there is precedent for a board of supervisors to send a sitting member of the General Assembly a bill for a law they had voted to support, she said she was sure it had happened, but could not provide an example in the interview.

We asked Reeves if he has ever heard of a county board sending a bill to a sitting member of the General Assembly. He said no.

Where this goes remains to be seen.

Reeves said he is seeking legal counsel, so if there is a legal issue to be settled, the courts will work that out.

Regarding the question of whether Vanuchs actions are beyond the pale, we are inclined to say yes.

Politicians must be aware of optics. Launching a hashtag from the dais and singling out one senator, in the middle of a heated campaign, for a law he and a majority of members in the House and Senate support, has the appearance of a campaign maneuver.

Theres a time and place for everything. We hope Vanuch and fellow local politicians will remember this going forward.
Weve been following updates from Ukraine pretty closely, and several times on the evening news, the report about the latest bombing there is followed by another kind of violence here.

A mass shooting.

It made me wonder how many there have been since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. I checked the Gun Violence Archive, which documented 84 mass shootings in the United States, just in the last two months.

They resulted in 87 deaths and 383 injuries. Here are a few examples of recent incidents:

A man sets off smoke grenades in a crowded subway car in Brooklyn, then opens fire on riders.

Three men bring guns to a busy mall in Columbia, South Carolina, on Easter weekend and start shooting at each otherand nine bystanders are caught in the crossfire.

Five people and a dog are found dead in a home in Duluth, Minnesota, all shot.

The shootings arent the only examples of ways were doing ourselves in. Last week, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles reported that crash fatalities reached a 14-year high in 2021 as 968 people died during accidents on state roadways. That a 14.3% increase from 2020 and the highest total since 2007.

Its not because roads or vehicles are unsafe, DMV officials said in a press release. Its because people are driving too fast or not paying enough attention.

We continue to lose lives to senseless crashes, said Linda Ford, DMVs acting commissioner. She urged motorists to do their part by slowing down and bucking up, focusing on their driving and never getting behind the wheel impaired.

Part of me wonders what in the world is going on, but another part of my brain blames the virus thats dominated our lives for more than two years. COVID-19 and all the shutdowns and restrictions, mask wearing and social distancing, sicknesses and deaths, have made us all a little wacko, whether we tested positive for it or not.

Please dont think Im making light of a disease thats killed almost a million Americans and impacted countless others. Theres nothing funny about it.

But as my mother and I discuss regularly, the pandemic has affected peoples mental health in ways that weve just begun to measure. Just as COVID itself created ripples that continue to haunt usfrom supply chain issues to ridiculous food pricesthe emotional fallout is being felt, near and far.

Its no wonder that were all a little more on edge and a little quicker to snap, given the ups and downs of recent years.

For those who were teetering a little closer to the edge, maybe the pandemic pushed them over it.

For others, maybe the financial worries or emotional concerns were on their minds so much, they were a little distracted behind the wheel. Maybe they were so torqued about not getting able to go and do things like normal that when someone inadvertently cut them off in traffic, they reacted with extreme road rage. Maybe those with severe mental health issues got to the point they felt there was no hope left and took out themselves and the rest of their family.

I dont know the reasons or the answers, but I know its getting scaryand I havent even cited suicide and drug use. Im starting to feel like our country is one of those buildings slated for demolition. Some of the explosives have been put in place and if someone hits the right button, its going to implode.

We dont have to worry about a foreign invader, were going to do it to ourselves.

But history also shows that Americans have stepped up before in a crisis, going back to when we were just a handful of colonies. Wed better pull together now while we still can.

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An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the U.S. secretaries of state and defense are meeting with the Ukrainian leader in the highest-level visit to Kyiv by an American delegation since the start of Russias two-month invasion
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Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute in Denver and hosts The Devils Advocate with Jon Caldara on Colorado Public Television Channel 12. His column appears Sundays in Colorado Politics.
The House of Representatives approved a bill Friday evening to address Colorado's growing fentanyl crisis, after another hourslong debate that
Thomas J. Perille, M.D., is president of Democrats for Life of Colorado. Prior to his retirement as a board-certified internal medicine physician, he was a hospital medicine specialist at Denvers St. Joseph Hospital, where he had served as chief of the Department of Hospital Medicine. Since retirement, he has performed volunteer work at St. Josephs Caritas Internal Medicine Clinic, which serves a primarily indigent population. He also has been an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
Two candidates in the race to become El Paso County's next top law enforcement official are billing themselves as "constitutional sheriffs" who would protect residents' constitutional rights and defend their civil liberties if elected.

But critics say the platform is an extremist anti-government movement that diverts focus from policy and leaves counties open to risk under such a sheriff. Some see the campaigns focused on constitutionality as a distraction from policy issues that the next sheriff will need to address, such as recruitment and retention.

Republican candidates Todd Watkins, an Army veteran and former U.S. Border Patrol agent, and Greg Maxwell, The Broadmoor's director of security, have said if elected they will not enforce what they call unconstitutional laws or mandates. That includes COVID-19-related mask or vaccine mandates and Colorado's "red-flag" law that allows family members and law enforcement officials to petition the court to confiscate guns from people considered a risk to themselves or others.

The constitutional sheriff movement, specifically the Arizona-based Constitutional Sheriff's and Peace Officers Association founded by former Sheriff Richard Mack, "is a small anti-government extremist movement" that promotes the idea that a county sheriff can stop the enforcement of federal or state laws, regulations or court orders because they are elected, said Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow with the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism.

The movement started around gun control and expanded to mask mandates, vaccinations and lockdowns. In February, Mack made a live video appearance in Colorado Springs to speak on the movement.

Several Republican sheriffs candidates have gravitated toward the concept.

Watkins has taken a hard-line approach to the idea, drawing the support of El Paso County Republican Party Chairwoman Vickie Tonkins and a nonprofit called Faith Education Commerce United that is closely aligned with her. Candidates associated with the group are proposing major reforms, such as a return to hand-counting ballots and "untangling" local law enforcement agencies from what they say is federal overreach.

"I want to be the people's sheriff," Watkins said during a February town hall event, where he appeared beside other favored GOP candidates. No other county sheriff's candidates were present. "I'm going to protect your rights and I'm going to ensure that the Sheriff's Office stays a local police agency, and it's not encumbered or entangled by larger echelons of government. ... Federal government is not in the business of protecting your rights. Certainly not anymore."

Watkins did not return The Gazette's request for an interview for this story.

Maxwell said in an email to The Gazette that, if elected, he would incorporate "extensive constitutional training" among his staff and will terminate law enforcement officials who "willfully violate citizens' rights."

"I have always upheld and defended the constitutional rights of the citizens of this county. I will continue to do that as sheriff," he said. However, when it comes to certain mandates  such as those for masks or vaccines  he would not enforce them because they are "unconstitutional" and those decisions are "personal choices."

But he also said it's the duty of law enforcement officers to enforce federal and state laws, which should be challenged in court if they are believed to be unconstitutional. This ensures no one person dictates what is and isn't constitutional and the people have the power to change the law with their vote, he said.

While law enforcement agencies can neglect enforcing certain laws to some degree, Pitcavage said, it's risky. For example, sheriffs who refuse to enforce Colorado's red-flag law could face jail time.

"If (sheriffs), on their own independent decision, could stop the enforcement of federal or state law just because they dont like them ... that totally subverts the rule of law," Pitcavage previously told a Gazette reporter in February.

However, it is much harder to hold sheriffs accountable than police chiefs, who answer to a city administration governed by a council.

In some cases, a governor might have to remove a sheriff, Pitcavage said Thursday. In others, the sheriff can be removed by a vote of the people, said Bill Ray, a spokesman for the County Sheriffs of Colorado, a nonprofit that advocates for sheriff's offices across the state.

Ray declined to answer The Gazette's questions about what authority county sheriffs have to refuse to enforce certain laws and what would happen if an El Paso County sheriff decided not to cooperate with federal agencies. The organization "does not engage in sheriff races or with candidates running for sheriff" and "does not have an official position on the constitutional sheriffs issue," he said.

Fellow sheriff candidates Joe Roybal, also a Republican, and John Foley, the Democrat in the race, say the idea of a constitutional sheriff is both redundant and a distraction from discussions on policy.

The man elected El Paso County's next sheriff will face an understaffed office, an agency that has been riddled by lawsuits and a time of shifting public opinion about law enforcement.

"I think it is just headline-capturing," said Roybal, El Paso County's undersheriff who has served the department for more than 26 years. "In my opinion, this is meant to not only confuse, but (also to) trick voters. As law enforcement officers, we all swear an oath to protect the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of state of Colorado. How does a constitutional sheriff affect policy? And what you're promising  is that even legal? Do you have the jurisdiction to do that?"

Foley, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps as an infantryman and worked in military intelligence, said the term implies other law enforcement and military officers "don't care about the Constitution."

"Go to the commander at Fort Carson and ask him, 'Are you a constitutional general?' Ask a private in the Army if they're a constitutional private. It makes no sense, because they're saying everyone who doesn't use that label is against the Constitution. That's not the case."

Constitutional sheriffs could particularly clash with federal law enforcement when it comes to immigration policy. On his campaign website, Watkins states a constitutional sheriff should require state or federal law enforcement agencies attempting to enforce law in El Paso County to first obtain the sheriff's consent.

This could include enforcing immigration policy. According to the Constitutional Sheriff's and Peace Officers Association, military troops and armed drones should be placed at the United States' southern borders to "close off the flood" of immigrants coming into the country. The organization also calls for deporting foreign nationals living in the U.S. without official authorization.

In recent years El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder, who is term-limited and cannot run for the office again, and Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell have had their enforcement of federal immigration policies challenged in state court.

In one instance, Mikesell argued an atypical funding scheme for the Teller County jail meant that on paper, no taxpayer dollars were used when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials trained three deputies to function as immigration officers per an agreement between the county and the federal agency. A state appeals court in December ruled against Mikesell and reinstated a lawsuit brought forth by six Teller County residents in the matter.

In El Paso County, Elder argued he could not be held liable for keeping Saul Cisneros jailed for nearly four months  far beyond the 48-hour time frame ICE says is the legal threshold  after he entered the El Paso County jail in November 2017. Though Cisneros' daughter posted bond four days later, the jail held him to comply with a 48-hour detention request from ICE. Elder claimed immunity through the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act, claiming he could only be held liable for negligently violating a person's rights but not if he made the conscious decision to do so.

The Colorado Supreme Court in March ruled Elder could be held liable for Cisneros' extended incarceration.

But so far, a sheriff has not tried to keep federal agents out of a county, Pitcavage said.

"To date, there has been more posturing  often with an eye towards conservative voters  than active resistance against federal authority," he said. "But if (the constitutional sheriffs movement) keeps up, there is always the possibility of a hotheaded or rash sheriff deciding to attempt something more serious."

And there are other risks, he said.

"Sheriffs or others who buy into this notion can then become more receptive to other ideas and conspiracy theories of anti-government extremists. They can also become more sympathetic to them and more willing to look the other way when it comes to their activities."

The Gazette's Mary Shinn and Colorado Politics' Michael Karlik contributed to this report.
The brilliant white-hot stars of night were rapidly fading into nothingness. Meanwhile, the eastern horizon was being set ablaze by strengthening hues of the impending spring sunrise. A new day was beginning at the Ventura Marsh.

The transition was greeted by a symphony of familiar wetland sounds  the soft splashing of waves, the brittle rustle of winter dried cattails, the trill of red-wings, and the overlapping voices of a thousand meowing cats. Thats right, the sound of meowing cats; smack in the middle of a 200-acre marshland.

Although the sounds were indeed cat-like, the daybreak symphony was emanating from the most unlikely of sources -- a massive, mile-long gathering of redhead ducks. Sequestered within the dark confines of a photo blind, I was hoping for some closeup viewing of one of North Americas most beautifully unique waterfowl.

Redheads are members of the diving duck clan. And like all divers, they earn their living by diving to the bottom of lakes and marshes where they glean the nutrient-rich seeds and roots of aquatic plant life. After spending the winter on the coastal marshes and lakes of Texas and northern Mexico, redhead flocks are currently en route to traditional nesting grounds, located mainly in prairie Canada. In Iowa, wetlands like the Ventura Marsh provide critical rest and refueling stations as birds continue their rigorous northward journey.

Spring courtship begins on the wintering grounds and continues as flocks move up the flyway. Females may simultaneously attract multiple suitors. The bird show is spectacular as each drake does his level best to outcompete rivals. The males unique display begins with a preliminary "throat puff" as the drake raises and bends his neck, before loudly emitting the distinctive slurring meow. The cat call display often concludes with the drake vigorously snapping back his head until the crown touches his lower back.

If the displays become too overwhelmingly, the hen may partially submerge and try to ditch her suitors by rapidly swimming away. When this fails, the hen may try to escape by diving  a maneuver which is, of course, immediately imitated by the courting males. Once the beleaguered hen resurfaces, she may decide to take wing. The drakes immediately follow suit as the spring ritual quickly becomes a high-speed aerial ballet as the flock twists and turns through the morning sky.

By the time the birds arrive on the marshes of Manitoba, the female will have chosen her mate and spring nesting begins.

Enjoy more wildlife tales online at Washburns Outdoor Journal at iawildlife.org/blog

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Iowa catches a lot of unnecessary, false and unwanted flak.

Not just every four years when the Iowa Caucuses showcase us naked for months while our fellow Americans point out and analyze every wart, wrinkle, scar, pimple and mole, but every day of every year.

We are labeled and therefore become, too conservative; too rural; too white; too agricultural; too sensible; too naive; too standoffish; too self-centered; and too nice.

We are also said to be; not diverse; not progressive; non-inclusionary; non-welcoming; not worldly; and not even worthy of driving through, thereby dubbed a "Flyover" state.

Yet, Iowans certainly must hold a Brobdingnagian secret, hidden behind our wry smiles, as today, 7 out of 10 Iowans were born here.

But, I digress. Today, for the record, we are going to acknowledge and rejoice in some of Iowa's Equal and Civil Rights accomplishments. Maybe unknown, maybe forgotten, "Iowa Firsts".

 Iowa Firsts

1839: Iowa Territorial Supreme Court rules that slaves residing in Iowa were "Free".

1846: Iowa Legislature writes law that ensures equal property rights for women.

1851: One-hundred and sixteen years before the US Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia, the Iowa Legislature codified legal inter-racial marriage.

1855: The University of Iowa is the first state university in the nation to admit men and women on an equal basis.

1868: In Clark v. School Board of Directors (Muscatine, Iowa), 86 years before the landmark USSC decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled schools in Iowa could not be segregated.

1869: Iowa was the first state in the nation to welcome women attorneys to join the bar, which led to Iowan, Arabella Mansfield of Mount Pleasant, being the first female attorney in the nation.

1873: Twenty-three years before the US Supreme Court handed down one the worst decisions in American judicial history in Plessy v. Ferguson-1896, proclaiming "separate but equal" the law of the land, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in a landmark case, Coger v. The Northwestern Union Packet Company, that public transport companies could not discriminate because of race. Coger is still cited as precedent in Federal court cases dealing with Civil and Equal rights and Equal Protection clause under the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, throughout this country. The Emma Lane Coger story will be a column subject in the near future.

1900: Carrie Chapman Catt was elected the first president of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Chapman-Catt, living in Mason City in 1885, became the first woman hired as a superintendent of a school district in the nation. In 1920, Chapman-Catt founded the League of Women Voters, an organization that sponsors election debates throughout the Nation today.

1905: George H. Woodson, a prominent Black attorney, and founder of the ABA (American Bar Association), of Buxton, Iowa, co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

1908: The first womens suffrage parade, in support of the 19th Amendment, in the nation was held in Boone, Iowa, and was organized by Rowena Edson Stevens and Rev. Eleanor Elizabeth Gordon.

1917: The first in the nation site to train officer candidates of African Americans was held at Fort Des Moines. These officers would go on the serve in World War I, in a segregated US Army. It took until 1947 for President Harry Truman to desegregate the armed forces.

1934: The first mosque in the nation was built in Cedar Rapids, Iowa  now known as the Mother Mosque of America.

Encompassing the late 19th and throughout the 20th Century, Iowa led the way in many areas of civil rights, human rights, race relations, gender and racial equality, containing and counteracting the "Lost Cause" mentality, discrimination and segregation, pogroms and genocide that the Civil War South inflicted upon the Black population after 1866.

2007: Iowa became the second state in the nation to allow full marriage equality for same-sex couples.

Iowa has been a leader throughout United States history and is proud of all of our firsts in the nation. As you head out today to participate in "Living in Iowa," be proud of your contribution to Iowa as the first in the nation state.

God Bless You, and God Bless Iowa.

JW Sayles is a Mason City resident. Opinions are his own.
U.S. regulators are strictly limiting who can receive Johnson & Johnsons COVID-19 vaccine due to a rare but serious risk of blood clots. The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday the shot should only be given to adults who cannot receive a different vaccine or specifically request J&Js vaccine. The decision is the latest restriction to hit the company's vaccine, which has long been overshadowed in the U.S. by the more effective shots from Pfizer and Moderna. In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended using the Moderna and Pfizer shots over J&Js because of its safety issues.
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Joanne Foster communicates in community health.

She doesnt speak the languages of the people from Afghanistan, Congo, Sudan and other countries who have moved to the Cottage Grove neighborhood in southeast Greensboro, but she opens the trunk of her car for them to shop for the food that might be familiar as they settle into the new culture and they understand her welcome.

As a community health worker for Mustard Seed Community Health, Foster and co-worker Gloria McMasters pick up the donated food and deliver it to their neighbors, along with health tips and connections to resources. McMasters knows every community resource, its eligibility criteria, hours of service and contact information. Foster is a fearless advocate for health and safety, speaking up about crime, environmental hazards and substandard housing.

Mustard Seed provides primary medical care for babies through elders, centered in Cottage Grove, but it also provides mental health care and much more. The weekly Health Outreach Team (HOT) meetings talk about everything that we can do to empower our community with good health: counseling for depression and substance abuse; nutritious food; physical activity; COVID vaccinations and masks; assistance to counter potential scams; transportation to essential appointments; creative ways to address litter; and language resources to facilitate communication with newcomers to this country.

Ileana Tol and social work interns offer clinical mental health services in English and Spanish. Dr. Beth Mulberry answers medical questions and hears updates about Mustard Seed patients team members have visited in their homes. Recently, the team brainstormed employment options for a refugee family after a teenager came to the clinic for a COVID vaccination and said his refugee resettlement benefits were about to run out. Now all the adults in the family have jobs. For months, the team has helped to protect a woman with dementia from scams and to keep her finances straight because she does not have family members whom she can trust to help.

Their passion and energy for this work is supported, in part, by a 2021 Women to Women (W2W) grant to Mustard Seed for the Health Outreach Team. Community Foundation of Greater Greensboros W2W fund empowers programs that remove barriers and create measurable impact on women.

Most Mustard Seed patients are uninsured, with incomes so low that they struggle to buy food and pay rent. They pay for medical care and counseling on a sliding scale, typically $20 a visit. As a small nonprofit and member of the North Carolina Association of Free and Charitable Clinics, Mustard Seed relies on grants and community donors for the rest of the cost of providing holistic care.

How can we help to grow community health?

Find out May 3 when Dr. Beth Mulberry shares stories of Mustard Seed at CoMetta Stories of us  The Long View of Health: The case for integrated care based on the social determinants of health. A local initiative, CoMetta offers opportunities to gather across sectors to hear stories and share conversations about urgent topics to imagine a new way to strengthen community in our time of separation. While polarization and racial tensions pull people apart, we can come together to find ways to address the underlying conditions that result in health disparities for immigrants, survivors of domestic violence and people of color. This conversation is sponsored by a Building Resilient Inclusive Communities grant to Mustard Seed.

Find out as well at a family fun day May 21 at the second annual Sowing Seeds Rodeo featuring food trucks, live music, a bounce house, balloons, touch a truck and an opportunity to support Mustard Seed so that our neighbors can be healthy and safe.

Join us in empowering our community with good health.

Beth McKee-Huger is an Episcopal deacon, vegetable farmer, housing advocate and a News & Record community columnist.
REIDSVILLE  Have you ever tried rock-wall climbing? Or perhaps your family would revel in canoeing together on Lake Hazels serene waters, catching glimpses of turtles sunning and fish flipping across the lake's surface? And hikes can be lively here when families search out natures treasures.

These are just some of the fun family activities on the agenda for the annual Betsy-Jeff Penn 4-H Educational Centers Open House on May 1. Activities get underway at 2 p.m. and conclude at 6 p.m.

Everyone is excited about this years open house since it was canceled the past two years because of COVID-19, said Stacy Burns, the center's director.

Other scheduled events for the day are games on the ball field and a display that chronicles the centers history.

The open house is an ideal way for families to spend an entertaining afternoon, Burns said, noting that camp staff will be on hand to supervise safety for all activities, including canoeing and rock climbing.

Refreshments and camp souvenirs will also be available for purchase.

Considered North Carolina 4-Hs premier camping institution, the event center is nestled at 804 Cedar Lane on nearly 200 acres of forest land with lakes, streams and fields. The property is located off Salem Church Road behind the Chinqua-Penn Plantation on Wentworth Street.

The outdoor retreat and education facility, given to the citizens of North Carolina in 1964 by the late Betsy Penn, is considered by many to be Rockingham Countys hidden gem.

Penn, widow of tobacco heir Jefferson Penn, designed the Swiss-style A-frame chalet cabins after homes and buildings she saw on one of her visits to Switzerland. She oversaw every detail of the planning and construction phases.

When the center was completed to her satisfaction, she donated it to North Carolina 4-H in honor of her late husband. The camp is now owned and operated through N.C. State University.

Thousands of young people have benefited from the life-changing summer camp and school field trip experiences since then. Campers need not be 4-H-ers to attend the six-day summer camp programs, which begin June 19, Burns noted.

Meanwhile, she invited people of all ages to come and enjoy an afternoon of fun during the open house.

It is a great opportunity for families to enjoy an afternoon of good, clean outdoor fun without the interruptions of electronic media, Burns said. With the arrival of spring, this is the perfect opportunity to explore the woodlands and revel in the warm, fresh air."
REIDSVILLE  Scott Potter, a Reidsville native and pharmacist at Walgreens in Reidsville for the past 12 years, spoke to the Reidsville Kiwanis Club recently about trends in the pharmaceutical industry.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina Eshelman School of Pharmacy, Potter pointed out that when he was coming through school, most pharmacy students were male. Today, though, pharmacy schools are seeing lots of successful women.

He also reminisced about Reidsvilles long-time pharmacists who have passed away, such as Bill Post, Hunter Gammon and Phil Link And Potter paid tribute to retired local pharmacist Andy Gaster.

Today, it is a totally different landscape, said Potter, noting when pharmacy students graduate they are typically in heavy debt for their education.

On the topic of COVID-19, Potter reminded club members that it is very important to get the first two vaccine shots, plus the two booster shots. He cautioned that with time, immunity wanes, making the boosters a necessity. And he anticipates that COVID-19 boosters will be annual offerings just like flu shots in the coming years.

Potter took questions from the club members on a number of health-related questions about the latest pneumonia vaccine which came out recently. Another was regarding the two-dose shingles shot, now a lifetime shot.

Some were concerned about muscle soreness with the use of statin drugs that mitigate high cholesterol, but Potter pointed out that the drug benefits were far greater than the soreness they may cause.

The Kiwanis Club meets each Thursday at noon at the Main Street Methodist Church Fellowship Hall. Lunch is provided by Cafe 99 and visitors are welcome.
MARTINSVILLE, Va.  While fishing on the Smith River, you might get a bite from a brown trout that was raised by students from local schools.

On Wednesday morning, Alyson Martins Magna Vista High School class released trout that they raised in the classroom, part of the Trout in the Classroom (TIC) program by the Dan River Basin Association (DRBA).

Before the students got to release their fish, Brian Williams, Virginia program manager at DRBA and Krista Hodges, education outreach manager at DRBA, taught them about and showed them live examples of macroinvertebrates, which means specimens with no backbone and are big enough for the eye to see. These macroinvertebrates were found in the river and are what the trout will eat now that they have grown big enough.

The macroinvertebrates that the students were able to see that day were crayfish, crane fly larvae, hellgrammites and caddisfly larvae.

Some kids stayed back, but a few were brave enough  with a little encouragement  to reach out to touch and hold the macroinvertebrates.

Next, Williams waded into the river with a net and caught some macroinvertebrates to show the students and he ended up catching a female crayfish that had eggs. The students gathered around him in a circle to see all the organisms that he was able to catch as he explained what they were and answered their questions.

After that, Hodges and Williams handed out clear plastic cups holding finger-length trout to the students. Each student released two trout, and then two students released the trout Williams brought as backup and the remaining trout from their classroom tank.

As a surprise at the end, Williams and Hodges showed them a few snakes. There were two corn snakes, which the students held, and one black rat snake that was close to six feet long. Williams put the black rat snake at the base of a tree and showed the group how the snake was able to climb the tree.

Trout in the Classroom

The TIC program has scaled down significantly since its beginning 15 years ago. Williams said that doing one class at a time has been really good. DRBA used to do releases with groups from 300 to 400 students.

The program was established by Dr. David Jones, a Martinsville orthodontist who is a fisherman and conservationist, and is open to groups of all ages. When Williams first got involved in the TIC program, he was visiting the tanks at all the schools to help take care of the fish. Then Hodges joined and suggested that the teachers take on that responsibility.

Weve had teachers in the program for 13 years, Williams said. All the teachers have to do is show interest, and then DRBA will help them set things up for their classrooms. Williams also keeps tanks of rainbow trout in his basement just in case there arent enough survivors from the students batches. This way everyone will get to release trout even if they are less successful in the classroom.

The whole program is not to restock the river with fish, its just to teach kids about cold-water hatcheries and fisheries, said Williams. This program allows students to learn about the natural environment and while adding to the rivers trout population. Less than 10% of trout hatch by themselves in the wild, so sometimes this program increases survival chances, Williams added.

When I was young I used to go looking for crayfish in the river, said Hodges. But now I get to share it with a bunch of students, which is awesome.

The MVHS students raised the trout they released for six months from the time the hatched from eggs. Since the tanks are placed in the classrooms for the TIC program, the kids were able to help feed the trout, clean the water and test the water quality to make sure it was suitable for the fish. The trout start eating a fine fish food from the hatchery the eggs are from and then as they grow the food also increases in size.

The Smith River has three types of trout: browns, which the MVHS students released, as well as rainbow and brook.
GREENSBORO  Margaret Morales spends her days on her cell phone.

A nearby stack of telephone numbers on index cards, with names and tiny notes with them, offers hope and disappointment.

She is trying to get help in moving her mobile home  replanting her life, really  after being uprooted by the sale and closing of the Jamison Mobile Home Park where she has rented a lot for decades.

She needs to schedule contractors to move the mobile home and the connections, including HVAC, plumbing, and electrical.

And shes fighting a June deadline for residents who had been paying $315 a month for lot rent, to move their homes.

Earlier in the week, she said Thursday, the manager of the mobile home park stopped to get pictures of the title of her mobile home and her signature on a stack of papers.

I dont know what I just signed, Morales said. She didnt leave me a copy. But I think everything would go to her that was left there after June 19.

Other mobile homes have been slowly disappearing from among the lots around her, which at one time defined a community.

But her plight and the saga of the final days of the mobile home park on Hiatt Street continue to be anything but routine for the tenants and the sellers. At one point an attorney sent a demand letter to the city, the sellers and the buyers asking for almost $50,000 per family to leave voluntarily or she would appeal all the way to the N.C. Supreme Court, implying it would drag out a resolution.

Rent raised

The 3-acre parcel of land at 2522 Hiatt St., in the shadow of UNCG, is under contract for multi-family units. Last summer, when residents got the news from the owners at the time, Family Properties, the mostly Spanish-speaking working-class neighbors formed the Hiatt Street tenants group with 18 families and vowed to buy the land many of them had lived on between a few years and a few decades. They went as a group before the City Council for help. The park, which has space for nearly 30 homes, was not at capacity when the sale was announced.

The tension had been building since residents were given the July 2021 notice that initially gave them just a few months to leave, although North Carolina statutes require that tenants of mobile home parks that are being repurposed have at least six months to vacate the premises. The seller later amended the date.

As other deadlines to leave came and went, some of the tenants had been able to take out loans to move. Others had been renting units that belonged to the owner, so they just packed up and left. And others, like Morales, remain.

In the meantime, the water bills, which are included in the monthly lot rents, ballooned from several hundred to several thousand dollars, property manager Lynne Anderson wrote this year in a Feb. 28 letter to the remaining tenants. She raised the rent to $475 a month.

Decembers water bill was $2,630.31, Januarys water bill was $1066.50, and February is $1,263, Anderson wrote. We have had the city check the meter and the water lines and we have no leaks.

The bills usually averaged about $40 a unit and only 10 of the mobile homes remained in February, Anderson wrote.

Neighbors had gone before the City Council last year asking for help before Thanksgiving, before the deadline was pushed into the new year, and then eventually until after the end of the school year. Michelle Kennedy, who oversees neighborhood development, and Mayor Nancy Vaughan, began meeting with the residents.

It was a private sale between two parties, Vaughan said Friday of the closing of the mobile home park.

But we understood the challenges that the Hiatt Street families faced in trying to move their mobile homes, she said.

Some of the residents, who also asked the grassroots group Siembra NC for help, grew disillusioned when city officials told the families about large parcels of land the city owned where they could possibly keep their community together. But they had already been sold.

The city received the demand letter just as the City Council was planning to announce a mass displacement fund that would help residents such as these from becoming homeless.

Obviously we were taken aback, Vaughan said of the amount being requested and the fact that the city had been in active conversations with the neighbors.

The fund, suggested by Mayor Pro-Tem Yvonne Johnson, isnt just for the Hiatt Street neighbors, but mass displacements of residents. However, the use is limited and the money does not go to the applicant upfront.

Morales, who lived on Hiatt Street for nearly three decades and is living off a disability check, has a place to go. So the money would help.

But she needs a lot of help, like many of the others.

Another mobile home park is holding a space for her home and Morales has already reached out to the city to tap into the new fund, although she says that while she borrowed $175 to buy a permit to place her mobile home in the new park, she doesnt have money to do anything else. Already, she is on a payment plan with her utility company and fell behind on her monthly rent after being admitted to the hospital a few months ago.

June 19 deadline to leave

Morales knows nothing about that demand letter from the attorney, who she said did not represent her. She said she understands that the law allows the owners to do what they want with their property.

So she is taking steps to leave.

She went to St. Marys Catholic Church to apply for help. The church gave her a check for emergency assistance and also assigned one of its volunteers to help her get through the application process with the city for the new mass displacement fund aid. That process frustrated both of them because they said they got slow or no responses.

I cant give up, Morales, thumbing through the index cards with potential sources of aid, said of finding help to move. But I dont have a lot of time.

In the meantime, the Jamison sign has come down and dumpsters have been removed.

The property had been in the hands of various members of the Jamison family over three generations. One of the longtime owners, Shirley Todd Jamison, worked in the Guilford County Health Department and spent nearly four decades in Latin America as a nurse and missionary. She died in March 2017, which precipitated the sale. Anderson, the property manager, is her niece.

Living at the mobile home park was especially convenient because it offered good schools, public transportation and a location near downtown.

It is unclear what developer Owls Roost Properties is paying for the property, but the land has a tax value of about $350,000. It is couched between an apartment complex on one side and an abandoned building with broken windows on the other.

City inspectors assessed the stability of each of the remaining mobile home units and found they were stable enough to move elsewhere.

In January, an attorney for Owls Roost, who had been in discussions with the sellers agent, the mayor and Kennedy, agreed to delay the closing until after the end of the current school year.

As part of those discussions with the city, those residents have been asked if they would be willing to sign something saying they understand they will receive this deadline extension if they promise to not stay past that date, Siembra executive director Kelly Morales said in an email in January.

We understand that moving mobile homes is costly and complicated  weve already seen the costs pile up for residents like Randy and Jose who left the mobile home park before the end of the year, Kelly Morales said in that email. We believe that if the residents of Hiatt Street are going to be asked to sign anything, they should have a feasible Plan B first.

Anderson, the park manager, could not be reached by telephone for comment. But in that Feb. 28 letter to tenants, Anderson said that she had not received any signed forms. As a result, she said the dumpsters on-site would be removed and that residents would need to request trash bins from the city of Greensboro.

It is unclear how many of the forms have now been signed and how many residents remain. Some of the units still on the land are empty.

The March 9 letter from Hillsborough attorney Jamie Paulen asked that all further communication go through her.

The community is in solidarity for the purposes of this demand, Paulen wrote.

She noted that she is a litigation attorney.

I am confident that I can keep the residents housed in their trailers pending small claims actions and appeals through the end of 2022, she wrote.

Using initials and lot numbers, she described clients such as the single mother with three daughters and no health care who works as a server just 6 miles from the mobile home park and paid more than $10,000 to buy what had been an abandoned mobile home from the park. She got help remodeling it and relies on her sister, who also lives in the mobile home park, for child care.

Another is the father and husband with three children who works as a painter and spent more than $10,000 on the mobile home and its upgrades to make it habitable, and the cancer survivor who has lived amongst friends for 14 years. Another is a carpenter unable to work because of treatment for colon cancer.

In the demand letter seeking aid for the tenants, Paulen noted the millions in emergency funding the city had received through the American Rescue Funds Program.

The remaining Hiatt families are making a demand of $451,928 in order for the remaining families to relocate voluntarily by the end of June, 2022, she wrote, saying the demands were based on calculations of the financial impact of the displacement. Without the money, the families intend to remain on the property and fight eviction all the way to the North Carolina Supreme Court.

Help for mass displacements

Paulen could not be reached for comment but Siembra NCs Kelly Morales said that Paulen no longer represents residents at the mobile home park. She said other questions had to be run by the tenants. Siembra had also helped the group raise money.

Before announcing its fund, the city had already been looking at a way to handle mass displacements, especially for people of low income. It was an issue four years ago when a tornado ripped through East Greensboro.

Vaughan had been worried that with the language barriers, Hiatt Street neighbors might have been led to believe that the city was going to pick up all the moving costs.

I think the city was pretty direct in what our role was in this, Vaughan said.

Not all the details have apparently been released regarding the fund, which seems to be part of the holdup for people like Margaret Morales, the mobile home park tenant. City officials have said that there are no upfront payments but there would be reimbursements for specific costs, such as for the movers of mobile homes.

Residents can get up to $10,000 each in aid for being displaced. However, that wont be enough to cover the costs for Morales. She said moving her mobile home will cost about $3,600 plus thousands more to set it up at its new location. And shell need another $6,000 for a new heat pump to replace the current one, which movers told her wouldnt survive the transfer. On top of that, shell need to pay for a place to stay for the weeks or more it takes to get her home moved and set up.

Vaughan called Morales this past week and the two talked about resources and agreed to talk again.

I want to stress that this was an unusual situation, Vaughan said of the citys involvement. Their options were extremely limited.

<&underline>Last of Hiatt Street families can stay until school year ends</&underline>

As the fight over this Greensboro parcel gets more fierce, the plot only thickens

Contact Nancy McLaughlin at 336-373-7049 and follow @nmclaughlinNR on Twitter.

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NEW ORLEANS  Stinky but handsome and widely popular landscape trees have spawned aggressive invaders, creating thickets that overwhelm native plants and sport nasty four-inch spikes.

Bradford pears and 24 other ornamental trees were developed from Callery pears  a species brought to America a century ago to save ravaged pear orchards. Now, their invasive descendants have been reported in more than 30 states.

Worse than murder hornets! was the tongue-in-cheek title of a U.S. Department of Agriculture webinar in 2020 about Callery pears including the two dozen thornless ornamental varieties sold since the 1960s.

Bradford and other Callery ornamentals are the third most common trees of 132 species planted along New York City streets  more than 58,000 out of 650,000 as of 2015, the most recent count, said city parks department spokesman Dan Kastanis.

But the city is no longer planting them, Kastanis said. Neither is Newport News, Va., which got rid of its Bradford pears in 2005. South Carolina, Ohio and cities including South Bend, Indiana, have banned or are banning all commercial varieties of Callery pears.

Some states, including Missouri and Alabama, are asking homeowners and landowners to stop planting them or to cut existing ones down and apply herbicide to the stumps. Several, such as North Carolina, offer free native trees to landowners who provide photos proving they have cut down Callery pears on their property.

Theyre a real menace, said Jerrod Carlisle, who discovered that four trees in his yard and one at a neighbors had spawned thousands on 50 acres he was turning from cropland to woods in Otwell, a community of about 400 in southern Indiana.

Indiana is among 12 midwestern and western states that have reported invasions, though most are in the South and Northeast.

Until 2015, Carlisle rented his field to a farmer. Then he enrolled it in a USDA crop reduction program that paid for planting 29,000 trees as wildlife habitat.

Carlisle realized the spiky flowering pears were a problem in 2019. When he cut or mowed them, new sprouts popped up. Trees sprayed with herbicide regrew leaves. Cutting off bark in a circle around the trunk kills most trees. Not these.

He and his 17-year-old son have cut down an estimated 1,400 Callery pears, applying herbicide to the stumps. But he figures there are about 1,000 more to go.

Without regular maintenance, fields near seed-producing trees can be covered with sprouts within a couple of years, said James J.T. Vogt, a scientist at the U.S. Forest Services Southern Research Station in Athens, Georgia.

If you mow it, it sprouts and you get a thicket," he said. If you burn it, it sprouts, too.

Seedlings only a few months old bear spurs that can punch through tractor tires, said David R. Coyle, an assistant professor in Clemson Universitys Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation.

The stench wafting from the tree's billows of white blossoms has been compared to perfume gone wrong, rotting fish, chlorine, and a cheese sandwich left in a car for a week. The trunks branch off in deep Vs, so after 15 to 20 years they tend to break in storms.

But Frank N. Meyer, an agricultural explorer who brought 2,500 species of plants including his namesake Meyer lemon to the USDA in the early 1900s, called the Callery pear wonderful, noting that it survived drought and poor soil.

At the time, a fungus called fire blight was devastating U.S. pear orchards, University of Cincinnati researchers Theresa M. Culley and Nicole A. Hardiman wrote in a 2007 BioScience article about the plants U.S. history.

And, just as researchers had hoped, grafting edible pears onto Callery roots produced blight-resistant fruit trees.

In 1952, USDA workers noticed a spikeless mutant growing among Callery pears started from seed. By grafting its cuttings onto roots of other Callery pears, they cloned an ornamental line they named Bradford pears. That variety was commercially available by 1962, Culley and Hardiman wrote.

Other seedlings grew into 24 more ornamental varieties. All are so pretty, hardy and insect-resistant that they were planted nationwide.
The polls had barely closed on the 2020 election when Ginny Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent the first of almost 30 text messages she exchanged with Mark Meadows, chief of staff under Donald Trump.

The subject of the text was, in the words of Ginny Thomas, the greatest Heist of our history, i.e., the imagined theft of the presidency by Biden and the Left.

It wasnt true, of course. Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by more than 7 million popular votes and more than 70 electoral votes in an election that was fair and square, as everyone knows except roughly half of all Republicans in the United States.

What set Thomas and Meadows apart from some of those who believe what everyone else calls the Big Lie, according to syndicated columnist Michael Gerson, is that they covered their effort to overthrow the election with the thick goo of spirituality.

Gerson was referring in part to Meadows text to Thomas in which he asserted with the confidence of a biblical prophet, This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs.

(The New Testament refers to Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords. So does Handels Hallelujah Chorus.)

Alas, neither Meadows nor Thomas is a biblical prophet.

They are, as far as I can tell, rank-and-file Christians. After marrying Clarence Thomas in 1987, Ginny converted to Catholicism, inspired, according to the National Catholic Register, by her husbands devotion to the Litany of Humility and his faithfulness in attending Mass.

When Mark Meadows was a member of Congress, his religion was identified generically as Christian, while other representatives were more specific regarding brand  Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, etc.

Commentators such as Michael Gerson and Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post and David French of The Atlantic blasted Meadows and Thomas for infecting political rhetoric with religious zeal, a criticism I understand but do not wholly share.

Clearly, the political and social agenda of Martin Luther King Jr.  whom Gerson rightly says raised the moral sights of politics and rooted our belief in human dignity  was born of religious vision and powered by what one can fairly call religious zeal.

For me the issue is fidelity to the truth, which I would expect of any person of faith, whatever his or her religion.

Meadows brazenly trumpeted the falsehood that the presidency was stolen from Donald Trump, and he did so in the name of the one who claimed that he had been born to testify to the truth (John 18:37) and in the tradition of Paul, who vowed, We cannot do anything against the truth, only for the truth (II Corinthians 13:8).

Meadows has a right to vote for and work on behalf of any political candidate he chooses, including Donald Trump.

But surely, a Christian has an obligation to conduct a serious, clear-headed search for the truth, unhindered by political biases, before declaring that one is on the side of the good and that the opposing cause is evil and before announcing that the King of Kings is on ones side.

Where is the evidence of such a dispassionate search for truth?

Indeed, where is the evidence of the greatest Heist of our history?

Trump and his allies had plenty of opportunities to lay out the evidence before judges and juries; they filed more than 60 lawsuits in their effort to overthrow the election. They lost all but one.

Ballots have been counted and recounted  and in Georgia counted again  always with the same result.

The attorney general of the United States  Republican Bill Barr  said that the DOJ could not find evidence of fraud sufficient to alter the outcome of the election.

The truth is or should have been clear, even to the most devoted followers of Donald Trump: The election was not stolen by Biden and the Left. That it was not clear to Meadows shows what can happen when religious vision is blurred by partisan political zeal.

In one of the text messages he sent to Ginny Thomas, Meadows encouraged her not to give up. He quoted from Pauls letter to the Galatians (6:9): Do not grow weary in well doing.

Given the damage that the Big Lie has done and continues to do to our country, perhaps Meadows should have read one verse further: So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all. ... 
Press Release

April 23, 2022 Dispatch from Crame No. 1,253:

Sen. Leila M. de Lima on COMELEC Commissioner Bulay's threat to use the AFP against those who criticize the COMELEC's handling of the elections 4/23/22 The threat of COMELEC Commissioner Rey Bulay to use the AFP to arrest those who criticize and complain about the handling of the elections by the poll body is uncalled for and illegal. Under the Constitution, the only time the AFP is allowed to exercise the law enforcement powers of the PNP, like arresting people, is when the Commander-in-Chief calls out the AFP to suppress lawless violence. Neither Bulay nor the COMELEC is the Commander-in-Chief. Not even during elections. The COMELEC's deputization power during elections certainly does not include the power to use the AFP in stifling criticisms and suppressing free speech. In the first place, why is there a need to arrest, or even threaten to arrest, people who are merely exercising their Constitutional right to freedom of speech and to petition the government for redress of grievances? Anong klaseng mga tao at abogado ba ang mga nasa poder ngayon? The lack of respect for the Constitution is disturbing, to say the least. It is particularly worrisome that a sitting COMELEC Commissioner is entirely ignorant of the limits of the COMELEC's powers over the AFP during elections as to usurp even the CIC powers of the President and use the AFP to bully the people. It is doubly worrisome that none of the Commissioners present with him at the COMELEC presscon yesterday even bothered to correct him. ### Access the handwritten version, here: https://issuu.com/senatorleilam.delima/docs/dispatch_1253
FAYETTEVILLE  An off-duty sheriffs deputy wont face charges for the fatal shooting of a Black pedestrian on a busy road earlier this year, a North Carolina prosecutor has announced, saying he had reason to fear bodily harm and to defend himself.

The North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys reviewed the shooting death of Jason Walker in January after the local district attorney recused himself from the case. In a letter late last week, the organizations executive director wrote that charges wont be pursued against Jeffrey Hash, who was off duty from his job at the Cumberland County Sheriffs Office at the time of the shooting.

The letter, citing evidence collected by the State Bureau of Investigation, said that Hash, who is white, stopped his personal vehicle in traffic about 30 feet from Walker when he saw him run into the road on Jan. 8 in Fayetteville. The prosecutors wrote that Walker ran forward, jumped on the hood of the truck, removed a windshield wiper and struck the windshield to the point of breaking it. Hashs wife and daughter were inside.

After shouting at Walker to stop, Hash then exited his truck and shot Walker four times after Walker lunged at him, according to the letter.

In this case, the evidence clearly supports the conclusion that Hash reasonably believed that he, his wife and his child were in imminent danger of great bodily injury or death at the hands of Walker, wrote Kimberly Overton Spahos, adding that Walker had made a violent assault upon the vehicle.

The letter also noted that, in considering criminal charges, prosecutors had to determine whether they could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime happened.

The prosecutors wrote while it is possible that other alternatives were available to Hash, the analysis is not and cannot be whether his actions were the only option or even the best option.

The shooting prompted protests by demonstrators who questioned authorities account of what happened.

An autopsy released in March found that Walker had wounds to his head, chest, back and thigh. The report noted that no alcohol or illegal drugs were found in his system.

The prosecutors letter last Thursday noted Walker was yelling, waving his hands and appeared to be agitated when he ran into the road.

An attorney for Walkers family, Ben Crump, has previously said a disagreement between a pedestrian and a sworn officer, whos trained to deescalate situations, shouldnt result in use of deadly force. Crump didnt immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

An attorney for Hash, Parrish Daughtry, expressed gratitude that the special prosecutor followed the law and conducted a thorough investigation, which she said included a careful examination of physical evidence and witness interviews. She added that Hash grieves for the loss of life and for Walkers family.

We greatly appreciate that this was not a quick arrest situation, she said, but rather that the state did what appears to be a very thorough investigation.
Todays Highlight in History:

On April 24, 1962, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieved the first satellite relay of a television signal, between Camp Parks, California, and Westford, Massachusetts.

On April 24:

In 1877, federal troops were ordered out of New Orleans, ending the Norths post-Civil War rule in the South.

In 1915, in whats considered the start of the Armenian genocide, the Ottoman Empire began rounding up Armenian political and cultural leaders in Constantinople.

In 1960, rioting erupted in Biloxi, Mississippi, after Black protesters staging a wade-in at a whites-only beach were attacked by a crowd of hostile whites.

In 1961, in the wake of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the White House issued a statement saying that President John F. Kennedy bears sole responsibility for the events of the past few days.

In 1967, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed when his Soyuz 1 spacecraft smashed into the Earth after his parachutes failed to deploy properly during re-entry; he was the first human spaceflight fatality.

In 1980, the United States launched an unsuccessful attempt to free the American hostages in Iran, a mission that resulted in the deaths of eight U.S. servicemen.

In 1990, the space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope.

In 1995, the final bomb linked to the Unabomber exploded inside the Sacramento, California, offices of a lobbying group for the wood products industry, killing chief lobbyist Gilbert B. Murray. (Theodore Kaczynski was later sentenced to four lifetimes in prison for a series of bombings that killed three men and injured 29 others.)

In 2005, Pope Benedict XVI formally began his stewardship of the Roman Catholic Church; the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said in his installation homily that as pontiff he would listen to the will of God in governing the worlds 1.1 billion Catholics.

In 2012, President Barack Obama went after the college vote, telling students at the University of North Carolina that he and first lady Michelle Obama had been in your shoes and didnt pay off their student loans until eight years earlier. Republican Mitt Romney swept primaries in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York.

In 2013, in Bangladesh, a shoddily constructed eight-story commercial building housing garment factories collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people.

In 2017, two inmates received lethal injections on the same gurney about three hours apart as Arkansas completed the nations first double execution since 2000, just days after the state ended a nearly 12-year hiatus on administering capital punishment. Astronaut Peggy Whitson broke the U.S. record for most time in space and talked up Mars during a congratulatory call from President Donald Trump to the International Space Station.

In 2019, avowed racist John William King was executed in Texas for the 1998 slaying of James Byrd Jr., who was chained to the back of a truck and dragged along a road outside Jasper, Texas; prosecutors said Byrd was targeted because he was Black.

In 2020, the Food and Drug Administration issued an alert about the dangers of using a malaria drug that President Donald Trump had repeatedly promoted for coronavirus patients. The parent company of Lysol and another disinfectant warned that its products should not be used as an internal treatment for the coronavirus, a day after Trump wondered aloud about that prospect during a White House briefing.

In 2021, flames engulfed the intensive care unit of a Baghdad hospital for coronavirus patients, claiming more than 80 lives and leaving more than 100 others injured. The United States formally declared that the systematic killing and deportation of more than a million Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces in the early 20th century was genocide, a term that the White House had avoided using for decades for fear of alienating ally Turkey.

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New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 76F. Winds SSE at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 76F. Winds SSE at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.
As we continue to feel the effects of a global pandemic and our planet sits precariously on the edge of another world war, some people are asking this important question: Why does an Oreo cookies cream stick to just one wafer when twisted apart?

MIT wants to solve the mystery. No, not a rapper known as The Notorious MIT. And no, not Mitt Romney, who enters the initials MIT into the Donkey Kong machine each time he gets a high score in the GOP game room.

The actual Massachusetts Institute Technology, a school I could not attend even if I earned 1,000 extra SAT points for spelling my name correctly, turned its collective brainpower toward Oreo cookies.

According to an April 19, 2022, news release, the research was supported in part by the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program, which makes we wonder if the Russians are secretly working on advanced cookie technology we need to counter.

From the news release:

When you twist open an Oreo cookie to get to the creamy center, youre mimicking a standard test in rheology  the study of how a non-Newtonian material flows when twisted, pressed, or otherwise stressed. MIT engineers have now subjected the sandwich cookie to rigorous materials tests to get to the center of a tantalizing question: Why does the cookies cream stick to just one wafer when twisted apart?

In reality, this isnt much different than other conversations that go on at many colleges and universities across the nation.

Dude, you know this Dorito is made up of molecules and stuff. What if each of those molecules was an individual universe with its own planets and junk. And if our universe was part of a grand Dorito  hey, thats the RA! Dude, I told you to put a towel under the door!

Back at MIT, the serious students were getting down to cookie business.

Theres the fascinating problem of trying to get the cream to distribute evenly between the two wafers, which turns out to be really hard, said Max Fan, an undergraduate in MITs Department of Mechanical Engineering.

You know what else is really hard? Realizing that when Max graduates he will immediately make twice as much money as I do because he went to freakin MIT and studied Oreos.

Way to go, Max! You made the right choice. Youre going to keggers, chasing brainy coeds and shoving free Oreos down your goozle while Im in the twilight of a doomed career in the dying newspaper industry with nothing but a cabinet full of stale, knock-off Hydrox cream-filled wafers 

Um, Im sorry, Max. Nothing personal, kid. Its just been a bad week.

Back to important Oreo research. Why does the cookies cream stick to one side rather than splitting evenly between both? The manufacturing process may hold the answer, according to the news release.

Videos of the manufacturing process show that they put the first wafer down, then dispense a ball of cream onto that wafer before putting the second wafer on top, said Crystal Owens, an MIT mechanical engineering PhD candidate who studies the properties of complex fluids and will also makes twice as much money as I do. Apparently that little time delay may make the cream stick better to the first wafer.

And there you have it. Another of lifes mysteries solved, thanks to the smart folks at MIT.

Scientifically, sandwich cookies present a paradigmatic model of parallel plate rheometry in which a fluid sample, the cream, is held between two parallel plates, the wafers, Owens said. When the wafers are counter-rotated, the cream deforms, flows, and ultimately fractures, leading to separation of the cookie into two pieces.

Yep, twice as much money.

Scott Hollifield is editor/GM of The McDowell News in Marion, North Carolina, and a humor columnist. Contact him at rhollifield@mcdowellnews.com.
HICKORY  Stacy Sharpe with Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group is pleased to welcome mortgage banker Kim Wagner as a licensed production partner.

Formerly with Truist Mortgage (previously BB&T), Wagner is joining The Stacy Sharpe Team of Atlantic Bay, one of the top three lenders in the Catawba Valley area and voted 2021 Best of Catawba Valley by Hickory Daily Record readers.

Wagner began in the mortgage industry in 1985 as a mortgage processor. Now she is honored to use her decades of experience in assisting homebuyers and clients looking to purchase refinance or build.

I try to abide by the Golden Rule and treat others as I would like to be treated, says Wagner.

Wagner serves all of North Carolina, primarily the Unifour area, including Catawba, Caldwell, Alexander, and Burke counties. She is also a member of the Catawba Valley Association of Realtors.

Married for 38 years, Wagner has two adult children.

Founded in 1997, Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group is a privately-owned national mortgage lender headquartered in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
HICKORY  Catawba Valley Community College recently welcomed LatinxEd to its campus for discussions on equity and inclusion for Latinx students.

LatinxEds visit to Catawba Valley Community College is part of its statewide #SomosNC Listening Tour, which has been taking place the past six months.

Catawba County is part of the Northwest Region of the tour, which also includes Burke, McDowell, Caldwell, Alexander, Wilkes, Alleghany, Watauga and Ashe counties.

The LatinxEd #SomosNC Listening Tour is allowing us to connect with great institutions making progress when it comes to equity and inclusion in NC, said Elaine Townsend Utin, co-founder and executive director of LatinxEd. We had a full house of Catawba Valley Community College faculty, staff and students ready and willing to engage in an important conversation in supporting the Latinx community in this region.

Included in the visit was a session where LatinxEds staff and Latinx students were able to get to know members of the Office of the President, Office of Student Engagement and Diversity, Office of K-64 and Talent Development and Office of Teaching and Learning.

LatinxEd then held a 45-minute session to better inform everyone in attendance, which included CVCC administration, faculty and staff members, about their organization.

Following that information session, everyone in attendance broke into three groups where they discussed Latinx college access, ways to better support Latinx students and programs and resources that should be created to further assist Latinx students.

The final session involved discussions between LatinxEds staff and CVCC students, faculty and staff.

CVCC is committed to ensuring every individual on this campus feels valued and has a sense of belonging, said Felicia Simmons, Vice President for Diversity and Engagement at CVCC. We are dedicated and putting actions to words for our students, faculty and staff, along with our community. The collaboration and partnership with LatinxEd allows the institution to continue to provide additional support, programs and resources for our Latinx population to ensure a successful and positive experience at CVCC.

Through the discussions and presentations, Utin saw one thing from Catawba Valley Community College and its approach to Latinx Ed students.

It's clear that CVCC gets it  advancing Latinx student success is an important part of the future of this campus and community, she said.

To learn more about LatinxEd, visit https://latinxed.org/.

For more information about the Office of Multicultural Affairs at Catawba Valley Community College, visit https://bit.ly/3Op3Os0.
" " Born in upstate New York in 1830, Kate Warne challenged gender expectations and took on the boys to become a detective for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency at the age of 26. Pinkerton

One day in 1856, a determined young woman made her way to the Chicago office of Allan Pinkerton, who founded and ran the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

Pinkerton told the woman, Kate Warne, that he had no openings for secretaries. But Warne answered Pinkerton with a shocking declaration: She wanted to be an agent for his company. As a female detective, she believed that she could enter into spaces and investigate cases that men could not navigate as easily. Pinkerton bought her argument, and hired her onto his team, making her the first woman detective in the United States.

"She just ... was somebody who could hold her own in any situation, which made her perfect for a job with Allan Pinkerton," says Chris Enss, a New York Times best selling author who writes books about women of the Old West, including "The Pinks: The First Women Detectives, Operatives, and Spies with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency."

And Pinkerton really put Warne to the test. One of the undercover cases that Warne took on in her first few years with the Agency was the Adams Express case, which children's book author and illustrator Marissa Moss explores in her book "Kate Warne, Pinkerton Detective."

The case involved a man who used his position with the Adams Express company to embezzle money from his employer. When the company hired the Pinkerton Agency, Warne was dispatched as an undercover field agent to befriend the suspect's wife.

"The idea was for her to discover where the money was and to convince the wife when the time was right to hand it over. Kate acted her role to perfection and was brave enough to sneak into the house and find where the money was buried, then later use just the right strategy to get the wife to give the money to a supposedly trusted courier," writes Moss in an email.

" " Allan Pinkerton (sitting on the right) during the Civil War at Antietam. Standing behind Pinkerton, holding the pole, is John C. Babcock, who some have claimed was actually Kate Warne in disguise, though that identification has been debunked over time. Seated with Pinkerton is William Moore. Standing: George H. Bangs, left, and Augustus K. Littlefield, right. Wikimedia Commons

But Warne really became famous for her work on the 1861 Baltimore plot, which was the conspiracy to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln. According to Enss, Warne worked on the case with a female, biracial detective: Hattie Lawson. Lawson's father was white and her mother was Black. Renowned for her beauty and owing to a white-passing complexion, Lawson could disguise herself as both a slave and as the wife of one of the male Pinkerton agents, allowing her the unique ability to spirit secrets out of the South on behalf of the Pinkerton Agency.

On this case, Lawson posed as the wife of a male Pinkerton agent, Tim Webster, who was disguised as a construction worker. Through talking to railroad workers in Baltimore, Lawson and Webster discovered that there was a conspiracy brewing to blow up the train that president-elect Lincoln would ride on his way to Washington, D.C., where he would be sworn into office.

Warne posed as Lincoln's sister and spirited him out of his hotel in Philadelphia, advising Lincoln to ditch his signature stovepipe hat and stoop down to hide his prominent figure. The Pinkerton Agency dispatched its own train, which Lincoln and Warne boarded. Meanwhile, the conspirators believed  falsely  that Lincoln was still on the original train bound for the capital.

While Lincoln slept, Warne stayed up all night, watching over the president-elect. The Pinkerton logo  an open eye  is due to Warne's steadfast watch over Lincoln, according to Enss. To this day, the Pinkerton homepage notes: "We Never Sleep." Of course, Lincoln made it safely to his destination, and Warne moved on to another case.

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'The Pinks'

During Warne's time at the Agency, Enss estimates that more than 15 women worked with the Pinkertons. Pinkerton dubbed these women "the Pinks." And Pinkerton clearly held Warne  and the other Pinks  in high regard, regularly praising her work in the field and making her the superintendent of the female bureau in the Chicago office.

He also promoted Warne to head a subsection of the agency that later evolved into the very famous institution known for protecting American public figures: the Secret Service.

"You had the Civil War, and the Pinkertons were very much involved in ferreting secrets in and out of different places and getting to the essence of different crimes, and Kate was instrumental in that. And they formed, during that time, what we now know as the Secret Service," says Enss.

"And because Kate was so good at what she did, [Pinkerton] had her ... train these different agents [in] protecting some of our most prominent political leaders in the country."

Pinkerton wrote about Warne's invaluable assistance on a case in Alabama in his book, "The Spy of the Rebellion." "She was a brilliant conversationalist when so disposed, and could be quite vivacious, but she also understood that rarer quality in womankind, the art of being silent."

" " During the American Civil War Kate Warne traveled with her boss, Allan Pinkerton, to meet with General George B. McClellan's Ohio Division. This photo shows Pinkerton, left, with Abraham Lincoln and McClellan at the Battle of Antietam in 1862. Wikimedia Commons

Although some have speculated that Warne engaged in an affair with Pinkerton, both Moss and Enss assert that those rumors hold little merit and that Pinkerton praised Warne in a professional capacity, not a personal one.

But hiring women and mixed-raced individuals to serve as detectives for his company was unusual, to say the least, given the time period. Moss notes that Pinkerton's open-mindedness may have stemmed from his impoverished childhood in Scottish slums, which "made him open to people's abilities, not their status."

Enss also describes Pinkerton as a progressive person who valued work ethic over political correctness. "He was more interested in solving a crime and making the clients happy and being good at his job," says Enss. "He was willing to hire people who he believed could get the job done."

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The Meryl Streep of Undercover Detectives

Kate Warne had some pretty unique skill sets that suited her to this dangerous line of work. According to unverified rumors, Warne had developed an interest in the theater at a young age, which would have made her perfectly suited to become an undercover agent.

"I mean she was like the Meryl Streep of the detective agency. She could wear a disguise. She could take on an accent. And she could pull it off, no matter where she was," says Enss.

Moss similarly characterizes Warne as a risk-taker who took initiative and always got the job done: "Everything about her was surprising. She had the daring to answer an ad for detectives and talk her way into a job that was dangerous, the kind of thing only men did."

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Warne's Life Is Shadowed in Mystery

One of the ironies of the first female detective is that, while she investigated mysteries, Warne was, herself, a mystery. She was born in upstate New York in 1830 to Israel and Elizabeth Hulbert, who had money problems. She had one brother, Allan. Warne married at a young age, but she became a widow by 1856 after her husband died. The family moved to Illinois that same year, and, not long after, Warne sought a job working for Pinkerton. Little else is known about her personal life.

As an operative who went by many different aliases, it was imperative for Warne to conceal her true identity. And many of the records in the Pinkerton office in Chicago burned down during the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, according to Enss.

Warne contracted a "lingering illness"  likely pneumonia  and died in 1868, according to Enss. Since Warne had no known surviving family members, Pinkerton arranged for her to buried in his family's plot of land as a tribute to her years of work with the Pinkerton Agency.

However, following the death of Pinkerton some years later, Moss notes that the company's reputation changed and fewer women joined its ranks once Pinkerton's sons took over: "Once Pinkerton died and they took over the agency, they shut down the women's division. It was under them that the Pinkerton Agency became known for working with ruthless robber barons, suppressing workers' strikes with violence."

Nonetheless, Warne's work with the Pinkerton Agency  and the work of the other Pinks  leaves behind an undeniable legacy for women working as detectives in law enforcement and private security.

"I believe her legacy is that she was one of the very first women who paved the way for females to be involved in law enforcement and take a much more aggressive role than they ever had before," says Enss. "She was a field operative. She wasn't at the desk typing correspondence. And she was doing this at a time when no other agency had women doing anything like this."

Now That's Interesting According to Moss, during the Baltimore plot, Warne wrote a fun description in her notes "of the tall, gangly president trying to fit comfortably in the train compartment to sleep."
As we continue to feel the effects of a global pandemic and our planet sits precariously on the edge of another world war, some people are asking this important question: Why does an Oreo cookies cream stick to just one wafer when twisted apart?

MIT wants to solve the mystery. No, not a rapper known as The Notorious MIT. And no, not Mitt Romney, who enters the initials MIT into the Donkey Kong machine each time he gets a high score in the GOP game room.

The actual Massachusetts Institute Technology, a school I could not attend even if I earned 1,000 extra SAT points for spelling my name correctly, turned its collective brainpower toward Oreo cookies.

According to an April 19 news release, the research was supported in part by the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program, which makes we wonder if the Russians are secretly working on advanced cookie technology we need to counter.

From the news release:

When you twist open an Oreo cookie to get to the creamy center, youre mimicking a standard test in rheology  the study of how a non-Newtonian material flows when twisted, pressed, or otherwise stressed. MIT engineers have now subjected the sandwich cookie to rigorous materials tests to get to the center of a tantalizing question: Why does the cookies cream stick to just one wafer when twisted apart?

In reality, this isnt much different than other conversations that go on at many colleges and universities across the nation.

Dude, you know this Dorito is made up of molecules and stuff. What if each of those molecules was an individual universe with its own planets and junk. And if our universe was part of a grand Dorito  hey, thats the R.A.! Dude, I told you to put a towel under the door!

Back at MIT, the serious students were getting down to cookie business.

Theres the fascinating problem of trying to get the cream to distribute evenly between the two wafers, which turns out to be really hard, said Max Fan, an undergraduate in MITs Department of Mechanical Engineering.

You know what else is really hard? Realizing that when Max graduates he will immediately make twice as much money as I do because he went to freakin MIT and studied Oreos.

Way to go, Max! You made the right choice. Youre going to keggers, chasing brainy coeds and shoving free Oreos down your goozle while Im in the twilight of a doomed career in the dying newspaper industry with nothing but a cabinet full of stale knock-off Hydrox cream-filled wafers

Um, Im sorry, Max. Nothing personal, kid. Its just been a bad week.

Back to important Oreo research. Why does the cookies cream stick to one side rather than splitting evenly between both? The manufacturing process may hold the answer, according to the news release.

Videos of the manufacturing process show that they put the first wafer down, then dispense a ball of cream onto that wafer before putting the second wafer on top, said Crystal Owens, an MIT mechanical engineering doctoral candidate who studies the properties of complex fluids and also will makes twice as much money as I do. Apparently that little time delay may make the cream stick better to the first wafer.

And there you have it. Another of lifes mysteries solved, thanks to the smart folks at MIT.

Scientifically, sandwich cookies present a paradigmatic model of parallel plate rheometry in which a fluid sample, the cream, is held between two parallel plates, the wafers, Owens said. When the wafers are counter-rotated, the cream deforms, flows, and ultimately fractures, leading to separation of the cookie into two pieces.

Yep, twice as much money.

Scott Hollifield is editor and general manager of The McDowell News in Marion and a humor columnist. Email him at rhollifield@mcdowellnews.com .
Press Release

April 23, 2022 De Lima slams COMELEC Commissioner's threat to arrest critics Re-electionist Senator Leila M. de Lima cried foul over recent threat by Commission on Elections (COMELEC) Commissioner Rey Bulay to use the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) against people who call out the poll body's handling of the elections. De Lima, a former election lawyer, said the threat of Bulay to use the AFP to arrest those who criticize and complain about the handling of the elections by the COMELEC "is uncalled for and illegal." "Under the Constitution, the only time the AFP is allowed to exercise the law enforcement powers of the PNP, like arresting people, is when the Commander-in-Chief calls out the AFP to suppress lawless violence," she said. "Neither Bulay nor the COMELEC is the Commander-in-Chief. Not even during elections. The COMELEC's deputization power during elections certainly does not include the power to use the AFP in stifling criticisms and suppressing free speech," added the lady Senator from Bicol. Based on media reports, Bulay warned that he would not tolerate insinuations or allegations of partisanship against the COMELEC from candidates in the May 9 national elections or their supporters. "To those issuing public opinion that COMELEC is biased or that it would cause election fraud, I am warning you that we would not hesitate to call upon the Armed Forces of the Philippines, which is now under COMELEC control, to round you up and have you jailed," he said. De Lima questioned the need to arrest, or even threaten to arrest, people who are merely exercising their Constitutional right to freedom of speech and to petition the government for redress of grievances. "Anong klaseng mga tao at abogado ba ang mga nasa poder ngayon? The lack of respect for the Constitution is disturbing, to say the least," she said. De Lima further questioned the extent of the knowledge of Bulay of the COMELEC's power over the AFP. "It is particularly worrisome that a sitting COMELEC Commissioner is entirely ignorant of the limits of the COMELEC's powers over the AFP during elections as to usurp even the CIC powers of the President and use the AFP to bully the people," she said. "It is doubly worrisome that none of the Commissioners present with him at the COMELEC presscon yesterday even bothered to correct him," she added. Bulay was appointed by Duterte to the COMELEC in November last year.
North Carolina is one of 13 states that have no legal avenue for the use of medical marijuana, much less the sale and distribution of recreational cannabis.

That hasnt deterred a 100-year-old Raleigh bank, West Town Bank & Trust, from launching last week a dedicated cannabis/CBD banking program that officials believe will have national appeal.

The program represents an extension of the banks mission to make financial services more accessible to emerging and underserved industries.

As one of the first banks to roll out a hemp banking program (in 2019) after the 2018 (federal) Farm Bill, we witnessed first-hand the role dedicated banking programs played in advancing the entire industry, Ross Sloan, West Towns senior vice president of Hemp & Cannabis Banking, said in a news release Wednesday.

The cannabis banking team is made up of seven certified financial service professionals.

Were excited to do the same for cannabis businesses, offering them the banking services they need to fuel not only their growth, but the growth of the entire cannabis industry, Sloan said.

West Towns work with hemp/CBD oil businesses already has made it stand out within the industry.

CBDAdvertisingAgency.com wrote that West Town is probably one of the banks that is most dedicated to the hemp business. The company has a special program focused on cannabis entrepreneurs.

You will get the same services as if you were a regular business.

West Town relies on its innovative platform to create actionable solutions for cannabis businesses.

CBDAdvertisingAgency.com said that with the emergence of CBD, we have also seen the emergence of CBD-friendly banks, even though America doesnt have a sound legal system that would allow for rapid expansion of the industry.

By itself, hemp products are pretty controversial, and until recently, most banks regarded them as high-risk.

There are also major legal and regulatory differences from state to state, making it really hard to sell and transport CBD across the US. This caused issues for CBD businesses as well. Even if you got (a loan), you had to pay enormous interest.

Reach spreading

Recreational use of cannabis has legal status in 18 states, primarily blue and purple states, but also red states Alaska and Montana.

Because federal law forbids recreational use of marijuana, most cannabis businesses struggle to find financial institutions willing to provide traditional business products.

That leaves most of the businesses to operate without bank accounts or electronic payments, while some rely on third-party groups that collaborate with Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-insured banks behind closed doors, West Town said.

Without banks, the cannabis industry must, by necessity, be an all-cash business.

That means no electronic payments, no credit and debit-card transactions, no access to bank depository and safekeeping services, no audit, control and payments-tracing services, and other oversight requirements.

Since federal law prohibits the sale and use of marijuana, national banks like Wells Fargo may not knowingly bank or provide services to marijuana businesses or for related activities, Wells Fargo said in a statement.

Truist Financial Corp. said in a statement that as federally regulated bank, we abide by all applicable federal laws and regulations.

As the production, distribution and sale of marijuana is illegal under federal law, Truist cannot provide banking services to those engaged in these activities.

We recognize this is a complex issue for the banking industry, and we welcome clarity from lawmakers and regulators as more states consider legalizing marijuana for medical and recreational purposes.

Physical threats

The challenges of such financial limitations for cannabis businesses are not only risky revenue-wise, but physically as well.

Just last week, the Associated Press reported that dozens of cannabis businesses in the San Francisco Bay area were robbed last fall in a wave of attacks that sometimes appeared coordinated.

Industry trackers in Washington state have reported at least 80 robberies so far this year, mostly in the Puget Sound region.

For example, AP reported that in March a suspect shot and killed an employee at a cannabis store in Tacoma; an ID checker shot and killed a robber in Covington; Seattle police shot and killed a suspect following a robbery in Bellevue; and a robber pistol-whipped a worker at an Everett shop.

AP also reported that marijuana shops that can afford it have hired private security guards, sometimes at costs of more than $50,000 a month for a round-the-clock detail, said Adan Espino, executive director of the Craft Cannabis Coalition.

Espino said hes pushing for state lawmakers to give tax credits to cannabis stores that have to shell out money for security.

Industry support

The lack of dependable financial services stunts the industrys potential for growth, profitability and increased consumer trust, according to West Town.

The federal uncertainty about legal cannabis use, and the often-piecemeal state regulatory approaches, have led the American Bankers Association and most state banking commissions  including in North Carolina  to lend their support to the latest push for the federal SAFE Banking Act that was submitted initially in 2013.

The bill would keep federal regulators from penalizing banks that work with licensed cannabis businesses.

The state bankers association has written the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs committee to conduct hearings on the merits of providing cannabis-related businesses access to banking services.

The associations stress that although we do not take a position on the legalization of marijuana, our members are committed to serving the financial needs of their communities  including those that have voted to legalize cannabis.

We believe federal action is necessary and support a solution that would allow banks to serve cannabis-related businesses in states where the activity is legal.

The associations wrote that leaving the cannabis industry unbanked presents serious public safety, revenue administration and legal compliance concerns and must be remedied immediately.

These businesses also must remit payments for state taxes and licensing fees in cash, denying the states the efficiencies and safety of more modern payment methods.

From the financial institutions perspective, the associations wrote that because revenue paid to them by cannabis businesses can be considered monies derived from illegal activities, financial institutions that bank the unrelated businesses can be accused of violating anti-money laundering laws.

If banks are forced to discontinue relationships with these unrelated businesses, a significant portion of the economy in states where cannabis is legal will be cut off from the regulated banking system.

The American Bankers Association cited similar points to the associations, while stressing the indirect benefits of federal cannabis legislation for vendors and suppliers, landlords and employees.

Indirect connections to marijuana revenues are hard, if not impossible, for banks to identify and avoid, the ABA wrote to the same Senate committee.

While ABA takes no position on the moral issues raised by legalizing ... ABA believes the time has come for Congress and the regulatory agencies to provide greater legal clarity to banks operating in states where marijuana has been legalized for medical or adult use.

Medical marijuana bill

Because North Carolina law doesnt permit the use of recreational marijuana, and most medicinal purposes, the legislative spotlight is squarely on bipartisan Senate Bill 711, titled NC Compassionate Care Act.

The bill advanced through three Senate committees during the 2021 session before stalling in the gateway Rules and Operations committee in August. It is projected to resurface early in the 2022 session.

SB711s odds of clearing the Senate are considered promising given that Sen. Bill Rabon, R-Brunswick, and chairman of Rules committee, is one of its three primary sponsors.

The pathway through the state House could be equally daunting, if not more so, according to political analysts.

The bill requires the medical marijuana system be self-sustaining from a revenue perspective following initial money to set up the system. The funding would come mostly from license fees and a monthly fee equal to 10% of the gross revenue derived from the products sold at the medical cannabis centers.

Opponents, who included Sen. Joyce Krawiec, R-Forsyth, expressed concern that SB711 will: serve as a gateway to legalized marijuana in North Carolina by 2024; that the licensing fee for vendors is too low; that a license should not be allowed to be sold; and that the potential profit levels need to be lowered.

Rabon, a cancer survivor, has said SB711 would not serve as a gateway to recreational marijuana use.

The bill previously was amended to reduce the number of medical cannabis centers from eight to four, two of which would be located in one of the states 20 Tier 1 counties  likely Mecklenburg and in the Triangle.

Forsyth and Guilford counties are in Tier 2.

Reactions

Banking analysts are mixed about whether the federal law, if approved, would entice more mainstream financial institutions to serve the hemp and cannabis industries.

The short answer is yes, said Bowman Gray IV, a local independent stock broker.

At this point, the big banks are in the best position to lobby the government for these changes and they should lean hard.

Gray said the main hurdle is that without federal standards for all things related to cannabis  product regulation and standardization to uniform banking rules  it is extremely difficult for the larger banks to be able to stay in compliance with laws that differ from state to state.

The federal government needs to step up to clear the way for an industry with such huge potential.

All aspects from financial regulation, to legalized use, to criminal justice reform, etc. the list is long and I dont think it can wait much longer.

Zagros Madjd-Sadjadi, an economics professor at Winston-Salem State University, said he doubts that large mainstream banks, such as Bank of America Corp., Truist and Wells would embrace serving the hemp and cannabis industries.

However, Madjd-Sadjadi said he could envision TD Bank Group getting involved.

TD, based in Toronto, is pursuing regulatory and shareholder approval of its $13.4 billion offer for First Horizon Corp. of Memphis, Tenn., which has a sizable branch presence in the Triad.

Marijuana is fully legal in Canada, and thus financing could be arranged potentially through the Canadian parent company, especially if it was lending to a Canadian subsidiary of an American company, Madjd-Sadjadi said.

Since they lend in both U.S. dollars and Canadian dollars, a Canadian bank might be a first mover into this space.

However, Madjd-Sadjadi cautioned this scenario might still have significant issues if the U.S. federal government tried to push back, especially with the onerous regulations that the U.S. has tried to impose on foreign lenders in an effort to collect more taxes from American taxpayers with accounts in other countries.

Tony Plath, a retired finance professor at UNC-Charlotte, said its time for prudentially regulated banks to embrace what is, in many jurisdictions, a legal industry.

The problem lies with our schizophrenic legal, regulatory and political systems that make marijuana possession and usage in several states quite legal, while said possession and use remain most illegal in other jurisdictions (like North Carolina), as well as at the federal level.

Plath said that since absolutely no federally insured bank seeks to break federal law in the first place, the former choice wins hands-down over the latter, leaving just about all of the cannabis industry unbanked in the traditional sense.

Now, stop for a moment and think about the secondary and tertiary consequences of leaving a popular and growing industry without access to mainstream American banks, and the payments-and-loan services they provide.

Either this stuff becomes a legal and legitimate product at the federal level, which is consistent with contemporary social attitudes and mores in practically every jurisdiction of the country, or it should remain illegal everywhere in the country.

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Achievers

Congress invited High Point University professor Scott Raynor to judge the regional entries for the Congressional Art Competition. Each spring, the Congressional Institute sponsors a nationwide visual art competition to recognize and encourage student artists in each congressional district. Raynor is one of the judges in North Carolinas 6th Congressional District. As part of the judging process, hell engage with and provide feedback to the students on their work. Artwork includes paintings, drawings, collages, prints, mixed media, computer-generated art and photography.

Raynor was also asked to view the final entries, which will be displayed in the U.S. Capitol and on the U.S. House of Representatives website.

* * * *

Carrie F. Vickery, Forsyth County District Court judge, has been awarded a 2022 Citizen-Lawyer award by the North Carolina Bar Association. Vickery is one of eight to win this statewide award recognizing her time spent volunteering for community and civic causes.

Announcements

The JH Adams Inn on North Main Street in High Point  a national historic property  will celebrate a 2,500-square-foot expansion during a formal opening planned for 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. April 28. The inn is owned by Gray Angell.

Angell and Iris Boswell of Business High Point/Chamber of Commerce will lead a ribbon cutting at 5:30 p.m. to formally dedicate the inns new Atrium, which was made by enclosing a former courtyard to create year-round event space. The project represents a $1.25 million investment by Angell.

Guests may enjoy live music, beer, wine, soft drinks and hors doeuvres from Cristina Grays Restaurant & Bar, which is on-site, while touring the new event space and select guestrooms.

The Atrium is featured on the inns new website, with the theme, Come Home to Southern Hospitality.

Angell is the owner of multiple commercial real estate holdings in the Piedmont Triad, including JH Adams Inn and Cristina Grays Restaurant & Bar in High Point, DeCastro Real Estate Investments; Blue Ridge Health Investors; Brookstone Terrace Assisted Living; and Brookstown Inn in Winston-Salem.

Awards

Three Wake Forest faculty  math and statistics professor Abbey Bourdon, chemistry professor John Lukesh and engineering professor Erin Henslee  have been named National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program Award winners.

Each will receive a five-year grant ranging from $400,000 to $625,000 to support their work.

Given to outstanding scientists, the highly-competitive CAREER awards are the NSFs most prestigious for junior faculty and are intended to provide a foundation for a lifetime of scientific leadership that integrates research and education.

Bourdon studies geometric objects called elliptic curves. A central aim of her project is to broaden participation in the mathematical sciences, both at the undergraduate and graduate level. She plans to develop a training program for graduate students to serve as project leaders for undergraduates enrolled in a research exploration course.

In his laboratory, Lukesh works with students to design and synthesize new chemical tools that can be used by the scientific community to investigate the biological significance and therapeutic potential of hydrogen sulfide and hydrogen selenide.

Lukesh will also use the grant to expand outreach activities in Winston-Salem, including developing interactive chemistry lectures for middle school children.

Henslees research addresses critical gaps in the knowledge of red blood cells to further understand the early changes in RBC-related diseases such as malaria, anemia and cardiovascular diseases.

The grant will also support her goal of developing students into better science communicators.

On the Move

Sawtooth School for Visual Arts in Winston-Salem has announced the recent hire of three key players in the organization: Leslie Schuneman, director of youth programming; Rebecca Silberman, registrar; and Ciara Loscombe, new director of The Art + Wellness Program. This program provides supportive art experiences for cancer patients, survivors and caregivers in partnership with 11 health care organizations in Forsyth County.

Send press releases to people@greensboro.com.
The San Francisco Chronicle recently published a story about claims that Californias senior Sen. Dianne Feinstein is mentally unfit to serve and that her staff is doing much of her work. Four U.S. senators and three of Feinsteins former staffers told the Chronicle that her memory is rapidly deteriorating and that the 88-year-old senator can no longer fulfill her job duties as a result of her alleged cognitive decline.

This unfortunate disclosure about Feinstein has once again raised calls to enact term limits for members of Congress. Though nothing has been confirmed, some see Feinsteins condition as an example of how so-called career politicians remain in office too long.

Whether Feinstein has remained too long in office is a different matter than whether the silver bullet known as term limits is the answer.

Term limits, in my view, are somewhere between an overly simplistic solution to a more complex problem or, as H.L. Mencken opines: For every complex problem there is an answer thats clear, simple and wrong!

Term limits are supported by a large majority of the American people, often portrayed as a cure-all for an ailing democracy. But support for term limits requires that one ignore the unintended consequences.

Supporters and detractors of term limits for members of Congress agree on one thing: Congress is broken, ineffectual and at times dysfunctional. As a detractor, I see term limits as a prescriptive that will only make the problem worse.

Cloaking themselves in effective platitudes such as throw the bums out and drain the swamp, proponents seem unable or unwilling to address the unintended consequences in the event term limits for members of Congress might be taken under serious consideration.

To support term limits one must embrace the counter-intuitive belief that experience when holding elected office is a pejorative. Few wish to be the surgeons initial patient or the attorneys first client. It requires a willing suspension of disbelief to suggest political experience is irrelevant.

If term limits were enacted, Congress would have more inexperienced members each term, creating more scenarios like what has been reported about Feinstein, that her unelected staff is doing most of the work.

Proponents are correct to suggest that members of Congress spend an inordinate amount of time fundraising. How would term limits change this dynamic? It may curb an elected officials desire to fundraise during the final term, but the remainder of the time would be business as usual.

The preamble of the Constitution begins: We the people, which holds that sovereignty rests with the people. Term limits further chip away at that fundamental belief in the American experiment because they remove power from the people. Assuming momentarily that Feinstein has remained in office too long, does her example warrant tying the hands of the American people?

In spite of its best intentions, term limits are a disciple of cynicism. Decades of exasperation have made many distrustful of the process so that term limits appear as the only viable option. But it is ultimately iron pyrite (fools gold). It may quench the desires for immediate gratification but it will not make the system better.

Beyond the musical chairs, jumping from one office to another, where has term limits made the system better in the state governments that have enacted them? If the states are, as Justice Louis Brandeis opined, the laboratories of democracy, there is not a positive hypothesis that can be applied for Congress.

Many of the issues that lead one to support term limits, such as money, gerrymandered districts and senators and representatives appearing out of touch with their constituents, feel intractable. Term limits, therefore, become a nebulous catchall response for insoluble problems.

But its a shortcut that will only make the problem worse. Term limits will not address money in politics or the time legislators spend fundraising; only a law that curbs those practices can do that. The same holds true for the other issues that cause many to tout term limits as a viable option.

Term limits should remain in the jurisdiction of the voters, who can decide for themselves whom they want to represent them.

The frustration that many feel regarding Congress is understandable and justified. But doing something in response, especially a remedy that seeks to address the issue by removing sovereignty from the hands of the people, is antithetical to the American experiment.

The Rev. Byron Williams (byron@publicmorality.org), a writer and the host of The Public Morality on WSNC 90.5, lives in Winston-Salem.
Open Harvest has for months been hinting at plans to move from its longtime home at 17th and South streets, and it appears it has now settled on a new location.

The co-op grocery store announced that it has signed a letter of intent to lease 10,000 square feet of space on the northeast side of a building at 330 S. 21st St., in the Telegraph District.

The building is home to Allo Communications, The Mill Coffee & Tea and Subway. The proposed Open Harvest space is currently being used by Allo for storage.

"We chose a location that stuck to the core of Lincoln," said Wally Graeber, chairman of Open Harvest's board of directors.

He said the co-op did a market study and looked at a few other locations before settling on the Telegraph District, which proved to be the most affordable and is in an area that is both "low-income and low-access," meaning there aren't other grocery stores nearby.

Open Harvest has a lot of work to do to make its plans come to fruition. The move will cost approximately $4.2 million, and the co-op is embarking on a campaign to raise the money.

It recently sent a letter to all of its roughly 2,300 members asking them to consider investing in the co-op through preferred shares, with a minimum investment of $1,000. Those shares will not give people voting rights, but they will pay a dividend in the future.

Open Harvest is hoping to raise at least $2 million through that route. The rest of the money needed would come through a combination of loans, grants and donated funds.

The co-op is seeking a grant of as much as $200,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that's available to grocery stores that operate in areas considered "food deserts." Graeber said it should find out by May if it received the grant, which has never before been given to a Nebraska organization.

There also is a fund people can donate to through the Lincoln Community Foundation that will help with moving and startup costs at the new store.

General Manager Amy Tabor said the fund opens up the opportunity for people who live outside Lincoln and even out of state to be involved. Open Harvest is part of a larger cooperative network, so the hope is that people from other places might donate money simply because they believe in co-ops and want to help out, she said.

Assuming Open Harvest is able to raise the money it needs, it would likely move into the new space sometime in late fall 2023 or early spring 2024.

The move from its longtime home of 32 years is being precipitated by the inability to extend its lease, which expires in March 2024.

But there also are other problems at its current location, including limited parking and an inability to get a liquor license because of its proximity to a residential neighborhood.

None of those things will be an issue at the new site.

"There are just so many positives about this location," Tabor said.

She also said the new location will provide the store long-term security that it doesn't currently have.

"We truly believe that this opportunity in the Telegraph District will set Open Harvest on a successful path for years to come, Tabor said.

Reach the writer at 402-473-2647 or molberding@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LincolnBizBuzz.

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Google's announcement Thursday that it's planning a third Omaha-area data center raises the question: What does that mean for the data center proposed in Lincoln?

The world's largest internet company said it plans to spend $750 million in Nebraska this year, most of it on a new data center on the northwest side of Omaha, near State Street and Blair High Road, and on the continued buildout of a data center in Papillion that started construction in 2019 and is partially operational.

No mention was made, however, of a potential Lincoln project.

Though no one has publicly admitted Google is the company planning the huge data center complex northwest of the 56th Street exit on Interstate 80, signs point that direction.

A company called Agate LLC owns the nearly 600 acres of land where the data center is proposed, but XXVI Holdings Inc., which is owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet, applied for tax incentives for the project.

XXVI Holdings Inc. is the same company that applied for tax incentives for the Google data center in Papillion.

The Lincoln data center was originally proposed in the summer of 2019, and documents submitted to the city at the time suggested that at full buildout it could encompass 2 million square feet of buildings and have nearly 1,000 employees.

The documents estimated construction would start in 2020, with the potential for 160 people to be working in the first buildings by 2022.

However, no construction activity has occurred at the site, although Lincoln Electric System did confirm it has completed preliminary design work for the electrical infrastructure needed for the center.

Officials from the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce and the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development declined to comment on the project, as did a spokeswoman for the Nebraska Department of Economic Development.

Google also declined to comment on any Lincoln plans.

According to documents filed with the City of Omaha, operations for the new data center there will span multiple buildings, totaling more than 1.4 million square feet, along with equipment yards and parking areas. A Google representative estimated construction could last anywhere from 18 to 24 months.

Googles efforts in Nebraska are part of its plan to invest about $9.5 billion in offices and data centers across the U.S. this year. In a news release, the company also said it will create at least 12,000 new full-time jobs. A representative for the company said Google did not have any new job figures to share for the Omaha area.

The Omaha World-Herald's Dan Crisler contributed to this report.

Reach the writer at 402-473-2647 or molberding@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LincolnBizBuzz.

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"Thank You, Mr. Nixon" by Gish Jen; Alfred A. Knopf, 272 pages, $28.

"Thank You, Mr. Nixon," Gish Jen's first collection of short fiction in more than 20 years, is a jewel box of creativity and a joy to uncover.

Across 11 synergistic stories about interconnected families, Gish creates a sort of episodic epic spanning 50 years, from Nixon's historic visit to China in 1972 through the umbrella protests in Hong Kong early in the pandemic. Most characters are Chinese American, first-, second- or third-generation, but Chinese play parts, too, as do white Midwesterners.

Marriage and friendship forge enduring bonds while travel and business lead to transient ties, yet all persist to some degree, passed between generations like genetic traits.

"It's the Great Wall!" introduces several central figures, including Opal, who returns to China for the first time in 40 years with her daughter and son-in-law. When she left Shanghai for graduate school in the United States, Opal never imagined that she would get stuck there, unable to go home due to China's 1949 revolution and subsequent upheavals, "like one earthquake followed by another, followed by another and another."

She starts helping the Chinese translator for her American tour group, hoping to facilitate a meeting with her sisters, and realizes that neither political upheaval nor the passage of time can erase her relationship to her homeland.

Twentysomething Duncan Hsu  dropout from military school, med school, and more  goes to Shandong in the early 1980s to teach English at a coal mining institute in "Duncan in China." A meeting with his Chinese cousin and a crush on an older student help open his eyes to a type of blindness he carried as an American, "a habit of believing in the happiest possibility."

In "A Tea Tale," the action moves stateside, to suburban Cincinnati. Tom and Tory, "an enormous blond couple" from Opal's tour, have maintained their interest in China, even adopting a daughter from there, but the former linebacker and the onetime Miss Ohio also retain their prejudices, which intensify when Duncan and his Chinese wife open a tea shop near their coffee shop.

Throughout, Jen subtly draws attention to all these perceptions of difference, those based on race as well as on age, values, class and immigration status. Some contrasts occur within families, as with the ultra-rich, Hong Kongbased Koo family. In "Gratitude," their oldest daughter, Bobby, who works in New York City, has stopped answering her mother's calls. Her story line finds bittersweet resolution in "Detective Dog," which suffers a bit from platitudes trying to capture the pandemic  "COVID. COVID was making people crazy." (Yes, authors, we know.)

Perhaps the most touching connection forms between two of the most disparate characters  Opal's 40-year-old granddaughter, Amarylis, and Duncan's 89-year-old father, Ed. Despite differing in almost every way, Amarylis realizes "no one can survive alone." Ed's take is less philosophical, boiling down to "Chinese, not Chinese, makes no difference."

These stories offer valuable insight into our world, which feels increasingly divided in countless ways. Surely everyone  us and them, whoever they are  would benefit if together we read what Gish has to say.

Cory Oldweiler is a freelance writer and editor.

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Is this Deb Fischer's dash to the wire in 2012 all over again?

Or still an unlikely long shot?

Ten years ago, Fischer was a state senator finishing her final year in the Legislature and matched against Attorney General Jon Bruning and State Treasurer Don Stenberg in a bid for the Republican nomination for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Fischer, in her first statewide election after representing a Sandhills district in the Legislature for eight years, held 12% of the Republican vote in a March survey by Public Policy Polling.

Her share of the pie rose to 25.9% in a We Ask America poll entering May, substantially behind Bruning who was polling at 42.2%.

When the GOP primary votes were counted on May 15, Fischer had 79,941 votes and Bruning had 70,067 and she was the Republican nominee.

It was a successful come-from-behind sprint at the end of the campaign.

That's the dream scenario for Sen. Brett Lindstrom of Omaha as Charles Herbster and Jim Pillen run out front battling one another in this year's hardball gubernatorial contest.

It's a volatile landscape with Herbster battling late-in-the-campaign allegations that he has inappropriately touched or groped a number of women, which he fervently denies.

Pillen, who is supported by Gov. Pete Ricketts and what appears to be most of Nebraska's Republican establishment -- the party itself maintains a neutral stance -- is expected to benefit from that disclosure.

They remain the heavily-funded heavyweights.

But is there another state senator a decade after Deb Fischer moving up from behind and surging toward the wire at the end?

* * *

And now comes Donald Trump.

He's not visiting rural Nebraska -- west of Lincoln -- where he would appear to still be absolute king of the hill, but between Lincoln and Omaha, the population centers that both voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

However, there are plenty of Trump voters to fill the I-80 Speedway venue at Greenwood a mile over the Lancaster County line in Cass County on Friday night. Hmm, Greenwood.

Perhaps Trump, the showman, will get Lee Greenwood to show up at Greenwood to sing "I'm Proud to be an American ... God Bless the USA."

That would light up what already is likely to be an electric night.

* * *

Seldom do you see the kind of grieving appreciation that the death of Brad Ashford prompted.

A good and decent man.

It was emotionally difficult for Sen. Steve Lathrop to deliver his strong, but tender eulogy in the legislative chamber where Ashford served for 16 years as a state senator on the final day of the 2022 session.

"A policy wonk ... non-partisan," Lathrop said. Full of "thoughtfulness; always seeking common ground."

"Brad loved this place," Lathrop told his colleagues, partly because Ashford said Nebraska's unique non-partisan Legislature allowed him to change political parties so many times.

"A friend for 65 years," Sen. John McCollister said, a neighbor who lived four houses down the street in Omaha.

"A gentle giant...an absent-minded professor," McCollister said.

Two tender tributes from a Democrat and a Republican.

And that was a perfect fit for who Ashford was.

He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014 as the Democratic nominee, was ousted by Republican nominee Don Bacon in 2016 after a single term, became friends with Bacon and endorsed him for re-election in 2020.

Party did not matter to him. People did.

Ashford was a successful congressman, innovative, flexible and bipartisan, delivering to his constituents a new Veterans Administration medical facility in Omaha funded through a unique public-private partnership and playing a bi-partisan leadership role in gaining funding for construction of a vital new runway at Offutt Air Force Base.

As the only Democrat in Nebraska's congressional delegation, he had the only tie to the Obama White House and developed a personal relationship with the president, who wrote him a letter of encouragement last month.

I'm not sure anyone disliked Brad Ashford.

But I know a lot of people who liked him a lot.

* * *

President Biden has named former Sen. Chuck Hagel, secretary of defense in the Obama administration, to membership on the board of visitors to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

The board provides advice and recommendations to the president related to morale and discipline, curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods and other matters related to the academy.

Hagel served in Vietnam as an Army sergeant and infantry squad leader and was twice wounded in combat. He is the only enlisted man to ever serve as secretary of defense.

* * *

Finishing up:

* This is the election year of wholly manufactured issues.

* Sen. Rich Pahls of Omaha, who has been absent recently from the Legislature because of health conditions, is on the path to recovery and expects to resume his legislative duties, I am told.

* Politico spotlights "Nebraska's surprisingly effective COVID strategy" in an in-depth look that could be a big political plus for Gov. Pete Ricketts while also acknowledging that Ricketts gradually departed from University of Nebraska Medical Center advice. One UNMC official, in the author's words, said he believes that "the state got too laissez-faire too quickly."

Reach the writer at 402-473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSdon

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Only hours after many residents of Cambridge returned to their homes Saturday, they were told to leave once again as fire crews from across the region, with assistance from the Nebraska National Guard, worked to contain a wildfire whipped by howling winds.

Residents of Cambridge, Bartley, Indianola and Wilsonville, communities in Furnas and Red Willow counties, were first told to evacuate Friday evening after the fire spread north and eventually west over drought-stricken areas.

The Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, which is coordinating the state's response, reported one person had died and at least three firefighters had suffered injuries battling fires.

Although no details are available, it's believed the person died during evacuation efforts in Cambridge, a community of about 1,000 people in southwest Nebraska.

Evacuation orders were lifted for all towns at about 12:30 p.m. Saturday. However, by 1:15 p.m., officials said the fire flared up again south of Cambridge and residents were told to be on standby for the evacuation order to be reinstated. They were told to leave a short time later.

Some roads are closed because of the fire, and where they are open, drivers are urged to use caution because of decreased visibility from smoke and blowing dust.

Anyone who is not a first responder is asked to stay away from the area.

The fire has blazed across an estimated 47,000 acres as of Saturday morning, starting near the Kansas state line and extending north to near the Harry Strunk Lake dam, the Valley Voice newspaper reported.

Fire departments from across the region are fighting the fire with assistance from the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, which called in Nebraska National Guard units, including a hand crew, two Blackhawk helicopters, one Lakota helicopter and several ground support trucks.

Residents of surrounding communities  including people from Arapahoe, whose homes were threatened in a wildfire earlier this month  stepped in to provide food and shelter for those evacuating their homes.

Arapahoe Public Schools served as one location where evacuees were provided with food, water and cots to stay the night. Others headed west toward McCook, where facilities were set up in churches and gyms.

The evacuation orders were not limited to the fire in southwest Nebraska. Macy, in northeast Nebraska, was evacuated because of a fire burning in that area.

Many of those who evacuated were able to take only valuables as they fled their homes.

Steve Ervin, a longtime Cambridge resident, grabbed photos, prescriptions and a few antiques and other sentimental items.

Ervin evacuated his home west of Cambridge at about 6:15 p.m. Friday and headed to stay with his son and daughter-in-law.

He feared it would be the last time he would see his house, which sits across from a field enrolled in a federal land conservation program.

He returned home Saturday morning, however, to find his house still standing.

Emotions were high," Ervin told the Journal Star in a Facebook message. "You just kept wondering, Do we have a home? If not, how do you start over at 70 years old?"

The fire that burned Friday night was stopped just 20 feet from Ervin's house, but consumed a shed, vehicle and a shelter belt.

Losses, yes, we had losses of mainly woodworking tools," he said. "But we have a house to go back to. God is good.

Reach the writer at 402-473-2657 or jebbers@journalstar.com

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Just south of Leighton Avenue, near the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's East Campus, sits a secluded white house.

It's been there for nearly a century and hasn't been occupied for years. It's difficult to spot from the road, but recently neighbors may have noticed more activity on the property.

A new chain-link fence put up around the perimeter. Workers hammering away. And last week, movers hauling in furniture.

Those recent renovations have transformed the once-dilapidated home into a new laboratory for students in UNL's forensic science program.

After years of being crammed into a storage room, those students will now have a bigger space to get hands-on experience with mock crime scene investigations.

It's a facility that program director Michael Adamowicz had asked for since his arrival at UNL in 2016.

Having a crime scene house is a really powerful asset for any forensic science program because it creates a learning laboratory," he said. "That is something you can't get in a normal university building. It's a space that you can't really replicate in a classroom.

The house, which at one point was scheduled for demolition, had fallen into disrepair and needed to be stripped to the studs.

Renovations began in 2018, but COVID-19 halted the project.

Even when renovations resumed last fall, the project faced skyrocketing prices of building materials.

During the time the house was unoccupied, several squatters and animals had come and gone, leaving drug paraphernalia, knee-high amounts of garbage and bodily fluids.

At one point they pulled a piece of drywall off ... and the entire space between two studs was up to about 3 feet high filled with dead roaches. So they pulled it off and all these dead roaches came spilling, Adamowicz said.

The storage room in Filley Hall that previously served as the classroom for mock crime scenes could only hold two to three students at a time. So the house, which is about 1,100 square feet, is more suitable.

"In the house we are able to do much more than just teach students how to analyze a crime scene," UNL lecturer Chuck Murrieta said. "We're able to teach them how to control a scene and gather quality data safely."

Faculty members  from firearms experts to forensic chemists  will set up evidence throughout the house and property.

Although students will spend most of their time finding weapons and bodily fluids inside the house, evidence can also be found outside the house.

The university has placed a junked car filled with bullet holes on the property for use during the mock investigations.

Fingerprints, footprints and tire tracks are spread out throughout the property for students to collect and later examine in a lab.

Murrieta, who was previously with Environmental Health and Safety at UNL, says he plans to use his skills in biosafety to teach students the fundamentals of lab safety.

"With this house we also get to focus on teaching students how to safely transport unknown materials to a lab, making sure no evidence or students get contaminated."

This summer, the university plans to add more furniture  from garage sales and donations  to the house in order to create more realistic crime scenes.

The program is also looking to partner with University Police and the Lincoln Police Department, which might use the facility for their own training purposes.

Reed Knutson, a senior forensic science major, says the house gives them more room for real-life situations.

"You have to carefully look through and examine what you think is evidence," he said, as well as "what needs to be carefully avoided."

Reach the writer at emejia@journalstar.com

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TOKYO  Japan welcomed the reelection of French President Emmanuel Macron as key to the unity of Group of Seven at a time when its members need to work together to end Russias invasion of Ukraine as soon as possible.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida congratulated Macron in his Twitter messages in both Japanese and French, saying, I hope to closely work with President Macron in a wide range of issues, including Russias invasion of Ukraine and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihiko Isozaki on Monday extended heartfelt congratulations to Macron on his reelection.

As we face a critical moment to end Russias outrageous aggression and defend the peaceful world order, the G-7 unity is required more than ever, and we plan to continue working closely with France led by President Macron, Isozaki said.

Japan, worried about the impact of Russian invasion of Ukraine in the East Asia where China is increasingly taking assertive military actions, has tried to play a greater role as part of G-7 and has joined in sanctions against Moscow and provided support for Ukraine in line with other members.

Isozaki called France an important, special partner for Japan that shares universal values including freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. He said Tokyo intends to strengthen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

CANBERRA, Australia  Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is welcoming President Emmanuel Macrons reelection to a second term in France as a great expression of liberal democracy.

Macron was scathing of Morrison after Australias conservative government canceled a 90 billion Australian dollar ($66 billion) submarine contract in September.

Macron accused Morrison of lying to him about the state of the French contract before a deal was announced for the United States and Britain to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. Morrison denied misleading Macron, who refused to take the Australian leaders phone calls.

On Monday, Morrison tweeted: Congratulations Emmanuel Macron on your reelection as President. Another great expression of liberal democracy in action in uncertain times.

We wish you & France every success, in particular your leadership in Europe and as an important partner to Australia in the Indo-Pacific, Morrison added.

KYIV, Ukraine  Ukraines leader has congratulated Emmanuel Macron on winning a second term as president of France  and beating a far-right rival seen as close to Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelenskyy called Macron a true friend of Ukraineon Sunday and expressed appreciation for his support.

Tweeting in French, Zelenskyy said: Im convinced that we will advance together toward new joint victories. Toward a strong and united Europe!

Macron has sought a diplomatic solution to Russias war in Ukraine. France has also sent significant weapons to Ukraine and Macron is planning more.

In a TV debate ahead of Sundays runoff, Macron assailed challenger Marine Le Pens past ties to Russia, notably a loan her party got from a Russian-Czech bank in 2014.

PARIS  Watching Frances presidential election results was especially stressful for Yasmina Aksas.

The 19-year-old law student could have been forced to remove her headscarf if far-right leader Marine Le Pen had won instead of incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

Speaking to AP as the first projections came in showing Macron in the lead, Aksas was visible relieved  but far from overjoyed.

Its still 40% of people voting for Le Pen. Its reassuring that its Macron but its not a victory, said Aksas, who is active in feminist and social justice organizations. It reflects nothing of what I think and what I identify with.

She expressed concern about extremist language and ideas that used to be limited to militant far-right groups but have now entered the mainstream.

Under Macrons presidency, she described encroaching limits on Muslims in the name of fighting extremism. They made it a problem for everyone while remaining vague about who the menace is.

So if you feel concerned about what theyre doing, like closing mosques, associations, when they say theyre targeting jihadists, you shouldnt feel targeted, otherwise you are suspected of not being part of the republic.

MORE STORIES:

 Macron vs Le Pen: France votes in tense presidential runoff

 Frances presidential rivals: Key moments, private lives

 EXPLAINER: How Frances old-school voting system works

 Follow all AP stories on France's 2022 presidential election at https://apnews.com/hub/france-election-2022

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

LONDON  A European economist says that if exit polls hold true and Emmanuel Macron wins the election against his right-wing challenger Marine Le Pen, France will most likely remain an engine of growth and progress in Europe for the next five years.

Economist Holger Schmieding says France has outperformed Germany for the past five years. He says France under Macron would likely remain on track for a sustained period of faster gains in employment and per-capita GDP. He says a dynamic France next to a still somewhat strong Germany is a major positive for Europe.

The economist says Macron has strengthened the French economy by more than any of his predecessors since Charles de Gaulle.

BERLIN  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was the first foreign leader to call President Emmanuel Macron and congratulate him on his reelection, Scholz office said.

The Federal Chancellor and the President confirmed their intention to continue the close and trusting relationship between Germany and France, not least in view of the current challenges such as the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, Scholz office said in a statement.

It also said the result signified a clear commitment to Europe and the European unification process, adding that Scholz and Macron agreed to meet as soon as possible.

The Czech prime minister also sent his congratulations to Macron.

France is our vital partner, we are keen on developing our great relationship further, Petr Fiala tweeted.

PARIS  Rights groups have breathed a sigh of relief at Marine Le Pens failure to become French president, but warned against complacency and urged the victor, Emmanuel Macron, to fight racial profiling and discrimination against Muslims, and better protect migrants.

Cecile Coudriou, head of Amnesty International France, cited egregious human rights failings under Macrons presidency including Frances treatment of refugees and asylum at its borders, systemic discrimination in the form of ethnic profiling by police, disproportionate and dangerously vague counter-terror laws, curbs to the right to protest, intrusive surveillance that impacts the right to privacy, failing to uphold climate commitments and selling arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Antiracism group SOS Racisme said : This victory, which might look large in a cursory analysis, is not so much a victory as a relief. The reality is that Marine Le Pen ... has progressed by about eight points in five years.

It criticized Macrons law against so-called separatism by radical Muslims and government ministers criticism of wokeism or Islamo-leftism. It blamed Macrons arrogance, (economic) liberalism, brutalization of the social movement and nods to the far right for worsening tensions in France. It is definitely not neutral to help trivialize the far right by choosing it as its opposition and winking at it, it said.

PARIS  President Emmanuel Macron said a simple Thank you! after winning reelection, and praised the majority who gave him five more years at the helm of France.

Macron also thanked people who voted for him not because they embrace his ideas but because they wanted to reject far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

Im not the candidate of one camp anymore, but the president of all of us, he said.

Macron comfortably won reelection to a second term Sunday, according to polling agencies projections.

He arrived on the plaza where his supporters gathered, beneath the Eiffel Tower, to the sound of the Ode to Joy, the European Unions anthem, hand in hand with his wife, Brigitte.

PARIS  Supporters of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen gathered at her election-night even in Paris Bois de Boulogne booed loudly as provisional results were announced.

But they quickly looked ahead to June legislative elections  as did Le Pen in her concession speech.

Francois Denormand, a retired dentist planning to run for a seat as a lawmaker for Le Pens National Rally party in Junes legislative elections said that what he called the third round starts tomorrow.

We must continue to fight, he said. We can lose the battle but not the war.

Nineteen-year-old Paul Renkert, waving a French flag, admitted that Im sad.

Renkert, who had traveled from the eastern Alsace region, said he had invested time in Le Pens campaign because I believe in the future of France.

He is looking ahead to the legislative elections and five years in the future when a new president is elected. Le Pen has not made known her intentions, but I dont think shell abandon us, he said.

Guests from abroad were among those invited to the soiree. Among them was Tom Lamont, with Belgiums far-right Vlaams Belang party, an ally of Le Pens National Rally. He, too, sent out a message of hope. Its a disappointment she lost but we see the right-wing movements is growing in France  and maybe in five years we will have a right-wing president here, he said.

MADRID  Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says that with the victory of Emmanuel Macron as projected by polling agencies, Democracy wins, Europe wins.

Citizens have chosen a France committed to a free, strong and fair EU, Sanchez, who is also leader of Spains Socialist Party, wrote, referring to the 27-nation European Union.

Sanchez, Portugals Antonio Costa and Germanys Olaf Scholz had published a joint open letter ahead of Sundays election presenting the vote as a choice between Macron, a defender of democracy in a strong European Union, and Marine Le Pen, an extreme-right candidate who openly sides with those who attack our freedom and democracy, values based on the French ideas of Enlightenment.

PARIS  French far-right figure Eric Zemmour, who failed to reach the runoff in the presidential election, has called for a nationalist coalition to be created in France's parliament.

Zemmour spoke after polling agencies projected that far-right leader Marine Le Pen, head of the National Rally party, had lost the presidential election to centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

Zemmour, who created his own party, Reconquest, in recent months, said the national bloc must get united.

He suggested such a coalition ahead of Junes parliamentary elections, with the aim to fight both Macrons party and the left.

Zemmour received 7% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election on April 10.

European leaders have been quick to congratulate French President Emmanuel Macron on his re-election.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has often sparred with Macron over Brexit and other issues, swiftly congratulated the re-elected president.

Calling France one of our closest and most important allies, Johnson said he looked forward to continuing to work together on the issues which matter most to our two countries and to the world.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi said that Macrons victory is splendid news for all of Europe.

He said France and Italy are working side by side, along with the other European partners, to construct a stronger, more cohesive, more just European Union, capable of being a protagonist in the greatest challenges of our times, starting with the war in Ukraine.

Portugals Prime Minister Antonio Costa says that, by voting for Emmanuel Macron, French people have demonstrated once again their commitment to the European project.

Costa, a socialist who was re-elected earlier this year in a landslide victory, wrote Sunday in a tweet that he was enthusiastic about working together with the centrist politician during the next four years.

The Portuguese prime minister made a case for voting to elect Macron in an open letter also signed by his Spanish and German counterparts, Pedro Sanchez and Olaf Scholz.

PARIS  Leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said Sunday that Marine Le Pens defeat in the French election is very good news for the unity of our people, and vowed to lead the fight against Emmanuel Macrons party in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Melenchon, who failed to reach the second round by a few hundred thousand votes and had urged his supporters not to vote for Le Pen, said Macrons presidential monarchy survives by default and under the constraint of a biased choice.

In his address, Melenchon exhorted Macrons opponents to vote in Junes parliamentary elections to choose a different path and elect a majority of leftist lawmakers. Melenchon said he would be prepared to lead an opposition government.

Courage, action, determination, always refusing fatality and resignation, Melenchon said.

BRUSSELS  Several European leaders and politicians have swiftly congratulated French President Emmanuel Macron for his reelection, as his far-right rival Marine Le Pen conceded defeat in Sundays presidential election.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted in French, together we will make France and Europe advance.

The Dutch prime minister also tweeted in French his hope to continue our extensive and constructive cooperation in EU and NATO.

In Germany, politicians around the political spectrum offered support, including from the pro-business Free Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and conservative Christian Social Union.

Many in Europe had worried Le Pen would undermine European unity and its post-war order.

PARIS  French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has conceded defeat in the presidential runoff, handing victory to incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

She said her unprecedented score in a presidential election represents a shining victory in itself.

The ideas we represent are reaching summits, she said.

French polling agencies are projecting that centrist Macron has won the runoff against Le Pen that took place Sunday.

PARIS  French polling agencies are projecting that centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron will win Frances presidential runoff Sunday, beating far right rival Marine Le Pen in a tight race that was clouded by the Ukraine war and saw a surge in support for extremist ideas.

If the projections are borne out by official results, Macron would be the first French president in a generation to win a second term, since Jacques Chirac in 2002. But he would face a divided nation and a battle to keep his parliamentary majority in legislative elections in June.

Five years ago, Macron won a sweeping victory over Le Pen to become the youngest French president. The margin is expected to be way smaller this time: Polling agencies Opinionway, Harris and Ifop-Fiducial projected that Macron would win between 57% and 58.5% of the vote, with Le Pen getting between 41.5% and 43%.

PARIS  Voter turnout is lower than usual in Frances presidential runoff Sunday, apparently reflecting voter frustration with both candidates, centrist President Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen.

Turnout at 5 p.m. Paris time (1500 GMT) stood at 63%, the Interior Ministry said. That was below the 65% at the same time in the last presidential runoff in 2017, when Macron overwhelmingly beat Le Pen, and the 72% in when Socialist Francois Hollande won the presidency in 2012.

Polls before Sundays election gave Macron a solid lead over Le Pen, but to keep it he needs the support of many left-wing voters who shunned both him and Le Pen in the first-round election on April 10. Many of those voters may choose to stay home this time instead.

Polling agency projections and early official results are expected after final voting stations close in France at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT).

LE TOUQUET, France  The two candidates for Frances presidential runoff have cast their ballots  and basked in adoring crowds outside their polling stations.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen went first, cheerily greeting election workers in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, in Frances struggling former industrial heartland. She emerged from the ballot booth beaming to drop it in a transparent box. Outside, she took selfies with supporters.

Then came incumbent Emmanuel Macron, who shook dozens of hands  and was handed a small child to hold up  on his journey from his family home in the resort town of Le Touquet on the English Channel to his voting station.

Inside, he greeted yet more people, posed for photographs with his wife Brigitte, and cast his ballot with a wink for the cameras. The voting booths were shielded by curtains in the red-white-and-blue of the French flag.

About 48.8 million voters are eligible to take part in the runoff, which is being watched around Europe. Early results are expected Sunday night.

PARIS  France began voting in a presidential runoff election Sunday with repercussions for Europes future.

Centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron is the front-runner, but he's fighting a tough challenge from far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

The centrist Macron is asking voters to trust him for a second five-year term despite a presidency troubled by protests, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. A Macron victory in this vote would make him the first French president in 20 years to win a second term.

The result of voting in France, a nuclear-armed nation with one of the worlds biggest economies, could also impact the conflict in Ukraine, as France has played a key role in diplomatic efforts and support for sanctions against Russia.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Press Release

April 23, 2022 Pangilinan tells Bureau of Plant Industry chief to resign amid smuggling issue VICE-PRESIDENTIAL aspirant Senator Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan on Saturday called for the resignation of the chief of the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), an attached agency of the Department of Agriculture (DA), amid the unabated smuggling of agricultural products in the country. In his interview on DZRH, the former food security czar did not mince his words, saying the BPI chief is good for nothing after revealing in a Senate hearing that the agency could not press charges against those behind the smuggling issue. "Inutile itong BPI. Pinagre-resign ko na nga eh. Dahil puro dahilan ang binibigay niya," Panglinan said of George Culaste, BPI's Director. At the continuation of the investigation by the Senate Committee of the Whole on vegetable smuggling last April 12, the BPI chief failed to provide an explanation for why smugglers continue to thrive and why the DA, particularly the agency he heads, is not filing cases these smugglers. Based on the Senate investigation, warehouses and the logistic companies carrying smuggled agricultural products were already named. However, DA has yet to act on this information. "Nagsampa na ba ng kaso dun sa mga smugglers ng carrots na meron nang warehouse na pangalan? Maraming warehouse. Wala. And then sinabi pa nung BPI, yung Department of Agriculture - Bureau of Plant Industry, wala daw silang magagawang magsampa ng kaso," Pangilinan said. "Eh talagang pagka ayaw, maraming dahilan. Pagka gusto, maraming paraan," he added. Pangilinan said that effective law enforcement is the key to addressing this smuggling issue. When he was Senate Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture in 2010, Pangilinan led a series of raids on warehouses of smuggled onions in Divisoria and Port of Manila. For him, this kind of political will should be replicated by agencies tasked to safeguard the rights of the citizens from smuggled goods. Pangilinan has vowed that under the leadership of a Robredo-Pangilinan administration, smuggling of agricultural products will be met with an iron fist, adding they will go after these "heartless" and "untouchables" smugglers. "Hahabulin at kakasuhan ng Team Robredo-Pangilinan ang mga walang-pusong smuggler. Walang untouchable sa smuggling sa ilalim ng Robredo-Pangilinan administration. No untouchables under our watch," Pangilinan said a day after the Senate hearing on vegetable smuggling last March. "Meron tayong batas. Ipapatupad natin ang batas gaya ng ginawa natin noon. Gamitin ang batas para protektahan ang karaniwang magsasaka at parusahan agad-agad ang mga lumalabag dito," he added.
The oldest son of former President Donald Trump has met with the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That's according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private session. The interview with Donald Trump Jr. took place Tuesday. He's one of nearly 1,000 witnesses interviewed by members of the House committee as they work to compile a record of the worst attack on the Capitol in more than two centuries. He's the second of Trumps children known to speak to the committee. His sister Ivanka Trump sat down with lawmakers for eight hours in early April.
OMAHA  A Bellevue man sought counsel from two California priests the day before and the day of his arrest in connection with the deaths of his two children.

Its not clear whether Adam Price, 36, went to confession or just approached the priests at their parishes in the San Francisco area, but the Bellevue man apparently made incriminating statements, according to court filings.

Prices attorney, Sarpy County Public Defender Tom Strigenz, has asked a judge to not allow any testimony about the conversations. Strigenz cited California law that prohibits disclosure of any privileged communications between a priest and a penitent. A penitent is defined as a person who repents their sins or wrongdoings and seeks forgiveness from God.

Price is charged with two counts of first-degree murder on allegations that he smothered his daughter, Emily, 5, and son, Theodore, 3, at his Bellevue home. Price and the childrens mother, Mary Nielsen, shared custody of the children  Nielsen was in Illinois at the time of their deaths and became concerned when she could not reach Price or her children.

Price first approached a retired priest, the Rev. Ulysses DAquila, at St. James Catholic Church in San Francisco on May 15, 2021.

He then traveled about half an hour south to the San Pedro Valley and approached the Rev. Jerome Foley at St. Peters Church in Pacifica, California, on May 16, 2021.

Both conversations are protected under California (law) and therefore the communication is presumed to have been made in confidence and the State has the burden of proof to establish that the communication was not confidential, Strigenz said.

Later that same Sunday, a family friend  prompted by concerns from Prices ex-wife  discovered the childrens bodies inside Prices Bellevue home.

Sarpy County District Judge George Thompson has not ruled on the defenses request to prohibit any testimony about Prices conversations with the priests. Thompson did grant the defenses request to apply California law to the case.

Both California and Nebraska have similar clergy-privilege laws that typically prohibit the use of private conversations between a pastor and parishioner.

The priests conversations may not be critical to prosecutors case. Bellevue police allege that Price made incriminating statements after they flew to California to interview him.

Price had been set to go to trial last month, but the trial was delayed at the defenses request. No new date has been set.

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The 2022 Legislature adjourned last week with an outsized scorecard of big-time accomplishments, fueled in part by a billion dollars in federal pandemic relief funding and an unanticipated flow of state revenue.

At the top of the list for many senators was enactment of the largest tax reduction package in state history, a bill (LB873) that included income tax cuts, increased property tax relief and phased elimination of state income taxation of Social Security income.

Along with that came epic water development initiatives, including a $500 million plan to build a South Platte River canal and reservoir system (LB1015) to claim and capture water flowing into the state from Colorado, a right secured by a century-old compact between the two states.

Another major proposal (LB1023) sets the stage for construction of a 4,000-acre lake between Lincoln and Omaha that would promote economic development and tourism while extending the state's water recreational opportunities to include the rapidly growing metropolitan complex.

That plan will await completion of studies to assure that the project would not interfere with the current and future supply of water to the cities of Lincoln and Omaha, along with an environmental impact study.

"There are still hurdles," Speaker Mike Hilgers said, "still so much work to do."

But there was more, much more, in this legislative session's list of projects, including allocation of federal funding (LB1024) to build housing and create economic development opportunities in North Omaha and South Omaha.

The Legislature also set aside funding to build a new state prison to replace the aging State Penitentiary in Lincoln without yet pulling the trigger to begin construction.

"It's incredible what we have done," Hilgers, of Lincoln, said after the Legislature adjourned on the 60th and final day of its 2022 session.

An onslaught of filibusters this year grabbed headlines and slowed the process, but did not reduce the impact of the end product.

The huge allocation of funding and commitment to major projects was "very disciplined" in terms of careful consideration of ongoing costs and the future fiscal impact, Hilgers said, as were the tax cuts when measured against the long-term impact of declining state revenue.

In the end, at the insistence of Appropriations Committee Chairman John Stinner of Gering, more than a billion dollars was stored away in the state's cash reserve, or rainy day fund, as a protective safeguard.

"I always thought our income taxes were too high," Hilgers said. "A lot of working parents in my district in Lincoln are taxed at the highest rate."

Looking at the 2022 legislative scorecard, he said, "it's incredible what we have done."

On a long list that he compiled and shared with senators on the final day, Hilgers said he believes funding for a new University of Nebraska Medical Center rural health complex in Kearney (LB792) may be one of the most impactful developments for rural Nebraska.

The end result of this Legislature's accomplishments reflects collaboration with Gov. Pete Ricketts, Hilgers said, a factor that may have been reflected in the governor's effusive praise for the Legislature's work product.

"Wow!" Ricketts exclaimed in his farewell remarks to the Legislature on Wednesday prior to adjournment of the 2022 legislative session.

"What fantastic work you have done," the governor declared.

"We did not agree on everything, but we had a very good collaborative relationship," Hilgers said during the interview in his Capitol office a day later.

Hilgers said he would place the tax reduction package "probably at the top of the list" of legislative accomplishments, with Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn, chairwoman of the Legislature's Revenue Committee, leading the way in shaping and reshaping the proposal.

In the end, Hilgers said, "we got to say no to fewer people" during this legislative session.

But the reality is that "a lot of the projects would not have happened without federal ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds," he said.

"There are still hurdles ahead," Hilgers said, "so much work to do on the lake."

Hilgers may no longer be a senator next January; he is a Republican candidate for attorney general this year. But, he said, he will try to "remain involved as much as the law will allow" in attempting to bring the proposed lake to fruition.

Sen. Mike McDonnell of Omaha, a leader in the so-called STARWARS (Statewide Tourism and Recreational Water Access and Resource Sustainability) legislative effort, will still be actively engaged in the process, Hilgers said.

Hilgers said the legislative session "moved the ball forward" in terms of law enforcement legislation, although it ultimately rejected criminal justice sentencing reform proposals that emerged from a legislative study in conjunction with the Crime and Justice Institute.

The Legislature approached the implementation of casinos in Nebraska in "a responsible way," Hilgers said, by limiting voter-approved casinos to six current horse racetracks (LB876) pending a study to be completed by 2025.

Looking at the total work product, Hilgers said, "it is incredible what we got done."

Reach the writer at 402-473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSdon

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I am a health care connoisseur.

I've survived one kind of cancer, gotten another kind and am trying to be a two-time survivor (so far, so good). I've been treated in most of Lincoln's major medical facilities and at the Mayo Clinic.

Nebraska health care providers adapted during pandemic The pandemic accelerated a shift to more outpatient or same-day surgeries and sped the expansion of telehealth, among other changes, Nebraska health care leaders say.

I've had chemo, radiation and more than 30 surgeries in the last six years. I've even got my favorite anesthesia and hospital gown style.

I've got firsthand knowledge of every step of the health care continuum, from a 911 call and ambulance ride to paying that final bill.

And let me say, I am big fan  of the medicine, the people who administer it and people who support them.

One of my children has severe respiratory issues. She's been rushed by ambulance, helicopter and jet to hospitals in Lincoln, Omaha and Des Moines, Iowa, when there were no beds closer to home.

The folks who have taken care of her  including the team that sat by her bedside 24 hours a day for days on end while a machine did the work of her lungs  have my eternal gratitude.

We all have our headaches  literal and figurative  but health care in the Heartland is something special. And it's something that's evolving all the time. That's why, starting today, we are pleased to launch Health Matters in the Heartland.

This monthly series is a collaborative effort between the Lincoln Journal Star and Omaha World-Herald and brought to readers with the help of presenting sponsor Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska and a group of monthly sponsors.

With each installment, we will look at an aspect of health care, how it's changing, the impact of COVID-19 and what consumers need to know. An in-depth story will be complemented by multimedia content, additional coverage and features online, and it will be gathered as the series progresses in a convenient, central spot online at journalstar.com/exclusive/health-matters.

Today we look at the forces that are driving care and costs after COVID-19. Next month we examine the changing landscape regarding mental health care. In future months, we'll look at topics such as technology, employment, virtual care and the challenges of delivering top-notch service to every corner of the state.

We couldn't do this without dedicated journalists and the support of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska and our other sponsors, and we are grateful for their help in telling these important stories about a profession in transition.

Understanding the changes and challenges, the people and the policy is critical, because no field touches us the way health care does. It is, quite literally, a matter of life and death. Thats why Health Matters in the Heartland.

Dave Bundy is editor or the Lincoln Journal Star. Reach him at dbundy@journalstar.com.

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April 18-22

This list is not comprehensive. Municipalities are listed as they appear on the criminal complaint. Suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. To see mugshots of the accused, visit journaltimes.com/gallery. Additional information about the complaints can be found at: journaltimes.com/news/local/crime-and-courts.

Nicholas J. Altman, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, unauthorized use of an entity's identifying information or documents, possession of narcotic drugs, possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, felony bail jumping.

Olumide C. Awosika, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, possession with intent to deliver/distribute/manufacture THC (less than or equal to 200 grams), resisting an officer, possession of drug paraphernalia.

Ronald (aka Redrum Badillo) S. Badillo, 1400 block Marquette Street, Racine, attempt criminal trespass, possession of drug paraphernalia, disorderly conduct.

Raymond D. Bahr, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, possession of narcotic drugs, possession of cocaine, possession of drug paraphernalia, misdemeanor bail jumping.

Allan M. Brown, Countryside, Illinois, escape.

Terry T. Canady, 900 block of Wolff Street, Racine, possession of drug paraphernalia.

Perry (aka Allan Lott) Carothers Sr., 1200 block of Schiller Street, Racine, obstructing an officer, misdemeanor bail jumping, misdemeanor theft.

Sherice J. Charleston, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, operating with restricted controlled substance in blood (2nd offense), operating without a license (2nd offense within 3 years).

Adonnis F. Clouson, 4800 block of North Green Bay Road, Racine, operating without a license (2nd offense within 3 years).

Paul Eugene Doerr, 1400 block of 11th Avenue, Union Grove, misdemeanor battery (domestic abuse assessments), disorderly conduct (domestic abuse assessments).

Michael J. Eggleston, Mount Sterling, Kentucky, sex offender registry violation.

Dallas David Gomez, 2300 block of Superior Street, Racine, retail theft (intentionally conceal less than or equal to $500), possession of drug paraphernalia, misdemeanor bail jumping.

Erik L. Gomez-Hanson, 100 block of 22nd Avenue, Racine, misdemeanor battery, disorderly conduct, possession of THC, misdemeanor bail jumping.

Gilbert Gonzalez, Delavan, Wisconsin, misdemeanor battery, criminal damage to property, disorderly conduct.

Lonnie L. Grandberry, 800 block of Hamilton Street, Racine, misdemeanor battery (domestic abuse assessments), criminal damage to property (domestic abuse assessments), disorderly conduct (domestic abuse assessments), misdemeanor bail jumping.

Clinton J. Gumieny, Muskego, Wisconsin, possession of methamphetamine, operate motor vehicle while revoked (4th+).

Willie C. Hayes, 2000 block of Washington Avenue, Racine, attempt armed robbery with threat of force.

Shamont Lakee Howell, 1800 block of Kearney Avenue, Racine, manufacture/deliver heroin (less than or equal to 3 grams), manufacture/deliver cocaine (les than or equal to 1 gram), deliver of schedule I or II narcotics.

Quincy Hunter Jr., 3500 block of Monarch Drive, Racine, battery by prisoners, substantial battery, disorderly conduct.

Demontez Lamar Jones, 600 block of 10th Street, Racine, attempt armed robbery with threat of force, obstructing an officer, manufacture/deliver cocaine (less than or equal to 1 gram, possession with intent to deliver/distribute a controlled substance on or near a park), maintaining a drug trafficking place.

Jason F. Jones, 1600 block of Packard Avenue, Racine, burglary (room), misdemeanor theft, criminal damage to property, entry into a locked building, misdemeanor bail jumping.

Sydney E. Jones, Green Bay, Wisconsin, possession of a firearm by a felon, possession of THC, carrying a concealed weapon.

Ryan T. Langdon, 1000 block of Parker Avenue, Racine, burglary of a building or dwelling, felony theft of movable property (between $2,500-$5,000), criminal damage to property, possession of drug paraphernalia.

Christopher J. Maldonado, 1000 block of Lockwood Avenue, Racine, misdemeanor battery (domestic abuse assessments), criminal damage to property (domestic abuse assessments), disorderly conduct (domestic abuse assessments), misdemeanor bail jumping (domestic abuse assessments).

Terral L. Martin, 800 block of Park Avenue, Racine, possession with intent to deliver/distribute/manufacture THC (less than or equal to 200 grams), felony bail jumping, misdemeanor bail jumping, maintaining a drug trafficking place.

Nyla J. Martin-Farmer, 2100 block of Slauson Avenue, Racine, obstructing an officer, resisting an officer, possession of THC, disorderly conduct.

Jonathan M. Martinez, Gurnee, Illinois, first degree intentional homicide (use of a dangerous weapon), attempt armed robbery with use of force.

Michael J. Minniear, 11500 block of Spring Street, Sturtevant, knowingly violating a harassment restraining order (domestic abuse assessments).

Keri L. Monheim, 100 block of South Pine Street, Burlington, operate motor vehicle while revoked.

Traoun D. Oliver-Thomas, 200 block of North Memorial Drive, Racine, possession of a firearm by a felon (firearm mandatory minimum enhancer).

Rebecca L. Price, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, possession of cocaine, possession of drug paraphernalia, possess/illegally obtained prescription, obstructing an officer, misdemeanor bail jumping.

Keyondra S. Ratliff, 6500 block of Cedarhedge Drive, Mount Pleasant, attempting to flee or elude an officer.

Donzel (ak Gutta) Ocie Riggins, 300 block of Daisy Lane, Racine, delivery/distribution of schedule I or II narcotics, maintaining a drug trafficking place, felony bail jumping, possession with intent to deliver narcotics, possession with intent deliver amphetamine, possession of THC.

Devonja Rogers, Chicago, Illinois, second degree sexual assault.

Leah M. Ruenz-McKinley, Genoa City, Wisconsin, disorderly conduct.

Cody A. Sobbe, Franksville, Wisconsin, disorderly conduct, misdemeanor bail jumping.

Babi R. Thomas-Moore, 900 block of 18th Street, Racine, criminal damage to property, disorderly conduct.

Agnieszka Wojtowicz, Algonquin, Illinois, felony personal ID theft (financial gain), theft by acquisition of a credit card, misdemeanor theft.

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KENOSHA  In recent weeks, Ukrainians around the world have worked to raise money and goods to send to their war-ravaged homeland.

On April 30, two Ukrainian-born Kenosha residents will offer art and T-shirts to bolster humanitarian efforts in Ukraine at an open house at DeBerges Framing and Gallery, 2008 63rd St.

Offered for sale will be pieces of traditional Ukrainian ribbon embroidery by Slava Buchkovich, and printed T-shirts from Annya Knautz.

Wearable art

For Knautz, its all about the children, particularly those in Ukraines orphanages.

Raised in an orphanage in Ternopil, a city about 73 miles east of Lviv, Knautz was adopted at age 9 by Kenosha residents Tim and Kathy Knautz.

Today, the 39-year-old is working to raise money for other orphans still living in Ternopil.

One of her fundraising projects has been the printing of T-shirts emblazoned with a handprint into which is set the outline of Ukraine.

She obtained the image from the internet and customized it. Next to the handprint are the words Pray for Ukraine. Printed on the back is John 14:18. The passage is, Never will I leave you an orphan, I will come to you,  Knautz said.

Knautz printed some of the shirts herself and the rest were produced by a local commercial printer.

Knautz acknowledges the importance of collecting medical and military goods for Ukraine, but says more can be done for the children still there.

And thats why Im doing what Im doing. I was an orphan, I was given a chance, why not give back what was given to me?

All of the proceeds from the sales of her shirts will go to the non-profit organization Orphans Future Ukraine.

Ribbon embroidery

Slava Buchkovich has been creating traditional Ukrainian ribbon embroidery since she arrived in Kenosha nearly 30 years ago. She had pieces displayed at the Kenosha Museum, sold them at art fairs and has taught the craft at area art galleries and craft stores.

Ribbon embroidery consists of painting flowers using thread, ribbon and yarn. The embroidered stitches range from miniscule flower buds to broad satiny petals, from three-dimensional roses, and thin wisps of wild grass to very perky daisies.

Most of the brilliant bouquets and floral fields are sewn onto black cloth. For display the pieces are mounted on boards and framed without glass.

Buchkovich taught herself the art of ribbon embroidery in the 1990s to help combat depression during the long term illness of her daughter Maria.

She had come to the U.S. in 1991 to find medical treatment for Maria, injured by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986.

We were looking for cure, but there was none to be found, she said.

Seeking a special school for Maria, they came to Kenosha in 1994. Marias condition deteriorated and she died in December 2020.

To get through the dark days, Buchkovich turned to ribbon embroidery. When I embroider I feel better, I feel my mind not so depressed. I do not know how to paint but I paint with my ribbons!

Recently Buchkovich created a field of multi-colored wild flowers with the word Bucha, embroidered in yellow and blue, the colors of the Ukrainian flag. She says it is a memorial to those who perished during Russian attacks on Bucha in March.

Ten of Buchkovichs works will be at the sale with proceeds going to Razom for Ukraine, a non-profit organization supporting humanitarian aid efforts.

In addition to ribbon embroidery, Buchkovichs on-sale crafts will include temari balls, a Japanese craft of colored threads wound around balls in geometric patterns and traditional Ukranian straw spider mobiles.

To assist in the fundraising efforts, the shop donated the cost of the framing of Buchkovichs pieces.

Fundraising with art

In recent weeks Buchkovich decided to sell her entire inventory of ribbon art to help those in her homeland.

Last month she went to DeBerges to have a piece framed and co-owner Barb Deberge-Henken suggested she sell her things at the shop.

Grateful for the opportunity, Buchkovich said, I came here and found these angels!

She chose us and we feel so lucky! Deberge-Henken said.

Shortly after that, Kathy Knautz, another regular customer, came in wearing one of Annyas shirts and Deberge-Henken asked her if Annya might want to sell the shirts there as well.

Any of the items not sold during the April 30 open house will remain at the store for sale, Deberge-Henken said.

Donations to Razom for Ukraine and Orphans Future Ukraine will also also be welcome.

I think its pretty awesome and were honored to do this, DeBerge-Henken said. You think, What do you do? What can you do to help? You can send money, but this another way to help.

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1. Yes. If inflation remains high and interest rates rise, the economy will be a major factor.

2. Yes. If the nation goes into a recession, it will be the issue on the minds of most voters.

3. No. Inflation will likely moderate by then; if so, the economy wont be a major issue.

4.No. All the turmoil involving Russia and Roe v. Wade will probably take center stage.

5. Unsure. Its hard to say how the economy will play with voters at this point.

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Press Release

April 24, 2022 De Lima urges IPs to vote for leaders who will not revise, violate their history Re-electionist Senator Leila M. de Lima joined the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) and the people of Cordillera in celebrating the Cordillera Day today (April 24) honoring the heroes who sacrificed their lives to preserve the people's ancestral lands. In her message for the 38th Cordillera Day, De Lima urged indigenous peoples (IPs) to help ensure that their history and heritage will not be revised, attacked, and violated by making sure to vote for leaders who will respect and protect their rights, come the May 9 national elections. "Kasama ninyo ako sa inyong pagdiriwang ngayon at sa mga hangaring nagsusulong ng inyong karapatan, tradisyon, kabuhayan, at kalikasan. At matatag na kasangga ninyo ako sa hustisyang panlipunan at karapatang pantao. "Nakikiisa rin ako sa pag-alala sa inyong magigiting na mga bayani at martir sa Cordillera na nagbuwis ng buhay para protektahan ang inyong lupaing ninuno at malayang pamumuhay sa komunidad," she said. "Dalangin ko rin ang isang payapa at malinis na halalan sa Cordillera at ang makapagluklok kayo ng mga lider na totoong lingkod-bayan at nagsusulong ng interes at kapakanan ng inyong mga kababayan at rehiyon," she added. The Cordillera Day is commemorated to honor Macliing Dulag, a Kalinga elder who was murdered by government soldiers on April 24, 1980. Macliing led the opposition to the World Bank-funded Chico Dam project that would have displaced indigenous peoples. According to the CPA, their group had led the annual commemoration and celebration of Cordillera Day since 1985, which, it added, "later evolved into a mass movement event, tackling regional issues confronting the indigenous peoples of the Cordillera." De Lima maintained that this year's celebration is momentous as it is crucial, considering that the country is now inching closer to the May 9 polls. "Because today's occasion will not only put front and center the triumphs and struggles of the Cordilleran people, but also what may become of the country and Cordillera in the next six years and the opportunities for our people," she said. "Let's all work together to bring the government back to the people where everyone's rights for self-determination and exercise of their beliefs will be respected and protected, where the concerns of the people are the focus and priority of the government, and the history and heritage of Cordillera and the indigenous peoples will be celebrated and not revised, attacked, and violated," she added. De Lima noted that the people of Cordillera has been facing enormous threats since Macliing Dulag death from destructive mining, mammoth dams, and invasive profit-oriented projects which arrogantly disregard the people's Free Prior and Informed Consent. "Maging ang inyong agrikultura at pagsasaka ay tinatamaan ng talamak na vegetable smuggling na nangyayari ngayon. "Marami din sa inyong kababayan ang naging biktima ng red-tagging at patuloy na nakakaranas ng pag-abuso sa karapatang pantao dahil sa inyong ipinaglalaban para sa lupa, sa inyong kultura at komunidad, at ang inyong kalayaang isabuhay ang paniniwala sa ilalim ng demokrasya," she said. "This struggle is heightened by the pandemic for the last two years and the repressive political environment we have had for the last six years. I am fully aware of that as I am also a victim of the harsh and vindictive occupant in the seat of power," she added.
Killeen, TX (76540)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low around 75F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low around 75F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph.
KEARNEY - A portion of a Kearney apartment complex is unihabitable after fire broke out on a balcony Friday night.

At 10:41 p.m. the Kearney Volunteer Fire Department responded to "E" building of Grandview Apartments at 1319 E. 45th St. in east Kearney. The fire started on the second floor balcony of an apartment, said Jason Whalen, KVFD deputy fire chief.

Residents of the apartment were asleep when the fire started, but safely escaped. The fire spread to the attic of the building where Whalen said it caused some damage to the structural components of the roof.

Residents of all 16 units of the building were evacuated and were displaced. The American Red Cross is assisting those residents. It's unclear how many people are effected.

No injuries were reported.

The apartment where the fire started, and the apartment below it, both received extensive water damage.

KVFD and an investigator with the Nebraska Fire Marshal's office determined the fire started from the disposal of improper smoking materials on the balcony.

Two engines and one ladder trucks, along with several firefighters responded to the scene.
KEARNEY  Victoria Morrow sits down to write for some very simple reasons.

I enjoy it, she said. I love history and I love mysteries and I love stories with happy endings, especially if the situation that the hero and heroine are going through is challenging. I like to see a positive resolution. I believe in the strength and character of the human spirit in difficult times.

Whether she sets her characters in the middle of war, as in a historical romance, or in a piece of contemporary fiction, Morrow wants the outcome to show a positive resolution where good triumphs over evil.

That may sound idealistic to some people, the Kearney-based author said, but it is in keeping with my personal belief system.

Morrow squeezed in her writing between work, family and school. In addition to earning a degree in psychology with a special education minor, she worked at two jobs  and still found time to publish four novels with two more in the works.

She published her first novel, The Eagle and the Dove, in 2007. Others followed until Morrow reached a breaking point, trying to balance work, school and life. She asked her editor at Pocket Books, John Scognamiglio, to release her from her contract.

He said, Are you sure, Vicki? Morrow recalled. I was emotional, but could not handle any more between work, home and writing, so Pocket released me from my contract. Maggie Crawford, the vice president of Pocket Books, gave me her card at a writers convention in New York and said, When youre ready, come on back.

After dealing with a series of deaths in her family, a painful divorce and other life events, Morrow found herself drawn back to writing.

If you hold fast to your faith and you hold fast to your beliefs and your morals and your values, even in the most challenging times, even if you dont necessarily see the positive results, somehow someone will benefit in the future, she said. Thats what we all hope for as a positive, good future  if not for ourselves, for our children and our grandchildren.

The author talks about little victories in life, the events and lessons that affirm the common good of society.

The plot of The Eagle and the Dove details the life of Katherine Kelly Dory, a young woman living in the lap of luxury in Boston in the 1880s. She accompanies her father out West where he travels because of his work with the railroads. After an abduction, Katherine gets rescued by Jesse McCallum, a man living on the edges of society in the Old West. They fall in love  except that Katherine still feels the pull of her life in Boston and her fiance who always treated her in the most delicate ways.

Morrow strongly believes in the power of good vs. evil.

My writing always has to end on a positive note, she said. If I read a book where the ending is tragic, regardless of how great the writer is, I personally feel cheated. There may be a tragedy where the hero doesnt make it, but there should be something there to show hope and that something good will come of it.

Morrow started her latest project with a different literary form.

I kind of got off on a tangent for the last month, she said. Ive been a writer of poetry all my life but theres never really been much of an audience for it. Its always just been something Ive enjoyed doing. Well, I wrote a lyrical poem called Zoe.

Morrow worked with a layout designer who encouraged her to expand the poem. The project now contains about 20,000 words and Morrow expects it to publish soon.

Zoe turned out to be a lot of fun to write, she said. Its a lyrical poem, like Beowulf, a fantasy poem with a happy ending. Its my next book to come out. I think theyre doing the copyright work on it now. It should be out in a few weeks.

After that, Morrow expects to publish The Eagle and the Rose, part of her American Eagle series.

As a member of the Nebraska Writers Guild, Morrow understands the benefits of working with other writers who support her work.

They are really quite good people, talented, original, warm, compassionate and nurturing, Morrow noted. Its lovely place for an accomplished writer or a novice. Nebraska Writers Guild is first rate.
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KEARNEY  Vanessa Lo was willing to pitch in wherever she was needed Saturday, even if it meant handling a nail gun for the first time.

The University of Nebraska at Kearney student admits that part of her community service project was a little nerve-wracking, but she enjoyed learning to install siding at the Habitat for Humanity build site at 17th Street and Avenue P.

I want to help as much as I can so when I drive by this house I can say, I did that, said Lo, a junior from Lexington who will start pharmacy school this fall. It makes you feel good when you can do something like this to help other people.

About 25 members of UNKs Kearney Health Opportunities Program (KHOP) assisted with the house construction as part of The Big Event, the universitys largest single-day service project.

Organized by UNK Student Government, the annual event allows Lopers to give back to the community and say thanks for all the support Kearney provides. Roughly 550 students from a variety of campus organizations participated this year.

The Kearney community does a lot for us and its important for us to give back, said UNK senior Henrique Adabo, a pre-medical student from Columbus.

Adabo, a member of KHOP and the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, also signed up for The Big Event as a freshman. He believes it exemplifies the UNK student body and their dedication.

The fact that nearly 600 students are participating is a very special thing, Adabo said. I dont think youll see that at many other universities.

UNK students volunteered at about 60 job sites in the Kearney area, completing spring cleaning, assisting with yardwork, landscaping and painting, building picnic tables and tackling other tasks.

Chapter President Taryn Hadwiger and 12 more members of the Alpha Phi sorority walked the ditches along U.S. Highway 30 while collecting aluminum cans, plastic bottles and other discarded items in big, orange trash bags. The cleanup covered a 1-mile section on the citys east edge adopted by Kearney Elks Lodge #984. Hadwiger was also part of a similar project a couple weeks ago just west of Kearney, where the Order of Omega Greek honor society sponsors a stretch of highway.

At UNK, we want to get involved in the Kearney community. Were here to help and were here to support them as much as they support us, said Hadwiger, a junior from Amherst.

Around 60 members of Alpha Phi took part in Saturdays event, with students spread across multiple locations. Spencer Kuhl was happy to have them at the highway cleanup site.

Our Kearney Elks Lodge members are aging and its harder and harder to get volunteers, he said. This allows us to continue doing this project. Without them, it would be harder to accomplish, thats for sure.

For students like Lo, The Big Event serves as inspiration by showing them how to stay involved in community service after graduation.

Were literally building a house for somebody, she said. Thats proof that we can make an impact in the community.
As I flew from Chicago to Kearney late Monday morning, I stared down at the Great Plains from my window seat and saw nothing but flat land as dry as a beat-up old shoe from the lack of rain.

Wednesday, a Dawson County friend who has farmed with her husband for decades told me its too dry to begin planting now. It was such a dry winter that right now there isnt enough moisture in the ground to get the corn up. Ive never seen anything like this, she said.

Her words made me pause. I am not from here. I am from Cleveland, where it rains frequently. Thats where Id spent Easter weekend. Daffodils and hyacinths were blooming, and the grass was that bright green hue so inviting after a long winter. Smudges of green clung to the fingertips of tree branches. The rebirth of spring was in full bloom.

Not here. It faded away close to the Missouri River, as if Id stepped back into February.

This drought is real. Ive never lived in a place that has grass fires, but theyre happening every day. Ive never lived in a place with red flag warnings and daily harsh thrashings by the wind. The comment from a lifelong Nebraskan that Ive never seen anything like this made me catch my breath.

I remembered The Dust Bowl, a Ken Burns documentary a few years ago on PBS. It told about clear mornings, storm clouds of dust by noon and dust that seeped in under closed windows and locked doors. Rural children died of pneumonia. Crops dried up. Lives were ruined. Its focus was Oklahoma and Texas, but Nebraska was on the edge of that, friends here said.

That documentary also warned about immense farms here draining the Ogallala aquifer, but friends here scoffed when I asked them about that. They assured me that theres enough water down below for centuries. Thats not what the documentary said, but I dont argue, even when I see orange and red amoeba-shaped blobs on the Weather Channel indicating drought spilling across this nations belly.

No, we focus on ordinary things, like why it takes so long for crews to unload luggage from planes at Kearney Regional Airport. On Monday, we 49 passengers trooped off the plane and circled like a horde of vultures around the baggage claim ramp. We waited. We waited. We waited.

I watched passengers boarding the plane for the return flight to Chicago. I saw their luggage slowly ride up the ramp into the plane. Where was our luggage? It had been taken off that plane, I hoped, yet the airport baggage claim door was fastened as tight as if it were padlocked.

We passengers waited politely. One man had flown in from New Jersey on business. Hed never been to Kearney, and he seemed apprehensive. Another woman grumbled about canceled flights. Two weeks ago, she was headed home to Kearney from Chicago, but her flight got canceled, so she was re-routed to Omaha. She had to rent a car to drive home, but rental cars are pricey right now, especially one-way rental cars, and she was not happy.

When the pilot welcomed us aboard, he called the city Keer-ney. He must not fly this leg very often.

Masks were still required Monday, so I was wearing one. As we waited for take-off, the flight attendant announced that masks were required on this flight, and if you dont have one, we will provide one.

Huh? Who didnt have one at that point? Masks were required at the TSA checkpoint. They were required to board the plane. They were required to enter the plane itself. Why did we get another mask announcement after fastening our seat belts?

Our plane was an hour late in leaving Chicago. As I watched snow flurries drift past the airplane window, I recalled Easter afternoon, when we went to Daffodil Hill at Clevelands beautiful Lake View Cemetery. Hundreds of thousands of daffodils carpet Daffodil Hill every spring. It is a joy, a visual renaissance. The world was reborn  until I returned to Nebraska. Here, we wait for rain.
Fort McCoys total economic impact for fiscal year 2021 was an estimated $1.93 billion, above the $1.479 billion reported for FY 2020, garrison officials announced.

The data was compiled by Fort McCoys Plans, Analysis and Integration Office.

Workforce payroll, operating costs, and other expenditures totaled $481.6 million for FY 2021 compared to $369 million for FY 2020.

A total of 17,753 personnel worked or were guests at Fort McCoy in FY 2021  1,702 civilians, 2,023 military, 1,452 contract employees and 12,576 Afghan guests. This includes all personnel who were on post during Operation Allies Welcome and with Task Force McCoy.

Approximately 62 percent of the workforce lives within Monroe County. The total FY 2021 workforce payroll for civilian and military personnel was $195.47 million.

FY 2021 operating costs of $249.88 million included utilities, physical plant maintenance, repair and improvements, new construction projects, purchases of supplies and services, as well as salaries for civilian contract personnel working at Fort McCoy.

Other expenditures accounted for $36.25 million and covered $332,635 in payments to local governments (including land permit agreements, school district impact aid, etc.) as well as $35.9 million in discretionary spending in local communities by service members training and residing at Fort McCoy.

Other factors of economic impact for the fiscal year included $39.4 million in military construction on post.

Fort McCoy supported training for 116,053 troops in FY 2021, which ran from Oct. 1, 2020, to Sept. 30, 2021. The training population included reserve- and active-component personnel from throughout the military.

Larry Sharp, chief of the Fort McCoy Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security Training Coordination Branch, said the training numbers include Army Reserve Soldiers; National Guard service members; and active-duty troops from not just the Army but also other services, such as the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force.

Training statistics reflect many types of training opportunities that take place at the installation by active- and reserve-component forces and other governmental agencies, according to DPTMS.

During fiscal year 2021, training included several Cold-Weather Operations Course sessions; battle-drill (weekend) training; annual training; mobilization; institutional training; and numerous exercises, including a Warrior Exercise, Combat Support Training Exercise, Diamond Saber, Global Medic, and the level III Army Forces Command (mobilization exercise Pershing Strike 21).

The Fort McCoy Executive Summary, available on the installation website, home.army.mil/mccoy, shows the installation makes continuous improvements to provide a training plethora of training capabilities for service members.

Throughout the last decade, Fort McCoy experienced unprecedented facility modernization, training area development and expansion, increased training and customer support capability, and improved quality-of-life opportunities, the summary states. From unmanned aerial vehicles, to urban training facilities, to live-fire ranges and virtual-training environments, Fort McCoy is prepared to meet the training needs of the Army in the 21st century.

A gross multiplier index of 4.0 was used to determine the overall effect of the expenditures in the local economy.

The GMI measures the number of times a dollar turns over within a region and was developed by the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

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The UW-La Crosse History Departments Hear, Here project has jumped across the pond this spring  engaging communities in one of Europes smallest countries.

Thomas Cauvin, an associated professor of public history at the University of Luxembourg, wanted to bring Hear, Here to the city of Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, after learning of the unique way to communicate history through multiple narratives, including voices that are normally overlooked.

The city launched the project in April as one of five, grant-funded public history outreach activities to create multiple ways to engage the community in history, explains Joella van Donkersgoed, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg who is coordinating the project. The project is named HistorEsch, the Luxembourgish word for historically.

History is often written from the point of view of the rich and educated, and most of our stories and the things we do (in Esch-sur-Alzette) are about worker and migrant history, says van Donkersgoed. These are histories that really matter to the people who live here.

Luxembourg is the second international location to develop a Hear, Here project, after London, Ontario, Canada.

The basis of the original Hear, Here project, developed by UW-L history professor Ariel Beaujot and her students in 2015, is that everyday people with different perspectives share in the telling of local history. The project provides audio recordings of stories from people of all backgrounds at specific downtown La Crosse locations. They are accessed by dialing a toll-free number at orange street signs.

Since 2015, the Hear, Here project has branched out to include many more stories, poetry and partnerships with other UW-L departments, K-12 education and community organizations. It also won two national awards, one in the U.S. and one in Canada, as well as a provincial award in Ontario.

Beaujot is excited the project is not only being replicated but also expanded, with the implementation of multiple languages in the Luxembourg city. Because Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg is multilingual, sitting on the border of France and Luxembourg, the audio recordings will be available in three different languages: Luxembourgish, French and English. In La Crosse, audio site recordings are recorded in English only thus far.

A blast furnace is the first stop in HistorEsch

Esch-Sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, will launch the project at five sites with historical significance in the city this year while it is the European Capital of Culture. More information about this initiative can be found at https://esch2022.lu/en/aboutesch/.

The first stop is at a blast furnace at Belval (industry terrain) at Esch-sur-Alzette, built in the late 1970s. This furnace and others have become a symbol for the Luxembourg steel industry.

At the site, one former worker explains seeing the furnace and becoming nauseous. You became dizzy when you saw this monster. I thought to myself: Take a hold of yourself, you have to work on it, the worker explains.

Although the furnace was taken down in 1995 and a university campus now surrounds the facility, the listener can imagine the place through the narration of an everyday person and understand what life was like working there, instead of simply learning about the person who owned the facility.

Beaujot was thrilled to receive the email from van Donkersgoed with interest in expanding the project into Europe.

I feel so honored and proud. It is so amazing for this project that came out this city to become so international, says Beaujot. This will help people understand the importance of history and their place in history, and that they are important.

Recordings and translations from HistorEsch are freely accessible at https://historesch.lu/index.php/story-map/.

Hear, Here continues in downtown La Crosse

The plan is for the project to run for 10 years total, until 2025. Also, a half-developed project for Hear, Here North (in North La Crosse) with 28 stories from the Oral History Program (OHP) is in the works. It was put on hold due to the pandemic. (OHP)

More on UW-Ls OHP can be found at https://www.uwlax.edu/cassh/oral-history-program/.

Hear, Hear has received awards from the American Association for State and Local History, Canadian Society for Digital Humanities, and the Architecture Conservancy of Ontario.

Learn more about Hear, Here

More about the project can be found at https://youtu.be/yGfUiH4F07g.

They (students) are creating something that has become a national-award-winning project. So, while they are also writing term papers and taking exams and all of the things they do, they are also creating this thing that will affect and change the community, said Beaujot.

A new sister city connection in Luxembourg

A new Sister City relationship with Junglinster, Luxembourg, was approved by the La Crosse Common Council in 2021.

This long-term partnership between the two communities was spearheaded by the La Crosse American Descendants Society (LADS). La Crosse has a strong connection to Luxembourg, and Wisconsin has one of the largest populations of Luxembourg immigrants. This is La Crosses eighth sister city relationship.

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The Aging and Disability Resource Center (ADRC) of La Crosse County is holding events throughout May to celebrate Older Americans Month and highlight this years theme, which is Age My Way.

The theme provides an opportunity to explore the many ways older adults can remain in and be active in their home communities. Some of the events planned by the ADRC in May include:

ADRC Open House, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday, May 4, 300 Fourth St. N., La Crosse. Check out the Aging & Disability Resource Center, learn about programs and services and meet staff. Giveaways, refreshments, and assistive technology demonstrations will be available. No registration required. Questions, call the ADRC at 608-785-5700.

Being Mortal Community Event, 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., Wednesday, May 11, La Crosse Public Library, 800 Main St., La Crosse. Join us for a showing of the PBS FRONTLINE documentary Being Mortal followed by a panel discussion of community hospice providers talking about how end of life is addressed in our community. Advanced care planning/resources available. Refreshments will be served. Free to attend. Registration required. To register, call the ADRC at 608-785-5700.

Homefit Workshop, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., Friday, May 20, Onalaska Community Center, 515 Quincy St., Onalaska. In partnership with AARP, learn how to make your home HomeFit. This workshop is designed to help individuals plan for independence, choice, and dignity as they age. Local resources/experts will be available. Free to attend. Registration required. To register, call the ADRC at 608-785-5700.

Habitat for Humanity Aging in Place Listening Session, 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 25, La Crosse Public Library, 800 Main St., La Crosse. Habitat for Humanity will be expanding their programming to provide accessibility and aging in place repairs for elderly and individuals with disabilities. Join executive director Kahya Fox as she talks about the importance of aging in place modifications, shares future plans, and seeks input from the public. No registration required. Call Habitat for Humanity at 608-785-2373 for more information.

Free Meal Fridays (every Friday during the month of May only). Bring a friend to a congregate dining site who hasnt been before and receive a free meal  one for you, and one for your friend! Eligible at the Holmen, Onalaska, and Community Connections Center dining sites. Registration required. Questions? Call the ADRC at 608-785-5700.

The above are just some of the events organized by the ADRC for Older Americans Month. There also will be a Medicare 101 session, Walk with Us Wednesdays, Bingocize (a combination of bingo-like games with exercise) and more. For a full listing, go to lacrosscounty.org/adrc and click on the Older Americans Month link under News and Information. You can also call the ADRC at 608-785-5700 for more details.

The ADRC of La Crosse County provides unbiased answers to all questions related to aging or living with a disability. Additionally, the ADRC runs programs that help La Crosse County residents stay independent and connected to their community. This includes serving thousands of meals to older adults, providing caregiver support, and hosting programs that help older adults stay active.

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A 23-year-old Mexican citizen living in Trempealeau County has been sentenced to 60 months in prison for distributing cocaine. Karlett Salazar Zagal pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court for her role in running a cocaine business in western Wisconsin.

According to federal prosecutors, law enforcement received information in August 2020 that cocaine was being sold in a barber shop and several taverns in Arcadia. Police narrowed the investigation to three people who received cocaine from Puerto Rico shipped a half-kilogram at a time.

The drugs were sent via U.S. Mail and were hidden inside radios, printers and bed sheets. In exchange for the cocaine, the Wisconsin-based traffickers sent money and guns to Puerto Rico.

Postal inspectors became involved and obtained the following search warrants:

May 5, 2021A parcel sent from Puerto Rico to a residence in Winona, Minnesota, was found to contain 557 grams of cocaine hidden inside a Bluetooth speaker.

June 29, 2021A parcel sent from Independence to Puerto Rico contained two Glock semi-automatic handguns.

July 13, 2021A parcel sent from Puerto Rico to a residence in Independence contained 506 grams of cocaine.

Salazar Zagal was arrested the day after the July 13 warrant. She reportedly told prosecutors she knew what was going on because she helped run the cocaine business and the distribution of weapons.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Chadwick M. Elgersma prosecuted the case.

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Yes, it happens in La Crosse.

Just a few short years ago, a young local girl was picked up by a New York man, recalls Fritz Leinfelder, an investigator for the La Crosse County Sheriffs Department. With plans to return to New York, the trafficker and his victim emerged from a La Crosse hotel just moments before law enforcement swept in and made the arrest.

Had he got away, we might never have seen her again, said Leinfelder.

Authorities have identified human trafficking in all of Wisconsins 72 countries, with Milwaukee logging just under half of the nearly 100 reported annual cases. Already in 2022, prosecutors have obtained convictions in the Beloit and Madison areas.

By some estimates, half of the kids trafficked in Wisconsin are under 18. Some as young as 11.

Although laws have tightened and sentences lengthened, traffickers have become more sophisticated in their work. We see a lot of them making a connection through gaming, said Leinfelder. They pose themselves as young boys and begin their grooming behaviors.

According to Leinfelder, the most vulnerable population is typically young teens with a difficult family life and who feel lonely. The traffickers are so good at getting into their lives and showing they care  obviously all lies, he said.

By some estimates, human trafficking is tied for second behind drug smuggling as a leading source of illicit industries, raking in over a billion dollars annually in the U.S. alone.

Leinfelder said that its difficult, however, to tally the exact number of trafficking cases in La Crosse. It might not be listed as trafficking, he said. Could be kidnapping or prostitution. There are other categories for crimes against children.

But there is work to be done. According to last years Shared Hope International study, Wisconsin received an F on its report card on child and youth sex trafficking, scoring a dismal 45.5 out of 100 in five of the six categories.

Community involvement is definitely helpful, said Leinfelder. Yet realistically he points out that some people wouldnt have a clue if it was in front of them. Thus the need for ongoing training.

A healing community

Those who fall victim to trafficking or domestic violence will find that in addition to area hospitals, several nonprofits in La Crosse are equipped to help put life back together.

And one of the most visible is New Horizons Shelter.

Program director Heidi Svee is among those who insist that tackling trafficking calls for a community-wide effort.

Trafficked victims really need wrap-around support and community, she said. Their isolation can be damaging. While New Horizons advocates for jobs, childcare, apartments and other basics, according to Svee, it takes a nurturing community to fill those needs.

New Horizons offers a 24-hour hotline for victims of trafficking or domestic abuse as well as emergency shelter and long term care up to 90 days. People often come to the shelter with nothing, said Svee. So in addition to a safe place to stay, the shelter provides donated clothing and toys for the children. But that just for starters.

For trafficking survivors, we have to work to build trust, said Svee. People who have come to us have experienced a lot of trauma.

So mental health counseling is a key component in recovery. Although New Horizons provides an in-house therapist and support groups, Svee lamented that still theres a gap in the mental health area, with long waits and affordability issues.

While New Horizons saw a total of six official trafficking cases last year, Svee acknowledges that the numbers are under-reported because so much happens under the radar.

Another standout dedicated to helping the abused and trafficked in La Crosse is the Family and Childrens Center. Danielle Swedberg, a counselor at the center, answered the following questions about victim assistance.

How do you work with your clients?

Were trained to do a child forensic interview so the person doesnt have to go through law enforcement. Sometimes they dont even recognize themselves that they have been trafficked. Then theres the healing and recovery piece. If someone says I dont have a home to go back to, we can arrange for independent living or some kind of transitional living. We also have an outpatient program and can arrange for foster care.

Can you estimate the number of cases?

Weve seen a couple in the last 12 months. As the definition of trafficking evolves, well see more. For example, families that will prostitute their children to raise money.

What are other ways you help?

It varies with the individual. Wed start with the advocacy piece. We work with community mental health professionals as well as check physical health needs. We build resiliency through education and find them employment if needed.

What is your relationship with other agencies?

We collaborate with law enforcement and child protection as well as school districts. We have a Memorandum of Understanding with many local agencies and all work together as a team to help pre-natal through adulthood.

In Part 2 of the series on Monday, read about local community groups that build anti-trafficking awareness and involvement.

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DECORAH, Iowa  Vesterheim, the National Norwegian-American Museum and Folk Art School, invites everyone to celebrate Syttende Mai, Norways Constitution Day, on May 17, both on campus in Decorah and online with a presentation from Norway.

This event was made possible by a generous gift to the Vesterheim Annual Fund from Jeff and Marilyn Roverud. The Roveruds have supported Vesterheims Syttende Mai festivities for the past 24 years.

Vesterheims celebration includes family events and an online presentation from Norway, which can be watched from the comfort of home or together with others at the museum. Admission is free all day, and the museum and store will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

At noon, Norwegian storyteller Anne Elisebeth Skogen will join online from Ryfylkemuseet at Sand, Norway, to tell My Last 17 Mai in My Hometown, Now as a Red Russ, her memories of russefeiring, a long-standing tradition for high school graduates in Norway.

To watch from home, registration for the Zoom link is required and available at vesterheim.org. Or enjoy the presentation with others in Vesterheims Westby-Torgerson Education Center. Coffee will be served.

At 12:45 p.m., Sharon Rossman will tell stories inspired by Nordic myths in the museums Main Building.

Gather for the Childrens Parade at 1 p.m. in Vesterheim Heritage Park. Norwegian flags will be given out at the entrance of the museums Main Building and the parade will start at 1:15 p.m. Everyone is invited to march along.

At 1:30 p.m. on Mill St. next to the museum, there will be a Vesterheim welcome and a performance by Decorahs Nordic Dancers. Visitors will be invited to dance, too!

There will be guided tours of the historic buildings in Vesterheims Heritage Park at 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Also, look for live streams on Vesterheim Facebook page.

Syttende Mai is the day Norway ratified its constitution in 1814 at Eidsvoll and Norwegians celebrate with excited crowdsespecially childrenmarching through the streets, waving flags, and singing songs.

Skogen grew up in the little town of Egersund, Norway, south of Stavanger. With an education in drama and storytelling, she runs her own storytelling business, telling stories for schools, organizations, festivals, and companies.

The Nordic Dancers began in Decorah in 1966 and include a senior and junior group of dancers. The dancers begin as third graders and make a 10-year commitment to continue through high school. They perform every year at various area festivals and traveled to Norway in 2016.

In case of inclement weather, visitors will the parade through the museum and the Nordic Dancers will be canceled. All other activities will continue as planned.

For more information on exhibits, classes, programs, tours, membership opportunities, and ways to donate and volunteer, connect at vesterheim.org, (563) 382-9681, and Vesterheim, 502 W. Water St., P.O. Box 379, Decorah, IA, 52101-0379.

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Westby Cooperative Creamery has been producing dairy foods since 1903. There are about 145 farmer-owners who ship their milk to the creamerys plant.

General manager Pet Kondrup said organic farmers from all over Wisconsin and from southeast Minnesota provide milk for the organic products the creamery makes, and conventional farmers within 25 miles of Westby provide milk for the conventional products. He said the first organic patron came on board in 2005.

The creamery makes cottage cheese, yogurt, cheese curds, sour creams, dips and butter. The creamery also makes food service and ingredients and has private label capabilities.

Kondrup said the creamery makes conventional and organic products every day and they are segregated in the plant. There is a special process to keep things separated.

In 2021, Kondrup said, the creamery produced 26.5 million pounds of product and expects to produce 27.6 million pounds this year. Were well on our way.

The newest product the creamery has for consumers is sour cream in a squeezable pouch. Emily Bialkowski, sales and marketing manager, said it was a considerable investment for the cooperative. She said a room in the plant was refurbished for the line.

Its been well received, Bialkowski said. The consumer likes the convenience of the package. Were thrilled to be innovators in the industry. You dont get utensils dirty; its convenient  you dont have a large open container where bacteria could form. Theres a cap to keep it fresh.

Kondrup said the cooperative is always working on something new.

We do a lot of bulk stuff, he said. Its not glamorous but it pays the bills. He added private label manufacturing is a big part of the cooperatives business. We are one of the largest makers of organic cottage cheese in the country.

Bialkowski said people who are interested in finding stores that carry Westby Cooperative Creamery products can go to westbycreamery.com, click on the store locator and type in their ZIP code to find the nearest store. There is also an option for consumers to purchase products online and have them shipped.

Westby Cooperative Creamery products can also be purchased at the Westby Cheese Store, located at 206 S. Main St. The store moved to the new location in August 2019 and a grand reopening was held in October of that year. The retail store was previously located at 401 S. Main St. in the same building as the creamery plant.

Kondrup said the previous retail store had limited space and there were a lot of steps for customers to climb. That was always a concern, he said of the steps. That former retail space now houses the creamery plants lab.

He said moving the retail store gave the creamery better opportunities for online sales and more space to pack those orders. He said the creamery had been renting that space for other uses and now owns the building.

Kondrup said in addition to selling the creamerys products, the retail store sells such items as ice cream cones, bakery goods from Hansens Country Bakery, wines from the area, cheese from other manufacturers and coffee. We were able to expand (the products we offered).

The creamery has its general offices and distribution center on Westbys north side, at 615 N. Main St.

Bialkowski said she invites anyone who wants to learn more about the creamery to check them out on social media. In addition to news updates, there are glimpses of farm life provided by the cooperatives farm ambassador, a farmer-owner who started sharing stories and photos in December 2021.

(The farm ambassador) provides a connection  a way for people to feel connected to the food they eat, Bialkowski said.

Angela Cina can be reached at angie.cina@lee.net.

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Zelenskyy meets top-level US delegation, gets aid promises

KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has met with the U.S. secretaries of state and defense in the highest-level visit to Kyiv by an American delegation since the start of the Russian invasion. Zelenskyys meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was shrouded in secrecy and came as Ukraine pressed the West for more powerful weapons in its fight against the Russian invasion. Blinken and Austin promised Zelenskyy a more than $300 million package of foreign military financing and a $165 million sale of ammunition. They also said President Joe Biden would announce his pick for a U.S. ambassador to Ukraine

In Kyiv, Blinken and Austin announce aid, diplomatic surge

NEAR THE POLISH-UKRAINIAN BORDER (AP)  The Biden administration has unveiled new U.S. military assistance and a diplomatic surge for Ukraine as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin completed a secrecy-shrouded visit to the capital of Kyiv. Blinken and Austin informed Ukraine's president of a more than $300 million package of foreign military financing and a $165 million sale of ammunition. They also said President Joe Biden would announce his pick for a U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and that American diplomats who left ahead of Russia's invasion in February would start returning to the country this coming week.

To Europe's relief, France's Macron wins but far-right gains

PARIS (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macron has comfortably won reelection to a second term. His victory Sunday triggered waves of relief among allies that France wont abruptly shift course in the midst of a war in Ukraine from European and NATO efforts to punish and contain Russia. Macron's far-right rival, Marine Le Pen, has conceded defeat but she raised her game in this runoff, with her best-ever showing. The French presidential race has been overshadowed by the war in Ukraine and a surge in French support for extremist ideas. Macron is the first French leader in 20 years to win reelection. Macron still faces a battle to keep his parliamentary majority in France's legislative election in June.

China promotes coal in setback for efforts to cut emissions

BEIJING (AP)  China is promoting coal-fired power as the ruling Communist Party tries to revive a sluggish economy, prompting warnings that Beijing is setting back efforts to cut climate-changing carbon emissions from the biggest global source. News reports say official plans call for boosting coal production capacity by 300 million tons this year. That is equal to 7% of last years output of 4.1 billion tons. China is one of the biggest investors in wind and solar, but jittery leaders called for more coal-fired power after economic growth plunged and shortages caused blackouts and factory shutdowns. Russias attack on Ukraine added to anxiety that foreign oil and coal supplies might be disrupted.

DeSantis tests limits of his combative style in Disney feud

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP)  In taking on Disney, Floridas Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is testing the limits of his combative leadership style while sending an unmistakable message to his rivals. And that message is that there's nothing or no one he wont fight as he plots his political future. Those who know DeSantis aren't surprised by his decision to punish the entertainment giant for challenging his political priorities. The 43-year-old Republican has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to fight while in office. But DeSantis decision to use the levels of government to settle a political feud with Disney is a step further than he's gone before.

Georgia's Kemp and Perdue clash over elections in debate

ATLANTA (AP)  Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and top Republican challenger David Perdue are bickering over who was to blame for 2020 and 2021 Republican election losses in their first of three debates Sunday. Perdue is showcasing debunked claims that Democrats fraudulently won the 2020 presidential election. Kemp says he followed the law that Perdue lost his Senate seat because of weak record. The debates come as time grows short to persuade the many Georgia voters who will cast ballots ahead of election day May 24. Counties can begin mailing absentee ballots Monday. Early in-person voting begins May 2. Both Kemp and Perdue are telling supporters that they are the best Republican to defeat Democrat Stacey Abrams.

Ads from soft-spoken Arkansas Sen. Boozman reflect GOP fury

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  Two-term Republican Sen. John Boozman is known in Arkansas as a soft-spoken figure, but his reelection message seems to be taking a combative tone. One Boozman TV ads features a sheriff saying that Boozman will fight liberals over gun rights. In another, fellow GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas praises Boozman as a conservative fighter. The sharper tone highlights Boozman's effort to appeal to voters who are mad that Donald Trump is no longer in office. Boozman faces at least two challengers in Arkansas' primary next month who are questioning his conservative credentials. He says the ads arent inconsistent with his low-key style and that hes just focusing on concerns hes hearing from voters.

France's youngest president wins again, troubles and all

PARIS (AP)  In just five years as France's president, Emmanuel Macron has gone from a young newbie in politics to a key world player and weighty decision-maker in the European Union. He has been deeply involved in efforts to end Russias war in Ukraine. And now he has won a second term, according to polling projections  the first French president to do so in a generation. That's despite troubles like the yellow vest protests and the pandemic, and voter perceptions that he is arrogant and president of the rich. His unusual marriage to a woman 24 years his senior has drawn attention. He paid an emotional tribute to his wife at his biggest campaign rally, calling Brigitte Macron the person I care the most about.

Opposition wins Slovenia vote, defeating right-wing populist

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP)  Early official results from Sunday's parliamentary election in Slovenia show that an opposition liberal party convincingly won, in a major defeat for populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa, who was accused of pushing the small European Union country to the right while in office. After counting over 97% of ballots, state election authorities says the Freedom Movement won nearly 34% of the votes, compared around 24% for the governing conservative Slovenian Democratic Party, The results mean that the Freedom Movement, a newcomer in the election, appears set to form the next government in a coalition with smaller leftist groups.

Warren calls McCarthy a 'liar' and 'traitor' over Jan 6 tape

WASHINGTON (AP)  Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren is slamming Rep. Kevin McCarthy as a liar and a traitor over recordings that show the House Republican leader, despite his denials, placing responsibility on Donald Trump for the Capitol riot and suggesting Trump should resign. Its unusually strong language to use against the House Republican leader, who's in line to become speaker if Republicans win control of the House in the November elections. But Warrens statement reflects a swell of Democratic criticism against McCarthy. They point to McCarthy's recorded comments in January 2021 as proof that GOP lawmakers at the highest levels privately acknowledge Trumps role at insurrection at the Capitol yet continue to defend him in public.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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SRINAGAR, India (AP)  Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Himalayan Kashmir on Sunday for his first public event since New Delhi stripped the disputed regions semi-autonomy and took direct control in 2019.

Modi remotely inaugurated a tunnel and work on two hydropower projects before delivering a speech that was punctuated by his government's developmental achievements. He said that the territory was put on a path of unprecedented development since 2019 but made no political commitments to the regions people, who have been without an elected local government for four years.

Let me assure the youth of the valley that they will not face difficulties and tribulations that their parents and grandparents faced, Modi said, referring to the Kashmir Valley, the heartland of anti-India sentiment. His speech was a part of a function to commemorate the annual Panchayati Raj, or grassroots democracy, Day.

One of the power projects he laid foundation to on Sunday was first commissioned by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2013.

Tens of thousands of people and elected officials from local councils across the region assembled in Palli village near Jammu city for the speech, which was held amid amid tight security. The area visited by Modi generally welcomed the Indian governments changes of Kashmir's status nearly three years ago.

Officials say the councils represent grassroots governance but its members have no legislative powers.

Government forces fanned out across Kashmir to thwart any violence. On Friday, two suspected militants and a paramilitary officer were killed in a gunfight some 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Palli.

Police chief Dilbag Singh said the slain militants were a suicide squad from Pakistan likely sent to sabotage Modis visit. He did not offer any evidence to back up his claim.

Modis two previous visits after Kashmirs status was changed were to military camps to celebrate a Hindu festival with soldiers. I n 2019, Modis government revoked the regions semi-autonomous status, annulled its separate constitution, split the area into two federal territories  Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir  and removed inherited protections on land and jobs amid unprecedented lockdown.

The region has remained on edge since, as authorities put in place a slew of new laws that critics and many residents fear could change majority-Muslim Kashmirs demographics.

Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and both rivals claim the region in its entirety. Rebels have been fighting against Indian rule since 1989. Most Muslim Kashmiris support the rebel goal that the territory be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and most Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  Russian forces in Ukraine tried to storm a steel plant housing soldiers and civilians in the southern city of Mariupol on Saturday in an attempt to crush the last pocket of resistance in a place of deep symbolic and strategic value to Moscow, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, announced he would meet Sunday in his nation's capital with the U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the U.S. secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin. The White House declined to comment.

Speaking at a news conference, Zelenskyy gave little detail about logistics of the encounter but said he expected concrete results  not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons.

It would be the first high-level U.S. trip to Kyiv since the war began Feb. 24. While visiting Poland in March, Blinken stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil to meet with the country's foreign minister. Zelenskyys last face-to-face meeting with a U.S. leader was Feb. 19 with Vice President Kamala Harris.

In attacks on the eve of Orthodox Easter, Russian forces pounded cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine.

A 3-month-old baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa, officials said. Zelenskyy said 18 more were wounded.

The war started when this baby was one month old. Can you imagine what is happening? Zelenskyy said. They are just bastards. ... I dont have any other words for it, just bastards.

The Ukrainian military said Saturday it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.

The command post was hit on Friday, killing two generals and critically wounding another, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said in a statement. The Russian military did not comment on the claim, which could not be confirmed.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a Zelenskyy adviser, said in an online interview that 50 senior Russian officers were in the command center when it was attacked.

The fate of the Ukrainians in the sprawling and besieged seaside steel mill in Mariupol, where Russia says its forces have taken the rest of the city, wasnt immediately clear. Earlier Saturday, a Ukrainian military unit released a video reportedly taken two days earlier in which women and children holed up underground, some for as long as two months, said they longed to see the sun.

We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe in fresh air, one woman in the video said. You have simply no idea what it means for us to simply eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, it is already happiness.

Russia said it took control of several villages elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region and destroyed 11 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including three artillery warehouses. Russian attacks also struck populated areas.

Associated Press journalists observed shelling in residential areas of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city; regional Gov. Oleh Sinehubov said three people were killed. In the Luhansk area of the Donbas, Gov. Serhiy Haidai said six people died during the shelling of a village, Gorskoi.

In Sloviansk, a town in northern Donbas, the AP witnessed two soldiers arriving at a hospital, one of them mortally wounded.

Sitting in a wheelchair outside her damaged Sloviansk apartment, Anna Direnskaya, 70, said, I want peace."

One of many native Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, Direnskaya said she wishes Russians would understand that Ukrainians are not bad people and that there should be no enmity between them.

"Why is this happening?" she said. I dont know.

While British officials said Russian forces had not gained significant new ground, Ukrainian officials announced a nationwide curfew ahead of Easter Sunday, a sign of the wars disruption and threat to the entire country.

Mariupol has been a key Russian objective and has taken on outsize importance in the war. Completing its capture would give Russia its biggest victory yet, after a nearly two-month siege reduced much of the city to a smoking ruin.

It would deprive Ukrainian of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere and establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014. Russia-backed separatists control parts of the Donbas.

An adviser to Ukraine's presidential office, Oleksiy Arestovych, said Russian forces resumed airstrikes on the Azovstal plant and were also trying to storm it, in an apparent reversal of tactics. Two days earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had given an order not to send troops in but instead to blockade the plant.

Ukrainian officials have estimated that about 2,000 of their troops are inside the plant along with civilians sheltering in its underground tunnels.

Earlier Saturday, the Azov Regiment of Ukraines National Guard, which has members holed up in the plant, released the video of about two dozen women and children. Its contents could not be independently verified. But if authentic, it would be the first video testimony of what life has been like for civilians trapped underground there.

The video shows soldiers giving sweets to children who respond with fist-bumps. One young girl says she and her relatives havent seen neither the sky nor the sun since they left home Feb. 27.

The regiments deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, told the AP the video was shot Thursday. The Azov Regiment has its roots in the Azov Battalion, which was formed by far-right activists in 2014 at the start of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine and has elicited criticism for some of its tactics.

More than 100,000 people  down from a prewar population of about 430,000  are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate that over 20,000 civilians have been killed in the city.

Yet another attempt to evacuate women, children and older adults from Mariupol failed Saturday. Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupols mayor, said Russian forces did not allow Ukrainian-organized buses to take residents to Zaporizhzhia, a city 227 kilometers (141 miles) to the northwest.

At 11 oclock, at least 200 Mariupol residents gathered near the Port City shopping center, waiting for evacuation, Andryushchenko posted on the Telegram messaging app. The Russian military drove up to the Mariupol residents and ordered them to disperse, because now there will be shelling.

At the same time, he said, Russian buses assembled about 200 meters (yards) away. Residents who boarded those were told they were being taken to separatist-occupied territory and not allowed to disembark, Andryushchenko said. His account could not be independently verified.

In the attack on Odesa, Russian troops fired at least six missiles, according to Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraines interior minister.

Residents of the city heard explosions in different areas, Gerashchenko said via Telegram. Residential buildings were hit. It is already known about one victim. He burned in his car in a courtyard of one of the buildings.

Zelenskyy's news conference was held in a Kyiv subway station, where he paused at one point as a train noisily passed through. The subway system, which includes the worlds deepest station, attracted widespread attention early in the war when hordes of people took shelter there.

Regarding the expected visit Sunday by U.S. officials, Zelenskyy said: I believe that we will be able to get agreements from the United States or part of that package on arming Ukraine which we agreed on earlier. Besides, we have strategic questions about security guarantees, which it is time to discuss in detail, because the United States will be one of those leaders of security countries for our state.

Fisch reported from Sloviansk, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Inna Varenytsia in Kviv and Associated Press staff members around the world contributed to this report.

Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Republicans could build on their decade-long hold over the Wisconsin Legislature under the states new 10-year political maps, though securing a veto-proof majority in both chambers may still be a stretch.

In a 4-3 decision on April 15, the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted legislative boundaries drawn by state Republicans, reversing the courts previous decision after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected maps drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. Those maps would have maintained, but reduced, GOP majorities in the Legislature.

A split ruling by the states high court last year established that the states next maps would need to be drawn with minimal changes to previous boundaries, which have afforded Republicans nearly unbreakable majorities in both chambers.

While some legislative districts become more competitive under the GOP-drawn maps, others see significant increases in their overall partisan lean, a shift that further insulates lawmakers from general election voters and can lead to more extremist candidates who appeal more to the fringe members of their base.

I think the maps as they currently exist will continue, in all likelihood, to promote further partisanship and polarization well into the next decade here in Wisconsin, said UW-La Crosse political science assistant professor Anthony Chergosky.

John Johnson, research fellow in the Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education at Marquette Law School, said an analysis of the new maps  using the results of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the 2018 gubernatorial election as a baseline  found that if half of voters statewide went for Democrats and the other half went for Republicans, Democratic candidates could expect to win just 36 of the Assemblys 99 seats and 10 of the Senates 33 seats.

Republicans would need a 7.2-point statewide advantage, or 53.6% of the vote, in order to have a chance of securing a two-thirds supermajority in the Assembly, Johnson added.

It would be a heavy lift, Johnson said. It would be the best sort of Republican year in quite some time, but its certainly also within reach. So its within reach, but youd have to stretch for it.

These maps do not make a Republican supermajority inevitable, but they make it more likely than even in 2020, Johnson added.

For Democratic candidates, the party would have to secure a 12.4-point statewide victory, or 56.2% of the vote, to have a shot at winning the 50 Assembly seats needed to hold a simple majority in the chamber, Johnson said. Democrats would need a 10.6-point statewide victory to secure a majority in the Senate.

Close calls

Such margins would be challenging for either party in Wisconsin, which is notorious for its razor-thin statewide elections. President Joe Biden defeated Trump in the state by about 21,000 votes, or less than 1 percentage point. In 2016, Trump beat Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by about 1 point, or fewer than 23,000 votes, and in 2018 Evers defeated incumbent Republican Gov. Scott Walker by about 1 point, or fewer than 30,000 votes.

An analysis of the Legislatures maps by PlanScore, a program that predicts precinct-level votes for districts based on past election results and U.S. Census data led by the Campaign Legal Center, a national nonprofit that advocates for nonpartisan maps, found that, under a 48% Democratic versus 52% Republican vote share in a statewide election, Republicans would end up holding 66% of the states Assembly seats and 64% of the seats in the Senate.

These are just very tough maps for the Democrats, theres no two ways about it, said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of the University of Virginia Center for Politics Sabatos Crystal Ball.

A two-thirds majority in both chambers would give state Republicans enough votes to successfully overturn a governors veto  a prospect that would significantly limit Evers ability to block conservative policies. During his first three years in office, Evers has issued more than 120 vetoes  the most in modern history, according to the Legislative Reference Bureau  to strike down bills such as those aimed at creating additional legislative oversight for schools, limiting unemployment benefits and overhauling elections.

Supermajorities in both chambers become less significant to the party if a Republican defeats Evers this fall and conservatives take back control of all of state government.

Partisan districts

Among the 10 most competitive districts  seven in the Assembly and three in the Senate  eight will lean Republican and two will lean Democratic under the Legislatures maps. Four of those 10 seats are currently held by Democrats.

Whats more, the sitting incumbent in half of those 10 districts is not seeking reelection this fall. All told, 23 members of the Assembly and six state senators will be retiring or seeking other elected office later this year.

But while some districts maintain narrow margins or even grow more competitive under the new maps, nine in the Assembly and one in the Senate actually see their partisan lean increase into double-digit margins, making those seats far less competitive in general elections.

Candidates running for those seats representing uncompetitive districts end up aligning more with primary election voters, who tend to hold more extreme positions and a more negative view of the opposing party, Chergosky said.

There is both an ideological and a stylistic component to this lack of competition in general elections, Chergosky said. It pushes candidates to be more ideologically extreme and it rewards candidates who are more hostile in their rhetoric and their presentation of self toward the other party.

Chergosky and Matthew Rothschild, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, said fewer competitive districts may strengthen Republicans hold on the Legislature, but the rise of extremist candidates could also spell out challenges in future statewide elections.

Strategists have already pointed to the gubernatorial campaign launched earlier this year by Rep. Timothy Ramthun, who has called for the legally impossible task of decertifying the 2020 election, as potentially creating challenges for current frontrunner and former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who is seeking to unseat Evers this fall.

While primary elections are often decided by the partys base, statewide candidates tend to shift back toward the more moderate ideals of general election voters in order to win in November. Moving too far toward the campaign talking points that invigorate primary voters could make that pivot challenging in the short time between the August primary and November election.

This hyper partisanship on the right, thats fostered by gerrymandering, may be a poison pill for Republicans in statewide elections, Rothschild said.

Final maps?

After initially selecting legislative maps drawn by Evers, the Wisconsin Supreme Court earlier this month reversed course and adopted boundaries drawn by state Republicans. The decision came after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Democratic governors maps and kicked the matter back to the states highest court in March.

Atiba Ellis, professor of law at Marquette Law School, said its a near certainty that the Legislatures maps will remain in place for the upcoming Aug. 9 primary and Nov. 8 election.

Ellis said its possible, if not likely, that legal challenges are eventually filed against the state Supreme Courts April 15 decision, but any potential changes to the states legislative boundaries would almost certainly occur later.

Key questions over the districts could likely focus on whether the Legislatures maps conform to the Voting Rights Act, a topic that became the focal point of discussion surrounding the governors proposal. Evers maps increased the number of Black majority Assembly districts from six to seven, while Republican-drawn maps reduce the number of Black majority districts to five.

Given that those questions could arguably be seen as not adequately addressed based on the record before the state Supreme Court, it would seem likely that interested parties might want to sue in federal court, Ellis said.

The U.S. Supreme Court did not take up the state courts adoption of Evers congressional maps, leaving those boundaries in place. Those maps increase the number of competitive congressional seats from one to two  the 1st and 3rd. Five of the states eight congressional districts are currently held by Republicans.

The Legislature must redraw political lines every decade based on the latest population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2011, Republicans, working in secretive conditions, drew maps that packed Democratic voters into lopsided districts and spread out rural and suburban Republicans into districts with solid, but narrower, majorities. The maps allowed the GOP to hold more than 60% of legislative seats, even when Democrats won all statewide elections in 2018.

A Wisconsin State Journal analysis of Wisconsins 2020 legislative races showed that Democratic candidates received 46% of total votes cast in state Assembly races, but ended up with only 38 of 99 seats after winning two new districts. In state Senate races, Democratic candidates secured about 47% of total votes, but only picked up 38% of the seats on the ballot and controlled only 12 of 33 seats.

State Journal reporter Alex Shur contributed to this report.

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CHILTON  A Wisconsin man has been charged with recently hiding the corpse of a man he was convicted of killing in the early 1980s.

John Andrews, 82, of Chilton, was arrested Friday, booked into jail and charged with hiding a corpse, a felony. Andrews pleaded guilty in 1994 to homicide by negligent use of a motor vehicle in the death of 67-year-old Starkie Swenson, who was reported missing in 1983. Swenson's body had been missing for nearly 40 years.

Prosecutors say Swenson and Andrews were involved in a love triangle and that Andrews ran over Swenson. Andrews was sentenced to two years in prison.

Swenson's body was found last September by two people hiking in High Cliff State Park  a few months after news stories were published about UW-Oshkosh anthropology students being enlisted to help find the missing body.

The statute of limitations for hiding a corpse in Wisconsin is six years. Prosecutors say the corpse was hidden between June 7, 2021, and Sept. 28, 2021. WLUK-TV, the Associated Press and other news outlets ran stories about the ongoing search for Swenson's body in April 2021.

Investigators began questioning Andrews about the location of Swensons remains on June 7, while anthropology students at UW-Oshkosh unsuccessfully assisted in a search for the remains near Omro, about 30 miles away from where the body was found by the hikers.

Andrews admitted to seeing photos of Swenson but told investigators he never spoke to nor saw Swenson in person and didnt know Swensons whereabouts.

Andrews faces more than 12 years in prison if convicted. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 6.

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Democrats who control Congress did something extraordinary last year. They pulled 3.7 million children out of poverty, including tens of thousands of kids in Wisconsin.

Now they need to do it again, with bipartisan support. Wisconsins congressional delegation should help make it happen.

Democrats last year passed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, a $1.9 trillion spending package. Among its sweeping provisions, the legislation sent six monthly payments to parents from July through December. The payments were an advance on a larger annual child tax credit for 2021, which increased from $2,000 per child to $3,000 or $3,600, depending on the childs age.

Parents could choose to accept some of that money in monthly installments, and 36 million American families  including 600,000 in Wisconsin  did just that, receiving up to $250 per older child and $300 per younger child. In Wisconsin, the average family received a monthly payment of $457.

Child poverty fell by 30%, which was a historic achievement.

Lower- and middle-income families struggling to pay their bills used the extra money to feed and house their children, according to surveys. Some parents paid for child care. Others were able to work less and stay home with their kids.

Getting payments monthly  rather than a lump sum after filing their taxes  encouraged regular and more responsible use of the money. And unlike other vouchers or subsidies, parents got to decide how to spend the extra money to support their families.

But in January, the monthly payments ended, plunging 3.7 million children back into poverty. Congress needs to bring the payments back and make them permanent this time.

The Democrats tried to restart the payments this year. But they wasted time, energy and political capital by pushing the payments as part of President Joe Bidens enormous Build Back Better spending plan. Its time to pursue the higher child tax credit on its own.Democrats blame U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., for killing Build Back Better in February. But some of Manchins objections to the larger plan, and specifically to the child tax credit, had merit.

The credit was offered to too many families who didnt need it, making it much more expensive. Those earning as much as $170,000 a year were eligible for the higher credit, under the Democratic plan. And even families earning up to $400,000 could claim the original $2,000 credit. Thats six times the average household income in Wisconsin.

It wasnt justified.

Manchin wants to tighten the cap on eligibility and bring back a modest work requirement. He also wants the federal budget to honestly reflect the cost of the higher credit into the future.The Democrats should consider his suggestions and invite Republicans to help negotiate a lasting deal. Reasonable Republicans such as U.S. Sens. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, want to get involved.

So get it done, Congress. Then claim victory this fall.

Raising children is expensive. More important, all of society benefits when children get off to strong starts in life, whether during a pandemic or not.

Thats why every modern president has supported the child tax credit. Former President Bill Clinton signed it into law. Former President George W. Bush doubled the credit to $1,000 in 2001 and made it refundable. Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump extended and enhanced it further.

Congress may be distracted by the looming midterm elections. But restoring these important payments to parents is doable if Democrats agree to a standalone, refined and bipartisan bill.

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April 13, 2022. The White House, CNN reporting: President Joe Biden on Wednesday told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the US was sending his nation an additional $800 million worth of weapons, ammunition, and other security assistance. It comes as US officials warn of a potentially bloody new phase in the ongoing war.

Biden detailed the new announcement in a midday telephone call with Zelensky that lasted for about an hour.

In response, President Zelensky tweeted: Continued constant dialogue with @POTUS. Assessed Russian war crimes. Discussed additional package of defensive and possible macro-financial aid. Agreed to enhance sanctions.

The Biden-Zelensky conversation drew on Bidens 33 years in the Senate, including two terms chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He knew Zelensky and Ukraine well.

On July 25, 2019, a very different phone call took place, also between an American president and President Zelensky. It lasted 30 minutes. We know what was said because a brave whistleblower laid bare then-President Donald Trumps communication in an Urgent Concern memo.

In the course of my official duties, the whistleblower began, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. That foreign country was clearly identified in the transcript: Ukraine.

Trump desperately wanted dirt to use against Joseph Biden. Trump informed Zelensky that he was making an end-run around our own State Department. Former US Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitchthat woman Trump called herwas bad news. Going forward, he told Zelensky, US-Ukraine relations were to be handled by Rudy Giuliani.

And then, in an evil and concealed unilateral action that will live in infamy, Trump imposed a halt in military aid shipments to Ukraine. Zelensky knew that the Russian bear was licking its paws, and breathing hard down Zelenskys neck. Zelensky bravely held firm, and refused to call the false-narrative press conference that Trump had demanded.

Has America in its nearly-250-year history ever seen anything approaching that treachery? Accordingly, on December 18, 2019, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives.

Had the Senate held firm to its constitutional duties, Trump would have been convicted unanimously and removed from office. But 47 of 48 Republican senators, from moderates such as Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to hard-right members Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson, rallied around Trump and cast not guilty votes.

Trumps history of admiration of Vladimir Putin is a long one. The relationship goes back to the 2013 Miss Universe Contest in Moscow, where Trump declared of Putin I do have a relationship with him, adding that Russias strongman had done a very brilliant job.

Trump accepted Russias help in his 2016 election campaign, later employing outrageous denial in the infamous Helsinki summit: President Putin says its not Russia. I dont see any reason why it would be, he declared of the bot-powered social media-dominating Russian election interference.

Trump was also willing to overlook Putins killing of dissident journalists with his we kill people too brush-off response to a query about Putins brutality.

Putins invasion of Ukraine did nothing to deter Trumps admiration. One day after Russian troops began their march into eastern Ukraine, Trump took to talk radio to declare the invasion a stroke of genius: [T]here was a television screen  Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine  of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, thats wonderful.

We cannot remedy the precedent-setting Senate vote that broke the guardrails against presidents seeking foreign involvement in US elections. We cant blunt the impact of the 2019 interruption of US military aid to Ukraine. What we can do is put pressure on the current Congress to hold fast to President Bidens pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia foreign policy. Emails and phone calls to the members of Congress on this are essential.

There are sacrifices we must make to aid our brothers and sisters in Ukraine. The price of gasoline in Wisconsin has nudged at times above $4 a gallon; in Illinois and other states, paying $5 a gallon is not unusual. As we make these sacrifices, we need to focus on the brutal hardships and deaths being endured daily in and around Kyiv, and in Mariupol.

A CNN headline on February 23 says it all: Trump sides with Putin as Biden tries to stop a war.

The four years of Americas foreign policy being pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine have ended. America now stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukraine. As Putin continues to pummel Ukraine, we must assure that President Bidens pledge to President Zelensky is carried out, not undermined.

There is no place for partisan politics when the lives of the proud and resilient people of Ukraine are at stake.

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By Vafa Ismayilova

In light of international and regional efforts to reach a final peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Nazis backed by the US-based ultra-nationalist diaspora Armenian National Congress of America (ANCA) and supporters of former Armenian Presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, who oppose any progress in relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey, burned Azerbaijani and Turkish flags in Yerevan on April 23 night.

The episode sparked a flood of Twitter replies from Azerbaijani and foreign users, who questioned the prospects for peace with Armenia, where certain segments of people maintain animosity and hostility toward neighbors.

On April 6, 2022, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and EU Council President Charles Michel met in a trilateral format in Brussels again. Both Aliyev and Pashinyan expressed a willingness to work quickly toward a peace agreement between their countries. To that end, it was decided to instruct foreign ministers to begin work on drafting a future peace treaty that would address all of the issues.

At the same time, it was also agreed to convene a Joint Border Commission by late April. The Joint Border Commission's mandate will be to: delimit the bilateral border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and ensure a stable security situation along and in the vicinity of the borderline.

Hatred, anger, aggression

User Elman Muradov stressed that "Germany made burning foreign flags a jailable offense, saying the sole aim of burning flags is to 'stir up hatred, anger and aggression'. Only far-right Alternative For Germany said it interfered with citizens' freedom of expression. This means that Armenians think like AfD".

He quoted Armenian poet Narek Mesropian as saying that "it is in our blood to hate the Turks" and Trukish poet Yunus Emre "I do not come for dispute, My work is love", underlining the presence of the generations that grew up with the education they received.

"Peace for the region is being discussed in Brussels and Baku, but Azerbaijani and Turkish flags were burned in Yerevan. The same rhetoric, the same empty revanchism. But the Azerbaijani and Turkish flags will always be on high, no one can take them out of people's hearts. Long Live Azerbaijani and Turkish Friendship!" economic expert and MP Vugar Bayramov tweeted.

Azerbaijani Consul-General in Los Angeles Nasimi Aghayev shared the video of the Nazi rally in Yerevan tonight on April 23, describing it as a "result of 30 years of state-sponsored anti-Azerbaijani and anti-Turkish hatred in Armenia".

The Twitter group "Azerbaijanophobia" believes "burning flags are a very cheap and lower level way of demonstrating hatred towards other countries".

"The very 'first Christian' nation 'peacefully' burning my flag. Welcome to the 21st century, where no aggression and hatred should have a place! I still hope for peace in our region," user "NazuLkin" tweeted.

MP Nigar Arpadarai wrote: "Today's torchlight procession in Yerevan city center ended with solemn burning of the Azerbaijani and Turkish flags. Similarities to third Reich rallies are not a coincidence. They reflect the fundamentals of the political system of Armenia, based on ethnic supremacy and crusading."

Peaceful South Caucasus

In an address to the EU and its agencies, the user "FarahG777" slammed the act and outlined that "barbarism, hatred and racism must be condemned. We need a peaceful South Caucasus that will benefit the entire region, not this filthy show".

User Samira Aghayeva recalled that "Azerbaijan is trying to sign a peace contract with Armenia... hays [Armenians] will never change".

Commenting on the Nazi rally cheering up the burning of the Turkish and Azerbaijani flags, the Twitter page Shusha News questioned: "How long it would take for the Armenian society to free itself from senseless hatred and animosity against its immediate neighbors?".

Diplomat Hasan Mammadzada described the move as a "barbaric act" stressing that Armenian nationalism is based on racism, violence, animosity and hatred towards their neighbors.

Burning Armenia's future

"An outdated mentality that believes in being a puppet of imperial powers... They think they can gain something by burning the Turkish and Azerbaijani flags in Yerevan. In fact, what they burned is nothing but their own future! Time will tell!" Turkish Prof Kurshad Zorlu tweeted.

Against the background of reactions to the abovementioned rally, user "JSpitsbergen" stressed: "Just returned from Shusha, Azerbaijan. Now I learned what does Armenian hatred infused with human blood, annihilation means. Barbaric, savaging, inhumane, cruel hatred. Speechless and sad not only for my country but for the Armenian people if one can call them such."

"Amidst the long-awaited normalization talks between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkiye, hundreds of pro-Russia Kocharyan (former president) supporters in Armenia are burning Azerbaijan and Turkiye flags and celebrating hatred tonight. What a freak show," Canada-based analyst on South Caucasus, Azerbaijan and post-Soviet region Nika Jabi wrote.

Raoul Lowery Contreras, a contributor to FoxNews, The Hill, Daily Caller, NYTimes Syndicate (New America News), said that "pro-Russian opposition in Armenia led by ANCA_DC-affiliated Dashnaks and former Presidents Kocharyan/Sargsyan, burned today flags of Azerbaijan and Turkey in Yerevan, opposing the peace. Continued hostility is their raison detre".

User Emin Aslan urged Armenia to take all necessary steps "to prevent the incitement and promotion of racial hatred, including by organizations and private persons in its territory, targeted at persons of Azerbaijani national or ethnic origin!"

Armenia destroyed and vandalized Azerbaijani territories during the three-decade occupation between the early 1990s and late 2020. The scale of destruction and massacres on Azerbaijan's formerly occupied territories is shocking, implying deep hatred and animosity toward the Azerbaijani people, with many experts describing these mass destructions and killings as genocide.

The country's war-torn Aghdam region alone is seen as a stark example of Armenian hatred and enmity. Aghdam, known as the "Hiroshima of the Caucasus" astounds delegations from all over the world with its infamous scenes of destruction.

Currently, the work is underway to restore Azerbaijan's liberated lands. Azerbaijan will rebuild its recently liberated areas in four stages. The initial stage includes the solution of the issues of governance and security, and infrastructure, while the subsequent stages include the solution of the issues of social services activities, reconstruction, and development of the economy.

In 2021, Azerbaijan allocated $1.5 billion for the reconstruction of liberated territories, followed by AZN 2.2 billion ($1.2 billion) in 2022. These funds will be used primarily to restore infrastructure (electricity, gas, water, communications, roads, education, health, and so on) as well as cultural and historical monuments.
By Trend





Alphabet unit Google, Meta and other large online platforms will have to do more to tackle illegal content or risk hefty fines under new internet rules agreed between European Union countries and EU lawmakers on Saturday, Trend reports citing Reuters.

The agreement came after more than 16 hours of negotiations. The Digital Services Act (DSA) is the second prong of EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager's strategy to rein in Alphabet unit Google, Meta and other U.S. tech giants.

Last month, she won backing from the 27-country bloc and lawmakers for landmark rules called the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that could force Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft to change their core business practices in Europe. read more

"We have a deal on the DSA: The Digital Services Act will make sure that what is illegal offline is also seen and dealt with as illegal online - not as a slogan, as reality," Vestager said in a tweet.

EU lawmaker Dita Charanzova, who had called for such rules eight years ago, welcomed the agreement.

"Google, Meta and other large online platforms will have to act to better protect their users. Europe has made clear that they cannot act as independent digital islands," she said in a statement.

In a statement, Google said: "As the law is finalised and implemented, the details will matter. We look forward to working with policymakers to get the remaining technical details right to ensure the law works for everyone."

Under the DSA, the companies face fines up to 6% of their global turnover for violating the rules while repeated breaches could see them banned from doing business in the EU.

The new rules ban targeted advertising aimed at children or based on sensitive data such as religion, gender, race and political opinions. Dark patterns, which are tactics that mislead people into giving personal data to companies online, will also be prohibited.

Very large online platforms and online search engines will be required to take specific measures during a crisis.

The companies could be forced to hand over data related to their algorithms to regulators and researchers.

The companies also face a yearly fee up to 0.05% of worldwide annual revenue to cover the costs of monitoring their compliance.

EU lawmaker Martin Schirdewan criticised the exemption granted to medium-sized companies.

"Under pressure from the conservatives, an exception rule for medium-sized companies was integrated, this is a mistake. Due to the large number of companies that fall under this definition in the digital sector, the exception is like a loophole," he said.

The DSA will be enforced in 2024.
A doctor with the American space agency NASA has made a virtual visit to the International Space Station (ISS) after being holoported by technology.

Dr. Josef Schmid and several other people took the virtual trip last October. NASA recently announced results of the experiment.

The agency said it was the first time that humans had been holoported from Earth to space. The term holoport is a combination of the words hologram and teleport.

A hologram is an image produced by a computer and made of light. Hologram objects appear in a shapely form, not flat like other images. Teleport means to travel extraordinarily fast using special technology. Such technology does not exist, however.

Holoport technology can project 3D models of people in any environment. This permits people physically present in the environment to see, hear and interact with the holoported individuals.

The experiment at the ISS involved a computer, camera and special software developed by NASA and its industry partner Aexa Aerospace. Special headsets enable people involved to interact with one another as if they were in the same shared space.

The camera used was the Kinect model, made by American software company Microsoft. The camera can be combined with Microsofts HoloLens 2 headset device.

While Microsoft has been using holoportation technology for several years, NASA said it was the first time it had been used in such an extreme and remote environment such as space.

Similar technology has been used to assist doctors performing remote operations and in telemedicine. Telemedicine is a way for people to talk to doctors and receive health care without having to visit a medical office, treatment center or similar place.



Schmid described the technology as a completely new manner of human communication across vast distances. He said the process represents a brand-new way of human exploration, where our human entity is able to travel off the planet.

During the experiment, Schmid was able to speak with Thomas Pesquet, a European Space Agency astronaut aboard the ISS. Aexa Aerospace chief Fernando De La Pena Llaca and several members of the companys technology team also took part in the holoportation event.

NASA said the technology demonstrates a new form of communication it plans to use on future space missions. It could permit people on Earth to be holoported to space, as well as send astronauts on virtual visits to Earth.

Schmid said the system could be used to hold private medical, psychiatric and family meetings and to virtually bring important people to the space station to visit astronauts. He added that the next step could be to combine holoportation with augmented reality technology.

Augmented reality, or AR, is a technology that can project computer-created imagery onto headsets like the HoloLens 2. The images appear in the headsets along with other physical objects in the environment. AR has been used to help guide workers through complex industrial processes.

Imagine you can bring the best instructor or the actual designer of a particularly complex technology right beside you wherever you might be working on it, Schmid said.

NASA said holoportation technology could greatly improve future missions into deep space. It said one of the most important uses could be to provide better and more personal communication between astronauts and people on Earth. The communication could be necessary for medical or mission support reasons. And, it could improve connectivity among astronauts in space and their families back home.

But NASA noted one possible challenge that could happen in future, planned missions to Mars. Technology systems will have to find a way to effectively operate with communication delays of up to 20 minutes each way during travel to and from Mars.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from NASA, Axiom Space, Aexa and Microsoft.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

Quiz - NASA Doctor Teleported to Space in Technology Experiment Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

virtual  adj. existing or occurring on computers or on the internet

3D (three-dimensional)  adj. having or appearing to have length, depth and height

remote  adj. happening a far distance away

vast  adj. extremely large

entity  n. something that exists apart from other things

mission  n. an important project or trip, especially involving space travel

psychiatric  adj. the study and treatment of mental illness

challenge  n. a difficult task or problem; something that is hard to do
The messages, reports from across Ukraine, read:

One civilian dead.

Thirteen military casualties.

Five civilians injured.

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova is looking at her cell phone as the messages come in. Her staff will collect the messages, register the reports, and investigate them for evidence of possible war crimes.

Venediktova declared last week that Ukraine would seek official international justice against Russia for its war. She noted at the time that the process would not be a quick one, especially as the warring continues.

And, so it is. The office is slowly and carefully gathering the information with one goal in mind: to hold Russias military and its president, Vladimir Putin, accountable for the death and destruction in Ukraine.

Venediktovas office has opened more than 8,000 criminal cases linked to the war already. Investigators have identified 500 suspects so far, including Russian government ministers and military commanders.

Venediktova has deployed prosecutors to refugee centers across Ukraine and at border crossings. They talk with the displaced, seeking the refugees stories of the war to document as evidence.

Even little details reported by a witness can be important. A description of an attackers clothing, or the sound of shelling, might lead to a major finding.

The interviews are slow and careful but worthy of the time. Venediktova and her office say they have documented evidence of mass burial sites, execution of civilians, shelling of civilian areas, repeated attacks on hospitals, forced disappearances, torture, sexual violence and cities under siege, denied food, water and humanitarian aid.

This image contains sensitive content which some people may find offensive or disturbing. Click to reveal This image contains sensitive content which some people may find offensive or disturbing - Click to reveal Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, center, looks at the exhumed bodies of civilians killed during the Russian occupation in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, April 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

For Venediktova, the goal is personal. I protect the public interest of Ukrainian citizens, she told The Associated Press. And now I see that I cant protect these dead kids. And for me its pain, she said.

The 43-year-old former law professor became Ukraines prosecutor general in 2020, the first woman to serve in the position. Since the war, she is on the move continuously with special safety measures in place, including bullet-proof military clothing. There is little time to eat or rest.

"The main functions of the law are to protect and to compensate. I hope that we can do it, because now it's just beautiful words, no more rule of law," Venediktova says. "It's very beautiful words. I want them to work."

Recently Venediktova visited the Lviv office. She and prosecutors spoke with Ala. Ala is 34 years old, and she has an 8-year-old daughter. Ala did not give her last name because her daughter is still in the Russian-controlled area.

Ala explains to them that shelling destroyed her home. She collected a piece of metal for evidence.

"We need proof for them to be punished. I am lucky. I am still here to talk about what happened to me, Ala said.

Venediktova has been creating partnerships and relations with human rights group. Some of these groups and the public have been concerned about the Ukrainian authorities in the past.

Venediktova also wants average citizens to help collect evidence by using their phones to send the information to a government website. In the past five weeks there have been over 6,000 claims on the site.

Most nights, Venediktova appears on Ukrainian TV to speak to the people of her country. She tells them that Ukraine will punish Russia for its actions.

"My first joy will be victory when we sell someone's villa, yacht, and our ordinary Ukrainians, who were forced to flee their homes, will physically receive this compensation," she says. "Thank you, good evening, see you soon."

Im Faith Pirlo.

Erika Kinetz reported this story for the Associated Press. Faith Pirlo adapted it for VOA Learning English.

____________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

staff  n. people who work and are employed by a company or organization

prosecutor  n. one who is in charge of the process of pursuing formal charges against an offender to final judgment

kids  n. children

bullet-proof  adj. not able to be penetrated by bullets

compensate  v. to give money to make up for something

joy  n. a feeling of great happiness

villa  n. a large house, usually in the countryside or near the sea, especially in southern Europe, and often one that people can rent for a vacation

yacht  n. a large boat that is used for racing or pleasure
President Joe Biden is crediting the assembly line workers at a Javelin missile plant for doing lifesaving work in building the antitank weapons that are being sent to Ukraine. He says the missiles are stifling Russias invasion as he is making a pitch for Congress to approve $33 billion so the U.S. can continue to hustle aid to the front lines. Bidens Tuesday trip to the Alabama factory that makes the Javelin weapons system is drawing attention to a growing concern as the war drags on: Can the U.S. sustain the cadence in shipping vast amounts of arms to Ukraine while maintaining the healthy stockpile it may need?
By Trend

Germany will buy 60 CH-47F Chinook heavy transport helicopters from Boeing (BA.N) worth around 5 billion euros ($5.40 billion)as it upgrades its military armour, Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported on Sunday, citing government sources, Trend reports with reference to Reuters.

The helicopters will be financed from the 100 billion euros planned special fund for the military which Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced, the paper said.

The helicopters could be delivered in 2025/26 at the earliest and would replace the roughly 50-year-old CH-53G helicopters made by the Sikorsky unit of U.S. arms makers Lockheed Martin (LMT.N), it said.

Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht will inform the parliament of the decision next week, the newspaper said.

Competitors for the deal included Lockheed Martin's CH-53K King Stallion. But the cheaper Boeing model and the fact that many NATO allies also fly the Chinook were the reasons for deciding on the CH-47F, Bild said.

A spokesperson for the Defence Ministry said no decision on helicopter purchases has been made yet.
Two years ago, when the bill was called The Endless Frontier Act, Wisconsins Mike Gallagher was among four bipartisan members of Congress who took the lead in pushing for deeper federal investment in science and technology to re-energize economic growth.

Today, the Green Bay Republican is not among the 90 or so members of the House of Representatives who will meet as a conference committee to iron out differences between successor bills, one from each chamber.

Instead, Wisconsin will be represented in coming weeks and months by Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, and Reps. Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald, both Republicans.

What happened? Its less about Gallagher losing interest in the notion of rejuvenated federal research and development investment, but more about conflicting Capitol Hill priorities brought on by war in Ukraine, chronic shortages of semiconductors, growing unease over Chinas ambitions in the world, and the revival of disputes over trade, climate change and immigration.

Bills passed by the Senate and House still share enough common ground to be rolled into one, but it wont be as easy. The legislative clutter now surrounding what The Endless Frontier Act originally envisioned may make it difficult to clear a path to compromise.

Named for a post-World War II report that sparked an American surge in science, engineering and technology investment, The Endless Frontier Act called for boosting specific tech and manufacturing sectors  semiconductor chips included  over the course of 10 years.

The bill was inspired by a 2019 Brookings Institution report that concluded the nations economy would be stronger and more diversified if R&D spending was less concentrated on the East and West coasts and more dispersed in emerging centers with domestic manufacturing potential.

Thats still the basic goal, but there are important differences. How (and if) those differences are resolved is vital to Wisconsin:

The Senate bill would boost spending by $250 billion over 10 years; the House $400 billion.

The Senate version would invest $29 billion over five years in a new National Science Foundation directorate focused on artificial intelligence, semiconductors and advanced computing, robotics, biotechnology, advanced materials and more.

The House bill sets aside $13.3 billion over five years for a new NSF directorate, but lists climate change, environmental sustainability, and social and economic equality among its more general targets.

Both bills would establish regional technology hubs (the Senate with $10 billion; the House with $7 billion) with the Senate calling for 10 such hubs and the House seven.

Easing the semiconductor shortage, made worse by the war in Ukraine and overall reliance on foreign sources, may be the glue that holds the package together. Such chips are used in everything from cars to telecommunications, from computers to health care, and from defense systems to clean energy production. The market is dominated by China and Taiwan.

Rifts between the Senate and House versions are most likely to emerge over items such as: retraining workers who lose jobs due to imports; trade tariffs; creating immigration visa paths for highly skilled workers; and the House emphasis on climate change, environmental resiliency and social goals versus the engineering-focused Senate approach.

If the negotiations fail and little more than semiconductor reinvestment is approved, thats not a win for Wisconsin because there isnt much of a chip industry here.

If the broader goal of shifting more R&D research and manufacturing to the Heartland is realized, Wisconsin and its neighbors win because of a strong foundation in most of the science, tech and manufacturing disciplines on the table.

The 2019 Brookings Institute report and its follow-ups listed two Wisconsin cities  Madison and Milwaukee  among its top 36 potential growth areas. Other Midwest cities were on the list, as well. Thats a big reason why Gallagher and his bipartisan colleagues sponsored The Endless Frontier Act a few months later.

Wisconsins three members of the conference committee can help steer the process in the right direction with some old-fashioned give-and-take. Thats not a specialty in Washington these days, but its well worth a try.

Tom Still is the president of the Wisconsin Technology Council. Email: tstill@wisconsintechnologycouncil.com.
NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP)  The recent appearance of two cruise ships in New London has raised hopes that Connecticut might stand to benefit from the return of an industry decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The two ships, part of American Queen Voyages, were on a tour of the East Coast and Canada, and were the first cruise ships to stop in New London in four years. Both are scheduled to stop in New London on the way back south in the fall.

The ships each brought about 90 passengers and 75 crew members and were met with gift bags, discounts in local restaurants and a driving tour of the city.

Connecticut also has deep-water ports in New Haven and Bridgeport that can handle large ships, but the state often isnt seen as a cruise destination.

Its encouraging that with the industry just really trying to make a comeback, they picked New London, Mayor Michael Passero told the New Haven Register.

New London and other Connecticut ports could benefit from Canada's reopening its own ports to cruises after two years, and also from industry trends toward more domestic routes and smaller ships that cater to an older clientele, said Chris Gray Faust, managing editor of the consumer review site Cruise Critic.

"There has been a pivot toward more domestic cruises, Gray Faust told the newspaper. Some of these ports are ones that you dont think of as cruise ports, necessarily.

A spokesperson for the Connecticut Port Authority told the Register that the agency is working with the state to study whether a pier at New Londons Fort Trumbull, which is closer to the mouth of the Thames River and the Long Island Sound, could be refurbished to accommodate cruise ships.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
By Trend

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will visit Ankara before heading to Moscow next week to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and then to Ukraine for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a U.N. statement said on Saturday, Trend reports citing Reuters.

Guterres will visit the Turkish capital on Monday, where he will be received by President Tayyip Erdogan, the statement said. The U.N. aid chief, Martin Griffiths, said on April 18 that Turkey was a valuable host for humanitarian talks between Ukraine and Russia.

Eri Kaneko, Guterres' associate spokesperson, told a news briefing on Friday that Guterres would head to Moscow on Tuesday and meet Putin as well as have a working meeting and lunch with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, hoping to discuss what can be done to bring peace to Ukraine.

The UN also announced that Guterres will meet with Zelensky, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, and UN agencies on Thursday to discuss the extension of humanitarian relief efforts.
One offers the most gorgeous islands in a region famous for its exquisite azure waters with the best luxury all-inclusive resort experience.

The other, colorful, casual and comfortable plus size apparel for at [sic] a great value.

Neither appears to mention great customer service, or even, well take your calls.

Mark Gams, of Oregon, contacted SOS on Feb. 19 with a story of vacation plans stymied by pandemic and vacation refund stymied by vacation provider.

In July 2019, he and his wife booked a weeklong trip to the Bahamas for eight months hence, and everyone knows where the world was when hence rolled around.

The trip insurance Gams had purchased for the Sandals Resorts package provided vouchers for later travel, so in December 2020, they made reservations for Sandals Antigua resort for late January of this year, Gams said.

Nine months after those reservation where made, though, Sandals corporate owner Unique Travel Corp. notified Gams that hed been enrolled  unsolicited and at no cost to him  in a different trip insurance plan that promised a cash refund should their plans again succumb to forces out of their control, according to Gams and documents from the company he provided to SOS.

Sure enough, by September 2021, the U.S. State Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were advising Americans not to travel to Antigua and Barbuda because of high COVID-19 rates. Gams said that when he canceled the January trip in late October 2021, a Sandals agent told him a full refund of $7,037.30 would be on its way in up to 10 business days.

We received a $98 credit on 11/5/21, the amount of our initial deposit, he wrote SOS. When I called asking when the rest was coming, I was told we wont be getting it as we paid for our trip with vouchers and the agent we spoke with shouldnt have told us the credit would be forthcoming. They explained our only option would be to ask to re-extend the vouchers.

Sandals New York City- and London-based PR firm didnt respond to SOS inquiries for a month until SOS let it, Sandals and Unique Travel know SOS would be writing a column like this one.

That shook loose a March 24 response from The Decker/Royal Agencys Stacy Royal, who said she hoped to have the information over to you today but needed four more reminders before she and Decker/Royals Cathy Decker responded on April 14 and 15, respectively, to say, in effect, that all Sandals would do is extend Gams vouchers expiration date through November 2023.

Sandals has not disputed that Gams was promised a refund. Gams said the couple is discussing whether to take the trip.

Sweating sweatshirt refund

In Mary Haefners case, online clothing brand Woman Within could not find it within itself to refund the rest of the $19.98 she paid for two sweatshirts ordered by mail last fall.

Haefner said that after shed snail-mailed her paper check, the retailer sent her a postcard saying it didnt have one of the sweatshirts in the color she wanted, and Haefner decided to cancel her entire order.

Woman Within sent her the sweatshirt it did have anyway, which Haefer tried on, didnt like and returned, and double W subsequently sent her a check for $10.44.

I did try it on and it was too thin, she said. They werent friendly about it so I said to just cancel it.

Haefner called SOS looking for help getting the other $9.54 back after she said W(2) told her multiple unhelpful or untrue things over several phone calls, including that they had already refunded all of her money.

SOS emailed the media contact for Woman Within parent company FullBeauty Brands on Jan. 21, and then, after getting no response, the media contact and privacy officer for FullBeauty and FullBeautys PR firm. Also no response.

A FullBeauty customer service rep in a Feb. 1 phone call provided an 800 number that connected to the same customer service phone system that wasnt helpful in the initial call. A call to the number for a media contact culled from an old FullBeauty press release resulted in a message saying the number was not working and providing a different number that when called also was not working.

On Feb. 17, SOS called an FBB number found on the companys Better Business Bureau webpage (which assigns the New York City-based company an A+ rating despite a customer review average of one out of five stars). The person who answered the phone said he could not provide a number to the companys corporate office. SOS also received no response to the contact us form it filled out on FBBs website.

Send us an SOS Since September 2007, SOS has helped save Wisconsin State Journal readers more than $199,370.51 and solved hundreds of problems. You can send an SOS using any of these methods: Email: sos@madison.com Online form: http://go.madison.com/sendSOS Phone: 608-252-6198 Mail: SOS, Wisconsin State Journal, P.O. Box 8058, Madison, WI 53708

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Hundreds of folks gathered at Wisconsin Brewing Co. early Sunday afternoon to do what Wisconsinites do best: drink beer.

But on Sunday, they drank for a good cause at the Brew for Ukraine Brewing Festival where 100% of the proceeds from sales of beer, T-shirts, food and other goods will be donated to Ukraine-based organizations in an effort to help the war-torn country.

The event, scheduled from noon to 5 p.m., was already packed indoors and outside within the first 30 minutes, with a line to the brewerys outdoor bar that was a few dozen people deep throughout the first hour.

Five of the beers at the center of the festival were from recipes shared by a Ukrainian brewery.

Pravda Brewery made a call to other brewing colleagues around the world a month or so ago saying, Look, we need help. Heres five of our formulas  could you please choose a formula to brew and sell it and send the proceeds to a list of organizations? said Kirby Nelson, the brewmaster and a co-owner of Wisconsin Brewing Co.

In March, Pravda Brewery, located in Lviv, Ukraine, released its beer recipes and invited brewers from around the world to make its beers to show support for the country invaded by Russia in February.

Rob LoBreglio, Great Danes brewmaster, got the formulas first and reached out to Nelson, and the two of them decided to round up a group of Madison-area brewers, known as the Common Thread, to brew the five recipes to be served at Sundays event and beyond.

Five of the breweries each brewed one of the formulas, and theres a lot more than what we have here today in terms of beer  various tap rooms and bars throughout the city will be selling these beers on tap, and the proceeds will go to Ukrainian charities, Nelson said. It was important to do this.

Other breweries that took part in the festival include Delta Beer Lab, Giant Jones, Funk Factory, Grumpy Troll, Karben4, Lake Louie, Starkweather, Vintage and Working Draft.

Julie Hedgecorth and Chuck Squires, both of Sun Prairie, sat inside of the brewery, sipped their beers and contemplated the events happening half a world away.

It makes you want to cry. I think we both shed some tears, Hedgecorth said of the conflict in Ukraine.

Its a travesty, its inhumane, Squires said. I wish we could do more.

Yana Selivanova, who is from Ukraine, was one of a handful of vendors at the event and sold handmade Ukrainian soaps, posters, T-shirts and other items. She also plans to donate 100% of the proceeds to a Ukrainian organization.

I just wanted to help somehow, the only way I can help my country is from here, she said. I feel very proud of people from Ukraine and proud of Americans who are willing to support and help.

Other vendors included Nothing Bundt Cakes, Sugar River Country Bakery and Stalzys Deli and Bakery. The festival also featured live music.

Pravda, which is Russian for truth, was founded in 2014 in a former department store in Lvivs central square. The project included Czech engineering, Belgian consulting, a German bottling line, Spanish pouring system and American brewer, according to the brewerys website.

The brewery later relocated to expand its production threefold and now has the capacity to brew 9,500 barrels of beer a year. But when Russia invaded, the brewery halted production to make Molotov cocktails for the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces.

Its unclear whether the company has restarted its brewing systems, but its recipes are now being made by breweries around the world, including at Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee, Bare Bones Brewery in Oshkosh and Sunshine Brewing Co. in Lake Mills.

Some of the beers in what is being called the Victory Series will also be available on tap at select breweries and a few taverns. One of the beers, Syla, named after a small Ukrainian village and made at Giant Jones Brewing Co. on Madisons Near East Side, has been bottled and is for sale in individual 500 ml bottles at the brewery and by next week will be at Star Liquor on Williamson Street.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP)  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ' deepening feud with Walt Disney World is testing the limits of his combative leadership style while sending an unmistakable message to his rivals that virtually nothing is off limits as he plots his political future.

The 43-year-old Republican has repeatedly demonstrated an acute willingness to fight over the course of his decadelong political career. He has turned against former aides and rejected the GOP Legislature's rewrite of congressional maps, forcing lawmakers to accept a version more to his liking and prompting voting rights groups to sue. He's also leaned into simmering tensions with Donald Trump, which is notable for someone seeking to lead a party where loyalty to the former president is a requirement.

But DeSantis' decision to punish Disney World, one of the world's most popular tourist destinations and one of Florida's biggest private employers, took his fighter mentality to a new level. In retribution for Disney's criticism of a new state law condemned by critics as Don't Say Gay, DeSantis signed legislation on Friday stripping the theme park of a decades-old special agreement that allowed it to govern itself.

To critics, including some in his own party, such a raw exercise of power suggests DeSantis is operating with a sense of invincibility that could come back to haunt him. Others see an ambitious politician emboldened by strong support in his state and a mountain of campaign cash grabbing an opportunity to further stoke the nation's culture wars, turning himself into a hero among Republican voters in the process.

When you listen to Ron DeSantis, it's righteous indignation: 'Here's why you're wrong and here's why I'm right,'' said Florida Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, a former state GOP chairman. And it is that righteous indignation and that willingness to fight back that endears people to Ron DeSantis' message. As long as he keeps on showing that he's willing to fight, people are going to continue to keep flocking to him."

DeSantis is up for reelection in November. But in the wake of his scrap with Disney, he will introduce himself to a key group of presidential primary voters this week when he campaigns for Nevada Senate candidate Adam Laxalt. The appearance marks his first of the year in a state featured prominently on the presidential calendar, although DeSantis aides insist it is simply a trip to help out a longtime friend.

Disney drew DeSantis wrath for opposing a new state law that bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. The DeSantis-backed bill has been condemned by LGBTQ activists nationwide as homophobic, although the measure, like others dealing with transgender athletes and racial history in schools, has emerged as a core piece of the GOPs political strategy.

The Disney legislation, which does not take effect until June 2023, could cause massive economic fallout for the company, the surrounding communities and the millions who visit the Orlando amusement park every year.

There are risks to DeSantis' embrace of the legislation, particularly if his antagonism towards Disney threatens the GOP's standing with independents and women, who could play crucial roles in the fall campaign. Jenna Ellis, a former Trump administration attorney, called the DeSantis-backed legislation vengeful.

Democrats who are facing a tough election year are eager to highlight DeSantis' moves as a way to portray the GOP as a party of extremists. In an interview, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison described DeSantis attack on Disney as a continuation of a divisive agenda geared toward booking interviews on conservative media at the expense of his constituents.

The people of Florida deserve a governor whose first priority is them, not his own political ambition, Harrison said.

President Joe Biden said at a party fundraiser in Seattle that this is not your father's Republican Party.

I respect conservatives, Biden told donors on Thursday. Theres nothing conservative about deciding youre going to throw Disney out of its present posture because ... you think we should be not be able to say, gay."

In a statement, DeSantis' spokesperson Taryn Fenske, called the governor a principled and driven leader who accomplishes exactly what he says he will do.

Indeed, DeSantis' friends and foes in the GOP agree that his crackdown on Disney is a major political victory among Republican base voters already enamored by his pushback against pandemic-related public health measures over the past two years. They suggest it also taps into a growing Republican embrace of anti-corporate populism and parental control of education that resonates with a wider swath of voters.

Republican pollsters have been privately testing DeSantis' political strength beyond Florida for several months, finding that the only Republican consistently with more support than DeSantis among GOP voters is Trump himself. At the same time, DeSantis is sitting on more than $100 million in campaign funds.

Hes a very smart guy in what hes doing and how hes doing it, Republican strategist David Urban, a close Trump ally, said of DeSantis.

Those close to the Florida governor say there is one message above all to take away from the Disney fight: that DeSantis, one of the few high-profile Republicans who has not ruled out running against Trump in a 2024 presidential primary, is not afraid of anybody, anything or any fight.

Tensions between the two men have been building for months.

In a Washington Post interview last month, Trump took credit for DeSantis' rise. And last weekend, longtime Trump loyalist Roger Stone released a video clip in which Stone calls DeSantis an expletive while greeting Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club.

So far, Florida voters seem to be on DeSantis' side.

Nearly 6 in 10 Florida voters approved of DeSantis' job performance in a February poll conducted by the University of North Florida. The poll also asked registered Republicans about a hypothetical presidential primary between Trump and DeSantis. The result? Trump and DeSantis were about even.

Brian Ballard, a Florida lobbyist and a major Republican fundraiser, said DeSantis has a combination of popularity and instincts that is shaping the modern-day GOP.

No other elected official, maybe in the country, has the Republican base support that Ron DeSantis has. So hes incredibly powerful, not only a powerful politician, but a powerful government leader, Ballard said. The guy really has the reins of power in his hands.

Peoples reported from New York. Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this report.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP)  Two candidates who were endorsed by former President Donald Trump won Michigan Republicans backing for attorney general and secretary of state at a convention Saturday, clearing their path to face Democratic incumbents in the fall.

The meeting of thousands of delegates was a test of Trumps clout in the party.

His allies  attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno, a lawyer, and secretary of state candidate Kristina Karamo, a community college instructor  emerged victorious from three-person fields at the 10-hour endorsement convention in downtown Grand Rapids.

The political newcomers support Trumps false claims about his 2020 loss in the swing state. They will be officially nominated at a second convention in August and challenge Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson in November.

Karamo won handily with two-thirds of the vote. DePerno was just shy of the majority needed in an initial vote. But he won a runoff over former legislative leader Tom Leonard that was paused and later restarted after the ballot order of races did not match what was shown on screens flanking the stage.

Trump has said his preferred candidates would not let Michigan be stolen in the next presidential election. He lost the state by 154,000 votes to Joe Biden. Trump's slate drew criticism, however, within a wing of the GOP that views the candidates as unelectable in the fall and was frustrated that party leaders openly backed them rather than be neutral.

State Republican Party Chairman Ron Weiser said such critics are poor losers."

We're going to unite together, and we will be able to win this election this fall, he said.

DePernos main rival for the nomination was Leonard, the partys 2018 attorney general nominee whom Trump later nominated for U.S. attorney in western Michigan. State Rep. Ryan Berman, who finished third, urged his supporters to back Leonard in the runoff.

Bernadette Smith, one of the partys vice chairs, said DePerno is the only candidate who will fight for election integrity. As DePerno's supporters walked to the front of the hall to demonstrate their support, a video played of Trump touting DePerno and calling Leonard a RINO  or Republican in name only.

DePerno unsuccessfully sued after human error led rural Antrim County to erroneously show a local victory for Biden over Trump. It was quickly corrected but was used to spread misinformation about voting equipment.

DePerno was in "the field working when no one else was, Smith said.

He may face repercussions over the Antrim lawsuit.

DePerno recently confirmed that the states Attorney Grievance Commission is investigating him. Nessel last year began a separate probe after a Republican-led legislative committee said people were making baseless allegations about the results in Antrim to raise money or publicity for their own ends. The panels report did not specify whom should be investigated, but the people mentioned in it include DePerno.

Republican U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman supported Leonard.

Mark my words: Democrats are motivated and we will only win if we put our best candidates forward, he said. I truly believe he's the only candidate in this race with integrity, grit, determination and the skills to not only win in November but to perform the duties of attorney general on day one.

DePerno, however, said he can unite Republicans and defeat Nessel.

She is literally drunk on power and we are going to end that, he said.

In the secretary of state's race, Karamo defeated state Rep. Beau LaFave and Chesterfield Township Clerk Cindy Berry.

We're going to make sure that our election results is something that everyone can be confident in, Karamo said.

In a sign of how pervasive election falsehoods have become, the party used machines to tabulate votes but, in a change, also hand-counted the ballots in a compromise with activists.

Nominees for Michigans statewide races are chosen at conventions except in gubernatorial and U.S. Senate primaries. The midterm election climate is expected to favor Republicans, but incumbent attorney generals and secretaries of state rarely lose.

The state Democratic Party said the GOP should be ashamed of its endorsed candidates. Chair Lavora Barnes called Karamo a fear-spreading, inexperienced extremist and said DePerno is a Trump lackey" willing to protect the former president but not all Michiganders.

Follow David Eggert at https://twitter.com/DavidEggert00

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Few issues in Congress transcend partisan polarization as reliably and consistently as members stock portfolios.

Americans across the ideological spectrum overwhelmingly agree that their federal representatives should not be buying and selling securities given their obviously advantageous access to information that is not available to most investors. And judging by the persistence of robust market participation on Capitol Hill, members of Congress from both parties broadly concur that they relish leveraging that privilege to enrich themselves.

The post-Watergate Ethics in Government Act and the Obama-era STOCK Act (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge), which required more frequent disclosure of congressional trading, have served mainly to underscore the extent of the problem without doing much to solve it. A recent review by Insider found that 59 lawmakers had violated the law, which generally incurs a piddling fine.

Meanwhile, flurries of remarkably prescient buying and selling by lawmakers have taken place on the cusp of world- and market-shaking events such as the 2008 financial crisis, the 2020 emergence of the novel coronavirus and this years Russian invasion of Ukraine, all suggesting senators and representatives were making lucrative use of information gained by virtue of their positions.

An outbreak of pre-pandemic stock-dumping prompted the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission to open an investigation of four senators. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., ultimately acknowledged failing to disclose a transaction by her late husband and said she would pay a fine, though she maintained that his trades were unrelated to the emergence of COVID-19 or any information she may have had.

Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who came under more extensive scrutiny based on a broader sell-off by him and a relative, stepped down from the leadership of the Intelligence Committee. And scrutiny of former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., may have helped hand the Senate to Democrats. But the federal government ultimately dropped all the probes without bringing charges.

The husband of another California lawmaker, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is so prolific and successful as an investor as to have inspired a following on social media, where amateur investors follow the speakers disclosed trades. ... Theres evidence that the thousands of trades disclosed by members of Congress, and mimicked by those monitoring them, are influencing the broader market. Like Burr, who voted against reform, Pelosi made matters worse by opposing any restriction of such congressional profiteering last year, though she has since changed her position.

The cause of reforming congressional stock trading is almost as popular and bipartisan in theory as members pursuit of market riches is in practice, with more than a fifth of lawmakers signed onto one of several current reform proposals. As the anemic previous efforts demonstrate, they have little hope of regaining credibility on the subject if they continue to allow members and their immediate families to own and trade individual stocks.

Requiring members of Congress to limit their investments to diversified funds that dont invite self-dealing and conflicts of interest is not a lot to ask given their unfair advantages over the investing public and the power and responsibility with which theyre entrusted. The alternative is another reason to distrust a legislature that Americans already hold in unsustainably low esteem.
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

(THE CONVERSATION) Russias invasion of Ukraine has brought strong Western condemnation and sanctions, but many nations around the world have chosen not to join this united front.

Dozens of governments outside Europe and North America have been reluctant to censure Russia, and many more have refrained from joining multilateral sanctions. China has tacitly supported the Kremlin since its February affirmation of a Sino-Russian friendship with no limits. A few others have backed Russia vocally, among them Belarus, which has served as a staging ground for the Russian invasion.

Meanwhile, other governments have sat on the fence. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said pointedly that his country will not take sides. Indian leaders have reaffirmed their policy of nonalignment, implying that their nation will seek to stay out of the fight. South Africa, Pakistan and numerous other nations are following a similar path.

As a scholar of international politics, I believe responses to recent Russian aggression shed light on how governments throughout what is known as the Global South are apt to behave if a new Cold War takes shape. Unless governments are threatened directly, many appear content to espouse nonalignment  a policy of avoiding strong support for the West or for its principal rivals in Moscow and Beijing.

Nonalignment may be a sensible strategy for individual countries as a way to preserve autonomy and avoid costly choices between major powers. However, I believe international peace and security will suffer if too many states refuse to take sides in cases like Ukraine.

The meanings of nonalignment

The concept of nonalignment emerged in the 1950s. It implied a refusal to join the rival Cold War blocs led by Washington and Moscow. The concept was pioneered by a group of post-World War II leaders including Indias Jawaharlal Nehru, Indonesias Sukarno, Egypts Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghanas Kwame Nkrumah and Yugoslavias Josip Broz Tito.

Despite representing a broad range of political ideologies, they all saw nonalignment as a way to resist colonial and imperial powers, preserve independence and stay out of the Soviet-American conflict.

These ideas led to the 1961 establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement, a loosely organized group that soon included most of the worlds countries and population. Several core principles guided the movement, including anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, nonaggression and noninterference.

Yet the movement faced a dilemma from the start. When a powerful state violates core principles like sovereignty and territorial integrity, should members of the Non-Aligned Movement take sides to oppose it?

The movements diverse members occasionally took strong unified stands. For example, they joined in opposing colonial rule in Rhodesia and apartheid in Namibia and South Africa. When superpower interests were more directly in play, however, nonaligned states failed to agree on when to take sides.

Leftist leaders in states such as Cuba and Vietnam saw the Western powers as neoimperial threats and sided clearly with Moscow despite joining the Non-Aligned Movement. Conservative states, such as Saudi Arabia and Morocco, tilted consistently toward Washington. Many sought relative neutrality. But all these states remained in the movement, which has no agreed standard for what degree of alignment is acceptable.

The differences among members of the Non-Aligned Movement undermined their ability to exercise collective clout, even when superpowers rode roughshod over norms of sovereignty and self-determination.

In 1979, for example, members were deeply divided over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Fifty-six voted to condemn the Soviet invasion at the United Nations, but nine supported Moscow and 26 abstained. Those numbers are remarkably similar to recent votes on Ukraine. Divisions over the Soviet war in Afghanistan weakened the Non-Aligned Movement and undercut its ability to enforce international norms and influence Soviet policy.

The movements relevance declined after the Cold War, as its diverse members struggled to define its role in a world no longer shaped by a Soviet-American standoff. Still, the movement has survived, and its 120 members recently celebrated the groups 60th anniversary in Belgrade.

Enduring dilemmas

The Non-Aligned Movement faces new challenges today, as the war in Ukraine continues.

For many governments in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, nonalignment remains appealing. Most depend heavily on trade, aid and investment both from the Western powers and from China (if not also from Russia). Choosing sides could thus be crippling economically. That danger is apparent in Belarus, which faces stiff Western sanctions for aiding the Russian war effort. Countries opposing Russia also risk debilitating energy cutoffs. Taking sides against China in any future scenario, such as conflict over Taiwan, would be even more costly.

Relative nonalignment is also attractive from a security standpoint. It enables governments to obtain weapons from multiple sources and limit dependence on any single power. This is a major factor for India, which remains heavily reliant on Russian arms, and to a lesser extent for countries like Vietnam.

Nonalignment helps keep diplomatic doors open as well. This appeals to governments wary of losing policy autonomy if they rely too much on one powerful state or bloc for political support.

For all of these reasons, nonalignment is likely to continue to be common. In fact, its strategic appeal is arguably stronger now than it was during the Cold War because of greater global integration. Unlike the 1950s, most countries now have strong economic, political and, in some cases, military linkages to both East and West.

Nonalignment may be sensible policy for individual states, but it could spell trouble for international security. Russian President Vladimir Putin has shattered the illusion that territorial conquest and great-power wars were consigned to the past, and in so doing put his fist through the defining principles of the Non-Aligned Movement. Reluctance to take sides in such a clear case of aggression can weaken international norms and undermine global security.

At this stage, most members of the Non-Aligned Movement have condemned Russian attacks. Yet only one, Singapore, has imposed sanctions. Others are passing the buck, making the war in Ukraine a burden for the United States and its core allies to bear.

In doing so, they are making it easier for the Kremlin to sustain a brutal military campaign. They are sending the message that aggression and territorial seizure by major powers will be tolerated. I believe this represents a major missed opportunity to defend the anti-imperial norms at the core of the Non-Aligned Movement. The movements members have profound interests in reasserting those norms on behalf of Ukraine, as they are among the most vulnerable to being next.

[The Conversations Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories. Sign up for Politics Weekly.]

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/as-ukraine-war-deepens-great-power-divisions-a-revitalized-non-aligned-movement-could-emerge-181136.

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Willie Sarratt wants to speak up for his neighbors.

Residents of the newly renamed Pioneer Village MHC on Locust Street near Kimberly Road, Sarratt and his neighbors are facing an uncertain future.

I just want to get it aired out so maybe somebody can help some of these people, he said. A lot of these people cant move their trailers and they have been here 20 years. What do you do?

In January, the 40 residents of the trailer park received notices that the property had been sold. The name of the park changed from Pioneer Trailer Park to Pioneer Village MHC.

At the same time, some of the residents started receiving eviction notices.

The people that have these smaller trailers, theyre all on social security and disability, Sarratt told the Times-News. They dont really keep their yard up that well, a lot of them are disabled. So they (the management company) went through and evicted all of them. That was the first eviction.

Sarratt and his neighbors are part of a growing national trend that has reached the Magic Valley. A red-hot housing market is leading to a rise in mobile home and trailer park evictions, leaving many low-income individuals struggling to find housing. While some of the owners say their goal is to update the spaces and allow residents to return, not everyone believes them.

Nowhere to go

Seventy percent of the Pioneer Villages residents are on social security or disability, Sarratt said. Before the new ownership, lot rent was $270.

They told us that they were going to fix the park up, upgrade it and make it all better, he said. That was in January.

In March, another round of eviction notices were sent out. Lot rent went from $270 to $400.

The Times-News reached out to the parks registered owner, Capital Investments LLC in Meridian, and received a statement from Stacie Seale, the registered agent listed for both the mobile home park and Capital Investments.

Seale is also listed as the manager of operations and human resources for the independent real estate brokerage Capital Group in Meridian. Mat Stevens is listed in Linkedin as president of Capital Group and as manager of Capital Investments, according to the Idaho Secretary of States Office.

Seale said she could not give out the owners name.

Pioneer Mobile Home Park is preparing for an extensive renovation at 1515 Kimberly Road in Twin Falls, the statement reads. The renovation is aimed at updating infrastructure and general beautification of the community.

In the interest of safety, management decided residents are unable to live at the park while work is underway. To limit the displacement of residents the renovations will be done in three phases, the statement said.

Current residents in good standing will be allowed to move to another space in the park that is not undergoing construction at that time. Good standing means no violations of the lease agreement, Seale said in an email.

Those residents that remain in good standing will be given the option to move into a newer home once each phase is completed, the statement said. We look forward to a continued relationship with them.

An uncertain future

When asked by the Times-News what the option to move into a newer home meant, she said the outcome of homes will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Needed renovations include updated utility services, streets and landscaping, she said.

At the completion of the renovation, Pioneer Mobile Home Park expects to provide an updated manufactured housing community that will provide a safe, comfortable living environment that the neighborhood and surrounding community as a whole can be proud of, the statement reads.

Completion of the work is scheduled for the spring of 2023.

Stacie Seale is also the registered agent for High Desert RV Park on Addison Avenue West, according to the Twin Falls County Parcel Map. Residents were evicted from High Desert in November.

Sarratt is worried that tenants not in good standing will have nowhere to go and the cost of rent will continue to increase.

Moving to a new park is not feasible for a variety of reasons, the first being the price tag.

Matt Gooch, owner of Rock Solid House Moving and Repair, said the majority of mobile homes in the Magic Valley were built in the 1970s. Their age makes them nearly impossible to move.

In 1982, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development changed the terminology used to describe mobile homes. Mobile homes manufactured after June 15, 1976, were changed to be called manufactured homes.

The homes built after 1976 have a HUD tag at the rear of each unit certifying it was built to HUD standards and safety requirements.

Homes built before 1976 are difficult to move because there is often structural damage, rotting or splitting, Gooch said.

Those can be tricky because mobile homes werent really built to last more than 30 to 50 years, he said.

In addition, moving a trailer can cost more than $5,000, depending on factors such as how far its going, the age and if it needs new wheels.

County and city codes also pose a problem.

When an older mobile home is picked up and placed somewhere new, the home is considered a new building and is required to comply with the latest housing code. This can require upgrading plumbing and electrical systems, which can cost upward of $12,000, he said.

The restrictions and thousands of dollars in moving costs make it difficult for people on a fixed income to move, Gooch said.

When they get kicked out of these trailer parks and subdivisions that get rebuilt into more modern residences, these people really dont have anywhere they can take this stuff, he said. And its usually too expensive for them.

Wesley Edmo, a staff member with MHAction, a national mobile home-resident organizing group, said the number of mobile home park evictions across the nation are rapidly increasing.

Its really a disturbing trend, Edmo said. We are fighting the good fight to maintain the affordability.

Part of the groups work includes convincing legislators to pass more protections for manufactured home community residents. These include guard rails for increasing lot fees or maintaining the property, he said. The best way for mobile home owners to protect themselves is to organize together and become self-advocates.

For the past year, Edmo has worked in Montana to stop two large corporations, Havenpark Capital and Enterprise Community Partners, from buying up local mobile home parks.

Its like they introduce themselves to all these people and lobbyists as these great people coming in and they are just going to do wonderful things..., he said.

In reality, they are gouging these consumers, he said.

Its ridiculous.

Edno has seen retirees across the U.S. who have been forced out of their homes because of arbitrary rules or fear tactics.

The people who work for many years and retired in these communities, all they want to do is live out their lives and enjoy the little bit of investment they have, their homes, Edmo said. And then they are forced out, forced to sell so these people can come back in, resell homes and make a profit.

For some Twin Falls residents, finding a new place has been nearly impossible.

Heart of stone

In November, all 16 families living in High Desert RV Park on Addison were given eviction notices and 30 days to vacate the property.

For 14 years, Gary Zimmers, 72, had lived at the park just west of West Five Points. New management took over the park in October and Zimmers feared he was going to lose his home.

The owners have a heart of stone, he said. They evicted us in winter.

Living on a fixed income, he struggled to find a place to live and ended up living in Hollister for a brief time at a park with no sewer hookups. In two months he was able to shower only twice.

Eventually, Zimmers was lucky enough to find a space at Curry Trailer Park east of Filer. He knows some of his old neighbors havent been as fortunate.

The people who live in trailer parks are the poorest of the poor, he said.

Mike McCarthy, a lawyer with Idaho Legal Aid Services, said owners of mobile home parks are required to give residents 90 days notice, but RV parks are different.

In the case of mobile home parks, some landlords use month-to-month leases in an attempt to get away with giving only 30 days notice, McCarthy said. But Idahos Manufactured Home Residency Act is clear: Owners must give 90 days notice for evictions and 180 days if the park is being closed.

Its just one of many things that put these folks in tough situations, he said.

It has been decades since Twin Falls has had a new mobile home park, said Twin Falls Planning and Zoning Director Jonathan Spendlove.

Because of the definition change in the 1980s, mobile homes are no longer being built. One large piece of property with multiple smaller homes requires a special use permit or a zoning development agreement.

Those are usually something thats happened in the 70s or 80s. No new ones are really brought into play, he said. Most people usually do RV parks.

Lot rent at High Desert RV Park was around $200, making it an affordable option.

Although Zimmers was told the owner wanted to renovate the park and improve living conditions, he believes the decision was solely money-driven. As of Friday, the High Desert RV lot is still bare.

The people he (the owner) makes homeless, they are up a creek, he said.

Former High Desert RV Park resident Leland McKelvy is angry about losing his home. He was forced to leave behind his small park model mobile home at High Desert due to its age.

After receiving the eviction notice, the new owner gave him a list of local RV parks in the community. McKelvy said nearly 80% of the parks on the list were full and the rest either wouldnt accept his home or were too expensive.

The Times-News called local RV and mobile home parks to gauge the availability of rental spaces. East 5 Points Trailer Court owner Frankie Kreps said her park has one open RV space.

Similar to residents at Pioneer Trailer Park, more than half of the tenants of High Desert RV park were on disability.

They dont have the money to move. Thats why they are living there in the first place, McKelvy said. They are living paycheck to paycheck, trying to get by.

His family purchased a newer RV but were still unable to find a park locally that would accept them. The RV is currently parked on his mother-in-laws property. He misses the camaraderie of his old home.

We were family, he said. It was a small community and we helped each other out. Then we were all thrown to the wind.

McKelvy said he is suspicious of the new owners intentions. The lot on Addison is zoned as C-1, also known as a commercial highway district. This zoning allows for commercial activities of various sizes from large malls to small shops, fast food restaurants and tourist accommodations, according to city code.

The zoning behind these RV and trailer park lots is complicated.

The Pioneer Village MHC property is currently zoned for C-1 and R4. Portions of the property lie within one or the other of those districts, Spendlove said.

Commercial highway districts do not allow for mobile home parks, but previous zoning along Kimberly Road may have allowed for a mobile home park at one time, Spendlove speculated. Because the previous land use allowed for a mobile home park, todays park is allowed as a legal nonconforming use.

The city has had a discussion with the new owners of the property over the last year but has not received any permits for new buildings or zoning changes on the property.

They have a right to change the use, Spendlove said.

Sarrat has a simple plea for the new owners of Pioneer Village MHC.

Just give these people time to move out.

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An Idaho board that recommends place names will play no role in replacing a racial slur found on 66 Idaho mountains, creeks, valleys and other geographical features.

The Idaho Geographical Names Advisory Council typically weighs in when an unnamed location gets a name or when an existing name is changed.

But not this time, as the U.S. Department of the Interior works to rename 660 places found on federal land across the country that use the word squaw.

This is kind of out of the normal process that we have, Boisean Rick Just, who heads the council, said by phone.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland declared the S-word to be derogatory in an order issued Nov. 19. Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico and the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary, issued the order to have the name scrubbed from federal features.

Those who wish to comment on the changes or to offer suggestions for renaming Squaw Butte outside Emmett or any of the other features can do so online though Monday, April 25.

After the comment period ends, The Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force will review comments from the public and Native American tribes. Within 90 days, the task force will submit proposed name changes to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. The board will have 60 days to make a decision on all of the proposed names.

In February, the U.S. Geological Survey issued a list of suggested replacement names for the features. They were not necessarily creative; they were simply taken from other nearby features.

The five suggested replacement names for Squaw Butte north of Emmett come from nearby streams: Corral Creek, Jakes Creek, Haw Creek, Long Hollow Creek and Spring Creek.

Those arent necessarily practical, but they provide a starting point for discussion, Just said.

They had so many to name that they looked around to other features nearby and put a name on it that sounded like it fit the area, Just said. I think there will be a lot of people who will take this opportunity to research the history in their area and come up with something appropriate.

Emmett resident Gregory Hall suggests Waipi Butte as an appropriate replacement for Squaw Butte. Waipi is Shoshone for woman, he wrote in a Facebook post. Emmett and Squaw Butte are located on traditional Shoshone-Bannock Tribes lands.

Others denounced the change, as detailed in an Idaho Statesman story. Several people said the name was meant to honor Native Americans and that an image of a Native maiden can be seen in the butte. Others called the change woke politics.

It will always be Squaw Butte for all the people who have lived here our whole lives, Emmett resident Karla Kimball wrote on Facebook. That is one thing that doesnt need to change.

Some people claimed they have family or friends who are Native Americans and who dont have a problem with the name. Thats not the case with the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, located on the Fort Hall Reservation in East Idaho.

Removing the words squaw from all of Idaho place names needs to happen, RandyL Teton, public affairs manager for the tribes, wrote in an email last year to the Idaho Statesman.

The S-word originated with the Algonquin-speaking Natives of Southeastern New England. It originally meant woman, but became a slur used by white settlers in as early as the 1600s.

In 2007, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names approved removing the S-word from eight place names in North Idaho. Three were on the Coeur dAlene Reservation, with five outside the reservation but in the tribes ancestral territory.

The Coeur dAlene Tribe asked for the names to be removed.

Native American names would be appropriate for those features now known by the S-word, Just said.

The Native Americans probably had names for a lot of those features that might have gone back a lot more than the 100-150 years that these have been in existence, he said.

Idaho saw a surge in population following the Civil War, Just said. Many of the new settlers came from Confederate states.

They brought some of those names that they were used to and didnt give much thought to what the Indians called anything, he said.

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Prosecutors in Idaho say they will seek the death penalty against a woman charged with killing her two youngest children and her new husbands previous wife. The prosecuting attorneys from Fremont and Madison counties made the announcement in court documents filed Monday, saying Lori Vallow Daybell will qualify for capital punishment if convicted because the slayings were exceptionally depraved and carried out for financial gain. Lori Vallow Daybells co-defendant and husband, Chad Daybell, is also facing a potential death penalty if convicted. The pair are charged with murder, conspiracy and grand theft in connection with the deaths of 7-year-old Joshua JJ Vallow and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan. Both have pleaded not guilty.
The federal mask mandate on planes, trains and public transportation never was about the science. It was about politics.

No wonder then that U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle of the Middle District of Florida tossed the mandate in a 59-page ruling Monday.

At this moment, it is not clear if the Department of Justice will seek an emergency stay. In a way, it doesnt matter. The toothpaste is out of the tube. Once youve told mask-resistant Americans they dont have to fog up their glasses when they fly, its over.

If the mandate had been about science, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would have followed the Administrative Procedure Act and conducted notice and comment procedures to examine the real-world consequences of the Feb. 3, 2021, rule.

Experts would have welcomed the input of stakeholders who would have had a chance to voice concerns and suggestions. Tweaks could have been made. Instead, it was an edict.

The flexing of administrative power, attorney Glenn Roper of the Pacific Legal Foundation called it. Last year, Pacific Legal won a challenge against a CDC-ordered nationwide ban on evictions  another power grab because of COVID-19.

There was a time when COVID-19 was new and unknown. The public understood why bureaucrats might overreact  better safe than sorry.

Two years later, its hard to show faith in a bureaucracy that hasnt even bothered to distinguish between mostly-for-show masks and more effective face coverings, such as N95s. Compliance apparently was the goal.

A chart by Ian Miller of the Brownstone Institute compares caseloads in states with and without mask mandates. Essentially, the chart shows no significant difference between states with or without mandates.

The Brownstone Institute is a think tank formed in response to the global crisis created by policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. The most egregious example: extended school closures that harmed far more children than they helped.

When reasonable voices pushed for targeted protections for the vulnerable while allowing the country to resume life as normal  Im quoting from the Oct. 4, 2020, Great Barrington Declaration  they were dismissed as anti-science goofballs.

The goofballs were right, and the experts were too slow to figure it out.

Debra J. Saunders is a fellow at the Discovery Institutes Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership. Contact her at dsaunders@discovery.org.

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By Trend

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, in a telephone conversation with European Union Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrel, underlined that the incumbent US administration should have the courage to correct its predecessors mistakes concerning re-imposition of oppressive sanctions against Iran, Trend reports citing Fars News Agency.

"The United States current administration should have the audacity to rectify the White Houses past mistakes," the Iranian foreign minister said in his phone talk with Borrel.

There are no doubts about the Iranian governments will to reach a good, strong, and sustainable agreement in Vienna, Amir Abdollahian added.

He reiterated that the White House should abandon its excessive demands and its indecision and walk down the path of realism and resolution of the standing differences.

The top Iranian diplomat, meanwhile, expressed gratitude towards Borrell and his deputy Enrique Mora over their efforts to coordinate the talks.

Borrell, for his part, appreciated the Islamic Republics will for conclusion of an agreement and the various initiatives that the Islamic Republic has come up with to facilitate the prospect.

He, however, expressed disappointment concerning a mid-March-present pause that has been announced in the negotiations, urging fresh talks between the EUs representative and Irans top negotiator Ali Baqeri Kani.

In 2018, the incumbent US President Joe Bidens predecessor Donald Trump took Washington out of a 2015 deal between the Islamic Republic and others. Trump also reimposed the illegal sanctions that the accord had lifted.

The Austrian capital of Vienna has, since last year, been holding many rounds of talks between Tehran and the remaining participants in the agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aimed at exploring the potential of the deals revival and fresh removal of the sanctions.




Although the state of Idaho is relatively low on the scale of drug and substance abuse, there is still a high illegal use of addictive drugs such as meth, marijuana and fentanyl within the Twin Falls area. The influence persists through the county leading to increased number of crime, arrests, domestic violence, child abuse, and overdose according to an article labeled Alcohol and Drug Addiction in Twin Falls. Instead of accepting the times and just providing more rehab centers the county or even the smaller individuals need to be making more of an effort to promote abstinence of drugs. A gradual way to reduce the use and sale of illegal drugs in Twin Falls County would be to target the local schooling systems and education departments.

The most influential time in a childs life is its first few years of schooling and so developing a system that declares the negative effects of drugs on the body and mind starting within the middle schools or even the upper end of elementary schools and spanning through the high schools and even college would prepare the upcoming generations to keep away from harmful substances. Currently there are drug awareness weeks celebrated once a school year within the Twin Falls school district, but there could be more advertised not only about the damaging effects of the illegal drugs but also the positive effects of refraining from consuming the substances. The more aware the youth of the county are to the life dampening effects of the drugs will keep them in an understanding why not to consume the substance and learn life lessons to influence others around them. Portraying only the negative effects would instill fear into the children but we want them to build a desire to strive to be drug free and live full lives. Wiring the brain with positives creates a deeper understanding and benefits to staying drug free. Connecting with the youngest generation that is highly exposed is the best way to tackle the drug presence plaguing the Twin Falls county.

How would schools start initiating a drug free environment and control the drug abuse within the area? Well, what is most impactful for kids? To first present the ideas the schools should start big with an assembly to make sure the whole student body heard the new initiative. Once presented the administration must make the effort to keep referencing the importance of being drug free by announcing it on the intercom some mornings, creating posters for the hallways, and giving teachers handouts to take home to inform the parents. Some students love to be involved so the next step could be a club based on promoting a drug free life. This club would find fun interactive ways to connect with their fellow peers to let them know what a better life could offer them. For the current people struggling to quit their early addiction, an afterschool program could be offered like rehabilitation centers but less intimidating because it is with teachers or students they know. By working through the little things to get the program started, it will lay the foundation to a great student environment and personal morals connected to being drug free. Each school can take the creative freedoms in how they would like to bring about awareness but there should be a district

wide requirement pertaining to the fundamentals needing to be presented.

Even though the results may be hard to see in the short run, the years of focused drug free advertisements and classes will bring about a better generation knowledgeable to the harms of the substances and the lifelong benefits to staying drug free. The schooling and education scores will begin to improve due to the lack of harmful influences destroying the brain functions. Providing a solid education for the youth of the county should be the teachers number one priority so by ensuring they are all drug free would later benefit the students overall. There are many other county wide things that could be done to dissolve the drug abuse in Twin Falls, but the best way to start is to bring the education systems into the fight against drugs.

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During the rest of the 19th century, the young town of Marion grew and developed as it became the governmental and business center of McDowell County.

Some research shows who served as the mayors and council members from 1863 to 1892.

A variety of sources identify and document mayors and town council members between the 1863 and 1892 period. A total of five mayors and 23 council-members were identified. The record is incomplete, but I offer the following:

* A. M. Finley, mayor (appointed Clerk of County Court in 1867).

* R.G. Burgin, B.Weeks, R.H. Garvin, Reverend T.A. Stradley, Town Council 1869. J.H. Gilkey, Jr., mayor

* Merrit Burgin, Joseph H. Neal, James Neal, Finley Laws, John G. Yancey, Town Council 1872.

* A.G. Hallyburton, mayor. Town Council not listed 1877.

* J.H. Gilkey Jr., mayor. Wm McD Burgin, W.H. Malone. Wm Boyer, J.A. Scott, Town Council 1884.

* James Morris, mayor. J.L. McCurry. Wm Boyer, McD Burgin, Wm Blanton. J.A. Scott. Town Council. Clerk/Treasurer McD Burgin. Marshall J.S. Elliot 1890.

* M.A. Newland, mayor. M.M. Teague, Reverend M.L. Kaylor, G.G. Eaves, J.L. Morgan, W.A. Bobbit (Marshall) Town Council 1892.

* James Morris, mayor. Wm Blanton, McD Burgin, J.L. Morgan, R.J. Burgin and B.B. Price, Town Council.

Ordinances and town services

A unit of local government has many functions. Government typically provides for the health and safety of the citizenry and provides services that are public in nature. In other words, government provides services that are not easily provided by the private sector such as security, highways and public schools. Obviously, the scope of government has increased and the nature of governmental services has changed.

The town of Marion was authorized in the 1845, 1857 and 1862 legislation incorporating the town to establish local laws and regulations consistent with the North Carolina Constitution as well as to protect public health and safety. It is important for readers to understand that cities and counties can only undertake those activities authorized by the State of North Carolina.

I did locate a hand book titled Town Ordinances: First Ordinances of the Town of Marion, NC. The document is dated July 1, 1892 and includes a list of the elected officials for the town. The officials, referred to as aldermen, include James Morris, mayor, and W. M. Blanton, W. McD Burgin, J.L. Morgan, B.B. Price and R.J. Burgin.

The handbook, Town Ordinances list the first laws for the town of Marion. The local laws were likely compiled into one document from various laws that were passed over a 30-year period and already enacted when recorded in 1892. The handbook has language that is consistent with previous legislative authorization.

A summary of a few of the more interesting local rules that were in place includes the following:

1) Every male residing in the town limits between the ages of 21 and 50 years will pay a poll tax of $1. A poll tax was essentially a tax on the right to vote and was used routinely as a means to prevent African-Americans from exercising the right to vote. Both incorporation statutes and the 1892 ordinance book include a poll tax. Poll taxes were outlawed at the national level with the passage of the 26th Amendment in 1964 and at the state level in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

2) The ordinance book established a series of business license taxes. Most of the fees were in the annual range of $5 to $10. There were higher fees designed to limit certain activities such as a $500 fee for a bar room, $75 for each pool table, and on every Merry Go Round $100.

3) Each male between the ages of 18 and 45 was required to work upon the streets of the town for four days each year. An exemption could be obtained by paying 75 cents per day.

4) Mules and horses were not allowed on the town sidewalks. They were also prohibited from riding through the town in a rapid or disorderly manner.

5) Vicious animals were prohibited.

6) Destruction or defacing property in the town limits was not allowed.

7) Guns could not be discharged in the town limits and fireworks were not allowed except in a public duty.

8) Playing and engaging in games in the streets or sidewalks was not allowed.

9) A person could not exhibit himself in a state of intoxication within the town limits.

10) Swearing or cursing aloud was not allowed. Also, disturbing the public peace or creating a nuisance was illegal. This included making threats.

11) It was unlawful for a prostitute, or woman whose general reputation for chastity was bad to be on the streets.

12) Certain agriculture uses including the roaming of animals was unlawful.

13) It was unlawful to insult any police member or town official.

14) All persons (but especially boys) were prohibited from getting on railroad engines or cars. The depot and rail shipments were regulated.

15) The mayor was given the power to remit all or a part of a fine. Also given the power to require a person to work, if they failed to pay.

I would suggest these areas of regulation were enacted by the town of Marion between 1862 and 1892.

A second brief comment will be offered regarding the services provided by the town of Marion prior to 1892. Marion provided at least five major services from 1862 to 1892. The five services would include: law enforcement, road construction, road maintenance, sidewalks and street lighting. The town was likely indirectly involved with the establishment of additional services such as the provision of electricity.

Law enforcement is a basic service provided during this period. I have previously mentioned the appointment of a town constable. Each of the incorporation statutes reference law enforcement and citizen patrols. The 1892 Book of Ordinances states that it was not legal to insult a police officer. The town certainly had a law enforcement service during this period and relied to some degree on voluntary patrols. The first action taken by the Marion Town Council following the Great Fire of 1894 was to rebuild the calyboose which had been located behind the courthouse and was destroyed.

The construction of roads and sidewalks would have been an on-going responsibility for the town. The very first assignment given in 1845 following the clearing of land and the construction of the courthouse would have been transportation related. Marion was a center for goods and services during this period, and people would have travelled to Marion to purchase goods and sell their farm products.

Consequently, streets were paved beginning in the early 1920s. The town would have also been involved with the county in constructing turnpikes that connected Marion to Asheville, Burnsville and Morganton. (A N.C. General Statute was passed in 1887 authorizing the construction of a Turnpike from Marion to Burnsville.) Other authorizations were passed approving connecting to Asheville and Morganton. J.Q. Gilkey, J.L. Morgan and Dr. B.L. Ashworth were instrumental in having city streets paved in Marion beginning in the 1920s.

Sidewalks were wooden boardwalks and served to keep people from the dirt and mud that existed in the streets. As mentioned, the town of Marion could compel property owners to construct wooden boardwalks.

Street lighting was a service provided by the town of Marion during this period. The streetlights were originally powered by fuel and in some cases the town reimbursed citizens the cost of the fuel. Electric service was becoming available by municipalities beginning in the 1880s. The city of Hickory was electrified in 1888. Marion had at least minimal electric service in 1892. More extensive service was provided by Marion Light and Power and founded by J.L. Morgan and Robert Bennet in 1908. (I am still receiving information on the provision of electricity in Marion and McDowell County). Duke Energy would have begun providing electricity in the 1920s.

The possibility of other services being provided is possible. Water, wastewater and fire service all initiated in the early to mid-1900s. The original water system was initiated in 1903, although the use of wells in a community method was possible prior to this date. The original waste treatment plant may have been constructed in the 1930s. Marion Telephone Company was established in 1911.

Oak Grove Cemetery was a cemetery in the 1870s and operated as the Oak Grove Association. It was suggested that the town took the cemetery operations over in the 1900s from this private operator. Many towns operated city dumps and hauled refuse. These and other service provisions may have been operational.

The town received quite a bit of criticism for not having a fully manned and equipped fire department when the 1894 fire occurred. The town did not have piped and treated water until the early 1900s. The town did not have treated sewage until the 1930s.

Conclusions

The research I have done for this article possibly accomplishes a number of items:

1) Establishes a possible link between the 1894 Marion fire and the destruction of Marions records. This is based on the co-location of the U.S. Post Office and town offices in the early 1900s.

2) Sheds light on the location process for the town of Marion and the three sites that were considered.

3) A few details that were not known regarding the auction of town lots and early Marion activity were produced.

4) Established that Marion was incorporated three times although the Marion council was non-functioning until after the third incorporation. Marion began to formally function as a Town Council in 1862.

5) Identifies a number of previously unidentified mayors and Town Board members who served between 1863 through 1892. Five mayors and 23 council members were identified.

6) The 1889 charter provides significant information on how the town functioned.

7) Summarizes adopted regulations and service provisions enacted during the period that Marion Town government emerges.

Past and present elected and appointed officials with the city of Marion are part of an outstanding legacy of service and progress. In addition, each of you have added to this legacy and added to your own legacy. It is an honor to bring some light to the 1845 to 1892 period.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The tiny South Pacific nation of the Cook Islands reported its first coronavirus-related death Sunday, more than two years after the pandemic erupted.

A 63-year-old woman, who had underlying health conditions, died on her way to hospital on the island of Aitutaki late Saturday.

"It is with great sadness that I announce that we have just recorded our first in-country death attributed to COVID-19," Prime Minister Mark Brown said in a statement Sunday.

"She had had all three anti-COVID vaccinations, but also had several serious underlying health conditions."

The island nation had been remarkably free from COVID-19 until an outbreak of the Omicron variant emerged after it reopened its border to travellers from New Zealand early this year.

"It is tragic, but not unexpected that we might lose someone to COVID," Brown said.

The Cook Islands Health Ministry said it has so far recorded 4,727 cases of COVID-19 of which 735 were active as of Sunday morning.

Explore further Cook Islands reports first case of Covid-19

 2022 AFP
Jazzoula, the citys long-running community jazz festival, will swing like its 2019 again.

Returning for the first time in two years, the event boasts a diverse lineup and a new location.

Every night Thursday through Sunday will feature different sounds, different instruments and different ages, said Kimberlee Carlson, a vocalist whos signed on as the festivals artistic director.

For instance, you can hear a trio led by longtime local vocalist Melody Anderson, or a piano trio with Kyle Curtis of the Fertile Crescent. While the Ed Norton Big Band has been around for years, the all-female Virginal Vinal Womens Swing Orchestra was formed during the pandemic.

Theres 22 bands, covering the spectrum from vocal-led groups to instrumental combos, small to big band. Style-wise, they play everything from swing to bop and contemporary.

The four evening shows, April 28-May 1, each present five to six bands per night doing 35-minute sets.

Longtime jazz festival overseer Bruce Micklus said the format means that if a particular style doesnt float your boat, you dont have to wait long for something completely different.

As Americas original form of music, theyre celebrating that in a somewhat underground patriotic way, he said.

New venue

The festival has also moved from its longtime home, the community hall at St. Anthony Parish, to the Show Room at the Zootown Arts Community Center.

In prior years, they would retrofit the hall to feel like a jazz venue with decorations, and also had to bring in sound equipment. The Show Room, meanwhile, has all the infrastructure in place already regarding ticketing, sound and drinks. Micklus said theyve never had a stage before, either, and the capacity is similar.

The festival was originally designed to show the virtuosity and the musicianship and the professionalism and musical integrity of our fellow jazzers here in Missoula, Micklus said. There are usually a few people from outside of the Missoula area, but its otherwise intended to spotlight local players.

The first incarnations were after-party jam sessions for Missoula musicians during the University of Montana Buddy DeFranco Jazz Festival. Jazzoula now sets its own date. Organizers are considering having another one at the ZACC in November and regaining the momentum they had in 2019.

That was the biggest audience wed ever seen, Carlson said.

The lineup

Carlson and Micklus said the city has a broad range of talent, from the groups at the University of Montana and recent graduates through to veterans in their eighth decade.

On the younger side of things, theyve invited groups like the Kyle Curtis Trio, who play regularly at Stave & Hoop speakeasy; the Matt Austin Quartet, led by a UM grad now based in Helena; and a quartet led by saxophonist Lhanna Writesel. Vocalist Margi Cates performed around her native Missoula before moving to and gigging around New Orleans. Shes since returned to town, and plays in a duo format regularly.

Naomi Siegel, a trombonist-composer based in Missoula, whos recorded several albums and led new projects around town, will play in a trio with Tommy Sciple on bass and Ed Stalling on drums. Other veterans of the music community include Jim Driscoll, a piano savant and true prodigy, as Carlson described him. She said hes not unlike Oscar Peterson in his level of command, but shies away from self-promotion.

Chuck Florence, a saxophonist who gigged in Detroit before making Missoula home, will play with him on Saturday.

One newer group is the Virginia Vinal Womens Swing Orchestra, who will perform with Carlson on vocals. The ensemble comprises local female music educators, professionals and UM students, according to Willi Prince, the jazz band director at Corvallis High School. It was founded to correct the genre gender disparity and provide women with an outlet for their musical creativity and provide inspiration, support and mentorship. Named after longtime local music educator Virginia Vinal, they focus on music by female composers and arrangers.

Honorees

As in years past, the Missoula Jazz and Blues Society will pay tribute to musicians by inducting them into the Hall of Fame.

One honoree this year is Don Maus, a versatile bassist who died in January 2022. A native Californian who played in Bay Area during the 1970s and 80s, he moved to the Bitterroot Valley and played with everyone from Joan Zen Band, the Ed Norton Big Band, small combos, bands of all genres, the Missoula Childrens Theatre and the Missoula Symphony Orchestra.

The second honoree is Mike Jones, who handled sound at the festival for almost 20 years.

He was instrumental in getting it to sound so beautiful, Micklus said.

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LOS ANGELES (AP)  Nearly 2,000 homeless people died in Los Angeles County during the first year of the pandemic, an increase of 56% from the previous year, driven mainly by drug overdoses, authorities said.

The findings released Friday in a report from the countys Department of Public Health showed that despite initial fears, the virus itself was not the main culprit in deaths among California's largest-in-the-nation unhoused population. But it did cut people off from mental health and substance abuse treatment after services were drastically reduced to prevent the spread of the virus.

Between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, the county recorded 1,988 deaths of homeless people, up from 1,271 deaths during the same period a year earlier, the report said.

During both of those years, drug overdoses were the leading cause of death but increased by 78% during the pandemic's first year. In the pre-pandemic year, the Department of Public Health reported 402 fatal overdoses. In the year after the outbreak, the number nearly doubled to 715, the report said.

The report found that 179 homeless people died from COVID-19 during the pandemics first year.

The findings in this report reflect a true state of emergency, said First District Supervisor Hilda L. Solis said in a statement. In a civil society, it is unacceptable for any of us to not be profoundly disturbed by the shocking needs documented in this years homeless mortality report.

A study of San Francisco homeless deaths released last month showed similar findings: Between March 2020 and March 2021, there were 331 homeless deaths recorded in San Francisco, more than twice the number of any previous year, with the leading cause of death being drug overdose, according to a study conducted by the University of California San Francisco and the citys Department of Public Health.

Los Angeles County is home to the Skid Row neighborhood, notorious for poverty and drugs and where LA's homeless population was once largely confined. Now, rows of tents, cardboard shelters, battered RVs and makeshift plywood structures are familiar sights throughout the nations second-most populous city.

Cities and states across the country are grappling with growing homelessness, as well as mental health crises. California has the largest unhoused population in the country, estimated at 161,000 with nearly a quarter of that number suffering from severe mental illness, according to a 2020 count of homeless people required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The pandemic likely exacerbated an already growing drug and overdose problem, driven by the prevalence of fentanyl, authorities said. Methamphetamine was involved in the majority of deaths, at 75%, roughly the same as the previous year. But the involvement of fentanyl in overdose deaths nearly doubled to 45%, the report said.

The COVID-19 pandemics impact on people experiencing homelessness has clearly extended beyond the immediate effects of this new and deadly virus, said Los Angeles Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer. The pandemic has exacerbated stressors already burdening this vulnerable population.

Young, Latino and Black people experiencing homelessness drove the increases in fatal overdoses, the report said.

Coronary heart disease was the second leading cause of death in the first year of the pandemic, accounting for 309 deaths and an increase of almost 30% from the previous year, the report said.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
PARIS (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macron comfortably won a second term Sunday, triggering relief among allies that the nuclear-armed power won't abruptly shift course in the midst of the war in Ukraine from European Union and NATO efforts to punish and contain Russia's military expansionism.

The second five-year term for the 44-year-old centrist spared France and Europe from the seismic upheaval of having firebrand populist Marine Le Pen at the helm, Macron's presidential runoff challenger who quickly conceded defeat but still scored her best-ever electoral showing.

Acknowledging that numerous voters cast ballots for him simply to keep out the fiercely nationalist far-right Le Pen, Macron pledged to reunite the country that is filled with so many doubts, so many divisions and work to assuage the anger of French voters that fed Le Pen's campaign.

No one will be left by the side of the road," Macron said in a victory speech against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower and a projection of the blue-white-and-red tricolor French flag. He was cheered by several hundred supporters who happily waved French and EU flags.

We have a lot to do and the war in Ukraine reminds us that we are going through tragic times where France must make its voice heard," Macron said.

During her campaign, Le Pen pledged to dilute French ties with the 27-nation EU, NATO and Germany, moves that would have shaken Europes security architecture as the continent deals with its worst conflict since World War II. Le Pen also spoke against EU sanctions on Russian energy supplies and faced scrutiny during the campaign over her previous friendliness with the Kremlin.

A chorus of European leaders hailed Macron's victory, since France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and is supplying weapons to Ukraine.

Democracy wins, Europe wins," said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

Together we will make France and Europe advance," tweeted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi called Macron's victory splendid news for all of Europe and a boost to the EU "being a protagonist in the greatest challenges of our times, starting with the war in Ukraine.

Macron won with 58.5% of the vote to Le Pen's 41.5%  significantly closer than when they first faced off in 2017.

Macron is the first French president in 20 years to win reelection, since incumbent Jacques Chirac trounced Le Pens father in 2002.

Le Pen called her result a shining victory, saying that in this defeat, I can't help but feel a form of hope.

Breaking through the threshold of 40% of the vote is unprecedented for the French far-right. Le Pen was beaten 66% to 34% by Macron in 2017 and her father got less than 20% against Chirac.

She and hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, one of 10 candidates eliminated in the first round on April 10, both quickly pitched forward Sunday night to France's legislative election in June, urging voters to give them a parliamentary majority to hamstring Macron.

Le Pens score this time rewarded her years-long efforts to make her far-right politics more palatable to voters. Campaigning hard on cost-of-living issues, she made deep inroads among blue-collar voters in disaffected rural communities and in former industrial centers.

Le Pen voter Jean-Marie Cornic, 78, said he cast his ballot for her because he wanted a president who would prioritize our daily lives  salaries, taxes, pensions.

The drop in support for Macron compared to five years ago points to a tough battle ahead for the president to rally people behind him in his second term. Many French voters found the 2022 presidential rematch less compelling than in 2017, when Macron was an unknown factor.

Leftist voters  unable to identify with either the centrist president or Le Pen  agonized with Sunday's choice. Some trooped reluctantly to polling stations solely to stop Le Pen, casting joyless votes for Macron.

It was the least worst choice, said Stephanie David, a transport logistics worker who backed a communist candidate in round one.

It was an impossible choice for retiree Jean-Pierre Roux. Having also voted communist in round one, he dropped an empty envelope into the ballot box on Sunday, repelled both by Le Pens politics and what he saw as Macrons arrogance.

I am not against his ideas but I cannot stand the person, Roux said.

In contrast, Marian Arbre, voting in Paris, cast his ballot for Macron to avoid a government that finds itself with fascists, racists.

Theres a real risk, the 29-year-old fretted.

Macron went into the vote as the firm favorite but faced a fractured, anxious and tired electorate. The war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic battered Macrons first term, as did months of violent protests against his economic policies.

In celebrating victory, Macron acknowledged a debt to voters who helped get him over the line, not to support the ideas I hold, but to block those of the extreme right.

I want to thank them and tell them that I am aware that their vote obliges me for the years to come, he said. "I am the custodian of their sense of duty, of their attachment to the Republic.

Associated Press journalists Sylvie Corbet, Elaine Ganley, Angela Charlton and Thomas Adamson in Paris, Sam Petrequin in Brussels Michel Spingler in Henin-Beaumont, and Alex Turnbull in Le Touquet, contributed.

Follow APs coverage of the French election at https://apnews.com/hub/french-election-2022

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  The U.S. secretaries of state and defense met Sunday night with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the highest-level visit to the countrys capital by an American delegation since the start of Russia's invasion.

The secretive meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, which was confirmed by a senior Ukrainian official, came as Ukraine pressed the West for more powerful weapons against Russia's campaign in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where Moscow's forces sought to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops in the battered port of Mariupol.

Yes, theyre meeting with the president. Lets hope something will be decided on further help, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych told Russian lawyer and activist Mark Feygin on his YouTube show Feygin Live. The United States has not yet commented.

Reporters who accompanied Austin and Blinken to Poland were barred by Pentagon and State Department officials from reporting the Kyiv visit until the two men physically left Ukraine. U.S. officials cited security concerns.

Before the session with Blinken and Austin, Zelenskyy said he was looking for the Americans to produce results, both in arms and security guarantees.

"You cant come to us empty-handed today, and we are expecting not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons,'' he said.

Zelenskyys last face-to-face meeting with a top U.S. official was Feb. 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris, five days before Russias invasion. While the West has funneled military equipment to Ukraine, Zelenskyy has stressed repeatedly that his country needs more heavy weapons, including long-range air defense systems and warplanes.

In an apparent boost for Ukraine, polling agencies said French President Emmanuel Macron would win reelection over far right candidate Marine Le Pen, who has faced questions about her ties to Moscow. The result was hailed by Frances allies in the European Union as a reassuring sign of stability and continued support for Ukraine. France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and is supplying weapons systems to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy's meeting with U.S. officials took place as Ukrainians and Russians observed Orthodox Easter. Speaking from Kyiv's ancient St. Sophia Cathedral, Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, highlighted its significance to a nation wracked by nearly two months of war.

The great holiday today gives us great hope and unwavering faith that light will overcome darkness, good will overcome evil, life will overcome death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win! he said.

Still, the war cast a shadow over celebrations. In the northern village of Ivanivka, where Russian tanks still littered the roads, Olena Koptyl said "the Easter holiday doesnt bring any joy. Im crying a lot. We cannot forget how we lived.

The Russian military reported hitting 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, including fortified positions and troop concentrations, while its warplanes destroyed 26 Ukrainian military sites, including an explosives factory and several artillery depots.

Since failing to capture Kyiv, the Russians have aimed to gain full control over the eastern industrial heartland, where Moscow-backed separatists controlled some territory before the war.

Russian forces launched fresh airstrikes on a Mariupol steel plant where an estimated 1,000 civilians are sheltering along with about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters. The Azovstal steel mill where the defenders are holed up is the last corner of resistance in the city, otherwise occupied by the Russians.

Zelenskyy said he stressed the need to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, including from the steel plant, in a Sunday call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is scheduled to speak later with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Arestovych, the Zelenskyy adviser, said Ukraine has proposed holding talks with Russia next to the sprawling steel mill. Arestovych said on the Telegram messaging app that Russia has not responded to the proposal that would include establishing humanitarian corridors and the exchange of Russian war prisoners for the fighters still in the plant.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is scheduled to travel to Turkey on Monday and then Moscow and Kyiv. Zelenskyy said it was a mistake for Guterres to visit Russia before Ukraine.

Why? To hand over signals from Russia? What should we look for? Zelenskyy said Saturday. There are no corpses scattered on the Kutuzovsky Prospect, he said, referring to one of Moscows main avenues.

Mariupol has endured fierce fighting since the start of the war because of its location on the Sea of Azov. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere, and allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

More than 100,000 people  down from a prewar population of about 430,000  are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate over 20,000 civilians have been killed. Recent satellite images showed what appeared to be mass graves to the west and east of Mariupol.

Children in an underground bunker were seen receiving Easter presents in a video released Sunday by the far-right Azov Battalion, which is among the Ukrainian forces at the steel plant in Mariupol. The groups deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, said the video was shot at the plant.

One toddler is seen wearing homemade diapers made of cellophane and people are seen hanging laundry on makeshift hangers.

Please help us, one woman in the video said through tears, appealing to world leaders. We want to live in our city, in our country. We are tired of these bombings, constant air strikes on our land. How much longer will this continue?

Mykhailo Podolyak, another presidential adviser, tweeted that the Russian military was attacking the plant with heavy bombs and artillery while accumulating forces and equipment for a direct assault.

Zelenskyy over the weekend accused Russians of committing war crimes by killing civilians and of setting up filtration camps near Mariupol for people trying to leave the city. He said the Ukrainians  many of them children  are then sent to areas under Russian occupation or to Russia itself, often as far as Siberia or the Far East.

The claims could not be independently verified. But they were repeated by Ukrainian lawmaker Yevheniya Kravchuk on ABCs This Week.

They have pulled these people from Mariupol -- they are put to filtration camps ... its sort of something that cant be happening in the 21st century, Kravchuk said.

Zelenskyy highlighted the death of a 3-month old girl in a Russian missile strike Saturday on the Black Sea port of Odesa. The baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at Odesa, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, citing social media, reported that the infant's mother, Valeria Glodan, and grandmother also died when a missile hit a residential area. Zelenskyy promised to find and punish those responsible.

The war started when this baby was 1 month old,'' Zelenskyy said. "Can you imagine what is happening? They are filthy scum; there are no other words for it."

For the Donbas offensive, Russia has reassembled troops who fought around Kyiv and in northern Ukraine. The British Ministry of Defense said Ukrainian forces had repelled numerous assaults in the past week and "inflicted significant cost on Russian forces.

A fire erupted early Monday at an oil depot in Russia near its border with Ukraine, but Russia's Tass news agency gave no immediate cause for the blaze.

NASA satellites that track fires showed something burning at coordinates that corresponded to a Rosneft facility some 110 kilometers (70 miles) north of the Ukrainian border. Moscow previously has blamed Ukraine for attacks on the Russian region of Bryansk, which borders Ukraine.

The spiritual leaders of the world's Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics on Sunday appealed for relief for Ukraine's suffering population.

Associated Press journalists Yesica Fisch in Sloviansk, Ukraine, Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Cara Anna, Inna Varenytsia and Oleksandr Stashevskyi in Kviv and AP staff around the world contributed.

Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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TOKYO  Japan welcomed the reelection of French President Emmanuel Macron as key to the unity of Group of Seven at a time when its members need to work together to end Russias invasion of Ukraine as soon as possible.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida congratulated Macron in his Twitter messages in both Japanese and French, saying, I hope to closely work with President Macron in a wide range of issues, including Russias invasion of Ukraine and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihiko Isozaki on Monday extended heartfelt congratulations to Macron on his reelection.

As we face a critical moment to end Russias outrageous aggression and defend the peaceful world order, the G-7 unity is required more than ever, and we plan to continue working closely with France led by President Macron, Isozaki said.

Japan, worried about the impact of Russian invasion of Ukraine in the East Asia where China is increasingly taking assertive military actions, has tried to play a greater role as part of G-7 and has joined in sanctions against Moscow and provided support for Ukraine in line with other members.

Isozaki called France an important, special partner for Japan that shares universal values including freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. He said Tokyo intends to strengthen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

CANBERRA, Australia  Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is welcoming President Emmanuel Macrons reelection to a second term in France as a great expression of liberal democracy.

Macron was scathing of Morrison after Australias conservative government canceled a 90 billion Australian dollar ($66 billion) submarine contract in September.

Macron accused Morrison of lying to him about the state of the French contract before a deal was announced for the United States and Britain to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. Morrison denied misleading Macron, who refused to take the Australian leaders phone calls.

On Monday, Morrison tweeted: Congratulations Emmanuel Macron on your reelection as President. Another great expression of liberal democracy in action in uncertain times.

We wish you & France every success, in particular your leadership in Europe and as an important partner to Australia in the Indo-Pacific, Morrison added.

KYIV, Ukraine  Ukraines leader has congratulated Emmanuel Macron on winning a second term as president of France  and beating a far-right rival seen as close to Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelenskyy called Macron a true friend of Ukraineon Sunday and expressed appreciation for his support.

Tweeting in French, Zelenskyy said: Im convinced that we will advance together toward new joint victories. Toward a strong and united Europe!

Macron has sought a diplomatic solution to Russias war in Ukraine. France has also sent significant weapons to Ukraine and Macron is planning more.

In a TV debate ahead of Sundays runoff, Macron assailed challenger Marine Le Pens past ties to Russia, notably a loan her party got from a Russian-Czech bank in 2014.

PARIS  Watching Frances presidential election results was especially stressful for Yasmina Aksas.

The 19-year-old law student could have been forced to remove her headscarf if far-right leader Marine Le Pen had won instead of incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

Speaking to AP as the first projections came in showing Macron in the lead, Aksas was visible relieved  but far from overjoyed.

Its still 40% of people voting for Le Pen. Its reassuring that its Macron but its not a victory, said Aksas, who is active in feminist and social justice organizations. It reflects nothing of what I think and what I identify with.

She expressed concern about extremist language and ideas that used to be limited to militant far-right groups but have now entered the mainstream.

Under Macrons presidency, she described encroaching limits on Muslims in the name of fighting extremism. They made it a problem for everyone while remaining vague about who the menace is.

So if you feel concerned about what theyre doing, like closing mosques, associations, when they say theyre targeting jihadists, you shouldnt feel targeted, otherwise you are suspected of not being part of the republic.

MORE STORIES:

 Macron vs Le Pen: France votes in tense presidential runoff

 Frances presidential rivals: Key moments, private lives

 EXPLAINER: How Frances old-school voting system works

 Follow all AP stories on France's 2022 presidential election at https://apnews.com/hub/france-election-2022

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

LONDON  A European economist says that if exit polls hold true and Emmanuel Macron wins the election against his right-wing challenger Marine Le Pen, France will most likely remain an engine of growth and progress in Europe for the next five years.

Economist Holger Schmieding says France has outperformed Germany for the past five years. He says France under Macron would likely remain on track for a sustained period of faster gains in employment and per-capita GDP. He says a dynamic France next to a still somewhat strong Germany is a major positive for Europe.

The economist says Macron has strengthened the French economy by more than any of his predecessors since Charles de Gaulle.

BERLIN  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was the first foreign leader to call President Emmanuel Macron and congratulate him on his reelection, Scholz office said.

The Federal Chancellor and the President confirmed their intention to continue the close and trusting relationship between Germany and France, not least in view of the current challenges such as the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, Scholz office said in a statement.

It also said the result signified a clear commitment to Europe and the European unification process, adding that Scholz and Macron agreed to meet as soon as possible.

The Czech prime minister also sent his congratulations to Macron.

France is our vital partner, we are keen on developing our great relationship further, Petr Fiala tweeted.

PARIS  Rights groups have breathed a sigh of relief at Marine Le Pens failure to become French president, but warned against complacency and urged the victor, Emmanuel Macron, to fight racial profiling and discrimination against Muslims, and better protect migrants.

Cecile Coudriou, head of Amnesty International France, cited egregious human rights failings under Macrons presidency including Frances treatment of refugees and asylum at its borders, systemic discrimination in the form of ethnic profiling by police, disproportionate and dangerously vague counter-terror laws, curbs to the right to protest, intrusive surveillance that impacts the right to privacy, failing to uphold climate commitments and selling arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Antiracism group SOS Racisme said : This victory, which might look large in a cursory analysis, is not so much a victory as a relief. The reality is that Marine Le Pen ... has progressed by about eight points in five years.

It criticized Macrons law against so-called separatism by radical Muslims and government ministers criticism of wokeism or Islamo-leftism. It blamed Macrons arrogance, (economic) liberalism, brutalization of the social movement and nods to the far right for worsening tensions in France. It is definitely not neutral to help trivialize the far right by choosing it as its opposition and winking at it, it said.

PARIS  President Emmanuel Macron said a simple Thank you! after winning reelection, and praised the majority who gave him five more years at the helm of France.

Macron also thanked people who voted for him not because they embrace his ideas but because they wanted to reject far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

Im not the candidate of one camp anymore, but the president of all of us, he said.

Macron comfortably won reelection to a second term Sunday, according to polling agencies projections.

He arrived on the plaza where his supporters gathered, beneath the Eiffel Tower, to the sound of the Ode to Joy, the European Unions anthem, hand in hand with his wife, Brigitte.

PARIS  Supporters of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen gathered at her election-night even in Paris Bois de Boulogne booed loudly as provisional results were announced.

But they quickly looked ahead to June legislative elections  as did Le Pen in her concession speech.

Francois Denormand, a retired dentist planning to run for a seat as a lawmaker for Le Pens National Rally party in Junes legislative elections said that what he called the third round starts tomorrow.

We must continue to fight, he said. We can lose the battle but not the war.

Nineteen-year-old Paul Renkert, waving a French flag, admitted that Im sad.

Renkert, who had traveled from the eastern Alsace region, said he had invested time in Le Pens campaign because I believe in the future of France.

He is looking ahead to the legislative elections and five years in the future when a new president is elected. Le Pen has not made known her intentions, but I dont think shell abandon us, he said.

Guests from abroad were among those invited to the soiree. Among them was Tom Lamont, with Belgiums far-right Vlaams Belang party, an ally of Le Pens National Rally. He, too, sent out a message of hope. Its a disappointment she lost but we see the right-wing movements is growing in France  and maybe in five years we will have a right-wing president here, he said.

MADRID  Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says that with the victory of Emmanuel Macron as projected by polling agencies, Democracy wins, Europe wins.

Citizens have chosen a France committed to a free, strong and fair EU, Sanchez, who is also leader of Spains Socialist Party, wrote, referring to the 27-nation European Union.

Sanchez, Portugals Antonio Costa and Germanys Olaf Scholz had published a joint open letter ahead of Sundays election presenting the vote as a choice between Macron, a defender of democracy in a strong European Union, and Marine Le Pen, an extreme-right candidate who openly sides with those who attack our freedom and democracy, values based on the French ideas of Enlightenment.

PARIS  French far-right figure Eric Zemmour, who failed to reach the runoff in the presidential election, has called for a nationalist coalition to be created in France's parliament.

Zemmour spoke after polling agencies projected that far-right leader Marine Le Pen, head of the National Rally party, had lost the presidential election to centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

Zemmour, who created his own party, Reconquest, in recent months, said the national bloc must get united.

He suggested such a coalition ahead of Junes parliamentary elections, with the aim to fight both Macrons party and the left.

Zemmour received 7% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election on April 10.

European leaders have been quick to congratulate French President Emmanuel Macron on his re-election.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has often sparred with Macron over Brexit and other issues, swiftly congratulated the re-elected president.

Calling France one of our closest and most important allies, Johnson said he looked forward to continuing to work together on the issues which matter most to our two countries and to the world.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi said that Macrons victory is splendid news for all of Europe.

He said France and Italy are working side by side, along with the other European partners, to construct a stronger, more cohesive, more just European Union, capable of being a protagonist in the greatest challenges of our times, starting with the war in Ukraine.

Portugals Prime Minister Antonio Costa says that, by voting for Emmanuel Macron, French people have demonstrated once again their commitment to the European project.

Costa, a socialist who was re-elected earlier this year in a landslide victory, wrote Sunday in a tweet that he was enthusiastic about working together with the centrist politician during the next four years.

The Portuguese prime minister made a case for voting to elect Macron in an open letter also signed by his Spanish and German counterparts, Pedro Sanchez and Olaf Scholz.

PARIS  Leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said Sunday that Marine Le Pens defeat in the French election is very good news for the unity of our people, and vowed to lead the fight against Emmanuel Macrons party in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Melenchon, who failed to reach the second round by a few hundred thousand votes and had urged his supporters not to vote for Le Pen, said Macrons presidential monarchy survives by default and under the constraint of a biased choice.

In his address, Melenchon exhorted Macrons opponents to vote in Junes parliamentary elections to choose a different path and elect a majority of leftist lawmakers. Melenchon said he would be prepared to lead an opposition government.

Courage, action, determination, always refusing fatality and resignation, Melenchon said.

BRUSSELS  Several European leaders and politicians have swiftly congratulated French President Emmanuel Macron for his reelection, as his far-right rival Marine Le Pen conceded defeat in Sundays presidential election.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted in French, together we will make France and Europe advance.

The Dutch prime minister also tweeted in French his hope to continue our extensive and constructive cooperation in EU and NATO.

In Germany, politicians around the political spectrum offered support, including from the pro-business Free Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and conservative Christian Social Union.

Many in Europe had worried Le Pen would undermine European unity and its post-war order.

PARIS  French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has conceded defeat in the presidential runoff, handing victory to incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

She said her unprecedented score in a presidential election represents a shining victory in itself.

The ideas we represent are reaching summits, she said.

French polling agencies are projecting that centrist Macron has won the runoff against Le Pen that took place Sunday.

PARIS  French polling agencies are projecting that centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron will win Frances presidential runoff Sunday, beating far right rival Marine Le Pen in a tight race that was clouded by the Ukraine war and saw a surge in support for extremist ideas.

If the projections are borne out by official results, Macron would be the first French president in a generation to win a second term, since Jacques Chirac in 2002. But he would face a divided nation and a battle to keep his parliamentary majority in legislative elections in June.

Five years ago, Macron won a sweeping victory over Le Pen to become the youngest French president. The margin is expected to be way smaller this time: Polling agencies Opinionway, Harris and Ifop-Fiducial projected that Macron would win between 57% and 58.5% of the vote, with Le Pen getting between 41.5% and 43%.

PARIS  Voter turnout is lower than usual in Frances presidential runoff Sunday, apparently reflecting voter frustration with both candidates, centrist President Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen.

Turnout at 5 p.m. Paris time (1500 GMT) stood at 63%, the Interior Ministry said. That was below the 65% at the same time in the last presidential runoff in 2017, when Macron overwhelmingly beat Le Pen, and the 72% in when Socialist Francois Hollande won the presidency in 2012.

Polls before Sundays election gave Macron a solid lead over Le Pen, but to keep it he needs the support of many left-wing voters who shunned both him and Le Pen in the first-round election on April 10. Many of those voters may choose to stay home this time instead.

Polling agency projections and early official results are expected after final voting stations close in France at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT).

LE TOUQUET, France  The two candidates for Frances presidential runoff have cast their ballots  and basked in adoring crowds outside their polling stations.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen went first, cheerily greeting election workers in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, in Frances struggling former industrial heartland. She emerged from the ballot booth beaming to drop it in a transparent box. Outside, she took selfies with supporters.

Then came incumbent Emmanuel Macron, who shook dozens of hands  and was handed a small child to hold up  on his journey from his family home in the resort town of Le Touquet on the English Channel to his voting station.

Inside, he greeted yet more people, posed for photographs with his wife Brigitte, and cast his ballot with a wink for the cameras. The voting booths were shielded by curtains in the red-white-and-blue of the French flag.

About 48.8 million voters are eligible to take part in the runoff, which is being watched around Europe. Early results are expected Sunday night.

PARIS  France began voting in a presidential runoff election Sunday with repercussions for Europes future.

Centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron is the front-runner, but he's fighting a tough challenge from far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

The centrist Macron is asking voters to trust him for a second five-year term despite a presidency troubled by protests, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. A Macron victory in this vote would make him the first French president in 20 years to win a second term.

The result of voting in France, a nuclear-armed nation with one of the worlds biggest economies, could also impact the conflict in Ukraine, as France has played a key role in diplomatic efforts and support for sanctions against Russia.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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The past eight months have passed about as smoothly as a kidney stone for Donald Babbin, the inaugural chief for the Hardin Police Department.

Babbin, a Massachusetts native, arrived in Montana last summer. Since then, hes overseen the hiring, equipping and mobilizing of a police force several years in the making.

The Hardin Police Department was born out of demand from the city's residents. Since its formation, officers on the city police force have responded to calls including missing people, shots fired and an attempted jail break at the Big Horn detention facility.

In January, however, a wedge formed between city and county authorities, starting with placing restrictions on city officers entering the county sheriff's office, and most recently excluding the police department from 911 dispatch calls made in Hardin. An accusation of excessive use of force on the part of a Hardin officer prompted the decision and cleaved the gap wider.

Ive been a cop for over 25 years. Ive had my fair share for excessive use of force investigationsSince Ive been in Hardin, it has been an uphill battle. Every single step has been an issue, said Babbin.

Fixing 'a lack of officers'

The City of Hardin set to work forming a local police department in February 2020 when its city council approved a municipal police department and a three-person police commission in a 5-1 vote. The city had previously contracted with the Big Horn County Sheriffs Office to respond to crimes within the city limits at a cost of $490,000 a year. The February vote also signaled an end to the contract tying the Big Horn County Sheriffs Office to the city. The Montana Interlocal Cooperation Act expired last summer after being in place for decades.

Those hopeful for police on patrol in Hardin have been disappointed before. In 2009, a convicted fraudster under the alias Michael Hilton left town abruptly, taking with him a fleet of Mercedes SUVs stenciled with City of Hardin Police Department on their sides. The city never recognized Hilton, or his bogus company, American Police Force, as the legitimate law enforcement agency for Hardin. Two years after his ignominious exit, the three people hired by the city to become police officers had resigned.

Hardin Mayor Joe Purcell, sworn in for his second term in January, has lived and worked in Hardin for the past three decades. When he entered office, a city-wide survey underscored one of his top priorities for Hardin residents: public safety.

Basically, what it came down to at the time was a lack of officers [in Hardin]And at the beginning everyone was very cooperative about the new department, including county commissioners and the sheriffs office, who were wanting to put officers in other places like Fort Smith and Decker, Purcell said. It was all pretty positive up until about a year ago.

A tense beginning

Around that time, negotiations on payments made to the sheriff's office stalled. Payments would not halt altogether, according to the initial contract submitted by Hardin city officials, but would taper off on an annual basis as the city bolstered its police force. The sheriffs office demanded payments every six months.

In the midst of these negotiations, Hardin officers began their first patrols on New Years Eve 2021. A four-person committee that included the mayor and city attorney selected Babbin, who had previously worked as a police officer in Massachusetts and Georgia, as chief.

The department launched with four officers, along with Babbin. Since then, well over 250 reports have come out of the department. Within a week of operations, the sheriffs office informed Babbin that the Big Horn County Sheriff's Office would be primary agency responding to missing persons, stolen vehicles, stolen firearms, death scene investigations and DUIs.

They were telling me that I cant respond to death scenes. Where I come from, we had a shooting a day. Ive worked several murders, several rape cases. Ive worked undercover, and the countys going to tell me that I cant respond to certain calls? I was hired to do a job here and Im going to do it, Babbin said.

The list of crimes was adjusted later that same day, according to a letter provided to the Gazette, with the sheriffs office clarifying that it would be the primary agency investigating missing persons, stolen vehicles and stolen firearms.

Less than a week later, another letter for Babbin arrived informing him that Hardin police officers would not be allowed into the sheriffs office, or the dispatch center. Concerns brought to Sheriff Lawrence Big Hair and Jail Administrator Victoria Oldson spurred the announcement, dated Jan. 13, 2022. The letter did not specify what those concerns were.

The verbal version I got was an officer went in with a suspect and wanted a criminal history report, Purcell, the mayor, said. He was looking to make sure this suspect had no warrants and was told no. I guess the officer cussed. One version says he said the F-bomb, according to another version he said, B.S. Its just little things being blown out of proportion.

None of this was anticipated. We started with the department Jan. 1, and by Jan. 13, theyre locking us out of the building, Purcell said.

The relationship among the officers in both agencies has not suffered from the animosity between their leadership, Purcell said. Purcell cited coordination in the recent search for a missing man and an attempted jail break at the county jail as evidence that county and city law enforcement can operate effectively side-by-side.

During the first few months Hardin officers were patrolling the town of less than 4,000 on the border of Crow Country, they were being dispatched without any kind of formal agreement between the city and the county dispatch board. County commissioners voted in October 2020 to transfer county dispatch from the sheriffs office to the independent Big Horn County Emergency Communications Dispatch Center.

Services cut off

Dispatch services to the Hardin Police Department ended March 8, according to an announcement from Big Horn County Attorney Jay Harris.

Two days earlier, a city officer entered the Town Pump in Hardin on March 6, according to Chief Babbin and reporting from Big Horn County News, after getting a report of an unruly customer who refused to leave. The officer spoke with the suspect, later identified as Elery Royce Crooked Arm, who was allegedly smoking in the gas station and destroying merchandise. When the officer attempted to arrest Crooked Arm, who had previously served time in prison for rape, he allegedly punched the officer in the face.

The officer used a Taser on Crooked Arm and brought him to the ground, according to police. While putting Crooked Arm in handcuffs, the officer reportedly struck Crooked Arm several times on the back of his head and neck. A complaint was filed against the officer, and the case was taken up by the state Division of Criminal Investigation. Crooked Arm is currently in custody at Big Horn County Jail.

As of March 9, the DCI had completed its investigation and the case is currently under review for possible prosecution, the county attorney said. Along with announcing dispatch services to Hardin police being severed, Harris submitted a list of expectations to Hardin City Attorney Jordan Knudsen for the department to implement before being reinstated.

"These expectations are for not only city citizen safety, but officer safety as well and reflect standard operating procedures for law enforcement agencies. Importantly, these expectations were ratified by the County Dispatch Board on March 22, 2022, and remain County policy," Harris wrote in the announcement.

Among the five requirements were that the officer under investigation be put on administrative or light duty. The city attorney, mayor and chief have all objected to the idea.

Although I understand why they would ask for it, it is a personnel matter. Its confidential and I dont think 911 has anything to do with whether an officer has been put on light duty, been disciplined or not, and what that discipline was. Us contractually agreeing to that would be a violation of that officers due process rightsand it would be a violation of our personnel policies. It would be more or less us giving up our authority to discipline our officers. It would also be a violation of state law as the mayor and chief of police are in charge of the police department and the officers, Knudsen said.

Knudsen, who as city attorney typically prosecutes misdemeanors that include assault, disorderly conduct and DUIs, said his caseload has taken a nosedive since police were shut out of dispatch service. Although officers are still on patrol, they can only respond to crimes they witness, or if a resident reaches out to the department's office line.

"Im disappointed that its come down to thisWe were all surprised that they just cut off dispatch. Im disappointed that the county has taken that action to the detriment of residents," Knudsen said.

Mayor Purcell told the Gazette the breakdown between county and city authorities has resulted from the sheriffs office attempting to micromanage the young department. In an attempt to ease liability concerns brought by the county, city officials have drafted an indemnity agreement, submitted to the county along with an agreement to allow HPD to access 911 dispatch services. The indemnity agreement would effectively hold the city responsible for any civil liability cases, such as an officer being accused of excessive use of force.

Weve been waiting for the last three months for a signatureThen they tack on these five mandates for us to follow, and thats not going to happen. Until they can drop their five mandate piece, at this time, were at a standstill. What were doing now is looking at a whole other dispatch option, Purcell said.

A new option

The Hardin City Council approved the implementation of 911 iNet on April 8. The private communication service, whose headquarters is in Alabama, will allow Hardin officers to operate through a dispatch system that utilizes cell towers rather than radio. With grant funding, each officer and HPD vehicle has a cell phone, and the service is now in full effect. The cost of the service, which Purcell said amounts to about $66,000 for the equipment and software, will be paid for through a rural development grant given to the city last year.

Another officer has also been hired within the past week, Babbin said, taking the place of a man who quit the department out of fear for his safety. The police chief anticipates two more officers joining by the end of the month, allowing HPD to once again be on call 24-hours a day by the first week of May.

County Attorney Harris said, to his knowledge Big Horn County has never tried to micromanage either the City of Hardin government or its police department. Writing to the Gazette via email, Harris said it would be irresponsible for the county to ignore the conduct issues on the part of the police department. County authorities have decided that dispatch services cannot continue unless protective measures are met by HPD.

"The public would certainly benefit from constructive, good faith dialogue between City and County authorities, which unfortunately has seemingly been at a minimum recently. The distance between the parties insofar as the acceptance of basic facts (which is a foundational prerequisite to constructive, good-faith dialogue) may be an unfortunate local reflection of greater modern issues in our society...We live in a high crime jurisdiction and cannot settle for anything less than lawful, top quality law enforcement services," he wrote.

At this time, no 911 calls in Hardin are being dispatched to its police department. Hardin residents wanting to connect to HPD can do so by calling 406-665-7900.

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CHOTEAU  With unsubstantiated theories of coordinated voter fraud lingering as a potent issue in the upcoming midterms, local elections officials across Montana are bearing the brunt of efforts to cast doubt on the states voting systems.

As the elected clerk and recorder, Paula Jaconetty serves as the top elections official for Teton Countys 6,200 residents. Despite the small, conservative electorate under her jurisdiction, she says a dedicated group of residents have been at times inundating her with duplicative or unclear allegations, questions and information requests related to the 2020 election.

Many of those requests bear the fingerprints of conspiracy theories that have emerged since former President Donald Trump began falsely blaming his 2020 election loss on the presence of widespread voter fraud. And Jaconetty said responding to them is a time-intensive process, with little indication that her responses are being given much weight.

Finally I had to turn it over to my county attorney, because they started accusing me of destroying public records, Jaconetty said. Clerks in small counties are also in charge of human resources, recordkeeping, and other duties, she added. Its not like I just do elections. I do the budgeting, all the financials plus our regular clerk-and-recorder duties. I have a great staff, otherwise I wouldnt be here anymore.

Speaking in a hotel conference room after a day of election judge trainings earlier this month, she said the tenor of those conversations has started to raise her hackles. For a federal election, Jaconetty said shed typically dispatch ballot-processing machines, known as tabulators, to count votes in the countys outlying polling places in the upcoming federal elections.

But after meeting with several local skeptics to explain election processes and security at a municipal election last year, she said one of them suggested that they could easily plant a chip in the machine that would alter the outcome of the vote. She acknowledges it was vague, but said she felt threatened enough to do all the counting with a centrally located tabulator in Choteau this year.

That was the deciding factor, she said, noting that logistics also played a major role in her decision. I took an oath of service to my county and do my very best with this, and never in my 21 years of doing this have I been questioned like this.

'All-consuming' local pressure

From the Flathead to Ekalaka, local elections officials say they feel under siege as local activists inundate them with public records requests, demand that all ballots be counted by hand or accuse them of covering up voter fraud in 2020. That pressure has been largely coming from the right, in a state where the GOP enjoyed an historically successful 2020 general election.

Missoula County has been the site of a more than year-long attempt by far-right activists to unearth irregularities in its 2020 election results. Those efforts recently prompted the local GOP committee to spend thousands of dollars to disprove the groups claims, amid concerns that conservative voters were becoming convinced their votes dont count.

In Helena, Lewis and Clark County residents last month poured into a county commissioners meeting to offer public comments centered on unsubstantiated hacking allegations and grants dispersed to election offices across the country in 2020. So far this year, Clerk and Recorder Amy Reeves says shes been bombarded by requests for the names of staff and election judges, grant funding reports and any information related to election procedures.

Its just not a quick thing to answer all these, Reeves said. She added that shes working to set up a website to centralize answers to duplicative queries.

Flathead County Clerk and Recorder Debbie Pierson said shes been spending upwards of 20 hours per week pushing back against allegations that her tabulators arent secure. A proposal last summer to replace the 16-year-old machines the county had been using faced such fierce opposition that commissioners delayed action on it multiple times, and at one point the county manager was dispatched to accompany Pierson when she left the meeting.

She worries that members of her staff and other experienced election officials around the state are getting burnt out by the all-consuming politicization of their roles, and either retiring early or finding a new career path.

These are professionals that care about what they do, and when youre daily being questioned  not that its not peoples right to question a process  but at the same time there hasnt been the ability to sit down and have rational conversations about it, Pierson said. The atmosphere has been reminding her of the Freemen era, she added, referring to the the anti-government militia group that was active in Montana in the 1990s. Its creating distrust in elections, and its really unfortunate.

Pierson is a Republican. But she noted her own GOP central committee has promoted debunked allegations that Flathead County reported an estimated 5,000 votes more than were actually cast. The claim is part of an analysis created by former Army Capt. Seth Keshel, a nationally prominent promoter of claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Keshel's analysis has repeatedly been shown to rest on unsubstantiated implications and missing data. He hasn't shared the methodology underlying his conclusions, but his heat map analysis of allegedly inflated vote totals has become a regular feature during events promoting election conspiracy theories across the state.

"These are national talking points, based on what is suspected to have happened in some other state," Pierson said. "It never ends."

Tossing out tabulators

Along Montana's eastern border, a push to eliminate tabulators altogether is getting a boost from local state lawmakers, including Rep. Bob Phalen, R-Lindsay, who has been traveling the region to urge clerks and county commissioners to eliminate machines in favor of hand-counting each ballot.

They did not have any substantial claims or proof of inequities with the processes in Montana or the tabulators, but [issues] in other states, Pam Castleberry said. Shes the clerk and recorder for Carter County, in the southeast corner of Montana.

Up until she introduced tabulators in her county in 2020, hand-counting ballots on Election Day would often keep her and her staff in the office past midnight, she said. I told them I have no plan of deviating from my election plan that I have and I will utilize the tabulators in this election or any upcoming elections.

The county clerks in nearby Dawson, Wibaux and Richland counties said they have also been approached by local lawmakers in recent weeks. Phalen, who appears to have been organizing the visits, did not respond to requests for comment. He was among a group of lawmakers who traveled last summer to Sioux Falls for a cyber symposium on election security, hosted by My Pillow founder Mike Lindell.

In Glendive, Dawson County Clerk and Recorder Shirley Kreiman has been fielding questions about grant funding and requests for copies of ballot images, which are treated as confidential voter information that would require a judges order to be released. She said she's witnessed an uptick in overall distrust of local election processes among county residents.

You just try to handle them as calmly as you can, Kreiman said. The processes are open, theyre certainly welcome to come and participate when we have the counting or the post-election audit, or when we do the testing of the machines.

Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen has declined repeatedly to directly address election fraud conspiracy theories, but has maintained that the states elections are secure. Shes also noted that under state law, tabulators certified for use in Montana lack the equipment to connect to the internet. One of her deputies, state elections director Dana Corson, last October issued an email to election officials across Montana, warning that several counties have been approached about a forensic audit of your tabulators.

He asked election officials to notify the state if they plan to allow access to the tabulators, and noted that doing so could violate agreements and expose confidential information. This may entail extra expense that you would need to cover, he wrote.

Corson did not respond to an email requesting clarification on what had prompted his guidance, or whether any tabulators in the state had in fact been accessed as part of an unofficial audit.

'It's unlimited'

At the Teton County election judge training, Jaconettys three-hour spiel is dense. Both she and judges-in-training readily acknowledge that no one will absorb all this information in one go. If youre unsure of anything on Election Day, she tells them, just pick up the phone and call her office.

Theres a rigid protocol governing each step an elections worker takes in providing and counting ballots. At least two elections officials accompany sealed boxes of ballots any time theyre moved. There are myriad ways that a person can cast their vote, or that their ballot can get disqualified.

Its that complexity that makes pushing back on the fraud theories so time consuming, elections officials say.

Its no matter what we do, they spin anything we tell them so they dont have to believe in the process, Jaconetty said.

Michael Russo, from the town of Power, has been the most prolific among the Teton County residents sending election-fraud queries to Jaconetty during the past year. The night before the training, hed emailed the county commissioners asking to discuss election security issues with them, and included a link to a video of state lawmakers discussing fraud theories at a recent meeting.

Russo said he's spent the past year researching election processes and allegations of voter fraud. He signed up to be an election judge to learn more about the process, he said, but by the end of the day hadnt gained any more confidence in its security.

Its an extremely complicated system, he said. Theres a lot going on there that we cannot verify.

Asked if theres any amount of evidence that would satisfy his doubts about election security, Russo responded that machines cant be trusted. Even though the state requires each county to hand-count random selections of ballots to double-check the tabulators results, he feels theres just too many unknowns, too many ways the machines could be manipulated.

Its unlimited, he said. If you think youre satisfied by a result, you didnt get the result. Its unlimited. Theres so much out there.

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By Trend

In a message to Armenian Orthodox Patriarch Sahak Mashalyan, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed the Armenian community who gathered at the Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate to commemorate Ottoman Armenians who lost their lives in the difficult conditions of World War I, Trend reports citing Daily Sabah.

"I respectfully commemorate the deceased Ottoman Armenians once again, and convey my sincere condolences to their surviving relatives. I wish God's mercy upon all Ottoman citizens who passed away forever in the difficult conditions of the First World War," he said.

Erdogan noted that the final years of the Ottoman Empire during World War I were a very painful period for millions of Ottoman citizens.

It is a duty of humanity to understand and share these common pains without any religious, ethnic or cultural discrimination, he said.

"It is important for us, who have shared joy and worry for centuries, to bind together the wounds of the past and strengthen our human bonds. With this understanding, I believe that we should build the future together, inspired by our deep-rooted unity of up to a thousand years, instead of magnifying the pain," Erdogan said.

The president also touched upon the recent normalization period between Turkey and Armenia and said: "I know that the normalization process is sincerely supported by our citizens of Armenian origin, who favor close cooperation between the two neighboring countries, and I attach great importance to this."

"I expect you to make a strong contribution to the evaluation of this historical opportunity that has emerged in the name of permanent peace and stability in our region after many years.

"I want you to make sure that we will make every effort to ensure that our Armenian citizens, who have left indelible traces in our cultural and human lives throughout our centuries-long partnership on this land, lead their lives in peace, security and safety," he stated.




Editor's note: Humanities Montana celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2022. Throughout the year, its monthly newsletter features Golden Anniversary letters from previous Humanities Montana board members, grantees, speakers, and friends that reflect on what 50 years of Humanities Montana has meant to them and to the state.

As an undergraduate student in Oregon, Washington, and Germany, I majored in both German studies and history but also took courses in several other humanities areas: philosophy, religion, art history, political science, English, world literature and sociology. Before I had completed my Ph.D. dissertation, I was offered a position at the University of Montana to teach German language and literature.

Near the end of my first year in 1970, I received a note from my department chair and the college dean that I should meet with them. I thought: Oh no, what did I do? Well, it turned out that they had decided I should teach a course the following year in the Introduction to Humanities program. I said modestly, Whats that?

They told me it was an interdisciplinary course taught by faculty across the campus, starting with the Greeks, then the Romans to the Middle Ages, and then in the third trimester, the modern era. Gulp. I said I didnt know much about the Greeks, and they said, You have the summer to study it.

I mention that here because it was one of the best things that happened to me as a teacher: It forced me to work closely with colleagues in disciplines from philosophy to art, from biology to chemistry, from French to American history. During those first years in Missoula, of course I got to know parts of Montana, especially the national parks and the states western areas. But I knew little about the rest of the state. I met Margaret Kingsland, executive director of what was then called the Montana Committee for the Humanities (MCH), and a couple of the UM faculty members who were serving on the MHC board and who asked me to join the Committee.

The idea of being involved in the public humanities across the state was something I thought could be both interesting and important. Boy, was I right about that. I loved the collaboration on the Committee, the mix of academics and lay members from across the state, and the opportunity to work with many other Montanans near to and far from Missoula. We all learned from each other, and we all also adapted to the uniqueness and needs of our state. The MCH became, thanks to Margaret and the many amazing board members, as well as our partners in towns large and small across the state, one of the top state humanities committees in the country.

Over the years, I held many positions within the council: board member, chair of the board of directors, a position with the Federation of State Humanities Councils, and I even filled in as acting MCH director on three separate occasions while Margaret was on sabbatical.

Clearly, I loved the work and figured out ways to continue teaching at UM during those times, and I was blessed by learning from the public humanities work out in the state how important that was for my on campus work, and vice-versa.

I met and became colleagues and friends with dozens of Montanans who were humanists in their own realms and ways, whether they were farmers, small business owners, attorneys, community leaders, Native elders, librarians, or school teachers; they were Republicans and Democrats  people with good ideas for public humanities programs and activities. Working together across the state, the MCH became the recipient of several best programs across the country, and Im very happy to say that it has remained one of the top councils in the country.

I can honestly say that MCH/HM was one of the most important parts of my personal, public, and academic life over the past 50 years.

Gerald A. Fetz, PhD, Professor and Dean Emeritus, University of Montana Honors College; College of Arts and Sciences.

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Men and women lined up in the parking lot of the Pinnacle Access Area in Mooresville, each carrying a bag of the accomplishments of their day. For the better part of the previous eight hours, those men and women had been out on Lake Norman, casting a line to try and find the biggest fish.

Despite the early rise and the long hours on a fishing boat, the disabled veterans that stood in line were all smiles, talking and laughing while they waited to have their catch of the day weighed in.

In the end, it was Will Stewart who came back ashore with the biggest haul, but there was no money or prizes handed out. For the veterans, just the day on the water, relaxing and catching fish with a professional fisherman, was all they could have hoped for and more.

It means the world to us to see them smiling and give them a chance to see their buddies, Terry Snyder, founder of Operation North State, said. Its really a homerun. The fish they catch are just icing on the cake.

Operation North State (ONS), a nonprofit organization providing military support services in North Carolina, brought their annual Top Shelf Fishin Festival to Lake Norman on Thursday, giving more than 60 veterans the opportunity to join a professional fisherman out on the water for a day at no cost to the veterans.

We specialize in recreational therapy, Snyder said of ONS. We just want to give these veterans a chance to do something that they may not otherwise get a chance to do.

The veterans set out with their assigned pro between 6 and 7 a.m. Thursday and returned to the Pinnacle Access Area around 2 p.m. While on the water, some pairs caught as many as 40 fish, keeping the biggest to be weighed at the end of the day. After weigh-ins were complete, the fish were released back into the water.

Of the host boaters, many compete in tournaments locally and nationally, so there was no lack of experience in helping the veterans reel in big hauls.

These events require host boaters to run, Snyder said. Weve got an abundance of those guys that are willing to be a part of this in the Lake Norman area. Thats why we come back.

Snyder, who also called Lake Norman one of the best fisheries in the state, has been hosting events on Lake Norman for more than a decade and has no plan to stop anytime soon.

The community here gives us so much support, Snyder said. The community in Mooresville really gets behind us and helps us put this on.

Many local businesses, such as Niagara Bottling, Brooklyn Boys Pizzeria, Tobos Bistro, and Iron Thunder Saloon offered their support to the event, whether monetarily or through food donations to help supply the banquet that the veterans were treated to after the fishing concluded.
Charlotte Firefighter Alex McDaniel and retired Charlotte Firefighter David Thornburg never knew John Ray Stroup, but that didnt stop them from coming to pay their respects to him last week.

Stroup, a longtime chief of Salem Fire and Rescue, died April 15 and was laid to rest Wednesday with the full ceremonial honors  a sea of blue surrounding his casket as it was carried in and out of the church, and the somber sound of bagpipes.

Its a big tradition in the fire service, police and as well as EMS, Thornburg said. The pipes have always been there.

When Irish and Scottish settlers came to the United States in the 1800s, Thornburg said some of the only kind of work they could find was working as a firefighter or police officer.

It was traditional for bagpipes to be played at Irish and Scottish funerals, a tradition that carried over into funerals for those in emergency services.

To do it for Mr. Stroup is an honor for us, Thornburg said. We were called and we jumped on it. Thats what we do.

Thornburg and McDaniel didnt know Stroup, but that was irrelevant Wednesday.

Thats one thing about the fire service, the brotherhood, McDaniel said. It doesnt matter where you go, small town, big city, you start talking to a fireman you end up knowing somebody that they know. It just somehow ties back to a relationship somewhere that youve made  Thats one of the reasons why its always an honor to be able to travel and to come do different things like this and just support the brotherhood, no matter where that is. We do our best to be there when they need it.

Chrissy Murphy is a staff writer and can be reached at cmurphy@morganton.com or at 828-432-8941. Follow @cmurphyMNH on Twitter.

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Clear, blue skies shone down on Burke County as it laid rest to a longtime public servant Wednesday.

John Ray Stroup, 68, died April 15 after more than 50 years of serving the Salem community as a member of Salem Fire and Rescue.

He spent 12 years as the chief of department, and stepped down in October to serve as a lieutenant, safety officer and first responder, said current Salem Fire Chief Charles Autrey.

John was a caretaker, Autrey said. He took care of his family, he took care of his community, he took care of his firefighters and his department. He leaves quite a legacy for us to try to carry on.

He also worked for Burke County EMS, and was the first EMS employee to retire after 30 full years of service.

He loved firefighting, he loved serving his community, he loved taking care of people, Autrey said.

Stroup had joined the fire department on his 18th birthday in 1972, before he even graduated high school, Autrey said.

He was set to be honored Friday with the Order of the Guardian, the highest honor awarded by the North Carolina Office of the State Fire Marshal.

The department had kept the reception for the award a secret from Stroup, hoping to surprise him at the station. He died a week before he was set to receive the order.

April Riddle, western director for the North Carolina Department of Insurance, presented Stroups wife, Kathy, with the Order of the Guardian at his memorial service Wednesday.

Its used to recognize exemplary service in the fire service, Riddle said. And 50 years as a volunteer firefighter is certainly exemplary service in the fire service.

Diane Rhodes, the mother of a Salem Fire Capt. Chris Rhodes, said she had known Stroup since they went to school together.

Its like a big void in our heart because John was always there, Diane Rhodes said. If you had a gas leak in the middle of the night and you didnt know who to call, call John and hed pick up his stuff and hed come and check it out, or a wreck in the neighborhood or just anything. John was always John. Even in school, he was one you could call on and appreciated.

Stroups daughter, Whitney, spoke at his memorial service, sharing memories of her father through the years.

I was his co-pilot, Whitney said. We were wired the same, and he understood me more than any person on this earth and I didnt really have to say anything because he just got it  but God bless my mom because she had to put up with us two stubborn Stroups.

She said she had been blessed to see her dad respond to several calls.

I was always moved to tears because I knew thats what he lived for, Whitney said. The way he lit up? It just fired his rockets. There was just this natural instinct that he had about him and its beautiful to just witness that, and I see that in you guys (first responders sitting in the pews) as well.

She said he would have gone out of his way to help anyone, and that he would want everyone to live their life to its fullest.

We dont get a lot of time on this earth, and life is certainly precious, Whitney said. He always told me dont ever quit or give up. Every failure, rejection or circumstance is opportunity to grow and learn in your purpose. He would say, I dont care what you do. Just be happy. Do what you can with what you got, and if you aint got a lot of anything, you always have love from God, and thats enough and thats all you really need.

John Stroups memorial service ended with a procession to his final resting place, with the procession stopping for a moment in front of Salem Fire Station one last time.

At his graveside service, his last call was made over the radio with Burke County Emergency Communications Center Operations Manager Chris White thanking him on behalf of Burke County.

The members of Salem Fire and Rescue Department wish to thank Chief John Stroup for his service to them, to the citizens of Burke County, to the state of North Carolina and to this great nation, White said over the radio. Chief Stroups assignment is complete, Friday, April 15, 2022, 15:20 hours. Rest in peace, brother. Well take the watch from here.

Chrissy Murphy is a staff writer and can be reached at cmurphy@morganton.com or at 828-432-8941. Follow @cmurphyMNH on Twitter.

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A local business and organization are teaming up to help support victims of domestic violence and abuse.

Craftd and the Morganton Cigar Club will host the inaugural Morganton Kentucky Derby Party from 4-8 p.m. Saturday, May 7, at the Morganton Community House to benefit Options Inc., a domestic violence shelter serving Burke County. The event will include a dinner, live music, raffles, games and prizes.

The downtown Morganton business Craftd, owned by Maryann Koziel, offers a variety of beer and wine by the glass or bottle and features handmade artisan crafts, according to its website. Koziels husband, Mark, is president of the Morganton Cigar Club.

The Morganton Cigar Club is a group of folks who enjoy smoking a good cigar, along with good conversation, Mark said. The Cigar Club is who first thought of the Derby fundraiser and approached Craftd to participate.

Craftd partnered with the club back in December to host the Snow Ball, a fundraiser benefitting Southmountain Children and Family Services.

We were looking for another way to bring the community together, Mark said. Since we supported a childrens organization in December, we wanted to find an organization that supports women initiatives. We very quickly realized that Options could use the support. Options relies heavily on donated funds to fund operations.

Options supports victims of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault by providing shelter, education and advocacy, according to its website.

Kristy Graf, executive director of Options, explained that the coronavirus pandemic has negatively affected the organizations finances.

Due to COVID-19, Options has not been able to host the Art of Chocolate (fundraiser) the last three years, Graf said. This has made a significant impact on our budget, as the demand for services has not declined.

Craftd and the Morganton Cigar Club thought a Kentucky Derby theme would be a fun opportunity for participants to dress up.

The board of the Cigar Club have all been to fun dress up parties around the Derby, Mark said. During the Cigar events and through talking to customers at Craftd, there was interest in some type of a dress up party. Thats what the Derby is  a chance to say hello to spring with fun outfits. And dont forget the hats! Theres plenty of folks already working on their hats as we speak. Dont want to dress up? Thats OK too. The race itself is less than a few minutes. But the friendships, community and awareness of Options will last a lifetime.

The theme will be reflected in the buffet dinner of derby fare, and attendees are encouraged to dress up in their derby finery. Bottles of Collectors Woodford Reserve 1L Derby Bottle Bourbon will be awarded for best dressed male and female, and for best hat.

Unless you dont like bourbon, (then) Craftd will swap out a wine basket instead, Mark said.

An open bar will be offered from 4-7 p.m., followed by a cash bar from 7-8 p.m.

Music will be performed by a four piece string band called The Woodshed Collective based in Charlotte and featuring Chip Whitfield on mandolin, Matt Bartels on guitar, Rob Kirby on banjo and Daniel Leich on the fiddle.

From a common interest in bluegrass and Americana folk music, this group of musicians have grown together and craft a unique sound with a range of styles, band member Daniel Leich said. From fiddle tunes to popular sing-alongs, they celebrate the lively culture of Carolina music.

Craftd will sponsor a wine pull during the event. For a $25 donation, guests will have the opportunity to pull a numbered cork and win the corresponding numbered bottle of wine.

There also will be a 50/50 raffle.

Tickets for the Kentucky Derby party are $100 each, plus $3 for an online booking fee. The deadline to purchase tickets is Saturday, April 30.

Its just going to be a really fun event  a great way to meet others in the community, get dressed up and most importantly, come to support Options of Burke County, Mark said. Were trying to raise as much as we can to help that organization.

Hes hoping the event will raise awareness of the work of Options as well.

Weve already heard from several attendees that they werent aware of the incredibly important services that Options provides, Mark said. We hope that the support can continue well beyond the Derby event.

To learn more about Options or to donate, visit optionsburkecounty.org.

Please consider attending the Derby Party to support Options and the families we serve, Graf said. We hope to see you next year at the Art of Chocolate!

To purchase tickets for the Morganton Kentucky Derby Party, visit bit.ly/3MogWMg. For information on the fundraiser, visit craftd-nc.com or email morgantoncigarclub@gmail.com.

Staff writer Tammie Gercken can be reached at tgercken@morganton.com.
A group of hourly workers at the Starbucks coffee shop in Butte, a city renowned for its rowdy union history, hopes to align workers at the store with Starbucks Workers United.

In a letter dated April 18 to Howard Schultz, who returned to the international coffee chain earlier this month as interim CEO, the Butte stores five-member organizing committee shared its plans to file for a union election to join Starbucks Workers United.

The organizing committees letter alleges that Starbucks pays non-competitive wages, shorts available work hours, offers inaccessible health insurance, and sanctions unfair separations and promotions.

This has led many of us, partners who genuinely love their jobs, towards looking for a more consistent level of integrity from Starbucks in accordance with their stated values, the letter reads.

On Saturday, an email from Starbucks Workers United confirmed the union has communicated with the Butte store.

All 220-plus stores in 31 states that have filed for a union election have filed with Starbucks Workers United, which is part of Workers United, affiliated with the Service Employees International Union, the email reported.

The local Starbucks organizing committee is in the initial stages of organization and has not yet started the process of petitioning the National Labor Relations Board for an election, a follow-up email confirmed.

The Butte store is at the very beginning of the organizing process. They have only just announced their intention to organize and have not yet filed a petition with the NLRB for an election.

If and when that happens, agents for the NLRB will seek an election agreement between the employer, union and other parties setting the date, time and place for balloting, the ballot language and more.

The corporate website for Starbucks articulates reasons the Seattle-based company feels union representation for its workers, referred to as partners, is not necessary.

Partners, we have a 50-year history of working together with transparency and having open conversations with respect and honesty. Its part of what makes Starbucks a different kind of company, the website declares.

Today is no different. We know that some partners are considering unionizing and know that you may have questions about that. We do not believe unions are necessary at Starbucks because we know that the real issues are solved through our direct partnership with one another.

Starbucks reports it has more than 32,000 stores in 83 markets around the world.

On April 8, The Washington Post reported 16 Starbucks stores had unionized to date in the U.S. An April 19 story in The Richmond Times Dispatch reported five Starbucks stores in Richmond, Virginia, had voted overwhelmingly for union representation.

It wasnt clear what the actual total of unionized stores is or how many of the pro-union votes have so far been certified by NLRB.

On Saturday, the five members of the organizing committee could not be reached for comment. That included Cody Ray Reichard, described by Starbucks Workers United as one of the leaders of the organizing campaign.

Supporters of unionizing the Butte Starbucks have attached pro-union posters to some utility poles in Uptown Butte. Their text suggests that Starbucks is at war with working class America.

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Theres nothing that fans flames between the executive and legislative branches so consistently in Butte-Silver Bow as the proposed demolitions of old buildings in Uptown Butte.

If they get to the Council of Commissioners level, as another one rides now, things almost always get heated and messy and loud.

Citizens who want to save the buildings  many preservationists at heart or by profession  turn out and get more vocal. They see most Uptown buildings as living testaments to Buttes history and fabric that must be protected, often at all cost.

Those in the executive branch  chief executives, planning and building officials, community enrichment and public works directors  say some buildings are in such bad shape, they should or have to come down. Its about public safety and theyre only trying to enforce local laws that commissioners enacted.

Enter the 12 commissioners with their own ways of seeing things. Some are big on preservation, some arent, some trust or get along better with the administration than others. Even that can depend on the issues or personalities involved.

All of those collide in debates about old buildings in Butte. Commissioners get snappy and snarky with each other and with county officials and vice versa. Decorum doesnt disappear, but it slips.

In every swirl there are claims the countys ordinances and procedures are broken or were skirted, that things moved too fast and decisions were made in secret. And there are always exasperations of Here we are again.

But passions on this issue run high in Butte and it seems that no matter how the ordinances are written or re-written, there will always be people who fight for buildings, those who dont and those in the middle.

And the clashes between the executive and legislative branches at all levels of American government are as old as the documents that set them up.

Decisions still have to be made on these building, but maybe Here we go again is simply inevitable.

THE CASE AT HAND

Here are the basics of the latest episode.

In March 2019  more than three years ago  county officials deemed an empty building at 135 E. Park St. as dangerous and did so again in November 2019. The roof and second floors had collapsed and there were structural issues with the east wall.

The building is near the corner of Park and Arizona streets, tucked between the Rescue Mission Bargain Center and a shorter, vacant building.

The countys Urban Revitalization Agency had previously tried to work with the buildings owners, Silver Bow Properties, to market the building and talked with developers about trying to save it but it wasnt financially feasible.

Under a settlement the council approved in November 2020, the county agreed to take the building and Silver Bow Properties agreed to pay $25,000 toward demolition costs. It was either that, county officials said, or have the matter drag out even longer in court.

The county had hired an engineer who determined 135 had to come down and when prep work for demolition began, crews discovered that walls with an adjoining Butte Rescue Mission thrift store building might have become merged over the years.

The county hired Water and Environmental Technologies to take a closer look, and it recommended the county seek a full analysis. So the county hired a structural engineer from Stahly Engineering in Helena.

That engineer determined the walls were merged and it would have to be shored up so 135 could be torn without damaging the Mission thrift store, which is actually two buildings. A ball-park estimate put the cost of that at $150,000.

Before proceeding at that cost, county officials said it made sense to have Stahly Engineering inspect the Mission thrift buildings, too. It did and said they were unstable and unsafe and needed repairs if pursued would cost well over $200,000.

The nonprofit Mission couldnt afford that so the county offered to pay the Mission $38,572 for the parcels and up to $12,000 in moving costs, then the county would have all three buildings, including 135, demolished.

The URA board agreed to foot that tab with tax dollars but the agreement with the Mission, which includes demolition, still needed council approval.

Before the first council meeting on the issue on April 6, the countys building official invoked a public safety exclusion, which cites unsafe conditions and prevents such matters from being reviewed or delayed by the Historic Preservation Commission, or HPC.

After lengthy debates during two council meetings, nothing has been decided. The council voted 6-5 on April 6 to delay action. At an April 13 meeting, the vote to delay was 10-2. It might be discussed again this coming Wednesday.

Here we go again.

SAVE THE BUILDINGS

At the beginning of the April 13 meeting, a dozen people  one after another  took the microphone and made passionate pleas to spare the thrift buildings from demolition.

The dozen included former county Historic Preservation Officer Mary McCormick, HPC board members Mitzi Rossillon and Bobbi Stauffer, and others who have fought to save Uptown buildings.

Among other things, they said there were too many demolitions, the process had been rushed and old Uptown buildings were Buttes biggest tourism draw. Theyre increasingly attracting investors and new residents, too, they said.

Some questioned the engineering reports. Some disputed their findings outright. Some suggested there were better firms to do such evaluations. A few shots were taken at county officials for not understanding the importance of preservation in Butte.

I look forward to the day that certain of our county officials who refuse to learn and get with the program  I look forward to the day they retire and that some of the people in this room that have come from other communities and understand how important these buildings are will take those positions and save our buildings, said Noorjahan Parwana.

Brian McGregor, who once chained himself to the Greek Cafe in an unsuccessful attempt to save it, said hes been going to the thrift store since he came to Butte 16 years ago and there was nothing wrong with it.

When it came to demolitions in Butte, he said he didnt put any stock in engineering reports because one used to justify the demise of the Brincks and Deluxe buildings on Front Street was wrong.

I can only conclude that that was the desire and the intention in the first place was to tear those buildings down, McGregor said.

He also thanked commissioners for listening to citizens.

That doesnt seem like such an odd thing but it is odd, he said. I have not seen this so much before when it comes to this topic.

WE'RE LISTENING

After county officials gave a brief summary of events that led to their proposed pact with the Mission and demolition plans, the questions and comments started flying.

Commissioner Bill Andersen, directing his comments at Chief Executive J.P. Gallagher, Planning Director Dylan Pipinich and others in the executive branch, said nobody from the audience had spoken in favor of demolition.

County officials werent his boss, he said.

Im answerable to these people out here in the audience, the people who live in District 10, he said. All of us are answerable to these people, all of us elected officials, and I think we need to start looking at their wants.

Andersen was among commissioners suggesting county officials had played the safety exclusion card to bypass the HPC on a matter that was all about historic preservation.

Commissioner Dan Callahan suggested that too and said the ordinances were flawed and being abused. Just look at the building at 135 E. Park, he said.

Here we are two-and-a-half years after we declared that one dangerous and were still fighting to tear that one down, he said. Its already been approved. How dangerous is a dangerous building?

In the case of the thrift buildings, he said, the only thing citizens were asking for is some time to let the process work so other options could be explored.

Commissioner Cindi Shaw said she didnt learn about the proposed Mission pact and demolition until a recent URA board meeting, even though the buildings are in her district and she is chairwoman of the council.

She said she had been through numerous demolition debates during her 16 years on council and they were always a cluster that resulted too often in buildings being torn down.

The engineering report on the thrift buildings stated it was based on visual observations and was limited in scope, Shaw said, and options for repairing the buildings should be pursued before a demolition decision is made.

Commissioner John Riordan said the process was broken but the Mission was caught in the middle. He suggested the county pay Mission officials for the buildings, remove them from the equation, then come up with a positive procedure on these buildings.

NOT SO FAST

This isnt the first demolition dispute for the countys executive branch, either, so they came loaded with their own points and counterpoints. At the April 13 council meeting, most were made by Pipinich (the planning director) and County Attorney Eileen Joyce.

Their overarching premise was this: There are local ordinances on the books, they were enacted by commissioners, they are understandable, and they must be followed as stated unless and until they are changed.

We have an obligation as the local government and the executive branch to enforce our ordinances, Joyce told commissioners.

Pipinich agreed with Callahan on one point, saying it was unacceptable that 135 was still standing.

I think were rolling the dice, Pipinich said. The roof of that building is sitting in the basement and I think were lucky that it (rest of the building) hasnt been down yet. It could go at any time.

But the reason it was still standing, he said, was because county officials had gone above and beyond in getting engineering reports to make sound determinations.

When we didnt get a complete answer from the first one, we went to the second one and then to the third one and then to the fourth one, he said, adding that no further review is needed.

The building was unsafe but invoking the safety exclusion did not by itself mean demolition. Repairs could be make, he and Joyce said, but the Mission couldnt afford them so the county offered to help.

But Joyce said it was hard to justify spending $150,000 of taxpayer funds to shore up a wall so one dangerous building beyond repair could be torn while leaving the other two in an unsafe condition.

She reminded everyone of a vacant, four-story warehouse that collapsed in 2014, spilling bricks and debris onto the street. Nobody was hurt but it later caught fire and after a 30-month legal battle with its owner, the county demolished the rest at a taxpayer cost of $283,000.

I dont think anybody thought that building on South Wyoming Street was going to fall down and one day it did, she said.

Joyce said she took offense to suggestions the process had been used inappropriately and she and Pipinich said ordinances had been followed and no decisions were taken lightly.

Nothing had been rushed, Pipinich said. The decisions, including the public safety exclusion, were two years in the making and based on four reports from three different engineers.

Im telling you that our due diligence was done and the letter of the law was followed and I can support that, Pipinich said.

STILL UP IN THE AIR

What happens next isnt clear.

Joyce did rule out one option during the April 13 meeting. She said the council could not unilaterally amend the proposed agreement with the Mission as Riordan suggested by agreeing to pay them but leaving everything else undecided.

It was a written pact, or Memorandum of Understanding, between the county and the Mission so any changes would also need an OK from the Mission, she said.

A new MOU with the Mission can be drafted but it will still need council approval. Commissioners could also take matters into their own hands and if enough agree, set their own course, even if it means enacting new ordinances.

That seems unlikely in the short run, but even if that is done, would it really prevent another cluster the next time all this comes up?

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The childrens book Chicken Little is a tale about how unreasonable fear can lead to disastrous results. Various political figures throughout history have been credibly accused of Chicken Little Syndrome, usually around the time of a consequential election. Judging by the persistence of Representative Brad Tschida in continuing to pursue a false narrative of election irregularities in the Missoula County 2020 election results, he joins the afflicted.

Rep. Tschida began his ill-fated quest to undermine the Missoula County election results months after the 2020 election. As Montana recalls, Republican candidates swept the state in that election. Most of us predicted the red wave, but the overall margin in excess of 10 points was compelling. Republicans did an excellent job at getting out the vote in a largely all mail election. Yet, despite the clean sweep by Republicans, Tschida chose to condemn election practices in Missoula County thereby causing new and old Republicans alike to question the validity of their votes. Of course, when one questions whether their vote matters, the likelihood of that voter reengaging in the next election wanes considerably. So, Tschidas choice to sow division and chaos has the net effect of alienating Republican voters. Yet ironically, Tschida claims to be Republican.

More concerning is Tschida makes his claims of election irregularities with zero first-hand knowledge of how voting occurs in Missoula County (and the rest of the state). Tschida wasnt present to oversee the initial vote counts in November 2020. He was also not present for the recount performed by a group of people who made up their own rules of procedure for a hand count in January 2021. After the bogus hand count, Tschida boldly proclaimed to the Montana Legislature that serious irregularities affecting election integrity in Missoula County exist. Because of Tschidas persistent salacious allegations, the Missoula County Republican Central Committee was forced to respond with a coordinated and professional recount in order to assure Republicans that they should continue to vote and their votes matter. While invited to supervise the recount, which was performed consistent with State law and procedure, Tschida couldnt be bothered to attend. Yet, after the recount affirmed no irregularities existed in the 2020 election, Tschida continues to cry foul.

Tschida promises to keep crying about election integrity despite not having darkened the doorways of the election office during an actual count of the votes he contends have been tainted. If ever there was a time for Montana GOP leadership to condemn Tschidas actions, it's now. By allowing baseless allegations to permeate the headlines under the Republican brand, the Montana GOP lends credibility to Tschidas willful ignorance thereby rendering the professional and competent efforts of the Missoula County Republican Central Committee futile.

Tammi Fisher is an attorney, former mayor of Kalispell and the host of the Montana Values Podcast.

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By Trend

The French began voting on Sunday in an election that will decide whether pro-European Union, centrist President Emmanuel Macron keeps his job or is unseated by far-right eurosceptic Marine Le Pen in what would amount to a political earthquake, Trend reports citing Reuters.

Opinion polls in recent days gave Macron a solid and slightly growing lead as analysts said Le Pen - despite her efforts to soften her image and tone down some of her National Rally party's policies - remained unpalatable for many.

But a surprise Le Pen victory cannot be ruled out, given the high numbers of voters who were undecided or not sure if they would vote at all in the runoff presidential vote.

With polls showing neither candidate able to count on enough committed supporters, much will depend on a cohort of voters who are weighing up anxiety about the implications of a far-right presidency against anger at Macron's record since his 2017 election.

Polls opened at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) and will close at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT). Initial projections by pollsters are expected as soon as polls close.




ARCHIVED - Jet stream threatens more storms: Spain weather outlook April 22-24



The unsettled April weather will continue throughout Spain this weekend

Although were now well into spring, Spain has been experiencing an unusual battery of storms for the last number of weeks , and the unpredictable weather is set to last for another few days yet. As the current storm that brought rain and even snow at the beginning of the week beats a retreat, another Atlantic storm will take over, driven by a weather phenomenon known as a jet stream.

According to the experts, a powerful anticyclone in Scandinavia is dividing a polar jet from Greenland in two, with one of those streams winging its way to Spain just in time for the weekend.

At the moment, the director of meteorology at Meteored, Jose Antonio Maldonado, predicts that the new storm will enter the northwest of the Peninsula from the Atlantic. Rainfall will move towards the interior of the country and the Cantabrian regions to finally spread throughout all of Spain over the next few days.

Friday April 22 will be cloudy and showers will dampen all regions except those close to the Mediterranean. More snowfall is due in the Pyrenees, Cantabrian mountain ranges and inland Spain, while weak rain is forecast for Gran Canaria and Tenerife. Abundant rain is expected in the south of Galicia, Castilla y Leon, Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha and will be cloudy and showers will dampen all regions except those close to the Mediterranean. More snowfall is due in the Pyrenees, Cantabrian mountain ranges and inland Spain, while weak rain is forecast for Gran Canaria and Tenerife. Abundant rain is expected in the south of Galicia, Castilla y Leon, Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha and a good part of Andalucia , where some localised storms havent been ruled out.

Weather warnings for Friday:

Andalucia, Asturias, Castilla y Leon, Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura on yellow alert for rain

Andalucia on yellow alert for wind

Andalucia, Galicia and the Region of Murcia on yellow alert for sea conditions

Little change is expected on Saturday April 23, although the rain will subside throughout the day in most areas, with the exception of the extreme north.

Weather warnings for Saturday:

Aragon, Asturias, Cantabria, Castilla y Leon, Catalonia, on yellow alert for rain

Andalucia, Balearic Islands, Murcia, Valencian Community on yellow alert for wind

Andalucia, Asturias, Balearic Islands, Cantabria, Catalonia, Murcia, Basque Country and Valencia on yellow alert for sea conditions

Aragon, Castilla y Leon, Catalonia and the Basque Country on yellow alert for low temperatures

On Sunday April 24 the Atlantic storm will move away from Spain, although there will still be some residual rains in the Pyrenees. Elsewhere, clouds will prevail with skies clearing to the east, with temperatures beginning to rise in the western half of the country.

Weather warnings on Sunday:

Asturias, Balearic Islands, Cantabria and the Basque Country on yellow alert for sea conditions.

Image: Aemet
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  A fire erupted at a now-shuttered inter-Korean industrial park in North Korea on Thursday, but it wasn't immediately clear if any South Korean property was damaged, officials said.

The fire was detected from a front-line South Korean observatory post at about 2 p.m. and appeared to have been extinguished about an hour later, Seouls Unification Ministry said.

The ministry, which oversees relations with rival North Korea, said it will try to confirm any damage at the complex in Kaesong city. North Korean state media didn't immediately report the fire.

The industrial park, established in 2004 during a period of warming ties between the divided Koreas, was once viewed as a test case for reunification because it combined South Korean technology and knowhow with cheap North Korean labor. The complexs operation was suspended in 2016 amid tensions over North Koreas weapons program, leaving South Korean equipment and other assets abandoned there.

South Korean businesspeople who ran companies at the park have repeatedly expressed a desire to visit the complex because of concerns about the condition of machinery and manufacturing materials left there. A planned visit approved by the South Korean government in 2019 fell through after North Korea ignored the request.

In 2020, North Korea threatened to dismantle the entire factory complex, and then blew up an empty South Korean-built liaison office there.

South Korea has accused North Korea of destroying South Korean-owned facilities at another dormant jointly operated project  a resort at North Korea's scenic Diamond Mountain where they ran tours together.

South Korean officials said they havent detected signs that North Korea is demolishing South Korean property at the Kaesong industrial park. South Korean media reported that authorities believe the fire at Kaesong wasn't deliberately set.

Earlier Thursday, Kwon Young-se, who has been nominated to be unification minister under South Korea's incoming conservative government, said the South should take a stronger stance toward North Korea over damage to South Korean property at the Kaesong park and Diamond Mountain resort.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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For the second month in a row, about 30 concerned residents attended the monthly meeting of the Louisa County Conservation Board seeking answers over the possible sale of an 18-acre tract of forest northeast of Morning Sun.

Although the issue was not on the agenda, one audience member asked if several other agenda items, including personnel updates, would affect when Baird Timber would be back on the agenda.

Conservation board chairman Sam Willson said he did not see the personnel updates portion of the agenda affecting any decision.

Meanwhile, board member Elizabeth Kling said she understood people wanted answers to what the board planned to do with Baird Timber, but she felt time would help resolve the situation.

An item placed on the conservation board's March 1 meeting agenda about the possible sale of the timber to help finance park development sparked a large number of residents, including members of the Baird family that originally owned the property, to turnout and voice their concerns and objections.

Louisa County acquired the property in 1983 from several Baird family descendants.

Although some family members recalled the property had been donated, other documentation indicated the county had paid for the land. Family members all agreed the intent in turning the timber over to the county had been to preserve it.

Others at the March meeting also recalled using the timber for hunting, recreation and other activities, explaining they felt there were other ways to raise money instead of selling county property people were using.

At Tuesdays meeting, the conservation board's newest member, Joellen Schantz, who was appointed by the supervisors on April 12, said local residents had taken a definite interest in the decision on the timber.

I think everybody here is probably going to be following the (LCCB) agenda pretty closely. Nothing is going to get by you, she said, reminding the group that the board of supervisors would also have to approve any sale.

In other action, local farmer Ron McDonald asked the board to transfer a strip of abandoned railroad right of way back to his farming corporation.

The conservation board acquired the property through Hoover Nature Trail, Inc., in 2006, but McDonald said language in an earlier deed should have meant the property transferred back to his property.

County attorney Adam Parsons during an earlier conservation board meeting disagreed, explaining court cases and other actions had established the countys ownership over the right of way.

The board did not take any action on McDonalds request.

The board also:

Accepted a $17,861 timber harvesting bid from J Kubitz, Dubuque, for 139 trees at Virginia Grove.

Approved a budget amendment that included a request to the supervisors to transfer $131,645 of eligible donations, land rent and other revenue into the LCCBs reserve account.

Approved a revised policy manual and bylaws.

Approved an executive directors job description.

Agreed to provide a crossing easement to Tyson Foods over a portion of railroad right of way north of Columbus Junction.

Agreed to continue investigating a possible sale of Emergency Wetland Program easements at Indian Slough.

Accepted a $94,481 bid from AB Creative, DeSota, NE., for playground equipment at Eden Park.

Agreed to continue a discussion on possible ideas for a Destination Iowa grant application.

Learned operations supervisor Jeff Snyder planned to retire on July 5.

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Eskom and City Power have observed a surge in copper cable thefts, with criminals stealing cabling in Johannesburg up to five times a day, according to a Sunday Times report.

Two dangerous instances of cable theft and attempted cable theft occurred recently, both in Soweto.

In one of the events in Nancefield, a group of thieves pulled 180m of copper cabling out of the ground with a bakkie  in broad daylight.

The cabling they removed is estimated to have a value of R60,000, and the culprits remain at large.

The other resulted in a shootout after community members intervened to protect the infrastructure from cable thieves in Eldorado Park.

City Press reported that 11 armed men were arrested following the attempted cable theft.

The removal of copper cables often results in extensive power outages for the residents that rely on them to supply municipal electricity.

Residents in Bedfordview suffered a days-long power outage in November 2021 after cable thieves damaged a crucial cable in a failed attempt to steal it.

The cable powers the City of Ekurhulenis Bedfordview substation. Despite Eskom working around the clock to prepare and complete the necessary repairs, the power utility could only restore power after several days.

In January, police minister Bheki Cele revealed disappointing statistics regarding cable theft-related arrests.

Cele had established a task team to fight cable theft in May 2020 and, since its inception, had only made 28 arrests  of which only three resulted in jail time.

Two accused were found guilty and both sentenced to three years imprisonment, on the first count and one year on the second count, Cele wrote in response to Parliamentary questions.

He added that another had been found guilty, sentenced to 12 years of direct imprisonment and declared unfit to possess a firearm.

The task team comprises several SAPS roleplayers, the National Prosecuting Authority, and Eskom. It developed an action plan to tackle cable theft crimes, focussing on two kinds of thieves  organised and opportunistic criminals.

According to the minister, organised criminals target quantities of copper cables that will return the most value, while opportunistic criminals target smaller amounts to accommodate their immediate needs.

The action plans directive is to:

Prevent, combat, and investigate national priority offences.

Ensure the availability of reliable and validated crime information.

Ensure effective and efficient investigations.

Make sure there is adequate support during the investigation of a crime.

Provide a specialised response capability.

Now read: Rules homeowners should know before installing solar power
The African National Congress (ANC) is considering the viability of several state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and it wants its members to decide on which ones to keep, merge, or privatise.

This is according to the Sunday Times, citing an ANC draft discussion document, which also reportedly stated the ruling party would give no more bailouts to failing SOEs.

The era of bailouts for SOEs is over. It is not sustainable, the report quoted the document as saying.

It revealed that delegates at the conference would discuss the future of SOEs, including South African Airways (SAA), the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), the South African Post Office (SAPO), and Eskom.

It also says the ANC anticipates job losses will rise as SOEs cannot continue to operate in their current forms but added that workers would be assisted in finding new income.

This includes reskilling and redeploying workers whose jobs are at risk and helping with seed capital for workers to establish their own small, medium, and micro-enterprises.

According to the document, Eskom and SAA are the main culprits when it comes to government bailouts.

The ANCs stance in the discussion document mirrors finance minister Enoch Godongwanas announcement that government would take a tough love approach towards SOEs.

The minister said that SOEs would need to develop their own plans to decrease their reliance on South Africas public funds.

For this reason, SOEs need to develop and implement [their own] sustainable turnaround plans, Godongwana said.

To reduce their continuing demands on South Africas public resources, the National Treasury will outline the criteria for government funding of state-owned companies, during the upcoming financial year.

Thisis what we mean by tough love, the minister added.

However, Godongwana explained that Eskom specifically would receive continued support from government, and that the National Treasury was developing a plan to deal with the power utilitys financial situation.

To date, Eskom has been provided with R136 billion to pay off its debt with a further R88 billion until 2025/26, Godongwana stated.

We acknowledge, however, that Eskom is faced with a large amount of debt that remains a challenge to service without assistance.

Looking at SAA, South Africas flag carrier suspended operations and was placed under business rescue in September 2020.

Its administrators were set to decide whether to sell or liquidate the airline if it did not receive a R10.5 billion bailout from the government.

SAA relaunched in August 2021 after concluding its business rescue and receiving a substantial bailout.

The Post Offices financial situation is also dire. It cant pay rent and was taken to task for not paying workers pension fund and medical aid contributions.

SAPO put several properties up for auction earlier in 2022 to reduce its debt.

However, with municipal and landlord debt of around R304 million, the minimum proceeds from the auctions  R23.2 million  would cover only 8% of what it owes.

Communication minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said that in addition to its outstanding rent and utility bills, as of 10 February, the state-owned postal service had also run up municipal debt of R915,000 for unpaid water and electricity.

As part of a strategy to turn SAPO around, Ntshavheni published proposed amendments to the Post Office Act last week.

It aims to expand the postal agencys mandate to include logistics and ecommerce services.

It would also allow the Post Office to reduce the number of services it offers in areas with no demand and charge higher fees in certain places  subject to regulatory approval.

The postal service is also hoping to enforce a monopoly on parcels under 1kg, which it says is granted by the Post Office Act.

However, it does not appear that the Post Office wants to take over all such deliveries from private couriers but wants them to pay an agency fee for the privilege.
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The director of pharmacy at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley hospital was one of 21 people charged this week by the U.S. Department of Justice for their alleged roles in a variety of COVID-19 scams.

The pharmacist, Ranna Shamiya, is one of three people prosecutors say abetted a Napa-based naturopath at the center of a scheme to produce fake coronavirus vaccination cards and sell bogus COVID cures.

Shamiya was charged with making false statements related to health care matters.

"We learned about this just two days ago, and we took immediate action. She is now a former employee," said Adam Istas, public information officer for Adventist Health Mendocino County. "Our understanding of this situation pretty much mirrors that of the Justice Department."

According to the department, Shamiya, 41, used her access to controlled medical information to identify legitimate lot numbers for FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccines, and transmitted that information to Juli Mazi, the Napa homeopathic doctor.

Mazi then used the lot numbers to create fake COVID-19 vaccination record cards. Those cards would falsely indicate that Mazi's customers received an FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccine with a verified lot number.

A voice message left on a phone believed to belong to Shamiya went unanswered Thursday.

If convicted, Shamiya could face five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release, according to prosecutors.

"Obviously, it's disappointing," Istas said. "It's a legal matter, and it's disappointing. I would note that at no point did this jeopardize our commitment to the safety of our patients. This is not a patient-facing charge she's accused of."

Mazi, meanwhile, pleaded guilty April 9 in federal court in San Francisco to one count of wire fraud and one count of false statements related to health care matters. Hers was the first federal criminal prosecution related to fraudulent COVID vaccination cards, the Department of Justice said. Mazi provided fake cards to at least 200 people, along with instructions on how to make the documents look like the bearer had received two doses of the Moderna vaccine, 28 days apart.

In addition to the fake cards, Mazi sold "homeoprophylaxis immunization pellets" she claimed would offer "lifelong immunity to COVID-19." She lied to the customers, telling them the pellets contained small amounts of the virus and would create an antibody response, prosecutors said.

According to the Justice Department, Mazi had previously engaged in similarly deceptive practices by providing protective pellets and falsified immunization cards in place of childhood vaccinations required for school attendance.

Mazi, 41, is scheduled to be sentenced July 29.

The DOJ also charged two other people it says worked with Mazi. Jason Costanza of El Paso was her office manager and Jaimi Jansen allegedly distributed both the scam cures and the doctored cards through her wellness center in Santa Cruz.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help. Subscribe today! Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Napa Valley Register.

Travel changes us like nothing else. Is safe to travel in 2022? The answer is a resounding yes.

The pandemic decimated an $8 trillion industry overnight. If there is a silver lining, it is that travelers have learned how to be more ethical and sustainable.

Some proponents of sustainable travel insist that COVID-19s global shutdown gave destinations an opportunity to rest and rebuild travel with an emphasis on social responsibility. Cities like Venice and Barcelona, poster children for overcrowded tourism, were able to take a break. Delhi, Shanghai and Los Angeles, all cities with notoriously bad air quality, reported the lowest pollution rates in many years.

Due to the pandemic, we've been given the rare chance of a calculated fresh start. These companies aim to make us better global citizens by changing the way we travel  away from mass-market tourism, toward being ethical and sustainable travelers. More people are now aware of leaving a smaller carbon footprint on our fragile planet.

As people become more environmentally conscious and the world veers toward a sustainable future, the tourism industry is changing how people travel responsibly, leaving behind a lesser carbon footprint while providing ethical animal tourism.

Heres a look at how some travel companies are moving forward:

Australia-based Aurora Expeditions traverses remote and breathtaking coastlines around the world. It selects each destination, including rarely seen stretches of Antarctica, for its natural beauty and biodiversity, its geological wonders and archaeological sites. Now the company is incorporating Citizen Science into its itineraries. Travelers are asked to assist in collecting and analyzing data in an array of projects as part of a collaborative project with professional scientists worldwide. Explorers learn the importance of environmental conservation and wildlife protection across all continents.

"Our goal is literally to inspire a network of hope  one place, one community, one vision at a time, around the world," said oceanographer Sylvia Earle, who partners with Aurora.

Abercrombie & Kent pioneered the luxury adventure travel market nearly six decades ago. Sustainable and ethical travel might be new buzzwords, but for A&K, the concept has been its driving force since it began in East Africa in the early 1960s.

"Thankfully, the concept of responsible tourism is catching on," said chairman and CEO Geoffrey Kent. "Notions of sustainability, carbon neutrality, animal welfare and cultural sensitivity haven't always been in sync with the travel industry. Increasingly we find our customers are asking us to book hotels with eco-friendly practices, support the local communities they're visiting, and find carbon-neutral ways of making the journey."

The largest adventure travel operator in the world is Melbourne-based Intrepid Travel, which provides travelers a rare opportunity to connect with local people and make a positive impact.

"We fundamentally believe that the travel industry can only rebound stronger if it rebuilds more responsibly," said CEO James Thornton. "The COVID-19 crisis has brought our sector to a crashing halt, and we would be remiss not to let it be for something good."

When joining an expedition, ask what safety measures and protocols are in place, and don't be afraid to question them. Travelers as well as operators play a vital role in responsible travel to ensure the well-being of people and the open spaces they visit. Travelers can take personal responsibility by following health and safety protocols and reading ahead on conditions in countries and regions theyll be visiting.

The rise of the conscious traveler is in full force. Global explorers will be far more discerning of where and how they travel. Those able to work remotely will travel for longer, opting to "work from holiday."

Destinations with large open spaces like Alaska, Canada and Australia will remain atop travelers' radar. Trekking in Nepal, snorkeling in the Galapagos Islands, Costa Rica, African safaris and wellness trips will be increasingly popular. Travelers will turn to operators who guide responsibly and tread lightly.

Nicholas Kontis is a travel writer who divides his time between Napa and Mexico, when he is not exploring the world.
EU considers additional funds for eastern countries for a deal to ban Russian oil

Armenia PM to visit Netherlands

Germany's finance minister warns that wage increases could further fuel inflation

Ursula von der Leyen travels to Hungary to persuade Orban to support sanctions on Russia

NEWS.am digest: Armenia marks May 9, Shushi liberation; Azerbaijan opens fire on Sotk gold mine

Ursula von der Leyen says unanimous vote on key areas of EU policy no longer makes sense

Resistance movement marches through central streets of Yerevan

US First Lady meets with Slovak President

North Korea urges citizens to strictly adhere to antiviral measures in connection with COVID-19

Armenian TV host dies after falling into river

Javelin manufacturer to double production of anti-tank missile systems

Sri Lankan Prime Minister submits his resignation to the President

Marukyan: There should have been half million people on streets now if people really wanted change of power in Armenia

Russia envoy to Armenia: Everyone should avoid steps that could aggravate situation

Oil prices drop in Saudi Arabia after COVID-19 outbreak in China

Armenia army general staff ex-deputy chief: I will say its a lie if someone says it was possible to win 44-day war

Georgia condemns presidential elections in South Ossetia

ARF Dashnaktsutyun Party official says authorities plan to divide Armenian diaspora

Azerbaijan continues attempts to appropriate Armenian Dadivank Monastery

Bitcoin is trading at a low since the summer of 2021

Armenia ambassador-at-large: Whoever says 'they want Artsakh to be part of Azerbaijan' probably wants it

Turkeys Erdogan to attend Teknofest in Azerbaijan

System Of a Down members welcome opposition Resistance Movement actions in Armenia (PHOTOS)

Journalist attacked in Baku

19 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia in past 5 days

Novak: Russia has already started selling oil to a number of new buyers

Putin: NATO countries did not want to hear Russia

Two Chinese ships enter Japanese territorial waters

China assures Australia of peaceful intentions in cooperation with Solomon Islands

Holy Etchmiadzin clergy visit Victory Park memorial in Yerevan

Armenia 2nd President Kocharyan: Let us live for new victories

Armenia ex-defense minister: Wedding at Mountains ideologically impossible after change of power

NATO Secretary General urges Putin to withdraw troops from Ukraine

Karabakh negotiation process did not fail under Armenia ex-President Serzh Sargsyan, says Seyran Ohanyan

Armenia ex-defense minister: Resistance Movements breakthrough moment already passed

Karabakh President visits Stepanakert Memorial on May 9 anniversaries

Armenia Investigative Committee chief on including PM Pashinyan as defendant: We have just accepted proceedings

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Armenia PM: Blood of our martyrs who gave their lives to Motherland should not be forgotten

Armenia premier, president, others are at Victory Park

Armenia marks May 9

Armenia PM visits Yerevan military pantheon

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Israel to abolish mandatory PCR testing at airport as of 20 May

US and G7 countries introduce new package of sanctions against Russia and Belarus

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Sico, a leading regional asset manager, broker, and investment bank, has announced the appointments of Owen Vallis as Chief Risk Officer and Nimita Nazer as Head of Middle Office.

Both these titles are newly created positions in Sicos management team aimed at expanding and enhancing both functions within the bank. Middle Office is a recently established department to support the banks Asset Management activities.

The new appointments to the executive management team are part of Sicos commitment to retaining the best calibre in the industry, as it works to maintain its operational excellence while continually deploying the best of resources to service its clients.

Chief Risk Officer

Vallis will assume his position as Chief Risk Officer at Sico with 18 years of experience in risk management. Prior to joining Sico, Vallis was the UK Head of Asset Management Risk at Credit Suisse Group in London for 10 years.

He additionally held the position of Vice President at JP Morgan for two years. Vallis also previously worked at Morgan Stanley and Kleinwort Benson as a Risk Analyst. He holds a BSc. in Disaster Risk Management from the University of Portsmouth, UK.

This new role is a very exciting step in my career and I am looking forward to working with the Board, the Executive Leadership team, and employees to strategically develop Sicos Risk Management department to become one that is best equipped to respond prudently to any emerging threats, while maintaining sustainable business growth for the long-term said Vallis.

Head of Middle Office

Nazer is coming into her position as the Head of Middle Office as a seasoned investment banking professional with over 15 years experience within international conventional banks and financial services in Bahrain.

She joined Sico in 2018 as Portfolio Administrator of the Asset Management Equities Department and was responsible for managing the non-investment activities of the department. She previously held the position of Client Services Manager with HSBC Securities Services in Bahrain for 7 years. She is a chartered accountant and member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (CISI), UK.

Commenting on her appointment, Nazer said: I am excited to be moving on to this new role within Sico with the ability to capitalise on my experience here and further develop the business line and contribute to Sicos expansion strategy. The Middle Office department forms an integral part of Sicos front and back-office ecosystem. I am looking forward to taking on this new role and being able to create value alongside the team.-- TradeArabia News Service
Third President Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia is participating in Saturday evenings traditional torchlight procession in Yerevanand on the eve of the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocideas a citizen. He told reporters about this before the start of this procession.

"Have I renounced being a citizen? Politics is one thing, being a citizen is another. Any politician, first of all, must be a citizen," he said.

To the remark that PM Nikol Pashinyan says that during the rule of the previous Armenian authorities there was a demand from the international community to lower the bar on the matter of the status of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) and when asked whether such a demand was made before him during his presidency, Sargsyan responded: "No. What does that mean? I do not think it is too appropriate to answer such questions on foot. But, nonetheless, since [19]88, Azerbaijan also had not wanted to talk about any bar at all. Is it such a fact that should have forced us to give up our goals? Of course not. All those documents are there. You demand from Nikol Pashinyan to publicize what he was proposed in 2019, and in general, what the 'bar' is for him."
The Armenian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the occasion of the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

The statement cames as follows:

Every year on April 24, Armenians around the world commemorate the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide - the first Genocide of the 20th century.

In 1915-1923, Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were subjected to unprecedented mass atrocities - brutal killings, violence and forcible displacement, which were pre-planned and implemented by the Government of Young Turks. Around 1.5 million men and women, elderly and children were murdered just because they were Armenians, and hundreds of thousands were deprived of their economic, educational and spiritual property.

Despite all the deprivations and hardships, the Armenian people survived and overcame the horror of genocide due to the national unification, the humanitarian support of different peoples, societies and individuals, managed to form communities in different countries of the world, preserve and strengthen their national identity, and most importantly, to rebuild its independent statehood.

A century after the Armenian Genocide, it is important to emphasize that the international community demonstrates significant solidarity on international recognition and condemnation of genocide, the manifestation of which is the state-level recognition of the Armenian Genocide by around 30 countries, as well as the adoption of relevant declarations and resolutions by a number of international organizations and institutions.

It is also important to emphasize that the agenda of international recognition of the Armenian Genocide serves to the strengthening of the system of security guarantees in the region, including the suppression of aspirations for new ethnic cleansing, and prevention of recurrence of such crimes against humanity in any other part of the world.

The crime committed against the Armenians by the Government of Young Turks later became the foundation for the development of the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The "crime of crimes" - the genocide still happens, depriving the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. The Republic of Armenia is resolutely fighting for the restoration of justice and the rights of the victims, having its significant contribution and leadership in the prevention of crimes against humanity.

Today we bow in memory of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide and reaffirm our commitment to the recognition of truth, the restoration of justice, and the prevention of new genocides and crimes against humanity.
US Ambassador to Armenia Lynne Tracy refuted the statement of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov regarding the activities of the OSCE Minsk Group.

This statement was made by the Russian government, it was not a coordinated, joint statement and does not reflect the US approach to this issue, the ambassador said in an interview with journalists at the Armenian Genocide memorial complex.

Obviously, this attack on Ukraine, unprovoked by Russia, complicated the activities of the Minsk Group. But we believe that in the format of the Minsk Group co-chairmanship there are opportunities for a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Andrew Schofer, the US State Department's Caucasian Negotiations Adviser and US Co-Chair of the Minsk Group, was here last week and had effective meetings with government officials.

Earlier the Russian Foreign Minister said the French and American partners in this group canceled the trio of co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, saying that they would not communicate in this format amid a Russophobic issues.
The National Bank of Bahrain (NBB) is leading the banking industry in environmental conservation within the kingdom by playing an active role in reducing its carbon footprint.

NBB has registered a 15.8% reduction in diesel consumption and an 8% decrease in electricity consumption at its headquarters. The bank has also clocked a 7.9% reduction in CO2 emissions from electricity and diesel consumption at the NBB headquarters, compared to 2020. As part of its efforts towards becoming a paperless organisation, NBB has recycled 24% of paper consumed throughout the year.

Honouring its commitment to integrate sustainability across its business operations, the bank continues to implement sustainability practices as part of its established 3-year sustainability roadmap.

Strategy focus

NBBs strategy focuses on embedding Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) framework across the banks operations. Through its guiding principles, the roadmap has enabled the bank to accomplish several key milestones, namely in environmental conservation, reducing harmful waste consumption and successfully lowering its CO2 emissions during 2021.

NBB has launched several initiatives during 2021 to instil a culture of environmental conservation across its community. The bank introduced a solar panel financing solution for customers who wish to install solar energy panels in their homes, and in a bid to embed environmentally conscious practices within its products and services, the bank also introduced auto loan financing with exclusive rates for customers seeking to purchase hybrid or electric vehicles.

The bank additionally extended its support to the first eco-friendly hospital in the kingdom, the new King Hamad American Mission Hospital, financing construction and the installation of solar panels at the hospital.

EMS certification

Honouring its commitment to ESG integration, NBB was the first bank in the kingdom to successfully attain the ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management Systems (EMS) certification which aims to help organisations reduce their environmental impact.

Furthermore, the bank has extended its support to the latest food sustainability project by the Ministry of Works, Municipalities Affairs & Urban Planning as part of its sustainability journey towards being a responsible bank.

NBB will finance the projects process of designing, building, operating, and handover of a hydroponic farm, which aims to reduce water consumption for plants, thereby minimising the countrys carbon footprint.

National enabler

Commenting on the banks ongoing sustainability trajectory, Jean-Christophe Durand, Chief Executive Officer of NBB, said: NBB takes pride in in its role to promote and implement environmental conservation strategies and initiatives. We believe in our continued efforts, working to reduce the organisations waste and carbon footprint on a daily basis, and strive to instil the less-is-more principle across the sector and the kingdom.

NBB is committed to being a national enabler, supporting the kingdoms directives, and play our part in fulfilling Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifas declaration at COP26 to reduce all emissions in the kingdom by 30% by the year 2035.

Dana Buheji, Group Chief Human Resources and Sustainability Officer at NBB, added: NBB continues to realise its sustainability roadmap through various organisational initiatives, which aim to guide the community towards adopting a principle based on sustainable living.

Green Up project

Over the past year, we have undertaken partnerships to promote a shift within the community. Our partnership with CleanUp Bahrain enabled us to hold our largest Group-led volunteering event as well as finance the Green Up project; a national initiative to plant 810 trees along the 16th December Highway. The bank has significantly improved its environmental performance over the past year.

NBB is on a steadfast path towards embedding ESG and sustainability practices within its organisation. Aligning its initiatives with the UNSDGs, NBB is currently on a resilient sustainability journey, allowing the bank to lead on the path towards achieving a net-zero economy.-- TradeArabia News Service
The UK plans to send armored anti-aircraft missile systems to Ukraine, The Times of London reported.

Stormer vehicles fire 17 high-speed Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles capable of destroying aircraft and helicopters. Starstreak is Britain's most advanced man-portable missile system, and in March the UK sent a batch of missiles to Ukraine.

The missiles are laser-guided and split into three darts, with a range of up to seven kilometers, according to The Times.

However, until now, Ukraine could only launch British missiles using shoulder launchers or portable stands, reports The Times.

The newspaper notes that the 13.5-ton Stormer vehicles are easier to operate, and Ukrainian forces will be able to move to their destination at a speed of 50 miles per hour, launch a rocket, and then leave.

The vehicle has a crew of three - driver, commander and gunner.

Sources told The Sun that several Stormers will be deployed to Ukraine along with 120 armored personnel carriers.

The delivery of Stormers to Ukraine has not been officially announced, but The Sun reported that Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace will make a statement in Parliament this week. It's no secret that the UK has committed itself to helping Ukraine with its anti-aircraft capabilities, the source told the newspaper.

The Ministry of Defense received a Ukrainian government delegation at the Salisbury Plain test site two weeks ago and reportedly demonstrated the technology, according to The Times.
107 years later, the American people continue to honor all Armenians who perished in the genocide, said the US President Joe Biden on the occasion of the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

His statement comes as follows:

On April 24, 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thus began the Armenian genocideone of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century. Today, we remember the one and a half million Armenians who were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination, and mourn the tragic loss of so many lives.

As we reflect on the Armenian genocide, we renew our pledge to remain vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms. We recommit ourselves to speaking out and stopping atrocities that leave lasting scars on the world. And, as we mourn what was lost during the Meds Yeghern, let us redouble our efforts toward healing and building the better, more peaceful world that we wish for our children. A world where human rights are respected, where the evils of bigotry and intolerance do not mark our daily lives, and where people everywhere are free to pursue their lives in dignity and security.

This is also a moment to reflect on the strength and resiliency of the Armenian people. After enduring a genocide, the Armenian people were determined to rebuild their community and their culture, so often in new homes and new lands, including the United States. Armenian Americans are a vital part of the fabric of the United States. They make our nation stronger and more dynamic, even as they continue to carry with them the tragic knowledge of what their ancestors endured. We recognize their pain and honor their story.

Today, 107 years later, the American people continue to honor all Armenians who perished in the genocide.
Vietnam eyes transition to green production for sustainable value

Economic sectors, localities and businesses should be considered the drivers of the nation's green growth and sustainable development strategy, experts have said.



According to Phan Xuan Dung, President of the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations, foreign-invested enterprises and multinational corporations can lead the trend of green transformation, thus helping Vietnam integrate with the global market.



Taking advantage of support from the FDI business community is extremely important for Vietnam in the context of limited domestic resources, and the digital and green transformation in Vietnamese small and medium-sized enterprises still remains slow, Dung said.



He added that the support from international partners and the pioneering of FDI enterprises in the trend of green transformation will contribute to helping Vietnamese businesses and localities speed up green transformation towards realising sustainable development goals.








Christies has announced two major appointments to its senior management team in the Middle East region - Dr Ridha Moumni has been promoted to the role of Deputy Chairman (Middle East & North Africa), effective immediately, and Meagan Kelly Horsman has been named Managing Director, Christies Middle East, led by Anthea Peers, the new President for Europe, Middle East and Africa region.

For Peers, the Middle East is a strategic priority for the company, and these two important executive announcements underscore the firm's commitment to deepening the investment in this area.

In his new role, Moumni will be responsible for business strategy across the region, with a strong focus on the Gulf and North Africa amongst other areas. He will work to expand and enhance Christies profile and portfolio of offerings while also promoting the companys diversified businesses.

He was previously Christies Senior Client Advisor for the Middle East, joining the company from Harvard Universitys Department of Art History, where he was an Aga Khan Fellow.

Kelly Horsman, who take over the new role on May 23, brings to Christies her extensive experience in Collection Management and Development for some of the most important collections in the UAE.

Based in the region since 2010, Kelly Horsman worked previously in the primary art market, starting her career in the art world at Bonhams. She has also curated numerous exhibitions, delivered short courses relating to the art sector, and created a curated print fair at Al Serkal Avenue.

On the senior appointments, Peers said: "Joining Christies London 16 years ago, I vividly remember the excitement felt ahead of the first auction we held in Dubai, back in May 2006. This expansion and further successes in the region, as we forged relationships throughout the area, remains pivotal for the business, and the Middle East has always been at the forefront of my mind."

"Its therefore an even greater pleasure to announce these new management appointments so early in my new role as President, Christies EMEA. There will be further news to come in the weeks and months ahead, underlining the strong investment Christies will continue to make in the region going forward," he added.

Christies Dubai office hosts two dedicated specialist departments for watches and Middle Eastern art, as well as a special events team, led by the newly appointed General Manager Itziar Salgado.

In addition to its core team of colleagues based in Dubai, Christies said it engages and directs a strong network of consultants throughout the region and receives integral support from senior colleagues across the business, including Dr. Bertold Muller, Managing Director Christies EMEA; and a highly skilled team of managers, client advisors, and specialists in Islamic Art, 20th/21st Century Art, Old Masters, and Collections.
Armenian News - NEWS.am presents the daily digest of top news on Armenian Genocide 107th anniversary as of 24.04.22:

On April 24, 2022, Armenians worldwide and the progressive society observe the 106th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide; the first genocide of the 20th century.

Armenian Genocide was carried out in several phases. But its beginning is considered April 24, 1915.

From 1892 to 1923, Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II and later the Young Turks subjected Armenians of Western Armenia, Cilicia, and the Ottoman Empire to mass deportation and extermination.

Around 1.5 million Armenians were killed between 1915 and 1923. More than half a million Armenians dispersed around the world. As a result of the Genocide, Western Armenia was left without its indigenous people, and the Armenians were dispossessed of their historical homeland.

Armenian Genocide is recognized by numerous countries including Russia, France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Canada, Venezuela, Argentina, the Vatican, and most US states. It was first acknowledged in 1965 by Uruguay.

This calamity is also recognized by the General Assembly of the United Nations, the European Parliament, the World Council of Churches, and several other international organizations.

Commemorations of this tragedy are held in virtually all countries where Armenians live. The main remembrance events, however, take place at the Armenian Genocide Memorial on Tsitsernakaberd Hill, in Armenias capital city of Yerevan.

Armenian authorities, members of governments, representatives of the diplomatic corps, political parties, members of the Armenian diaspora, and numerous guests visit Tsitsernakaberd on this day to pay tribute to the Genocide victims.

The annual daylong procession began with an official wreath-laying ceremony at the hilltop memorial led by Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan and President Vahagn Khachaturyan.

Thousands assembled in Yerevan on Sunday to participate in the annual march to commemorate the anniversary of the 1915 Armenian Genocide.

The annual torchlight procession dedicated to the innocent victims of the Armenian Genocide this year had the slogan "Wake up, Lao."

Second President Robert Kocharyan and third President Serzh Sargsyan also took part in this procession.

And Artur Vanetsyanthe leader of the opposition "With Honor" Faction of the National Assembly (NA) and chairman of the opposition Homeland party of Armenia, who has been on a sit-in for already a week now at Freedom Square in downtown Yerevan, and his supporters joined this torchlight procession as well.

The torchlight procession headed to the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan.

Along with the torchlight procession in Yerevan, there was a similar procession in the Artsakh capital Stepanakert.

Torchlight processions have been held every year in both Yerevan and Stepanakert. But this year these processions are more crucial amid the current crisis in the Artsakh issue.

Turkey continues to deny a premeditated government effort to exterminate Ottoman Turkeys Armenian population.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Armenians themselves massacred Muslim civilians and that their mass deportations to a Syrian desert was the most reasonable action that could be taken by the Ottoman government.

Meanwhile, member of the Turkish Parliament Garo Paylan, who is of Armenian descent, has submitted a bill on recognition of the Armenian Genocide to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, reports Agos.

The bill submitted on the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide also demands the identification of those responsible for the crime.

However, Speaker of the Turkish Parliament Mustafa Sentop has returned HDP lawmaker Garo Paylans bill on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, maintaining that it contradicts the provisions of the Rules of Procedure, NTV reports.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, in turn, makes the gesture of the racist Grey Wolves organization to demonstrators from the Armenian community in Uruguay who were marching the day before the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

The international community continues to refer to the Armenian Genocide.

The US President Joe Biden said in a statement that 107 years later, the American people continue to honor all Armenians who perished in the genocide.

After enduring a genocide, the Armenian people were determined to rebuild their community and their culture, so often in new homes and new lands, including the United States, he said.

The Cyprus government, in turn, said that Turkey continues to deny its crimes against the Armenian people

The French Embassy also expressed support and sympathy for the Armenian people.

While the British Ambassador, in turn, laid a wreath in Armenian Genocide memorial complex in Yerevan.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis delivered an address on the occasion of the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian Embassy in Greece reported.

According to the PM, 107 years have passed since the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, as well as the extermination of 1.5 million people.

"We pay tribute to the memory of the victims. Mentioning the dark pages of the past is a guide to preventing such crimes in the future. Our main concern is to ensure a peaceful future and mutual respect for all.

The pogroms of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire during World War I are the first genocide of the early 20th century. The Armenian Genocide was committed by the Young Turkish government in various regions of the Ottoman Empire.

The first international reaction to these events was given in 1915. It was a joint statement by France, Russia and Great Britain, in which the violence against the Armenian people was called "a crime against humanity and civilization."

The parties blamed the Turkish government for the crime. The fact that the Ottoman government committed the Armenian Genocide was substantiated, recognized and confirmed by eyewitness accounts, laws, decrees, decisions of many states and international organizations. It was recognized and condemned by thirty countries of the world, the Greek PM said in a message.
Hatred and violence must never again be met with indifference, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on the occasion of the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Today, we join Armenian communities in Canada and around the world to honor the memory of the victims of the Armenian genocide  one of the darkest chapters in human history. We also honor their descendants, including Canadians of Armenian heritage, who have contributed and who continue to help shape the strong, diverse, and inclusive country that we enjoy today.

The atrocities committed and the horrific number of lives that were taken from 1915 to 1923 must never be forgotten. In 2015, a century after the start of this tragedy, Parliament passed a motion declaring April 24 as Armenian Genocide Memorial Day, a date that has since served to remember the loss, trauma, and pain inflicted by these atrocities and to ensure they are never repeated. This day falls during Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention Month.

Hatred and violence must never again be met with indifference. Each and every one of us has a role to play in making sure such brutality is never repeated, and it starts with taking a stand against discrimination and hate in all its forms  whenever and wherever it occurs.

Together, on this somber anniversary, we remember the lives lost, recognize the strength and spirit of the Armenian people, and look forward with hope to a future of peace, mutual respect, and dignity among people and countries around the world.
Chinas biggest state-owned energy companies are reportedly negotiating the opportunity to buy a stake in a major Russian gas export project from Shell after the British oil and gas corporation exited Russia over the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, RT reported. Cnooc, CNPC, and Sinopec Group are in joint talks with Shell over the company's 27.5 per cent stake in the Sakhalin-2 liquefied natural gas venture, according to people with knowledge of the matter, as quoted by Bloomberg. The discussions, which are in the early stages, reportedly include the sale of the stake to one or two of the Chinese firms, or to a consortium of all three majors. Shell is also open to negotiations with other potential buyers outside of China, the sources, who asked to remain anonymous, told the media. In March, Shell announced plans to exit its joint ventures with Russian state-run gas giant Gazprom and related entities. The decision follows similar steps announced by French-based Total, the UK's BP, and Norway's Equinor ASA. Later, the company said it would have to write off as much as $5 billion in assets due to the exit. China's automotive industry is also eyeing opportunities in Russia. One of the Chinese auto manufacturers may buy Renault's stake in Russian carmaker Avtovaz, according to a source in government agencies, as quoted by TASS. Renault holds 68 per cent in Lada Auto Holding, a joint venture with Rostec, which owns 100 per cent of Avtovaz. --IANS san/arm ( 256 Words) 2022-04-23-19:10:04 (IANS)
In a filing with the stock exchanges, RIL said, "The Future Group companies comprising Future Retail Limited (FRL) and other listed companies involved in the scheme have intimated the results of the voting on the scheme of arrangement by their shareholders and creditors at their respective meetings.

"As per these results, the shareholders and unsecured creditors of FRL have voted in favour of the scheme. But the secured creditors of FRL have voted against the scheme. In view thereof, the subject scheme of arrangement cannot be implemented."

The scheme of arrangement was for the transfer of retail and wholesale business and the logistics and warehousing business of Future Group to Reliance Retail Ventures Limited (RRVL), a subsidiary of the company, and Reliance Retail and Fashion Lifestyle Limited (RRFLL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of RRVL, for Rs 24,371 crore.

The deal was opposed by Amazon and intense legal battles have been waged ever since the deal was announced.

--IANS san/arm

( 192 Words)

2022-04-23-22:04:02 (IANS)
With a significant arrangement between the Congress and political strategist Prashant Kishor alias PK almost certain now, speculations are rife over the imminent end of the existing arrangement between the Trinamool Congress and PK-founded organisation Indian Political Action Committee (I-Pac). According to political leaders and observers whom IANS interacted with, if PK or I-Pac officially gets the chance of drawing the roadmap for Congress for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, that assignment will surely be for pan-India and West Bengal will not be an exception. In that case, there will be an automatic termination of the existing arrangements between the TMC and I-Pac. When contacted, TMC leader and three-time Lok Sabha member Sugata Roy made a significant statement that clearly hinted towards the imminent termination of the existing arrangements between TMC and I-Pac. "If the ongoing discussions between the Congress and Prashant Kishor take a formal shape, TMC will surely have to rethink its relationship with I-PAC. However, political situation changes in moments and till the time the ongoing dialogues between Prashant Kishor and the Congress leadership takes a final shape, we will have to wait and watch," Roy said. Congress member from West Bengal Subhankar Sarkar said that there is only one remote possibility that PK-TMC arrangements can continue even after the poll strategist officially gets the assignment to draw the roadmap for Congress for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. "The remote possibility is that Congress and TMC enter into a seat-sharing agreement in West Bengal in 2024, as the two parties did in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls and 2011 West Bengal Assembly elections. But that possibility looks remote as of now considering that the TMC has continued to weaken the Congress by roping in its leaders. But again, nothing is final unless it is final in politics," Sarkar said. BJP's West Bengal spokesman Shamik Bhattacharya refused to make any comment on the issue, describing it as the internal matter of Congress and TMC. "However, the desperation to get PK as a savior speaks a lot about the leadership qualities of both the parties," he said. Former head of the department of International Relations at the Jadavpur University, Om Prakash Mishra, also ruled out the possibility of a TMC-Congress seat-sharing arrangement in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. "First, look at the TMC angle. In the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections, both the Congress and its ally Left Front got totally wiped out even in the erstwhile Congress strongholds of Murshidabad and Malda districts. "Not a single Lok Sabha seat in West Bengal is a safe seat for Congress now and in such a situation it is unlikely that the TMC would like to spare a single seat to the Congress. From the Congress's point of view, in case of any arrangement, the Trinamool would demand some seats in other states from the Congress. So, in all probability, the relations between I-Pac and the TMC is heading for an inevitable end as, in my opinion, the PK-Congress innings getting official is just a matter of time," Mishra said. Political analyst and former registrar of Calcutta University, Rajagopal Dhar Chakraborty, said that officially Prashant Kishor does not hold any post in I-Pac, though this organisation was founded by him. "So, an option can be that Kishor, on his behalf, operates for the Congress nationally and I-Pac works independently for the TMC in West Bengal. But the question of greater credibility will automatically arise then. So, the situation right now is extremely critical," he said. --IANS src/sks/arm ( 600 Words) 2022-04-23-19:04:01 (IANS)
In a dramatic climax, the Mumbai Police on Saturday evening arrested independent Amravati MP Navneet Rana and her husband Badnera MLA Ravi Rana, soon after they suo-moto dropped their plans to storm Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray's residence. Among other things, the Ranas have been charged for disturbing peace and order, and making inflammatory statement, by the Khar Police Station following a complaint by Shiv Sena activists. In a countermeasure, the Ranas also submitted a complaint with the Khar Police against various Shiv Sena leaders for allegedly threatening them. The development came soon after they were detained by a team of Khar Police Station and later placed them under arrest with plans to produce them before a Magistrate Court on Sunday. Earlier, the Ranas claimed that they had called off their plans to go and recite Hanuman Chalisa at the Chief Minister's private residence 'Matoshri', even as hundreds of Shiv Sena and Yuva Sena activists laid a siege at the politician couple's home, demanding an apology for insulting Thackeray. An elated Yuva Sena leader Varun Sardesai said it was "the victory of the party and the Ranas could not move out of their home" let alone go to the Chief Minister's home. "They have failed in their plans. We demand a public apology from them for their statements against the Chief Minister. We have shown them our strength. They are cowards who ran away," thundered Sardesai. At the Ranas' home, there were heated exchanges with the police who wanted them to come to the police station, but the couple insisted the police should produce a warrant, with the entire high-voltage drama shown live on social media. "We are elected representatives, but under Thackeray's rule, we have been forcibly taken to the police station. There's no law and order here. Sena goons have gathered outside our home since yesterday. If this is what we are facing, what justice can the commoners expect," said Navneet Rana. Jubilant men and women Shiv Sainiks said that the Shiv Sena has shown its power and "people like (Ranas) these come and go" and the party doesn't bother about them. The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders like Sudhir Mungantiwar slammed the Maha Vikas Aghadi government and termed the detention of the Ranas as arising out of vendetta politics though they had withdrawn their agitation plans. Other leaders have alleged that the law-and-order situation in the state has collapsed and President's Rule should be imposed. --IANS qn/pgh ( 423 Words) 2022-04-23-19:32:03 (IANS)
Ajman Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) witnessed growth in the total number of registered members during 2021, as the total number of members reached 58,038 members, compared to 36,000 during 2020, with a growth rate of 7 percent.



Commercial licenses were issued during 2021, with a total of 21,077 memberships, followed by professional memberships with a total of 14,926, and industrial memberships with a 1149, reported Emirates News Agency WAM, quoting Muhammad Ali Al Janahi, Acting Director-General of ACCI.



Al Janahi noted that the growth rate of new membership in the Ajman Chamber during 2021 was 35 percent compared to 2020, when the number of new members reached 7,704 during 2021; compared to 5,723 members during 2020, and the number of new commercial licenses for the previous year was 4,238 membership, 2534 professional membership, and 131 industrial memberships.



Ajman Chamber strengthened its economic relationship worldwide through 127 joint meetings, and organised for its members from companies and factories 149 participant opportunities in economic activities at Expo 2020 Dubai.



Al Janahi stressed that the Ajman Chamber seeks to provide an attractive business environment to achieve its strategic objectives, including "promoting the sustainability and growth of the business community, foreseeing and creating the future of business, and enhancing the potentials of competitiveness and leadership," which are reflected in the growth of its members businesses and the sustainability of their activities.




Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday expressed concern over non-stop atrocities and the deteriorating law and order situation in the state. He urged Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy to act with responsibility towards ensuring safety of women. Naidu said the Chief Minister's policies and actions should instill fear in the minds of criminals and perpetrators of atrocities on women. He also demanded that the ruling YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) should stop misusing the police for political advantage. He said the government should stand by the side of the victim of gang-rape in the Vijayawada Government General Hospital (GGH). Naidu reiterated his demand for Rs 1 crore financial assistance, a permanent house and livelihood for the victim. The government should appoint a special court immediately so as to give deterrent punishment to the culprits. He alleged that because of the complacency of the YSRCP rule, the criminals are not afraid to perpetrate atrocities on women. The TDP chief termed as deeply disturbing the atrocity committed on a mentally challenged girl in the busy hospital. Three miscreants victimised the girl for 30 hours in a room in the hospital. They resorted to heinous crime in front of her parents. This is a clear testimony to the total collapse of law and order in the state, he said. Naidu said it was inhuman not to take any action even after the parents complained at the police station about their missing daughter. "What message the police were sending by remaining in service of the ruling party leaders at the cost of women safety? There is no safety any more for girls going to schools and colleges and for women going to jobs and markets," he said. Chandrababu Naidu asked whether the chief minister had any right to rule the state when his regime failed to protect women. "The ruling YSRCP leaders themselves assumed the role of criminals and rapists. YSRCP leader Bhushankar and APCOB chairman Konduru Anil Babu molested a girl and then sold her into prostitution. Over 70 persons were accused in this but no action has been taken against them till now." The TDP chief pointed out that the police had not yet nabbed Venkata Reddy who was accused in the rape of a woman in the vicinity of the CM's residence in Tadepalli. "A Dalit girl was hacked to death in broad daylight in Guntur on the Independence Day but the accused was not punished even now." Naidu asked what happened to the CM's promise to punish criminals within 21 days under Disha law. "Anti-social elements are rearing their ugly head. Ganja, drugs and illicit liquor are triggering more atrocities and crimes. As per the National Crime Records Bureau, one third of crimes against women in the country were taking place in Andhra Pradesh. It is condemnable that Andhra Pradesh stood top in the country in physical attacks, human trafficking and sexual harassment offences," he said. --IANS ms/pgh ( 510 Words) 2022-04-23-19:44:09 (IANS)
The firefight between terrorists and security forces began after a joint team of the police and the security forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation on the basis of specific information about the presence of terrorists.

As the security forces zeroed in on the spot where the terrorists were hiding, they came under a heavy volume of fire that triggered the encounter.

"One more terrorist killed. Operation in progress," a police officer said.

--IANS zi/pgh

( 116 Words)

2022-04-23-21:24:04 (IANS)
"Suspicious activity was noted close to the Burail jail in Chandigarh. We reached the spot, some objectionable material was found. A bomb disposal team reached the spot. Prima facie, a burnt codex wire and a detonator was found," Senior Superintendent of Police Kuldeep Singh told the media.

The Burail jail is housing several high-profile prisoners.

The assassins of Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh -- Paramjeet Singh Bheora, Jagtar Singh Hawara and Jagtar Singh Tara -- and murder convict Devi Singh escaped from the Burail jail on the night of January 21, 2004.

Tara, who was arrested in 2015 after the escape in 2004, has been undergoing imprisonment in the Burail jail.

--IANS vg/pgh

( 152 Words)

2022-04-23-22:47:27 (IANS)
Police said based on specific input generated by Kulgam police regarding presence of terrorists in Mirhama area of Kulgam, a joint cordon and search operation was launched by Kulgam Police and Army.

During the search operation, as the search party proceeded towards the suspected spot, the hiding terrorists fired indiscriminately upon the search party which was retaliated effectively leading to an encounter.

"In the ensuing encounter, two terrorists of JeM outfit killed so far and their bodies have been retrieved from the encounter site," police said.

"Based on the credible source report and as per physical appearance, both the killed terrorists seems to be Pakistani JeM terrorists however, their identification is being ascertained."

Incriminating materials, arms and ammunition were recovered from the site of encounter. All the recovered materials have been taken into case records for further investigation.

"Later on, a team of CRPF also joined in the operation. All civilians have been evacuated from nearby houses and cordon has been strengthened. Encounter will be resumed in the first light tomorrow morning," police said.

--IANS zi/pgh

( 219 Words)

2022-04-23-22:54:55 (IANS)
Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced a grand memorial at the Jagdishpur fort in Bihar to pay tribute to Babu Veer Kunwar Singh, who had led a battery of mutineers against the East India Company during the first freedom struggle of 1857, also known as the Sepoy Mutiny. Shah was on a one-day visit to Bihar on Saturday where he went to Jagdishpur in Bhojpur district to celebrate the valour of Babu Veer Kunwar Singh. The BJP state wing had organized an event at Jagdishpur where supporters of the saffron party assembled and waved 78,000 national flags, creating a new record. While addressing the rally in Jagdishpur, Shah said that historians did not give proper respect to Babu Veer Kunwar Singh who fought against the Britishers at the age of 80. "The way the people of Bihar came for the event in large numbers despite the soaring temperature was a real tribute to Kunwar Singh. I became speechless after seeing the patriotism of people in Jagdishpur today. The historians have done injustice to Babu Ji. He deserves more respect as a freedom fighter and for his contributions to the freedom struggle. The people of Bihar have given real tribute today," Shah said. During the event, India scripted a new record by waving 78,000 national flags. --IANS ajk/arm ( 232 Words) 2022-04-23-23:00:05 (IANS)
An official source said that PM Modi will chair the meeting through video conferencing with Chief Ministers. As per the source, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan will prepare a presentation on the current Covid-19 situation.

India has seen a steady rise in the Covid-19 cases and the positivity rate in the last few weeks.

India on Saturday morning reported rise at 2,527 Covid cases in last 24 hours, against 2,451 cases recorded on previous day. In the same period, the nation has also recorded 33 Covid deaths, said the Health Ministry.

The active cases comprise 0.04 per cent of the total infections, while the national Covid-19 recovery rate has been recorded at 98.75 per cent, said the Health Ministry.

The weekly positivity rate in the country currently stands at 0.50 per cent, while the daily positivity rate has reported considerable rise at 0.60 per cent, as per the Health Ministry report on Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, India's Covid-19 vaccination coverage has crossed 187.65 crore on Saturday.

More than 17 lakh vaccine doses have been administered till 7 p.m. on Saturday, as per the Health Ministry report.

--IANS avr/pgh

( 231 Words)

2022-04-23-23:12:05 (IANS)
Telugu Desam Party (TDP) politburo member Varla Ramaiah on Sunday asserted that Andhra Pradesh Women's Commission chairperson Vasireddy Padma had no authority to send notices to Leader of Opposition Chandrababu Naidu and party's ex-MLA Bonda Uma. Ramaiah said if the modesty of the Women's Commission Chairperson was really outraged, then she should have immediately complained to the police for initiating an inquiry. Addressing a press conference here, the TDP leader pointed out that the whole incident at the Vijayawada general hospital took place in the presence of the police officials. "Instead of complaining to the police on the spot, the chairperson issued suo motu notices with an ulterior motive to hold an enquiry herself in order to give punishment," the TDP leader said. Ramaiah said Vasireddy Padma was apparently making politically motivated allegations and she arrived at the Vijayawada GGH with the sole purpose of creating a law and order problem. "She deliberately waited till Chandrababu Naidu arrived there and used the occasion to create needless controversy. It was the Women's Commission chairperson who misbehaved with Chandrababu Naidu despite the fact that he was a duly elected Leader of Opposition and a former Chief Minister. Moreover, the chairperson shouted and raised her hand to beat the women leaders there," Ramaiah stated. He further asked why Vasireddy Padma did not lodge a complaint at the police station if injustice was indeed done to her saying that this was the constitutional procedure to be adopted regardless of anybody's position of power in a democratic country like India and the chairperson should take back her notices without making any further political noise. Expressing concern, the TDP leader said Vasireddy Padma's unlawful notices once again exposed how badly CM Jagan Reddy had undermined all the constitutional systems and institutions in the State. "She was acting out of ignorance of the laws that were governing the country. In fact, Chandrababu Naidu persuaded the TDP leaders not to make a police complaint against Padma who threatened the women leaders," the TDP leader said. Varla Ramaiah said Vasireddy Padma was doing political stunts instead of using her good office to protect and enable women as she was bending the commission to serve the anti-women policies of the Jagan Reddy regime. "It was a fact that Chandrababu Naidu ensured women's safety by taking stringent action against perpetrators of atrocities on women in the TDP rule," he added. The TDP leader recalled how the Chandrababu regime called and ordered the DGP to arrest within 24 hours an offender who raped a minor girl at Dachepalli in the Guntur district. "As there was no escape, the offender committed suicide. Such was the impact of the steps taken for women's safety during the Chandrababu rule. It was not the CI and SI who should be suspended in the GGH gang-rape case," the TDP leader said. He further stated that the Government should be dismissed and the Women's Commission chairperson should be suspended for her failures and the woman home minister should be dismissed. (ANI)
Mumbai Police on Sunday said that six Shiv Sena workers have been arrested on Sunday for allegedly creating ruckus outside MP Navneet Rana and her MLA husband Ravi Rana's residence in Mumbai over the Hanuman Chalisa row. "Khar police arrested six Shiv Sena workers after Police registered a case yesterday against party workers who created ruckus outside the residence of Navneet and Ravi Rana," said Mumbai Police adding that the search for other accused is underway. On Saturday, a row started when Amravati MP Navneet Rana and her husband stated that the couple plans to chant Hanuman Chalisa outside 'Matoshree'(Maharashtra CM's Mumbai Residence), after which a huge crowd gathered outside the residence of the political couple waving flags with an aim to prevent them from reaching the Chief Minister's residence. While speaking to ANI on Saturday, Navneet cited concerns over the law and order situation and said that Maharashtra CM was creating a Bengal-like situation in the state. "These are not Shiv Sainiks who are protesting in front of my house; they are goons of Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. CM Uddhav Thackeray only knows how to file cases against people and put them behind bars. He's creating a Bengal-like situation in Maharashtra," said Navneet Kaur. The Ranas withdrew their plan to chant Hanuman Chalisa amid the protests from Shiv Sainiks that culminated in their arrest on the charge of creating enmity between different groups. "A case is registered at Khar Police against MLA Shri Ravi Rana and MP Smt Navneet Kaur Rana U/S 153(A), 34, IPC r/w 37(1) 135 Bombay police act. Both are taken into custody from their house at Khar. Further investigation is being done by Khar Police Station," stated an official release by the police. Meanwhile, on Sunday, MP Navneet Rana and MLA Ravi Rana were sent to judicial custody for 14-days by the Holiday and Sunday court of Metropolitan Magistrate, Bandra. The MP-MLA couple's application will be heard by the court on April 29. The Mumbai Police has asked them to file their say on the bail plea on April 27. (ANI)
Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Sunday said that the "conspiracy and organised attack" on the Hubballi police station has been taken very seriously. "We have not considered the Hubballi arson case as an ordinary one. The conspiracy and organised attack on the Hubballi police station has been taken very seriously. The people and organisations behind the arson would be identified and dealt with sternly, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said. Speaking to media persons at the Hubballi Airport, Bommai said the investigation is on to unravel the plot and the facts behind the incident. The police have already got the statements from those arrested. With the arrest of Hubballi-Dharwad Municipal Corporation (HDMC) corporator Nazeer Ahmed Honval, an All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader on Sunday, over 100 people have been arrested by the police in connection with the violence over a social media post in the district. Till April 22, police registered 12 cases in which 134 arrests have so far been made. Replying to a question that the email threats received by some of the schools have their origins in Pakistan, Bommai said, "there are instances in the past of sitting here and using the IP addresses of Dubai and Saudi Arabia. A thorough investigation has been ordered into the case. The source of the emails and the culprits involved would be identified and help would be sought from the concerned countries through the External Affairs ministry to arrest them. We will go to the bottom of the case and find the culprits." Reacting to a video, related to the irregularities in PSI recruitment, which has gone viral, Bommai said, audio, video and new ways of fraud are coming out. CID has been asked to conduct a thorough investigation. Whoever it is, however influential and smart they may be, the guilty would be arrested and punished, he said. Replying to a question that Divya Hanagari has not been arrested yet in the PSI recruitment case, the Chief Minister said, her institution and house have been seized. She would be arrested soon. (ANI)
Countering Yes Bank promoter Rana Kapoor's allegation against the senior party leader, Congress Party on Sunday accused Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of keeping the pot boiling without any basis. While addressing the media on Sunday, Congress Party, in an official reaction, rubbished Rana Kapoor, who is being probed by Enforcement Directorate (ED), allegations that he was 'forced' by then Congress Union Minister to buy an MF Hussain painting for Rs 2 crores from Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi, while addressing the media, said, "This man makes allegations against dead people and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) just wants to keep the pot boiling." Singhvi said "2010 transaction is related to a person who is behind bars for years. 20 to 30 bail applications have been rejected, this man makes allegations against dead people and BJP just wants to keep the pot boiling. Neither Deora Saab is alive nor Ahmed Patel is alive to deny." It is because this person wants to come out on bail and so, he is making such statements and naming political people. "Loan books saw a dramatic increase in the BJP government. Who will answer this ?? 2014 - 50,000 Cr. 2019 - 2.41 lakh crore. 6th March 2022 - PM address PC in Delhi sponsored by Yes Bank," he added. Manohar Lal Khattar-led Haryana Government invested money in sinking bank Yes Bank when the bank was in turmoil, Singhvi further added. Atleast don't defame dead people like Deora and Ahmed Patel so casually. We all are well aware of the credibility of ED. What is the object of this? It's the pressure tactics? he stated. "They are trying to scare people. To do political vendetta. We know the credibility of people who are accusing," Singhvi added. Yes Bank promoter Rana Kapoor informed the Enforcement Directorate (ED) that he was 'forced' by a then Congress Union Minister to buy an MF Hussain painting from Priyanka Gandhi Vadra for Rs 2 crores. As per the chargesheet filed by the agency in a special court in Mumbai, Kapoor informed ED that he was forced by the then Petroleum Minister Murli Deora to buy the painting, and then Deora told the Yes Bank promoter that the sale proceeds were utilized for the treatment of party interim chief Sonia Gandhi in New York. Murli Deora held the position of Petroleum Minister in Congress-led United Progressive Alliance governments. ED is investigating a money laundering case against Rana Kapoor and his family members. A case has also been registered against Rana Kapoor for illegally giving a loan of Rs 1,900 crore to Gautam Thapar's Avanta company. The ED has alleged that a bribe of Rs 300 crore was paid to Kapoor for facilitating around Rs 1,900 crore loans from Yes Bank to Gautam Thapar's company. (ANI)
Samsung-Zamil launched its latest edition of variable refrigerant flow (VRF) air-conditioning system (DVM S2) at the Big 5 Saudi, one of the largest construction trade fairs, held from March 28 to 31 in Riyadh.

Suitable for high-rise apartment complexes and small commercial buildings, the (VRF) (DVM S2) system is a unique solution for buildings that require high cooling efficiency, total control and installation flexibility, a release said.

Moreover, the new systems are characterised by their flexible design, maximum comfort, and superior performance that helps in saving electricity consumption, ensuring sustainability and easy maintenance.

Samsung Electronics Saudi Co Ltd had taken part in the exhibition in partnership with Zamil Air Conditioners.

HVACR workshop

Furthermore, the Samsung-Zamil partnership also sponsored the HVACR workshop where Samsung participated in three sessions on Improving air conditioning energy efficiency using artificial intelligence technology, The 360 Cassette air conditioner and WindFree technology.

The Samsung-Zamil pavilion at the Big 5 Saudi saw the presence of many specialists in the field, including consultants, contractors, engineers, and those interested in the latest air-conditioning technologies.-- TradeArabia News Service
The accused surrendered a week after Supreme Court cancelled his bail and asked him to surrender in a week.

The top court set aside the Allahabad High Court order dated February 10, 2022, and remit the matter back to the High Court. It said that the order of the Allahabad High Court cannot be sustained and has to be set aside and bail bonds of the respondent/accused are cancelled.

The Court clarified that it has not expressed any opinion either on facts or merits, and said that "all questions of law are left open for the High Court to consider and decide."

Eight people, including four farmers, were killed in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence on October 3, 2021. Mishra allegedly ran over the farmers who were protesting against the Centre's three farm Laws. He was arrested on October 9 and granted bail in February 2022.

Family members of the victims of the Lakhimpur Kheri incident moved the Supreme Court challenging the Allahabad High Court order, which granted bail to Ashish Mishra.

Earlier, the Supreme Court had appointed a committee headed by retired Punjab and Haryana high court judge Rakesh Kumar Jain to monitor the probe into the Lakhimpur Kheri violence. (ANI)
Chief Judicial Magistrate court in Assam's Kokrajhar district is likely to pass the order on the bail petition on Monday in connection with the case against Mevani's purported tweets against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The court has sent Mevani to one-day judicial custody.

"Court sent Jignesh Mevani to one-day judicial custody and the court will take up the bail petition on Monday. Police sought 10-day custody. If the court will not grant the bail, then we will move the higher court," Mevani's Advocate Angshuman Bora told ANI.

Earlier on Wednesday night, Mevani was arrested by an Assam police team from Palanpur town in Gujarat over a couple of his tweets.

An FIR was filed against him after a complaint was filed by an Assam BJP leader, Arup Kumar Dey.

A case was lodged against Mevani under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), section 153(A) (promoting enmity between two communities), 295(A), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), and sections of the IT Act.

A couple of tweets on Mevani's Twitter handle are not visible on his feed with a message displaying that the tweets have been withheld in India based on a "legal demand".

In the controversial tweet, Mevani had reportedly requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure communal harmony during his recent visit to Gujarat.

Mevani claimed that he was arrested out of a political vendetta against him.

The Assam state Congress unit had protested the arrest of the Gujarat legislator.

Elected as an independent MLA, Mevani had extended his support to Congress in September 2019. (ANI)
Notably, Badnera MLA Ravi Rana was first brought to Mumbai's Arthur Road jail. According to jail officials, due to overcrowding at Arthur Road jail, Ravi Rana was then shifted to Taloja Jail in Navi Mumbai.

Meanwhile, Amravati MP Naveneet Rana has been shifted to Byculla jail.

The couple was arrested on Saturday and then taken to the Khar Police Station.

On Saturday, a row started when MP Navneet Rana and her husband stated that the couple plans to chant Hanuman Chalisa outside 'Matoshree' (Maharashtra CM's Mumbai Residence), after which a huge crowd gathered outside the residence of the political couple waving flags with an aim to prevent them from reaching the Chief Minister's residence.

The Ranas withdrew their plan to chant Hanuman Chalisa amid the protests from Shiv Sainiks that culminated in their arrest on the charge of creating enmity between different groups.

"A case is registered at Khar Police against MLA Shri Ravi Rana and MP Smt Navneet Kaur Rana U/S 153(A), 34, IPC r/w 37(1) 135 Bombay police act. Both are taken into custody from their house at Khar. Further investigation is being done by Khar Police Station," stated an official release by the police.

MP Navneet Rana and MLA Ravi Rana were sent to judicial custody for 14-days by the Holiday and Sunday court of Metropolitan Magistrate, Bandra.

The MP-MLA couple's application will be heard by the court on April 29. The Mumbai Police has asked them to file their say on the bail plea on April 27. (ANI)
The delegation will include BJP leader Kirit Somaiya, Mihir Kotecha, Sunil Rane and others.

Somaiya claimed that he was injured in the alleged stone-pelting incident by the Shiv Sena workers in Mumbai on Saturday.

In a series of Twitter posts, Somaiya said, "Heavy stone-throwing at Khar Police Station by Shiv Sena goondas (goons), my car window glass broken, I am injured, rushing to Bandra police station."

"I am shocked, in the presence of 50 police persons, on the campus of Khar police station, Shiv Sena's 100 goondas assault me with stones. Wanted to kill me. What the Police Commissioner is doing? How are so many mafia Sena goondas allowed to gather in the police station?" he said in another tweet.

Earlier on Saturday, Somaiya had visited Khar Police Station to meet Amravati MP Navneet Rana and her husband MLA Ravi Rana who were arrested on Saturday.

Meanwhile, former Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis condemned the attack on the BJP leader Kirit Somaiya and requested the Centre to take action against concerned officials.

"An attempt was made to attack Kirti Somaiya outside a police station in Mumbai last night. We will request Central Government to take action against concerned officials," Fadnavis said. (ANI)
Researchers have identified a lesser-known form of ozone playing a big role in heating the Southern Ocean -- one of Earth's main cooling systems. Ozone is a gas composed of three oxygen atoms. Many studies have described ozone in the stratosphere, and its role in shielding people from the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. Closer to ground level, in the troposphere, ozone is harmful to humans. In the study led by University of California-Riverside scientists revealed that lower level ozone is adding a great deal of heat to the Southern Ocean -- more than scientists previously understood. "People haven't paid much attention in the past to tropospheric ozone in terms of ocean heat uptake. Based on our models, they should be," said lead author Wei Liu, climate scientist at the varsity. The finding has been published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Oceans remove a majority of the carbon and heat that enter the atmosphere when humans burn fossil fuels. The Southern Ocean, also called the Antarctic Ocean, collects a third of all excess carbon in the world's atmosphere, and an estimated 75 per cent of the excess heat collected by the world's oceans. It is important to understand this heating so it can be controlled. Increased ocean warming is contributing to well-documented issues of sea levels rising. To further this understanding, Liu and an international team of scientists explored climate model simulations with changes in ozone levels between 1955 and 2000. These model simulations isolated both stratospheric and tropospheric ozone from other influences on Southern Ocean temperatures, allowing them to see how each factor contributes. While both stratospheric and tropospheric ozone contribute to the Southern Ocean warming, the team found that the latter contributes more. "Historically, about a third of the ocean's warming is attributable to ozone. For this third, about 40 per cent is from the stratosphere, and the rest is troposphere," Liu said. Liu believes the results of this study are useful for showing where people can make further changes that will improve the environment. Volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, from products like pesticides, tobacco smoke and automobiles are gases that form the building blocks of tropospheric ozone. The same is true for nitrogen oxides produced by combustion, or carbon monoxide from furnaces, gas stoves, and automobile exhaust. Many of these products can be modified to produce fewer VOCs. "Tropospheric ozone is an air pollutant," Liu said. "If we reduce our production of this, we get the dual benefits of less air pollution and most likely, less Southern Ocean warming as well." --IANS rvt/pgh ( 436 Words) 2022-04-23-19:53:34 (IANS)
External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar met with Argentina's Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero at Hyderabad House in Delhi on Sunday. The Argentine Foreign Minister is in the national capital to attend the Raisina Dialogue scheduled for April 25-26. Today, Foreign Minister of Nigeria Geoffrey Onyeama also arrived in New Delhi on an official visit. Onyeama will also attend the Raisina Dialogue. Taking to Twitter, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi wrote, "Pleased to welcome FM @GeoffreyOnyeama of Nigeria as he arrives in New Delhi on an official visit. He will also be attending the @raisinadialogue starting tomorrow." Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau will also visit India from April 25-27, Poland Foreign Ministry announced in a statement. This will be the first visit of a Polish foreign minister to India in nine years. Poland FM's visit also includes a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and bilateral talks with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the seventh edition of the Raisina dialogue on April 25, said Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi during the MEA weekly briefing on Thursday. The dialogue, which will be held over three days from April 25 to April 27, will witness the participation of European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen as the chief guest. The Raisina Dialogue 2022, based on the theme "Terranova- Impassioned, Impatient, Imperilled", will be modelled along six thematic pillars --Rethinking Democracy: trade, technology and ideology; End of Multilateralism: a networked global order; Water Caucuses: turbulent tides in the Indo-Pacific; Communities Inc: first responders to health, development, and planet; Achieving Green Transitions: common imperative, diverging realities; Samson vs Goliath: the persistent and relentless technology wars. The Raisina Dialogue, which started in 2016, is India's flagship conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics committed to addressing the most challenging issues facing the global community. The conference is organised by MEA in collaboration with the Observer Research Foundation (ORF). The dialogue, which was held virtually last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will be held in the in-person format this year, informed Bagchi. "Raisina Dialogue 2022 will have around 100 sessions with over 210 speakers from 90 countries. There will also be side events that will be hosted in Berlin and Washington. Raisina young fellows programme will also be conducted on the sidelines of this main conference," said Bagchi. The MEA spokesperson further said that the conference will most likely be attended by former PM of Sweden Carl Bildt, former Canada PM Stephen Harper, former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed and former Australia PM Anthony Abbott. "We will also be counting on a pre-recorded message from the President of United Nations General Assembly Abdulla Shahid," added Bagchi. In terms of the participation of foreign ministers, the MEA spokesperson informed that the foreign ministers of Argentina, Armenia, Guyana, Nigeria, Norway, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia will be attending the event. He further said that the Australian foreign may also join the conference virtually.Bagchi said that the foreign ministers, during their visit to India, will also have official engagements with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. (ANI)
Ahead of Raisina Dialogue scheduled to be held on April 25, Foreign Minister of Nigeria Geoffrey Onyeama arrived in New Delhi on Sunday morning on an official visit. Onyeama will also attend the Raisina Dialogue international conference. Taking to Twitter, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi wrote, "Pleased to welcome FM @GeoffreyOnyeama of Nigeria as he arrives in New Delhi on an official visit. He will also be attending the @raisinadialogue starting tomorrow." Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau will also visit India from April 25-27, Poland Foreign Ministry announced in a statement. This will be the first visit of a Polish foreign minister to India in nine years. Poland FM's visit also includes a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and bilateral talks with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the seventh edition of the Raisina dialogue on April 25, said Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi during the MEA weekly briefing on Thursday. The dialogue, which will be held over three days from April 25 to April 27, will witness the participation of European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen as the chief guest. The Raisina Dialogue 2022, based on the theme "Terranova- Impassioned, Impatient, Imperilled", will be modelled along six thematic pillars --Rethinking Democracy: trade, technology and ideology; End of Multilateralism: a networked global order; Water Caucuses: turbulent tides in the Indo-Pacific; Communities Inc: first responders to health, development, and planet; Achieving Green Transitions: common imperative, diverging realities; Samson vs Goliath: the persistent and relentless technology wars. The Raisina Dialogue, which started in 2016, is India's flagship conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics committed to addressing the most challenging issues facing the global community. The conference is organised by MEA in collaboration with the Observer Research Foundation (ORF). The dialogue, which was held virtually last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will be held in in-person format this year, informed Bagchi. "Raisina Dialogue 2022 will have around 100 sessions with over 210 speakers from 90 countries. There will be side events that will be hosted in Berlin and Washington. Raisina's young fellows programme will also be conducted on the sidelines of this main conference," said Bagchi. The MEA spokesperson further said that the conference will most likely be attended by former PM of Sweden Carl Bildt, former Canada PM Stephen Harper, former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed and former Australia PM Anthony Abbott. "We will also be counting on a pre-recorded message from the President of United Nations General Assembly Abdulla Shahid," added Bagchi. In terms of the participation of foreign ministers, the MEA spokesperson informed that the foreign ministers of Argentina, Armenia, Guyana, Nigeria, Norway, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia will be attending the event. He further said that the Australian foreign may also join the conference virtually.Bagchi said that the foreign ministers, during their visit to India, will also have official engagements with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. (ANI)
The Inter University Students Federation (IUSF) protest march reached Galle Face in the capital city of Colombo on Sunday evening. The protest initially gathered near the Prime Minister's residence in Wijerama Road, demanding the President and his government resign, Colombo Gazette reported. Speaking in Galle Face, IUSF Convenor Wasantha Kumara Mudalige said that they will remove President Gotabaya Rajapaksa if he does not step down. The convener noted that the protest march continued despite the barricades placed around Galle Face, reported Colombo Gazette. Mudalige said that removing the barricades is no difficult task but the main focus is to remove the President and his Government. Earlier, the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) had expressed their concern over the barricading of some roads leading to Galle Face in a statement. According to the statement, BASL noted the escalation of the situation in the vicinity of the protest at Galle Face as a result of the heavy deployment of police personnel and the barricading of some of the roads leading to Galle Face, as reported by Colombo Gazette. BASL called upon the Sri Lankan Government, the Inspector General of Police and all police officers and the armed forces to ensure the safety of the protesters and their freedom of movement. "They are duty-bound to ensure the safety of the protesters and the public and the right of the people to dissent in a peaceful manner and also the freedom of movement of the citizen," the BASL said. The BASL warned that any violence that took place from whatever quarter then it will have serious repercussions for the country. Mass protests over economic mismanagement escalated in early April, prompting the president to declare a state of emergency on April 1. Sri Lanka has been gripped by an economic crisis considered the worst since the country gained independence in 1948. Due to energy shortages, some parts of Sri Lanka have rolling blackouts. Sri Lanka's foreign debt is estimated at USD 51 billion. (ANI)
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Sunday highlighted the Indian diaspora as a 'powerful force' in the country's 'Look East' policy while addressing the Indian community and 'friends of India' in Singapore. "Indian diaspora is one of the important powerful forces of India's Look East Policy," Birla said, adding, that the diaspora is playing the role of a catalyst to further bridge the gap among countries and improve the bilateral relationships. India's 'Look East' policy was adopted in the early 1990s and seeks to deepen India's economic and strategic ties with south-east Asian countries. The 'Look East' policy was followed up by the 'Act East' policy adopted in the 2010s. "Diaspora's active contribution to the comprehensive economic and social development of Singapore has laid the foundation for strong relations between the two countries," Birla observed. The Lok Sabha Speaker has been on an official visit to south-east Asia since April 19 leading a parliamentary delegation. Speaking in Singapore, Birla said that in the 75 years of India's independence, the country has undergone an extensive political, social and economic transformation and India's democracy and its democratic institutions have set a perfect example of inclusive growth before the whole world. He further added that from defence to technology, new opportunities are being created in the country listing schemes like Start-Up India, Digital India, Stand Up India and Skill India. "Today, India is being seen as a symbol of positive change in the whole world. The present era is an era of socio-economic change in India, an era of innovation," Birla said. Birla further urged the Indian diaspora, particularly the youth, to join hands for the socio-economic transformation in India He also added that as India evacuated more than 30,000 civilians from Ukraine and neighbouring countries from the war zone, the self-respect, strength and power of present-day India have been recognized by the world. "India has a strong voice in global fora on issues like climate change, terrorism, and global peace," Birla said. On Saturday, Birla visited the Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia and appreciated the restoration work of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in the area. "Blessed to visit Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia. It is one of the great cultural wonders of the world. The architecture of temple reflects shared cultural heritage of India & Cambodia. Happy to note that massive restoration work of temple has been done by ASI," he tweeted. Lok Sabha Speaker also met the king of Cambodia Preah Bat Samdech Preah Boromneath Norodom Sihamoni and discussed the issues of mutual interest and reiterated India's firm resolve to strengthen the bilateral relationship. Earlier, Om Birla was in Vietnam from April 19 to 21. The official visit of the parliamentary delegation is scheduled to conclude on April 25. (ANI)
Pakistan's Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal on Sunday said that former Prime Minister Imran Khan is "playing with Pakistan's interests" to keep his "failed politics" alive. The minister, who is a Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader, made the remarks while addressing a press conference in Lahore. The minister said the National Security Committee (NSC) of Pakistan twice dismissed the possibility of any foreign conspiracy, however, "Imran Niazi is playing with national interests to keep his politics alive," Dawn reported. "If Pakistan wants to be a strong country, we need to have a strong economy," he reportedly said, adding, "That can only happen when we align ourselves with the global economy." The comments come at a time when Imran Khan, who was ousted following a historic no-confidence motion in the country, has been addressing rallies in various cities making claims that he was ousted as a result of a foreign-backed conspiracy. Iqbal, in his presser, termed the frequent mentions of "conspiracy" by the ex-PM the "rona-virus", vowing the country would move forward and the coalition government would fix all issues facing the country. Iqbal alleged that when the PTI was in power, it had hampered the CPEC's progress and soured ties with the European Union, the United States and even brotherly Muslim countries, risking the isolation of the country. "We have to set Pakistan on the path of (development, like) Malaysia, Turkey, China and South Korea," Iqbal said. The PML-N leader also accused the PTI of trying to pressurise the Election Commission of Pakistan in an alleged attempt to influence the foreign funding case. On Saturday, Imran Khan had called on Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja to resign, accusing him of bias. Raja subsequently said there was no valid reason to do so and would remain in his position in the best interests of the country. The minister stated there would be no "false cases" against Imran and only "genuine cases" would be lodged. "Evidence will guide all our actions," he said. (ANI)
Dubai based Global Hotel Alliance (GHA), which brings together a unique collection of independent hospitality brands, has won the Freddie Award for the Best Up-and-Coming Programme at the award ceremony in New Orleans.



GHA DISCOVERY, the world's largest loyalty programme for independent hotel brands, was reimagined in December with innovations such as the industrys first digital rewards currency, DISCOVERY Dollars (D$), meeting the needs of modern travellers with more rewards, recognition and opportunities to experience hotels and resorts at home or away.



Having launched in 2010, the GHA DISCOVERY programme has been adopted by all hotel brands in the alliance. It maintains its distinction as the programme for those who wish to experience travel more authentically.



With 40 brands and 800 hotels in 100 countries, after NH Hotel Group joins this summer, the collection is significant in size and known as one of the most diverse loyalty programmes globally, featuring distinct brands that offer unique hospitality experiences.



GHA DISCOVERY has a significant reach with 20 million members spanning every continent, which helped in the voting for the 2022 Freddie Awards, an annual event that garnered 2.5 million votes this year. The Freddie Awards are the longest standing and most prestigious recognition in the travel loyalty industry. Over the years, tens of millions of votes have been cast to allow members to recognise the loyalty programmes they appreciate most.



Kristi Gole, GHAs Head of Product, accepted the award at the ceremony in New Orleans on Thursday, 21 April.



GHA is a challenger brand that remains dedicated to delivering something different for our hotels and our loyal members. Its so rewarding to receive this recognition, signifying that our members appreciate what we offer and that they love our unique collection of brands, Gole said.



GHA received nominations in four categories this year, the first time making the list, and was honoured to win in the esteemed Programme of the Year category for hotel programmes as the 201 award winner for Europe and Africa. This award represents the best Up-and-Coming Programme.  TradeArabia News Service
The Ministry of External Affairs on Sunday said that Armenian Foreign Affairs Minister Ararat Mirzoyan's visit will further advance bilateral cooperation between India and Armenia. Taking to Twitter, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said, "Glad to welcome FM @AraratMirzoyan (Ararat Mirzoyan) of Armenia in New Delhi. His visit will further advance our bilateral cooperation. Looking forward to hearing his views at #Raisina2022." Earlier in the day, Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama and Argentine Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero also arrived in New Delhi to attend the Raisina Dialogue scheduled to be held on April 25. The is in the national capital to attend the Raisina Dialogue scheduled from April 25-27 and earlier today met EAM Jaishankar at Hyderabad House in New Delhi. The Raisina Dialogue 2022, based on the theme "Terranova- Impassioned, Impatient, Imperilled", will be modelled along six thematic pillars --Rethinking Democracy: trade, technology and ideology; End of Multilateralism: a networked global order; Water Caucuses: turbulent tides in the Indo-Pacific; Communities Inc: first responders to health, development, and planet; Achieving Green Transitions: common imperative, diverging realities; Samson vs Goliath: the persistent and relentless technology wars. The Raisina Dialogue, which started in 2016, is India's flagship conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics committed to addressing the most challenging issues facing the global community. The conference is organised by MEA in collaboration with the Observer Research Foundation (ORF). The dialogue, which was held virtually last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will be held in the in-person format this year, informed Bagchi. "Raisina Dialogue 2022 will have around 100 sessions with over 210 speakers from 90 countries. There will also be the side events that will be hosted in Berlin and Washington. Raisina young fellows programme will also be conducted on the sidelines of this main conference," said Bagchi. The MEA spokesperson further said that the conference will most likely be attended by former PM of Sweden Carl Bildt, former Canada PM Stephen Harper, former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed and former Australia PM Anthony Abbott. "We will also be counting on a pre-recorded message from the President of United Nations General Assembly Abdulla Shahid," added Bagchi. Meanwhile, the EU President Ursula von der Leyen who arrived in India for a two-day official visit on Sunday has also been invited as the Chief Guest for this year's edition of Raisina Dialogue and will address the inaugural session on April 25. (ANI)
Days after a 14-year-old girl was kidnapped in Karachi, now another teenager has gone missing from the city's Saudabad area, according to media reports on Sunday. A First Information Report (FIR) has been lodged against unknown suspects on the complaint of the missing girl's mother, reported Dawn newspaper. Earlier on April 21, a girl was kidnapped on April 16 when she went out of her house to throw garbage, as per reports. City police chief Ghulam Nabi Memon has said that three police teams had been formed to probe and identify the suspects involved in the recent kidnapping of a teenage girl in Al Falah Society of Shah Faisal Colony, Dawn reported. Pakistan's Global Gender Gap Index has worsened over time. In 2017, Pakistan ranked 143, slipping to 148 in 2018. According to the last year's 'Global Gender Gap Report 2021', Pakistan ranked 153 out of 156 countries on the gender parity index, that is, among the last four. While the incident of attempting to rape a girl during the Pakistan Super League (PSL) shows that the security in Pakistan is not as good as claimed by authorities and it is worrisome. Not only in the context of PSL but also generally because the real picture is very grave. According to media reports, two private guards tried to rape a female near Lahore's Gaddafi Stadium, during the seventh edition of the Pakistan Super League (PSL). As per an FIR, the girl got lost after the match and forgot her way. "She saw two guards and sought help, however, they took her to a secluded place and tried to sexually assault her," the FIR read, adding that the girl started screaming which alerted her brother and father, who rushed to the place, according to The Pakistan daily. According to a report by Punjab Information Commission of February 2022, 2,439 women were raped and killed in name of "family honour" during last six months in the province. (ANI)
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has expressed concerns over the series of attacks that led to the deaths of over 50 boys and girls, calling it a "grave rights violations" in Afghanistan. "In one week alone, more than 50 girls and boys have lost their lives in a series of heinous grave rights violations in Afghanistan," Paloma Escudero, UNICEF Director for Global Communication and Advocacy, was quoted by Tolo News as saying. The UN agency also highlighted the delay in reopening of schools for girl students in Afghanistan saying, "It's been one month since Afghanistan's de facto authorities barred teenage girls from returning to school." The Taliban regime in Afghanistan had barred girls from attending school over grade six after issuing a decree last month. "It is our right to go back to school. We cannot take this pain anymore," UNICEF quoted Mariya a 16-year-old as saying. "We are doing all we can to support education #ForEveryChild in #Afghanistan. @UNICEFis providing: 2 months emergency cash support for teachers School bags & supplies for 1st graders Millions of textbooks But more is needed. We won't give up on the children who need us," UNICEF informed in a tweet. Meanwhile, the Taliban's Ministry of Education said that the schools for girls in grades 7-12 will be reopened in the near future. "UNICEF promised to help the Ministry of Education in providing salaries for teachers. Also, the money will flow into accounts which will prevent the existence of fake teachers," Aziz Ahmad Riyan, a Taliban spokesperson was quoted as saying. "Depriving girls from education and closing their schools have affected the government as well because it has been working on how to reopen the schools, but they are yet to find a solution. We ask the Islamic Emirate to reopen the schools for girls as soon as possible," Omarzada, a teacher said. (ANI)
Moscow [Russia], April 24 (ANI/Sputnik): The funds of the Russian Consulate General in New York at Bank of America have been blocked and the mission is operating on cash reserves, acting Consul General in New York, Vyacheslav Slavkin told Sputnik on Sunday. Earlier in the day, Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said that Bank of America closed the accounts of two Russian consulates general in Houston and New York. "On March 16, Bank of America blocked and froze all of our accounts. We are completely restricted from paying for utilities - we cannot pay for gas and insurance. We can't pay for the basic things necessary for the functioning of the Consulate General," Slavkin said, adding that the consulate is also facing "difficulties with the payment of employees' salaries." According to Slavkin, all payments necessary for the functioning of the consulate are made from the cash reserve in case of extreme events, which is available at the cash desk of the mission. "In addition, we use the funds paid by citizens for consular services," the diplomat added. The acting Consul-General made no predictions about how long the reserve will last. "We are working very closely with the State Department on this issue. The State Department has promised to provide all assistance in opening new accounts, in some other banks. However, so far everything is in process. So far there is no result," Slavkin said. At the same time, Slavkin noted that the security measures of the Russian Consulate General in New York have been strengthened amid threats to the diplomatic mission amid Russia's military operation in Ukraine. (ANI/Sputnik)
A total of 14 foreign nationals including seven from India, three from the UK and one each from Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar and Ethiopia had been detained and kept in Yemen without trial, media reports said.

Seven Indians were detained from a Houthi rebel-seized cargo vessel in February this year.

"The Sultanate of Oman has coordinated with the concerned authorities in Sana'a, which responded with gratitude to these endeavours, and after communicating with the sisterly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to facilitate the issuance of the necessary permits," Oman's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

14 nationals were transferred from Sanaa to Muscat "on a plane belonging to the Royal Air Force of Oman, in preparation for their return to their countries," the statement further said. (ANI)
This comes after the Inter-University Students Federation (IUSF) members protested opposite the Prime Minister's residence demanding the resignation of all members of Parliament, the President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, reported Colombo Page.

Some students climbed the wall to protest, while black flags were hoisted near the entrance to the official residence.

Thousands of university students launched a protest march from Colombo Fort Railway Station on Sunday with the objective of joining the protest in the Galle Face Green which is continuing for the 16th consecutive day.

However, the police had constructed permanent roadblocks and cordoned off several roads in Colombo Fort after a court rejected a Police request to ban the march, reported Colombo Page.

Sri Lanka's economy has been in a free-fall since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to the crash of the tourism sector. The country is also facing a foreign exchange shortage as it borrowed billions of dollars from China, burdening itself with hefty loans.

Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis since the country gained independence in 1948. Food and fuel shortages, soaring prices and power cuts are affecting a large number of the people resulting in massive protests in the country. Sri Lanka's foreign debt is estimated at USD 51 billion. (ANI)
Qureshi, while addressing the rally of PTI workers at Multan's Babar Chowk on Sunday, asked the political workers of Multan to start preparations for welcoming Imran Khan on May 10, ARY News reported.

During his address, Qureshi also reiterated that a conspiracy was hatched to topple the PTI government and imposed the corrupt politicians.

He said that another conspiracy is being hatched against Imran Khan to disqualify him by the election commission besides banning the political party, ARY News reported.

He announced that the PTI political committee has decided to stage protests outside the election commission offices, ARY News reported.

Meanwhile, in a Tweet, PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry also informed about the protests and said that a meeting of the party's political committee was held on Sunday wherein issues pertaining to the ECP were deliberated upon.

He accused the CEC of being "partisan and dishonest" and said that a declaration to de-seat the PTI's dissident assembly members had still not been issued by the ECP.

"In this connection, the PTI will hold a protest in front of the ECP offices across the country on Tuesday against the behaviour of the election commissioner," Chaudhry said.

Days ago, PTI Chairman Imran Khan had asked the CEC to tender resignation, saying the party believed him to be "biased". Addressing a press conference at his Bani Gala residence, Imran had said the PTI did not trust the CEC, alleging all his decisions were against the party. (ANI)
Taking to Twitter, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said that Logar's visit to India is a renewed opportunity to further deepen collaboration between both countries.

"Welcome to India, Foreign Minister of Slovenia Anze Logar. Our partnership with Slovenia encompasses sectors like infrastructure and emerging technologies. The visit is a renewed opportunity to further deepen our collaboration," MEA tweeted.

Slovenian Foreign Minister will meet with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

"During his official visit to India, Minister @AnzeLog will meet with Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam @DrSJaishankar and participate in the international conference @raisinadialogue. He will also attend a cultural event to mark the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations," Foreign Affairs of Slovenia tweeted.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the seventh edition of the Raisina dialogue on April 25, said Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi during the MEA weekly briefing on Thursday.

The Raisina Dialogue 2022, based on the theme "Terranova- Impassioned, Impatient, Imperilled", will be modelled along six thematic pillars --Rethinking Democracy: trade, technology and ideology; End of Multilateralism: a networked global order; Water Caucuses: turbulent tides in the Indo-Pacific; Communities Inc: first responders to health, development, and planet; Achieving Green Transitions: common imperative, diverging realities; Samson vs Goliath: the persistent and relentless technology wars.

The Raisina Dialogue, which started in 2016, is India's flagship conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics committed to addressing the most challenging issues facing the global community. The conference is organized by MEA in collaboration with the Observer Research Foundation (ORF). (ANI)
Telegram via Christopher Key

Organizers tasked with putting on a Jacksonville, Florida conference headlined by COVID-19 truthers Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Peter McCullough had enough of anti-vaxxer Christopher Key's shenanigans on Saturday afternoon.

So much so that they reported the Vaccine Police leader to police as a trespasser, a move which sent him back to jail (again), where he is now currently awaiting a preliminary hearing.

On Saturday morning, Key could be heard on video berating an organizer of the far-right gathering, after he claimed she mandated he move his car off a sideway. Then, Key claimed that he went to the building at the Take Action for Freedom Tour event to take a tinkle, which left police being called.

I am now being asked to leave, Key said ahead of police arriving. Following a police officer arriving on scene, one unidentified gathering organizer told the officer that Key was causing a disturbance.

The Alex Jones Pal Behind The Urine-Drinking COVID Cure

You have caused a big disturbance, the organizer added.

After being issued a trespassing warning by police, Key apparently still wouldn't comply with the orders of the Jacksonville police officers. (The Jacksonville Police Department didnt immediately return The Daily Beasts Saturday-evening request for comment.)

You have been trespassed from the property, Jacksonville officer J.A. Mack can be heard telling Key in the video. Get in your car and leave, or you are going to be arrested.

Throughout a 40-minute video posted by Key on Telegram, the urine-drinking conspiracy theorist continually argued with police.

You need to uphold the law, Key told the officers, to which Mack replied: This is your last warning.

Eventually, the police had enough of the anti-vaxxers antics and placed him in handcuffs as Key continued to threaten the officers with lawsuits.

According to arresting documents obtained by The Daily Beast, Key was booked into the Jacksonville John E. Goode pre-trial detention center at 1:26 p.m. Eastern with charges that include trespass on property and defies order to leave or endangers property.

Story continues

Speaking from a jail phone late Saturday, Key and far-right radio host Stew Peters chalked the arrest up to the organizers of the far-right event being jealous of their COVID-19 conspiracy theories involving snake venom in the water and Satan blood in vaccines.

Hucksters Profit Off Nutty Venom in the Water Theory

This is a bunch of M.D.'s that are pissed off because a chiropractic and a bounty hunter released information before they ever could, Peters riffed on the phone call he recorded and posted to Telegram.

Yes, there is venom in the shots, the right-wing radio host continued, claiming that event organizers are now attempting to discredit their fellow right-wingers, including Key.

It is very upsetting to me that some of my freedom fighters family is the one that incarcerated me, Key concluded.

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STORY: Argentina is one of the world's top food exporters and the sector is key to Latin America's third-largest economy.

Protesters waved Argentinian flags and rode tractors onto a road in front of the Casa Rosada presidential palace in the capital. It is rare for farmers to protest in Buenos Aires, as they usually hold such demonstrations in rural areas.

Fernandez has intervened in the grains and meat sector, at one point limiting how much meat producers could export in order to prioritize domestic supply.

Protesters held signs reading: "We pay for roads but instead get swamps" and "lower the taxes."

They also issued their demands for a reduction in taxes in a letter to the government that was read at the protest and later provided to the media.

"We have a simple demand: we are no longer willing to fund the rope that is being used to choke us," the letter read.

The protest was not organized by a specific organization.

Taxes rose under former President Mauricio Macri, a conservative, and have continued to rise under Fernandez, a leftist. A 12% tax is levied on wheat and corn exports, which rises to 33% in the case of soy, flour and cooking oil exports.

Argentina has battled extremely high inflation for years - it hovered around 50% in 2021 - making food policy a particularly delicate task for the government.

In the past year, farmers have also protested against limits on meat exports that Fernandez eventually relaxed.
Air Arabia Abu Dhabi, the UAE capitals first low-cost carrier, has announced the introduction of a new service to Mumbai in India, starting from May 12, 2022.



The airline will fly an Airbus A320 to and from Mumbai three days a week  Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.



Mumbai or the city of dreams is a destination that every traveller must visit. The capital city of Maharashtra state is known for its unique experience, magnificent architecture, religious sites, and savoury cuisine. Besides being Indias the financial centre and a major economic hub, it is considered the city of aspirations, wealth, and glamour.



Mumbai is the sixth city in India that Air Arabia Abu Dhabi flies to after Calicut, Chennai, Jaipur, Kochi, Trivandrum. The new service represents the 20th route for Air Arabia Abu Dhabi since the launch of the carriers service from Abu Dhabi International Airport in July 2020.



Customers can now book their direct flights between Abu Dhabi and Mumbai by visiting Air Arabias website, by calling the call centre or through travel agencies.  TradeArabia News Service
In the Army, Ulrich Nkou Sembe worked as an operating room specialist. When he got his first civilian job after transitioning out of military life, he went on to do the same thing in the private sector.

That seamless transition is courtesy of the U.S. Armys PaYS program, which stands for Partnership for Youth Success. The program has been around for more than 20 years and is a recruiting tool that ensures up to five job interviews upon separation from the Army with corporate partners committed to hiring former service men and women.

I liked the uniform, said Nkou Sembe, who is still in the Army Reserves. And I like my job. It hasnt been easy, but its been worth it.

In addition to his job as a surgical technologist at HCA Healthcare in Texas, Nkou Sembe is also at Houston Community College studying biology. He plans to go to medical school and hopes to become a flight surgeon or field surgeon in the Army one day.

That is the goal, he said.

And the PaYS program helped him find a good job quickly  allowing him to keep pursuing his dreams.

Weve stood the test of time over the years, when it comes to helping assist transitioning soldiers, said Antonio Johnson, PaYS program manager.

Nowadays, there are dozens of nonprofits, as well as programs within the services, that help transitioning servicemembers. But the Army program has been around a long time and has a track record of success. There are currently 966 PaYS partners, 782,860 jobs available and 275,974 PaYS soldiers.

PaYS started in 2000 and began as a way to help with recruiting. The Army helps soldiers gain valuable skills that will translate into civilian employment  even helping them obtain training and certification if necessary. Nkou Sembe said he got his certification as a Certified Surgical Technologist through the National Board of Surgical Technology and Surgical Assisting to work in operating rooms in the Army, for example.

PaYS partners, including companies like General Motors, USAA, Cintas and Century 21, interview servicemembers, and about 60% of them receive job offers, Johnson said.

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Recruits can choose to sign up for the program upon enlistment and choose a qualified career path in the Army to help with future job prospects. The Army trains recruits in a number of different fields that translate into civilian employment, Johnson said  meaning its a win-win for employers and servicemembers alike.

Many young people see the Army as a stepping stone to their future careers, and PaYS helps with that plan.

The Army has made it a priority to help transitioning soldiers, Johnson said. The more they successfully transfer out, the better. No one wants unemployed veterans.

Its the soldier-for-life philosophy. We take care of each other for life.
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia's government on Sunday defended its response to China's courtship of nearby Solomon Islands which culminated in a security pact, ahead of a general election next month where it had hoped to highlight its national security credentials.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton in a television interview attributed China's success to an uneven playing field involving tactics with which no Australian government could compete.

The pact, announced earlier this month, is seen as a major inroad for China in the resource-rich Pacific, where the United States has long been the dominant influence along with allies Australia and New Zealand.

China has said the pact will help the Solomon Islands maintain social order and cope with natural disasters and humanitarian relief. It said it poses no risk to the U.S., while the Solomon Islands said it will not undermine regional peace.

Still, the U.S. has said it would respond accordingly to any Chinese military presence in the region, while critics of Prime Minister Scott Morrison have called the pact Australia's biggest diplomatic failure in the Pacific since World War Two.

Dutton, in an interview with Sky News, said the pact follows a pattern of China's engagement around the world.

"If you look at what's happened in Africa, there are corrupt payments being made - we could never compete with that sort of playbook," Dutton said, without providing evidence.

He said he could not comment on whether corrupt payments had been made in the Solomons case.

"China's incredibly aggressive - the acts of foreign interference, the preparedness to pay bribes to get outcomes, and to beat other countries to deals - that's the reality of the modern China."

Speaking to journalists later in the day, Morrison said China building a military base on the Solomon Islands would be a "red line" for Australia.

"Working together with our partners in New Zealand and of course the United States, I share the same red line that the United States has when it comes to these issues," ABC News quoted the prime minister as saying.

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"We won't be having Chinese military naval bases in our region on our doorstep."

The embassies of China and the Solomon Islands in Canberra did not respond to requests for comment outside business hours.

Morrison looked to deflect criticism by shifting the debate to his economic policy, promising to not introduce any taxes if re-elected, and to cap government tax revenue at 23.9% of gross domestic product.

The policy also involves giving workers A$100 billion ($72.4 billion) in tax relief over the next four years.

Australians head to the polls on May 21.

($1 = 1.3816 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Praveen Menon; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
Barcelonas defeat leaves rivals Real Madrid on the brink of another LaLiga title (Joan Monfort/AP) (AP)

Barcelona slumped to a 1-0 home defeat by Rayo Vallecano which pushed leaders Real Madrid a step closer to the LaLiga title.

With Real not in action ahead of Tuesdays Champions League semi-final first leg at Manchester City, second-placed Barca missed the chance to cut into the 15-point deficit and saw their game in hand rendered redundant.

Alvaro Garcias early goal proved enough for Rayo to complete a league double over Barca, and leave Real needing just one more point from their last five games to wrap up another domestic title.

That special feeling when you sweat for the win till the last second #LazioMilan #SempreMilan pic.twitter.com/EbyfNCJM40  AC Milan (@acmilan) April 24, 2022

AC Milan regained top spot in Serie A as Sandro Tonali struck in stoppage time to snatch a 2-1 win at Lazio.

The Rossoneri had seen rivals Inter climb to the summit after beating Roma on Saturday, and fell behind at the Stadio Olimpico as Ciro Immobile fired Lazio into a fourth-minute lead.

Veteran French forward Olivier Giroud, though, hauled Milan level five minutes into the second half and when it seemed they would have to settle for a draw, Tonali stabbed the ball in following a knockdown from substitute Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Milan now sit two points clear, although having played a match more, as they chase a first Scudetto since the 2010-11 campaign.

Earlier on Sunday, a late goal from substitute Federico Bonazzoli helped Salernitana keep their survival bid alive with a 2-1 win over Fiorentina, which was a third straight victory for Davide Nicolas side.

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Champions League hopefuls Napoli were left stunned as Empoli scored three times in the last 10 minutes, including a brace from Andrea Pinamonti, to come from behind to beat the Partenopei 3-2 at Stadio Carlo Castellani and finally end their own 17-game winless run.

Elsewhere it finished 2-2 between Bologna and Udinese, while Milan Badeljs 89th-minute strike grabbed Genoa a 1-0 home win over strugglers Cagliari  who are now just three points ahead of Salernitana.

Hertha Berlin boosted their Bundesliga survival hopes with a 2-0 win over fellow strugglers Stuttgart.

Davie Selke gave the hosts an early lead before Ishak Belfodil wrapped things up in stoppage time for Felix Magaths men to increase the gap to third-bottom Stuttgart to four points.

Augsburg also put further distance between themselves and the relegation zone with a 2-0 win at Bochum thanks to first-half goals from Andre Hahn and Michael Gregoritsch.

In Ligue 1, Marseille kept themselves on course for Champions League qualification with a 1-0 win at Reims.

Paris St Germain had clinched the title on Saturday, and substitute Gerson struck late on as Marseille maintained their six-point lead over third-placed Rennes, who earlier in the day had trashed Lorient 5-0 despite having defender Nayef Aguerd sent off.

Khephren Thuram scored a last-minute goal as Nice kept up their own European hopes with a 1-0 win over relegation-threatened Troyes.

#FCMSB29 [   ]



 Le compte rendu de la reception de Brest (0-1)   Fc Metz  (@FCMetz) April 24, 2022

At the other end of the table, bottom club Metz finished with nine men as they lost 1-0 at home against Brest.

Clermont picked up what could prove a crucial point in their survival bid after coming from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 at home against Angers, who had Mohamed Ali-Cho sent off late on.

Kalifa Coulibaly scored twice as Nantes beat Bordeaux 5-3 while a late goal from Zeki Celik gave Lille a 1-0 home win over Strasbourg.
Apr. 23Barrett Brown of East Limestone baseball is moving on to the next level after signing his scholarship with Birmingham Southern on Thursday, April 21, from the East Limestone gymnasium lobby.

A big moment in the young athlete's life, Brown was joined by dozens of students, friends, family, coaches and teachers, all of whom made sure to take time out of their day to honor Brown on his decision to join a prestigious baseball program.

As of Friday, April, 22, Birmingham Southern baseball has an overall season record of 28 wins and 7 losses, with a 15-3 record in conference play. Additionally, they have won eight games in a row.

Adam Brown, head coach of East Limestone baseball, recognizes the level of caliber program that Birmingham Southern is, and is positive that the team is getting a good player and better person in Barrett.

While Coach Brown has only known Barrett for a about a year, they formed an immediate connection, with Barrett making an early impression on the coach.

Before signing with the program on Thursday, Coach Brown took the time to speak to the audience and congratulate his player.

"We support Barrett and his new adventures," he said. "I want to say thank you to his parents for raising such a good young man. He is a great player but an even better person. We all love him very much and no matter what happens or where he goes, he has the support of everyone in this room. He will always be in our hearts and we know he will have continued success."

Brown's signing continues the run of Limestone players signing to the next level.

He is not the first Limestone athlete to sign with Birmingham Southern in the past month, as he will join Clements' Dylan Patrick, who is going to Birmingham Southern on a basketball scholarship.

Additionally, they will be joined in Birmingham by Athens' Jacey King and Telaya Murrah, who signed with UAB earlier this week on a cheerleading scholarship.

East Limestone will also continue their run of scholarship signings, as next week will feature basketball standout Taylor Thatch signing to the next level.
Deputy Bilal Bazzi

A Monroe County sheriffs deputy was honored by Bedford Township and Sheriff Troy Goodnough for his outstanding work in law enforcement.

Deputy Bilal Bazzi was named Bedford Townships Sheriffs Deputy of the Year during last week's Bedford Township Board meeting. Additionally, the board declared April 19th as Deputy Bazzi Day.

Goodnough spoke at the meeting before the board presented the award, talking about Bazzis roots as the son of Lebanese immigrants living in Dearborn. Bazzi joined the Monroe County Sheriffs Office in 2020, working in Bedford Township and currently Frenchtown Township.

His dedication to this community goes unwavering, he said. He views law enforcement as a very prestigious and rewarding career.

On early Friday morning, Bazzi was working road patrol when he pulled over a vehicle, which led to the arrest of a fugitive, who escaped from authorities in Wood County, Ohio, and stole a vehicle in Bedford Township.

Goodnough noted that Bazzi has earned a reputation for being aggressive yet fair with traffic enforcement. Last year, he performed 1,485 traffic stops, resulting in 263 traffic citations. He also investigated 881 complaints resulting in 121 arrests and 263 warrant requests sent to the prosecutors office.

I think he leveraged his skills to instruct and hopefully deter bad driving not only through citations but communication," Goodnough said.

Bazzi then took the podium and expressed his gratitude to Goodnough and his fellow officers, the board and citizens.

Theres nothing else Id rather do than be able to police in Monroe County, he said. I appreciate that, and I thank you for everything.

Bedford Township Clerk Trudy Hershberger then presented Bazzi with the award and read the official declaration.

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Bedford Board, Goodnough honor Bazzi as Deputy of the Year
Apr. 24A controversy that has swirled for years over a small stretch of the border between Maine's two oldest towns could soon be settled once and for all.

York and Kittery, normally friendly and cooperative neighbors, have been at odds over whether their shared border is straight or meandering. Maps drawn by each town in 1794 differed slightly, but the discrepancies apparently went largely unnoticed until four years ago.

After a survey of a Route 1 property that straddles the towns made it clear that their placements of part of the border didn't match, officials from the two towns became locked in a back-and-forth over the exact location of the boundary.

Finally, York filed a complaint Feb. 22 in York County Superior Court asking a judge to appoint commissioners to settle the dispute. Kittery responded by saying no commissioners are needed because the border has been in the right place for well over three centuries. Kittery's town manager has called York's push to legally determine the border "an aggressive attempt to take land from Kittery."

"Kittery will vigorously defend its borders," Kittery Town Manager Kendra Amaral told town councilors on March 28. "It impacts neighborhoods, it impacts people's property and the border has been recognized for hundreds of years."

The border between York and Kittery was established in 1652 by decree from the Massachusetts Bay Colony under threat of force by an armed militia. Maps of the two towns drawn in 1794, a quarter-century before Maine became a state, show the border in slightly different spots.

Those differences weren't an issue until that survey four years ago, commissioned by a local developer who had bought land along Route 1 that straddles the two towns. The survey found that the town line was 333 feet south of where modern maps show it to be. If the border is moved, that land would become part of York.

York officials think the developer's survey shows the true straight-line border, but people down in Kittery disagree. The border that they say has been acknowledged for hundreds of years weaves slightly from Eliot to Brave Boat Harbor, they argue.

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The dispute centers on land that includes about 300 feet of frontage on Route 1 north of Landmark Hill Lane. The area includes residential parcels, two cell towers and a cemetery. An attorney for Kittery said in court filings that York's desired modification of the border would affect at least 25 residential properties covering over 300 acres, with a total assessed value of nearly $8 million.

The differences in town maps when they first came to light prompted plenty of lighthearted ribbing about a "border war" breaking out between the two otherwise friendly towns. Town leaders in York joked about building a wall on their southern border, while Kittery residents imagined marching a militia northward.

But the issue is actually a serious one, municipal officials now say, and it needs to be settled.

The land in question is still largely wooded, but is in an area that has been developed in recent years. A border adjustment wouldn't change anyone's property ownership, but it would affect where some pay taxes, vote and go to school and which town maintains a cemetery. It could also change how that Route 1 property is developed.

Amaral believes York's motivation to take this issue to court comes from a single property owner who is looking to develop property around the disputed border and right now has to comply with zoning in both towns. The property owner, who is not identified in town records, "is not happy with what Kittery has said" about how the property can be developed, she told the town council in late March.

Kittery has submitted a Freedom of Access Act request to York for all public records  including letters, emails, texts and social media messages  between town officials and past and present owners of the property at 524 U.S. Route 1. Amaral told the town council she suspects this will give the town a better sense of why York is pressing the border issue now.

A LONG HISTORY

Kittery, incorporated in 1647, is the oldest town in Maine and originally included the towns now known as Eliot, Berwick, North Berwick and South Berwick.

In November 1652, commissioners from the Massachusetts Bay Colony arrived in Kittery, intent on annexing what was then known as the Province of Maine up to modern-day Cape Porpoise. On Nov. 20, 42 inhabitants of Kittery signed a declaration acknowledging they would henceforth be subject to the Government of Massachusetts Bay.

Two days later, the commissioners traveled northeast to Gorgeana, where inhabitants had assembled at the house of Nicholas Davis. By the end of the day, they had taken the same oath as those in Kittery. Georgeana was reincorporated in 1652 as York, named for York, England, and was one of the last Royalist strongholds taken by the Puritans in the English Civil Wars.

Under the Articles of Submission signed in 1652, Massachusetts Bay Colony ordered the towns to set up up their borders. In 1794, Massachusetts insisted that each town create a map because many towns were in disputes over their boundaries. The borders on the maps created that year of Kittery and York did not completely match, but no one seemed to worry at the time.

The border debate picked up in 2018, after the survey.

The following year, Todd Frederick, chairman of the York Board of Selectmen, sent his counterpart in Kittery a letter outlining York's position that the border between their towns is a straight line established in 1652. He said the meandering line shown on local tax maps is inconsistent with the legally established border and asked Kittery to work with York to properly identify the "proper straight-line border" or ask the court to settle the matter.

Frederick cited a copy of a report that settled a contested border between York and Eliot to bolster York's opinion that its border with Kittery is a straight line.

Eliot took York to court in 1991 to establish the boundary between the towns. The three-member commission established by a York County Superior Court judge determined the border between York and Eliot was a straight line.

Kittery officials disagree with York's opinion that the ruling on the York-Eliot border has any bearing on the current border dispute. The report produced to settle the York-Eliot border issue did not review any historical records after 1810, when Eliot separated from Kittery, and ignored over 200 years of applicable historical record and all of the perambulations required by law, the town attorney wrote last month in a motion to dismiss York's complaint.

In a November 2019 response to Frederick's letter, Judith Spiller, chair of the Kittery Town Council, wrote that the boundaries set forth by the Articles of Submission presented an alternate line to the one that had been used previously and that Kittery has used since. The town council, she said, believes the boundary between the two communities is not the one set forth in those articles but the one noted "in all relevant contemporary and historical documents.

"All U.S. Geological (Survey), State of Maine, Town of York and Town of Kittery maps and documents support the current and historical boundary between our two friendly communities," she wrote.

Spiller disputed the validity of the border noted in the articles on other grounds as well.

"It is important to note that this particular boundary was established through aggression, imposed by decree from the Massachusetts Bay Colony," she wrote. "Rife with arbitrary limitations set forth and enforced by armed militia, it reflected neither the established property lines of the times nor those before or after it."

Amaral, Kittery's town manager, and York Town Manager Stephen Burns each said they can't comment on the dispute because it is in litigation.

BORDER GOES TO COURT

It is rare that disputes about municipal borders in Maine end up in court, but they are bound to pop up occasionally in a state whose town lines were set hundreds of years ago and often marked with stone walls, tree or granite markers that have long since disappeared.

In the complaint it filed in York County Superior Court in February, York asked the court to appoint three commissioners and empower them to determine the "true and correct" common boundary, describe the boundary line "by curves and distances," and set markers to indicate the established border.

York argues in its filing that the 1652 description of the common boundary said it began at the head of Brave Boat Harbor and then ran "in a straight line to the head of ye Southwest branch of ye River of York." The two towns, it said in its complaint, cooperatively identified that straight-line boundary through perambulations, or walking the line, in 1695, 1740, 1779 and 1794.

But the town said that waypoints that marked the boundary caused it to stray from its proper course and become a meandering line, not the straight line between two defined monuments identified in 1652.

Kittery has asked the court to dismiss York's complaint, arguing that the situation should have been resolved long ago and York has not demonstrated a controversy sufficient to justify judicial review.

No hearings have been scheduled and a decision on the motion to dismiss could be a month or two away.

If the case is not dismissed, the court would likely appoint three commissioners with surveying experience to establish the exact location of the border.

Stephen Langsdorf of PretiFlaherty, who represents Kittery, said he "strongly believes the motion to dismiss will be granted because York did not comply with the requirement that border perambulations to confirm municipal boundaries occur every five years." That process, which requires representatives of the town to walk the border, was required by law from 1820 to 2003.

"The point of the law was to timely identify any disputes about municipal borders," Langsdorf said. "In other words, the case should have been resolved 200 years ago."
Boris Johnson - Stefan Rousseau/AFP via Getty Images

Boris Johnson has warned the UN secretary general that Vladimir Putin will try to "manipulate" his visit to Moscow this week into a propaganda victory for the Kremlin.

The Prime Minister is understood to be concerned about Antonio Guterres' planned trip to see Putin and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, on Tuesday and on Sunday night told him to be "careful".

Mr Guterres has already been accused of doing too little to help peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, amid wider criticism of the UN's failure to restrain Putin's aggression.

A Number 10 source said Mr Johnson on Sunday "warned the UN secretary general that Putin will seek to manipulate his visit" and told him that he should "be careful" of Kremlin propaganda.

Mr Johnson's intervention comes as he will this week attempt to draw public attention back to his work on the war and domestic priorities after last week was dominated by "partygate".

On Monday he will visit North Wales, where he will talk up the prospect of a speedy trade deal with India, and the north west of England, to discuss government policy on football clubs.

However, he could also receive more fines over Downing Street parties, potentially overshadowing his attempts to "get on with the job".

While an official readout of Mr Johnson's call with Mr Guterres emphasised their "shared concerns" over the war and the "need to secure a ceasefire, facilitate humanitarian efforts and allow civilians to leave", sources suggested tensions between the two over Mr Guterres' visit.

It is feared the trip may achieve little in bringing Russia and Ukraine closer to peace but could give Moscow the opportunity to humiliate Mr Guterres or the wider West.

A previous visit by Liz Truss resulted in a tense press conference during which Mr Lavrov said their discussions were "like the conversation with a deaf person" before walking off stage.

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A similar trip to Moscow earlier this month by Karl Nehammer, the Austrian chancellor, resulted in a "not friendly" meeting with Putin at his official residence in the Novo-Ogaryovo district.

Mr Nehammer was criticised for his attempt to negotiate with the Russian president, which the Czech foreign minister said was "naive" and one EU diplomat called "f------ pointless".

Mr Guterres' trip also risks worsening relations between Nato leaders and the UN. The alliance has been frustrated at the UN's lack of action on Russia, with the organisation hamstrung by Moscow's permanent seat on the Security Council, allowing it to veto any resolutions on the conflict.

Earlier this month, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, made a tense address to the security council, challenging it to act against Putin or dissolve itself.

"We are dealing with a state that is turning the veto of the United Nations security council into the right to die," he said. "If it continues, countries will rely not on international law or global institutions to ensure security, but rather on the power of their own arms."

Mr Guterres has spoken to Mr Zelensky once since the invasion, while Putin has declined his requests to open a dialogue.

Last week, the UN leader was urged by more than 200 former officials to intervene more stridently over the war. Days later, he announced plans for a "working lunch" with Mr Lavrov and an audience with Putin.

The leaders of France and Germany were criticised for visiting Moscow in last-ditch attempts to prevent the conflict, which other Western officials said were doomed to fail but risked legitimising the Kremlin. Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz met Putin in the week before the invasion on Feb 24.

After his trip to Russia on Tuesday. Mr Guterres will travel to Ukraine, where he will meet Mr Zelensky and Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister.

A UN spokesman said the secretary general "hopes to talk about what can be done to bring peace to Ukraine urgently" and will meet agency staff providing support for refugees forced to leave their homes by the conflict.

The UN has continued to provide humanitarian support in Ukraine despite the failure of its political leadership to secure a peace deal. This week, the body will launch a fresh appeal for donations to fund its work.
NEON

Cinematic perfection may be technically unattainable, but good luck finding a flaw with Petite Maman, French auteur Celine Sciammas tender and moving tale about a young girl named Nelly (Josephine Sanz) who, while helping her parents clean out the rural home of her recently deceased grandmother, strikes up a friendship with a girl named Marion (Gabrielle Sanz) who looks just like her, sounds just like her, and turns out to be her 8-year-old mother.

Its a magical turn of events, and it forms the basis for Sciammas 72-minute fable about loss, grief and the desire to communion with the past and the loved ones who inhabited it. While the mechanics of these supernatural circumstances remain a mystery throughout, less enigmatic are the profound emotional and psychological questions plumbed by Sciammas drama, which operates with a subtlety, stillness and insightfulness thats as bracing as its atmosphere is enchanting and the Sanz sisters lead performances are captivating.

In certain respects, Petite Maman is a departure from Sciammas prior, heralded Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a 2019 period romance about a blossoming affair between a noblewoman and the artist hired to paint her. Yet like all her work, it remains intimately attuned to the experiences and perspectives of women who are bonded by blood, affection, and circumstance. Conceived before the pandemic but shot during it, Sciammas latest is a gentle variation on the time-travel genre, one in which anguish and alienation spark Nellys unique relationship with the adolescent mother she never knewa twist complicated by the fact that Nellys adult mom (Nina Meurisse) is presently MIA, thus leaving the girl adrift (despite the presence of her loving father). Quite simply, its as impeccable as movies come: tightly contained, expertly executed and overflowing with thorny and universal notions about the ties that bind and the everlasting yearning for togetherness.

Hit the Road Boasts One of the Most Magical Child Performances Youll Ever See

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On the eve of its U.S. theatrical premiere on April 22, it was our pleasure to speak with Sciamma about the personal inspirations for Petite Maman, the French film industrys attitudes toward female directors, and her 2020 decision to walk out of the Cesar Awards (aka the French Oscars) in protest of Roman Polanski.

Do you think youd get along with your own mom, as a child? I assume that questionand fantasywas the starting point for the film.

Yes, the starting point creatively was this image of two little girls playing, being the exact same age, playing together as equals, and being a mother and daughter. That image was both very peaceful, very soothinglike an opportunity for very intense and beautiful shared feelingsbut it also felt very, very troubling. It was like a form of enigma in this situation, and its because its a myth, I guess. Mythsits the intention of a question, and its the opportunity of a world where there are new rules, and I think the film is doing that. Its looking at the full opportunity of that new rule, not actually knowing where it would land. I wrote this quite candidly, like, what if? So yes, that would be my personal answer to that. Thats how I imagine myself with my own mother at that age.

Among other things, the film is about the childhood process of learning to say goodbyewhich is universal and can be quite jarring. Was that idea also a part of your inspiration?

I think Japanese animation is all about kids learning to say goodbye, or people just learning to say thank you. Maybe its the same thing, goodbye and thank youits an acknowledgement of the other. The films that inspired me for Petite Maman, and by inspired, I mean they gave me some kind of courage because they existed, were My Neighbor Totoro, and all of Miyazakis films, and also a film by Mamoru Hosoda named Wolf Children. Those are films that deal with the big goodbyes of childhood, because I think childhood is about learning about the fact that time passes. Like [Andrei] Tarkovsky said before me, I think all films are a sculpture of time. And they are an opportunity to sculpt the time differently. So, I think all films talk about goodbyes. The way films end really talk about the fact that, are they saying goodbye to you, or are they not? Are the characters saying goodbye? I tend to do films where, in the end, the film is saying goodbye to you, and also, the characters are saying goodbye to each other. This could be a definition of cinema for me, in a way.

Filmmaker Celine Sciamma Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty

At what point in the creative process did you decide that the magic-realist crux of the storythat Nelly meets her mother Marion as a childwould go unexplained, versus addressing it in a more straightforward way?

Thats a very good question, because that was the biggest decision in the process of making the film. What I felt intuitively while I was writing this was that it would be very straightforward. But in the process of writing the film, I was looking for a moment where the secret is revealed, and thats when I realized I was actually supposed to write a film about time travel. But I hadnt seen it like that at all! I was kind of embarrassed by the time-traveling dramaturgy, because we all love it very much, and Im a kid cinephile from the 80s so Ive basically been brought up by Back to the Futurewhich I know by heart, and really, really admire the dramaturgy of the film, which Ive studied a lot. So, its not that I wouldnt love to do that, but its just that it wasnt the sculpture I was looking for.

It would have made the film a chapter longer, and that wasnt the sculpture I was looking for. And it would imply some form of conflict. Thats the time that I decided that the film itself would be the time-traveling machine, and that it would create a common space in time, rather than a past, a present, and a future that you have to travel within; a common space in time, and that they would harvest that common space in time simply by believing each other. Simply by believing each other! And by just saying the truth. The opportunity of the truth seems obvious in the time-travel movie, in a wayits fabulous that you should tell the truth, to really, really be there, rather than talking about the fact that you just landed and that you have to leave. That engaged the whole artistic direction of the film, because thats also when we decided that the sets wouldnt age or wouldnt be different in the past or in the future, and also that the film would be timeless, which is super-weird for a time-traveling film. Like, it cant work. But we managed to make it work by being really radical, and strongly believing that this would produce a high level of intimacy.

Theres a specificity to many of the films details, be it Nelly feeding her mom while driving, or finding the hidden cupboard in the house, or the tree fort. How much of that was mined from your own childhood?

The body language, and the comedy, of childhood, and the first 10 minutes of the filmlike when she feeds her mother in the caris the moment when the film is really, really trying to be anchored in some form of reality. I tried to remember some fetish moments from my childhood to fuel this reality. But then the film switches to magic realism, to a form of daydream, and it was a decision to not fuel it with too many details about the family. You know, we dont even know the name of the father, and we dont know their backstory, and nobodys asking too many questions about the future or the past, so that viewers can live the situation but it can really be their story.

You have to be very generous; the film makes you give away your story, in a way. And thats also why I chose not to be too fetishist about my childhood and my own story, so the film would be very welcoming for all types of situations. If your parents are dead or alive, if youre talking or not, if you have a good relationship or a bad relationship, the film can be the shelter of your story. That was also the politics of the film.

Youve spoken in the past about the female gaze, and Petite Maman seems attuned to not only the female gaze, but the female experienceof being a young girl, of dealing with a distant mother, of figuring yourself out on your own. Is there greater space to explore such issues in film today, compared to when you first began writing/directing 15 years ago with Water Lilies?

I dont knowyes and no. In a way, those ideas, they are appearing more and more in fiction, because the market took those ideas. Any platform content will be more politically aware than ever in my life, and as someone who watches fiction, I can see those ideasand even if its cynical, I dont care. It would be cynical anyway; it was cynical when they were very brutal ideas. But does that leave more room for radicality in the arts, and the poetry of those ideas, and does it make more room for radical voices and independent filmmaking? I dont know.

This is linked to the state of the industry, and COVID has put this crisis on a climactic level. Plus, we are in the middle of a backlash, since this cultural revolution that you mention really rose and expanded. So, were in the middle of something [laughs]. What I can say from my perspective is that we can rely now on international support and international attention on our work, which is good, and which also means theres solidaritywhich means its needed.

You made headlines by walking out of the Cesars in protest of Roman Polanski, but at the same time, Portrait of a Lady on Fire was being celebrated, and Titane has since won the Palme dOr at Cannes. Given those opposing old guard-new guard forces, what is the current state of the French film industry as it relates to female-driven filmmaking? Is there a positive transition taking place?

This transition, and those two forces, are happening at the same moment. I think its the same everywhere, its just that in France, theres a very, very strong system of support for films, and independent cinema, and theres big funding, so theres a lot of newcomers. But well see, the turn that the industry will take.

We cant tell. In France right now, were in the middle of a very difficult political moment, in-between the two rounds of our presidential election. Far-right is at the door, extreme right is at the door, white supremacists are at the door, so I cant tell you about the positive over the negative outcome right now! Im just looking very, very carefully at things, and trying to think about it.

Celine Sciamma (C), winner of the Best Screenplay award for her film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, poses with Noemie Merlant (R) and Adele Haenel (L) during the 72nd annual Cannes Film Festival on May 25, 2019, in Cannes, France. Stephane Cardinale/Corbis via Getty

Like Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Petite Maman features no traditional musical score. What is it about stillness and quiet that speaks to you?

Music is one of the tools for creating a common space in time. Because, for instance, a song in editing creates unity, even if it will go over ten locations in a clip. So, it could have been a way. But I really wanted to work on the soundtrack of the film, to create a common space in time through the sets and nature; thats also what we were doing with the lighting in the film, to create a very strong continuity. The beauty of sound editing is that we shot in studio, so the entire sound atmosphere has been invented afterwards. And the fact that the house has the exact same sounds in the present and the past, and that there are strong notes like a spaceship thats rumblingits part of the grammar of the film. This film is designed to be seen in cinemas with people, and that kind of silence, and that kind of soundtrack, you listen to the film in a very different way, because you also hear yourself, and the presence. So, it really depends on how you want people to listen and to be at attention with the film. The lack of music on the soundtrack is a way to put viewers in a very active situation.

Did you always plan on making a feature that was this short? I think its the perfect length and lends it a fabular quality.

Yes. It had to be straightforward, because I wanted the film to be really, really emotional, and if it went on for a long time, that could be tiring. I wanted the film to be seen by kids, and that they could sit through it very easily, and that it could be identified, at that length, as a film for kids. And also, because its designed as 24-hour experience, its like a shot. I really wanted to design it as this shot, and you would carry it back home with you, and then it includes your night, and your dreams. That was the little design.

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Ukrainians on Sunday marked a sombre Orthodox Easter two months into Russia's invasion, with some braving bombardment for blessings and many of the displaced clinging on to cherished traditions.

Under the rain at a military position in the eastern town of Lyman, on the frontline, soldiers traded the usual patriotic salutation of "Glory to Ukraine!" for the ritual "Christ has risen!"

"Truly risen!" came the reply.

In the town's small Orthodox church, around 50 civilians had braved possible mortar fire to gather to pray from dawn.

Ukrainian and Russian artillery fire could be heard throughout the singing of the psalms.

"If we make the wrong choices then darkness will ruin us, as darkness is destroying us during this war," the priest said in his sermon.

"We are thankful for the humanitarian aid and the community taking care of the displaced," he added.

Ten soldiers and policemen in uniform, some in bulletproof vests, also attended the service in the pale blue church, their hands full of Easter baskets, making the sign of the cross before entering.

- Multicoloured sugar beads -

The war in Ukraine has killed thousands and forced millions to flee their homes since Russia invaded on February 24.

In the relative safety of the western city of Lviv, a husband and wife in their Sunday best stepped up into a packed church, the latter holding the traditional breakfast basket covered in an embroidered cloth for the priest's blessing.

Outside the Bernardine Church, 27-year-old Yuliya listened to the service from the courtyard with a friend.

"It's a holiday that unites family. We have war now, and it is especially important to follow our traditions," she said, dressed in a long black coat.

Ukrainian authorities on Saturday urged those celebrating to follow religious services online and to respect night-time curfews.

Across the vast country, people made preparations, however modest.

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On another part of the frontline, in the eastern city of Severodonetsk, Ukrainian troops had hidden their small stock of supplies under a bridge after they were hit by Russian mortar rounds in the night.

Along with water and Coke bottles, Kalashnikovs and cereal bars, three large Easter breads covered in icing and sprinkled with multicoloured sugar beads awaited them, after a delivery from their commander.

In Slovyansk, to the west, worshippers on Saturday afternoon hastily made their way to the Aleksander Nevsky Cathedral with baskets filled with decorated eggs and sweet bread.

Paisiy, a 34-year-old priest, said he had stayed in the city to bring comfort to the many residents who had refused to leave.

"This is my job to stay. People are afraid and when they come here and see the priest, it brings them a feeling of security," he said.

Around him, people dropped in for a blessing with holy water, then hopped back on bikes and sped off.

No one stayed any longer than absolutely necessary in the courtyard of the brick cathedral, as the boom of artillery fire resounded in the distance.

- 'Wish for victory' -

In Lviv on Saturday afternoon, 51-year-old Yuliya had come for an Easter blessing, just a week after she and her parents fled Russian bombardment on her eastern home city of Kharkiv.

"I was fed up with shivering when the missiles were flying over my house," she said, without giving her second name.

She carried two iced cakes she had baked the day before covered in a cloth in a basket.

"They are not as beautiful as they used to be," she said, as she had not yet grown accustomed to the oven in her new home.

She said Easter this year was different -- even in Lviv, where she had spent the holiday several times before the conflict.

"I can see fewer people, and not so smiley faces. People are more concerned," she said.

Nearby, Iryna Gapanovych, 38, said she and her friend had spent more than two hours in a bomb shelter on their way to church, after the air raid siren rang out.

"My wish for Easter is victory for Ukraine," she said, clutching a basket of sweet bread, painted eggs and cured meat.

dar-ah/dt/bp
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - David Mizrahi is to step down as chief executive of Bezeq, Israel's biggest telecoms group, the company said on Sunday.

"After more than 20 years with Bezeq Group and close to four years in the position of CEO, I feel that it is time for me to make a change," a company statement quoted Mizrahi as saying.

Mizrahi will remain CEO until a replacement is found, the statement said.

It quoted Mizrahi as saying that during his four years at the helm, Bezeq had achieved "consistent growth" in revenue along with a "healthy and robust balance sheet".

Last month, Bezeq reported a net profit of 256 million shekels ($78.29 million) for the October-December 2021 quarter, excluding one-time items, down from 277 million shekels a year earlier. Revenue rose 2.5% to 2.26 billion shekels.

For 2022, Bezeq has forecast adjusted net profit of 1 billion-1.1 billion shekels, compared with 1.15 billion in 2021. It estimates adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of 3.6 billion-3.7 billion shekels, versus 3.76 billion last year.

($1 = 3.2698 shekels)

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Susan Fenton)


The march in the heart of Hyderabad began with every participant reading the preamble of the constitution of India and taking the pledge to promote peace and unity.

Nikhat Fatima | TwoCircles.net

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HYDERABAD  A peace march, calling for the unity of society and rejection of communal hatred amid the ongoing divisive political atmosphere prevailing in the country, was held Sunday in Hyderabad.

The peace march was organized by Telangana for Peace and Unity (TPU), which is an organization of concerned citizens from the state. The organizations purported aim is to work towards establishing peace and unity of all communities in Hyderabad across Telangana, especially, at a time when religious fundamentalist forces are trying to spread hatred in the country.

The peace march was taken out in the heart of Hyderabad from Babu Jagjivan Ram Statue near Lal Bahadur Stadium to Babasaheb Ambedkar Statue. The march covered a distance of 2 kilometres amid the presence of police.

The peace march saw the participation of hundreds of people from different religious backgrounds, including activists and retired professors, advocates, writers, students, teachers, and educationists. Activists from different organisations like Rythu Swarajya Vedika, Help Hyderabad, Telangana Domestic Workers Union, Dalit womens Forum, Dalit Stree Shakti (DSS), Ankuram, All India Muslim Sangham, Human rights Forum (HRF), Progressive Organisation for Women (POW), National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW), Confederation of Voluntary Associations(COVA), Telangana Women and Transgender Joint Action Committee, National Alliance of Peoples Movement (NAPM), Sankalp Womens support Alliance attended the march.

The march began with every participant reading the preamble of the constitution of India and taking the pledge to promote peace and unity.

Participants carried the tricolour, and placards with messages of unity that read, We stand united for peace and unity,  Mazhab nahi sikhata aapas mein bair rakhna (Religion does not teach division), and  Humanity is our common religion.

Addressing the audience, Khalida Parveen, a senior activist and President of Amoomat society, said, The constitution of India gives scope for people of all religions to participate in their religion freely but the constitutional values are not being upheld today. We have all always lived together and will continue to do so. We are not going to fight this violence with violence; we are going to fight the constitutional way. So I appeal to everyone to not give in to anger and resort to violence in order to retaliate. Let us be patient and work to promote unity and strengthen each other. Let us spread the message of peace to each and every corner of our state. I appeal to the Chief Minister of Telangana to support us to promote peace and unity and not let divisive forces destroy the peace that is prevailing in our state.

Talking to TwoCircles.net, Meera Sanghmitra, a prominent activist from the National Alliance of Peoples Movement and a member of the Joint Action Committee of women and transgender organisations, said, While Telangana has not suffered major communal violence like some other states, recent developments in the state point to a very disturbing pattern. All of us who believe in peaceful co-existence must work very hard to ensure that the atmosphere in the state is not vitiated. We must take the spirit of TPU and constitutional values to every part of the state and demonstrate that people of Telangana want livelihoods and social security, not hate crimes and religious discrimination.

Sarah Mathews, another senior activist from Hyderabad, heading Sankalp Womens Support Alliance, said, Our unity march is a show of strength of the gentle but strong. An indication of our resolve to save our constitution and country. We hope that this movement spreads across the country, that people stand together united as one and expose these corrupt politicians who pit one against another for their filthy vote bank politics.



Nikhat Fatima is a correspondent with TwoCircles.net. She tweets at @snikhatf
Oxygen

Single mother Kelli Underwood survived brain tumors, divorce, and depression, but an ill-fated love triangle would be the death of her. Underwood was born and raised in Mesquite, Texas, just east of Dallas. She married young but it wouldnt last, nor would her second marriage. As a single mother of three, she struggled to balance work and family. When it came down to it she was always a very positive person. Anybody that met her said that her smile would light up a room. Thats just the type of
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The Chinese financial hub of Shanghai reported 39 new deaths among its COVID-19 patients on April 23, up from 12 the day before, the local government said on Sunday.

The city also recorded 19,657 new local asymptomatic coronavirus cases, down from 20,634 a day earlier. The number of confirmed symptomatic infections stood at 1,401, also down from 2,736 the previous day.

Shanghai is currently battling China's biggest-ever COVID-19 outbreak.

(Reporting by David Stanway and Brenda Goh; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Chris Rocks mother Rose Rock is ready to talk about the altercation between her son and Will Smith at the 2022 Oscars.

Rock spoke to NBC affiliate WIS in Columbia, South Carolina when she was in town to give a motivational speech to high schools across the city. During the interview, she spoke out about the incident during the broadcast where Smith slapped Rock after he made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smiths shaved head.

You reacted to your wife giving you the side-eye and you went and made her day because she was mulled over laughing when it happened, Rock said to WIS Billie Jean Shaw.

Rock was watching the Oscars at home, she said. At first, she assumed that the slap was staged and planned ahead of time until the censors kicked in and Smith began swearing at her son.

When he slapped Chris, he slapped all of us, she said, later adding, He really slapped me.

After the tense moment was over and Rock went back to presenting the award for best documentary feature, Rock said that she felt that the only thing she could do was reach out to her son and tell him that she was proud of how he handled the situation.

The matriarch of the Rock family and mother of seven is not the only member of the family to react to the incident. Rocks younger brother, Tony Rock, referenced the altercation on many occasions, including a series of Twitter replies to fans, one of which he said he didnt approve of Smiths Instagram apology.

Earlier this month, Tony Rock also slammed Smith during an expletive-laden bit during his comedy show, at one point saying, If you think you gonna to walk up on this stage, this aint the motherfking Oscars!

In the weeks since the Oscars, Rock has yet to release a statement or speak out publicly in detail about the events of the evening.

There were reports that at one of his comedy shows, he stopped a heckler from shouting profanities about Smith. The 57-year-old comedian also briefly addressed the incident days after the award show during a pre-scheduled comedy show, first by asking fans how their weekend went.

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I dont have a bunch of s--- about what happened, so if you came to hear that, I have a whole show I wrote before this weekend, he explained. Im still kind of processing what happened. So, at some point Ill talk about that s---. And it will be serious and funny.

On April 1, Smith announced that he would resign from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in a lengthy statement. His resignation was confirmed by David Rubin, president of the Academy, in a statement to NBC News.

The following week, the board of governors for the academy announced that Smith would be banned from attending the Oscars ceremony and other events or programs held by the academy, for the next 10 years. Smith said in a statement that he would accept and respect the decision.

Related:
Boone mayor John Slight, left, accepts a BEST of Iowa Excellence Award from David Vollmar, senior key account manager for Alliant Energy and Alliants representative on the BEST Board.

The city of Boone is among four Iowa communities honored with a BEST of Iowa Excellence Award.

BEST stands for Business Expansion and Strategic Trends and is a collaboration among local economic development groups, the Iowa Economic Development Authority and Iowas utility companies.

Boone was recognized for going above and beyond throughout the data gathering process that helped identify workforce challenges and supply issues. The initiative in 2021 got data from interviews with more than 1,065 companies in 66 Iowa counties.

The reason this award is important is that it points directly back to the mayor, the city administrator, the city council, that they're placing a high priority on understanding the needs of their existing employers, said Dan Culhane, president and CEO of the Ames Economic Development Commission (AEDC).

More: Ames, Boone County economic development groups enter contract

They dont get this award unless they have the leadership and the understanding of how important this is, he added.

Boone has contracted with the AEDC to support its economic development goals.

The City of Boone is honored to receive this award, along with the other communities, Boone city administrator William Skare said in a news release. Mayor (John) Slight and the city council understand how important our current businesses are to the economic vitality of our city. They deeply appreciate their commitment to our community and work hard to support them. Our relationship with Ames Economic Development Commission has proven to be effective in continuing our economic development progress.

We were thrilled they got the award, Culhane said. They went from no visits in 2018 and 2019 to where every visit was attained last year. So it was a big jump in the number of visits.

He said its a problem of staff bandwidth for many communities that just dont have the employees available to make the visits happen. And thats where entities like the AEDC can help.

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More: Where do Ames' workers live, and how far do they commute? A new study will offer answers.

Learning the data surrounding local business trends helps retain and expand existing businesses as well as draw new ones to the community, he said.

Its the basic blocking and tackling  the basic tenet of economic development, Culhane said. About 80% to 85% of your job growth will come from businesses that are already here so youd better take care of them.

There are 16 companies in the city of Boone and a total of 110 companies in Boone and Story counties that the AEDC targets for visits each year.

The AEDC primarily targets interstate commerce employers, Culhane said.

If someone is producing a product or a service  it could be a software company or a durable goods manufacturer  if theyre selling that out of state, were most likely in contact with them, Culhane said. One way you do this is by having a lot of communication with them, having relationships with them and ultimately knowing what their needs are to maintain their presence in your community but also grow in your community.

Getting firsthand feedback from businesses across Iowa is critical to setting the stage for economic success, Drew Conrad, director of the Institute for Decision Making at the University of Northern Iowa, said in the release.

We hope that this information will help leaders pinpoint how to best support the hardworking people of Iowa, Conrad added.

Iowa City Area Development, Mahaska Chamber and Economic Development and Urbandale Economic Development also received the BEST of Iowa Excellence Award.

This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: Partnering with Ames Economic Development, Boone gets BEST of Iowa award
NextShark

A 91-year-old Korean War Navy veteran is hoping to find his first love, who he met during his time as a second class petty officer in Japan in 1953. Duane Mann, 91, wrote a Facebook post on May 1 hoping to find someone who recognizes the woman in a photo he took in 1953, whose name he says is Peggy Yamaguchi. In the post, Mann explains that while he was stationed in Japan from 1953 to 1954 at age 23, he met Yamaguchi at an Air Force NCO Club, where he worked as a slot machine repairman in his spare time and Yamaguchi worked as the hat check girl.
COSHOCTON  The race for the Republican nomination for judge of Coshocton County Common Pleas Court has turned bitter between two old rivals.

Incumbent Robert Batchelor is being challenged by attorney William Todd Drown. Batchelor first won the bench in 2010 over Drown, who ran as a Democrat. Drown also lost a bid for judge of Coshocton County Probate and Juvenile Court as a Democrat against Van Blanchard II in 2012.

Drown has come under fire from some for switching parties and an indictment issued April 15 by a Coshocton County Grand Jury. He was charged with robbery, tampering with evidence and theft in office from an incident on May 24, 2021. Drown said it related to cleanup of tires from a blighted property in the Village of Conesville, where he serves as solicitor.

He's scheduled to be arraigned at 1 p.m. Friday in Coshocton County Common Pleas Court, rescheduled from Monday. Batchelor has recused himself from the case, which is being handled by a special prosecutor from Licking County and not the Coshocton County Prosecutor's Office. Conesville Village Council is expected to discuss keeping Drown on as solicitor at its next regular meeting Wednesday.

Per court documents, Drown is being represented by attorney Samuel Shamansky of Columbus. Assigned to the case is retired Judge Daniel T. Hogan of Franklin County.

Drown has called the charges bogus and "the worst political hit job there has ever been." He has demanded Batchelor and Coshocton County Prosecutor Jason Given resign and has sent a letter to the Ohio Attorney General's Office asking for an investigation into the matter.

Batchelor said the case is not politically motivated and he's had nothing to do with it as judges do not choose cases to present to a grand jury and are not present in the courtroom when grand juries review cases. He also said he would participate in any inquiry or investigation from the attorney general's office if launched.

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Drown has also sent a letter to the Ohio Secretary of State's Office asking for neutral observers to oversee the primary. Drown stated in the letter that he had no confidence in Republican members of the Coshocton County Board of Elections to fairly administer the election. The Tribune has contacted the BOE for comment.

In aggressive ads on WTNS Radio, Drown has compared himself to former President Donald Trump running afoul of what he calls the Republican elite who will do anything to keep him from office. Other ads have Drown questioning the plea bargaining system in the common pleas court and citing specific cases where charges were lowered or less than the maximum sentence was issued. The radio ads and videos of Drown addressing allegations against him can be found on his campaign's Facebook page.

The Coshocton County Republican Party, which endorsed Batchelor, has sponsored a website questioning Drown's morals and ethics while listing ways it believes he has failed as an attorney, businessman and politician.

Judge Robert Batchelor of Coshocton County Common Pleas Court

Why run for office?

Despite controversy surrounding the race, both candidates said they are running for office as they want the best for Coshocton County and it's residents.

Batchelor said he feels being judge is the best way he can serve the community. This includes protecting the rule of law and U.S. Constitution. Accomplishments from his time as judge includes starting a drug court in 2015 and creating a probation department in 2019. Prior the court used two parole officers on loan from the state.

"Even though I was a trial lawyer in that very courtroom for my entire career, the moment I took the bench for the first time in 2011 is when I fully realized the impact a judge has on the lives of the people who come before the court," he said. "Every decision impacts the very place where I live, work and raise a family. I believe that Ive been part of something bigger than I expected by being part of a great team that continues to make Coshocton County safer and better for everyone."

Drown said he's mainly running because he feels the plea bargaining system in the local court is broken and leads to offenders not being punished to the fullest extent. He was a victim of assault at the age of 18 and understands what victims go through, but he also feels protecting the greater good needs considered.

"I understand what victims go through and I understand how important it is to listen to their story and not discount what they went through. Nevertheless, we cannot allow victims to compromise public safety by demanding minimum sentences of 10 years or less for child rapists and predators. That does not protect other families and their children," he said.

William Todd Drown

Goals for office

If elected, Drown said he would examine speeding up the civil docket, which could include making the magistrate position full time and sharing the post with juvenile court. He would also require everyone who works for the court or courthouse to disclose names of relatives and other potential conflicts of interest to avoid improper influence or connection to certain factions.

"I want justice in this county to be truly blind so the punishment always fits the crime and not the person. I will reign in the abusive plea bargain process and crazy sweetheart sentences given out by our local court to violent criminals," Drown said. "I say this to violent criminals and those who traffic in heroin and fentanyl and other such drugs, you will do serious time for these serious crimes if I am elected judge."

Batchelor agreed the drug epidemic is a major local issue and he feels he's done well in sentencing drug offenders. However, he said it takes more than prison terms to make the community safer and one has to ask what happens when someone is released. In his next term if elected, Batchelor wants to create a re-entry program for those returning to the community from prison.

"The law says people leaving prison are returned to the county that sentenced them to prison. Like it or not, this is the law. When these Coshocton County residents are released, the only thing they get from the prison warden is $75 and a pat on the back. Its no wonder when people get out of prison, with nowhere to live, no job, no family and no future, they end up back on the street using drugs. Eventually they start selling drugs and the story goes on," he said. "By establishing a re-entry program with the help of community leaders, we can assist offenders in leading productive lives that will make our community safer."

Leonard Hayhurst is a community content coordinator and general news reporter for the Coshocton Tribune with close to 15 years of local journalism experience and multiple awards from the Ohio Associated Press. He can be reached at 740-295-3417 or llhayhur@coshoctontribune.com. Follow him on Twitter at @llhayhurst.

The Drown File

William Todd drown is past solicitor for the villages of Gann, Fredericktown, Edison and Warsaw; current village solicitor for Conesville and Nellie; municipal court prosecutor for Edison; past special counsel for villages of Sparta, Utica, Centerburg and Centerburg School District; past legal counsel for Walhonding Valley Fire District and Coshocton County Habitat for Humanity; current legal counsel for Coshocton County Board of Realtors; and past interim executive director for the Coshocton County Metropolitan Housing Authority. Drown has owned Fidelity Title and Closing Services Agency for 25 years.

He has worked for the United States Department of State in Washington D.C.; U.S. embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica; Rep. John Boehner; capital crimes division of the Ohio Attorney General's Office under Betty Montgomery; U.S. Department of Justice Office of the U.S. Trustee Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Trustee for the Southern District of Ohio. He also served as a campaign aide and White House Advance Team for Ohio for President George H.W. Bush. He's a member of the NRA.

Drown's office has supported 4-H activities at the Coshocton County Fair, sponsored a holiday lighting contest and six families every Christmas. His office donates to programs of the Coshocton County Career Center and does work for local churches, pastors and charities at little to no charge.

The Batchelor File

Bob Batchelor has served as Coshocton County Common Pleas Court Judge since 2011. This followed his service as the Coshocton County Prosecutor from 2001 to 2010. He and his wife Shelley have been married 26 years and have raised two sons. The couple are involved with their church, the Coshocton County Public Library and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Batchelor was awarded distinction from the Ohio State Bar Foundation for his work with Big Brothers Big Sisters, Kiwanis Club and the American Cancer Society. He is a member of the NRA and the Coshocton Gun Club.

This article originally appeared on Coshocton Tribune: Coshocton judge race turns into bitter, personal fight
The parents dropping off their young children at Kiddie Campus Childcare Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas consider themselves lucky.

Britni Nunez makes $17.50 an hour in a chicken plant. She and her husband, a factory worker, spend $250 a week to send baby Zania here. "We both work," she told correspondent Rita Braver, "so if we didn't have child care, one of us would have to stay home.  If it was just me paying, it'd be half my check every week."

And it is also hard for Robin Slaton, who is trying to keep Kiddie Campus afloat: "Yeah, it's just been a struggle," she said.

As the owner of this facility, she faced financial problem before COVID. Then when the virus hit and enrollment dropped, she had to begin letting teachers go. "I started with laying some off," Slaton said. "Then my leadership team. I just couldn't afford the higher-paid employees."

Braver asked, "As COVID started to ease up, did parents want to send their kids back?"

"The issue was not the number of kids that we could enroll; we have a waiting list, over 50 children," Slaton said. "Five of our classrooms are closed, because we cannot find teachers to hire."

"Why can't you find more teachers?"

"It is the low wages that we pay. Then we have Hobby Lobby paying $18 an hour with some benefits, and we just can't match that."

In contrast to the craft and hobby chain, Slaton says she can only afford to pay her employees an average of $13 an hour without raising prices beyond what families she serves can afford. So, she is trapped in a vicious cycle.

And she is not alone.

"There is a crisis for American children, their families and the child care workers," said Lea Austin, who runs the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkley. She said many other countries offer all parents some subsidized childcare for young children. But things in the U.S. have gone from bad to worse.

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Braver asked, "What did the pandemic do to the availability of child care?"

"We have lost about 16,000 child care programs across the country, about 131,00 jobs," Austin replied.

Federal Emergency COVID Relief Funds did provide $39 billion to support child care, helping struggling centers and some parents, like Rikael Franklin. She works as a caregiver at Kiddie Campus, and as an "essential worker" now gets vouchers to pay for her two children, who are enrolled here. But when that money runs out, she said, "If I didn't have vouchers, I don't think I would be able to work, because my whole check would go straight back to them."

President Biden's Build Back Better plan would offer permanent help with child care costs. But that legislation is stalled, and Mari Slinker, an essential worker in a food production factory, whose four-year-old daughter comes to Kiddie Campus, says that if the vouchers go, it will mean struggle: "More overtime, less time with my daughter."

But there may be even more bad news on the horizon. Kiddie Campus owner Robin Slaton said she can no longer keep fighting to make ends meet. "I've actually decided, after 24 years, that it is my best interest of my health to put this childcare center up for sale," she said.

She plans to start an organization to help day cares across the country lobby for more support. But in the meantime, if she cannot sell Kidde Campus, she said she will be forced to shut down. "And I feel bad saying that, because I know the community needs it."

And Mari Slinker fears the worst for families like hers: "Stress, more stress, more worries  that constant wondering, is my kid okay today?"

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Lea Austin on the crisis in child care today

For more info:

Kiddie Campus Childcare Center, Fayetteville, Ark. (Facebook)Lea J.E. Austin, co-director, Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California, BerkeleyChange for Early Childhood Education

Story produced by Sari Aviv. Editor: Chad Cardin.

Full interview: Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan

U.S. races to arm Ukraine to brace for battle in the east

Zelenskyy pushes for more arms ahead of visit from top U.S. officials
Hello again, Dallas! Important update: You all, as readers, have made the Dallas Daily so successful that it is my honor to announce the next stage of the newsletter. Patch is looking for a local writer and entrepreneur to take the helm of the Dallas Daily. Although I have loved getting to know this community, we want to pass the torch to someone truly local to write about Dallas long term. So if youre interested in earning extra income while making this newsletter a more valuable resource for your neighbors, learn more and apply here.

First, today's weather:

Some rain and a thunderstorm. High: 65 Low: 53.

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Here are the top three stories in Dallas today:

Dallas city leaders held an Eviction Clinic at the Oak Cliff Government Center on Saturday. The clinic was meant to assist Dallas residents with getting financial assistance to avoid eviction. The city leaders reportedly hope to hold more Eviction Clinics in different Dallas communities in the future. (NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth) The Dallas City Council is currently reviewing a proposed ordinance that would ban panhandlers and pedestrians from occupying traffic medians. The ordinance would issue Class C misdemeanors to anyone breaking the ban. Supporters of the ordinance claim that the issue is one of public safety. (KERA News) A property in West Dallas has been torn down, despite community efforts to preserve its connection to Bonnie and Clyde. The Dallas Landmark Commission was working to preserve the property, small home and former filling station, but the COVID-19 pandemic suspended the designation process. Dallas City Councilman Omar Narvaez reportedly wants the city to conduct an investigation into the property's destruction. (FOX 4 News Dallas-Fort Worth)

Today in Dallas:

The Market At The Dallas Farmers Market (All Day)

Story continues

From my notebook:

Did you know that the Nile Crocodile has over 60 teeth? Click to learn more about Nile Crocodiles with the Dallas Zoo. (Facebook)

The City of Dallas is unveiling ceremonial sign toppers on Apr. 28 at the Lakewest Storefront. (Twitter)

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Now you're in the loop and ready to start this Monday! See you all tomorrow morning for another update.

 Nicole Fallon-Peek

About me: Nicole Fallon-Peek is a journalist and copywriter with a degree in Media, Culture and Communication from New York University. She has served as a freelance reporter, managing editor, copy editor, and editorial director for a variety of B2B news outlets. She currently co-owns and operates content creation agency Lightning Media Partners.

This article originally appeared on the Dallas Patch
Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) on Sunday said she hopes President Biden will eventually visit Ukraine and meet with that countrys president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

I hope President Biden will actually someday to make here to meet with President Zelensky, Spartz, the first Ukrainian-born member of Congress, told co-anchor Dana Bash on CNNs State of the Union.

Spartz noted that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Ukraine to meet with Zelensky earlier this month amid the war with Russia.

We definitely can arrange for our people to come here and visit Ukrainians, she said.

Spartz is the latest individual to call for Biden to visit Ukraine amid the conflict.

Zelensky and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba last week both expressed an interest in having Biden travel to the country. The Biden administration, however, has said sending the president to Ukraine is not an option.

On Saturday, Zelensky said We will be expecting, when the security will allow, the President of the United States to come and to talk to us, according to CNN.

Spartzs comments come the same day Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will travel to Ukraine. The U.S. has not confirmed the trip, but Zelensky said they are slated to visit the war-torn country.

Asked by Bash on Sunday if Blinkin and Austin visiting Ukraine sends a strong enough message of solidarity from the U.S. government, Spartz said I think its important.

Im glad to see some of our elected officials do come here because, you know, our people do support this fight and its important for us to be on the ground and shows that, you know, our country stands with the people of Ukraine, Spartz said.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
The plane I flew on when island-hopping in Hawaii was meant for 10 passengers. Ashley Probst

I grew up in Hawaii, and I flew from Maui to the Big Island of Hawaii on a 40-minute flight.

The booking was inadvertently made on a 10-seater commuter plane for only $66.

The flight was like an affordable aerial tour of both islands, which was worth the turbulence.

While growing up on Maui, I often visited family on neighboring islands and quickly became accustomed to the quick flight.

Me being driven from Lahaina to the airport in Kahului. Ashley Probst

On these short flights, the plane takes off, flight attendants hand out juice, and, by the time they start collecting the trash, you're already starting to come in for a landing.

Many flights from island to island usually cost around $100 and are on Boeing aircrafts with about 30 or so rows of five seats.

But I recently had a different experience when I island-hopped from Maui to the Big Island so I could spend the day at Hapuna Beach.

I had inadvertently booked the flight on a 10-seater commuter plane  and my ticket only cost $66.

Here's what it was like to experience this scenic 40-minute flight:

During the drive to the airport, I got to see wildlife, like whales and butterflies.

I could see a butterfly and a couple of whales off in the distance. Ashley Probst

The time it takes to get from my house to the airport is about 35 minutes, which is only a slightly shorter trip than the flight itself.

While driving along Honoapiilani Highway, which meanders along the west coast of Maui, there were plenty of opportunities to spot whales and other wildlife.

I arrived at the airport over an hour before my departure time.

The welcome sign at Kahului Airport. Ashley Probst

I normally get to the airport a maximum of two hours early but felt I could get away with a shorter time frame since it's a small airport that I know very well.

But I soon realized that I didn't know the airport as well as I thought.

The commuter terminal at Kahului Airport, which is in a separate building from the main airport. Ashley Probst

After being dropped off at departures, I wandered around for about 10 minutes trying to find Mokulele Airlines, which is a Southern Airways company.

Finally, I swallowed my pride and asked an employee for help. I was informed that my terminal was on the other side of the airport. It was also in a completely separate building that I didn't even know existed.

Story continues

I'd flown on commuter planes before, but only ever out of the even smaller airport in Kapalua, so I just assumed that was the island's hub for those types of flights.

All passengers had to stand in line to check in for our flights.

The check-in counter at Mokulele Airlines. Ashley Probst

This is because we were required to check all of our bags, since there's nowhere to store them in the passenger area. There aren't overhead bins and there's no extra space under the seats.

We also had to disclose our weight so the airline could ensure the distribution was even throughout the plane.

There was no security check to go through, so I found a seat in the open-air terminal to wait for my boarding call.

A view of the West Maui Mountains from the commuter terminal. Ashley Probst

I wasn't exactly sure how to feel about the lack of security, but it was convenient to not have to go through that step, so I rolled with it.

The terminal didn't have much inside.

A lounge area in the commuter terminal with vending machines. Ashley Probst

I found a couple of vending machines with drinks and snacks, but sadly no coffee, so I decided to wait and pick something up after arriving at my destination.

Once they announced our plane was ready to board, the pilot met us in the terminal and gave us our seat assignments.

The artwork on this commuter plane featured a depiction of Pele, the Hawaiian creation goddess, on its tail. Ashley Probst

Everyone on the flight then walked out onto the tarmac together and boarded the commuter plane, which doubled as a beautiful Hawaii-themed work of art.

The plane's tail had a gorgeous depiction of Pele, the Hawaiian creation goddess.

As expected, the plane was tiny both inside and out.

The "low ceiling" sign posted in the cabin was no joke. Ashley Probst

I'm 5-foot-3 and had to bend over at what felt like a 90-degree angle in order to get to my seat.

The seat belts were a little different than on standard passenger planes.

Me, fully buckled in with my seat belt, and ready for takeoff. Ashley Probst

In addition to the lap belt, there was a secondary one that went over our shoulders so we would be extra secure while strapped in.

Before taking off, our pilot hopped out and appeared to fix something on the wing.

Our pilot seemingly needed to adjust something on the plane before takeoff. Ashley Probst

I have no clue what he was doing, though it looked like he was tightening something.

Better safe than sorry, I suppose, though my anxiety didn't quite agree at the time.

Still, we were taxiing on the runway only about five minutes after boarding.

My view from the third row of our 10-seater plane shortly after takeoff. Ashley Probst

And once we were in the air, the views were spectacular.

A majority of the flight was essentially a tour of Maui's north shore.

One of my favorite shots from the flight  a view overlooking the Maui Country Club in Paia. Ashley Probst

The pilots didn't also serve as guides, so it was more of a self-guided tour based on the passengers' collective knowledge of where we were flying over.

Halfway through the flight, I noticed that the aviation GPS was in my line of sight.

My view of the aeronautical chart from my seat on the plane. Ashley Probst

This added to the intimate experience since you can't normally see into the cockpit. It gave me an idea of where we were as well as our flight path.

Some of my favorite views were of the Road to Hana and various waterfalls that connected with the ocean.

A view of the Road to Hana. Ashley Probst

I could see the Road to Hana, one of the most beautiful highways in the world, from my seat.

It runs from Kipahulu to Kaupo on Maui, is about 64 miles long, and is known for being dangerous.

Even the cloud cover was absolutely stunning.

White, puffy clouds covered Maui. Ashley Probst

I felt like I was literally on cloud nine  if only it were possible to get out and take a nap on one of them.

Once we reached the island's edge, I shifted my focus to try to spot some more whales.

The view as we flew over the east edge of Maui toward the Big Island. Ashley Probst

This was much harder than I thought it would be from above, as it really just looked like the ocean was covered in white caps.

That said, I can say with the utmost confidence that we did fly over many whales, whether we actually saw them or not.

It was also a little nerve-racking being above the open ocean during the flight, but I tried to stay calm.

When we started to descend, the turbulence actually gave me a welcomed sense of nostalgia.

Our plane coming in for a landing on the Big Island. Ashley Probst

My dad has always loved flying on commuter planes and I remember him speaking about the turbulence, saying, "This is more fun than the rides at Disneyland!"

That said, the turbulence wasn't as intense as I expected it to be considering it was a windy day.

Our final view was of what locals call "brownie brittle."

You don't want to try taking a bite of this brownie brittle. Ashley Probst

It is an affectionate nickname for the miles and miles of lava rock that is especially prominent in Kona, which is on the west side of the Big Island.

We landed almost exactly 40 minutes after takeoff and, before we deplaned, all of the passengers took a group photo.

All 10 passengers of our commuter flight to the Big Island. Ashley Probst

I asked them to take the picture  and felt a little awkward doing so  but they were happy to oblige, as was the pilot who snapped the shot.

Before I left the airport, I took one more picture of the plane.

Another side of the commuter plane. Ashley Probst

I discovered more beautiful artwork on the other side of the aircraft, which was a lovely way to end the journey.

Overall, this intimate flying experience was top tier.

Me in front of the commuter plane after landing in Kona. Ashley Probst

The smaller terminal was convenient and the plane was fast and efficient.

The $66 ride is worth it for the views alone  especially since helicopter tours of the same area cost hundreds of dollars. I'd choose to travel on another commuter plane over the standard ones any day.

Read the original article on Insider
A Melbourne lawyer engaged in billing shenanigans with clients, didnt notify those clients of $15,000 in settlement funds and paid himself with that money. He, then, sued those clients alleging breach of contract damages of $100 million.

What he did with the $15,000 earned George Ollinger III an emergency suspension in January 2021. What Ollinger did afterwards got him disbarred last month after being a member of the Florida Bar since 1977.

What can sound at times like a first season episode of Better Call Saul starts in Palm Bays Sunrise Mobile Home Park four years ago.

A Florida lawyer had a habit of practicing while suspended or, essentially, disbarred

Death and attorneys fees

What follows comes from the referees report on Ollingers original discipline case.

Claudia and Nandallal Rameshwar lived in the mobile park, but didnt get along with management. After a dispute with the manager, Claudia Rameshwar claimed she was injured and hired Ollinger to for a personal injury lawsuit on Jan. 20, 2018. Ollingers fees would be contingent on the lawsuits result.

A charge of felony aggravated assault on Feb. 7, 2018 gave Claudia Rameshwar another reason to need an attorney, so she hired Ollinger for a $3,500 flat fee. But Claudia Rameshwar died during heart surgery on Feb. 18, 2018, heart surgery that her husband and her adult daughters blamed on her fights with Sunrise Mobile Home Park management.

They hired Ollinger for a wrongful death lawsuit against the manager and Sunrise Mobile Home Park, attorney fees contingent on the lawsuits result. They also hired him for probate work on Rameshwars estate, preventing Nandallal Rameshwar from being evicted from Sunrise and a lawsuit against Minnesota Life Insurance for not paying the claim after Claudia Rameshwars death.

Ollinger thought he could get Sunrise with a class action lawsuit for predatory behavior via unfair evictions. He sent 399 form letters to Sunrise homeowners and billed the Rameshwars for the time his paralegal spent interviewing some of those owners.

Story continues

A Florida Bar audit would show that on June 18, 2018, Ollinger put a $10,000 check from Geico for Claudia Rameshwars estate in his trust account. The memo on the check said for underinsured motorist coverage. He did the same with a $5,000 check from Geico. The memo said for personal injury protection and death benefits.

Ollingers paralegal emailed the Rameshwars about the $10,000 four days before Ollinger deposited the check. But, there was no similar notification about the $5,000. Also, Ollinger never got a signed closing statement from the Rameshwars before he moved $14,820 of the money from his trust account to his operating account.

By Jan. 28, 2019, all the Geico money was gone from the operating account and all the withdrawals from that account were for Ollingers law firm or Ollinger.

Ollinger, the only signatory on that operating account, later claimed the Geico money stayed in the account until July 8, 2019 even in the face of bank statements showing the operating account overdrawn on Jan. 28, 2019. What an audit found was that he transferred $15,000 back into the trust account from his operating account.

READ MORE: South Florida lawyers suspended for attempted murder charges, helping a paralyzed child

Paperwork and a paralegal/paramour

Even after the Rameshwars dropped Ollinger as an attorney, he continued to file pleadings on behalf of Claudia Rameshwars estate and attempted to have who the referee called his paralegal/paramour installed as the estates personal representative.

In November 2018, Ollinger filed a lawsuit against Nandallal Rameshwar and his late wifes adult daughter for breach of contract, alleging breach of various fee agreements. He added Claudia Rameshwars estate as a defendant in November 2019. Thats the $100 million lawsuit.

Meanwhile, as the lawsuit against Minnesota Life Insurance proceeded in federal court, Ollinger didnt file a motion for permission to withdraw, but did try to substitute his paralegal as the plaintiff instead of Claudia Rameshwars estate.

The federal magistrate court eventually issued an order removing Ollinger as counsel for the estate.

Suspension and disbarment

The Florida Bar petitioned the state Supreme Court for an emergency suspension of Ollinger in January 2021 because he appears to be causing great public harm by engaging in patterns of misconduct, including, but not limited to, the following: misappropriating clients funds, commingling attorney and clients funds, and engaging in conflicts of interest.

The court granted the Bars request. But, a Bar petition for contempt said, Ollinger kept engaging in email communications as counsel for the opposing party in a Broward County divorce case in April 2021.

The referees report on the previous matter recommended Ollinger be disbarred. The contempt of court case just added weight. Combined, the two crushed Ollingers law career.
Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Doug Lute said on Sunday that the latest U.S. military aid package to Ukraine can make a real difference as Ukrainian forces battle invading Russian troops.

During an appearance on ABCs This Week, moderator Martha Raddatz asked Lute about the Biden administration sending another $800 million in military aid to Ukraine.

Lute referred to the aid package as a real difference maker, adding that it will close the quantitative gap between the two sides.

That can make a real difference because this begins to close the quantitative gap between the Ukrainians and the Russians. In fact, some estimates are now that the Ukrainians have as many tanks on the battlefield as the Russians, Lute told Raddatz.

If not more, right? Raddatz asked.

If not more, Lute, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, responded.

Now, the reality here is that many of the tanks that Ukrainians now have are the ones deserted or abandoned by the Russians, he said. So this imbalance in quantitative factors like tanks and artillery and so forth is beginning to get righted in the in the favor of the Ukrainians.

President Biden announced Thursday that the U.S. would send another $800 million military aid package to Ukrainian forces fighting Russian troops in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Lute on Sunday also said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is looking at more opportunities to capture other cities and areas in Ukraine after Russian forces abandoned an attempt to take Kyiv earlier this month.

I think theyre still looking for opportunities to figure out what their goals are. Theyre sort of making it up as they go along, Lute said. Putin is trying to access what might be possible. Hes looking for opportunities and hell grab the first good one available. Right now there dont seem to be many good opportunities for Vladimir Putin.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Former President Donald Trump addressed supporters at a rally in Delaware, Ohio, on Saturday night.

In addition to remarks from Trump, other Republicans running for election in the state were set to speak at the event being held at the Delaware County Fairgrounds ahead of the states May 3 primary.

Former President Donald Trump speaks to crowd gathered at the Lorain County Fair Grounds in Wellington, Ohio, United States on June 26, 2021. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

OHIO TRUMP RALLY: FORMER PRESIDENT'S BACKING MAY PROPEL VANCE TO VICTORY, INDICATE POWER OF HIS ENDORSEMENT

Trump's visit to the state comes after his endorsement of Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance. The former president backed Vance for the GOP Senate nomination in Ohio after top candidates jockeyed for his support for months. Rivals Mike Gibbons, Jane Timken and Josh Mandel  all advised and endorsed by at least some Trump-world regulars  sparred with Vance and each other about whose support for Trump was more genuine.

JD Vance, co-founder of Narya Capital Management LLC and U.S. Republican Senate candidate for Ohio, speaks during a campaign event in Huber Heights, Ohio, U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 17, 2022. Gaelen Morse/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The event was slated to include speeches from Vance and Rep. Mike Carey, R-Ohio, as well as congressional candidates Max Miller and Madison Gesiotto Gilbert. The announced speakers have all received a Trump endorsement.

"Heading to Ohio for a big rally tonight, great crowd," Trump said in a statement before the event. "See you there!"

Prior to the rally on Saturday, Trump announced his endorsement of Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose for reelection. "Frank is dedicated to Secure Elections  the most important work he can do  with every legal vote counted, no ballot harvesting, and all votes counted on Election Day," Trump said of LaRose's work.

Fox News' Tyler Olson contributed to this article.
WASHINGTON  French President Emmanuel Macron cruised to a second term Sunday, beating back a stronger-than-expected challenge from a far-right populist who has attacked the European Union and NATO and expressed support for Russia.

I am no longer the candidate of one side, but instead the president for all," Macron told cheering supporters who gathered near the Eiffel Tower to celebrate his reelection and the defeat of challenger Marine Le Pen.

In a rematch of the 2017 presidential election, Macron led Le Pen with more than 58% of the vote, according to projected results from the French news media, working with national pollsters.

Le Pen conceded shortly after the announced projection. She noted that she improved her performance from five years ago and will now concentrate on legislative elections for her party.

"The game is not completely over," she told supporters.

Five years ago, Macron defeated Le Pen with more than 66% of the vote.

Macron, 44, who built his own political party to run for president in 2017, won again despite a first term beset by protests against his economic policies, the COVID-19 pandemic and, most recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine that roiled diplomatic relations across the globe.

French President Emmanuel Macron is pictured in Paris after winning re-election, defeating far-right candidate Marine Le Pen for a second five-year term as president.

In his victory speech, Macron acknowledged that French voters had expressed "anger" and he must now respond effectively.

Macron's reelection also dealt a setback to the populist movements that have upended politics across the Western world, from Brexit to the successes of Viktor Orban in Hungary and Donald Trump in the United States.

When one puts back together your project brick by brick, its a project thats about getting out of the EU, even if it doesnt explicitly say so," Macron told Le Pen in their last debate.

US and EU officials relieved

American and European government officials greeted news of Macron's reelection with relief. Some analysts in the United States pointed out Macron won despite approval ratings of less than 40%  about the same as President Joe Biden, who is contemplating a reelection run of his own in 2024.

Story continues

"An interesting observation, just FYI," tweeted White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. "President Macron appears to have secured a double-digit victory over LePen, at a time when his approval rating is 36%. Hmmm...."

Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, pointed out that another prominent European populist  Slovenia Prime Minister Janez Jansa  faced defeat on Sunday, according to vote projections.

Those losses could be "a giant victory for the renewal of democratic values in Europe and a huge setback for populist nationalism," McFaul said. "Maybe the global tide is turning?"

Others pointed out that Le Pen did better in this French election than the one five years ago, and the conservative populist movement still has to be taken seriously in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Le Pen herself told supporters that "more than ever I will continue my work for the French."

STATE OF THE RACE: Emmanuel Macron vs Marine Le Pen: France votes in tense presidential runoff

FIRST ROUND:Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen fight for French presidency

Far-right Le Pen came out strong after first round

Le Pen had come within 5 percentage points of Macron in the first round of voting two weeks ago, fanning fears of an ultranationalistic turn in French politics. Le Pen has long espoused an anti-immigrant agenda, and in this campaign, she called for banning Muslim women from wearing headscarves in public.

In a Friday interview on BFM television in France, Macron cast the election as a choice "between leaving or not leaving Europe" and "abandoning or not abandoning the secular republic.

Le Pen, echoing the arguments of anti-globalists across the continent, said France had surrendered its sovereignty to multilateral organizations like the EU and NATO.

In the runup to Sunday's election, French voters expressed anxiety over issues that have also shaped politics in the United States and elsewhere: inflation, a sluggish economy, fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Macron and Le Pen finished as the top two candidates from a crowded field after the first round of voting two weeks ago. In a closer-than-expected margin, Macron finished with 27.85% of the vote, and Le Pen with 23.15%.

The narrow margin prompted more political activity by Macron, who had focused on his government job and did very little campaigning before that first round.

Polls in recent days showed Macron expanding his lead, but the French president warned supporters not to take anything for granted.

Macron and Russia's war in Ukraine

Macron has played a key role in organizing the Western response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, promoting military assistance to the Ukrainians and economic sanctions on President Vladimir Putin's government.

Le Pen has been sympathetic to Putin and Russia, and a victory by her would have been a big propaganda victory for Putin's government.

Macron played on Le Pen's ties to Russia during the campaign, telling her in one debate: When you speak to Russia, you are speaking to your banker." He also said her anti-Muslim policies would trigger a "civil war" in France.

After her loss in the 2017 presidential election, Le Pen sought to soften her image. She reversed her longtime opposition to the euro, the EU's currency, and changed the national party from the "National Front" to "National Rally."

LE PEN'S AGENDA:Marine Le Pen's far-right vision: Retooling France at home, abroad

ATTACKS ON MACRON:French President Emmanuel Macron slapped in the face while touring small village

This time around, Le Pen focused more on the economic anxiety expressed by many French voters. One of her targets: Macron's plan to raise the pension age from 62 to 65.

The challenger said she wanted to "give the French their money back.

A Le Pen victory would have meant drastic changes for the French and their relationship with the EU and NATO, organizations with close ties to the United States. France is the EU's second-largest economy and has nuclear weapons.

Now Macron gets a second term for his more global agenda.

Historian Simon Schama tweeted that it "looks like those endlessly repetitive self-feeding newspaper predictions that this would be a nailbiter because France hated Macron so much and Le Pen now so reassuring were all massively mistaken."

The results of the French election are a victory for the EU, NATO and their U.S. allies, but also a warning that the populism of those like Le Pen is not dead.

Le Pen got a higher vote total than five years ago, noted Benjamin Haddad, the senior director of the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council. Estimated voter turnout Sunday was less than 65%, low by French standards.

"There is discontent," Haddad said. "There is anger. There is anger at the cost of living."

Macron rallied his candidacy with a strong debate showing last week, he said and seems ready to continue pursuing a "reformist liberal agenda.

"There are things he will have to address," Haddad said. "He is aware of that."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Emmanuel Macron wins reelection as French president over Marine Le Pen
Christopher Rufo, conservative activist, in Tacoma, Wash., on Tuesday, April 19, 2022. (Chona Kasinger/The New York Times)

GIG HARBOR, Wash.  Christopher Rufo appears on Fox News so often that he converted a room in his Pacific Northwest house to a television studio, complete with professional lighting, an uplink to Fox in New York and an On Air light in the hall so his wife and two children dont barge in during broadcasts.

Ill do Tucker and then pop out and have dinner, Rufo said recently at his home in Gig Harbor, Washington, thousands of miles from the nations media and political capitals.

Rufo is the conservative activist who probably more than any other person made critical race theory a rallying cry on the right  and who has become, to some on the left, an agitator of intolerance. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a right-leaning think tank, he has emerged at the front of another explosive cultural clash, one that he sees as even more politically potent and that the left views as just as dangerous: the battle over LGBTQ restrictions in schools.

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Rufo has taken aim at opponents of a new Florida law that prohibits teachers in some grades from discussing LGBTQ issues and that critics call Dont Say Gay. He declared moral war against the statutes most prominent adversary, the Walt Disney Co. And he has used the same playbook that proved effective in his crusade on racial issues: a leak of insider documents.

On Tucker Carlson Tonight, Rufo shared video last month of an internal Disney meeting where a producer spoke of adding queerness to an animated series and mentioned, tongue-in-cheek, her not-at-all-secret gay agenda.

To conservatives, the video was proof that Disney was sexualizing children.

Weve caught them on tape and the evidence is damning, Rufo declared. The story ricocheted through the conservative media ecosystem. Fox News alone ran dozens of segments critical of Disney.

On Friday, Rufo appeared with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at the signing of a bill known as the Stop WOKE Act, which bars teaching in workplaces and schools that anyone is inherently biased or privileged because of race or sex. Rufo, who consulted on the bill, warned Disney that an in-house program it had run that urged discussion of systemic racism was now illegal in the state of Florida.

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The signing was the culmination of Rufos long campaign to short-circuit corporate and school efforts at diversity and inclusion training. He has acknowledged twisting hot-button racial issues to achieve his aims. The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think critical race theory, he wrote on Twitter last year.

Friday was also a milestone in Rufos latest fixation. As he looked on, DeSantis signed a second measure abolishing Disneys special tax status in the state.

The retaliation against Disney emerged after its opposition to the Parental Rights in Education law, signed by DeSantis last month, which bans classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity for children below fourth grade, and limits it in older grades. The anti-LGBTQ statute is part of a political brawl unfolding in an election year as both parties try to excite their bases. Republican lawmakers in multiple states have proposed measures similar to Floridas.

Rufo is convinced that a fight over LGBTQ curriculums  which he calls gender ideology  has even more potential to spur a political backlash than the debate over how race and American history are taught.

The reservoir of sentiment on the sexuality issue is deeper and more explosive than the sentiment on the race issues, he said.

Critics of Rufo, and of the broader right-wing push on LGBTQ issues, say the attacks represent a new era of moral panic, one with echoes of slanders from decades ago that gay teachers were a threat to children. Some champions of Floridas law, including Christina Pushaw, DeSantis press secretary, have labeled their opponents groomers  adults who want to sexually pursue children.

Donald Moynihan, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University, said conservatives had falsely and intentionally linked child sex predators with opponents of the Florida law. Rufo, he said, had provided fuel for their arguments.

This is the stock-in-trade of Rufos brand of activism  creating these very negative brands and then associating things that might have much more popular support with those brands to put people on the defensive, Moynihan said. Thats the through line you see between the CRT stuff and the current groomer effort.

After Rufo released the Disney employee videos, he shared mug shots on Twitter of Disney workers who had been charged in child sexual abuse cases over the years, based in part on CNN reporting from 2014.

He failed to note, in an article he wrote about the arrests for City Journal, a publication of the Manhattan Institute, that none of the cases in the CNN report involved children at Disneys parks. Nor did he include Disneys response to CNN that the arrests were one one-hundredth of 1% of the 300,000 people we have employed during this time period.

In another article for City Journal, Rufo claimed that American schools were hunting grounds for teachers, and that parents have good reason to worry about grooming in public schools.

He cited data from a decades-old survey, in a study for the Education Department, but he omitted the studys declaration that the vast majority of schools in America are safe places.

Charlie Sykes, a founder of The Bulwark, a political site for anti-Trump conservatives, said Rufos association with the Manhattan Institute provided intellectual cover for flawed and inflammatory work.

It gives him this veneer of being a conservative scholar, Sykes said. He basically says, Anything you dont like about race becomes CRT. Now, all of your anxieties about sexuality or gender become grooming.

Reihan Salam, president of the Manhattan Institute, defended Rufos work for giving voice to parents concerns about the ideological climate in public schools, specifically a lack of transparency over the teaching of contentious subjects.

Rufo denied that he had broadly equated opponents of the Florida law with groomers. Its wrong, factually and morally, to accuse someone of being a groomer with no basis and evidence, he said.

Its become a powerful word that should be used with great responsibility, he added. Nevertheless, some LGBTQ people have reported an increase in harassment as the use of the term has surged online, echoing the QAnon conspiracy theorys fixation on a cabal of deep state Democratic pedophiles.

Rufo, 37, lives and works in Gig Harbor, a picturesque boating town on Puget Sound south of Seattle. A former documentary filmmaker and, briefly, an unsuccessful candidate for Seattles City Council, he burst on the scene in 2020 by publicizing examples of diversity trainings in government that seemed to have gone off the rails, such as asking bureaucrats to examine their complicity in the system of white supremacy. Diversity trainings, long a fixture in government and corporate America, typically support the idea that peoples unconscious biases involving race and gender can create hostile work environments.

His reporting in City Journal and posts on social media electrified readers, who leaked him more documents from anti-bias and diversity seminars.

Perusing footnotes, he discovered the field of critical race theory. Originally a graduate-level academic thesis before conservatives turned it into political shorthand for a variety of teachings on race, it holds that racism is systemic in American institutions, not just a matter of individual bigotry.

Appearing on Carlsons Fox show in 2020, Rufo urged President Donald Trump to abolish critical race theory trainings in the government.

The next day, he said, he received a call from Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, telling him that Trump had seen him on Fox, and asking him to consult on an executive order. Framed in his home, Rufo has the pen that Trump used to sign the order, and a handwritten card from the White House: Who says one person cant make a difference?!

Although President Joe Biden quickly revoked the order, critical race theory became a volatile political issue as Rufo and allies accused school systems of indoctrinating K-12 students.

The evidence was often thin, typically focusing on diversity training for teachers. But even as critics on the left called the attacks a diversion meant to exploit white grievances, the messaging resonated with many parents, who were already angry at school administrators about pandemic-imposed closures.

Critical race theory  and a broader parents rights movement  helped drive Republican victories in school board elections and the Virginia governors race last year. Seventeen states have passed laws or issued orders to restrict critical race theory or limit how public-school teachers can discuss racism and sexism, according to Education Week.

Taking this issue and educating 175 million American adults in a very short period of time, its an astonishing thing, Rufo said.

His advocacy has been financially rewarding. Besides his Manhattan Institute position, he has a newsletter with 2,500 paid subscribers, and he runs a nonprofit entity to support his work, which he said had received over $500,000 in donations since late last year.

Rufo said he thought a great deal about selecting the right language to define what he opposed. A fan of postmodernist thinkers, he refers to the importance of meta-narratives. He said that to maximize voters anxieties about gender issues, he plans to write a series of articles on classroom practices he deems outrageous.

You have to provide the vocabulary for people to talk about gender issues, he said. Once that happens, its going to be explosive.

State Sen. Shevrin D. Jones of Florida, a Democrat who opposed the states classroom law, called Republicans the party of buzzwords  they use words like groomers to rally up their base.

In January, Rufo urged people to leak him documents, PDFs, audio-video and training materials related to gender, grooming and trans ideology in schools.

Three months later, as Rufo works on several projects including a book, his classroom series is still in its early stages. On Thursday, he published his first article.

 2022 The New York Times Company
Apr. 24A 19-year-old Salt Lake man was found dead with an apparent gunshot wound in Waimanalo Saturday night and Honolulu police have opened a second-degree murder investigation.

Honolulu Emergency Medical Services personnel arrived at the parking lot of a small grocery store at 41-1606 Kalanianaole Highway at about 7 :45 p.m. and found a man dead.

The man's girlfriend told police that the couple arrived at Shima's Supermarket Saturday evening and he left to get something to eat, said homicide Lt. Deena Thoemmes.

The girlfriend remained in the parking lot and when she looked up, he was on the ground, she told police, according to Thoemmes.

At the scene, a woman cried over man, saying, "I love you, " before the body was taken away at about 10 :30 p.m.

No arrests have been made as of late Saturday night.
JERUSALEM (AP)  Israels foreign minister on Sunday accused the Hamas militant group of orchestrating recent unrest at Jerusalems most sensitive holy site, responding to criticism that Israeli police used heavy-handed tactics to quell the violence.

Yair Lapid made the comments following days of clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians at the contested holy site, which is revered by Jews and Muslims. The confrontations have come at a time of heightened tensions following a string of deadly attacks inside Israel, arrest raids in the occupied West Bank and rocket attacks into Israel launched from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. It is the worst violence to shake the region since an 11-day war last year.

Speaking to foreign reporters, Lapid accused Hamas of hijacking the activities at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and encouraging young Palestinian men to throw stones and fireworks at Israeli security forces.

They have done this to create the provocation to force the Israeli police to enter the mosque and set off a regionwide conflict, he said.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third-holiest site in Islam and an emotional symbol for the Palestinians. It sits on a sprawling esplanade that also is the holiest site for Jews, who call it to the Temple Mount because it was the location of the biblical Jewish Temples. The competing claims to the site lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have sparked numerous rounds of violence in the past.

The Palestinians have accused Israel of provoking the latest violence by allowing large numbers of Jewish pilgrims to visit the site. Last week, Jews celebrated the festival of Passover, a time when tens of thousands of people visit Jerusalem.

Under longstanding agreements, Jews are permitted to visit the compound, but they are barred from praying. But in recent years, an increasing number of religious extremists have begun to quietly pray in violation of the rules, sometimes with Israeli police watching on. The Palestinians fear that such actions are part of an Israeli plot to take over or divide the site.

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Lapid rejected such accusations, saying that Israel is committed to maintaining the status quo at the site.

There is no change. There will be no change. We have no plans to divide the Temple Mount between religions, he said. He called on Israels allies in the Muslim world to act against these fake news and to help calm the situation.

Lapid also rejected suggestions that Israeli police have used excessive force to disperse the demonstrations at the Al-Aqsa site.

On Friday, Israeli riot police stormed the compound after Palestinian youths hurled stones at them. Palestinian social media have been filled with videos showing Israeli police hitting people with clubs and firing tear gas and stun grenades. Israeli police, meanwhile, have released their own videos showing Palestinians inside the mosque hurling stones and explosives.

After midday prayers on Friday, a small group of Palestinians waving Hamas flags marched in protest and tried to break into an empty police post inside the compound. Israeli police used a drone to drop tear gas on them, sending crowds of people scattering across the esplanade.

During Ramadan, Israel ensured that hundreds of thousands of Muslims could go to the Temple Mount and pray at Al-Aqsa, Lapid said. Despite provocations by terrorist organizations, despite attempts to stoke violence: We have done, and continue to do everything to enable peaceful prayer."

Despite the Israeli pledges to protect freedom of worship, it has maintained restrictions that bar entry to the mosque for hundreds of thousands of Muslim Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel says such restrictions are a security measure.

In Cairo, the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates  three countries that have full diplomatic relations with Israel  met Sunday to discuss the tensions in Jerusalem.

A statement after the talks said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates, called for calm in Jerusalem and for Israel to respect the status quo of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

They also urged Israel to stop all measures that undermine the two-state solution, and to find away to return to serious negotiations with the Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has ruled out peace talks and opposes Palestinian independence, but has pledged to reduce tensions by taking steps to improve living conditions in the West Bank and Gaza.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum blamed Israel for the violence.

The one who bears full responsibility for detonating the situation in Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque is the occupation government, which brutally attacks defenseless worshippers on a daily basis, prevents them from reaching Al-Aqsa and tries to impose the project of Judaization, he said.

The string of events in recent weeks has raised fears of a repeat of last year, when protests and violence in Jerusalem eventually boiled over, helping to ignite an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas and communal violence in mixed Jewish-Arab cities inside Israel.

The rocket fire out of Gaza in recent days has been the heaviest since last years war. None of the rockets have caused any damage or injuries inside Israel, but they have set off sirens in parts of southern Israel and angered residents there. A misfired rocket also landed inside Gaza on Friday, exploding near a home and U.N. school and lightly wounding two people, according to local officials.

On Sunday, Israel closed its crossing with Gaza, barring some 12,000 Palestinians from going to work in Israel. The job permits have been an economic lifeline for thousands of Gazan families and were considered to be a key factor in maintaining stability before the latest fighting broke out.

The Gaza workers union accused Israel of imposing collective punishment on people who were not involved in the fighting. Israel has not said when it will reopen the crossing.

___

Associated Press writers Wafaa Shurafa in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed reporting.
Jacob Rees-Mogg said some civil servants are acting as if the country is still in lockdown. (AFP via Getty Images)

Jacob Rees-Mogg has suggested civil servants who work from home could be sacked or see their pay docked.

Writing for the Mail on Sunday, Rees-Mogg accused the Civil Service - the non-political organisation responsible for implementing government policies - of acting as if it is still in lockdown.

The article shows Rees-Mogg, the government efficiency minister, is doubling down following the controversy surrounding his messages to civil servants which the public servants union branded crass and demeaning

He has reportedly been leaving notes in deserted Whitehall workspaces with the message: Sorry you were out when I visited. I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon.

A deserted Whitehall during the third national lockdown in January 2021. Jacob Rees-Mogg is calling for civil servants to return to the office. (Getty Images)

Rees-Mogg is said to have been carrying out post-lockdown spot checks of government buildings which he has oversight of as part of his ministerial brief.

And writing in the paper today, Rees-Mogg said: While the private sector seems to have come to a reasonable equilibrium on home working, parts of the public sector seem to act as if they are still in lockdown. Not only are vast central London offices sitting empty, the Civil Service is as large as it has been for many years.

Rees-Mogg suggested more experienced civil servants are enjoying the fruits of their London-weighting [the allowance in pay packets to account for higher costs in the capital] at home in the shires and that the government is committed to smaller but better-used government estate in the heart of Whitehall.

Watch: Civil servants must return to the office, says Jacob Rees-Mogg (from Tuesday)

And in a suggestion those working from home could lose their jobs or have their pay docked, he warned: Essentially, if people are not back in their office it will be fair to assume that the job does not need to be in London.

The FDA union, which represents senior public servants, has criticised Rees-Moggs approach, accusing him of damaging the reputation of the civil service and waging a harmful culture war on it.

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General secretary Dave Penman said his desk notes are a testament to just how disconnected Jacob Rees-Mogg is from the business of government.

Read more: 'Strong case' for Boris Johnson to remain PM as he has 'plenty more fuel in the tank' despite partygate row, Tory chairman Oliver Dowden says

Conservative Party chairman Oliver Dowden defended Rees-Mogg on Sunday, saying his notes to civil servants were driven by getting the very best value for taxpayers and I support him in doing that.

Asked on Sky News Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme if the letters are passive aggressive, Dowden said: Ive never found Jacob Rees-Mogg passive aggressive.

He added: As we learn to live with COVID, I think if we really want to serve the British people best, one of the things we need to do is have that collaboration, that kind of sharing ideas that comes from working in the office.
In this article:

French President Emmanuel Macron will win Frances presidential runoff Sunday, according to French polling projections.

Macron faced off against right-wing rival Marine Le Pen, who conceded soon after projections were released.

Polling agency Ipsos shows Macron won 58.2% of the vote to Le Pen's 41.8% of the vote.

FRANCE ELECTION: EMMANUEL MACRON, MARINE LE PEN PROJECTED TO FACE OFF IN SECOND ROUND

French President Emmanuel Macron thumbs up as he welcomes Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins (L) prior to their meeting at the Elysee Presidential Palace on December 01, 2021 in Paris, France . Chesnot/Getty Images

Macron was first elected Frances president 2017, becoming the country's youngest president at the age of 39.

He is the first French president in 20 years to win a second term, since Jacques Chirac in 2002.

International leaders sent congratulatory messages on social media to Macron following the projections and Le Pen conceding, including from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
NEW YORK  Mayor Eric Adams on Saturday said he aims to give New York Citys streets a $904 million makeover over the next five years  adding hundreds of miles of bike and bus lanes as well as revamped pedestrian spaces.

The budget target makes good on legislation passed by the City Council in 2019 that mandated a streets master plan for the five boroughs. The plan requires the city Department of Transportation build 250 new miles of protected bike lanes and 150 miles of new bus lanes by the end of 2026.

This is a historic investment, Adams said during a news conference on his proposal. We must do our part, and that is to ensure that the pathways are safe where people can feel comfortable and utilize the bike infrastructure we have. We are so far behind international leaders. If you go to other cities and countries across the globe, they are so far ahead of us.

Adams  who rode a bike from City Hall to the news conference in downtown Brooklyn  didnt lay out specific plans for the bus and bike lanes makeover, or new pedestrian this year.

The proposed $904 million investment over five years must be worked out with the City Council as part of the citys budget thats due at the end of June. The amount is roughly in line with the $1.7 billion the Council in 2019 estimated the street redesigns would cost over a 10-year period, officials said.

But the proposal is well short about $2.2 billion short of the $3.1 billion Council members proposed earlier this year for the citys streets plan. The Councils plan goes much further than the benchmarks laid out by the 2019 law, and would add 500 miles of bike lanes and turn dozens of city streets into pedestrian plazas.

The mayor said his proposal is part of a continued conversation with Council Speaker Adrienne Adams.

During Saturdays news conference, Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez lamented he wont reach one of his major goals  reinforcing half of the citys plastic-protected bike lanes with fortified barriers during Adams first 100 days in office.

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Now, Rodriguez said it will take until the end of 2023 to add sturdier barriers to 20 of the citys roughly 40 miles of bike lanes that currently have only flimsy plastic barriers.

The announcement comes amid a startling increase in fatal car crashes.

A report published last week by the street safety group Transportation Alternatives highlighted traffic deaths that have increased 44% during the first three months of 2022 compared with the same period of 2021  the deadliest calendar year for car crashes since former Mayor Bill de Blasio launched his Vision Zero program.

There are people who are habitual, dangerous drivers, Adams said. They speed and have a total disregard for others. Theyre always in a rush no matter where theyre going. They dont believe that theres a speed limit. We need to find them proactively and get them off the streets


Chart-topping rapper Megan Pete, known professionally as Megan Thee Stallion, is speaking out in her first television interview addressing the 2020 shooting allegedly involving rapper Tory Lanez. Megan Thee Stallion accuses Lanez, whose real name is Daystar Peterson, of shooting her in the foot. He has denied the allegations and his legal team has not responded to questions for comment from CBS News.

After leaving a house party in the Hollywood Hills with Lanez and a friend from Houston, she said there was an argument in the car because she wanted to leave and others didn't.

"It was an argument because I was ready to go and everybody else wasn't ready to go. But that's, like, normal friend stuff," Megan Thee Stallion told "CBS Mornings" co-host Gayle King. "It shouldn't have got this crazy."

Megan Thee Stallion said the argument quickly escalated and turned violent after she got out of the car. She accuses Lanez of firing a gun at her several times.

"So I get out of the car and it's like everything happens so fast. And all I hear is this man screaming. And he said, 'Dance, bitch.' And he started shooting. And I'm just like, 'Oh, my God.' Like, he shot a couple of times. And I was so scared," said Megan Thee Stallion.

"So is he in the car shooting from the car, Megan? How is he?" King asked her to clarify.

"He is standing up over the window shooting. And I didn't even want to move. I didn't want to move too quick," the rapper said. She told King that at the time she thought, "I don't know if he's gonna shoot something that's, like, super important. I don't know if he could shoot me and kill me."

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office charged Tory Lanez with assault and weapons charges in connection with the shooting of Megan Thee Stallion in late 2020. The case is expected to go to trial in September of this year. Lanez pleaded not guilty to all charges.

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More of Gayle King's interview with Megan Thee Stallion will air on "CBS Mornings" on Monday, April 25.

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Pianists play Ukrainian pieces to raise money for refugees
Apr. 24LAWRENCE  A Mexican national living in Lawrence was indicted Thursday on charges of trafficking fentanyl.

Jesus Gracielo Garcia-Vega, aka Jonathan Ivan Badillo-Hernandez, 34, was indicted on one count of possession with intent to distribute 400 grams or more of fentanyl, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's office.

According to charging documents, it is alleged that on March 23, 2022, Garcia-Vega gave a sample of fentanyl to a confidential source working with police. Garcia-Vega agreed to sell to the confidential source and was arrested the following day.

The charge of possession with intent to distribute 400 grams or more of fentanyl provides for a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years to life in prison, at least five years of supervised release and a fine of up to $10 million. If convicted, Garcia-Vega will be subject to deportation upon completion of any sentence imposed.

Garcia-Vega has been in custody since being arrested on March 24.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Samuel Feldman of the Narcotics and Money Laundering Unit is prosecuting the case. The announcement was made by United States Attorney Rachael Rollins and Brian Boyle, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration, New England Field Division.
Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D), who called out a Republican colleague who accused her of grooming children, said she received a call from President Biden on the matter.

I didnt wake up on Monday morning thinking that, by Friday, Id answer a phone call saying, Hi, Mr. President, McMorrow said in a Twitter post on Saturday.

Im humbled by @potus reaching out to discuss my speech, why we do this, and what it means for the soul of the nation. We can, and we will, McMorrow added. #HateWontWin.

McMorrow garnered headlines after she ripped fellow Michigan state Sen. Lana Theis (R) during a floor speech.

Senator Lana Theis accused me by name of grooming and sexualizing children in an attempt to marginalize me for standing up against her marginalizing the LGBTQ communityin a fundraising email, for herself, McMorrow tweeted.

Hate wins when people like me stand by and let it happen. I wont, McMorrow added.

Screenshots posted online show Theis said in a fundraising email that shes up against social media trolls like Senator Mallory McMorrow (D-Snowflake) who are outraged they cant teach cant groom and sexualize kindergarteners.

McMorrow and two other state lawmakers walked out of the GOP lawmakers speech the week prior when Thesis reportedly stated that children were under attack from forces that desire things for them other than what their parents would have them see and hear and know.

Some states have recently passed or introduced versions of Floridas Dont Say Gay bill, which prohibits state educators from discussing LGBTQ and gender identity issues to students in a specific age range.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
OSLO (Reuters) -Norway's $1.3 trillion wealth fund will vote next week to support top management at German drug and farm products maker Bayer AG, but will vote against the remuneration package of CEO Werner Baumann, it said on Sunday.

Shareholders will vote on April 29 at Bayer's annual general meeting on whether or not to ratify the executive board's business conduct during 2021, a standard procedure at German AGMs.

The Norwegian fund owned 2.27% of Bayer's shares at the end of 2021, valued at $1.19 billion, making it the company's fifth largest shareholder according to Refinitiv data.

"The board is responsible for attracting the right CEO and setting appropriate remuneration," Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which operates the fund, said in a statement.

It cited the need for a "substantial proportion of annual remuneration" to be provided as shares locked in for five to 10 years, transparency to avoid "unacceptable outcomes" and that all benefits should have a clear business rationale.

While the AGM vote is largely symbolic, with no bearing on management's liability or tenure, it is nevertheless seen as a key gauge of investor sentiment.

Baumann, whose contract as CEO runs until 2024, is under pressure to boost return on investment which has been lagging that of its rivals following the $63 billion takeover of agri business Monsanto in 2018.

Bayer's shares tumbled in the months that followed the acquisition when jurors found Monsanto liable in several U.S. lawsuits for not warning of alleged cancer risks linked to its weedkiller Roundup.

The Norwegian fund joined a majority of shareholders at the 2019 AGM in rebuking Bayer's management, but did, however, give its backing to Baumann and his team for the following two years.

(Reporting by Terje Solsvik, editing by Gwladys Fouche and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
(Removes comment incorrectly attributed to Houthi chief negotiator)

(Reuters) - Oman facilitated the release of 14 foreigners, including a British national, who were held in Yemen and transferred them from the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital Sanaa to Muscat on Sunday, Oman's foreign ministry said.

The people freed included a British man, his wife and child, seven Indian nationals, a Filipino, an Indonesian, an Ethiopian and a Myanmar national, the ministry added, without giving details of what had led to their detention.

The British government identified the Briton as Luke Symons, saying he had been held without charge or trial since 2017.

"Luke was 25 when he was unlawfully detained by the Houthis. His son was only a few months old at the time," Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement.

"He was allegedly mistreated, in solitary confinement, and refused visits by his family," Truss said.

Amnesty International said in February that Symons traveled to Yemen in 2012 where he met and married his Yemeni wife. It said he had been accused by the Houthis, de facto authorities in North Yemen, of spying for the British government though he was not formally charged with any crime.

The Omani ministry said that after communicating with Saudi Arabia to facilitate issuance of the necessary permits, all 14 were transferred on an Oman Royal Air Force plane to the Omani capital, in preparation for their return to their countries.

A Saudi-led coalition, which intervened in the Yemen war in March 2015 against the Iran-aligned Houthis, controls Yemen's sea and air space. Oman is not a member of the coalition.

Earlier this month, the warring sides in Yemen's seven-year conflict agreed to a nationwide truce for the first time in years, under a U.N.-brokered deal.

(Reporting by Nayera Abdallah; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Frank Jack Daniel and Frances Kerry)
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said on Saturday that it is working to facilitate the release of members of its special monitoring mission in Ukraine amid concerns that they have been deprived of their liberty.

The OSCE is extremely concerned that a number of [OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine] national mission members have been deprived of their liberty in Donetsk and Luhansk and is using all available channels to facilitate their release, the OSCE tweeted, referring to the pro-Russian separatist-controlled regions in southeastern Ukraine.

Shortly after Russia launched its invasion in Ukraine on Feb. 24, the international security organization said it would be temporarily evacuating staff in Ukraine.

The safety of the dedicated women and men who serve as impartial eyes and ears of the international community on the ground throughout the country is imperative, OSCE Secretary General Helga Schmid said at the time.

The development comes as Russia mounts a renewed attack in eastern Ukraine after it failed to capture Kyiv in the opening weeks of he conflict. Amid the brutal offensive, officials have warned that the besieged port city of Mariupol could fall within days.

In an op-ed published Thursday in The Wall Street Journal, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov wrote that international organizations, specifically the OSCE and U.N. Security Council, had failed given their focus includes maintaining global security and peace and conflict prevention, among other aims.

While the United States and Russia are members of both organizations, Ukraine is currently only a member of the OSCE.

Among the casualties of Russias war on Ukraine has been the postwar system of global order and security. Russia has done everything that the international security institutions were created to prevent. How can the United Nations Security Council, on which Moscow has a permanent seat, live up to its mission to maintain peace? Reznikov wrote.

What kind of security and cooperation is possible on the Continent when one participating state of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe has attacked another and killed thousands of civilians? These organizations have failed, he added.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Warmth and rain on Monday before temperatures, once again, dip in Ontario

For some areas, especially in southwestern Ontario, Monday will be one of those unique days where the high temperature occurs in the early morning hours.

However, the lingering warmth will come to an abrupt end as a cold front sweeps across southern Ontario from the west, sending temperatures falling through the day.

Scattered showers will accompany the front as it traverses the province, especially in the afternoon and evening. Well see afternoon temperatures in the low- to mid-teens for much of the region.

The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) will see rain moving in during the afternoon, while a strong southwesterly flow ushers in warm temperatures. This could be the first day that the City of Toronto reaches 20 degrees.

image (2)

TUESDAY AND BEYOND: ONCE AGAIN, A COOLDOWN RETURNS

The upper-level ridge that brought us a warm weekend will move downstream and allow an upper-level trough to take its place. This trough will bring much cooler air, making for chilly conditions by midweek.

By Tuesday night, a quick burst of Arctic air moves into the lower Great Lakes region with temperatures falling around the freezing mark. We could see the potential for snow across central and southern Ontario throughout Tuesday overnight.

Temperatures could be up to 10C below seasonal by Wednesday. In fact, the upcoming streak of below-seasonal air will put parts of southern Ontario on par with the regions closer to the Arctic Circle. London, Ont., and regions near the Arctic Circle can expect a high of about 2C on Wednesday.

This spell of below-seasonal conditions looks to continue through the beginning of May.

Stay with The Weather Network for the latest conditions across Ontario.
(Reuters) - Beijing's Chaoyang district will require people who live and work in the district to undergo three coronavirus tests this coming week, the city government of Beijing said on Sunday.

Chaoyang is the biggest district in Beijing and is home to 3.45 million people.

The city government's requirement comes after Beijing reported 22 new coronavirus cases on Saturday.

(Reporting By Norihiko Shirouzu; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
BLOOMINGTON -- Andrew Murray was on the bike for Phi Delta Theta during last year's Little 500 and in the lead pack on Lap 197 when everything fell down around him. So much of what he and his team had worked for vanished in an instant.

"I got on the bike around lap 195," Murray said. "I sat in for two laps. I was fourth wheel, and Fiji (Phi Gamma Delta) came on the outside. They slipped. They fell right into me. They knocked me out, knocked the rest of the field out. That was our day."

Little 500 history: IU Little 500: Ahead of the 2022 race, here are the top moments in its history

Women's results: Bloomington North grad Grace Williams leads Melanzana Cycling to women's Little 500 title

This race can, of course, be that cruel. Ordinary students train for months to be professional-class cyclists, but all that training and even a well-executed strategy can be deemed irrelevant if someone else's tire goes the wrong way on a a cinder track. That was Phi Delta Theta's fate in 2021 and its riders were determined not to let that happen again.

So they didn't.

Senior James Kulik outsprinted riders from Sigma Phi Epsilon and Jetblach at the finish line to claim the fraternity's first Little 500 title since 2001 on Saturday at Armstrong Stadium, bringing an army of fraternity brothers and alumni, mostly clad in sky blue T-shirts and jerseys down onto the track.

Phi Delta Theta's Andrew Murray, left, leaps in excitement as James Kulik crosses the finish line to win the men's Little 500 bicycle race at Bill Armstrong Stadium on Saturday, April 23, 2022

Team fueled by last year's results

"I think that was the driving force all year," Murray said. "To get that close and the race just to be taken from you with two laps left, it's heartbreaking. That fueled us going into this year and allowed us to just fully commit to our training. Now, here we are, champions, the year after."

For seniors Murray, Kulik and Mitchell Pardi, this was just their second race. They didn't make the squad as freshmen. They were all supposed to be on the squad as sophomores, but that was wiped out by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Story continues

More: From Abram to Zhang, high school track is off to a fast start for Bloomington area schools

More: Big addition: Road lead to Indiana women's basketball for Providence transfer Alyssa Geary

A plan for every situation

But after last year's disappointment, they ran like seasoned veterans. They were determined to stay close to the front no matter what happened and had plans in place for every contingency.

That included the wreck Pardi got in about 100 laps into the race.

"We had a flexible plan this year," Pardi said. "We pretty much planned for just about every scenario. So that's what we did. When there was a wreck, like what happened myself, we knew exactly what to do. We knew what to do when someone was burning, when someone was breaking away. I think combining all of those different strategies and just running our own race and trusting our legs was the most important thing."

Sigma Phi Epsilon looks to move to the inside during the men's Little 500 bicycle race at Bill Armstrong Stadium on Saturday, April 23, 2022

Murray and Elias Konow, the sophomore running just his second race, kept Phi Delta Theta going when Pardi wrecked, suffering a hand injury that required the removal of his fingernail in the medical tent, but he returned to the pit once his wounds were cleaned out to make sure the squad maintained a whole team. They fell behind some, but managed to close the gap within a few laps.

"I saw him go down in Corner 4 and I sprinted over there because I didn't know if the bike would be ridable or not," Konow said. "Luckily it was. He exchanged to Andrew, Andrew was able to get us pretty close back on after a couple laps. They gave it to me and I was able to bridge back to the main group about two laps in. We crashed last year and definitely had a bigger gap last year. We were comfortable and knew what we had to do to bring it back."

More: Catch them if you can: Outfield keeping Bloomington North baseball in the game

More: Indiana, Notre Dame men's soccer teams face off, wrap up spring exhibition schedule

The final push

And the team got the bike to Kulik down the stretch he knew what to do, finishing with a blistering last lap of 33.97 seconds. There was chaos on the track behind him because of another crash in Turn 4 with less than two laps to go, but he didn't even notice.

"I don't even know what you're talking about," Kulik said. "This is the first time I'm hearing about it. My mind was just on the last lap trying to finish it. That's all I could think about. When it comes down to something like that, all you can do is just focus on yourself, just finishing."

Sigma Phi Epsilon rider reacts after falling during an exchange during the men's Little 500 bicycle race at Bill Armstrong Stadium on Saturday, April 23, 2022

Heartbreak visits another team

Phi Delta Theta did benefit from someone else's heartbreak. Andrew La Valle of Phi Kappa Psi had already been through enough of it. In 2019, his older brother Albert called for an exchange to Andrew on the last lap that led to Phi Kappa Psi giving away a 7.9-second lead. Last season, Andrew lapped the field at one point, but a wreck severely damaged his team's bike and that lead slipped away.

This year he was in the lead pack with less than two laps to go and had reason to believe he could out-sprint the field, but wrecked again.

"I knew I couldn't be on the front when I came to the last lap," LaValle said. "... I thought, let me be third or fourth wheel coming out of this turn. Once I get to the straightaway, I'm just going to absolutely punch it. That was the goal, and just try to get the inside line. I guess Grey Goat bumped Black Key Bulls.

"Last year, when I crashed, I regretted not going into the gutter, because when there's a crash you're allowed to go to the gutter to go around. But they just kept sliding. Then they were on the ground, and I was like, 'Damn, this is really unfortunate.' And that's the race."

Follow Herald-Times IU Insider Dustin Dopirak on Twitter at @DustinDopirak or email him at DDopirak@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Phi Delta Theta claims Little 500 title with last-lap sprint
Piers Morgan and Nigel Farage are feuding over former President Donald Trump.

Morgan claims that Farage almost wrecked his interview with Trump by sending him a "dossier of criticisms."

In retaliation, Morgan shared old footage of Farage criticizing Trump.

Piers Morgan shared footage of Nigel Farage criticizing former President Donald Trump in retaliation for an alleged stitch-up by the pro-Brexit broadcaster.

Insider reported that Morgan, who is hosting a show on the new TalkTV network, claimed that Farage, a host on rival network GB News, tried to wreck his interview with Trump.

Morgan claimed that Farage handed a "dossier of criticisms" to Donald Trump Jr. which was, in turn, handed to the former president. The three-page document, detailing Morgan's past criticisms of Trump, reportedly almost caused the former president to cancel minutes before the interview was due to start.

"I always like to return a favor," Morgan said on Twitter, on Friday, announcing that he would be posting footage of Farage speaking "VERY disparagingly" about Trump. "I do hope it doesn't damage their bromance," he added.

Morgan posted the footage, Metro reported, which shows Farage discussing the "real problems" with Trump prior to his 2016 presidential election victory.

"Can you make sure your Dad sees it, @DonaldJTrumpJr  just thought you should both know what a treacherous disingenuous little snake you're dealing with," Morgan wrote.

Farage says that Trump only has "one gear" and has a "certain sense of anger" about him in the footage.

Farage, who has appeared at rallies with Trump, responded with a tweet expressing his loyalty. "Like millions of American voters, in April 2016, I was still making my mind up," Farage tweeted. "By August 2016, I gave Trump my full support  and I have backed him ever since. Unlike you @PiersMorgan!"

Story continues

US President Donald Trump listens as Nigel Farage (R) speaks during a Make America Great Again rally at Phoenix Goodyear Airport October 28, 2020, in Goodyear, Arizona. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Morgan replied, calling Farage a "duplicitous two-faced weasel." He added, "I dread to think what you've been saying in private about Trump behind his back if this is how you've so disloyally attacked him in public."

Morgan and Farage's public feud began after Farage, a leading figure in the Brexit movement, sided with Trump after the former president's team and accused TalkTV producers of deceptively editing promotional clips, making it appear that Trump angrily walked off the set.

TalkTV is a new British television network operated by News UK, owned by the media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Read the original article on Business Insider
The Monroe Police Department has issued a first-degree murder warrant Tuesday for Billy Rashawn Barrino, 24, who is accused of shooting and killing Jaleel Takeem Nivens on Saturday afternoon.

Officers were called to Boyte Street just before 5 p.m. in downtown Monroe.

Police said Nivens was shot several times before he was taken to the hospital where he died.

ALSO READ: Anybody can be in his familys shoes: Man killed near Northlake Mall mourned by loved ones

Investigators said several people witnessed the shooting, but so far no one has come forward.

Nivens family said theyre focused on healing and remembering the man they describe as funny and intelligent.

We considered him a brother, because he was always around, his cousin, Rotavis Ashcraft said. Always from the time I was born, Jaleel was there.

Ashcraft said Nivens leaves behind a son.

He loved his son, JJ, Ashcraft said. He loved to laugh and joke, and he also had his game he like to play.

Ashcraft said he is waiting for justice to be served.

God would want me to forgive you, but God has a lot more patience than I do, Ashcraft said.

Barrino is 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weighs 150 pounds.

He is also charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Anyone with information about this shooting is asked to call the Monroe Police Department at 704-282-4700 or Union County Crime Stoppers at 704-283-5600.

Police said a $5,000 cash reward could potentially be offered.

(WATCH BELOW: One person killed in shooting near Northlake Mall, MEDIC says)
A Hyde Park man who police say tried to grab a Boston police officers gun was arrested on weapons and assault charges on Saturday.

Ricardo Fields, 40, tried to run from officers responding to a report of a person with a gun in Dorchester, according to a statement from Boston Police. During the chase, officers saw him pull a gun from his waistband and drop it on the sidewalk, police said.

The gun was later determined to be a 9mm Luger handgun with one round in the chamber and seven rounds in the magazine, according to police.

An officer drew his gun and ordered Fields to stop. He ignored the officers commands, ran at the officer and grabbed the barrel of his gun, police said.

The two struggled, with the officer trying to put the gun back into his holster, police said. The guns magazine was ejected during the struggle.

Additional officers arrived and placed Fields under arrest. He is charged with two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition, carrying a loaded firearm on a public way, assault with a deadly weapon, assault and battery on a police officer, possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number, and armed career criminal Level 3.

Fields will be arraigned in Dorchester District Court.

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In this image released by the Las Cruces Police Department, an officer's body camera shows him pointing a gun at Amelia Baca, who stands inside her home on Fir Avenue on April 16, 2022. LCPD circled two large kitchen knives that Baca is holding in her right hand.

LCPD shoots 75-year-old woman suffering from dementia

Las Cruces Police confirmed on Monday that an officer shot and killed a woman Saturday evening, April 16, after several reports from local news outlets reported the police shooting.

In a news release, the department confirmed that officers responded to the 800 block of Fir Avenue around 6:30 p.m. on April 16. Police said they were responding to a call regarding a woman with a knife making homicidal threats toward another person. Police discovered a woman, 75-year-old Amelia Baca, at the house.

However, the department did not release any other details about the shooting  including the victim's name  until after 7 p.m. Friday. (They still have not identified the officer who shot and killed Baca.) On Friday night, the department released a video detailing the department's account of the shooting.

Justin Garcia, the public safety reporter for the Sun-News, has been covering the shooting since it happened. Inside the newsroom, there has been great consternation about the opaqueness we've experienced from the City and LCPD around this shooting. And we're not alone, as Justin explained:

Many readers assume that print and television journalists have a rivalry that runs deep. But nothing could be further from the truth. Do we compete for stories? of course we do. But oftentimes we work together in small ways to make sure that the public knows the truth. That was the case in the Amelia Baca shooting. During a city council meeting last Monday, KVIA's Kate Bieri asked if I would hang out with her while we waited for LCPD Chief (Miguel) Dominguez to arrive. The tiny collaboration was a valuable endeavor because, as the saying goes, two reporters are better than one. Sure enough, we each got to talk to Dominguez on our own and the community was better for it.

This newsletter also has a companion podcast, through which we try to pull back the curtain and bring readers into the reporting process. This week, we talk a lot about how we're now covering cops, courts and crime  or public safety reporting, as we're now calling it. We also talk about the challenges we've encountered covering the Amelia Baca case.

Story continues

A continued journal entry from Olga who met John Curnutt of Las Cruces on her journey of fleeing Ukraine following the attack by Russian forces.

Las Cruces resident translates journal entries of Ukrainian refugees

When Las Crucens John and Robert Curnutt traveled to Moldova in March, they not only worked to help Ukrainian refugees, they also collected stories of people displaced by war.

The father and son told the Sun-News that a large part of what they did was drive people to refugee centers, train stations and other locations after they had crossed the border from Ukraine to Moldova. The rides were often quiet as people rested, knowing they were safe.

John took a journal with him and throughout the two weeks he and his father were in Europe, he passed the journal around to those willing to write their story.

Las Crucen Katya Moore, who is from Russia and a friend of the Curnutt family, translated the entries. She said she was surprised to find all of the writing in Russian rather than Ukrainian though both are Slavic languages and use similar alphabets.

Our reporter, Leah Romero, has been following this story. She said:

I spoke with John and Robert Curnutt several weeks ago about their trip to Moldova to help Ukrainian citizens fleeing the country as Russian forces invaded the country. John mentioned he took a journal with him and asked people to write down their stories while he drove them to their next destination -- a train or bus station, refugee center, family or other places. He also mentioned that he planned to have the journal entries translated.

This intrigued me and he was willing to share the entries and translations with me. A family friend, Katya Moore who is from Russia, translated the entries. The Russian and Ukrainian languages use a similar alphabet.

Most of the entries gave an account of how the Ukrainian citizens came to a decision to flee their country and that they hoped the conflict would end so they could go home. Some mentioned that this was not the first time they fled. The conflict is still ongoing and Ukrainians are still trying to find places to stay until they can return to their eastern European homes.

John mentioned to me recently that he and his family are still working to help the refugees any way they can while in the U.S.

Christina Armstrong smokes while talking to a friend at Sol Cannabis, the first and only cannabis consumption lounge in the state of New Mexico, on April 20, 2022.

Another first: Las Cruces gets state's first cannabis consumption lounge

Dozens of customers patronized the only cannabis consumption lounge in New Mexico to celebrate the first 4/20 since personal use and retail sales of weed became legal.

Though city code limits licensed cannabis consumption areas to indoor spaces, Sol Cannabis operated both an indoor lounge and outdoor patio on Wednesday.

The City of Las Cruces did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, though the municipality did remind residents and businesses of rules regarding cannabis in a Tuesday news release.

On April 15, Sol owner Kwame Ponschock said the city had given his business the okay to operate the outdoor patio.

Sol Cannabis, at 523 East Idaho Ave., opened in the building which used to house Si Italian Bistro. Sol Cannabis also operates a retail dispensary for medical and recreational users in the building.

Reporter Michael McDevitt, who covers city and county government for the Sun-News, was there on 4/20:

On April 20, I got the chance to visit the first, and the only, consumption lounge for cannabis in the state of New Mexico  Sol Cannabis, a business on East Idaho Avenue in Las Cruces which set up shop in the old Si Italian Bistro building. Sol is primarily a dispensary.

Wednesday was the first 4/20 since retail sales of cannabis and personal possession and consumption became legal. Since the state legalized pot last year, the question of what these licensed consumption areas would look like and how theyd operate has been one that fascinated me. Would they be more akin to a bar, a hookah lounge, a friends living room or none of the above  something entirely unique?

That question drew me to Sol on 4/20. When I arrived, I was surprised by the atmosphere. People played Big Buck Hunter  one of several arcade cabinets set up in a corner of the lounge. Music played, people talked and a TV played a movie on mute. One woman wearing headphones worked on her laptop with a joint in one hand and a travel mug on the table, like she was at Starbucks. Smoke lingered in the air. Despite city ordinance, Sol was operating consumption outdoors as well. (City code says youre only supposed to allow consumption indoors). Outside, in an enclosed patio space, folks of all ages smoked and sat in wooden chairs.

Its unclear if the city told Sol to cease outdoor operations, but the city said no codes violations were recorded on 4/20. As businesses and the city adjust to this new industry, expect Sol to likely stand as just one of the countless ways to operate such an establishment.

Thousands of New Mexicans in need of disability services are off a waitlist, but are providers ready?

Home-based services for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities help them participate as active community members while receiving therapy, seeking jobs and maintaining daily routines.

Thanks to an infusion of federal COVID-19 relief money, 4,600 New Mexicans with developmental disabilities, some of whom languished 13 years or longer on a lengthy waiting list, are now being offered services.

But what happens when that money runs out is not clear, and a parallel challenge persists as providers struggle to serve those clients at outdated reimbursement rates.

Two providers have stopped offering home-based services altogether: Solana Care in Albuquerque has shut its doors, and Tresco  a nonprofit based in Las Cruces  announced in March it was withdrawing from the state's development disability waiver program because it was financially untenable.

Las Cruces Sun-News reporter Algernon D'Ammassa has been covering this issue since Tresco made the announcement last month. He said:

The state's Development Disabilities Waiver program provides home-based services for people with various needs: numerous kinds of therapy, assistance with job searches or home economics, managing medications and taking part in community activities. The long waiting list has gotten a lot of attention for years, but this year New Mexico used federal pandemic dollars to move everyone waiting into services if they are still here, eligible and desiring services.

Good news, right? However, if providers have already been signaling they are understaffed and underfunded for the clients they currently have, what happens when a state agency says, "Here are 50 more?" In Las Cruces, one longtime provider of services for these people in need, Tresco, made a surprise announcement several weeks ago that it could not afford to continue, saying it had become financially untenable. Documents we obtained also showed that Tresco staff was struggling to keep up with numerous documentary requirements with rigid deadlines that the state's Developmental Disabilities Supports Division director himself admits sets the stage for "performance issues."

It's challenging to write an intricate policy story like this for a general audience. It's a long article that presents in broad strokes some of the background and key problems that will require a commitment by state lawmakers and federal agencies to mitigate with proper funding.

Rob Jameson flies his 4-month-old, Nova, over the grass in Arcosanti, Arizona on April 9, 2019. Jameson heard on a podcast that interacting with nature will help develop a babys sense of curiosity.

Meg Potter joins the Sun-News team

This week, we're excited to welcome a new photojournalist to our news team. Meg Potter starts today  filling a position that has been (sometimes painfully) vacant for a couple of months. At the Sun-News, we need a dedicated photojournalist  as reporters, they help to illustrate our stories.

Often, they help tell our stories  visually  in ways we're unable to do ourselves. In fact, some of my closest professional relationships have been with our photographers  Robin Zielenski, Jett Loe, Nathan Fish and Josh Bachman, for example.

I'm very excited about what Meg will bring to the table. Her work, thus far, speaks for itself.

News Director Lucas Peerman hired Meg after interviewing a long slate of candidates for the job. Lucas said:

Meg Potter, a talented visual journalist, joins the Las Cruces Sun-News staff this week. Meg graduated from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University and has since interned at the Arizona Republic, Jackson Hole News&Guide and the Jackson Citizen Patriot. Meg has covered stories of national prominence, including migrant crossings through the Arizona desert and the disappearance and death of Gabby Petito in Wyoming. She also has an eye for capturing what makes communities like ours such a great place to call home.

When Meg was the photo editor for the student newspaper at ASU, she traveled from Phoenix to El Paso to cover a Sun Devils football game in the Sun Bowl. Meg said that since that trip, she's been drawn to the area and is happy to be returning to the desert southwest after stints at newspapers in Wyoming and Michigan.

Meg replaces Nathan J. Fish, who in March joined the staff of The Oklahoman, another publication in the USA TODAY Network. Meg will not only be the lead photojournalist for the Sun-News, but she'll also help lead our social media and video strategies and will also write a story from time to time. Look for Meg's work in the print edition, in galleries online and on our Instagram page.

Welcome Meg to Las Cruces via her Instagram or email mpotter@lcsun-news.com.

I hope you'll find a way to reach out to her and join us in welcoming her to our team.

Damien Willis is a Lead Reporter for the Las Cruces Sun-News. He can be reached at 575-541-5443, dwillis@lcsun-news.com or @DamienWillis on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Police shooting raises questions, Ukrainian letters translated and cannabis lounge opens
Police arrested two people and seized two guns after breaking up a party in Dorchester Saturday night.

Police say they first noticed the party around 9:30 p.m. Saturday while responding to a report of a fight on Wheatland Street. They did not find a fight but saw a party with approximately 100 guests and a DJ nearby on Dunlap Street, according to a statement from Boston Police.

Officers spoke with the homeowner and asked that the DJ turn the music down.

About an hour later, a loud party was reported at the same address on Dunlap Street. Officers requested that the DJ turn off the music, and the party started to shut down, according to police.

Police say a man leaving the party later identified as 18-year-old Philip Blain, appeared to have a gun on him. They approached him while he was sitting in a car and found a loaded gun under the floormat at his feet, according to police. They removed Blain and the driver of the car, a 17-year-old boy from Weymouth, and seized another loaded gun, police say.

Police say the gun found under Blain was a semi-automatic 9mm with a magazine capable of holding 30 rounds. The gun was loaded with 11 9mm rounds and one round in the chamber, according to police.

The other gun, found on the teenager, was a Jimenez Arms .380, loaded with five rounds and one round in the chamber, according to police.

Blain faces charges of unlawful possession of a firearm, possession of a large capacity feeding device, carrying a loaded firearm, possession of a firearm with a defaced serial number, and possession of a large capacity firearm on a public way.

The 17-year-old boy will be charged with unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition, carrying a loaded firearm, and possession of a firearm with a defaced serial number.

Blain will be arraigned in Dorchester District Court. The 17-year-old will be arraigned in Dorchester District Juvenile Court.

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The Daily Beast

Lauderdale County SheriffLoved-up prison guard Vicky White and her jailhouse beau Casey White have been caught after an extraordinary 11 days on the run, officials in Indiana and Florida confirmed Monday evening.Weve captured them, Vanderburgh County Sheriff Dave Wedding told WAAY 31, adding that they were involved in a crash after a police pursuit.Vicky White, 56, was taken to a hospital with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, while 38-year-old Casey White, no relation, surrendered and was take
Pierce County prosecutors this week dismissed arson charges brought against a 54-year-old Puyallup business owner accused of setting a fire that burned his laundromat and other businesses at the Valley Plaza shopping center.

Sam Hoy was accused in October 2020 of first-degree arson, more than a year after his business, the Happy Dryclean & Laundromat, was damaged along with others in a fire at the shopping center on East Main Avenue near 15th Street Southeast.

In a motion and order for dismissal filed Tuesday, deputy prosecuting attorney Lisa Wagner said it was unlikely that the state would be able to prove the arson charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

The defense provided a Fire Investigators Origin and Cause report that calls into question many of the assumptions made by the Fire Marshall in this case, the motion states.

Other concerns regarding the fire investigation arose during an interview with the Pierce County Fire Marshal, Warner Webb, according to the document. Those concerns were not specified.

The dismissal without prejudice allows prosecutors to refile charges if circumstances change, Pierce County Prosecuting Attorneys Office spokesperson Adam Faber said.

We anticipate there may be further proceedings involving property damage claims and insurance matters, Faber said in an email. We have left open the option to re-file criminal charges if additional facts or evidence comes to light.

The fire occurred the night of Sept. 24, 2019 at Valley Plaza, a strip mall that housed seven businesses at the time. Fire officials said the blaze took two hours to extinguish.

The News Tribune talked with a number of business owners who were affected, including Hoy. The man said he and his wife, who owned the business with him, werent sure what they were going to do next.

Reached by phone Friday, Hoy declined to comment.

The business owner was charged a year later in Pierce County Superior Court. Investigators had discovered the day after the incident that the fire started in an electrical room of Hoys laundromat.

The fire marshal declared the business a crime scene after allegedly finding evidence that natural gas lines connected to laundry dryers had been tampered with, according to court documents. Investigators also found numerous butane canisters in the electrical room.

This story was originally published by The News Tribune.
The Rays almost bullpenned their way to a no-hitter. (Photo by Mike Carlson/Getty Images)

The Tampa Bay Rays completed nine no-hit innings on Saturday, but they unfortunately fell short on the other requirement to complete a no-hitter: scoring a run.

The no-hitter did not survive extras, but Kevin Kiermaier ensured the day wouldn't be a total loss.

Facing the Boston Red Sox at Tropicana Field, six Rays pitchers combined to take a no-hitter into extra innings, but lost it when the seventh pitcher, Matt Wisler, opened the tenth inning by yielding an RBI triple to Red Sox first baseman Bobby Dalbec.

Thanks to the extra-inning ghost runner, back for one more year, the hit broke a scoreless tie.

That's one way to break up a no-hitter! pic.twitter.com/VIDCJjzmg8  MLB (@MLB) April 24, 2022

Dalbec immediately scored on a sacrifice fly to push the lead to 2-0. The Rays finally got their first run in the bottom of the inning when a throwing error by Red Sox second baseman Trevor Story allowed their ghost runner to score.

One plate appearance later, Kiermaier ended the chaotic game with a no-doubt homer to right field for a 3-2 win.

The six pitchers who would have combined for the no-hitter had Tampa Bay avoided extras: J.P. Feyereisen, Javy Guerra, Jeffrey Springs, Jason Adam, Ryan Thompson and Andrew Kittredge.

This would have been a very odd no-hitter

The no-hitter would have been the second in Rays history, the 17th combined no-hitter in MLB history and the first of the 2022 season, one year after the league set a record with nine no-hitters (not counting a pair of seven-inning no-hit efforts in doubleheaders).

The Rays would have also tied the record for the most pitchers used in a no-hitter with six, joining the Houston Astros in 2003 and Seattle Mariners in 2012. No Rays pitcher threw more than two innings, which would have been a record for fewest innings thrown by any pitcher as well.

On the peripheral level, it wasn't a dominant performance. The Rays' pitchers combined for only six strikeouts in 10 innings while walking five. Before their extra-inning rally, the Red Sox put three balls in play with an xBA (basically the odds of a hit based on a ball's exit velocity and launch angle), but the Rays' usually strong defense took care of them.

The Rays were nearly as hapless on offense as the Red Sox in the first nine innings before Kiermaier's walk-off. The team managed only two hits and two walks, so it actually had fewer baserunners than the team being no-hit even before it lost in extras.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) at a hearing on Capitol Hill November 19, 2019 in Washington, DC. Jacquelyn Martin - Pool/Getty Images

Rep. Matt Gaetz appeared to show support for the idea of Rep. Jim Jordan becoming the House Republican leader.

Gaetz called Jordan the "hardest working" Republican when asked if he or Jordan would replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy.

McCarthy, in a newly released secret audio, told lawmakers he planned to urge Trump to resign after the Capitol riot.

Rep. Matt Gaetz on Saturday appeared to throw his support behind Rep. Jim Jordan, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, to replace House Minority Leaders Kevin McCarthy as the Republican leader.

Jordan "is the hardest working and most talented member of the Republican House Conference. And every member knows it," Gaetz said in reply to a tweet urging Jordan and Gaetz to take over McCarthy's role.

Gaetz's comment comes after The New York Times released audio in which McCarthy can be heard telling his fellow lawmakers that he planned to urge Trump to resign in the days following the Capitol riot.

In the audio, captured on January 10, 2021, Rep. Liz Cheney asks McCarthy if Trump should resign, to which McCarthy replies: "My gut tells me no. I'm seriously thinking of having that conversation with him tonight. From what I know of him, I mean you guys know him, too, do you think he'd ever back away?"

He says an impeachment resolution would pass in the House and "there's a chance it will pass the Senate even when he's gone." Then McCarthy says he'll tell Trump that "it would be my recommendation you should resign."

McCarthy in a statement posted to Twitter said the reporting from the Times was "totally false and wrong," and reiterated his support for Trump.

"The past year and a half have proven that our country was better off when President Trump was in the White House," his statement said.

Story continues

Last year, a group of 10 House Republicans voted to impeach Trump, but McCarthy was not one of them. After the audio was released, both Republicans and Democrats slammed McCarthy.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois who also serves on the House panel tasked with investigating the Capitol riot, said McCarthy's remarks in the leaked audio demonstrate that Republican leaders think their voters are "dumb."

He "ought to be ashamed," Kinzinger said. "Republicans, your leaders think you are dumb. Let's be done with them."

Read the original article on Business Insider
Robert Lewandowski was on the scoresheet as Bayern Munich sealed their tenth successive title (Getty Images)

Bayern Munich striker Robert Lewandowski heaped praise on the German teams huge achievement after they won their 10th consecutive Bundesliga crown with three games to spare on Saturday.

Bayern defeated Borussia Dortmund 3-1 in front of a sold-out home crowd to go 12 points clear at the top of the table.

They have now won 31 Bundesliga titles since the introduction of the top division in 1963, and 32 German league crowns in all.

Its not always easy to be consistent and play great football throughout the campaign, Lewandowski said.

Perhaps in a couple of years, people will realise what a huge achievement 10 titles in a row is.

Forward Thomas Muller, who became the first player to win 11 league titles, said nothing could beat the feeling of winning the Bundesliga.

You dont have that situation often enough, to win the championship against your direct rivals in a home game. We really wanted to do that, Muller said.

Midfielder Jamal Musiala said he was overwhelmed after scoring the third goal which sealed their victory against Dortmund, while Joshua Kimmich also delighted with their special achievement.

It may seem normal for outsiders, but it takes a lot of hard work. Were really happy and proud to reach this big goal, Kimmich added.

Reuters
A former US ambassador to NATO said Russia lacks the means to seize the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

Russia began a new phase of its attack on Ukraine last week, focusing on the eastern Donbas region.

The same Russian "shortfalls" seen in Kyiv may be on display again in the Donbas region, the former ambassador said.

Former US Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute said he believes Russia lacks the ability to seize the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

Speaking on ABC News "This Week" on Sunday, Lute shared his thoughts on Russia's capacity to take over Kyiv, after host Martha Raddatz asked if Russian forces had "given up" on the seizing the target, one of its top goals since the invasion began on February 24.

"I think Kyiv is beyond their means," Lute responded. "They can't seize Kyiv. They can't replace the Zelenskyy government. I think they're still looking for opportunities to figure out what their goals are. They're sort of making it up as they go along."

Lute added that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "looking for opportunities" and will "grab the first good one available."

Russian forces withdrew from the area around Kyiv earlier this month after several weeks of war with Ukraine revealed a staunch defense and refusal to abandon the city. Ukrainian police said over 900 bodies have been discovered in areas surrounding Kyiv, and many of them appear to be civilians that were "simply executed" by Russian troops.

Russia began a new phase of its attack on Ukraine last week, focusing on the eastern Donbas region. The US and other Western countries are providing additional, heavier weaponry to Ukraine, arming the country for what may be months of intense clashes in the region's flatter, more open terrain, Insider's Christopher Woody reported.

Story continues

On Sunday, Lute said some of the same Russian "shortfalls" may be on display yet again in the Donbas region.

"The problems that the Russian army demonstrated in phase one of this fight, in and around Kyiv, where they failed, Ukrainians outmatched them. Those same shortfalls by the Russian military, I think, will be on display again in the Donbas," Lute said.

He added: "You can't reform an army in a matter of a couple of weeks. This is the same Russian army, so I expect many of the same failures."

The former ambassador said that while Putin may wish to expand Russia's power and "recreate something like the old Russian empire," it is "not within his means."

"There's a big gap here between his aims and his means," Lute said. "I don't think that the situation on the battlefield yet lends itself to some sort of diplomatic, compromise solution. Both sides still imagine that they can win this."

Read the original article on Business Insider
Alfred and Yankurije married 14 years after the genocide

To heal you must love - so believes a woman who not only forgave the man who killed her husband 28 years ago during Rwanda's genocide, but allowed his daughter to marry her son.

Bernadette Mukakabera has been telling her story as part of continuing efforts by the Catholic Church to bring reconciliation to a society torn apart in 1994 when some 800,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days.

"Our children had nothing to do with what happened. They just fell in love and nothing should stop people from loving each other," Bernadette told the BBC.

She and her husband Kabera Vedaste were from the Tutsi community, who were targeted after an aeroplane carrying Rwanda's ethnic Hutu president was shot down on 6 April 1994.

Within hours, thousands of Hutus, indoctrinated by decades of hateful propaganda, began well organised killings - turning on their Tutsi neighbours around the country.

One of these was Gratien Nyaminani, whose family lived next to Bernadette's in Mushaka in western Rwanda. They were both farmers.

After the massacres ended, with a Tutsi rebel group taking power, hundreds of thousands of people accused of involvement in the killings were detained.

Gratien was taken into custody and eventually tried by one of the community courts, known as gacaca, set up to deal with genocide suspects.

At these weekly hearings, communities were given a chance to face the accused and both hear and give evidence about what really happened - and how it happened.

Rwanda's traditional gacaca courts dealt with hundreds of thousands of genocide suspects

In 2004, Gratien told Bernadette how he had killed her husband and apologised - and at the same hearing she chose to forgive him.

This meant that he did not have to serve a 19-year jail term, but a two-year community service sentence instead.

'I wanted to help'

During the 10 years he was in detention before his public apology, his family had sought to make amends with Bernadette and her son Alfred, who was about 14 years old when his dad was killed.

Gratien's daughter Yankurije Donata, who was about nine at the time of the genocide, began to go over to Bernadette's and help around the house.

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"I decided to go and help Alfred's mother do the housework and even the farm because she had no-one else to help her considering that my father was responsible for her husband's murder," she told the BBC.

"I think Alfred fell in love with me when I was helping out his mother."

Bernadette was touched by her consideration: "She helped me knowing well that her father killed my husband, she knew that I didn't have any help because my son was at boarding school.

"I loved her heart and behaviour - this is why I didn't resist her becoming my son's wife."

But for Gratien it was not so simple - he was at first sceptical when told of the marriage proposal.

"He kept asking how and why a family he offended so much would want anything to do with his daughter," Yankurije said.

The happy couple flanked by Bernadette (L), holding their son, and Gratien (R)

At last he was persuaded and gave his blessings as Bernadette was adamant that she harboured no ill-will towards Yankurije.

"I did not have any resentment towards my daughter-in-law for her father's actions," Bernadette says.

"I felt like she could make the best daughter-in-law because she understood me better than anyone else. I persuaded my son to marry her."

The couple wed at the local Catholic Church in 2008.

This is where Gratien had confessed before the congregation after completing his community service two years earlier - seeking forgiveness.

'No reconciliation, no holy communion'

The church has been at the centre of efforts to reunite communities in the area.

Father Ngoboka Theogene from the Cyangugu Diocese says people have embraced its reconciliation programme. Several other denominations have facilitated similar initiatives.

The churches realise that people have no choice but to live together, so much better do so in peace and understanding.

"Those accused of genocide crimes are not allowed to partake of the sacrament until they have reconciled with their victims' family," Father Ngoboka explains.

The final reconciliation happens in public where the accused and the victim stand together.

"The victim stretches their hands towards the accused as a sign of forgiveness," he says.

People attended a recent event in Mushaka to mark 28 years since the genocide to learn ways to coexist, not long after Gratien had died.

"When we speak about change it is not about changing one's skin colour but changing your bad character," said the event's facilitator, Apiane Nangwahabo from the Mushaka parish.

"A change of heart is important before deciding to live a holy life."

It was here that Bernadette spoke about her son's marriage to the daughter of her husband's killer.

"I love my daughter-in-law so much and I don't know how I would have survived if she wasn't here to help me after my husband died."

She says she is heartened to see that Alfred and Yankurije's love story has encouraged many others to seek and offer forgiveness.

More on the genocide:
Rwanda's President Paul Kagame arrived in Uganda Sunday, making his first visit to the country in four years as the relationship between the two East African nations improves following long-simmering tensions.

Public broadcaster Rwanda Broadcasting Agency said Kagame had arrived in Kampala to meet his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni and attend the 48th birthday party of Museveni's powerful son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who has been instrumental in the rapprochement between the two neighbours.

Kainerugaba has played a key role in repairing long hostile relations with Kigali, including holding talks with Kagame that led to a reopening of the land border in January after three years of closure.

The Ugandan high commission in Kigali said Kagame was on "a private visit", adding that Kainerugaba and Security Minister Jim Muhwezi were among the senior government officials who received the Rwandan leader.

Kainerugaba, who heads Uganda's land forces and serves as a special presidential adviser, has previously referred to Kagame as "my uncle" on Twitter.

"Those who fight him are fighting my family. They should all be careful," he wrote in January.

The visit comes weeks after Uganda announced the deportation of a leading figure belonging to the banned opposition group Rwandan National Congress (RNC), which Kigali considers a terrorist outfit.

The reported presence on Ugandan soil of rebels seeking to topple Kagame has been a long-running sore in relations between the two neighbours.

Kainerugaba had promised to crack down on the RNC, which was founded in 2010 by former Rwandan army chief Kayumba Nyamwasa and ex-spy boss Patrick Karegeya who both became fierce Kagame critics.

Kagame last visited Uganda in March 2018 on Museveni's invitation for private talks on bilateral, regional and international issues.

Although the two men were close allies in the 1980s and 1990s, the two countries later fell out over mutual accusations of espionage, abductions and support for rebels.

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The Uganda-Rwanda border was abruptly closed in 2019 as tensions spiralled, but was reopened in January this year in a major sign of warming ties.

Although Kainerugaba has repeatedly denied claims he intends to succeed his 77-year-old father -- one of Africa's longest-serving leaders -- observers point to his rapid rise through Uganda's army ranks as proof that he is being groomed for the top job.

burs-amu/raz
Two of the Senates highest-profile progressives are attracting presidential speculation  again.

Roughly two years after Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) suspended their White House bids to back Joe Biden as the partys nominee, they are getting attention for what some Democrats say resemble early national campaigns-in-waiting.

Neither senator has announced another bid or even come close to it. Theyve faithfully backed the presidents agenda, worked the halls of Congress and said they want to see him thrive.

But as Bidens approval rating fails to crack the low 40s, Sanders and Warren  who are both up for reelection in 2024  are pushing him in new ways, raising questions about their own maneuvers in the process.

No one really knows if Biden is going to run or not run, said Cooper Teboe, a donor adviser to progressive candidates. People are trying to stake claim if he does not.

This week, a top Sanders adviser raised the possibility that Sanders could mount a third bid for the White House, a scenario that seemed nearly unfathomable when he quickly endorsed Bidens nomination against former President Trump.

In a memo circulated on Wednesday, former Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir answered a hypothetical question from a supporter about whether Sanders would consider running if Biden does not seek a second term.

In the event of an open 2024 Democratic presidential primary, Sen. Sanders has not ruled out another run for president, so we advise that you answer any questions about 2024 with that in mind, Shakir wrote.

The memo, first reported by the Washington Post and confirmed by The Hill, sent shockwaves through Democratic circles and made some progressives ears perk up.

I was heartened to see that Sen. Sanders and his progressive message still resonates so strongly with the vast majority of Americans, said Stacey Walker, a political organizer from Iowa who received the memo as a staunch supporter.

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Some in Sanders World praised the move as good politics.

Theres no question its smart, said one left-wing operative close to the senators orbit about the memos conception. You have to do that.

To be sure, Biden has given no indication he doesnt intend to run again. The White House has repeatedly brushed off such speculation, and earlier this week, The Hill learned from two sources that Biden had told former President Obama he intends to campaign in 2024.

But while not too long ago Biden was all but guaranteed the 2024 nomination, things may not be so settled anymore.

The trajectory of his presidency continues to concern Democrats who fear his low approval rating will hinder the partys chances of staying in power and possibly his own. If that happens, Bidens fate is considerably less certain, those voices say.

Sanders had all but ruled out a third presidential campaign after coming up short against Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. In May, he was explicit: Its very, very unlikely that Ill be running for president ever again.

Some close to the senator take him at his word about his intentions. They believe chatter about his national prospects to be premature, nonserious or misguided.

This is a way for his team to keep him in the conversation, said Chuck Rocha, who was a senior adviser for Sanderss 2020 campaign. If not him, others are already starting to plan and look.

Talk about a possible progressive replacement to Biden is not new.

It started in earnest when negotiations around Build Back Better, his expansive social spending and climate package, failed because of two moderate Democrats. Progressives were aghast when Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) effectively killed in the Senate what the House had already passed.

That anger compounded when Biden also couldnt convince the chambers narrow majority to pass a voting rights bill and then, as the countrys chief executive, declined to use his authority to enact other measures such as student loan forgiveness.

With the midterms now just six months away, Sanders and Warren are pressuring Biden to act more decisively, effectively igniting questions about why theyre criticizing him more harshly now than in the past.

We cant govern if we dont win, said Walker. However, in this particular moment, Americans are starting to ask, what use is winning if we refuse to govern when we do?

Unlike Sanders, Warrens moves have been less overt.

That changed this week when she penned an op-ed asking Biden to do more of what he promised before November.

To put it bluntly: if we fail to use the months remaining before the elections to deliver on more of our agenda, Democrats are headed toward big losses in the midterms, she wrote in The New York Times on Monday. She then followed up in an interview with Pod Save America, the popular program started by Obama alums.

Some Democrats said Warren outlined what activists had been long calling for during Bidens first term.

She is correct and joins a chorus of mostly progressive activists, thinkers and policymakers who have been singing this song for months now, said Walker.

The Massachusetts Democrat has maintained a relatively low public profile since Biden took office in January, save a few bursts of attention. She tried out for the role of vice president and later expressed interest in becoming Treasury secretary, a job allies saw as a wonky and natural fit but was passed over for Janet Yellen.

Shes since weighed in on key policy debates and appointments, from the Federal Reserve chairmanship to antitrust issues, without much fanfare. More recently, shes been a leading voice pushing Biden to cancel as much as $50,000 in student loan debt per borrower.

She has also recently lent her name to several down-ballot candidates up this year: Summer Lee in Pennsylvanias 12th Congressional District, David Segal in Rhode Islands 2nd Congressional District and Delia Ramirez in Illinoiss 3rd Congressional District. She also endorsed Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) in the states attorney general contest.

Those movements, some progressives argue, are signs that the senator is interested in raising her profile.

Not just that op-ed, said Teboe.

If you look at her political operation, shes endorsing in every race she can get her hands on. Shes sending emails out. Shes trying to build political currency in as many states as possible, he added, stressing that it all hinges on if Biden declines to run again.

As distinct as Warrens inside-out style has become to her personal brand, Sanders has remained more in-your-face.

The democratic socialist has publicly sparred with Manchin and Sinema and pushed Biden to go for as much as $6 billion during the early talks around the spending package. As chairman of the Senates budget committee, he has expressed frustration with centrists in his caucus who have refused to budge on the same issues that inspired voters to turn out for Biden.

Sanders made rounds of cable news appearances, each time seeming more dissatisfied with the political reality that Democrats cant enact things such as a $15 minimum wage or Medicare for All without an overwhelming majority of support.

Sen. Sanders clearly conditioned his consideration of another presidential run on an open primary, which of course means President Biden would have determined not to seek reelection, said Walker. I think this is admirable.

Sanders made rounds of cable news appearances, each time seeming more dissatisfied with the political reality that Democrats cant enact things like a $15 minimum wage or Medicare for All without an overwhelming majority of support.

He is also increasing his travel schedule, including going to several competitive races with national implications. Hell be in New York and Virginia over the weekend to express support for employees of Amazon and Starbucks, two of the senators biggest corporate targets, who recently formed unions.

If we find ourselves in a position where President Biden opts not to run, I imagine Sen. Sanders will feel an obligation to think about stepping up to the plate, Walker said. That he would even consider doing so again is a courageous act of patriotism.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln signed into law the bill that created the U.S. Secret Service. The evening he was shot. Win some, lose some.

Nearly 160 years later, the Secret Service says theres nothing weird about the fact that a couple of guys pretending to be Homeland Security agents duped four of its officers into believing their rather unbelievable backstory.

In Secret Service school, apparently, they do not teach you to be suspicious of someone who starts showering you with gifts, including a free, $40,000 luxury apartment.

The agency had a better excuse in1865 when it was not yet the job of the Secret Service to protect the president. In fact, it was more or less created not to protect presidents, but to protect us from presidents, particularly those who hadnt yet had much practice at running a capitalist democracy.

Tim Rowland

In 1833, Andrew Jackson  who figured he knew more than George Washington and Alexander Hamilton  shut down the Second National Bank. In response, localized banks began popping up like pizza parlors, and each of them had a different idea of what money should look like and, for that matter, how much of it was needed to fund a bank.

The fruit of Jacksons labor became better known as the Panic of 1837, and as banks failed left and right it became impossible to know what a bank note was worth, or whether the issuing bank even remained in existence.

The denomination appearing on a bill was only its suggested value. The further afield it circulated the less was known about the bank that printed it  or whether the bank still existed  so the less the note was worth. There was no FDIC at the time. Accepting a bank note wasnt a lot different from taking a chance in a raffle at the country fair.

Magically suspicious: Consumers claim Lucky Charms making them sick

More from Tim Rowland: When no idea has a chance

It scarcely bears mentioning that among the great beneficiaries of this system were the counterfeiters. With over 1,000 banks printing up notes, a counterfeiter could easily replicate the note of a state bank  or if that were too much work, they could design their own.

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Books and weekly papers were published, both to give a rough guess as to the value of each note and to alert retailers to the most recent counterfeits.

With the South helpfully out of the federal government's hair at the onset of the Civil War, Congress could finally get around to repairing Jacksonian damage and establishing the financial system that has endured to this day  including the introduction of the greenback.

But in a system dominated by paper notes instead of gold and silver coins, counterfeiting was unacceptable. This was a problem, since by this time, a third of all currency in circulation was bogus.

Southern lawmakers had not wanted a national police force either, so there had been little concerted effort to stop the counterfeiting enterprise. Counterfeiting was much like bootlegging would become six decades later. Many otherwise fine, upstanding members of the community participated, printing the money in remote country locales and then employing a network of distributors to inject it into the urban economy.

In the mid-1840s, a recent Scotch immigrant was deep in a Midwestern forest searching for straight white oak with which to make barrel staves, when he stumbled upon a nest of counterfeiters. After watching them and learning their habits, he turned them in to the authorities, and from that day Allan Pinkertons career in law enforcement was launched.

Early in 1861 Pinkerton received a letter from Samuel Morse Felton, president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, requesting a meeting. Felton was hearing increasingly worrisome chatter that a mob of secessionists was willing to resort to violence to overturn the results of a free and fair election.

Pinkerton foiled a plot to kill Lincoln by racing him through Baltimore ahead of schedule; when the would-be assassins bared their knives, the incoming president was already ensconced in the nations capital.

Unfortunately, it took the assassinations of three U.S. presidents before guard duty was assigned to the Secret Service. From three assassinations in 40 years, we have only had one over the following 120. Attempts to kill Presidents Taft, Truman, Ford and Reagan have been thwarted.

Despite some embarrassing dalliances with hookers and the bottle (Secret Service members are now prohibited from drinking 10 hours before a shift, and doing business with non-reputable establishments) the agency has performed heroically, both in protecting the president and, true to its roots, fighting electronic financial crime.

There is likely to be more to the story of the four agents taken in by the two fraudsters who protest that they only infiltrated the agency out of a desire to make friends. As the saying goes, with friends like these 

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Secret Service has had heroic efforts to counter its mistakes
LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP)  An opposition liberal party convincingly won Sunday's parliamentary election in Slovenia, according to early official results, in a major defeat for populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa, who was accused of pushing the small European Union country to the right while in office.

The Freedom Movement won nearly 34% of the votes, compared with around 24% for the governing conservative Slovenian Democratic Party, state election authorities said after counting over 97% of the ballots.

Trailing behind the top two contenders were the New Slovenia party with 7%, followed by the Social Democrats with more than 6% and the Left party with 4%.

The results mean that the Freedom Movement, a newcomer in the election, appears set to form the next government in a coalition with smaller leftist groups. The party leader addressed supporters via a video message from his home because he has COVID-19.

Tonight people dance, Robert Golob told the cheering crowd at the party headquarters. Tomorrow is a new day and serious work lies ahead.

Jansa, an ally of right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, congratulated the relative winner of the election in a speech.

The results are as they are, Jansa said, praising his government's work. Many challenges lie ahead for the new government, whatever it may look like, but the foundations are solid.

A veteran politician, Jansa became prime minister a little over two years ago after the previous liberal premier resigned. An admirer of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Jansa had pushed the country toward right-wing populism since taking over at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reflecting strong interest in Sunday's election, turnout was higher than usual  around 67% of Slovenia's 1.7 million voters cast their ballot, compared with 52% in the previous election in 2018.

Golob, a U.S.-educated former business executive, came out as a frontrunner shortly after entering the political scene. The Freedom Movement party has advocated a green energy transition and sustainable development over Jansa's nation-centered narrative.

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Liberals had described Sundays election as a referendum on Slovenias future. They argued that Jansa, if reelected, would push the traditionally moderate nation further away from core EU democratic values and toward other populist regimes.

Opinion polls ahead of the vote had predicted that the leading parties would be locked in a tight race.

Jansa's SDS won the most votes in an election four years ago, but couldn't initially find partners for a coalition government. He took over after lawmakers from centrist and left-leaning groups switched sides following the resignation in 2020 of liberal Prime Minister Marjan Sarec.

Jansa, in power, faced accusations of sliding toward authoritarian rule in the Orban style, drawing EU scrutiny amid reports that he pressured opponents and public media, and installed loyalists in key positions for control over state institutions.

The Freedom House democracy watchdog recently said that while political rights and civil liberties are generally respected (in Slovenia), the current right-wing government has continued attempts to undermine the rule of law and democratic institutions, including the media and judiciary.
Moyo Studio / Getty Images

It happens all the time to even the most careful Americans, and yet so many of us dont know what to do should it happen to us. Were talking about having your Social Security number stolen. Identity thieves snatch these precious digits through a variety of ways, including by hacking us online or scamming us by posing as a legit agency such as the IRS or Social Security Administration.

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Once they obtain this most sensitive information, criminals can sell it on the dark web or use it to open a new credit card among other benefits. Though this happens often (the Federal Trade Commission estimates that some 9 million Americans are victims of identity theft on a yearly basis), dealing with it is a headache. Its important to stay calm and go about the situation promptly and with diligence.

To clarify and streamline the process of what to do if your Social Security number is stolen, GOBankingRates consulted with personal finance experts.

Heres what we learned you should do.

Alert Any of the 3 Major Credit-Reporting Agencies

It is critical to act swiftly and alert either Equifax, TransUnion or Experian, said David Clark, lawyer and partner at The Clark Law Office. Doing so significantly limits the perpetrators use of your SSN, giving you enough time to settle the issue legally.

Note that this fraud alert must be renewed every 90 days until its established that the theft is resolved.

How Well Do You Know Your Money? Take Our Quiz and Increase Your Financial Literacy

Run Credit Reports

After realizing your SSN has been stolen, run your three credit reports from Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, said Dr. Chris Pierson, CEO of the cybersecurity solutions firm BlackCloak. You can do this for free and do not need to pay or join any subscription service under a prior federal law. Once you do that, review each for any issues and immediately dispute any credit cards or accounts that are not yours.

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You can get the three credit reports for free here.

Request a Fraud Alert or Credit Freeze

Fraudsters may want to use your identity to scam others. They may want to make purchases under your name, rent a car or an apartment, open a new credit card or apply for a loan, said Francis Locknear, founder of The Cost Guys. This is why its ideal to request a credit freeze if somebody has stolen your social security number. A credit freeze will restrict access to your credit report.

You will need to freeze your credit with all three credit bureaus: TransUnion, Equifax and Experian.

If somebody has your SSN but doesnt have any proof of the incident, you can still prevent the fraudster from using your identity, Locknear said. You can have a fraud alert placed. It will not restrict access to your credit report, but it will prevent anyone from using your information without verifying your identity first.

Report the Theft to the IRS

This next step is crucial as access to your SSN provides the thief means to file tax returns in your name and collect your tax refund, Clark said. The fact of the matter is that, unlike credit card accounts, stolen SSNs cant be closed so your only course of action is to report the incident to the IRS. Doing so will help absolve your name from any possible tax fraud committed using your stolen SSN within the duration of the issue.

You should specifically file a Form 14039 Identity Theft Affidavit with the IRS to notify them of the SSN theft, Pierson specified.

File an Identity Theft Report

A stolen valid SSN carrying the bearers name and address is valued at a high price and most likely sold to undocumented workers or people trying to hide their identities, Clark said. Ensuring there is a police record affirming you are not in use of your SSN at the time of a crime involving your identity will help clear your records and your name. This is also a prerequisite to applying for a new SSN.

Check Your Banking Relationships

You will also want to check your major banking relationships because a stolen SSN could be just the beginning of a larger identity theft scheme aimed at your financial accounts, Pierson said. At a minimum, be sure to change your password and access to each of your bank accounts. Make sure your financial accounts also have dual-factor authentication turned on so that no one else can gain access to the account.

Watch for Unusual Activity

Criminals typically use SSN theft as the starting point for financial theft, insurance and tax refund scams, so you need to go down the list and contact all of those organizations to make sure your account information (especially your contact information) has not been changed, to look for any unusual activity and to add any additional protections you can to these accounts, Pierson said. These should include (in addition to your banking) your email, health insurance, and any local, state or federal accounts you might have. You need to talk to each of those organizations to find out what additional anti-fraud protections can be added to your account.

Up the Security With Your Mobile Carrier

Last, but not least: Call your mobile carrier and increase the security on your mobile account, Pierson said. Most of the carriers will allow you to add a PIN to the account which will prevent an impostor from trying to gain control of your account. This is extremely important for you to do because SIM swapping is very common for people who have been the victims of identity theft.

Pierson explained that SIM swapping is when a criminal is able to trick the mobile carrier into switching out the SIM card associated with your phone number, which effectively gives the criminal control over that phone number.

Typically, they do this in order to steal your dual-factor authentication codes for a bank account or some other important account, Pierson said. However, SIM swapping also allows the criminal to receive all your calls and text messages and to impersonate you in making calls or texts to others.

More From GOBankingRates

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Social Security Number Stolen? What To Do
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's ombudsman said on Sunday it would investigate the government's alleged spying of Catalan separatist figures during the height of the region's bid for independence, while the government announced a separate inquiry by its CNI intelligence agency.

The probes come following intense pressure on the government to explain itself after Canada's Citizen Lab group, a digital rights group, said more than 60 people linked to the Catalan separatist movement, including several MEPs, politicians, lawyers and activists, had been targets of "Pegasus" spyware made by Israel's NSO Group.

In an interview with Spanish paper El Pais on Sunday, Catalan leader Pere Aragones, said trust was "at a minimum" and called on the government to give answers in the next days.

Spain's Ombudsman, which supervises the activity of public administrations, said it was assessing "a possible inappropriate use of the Pegasus software tools" that may have put "fundamental rights", including privacy, at risk.

In a statement on Sunday, Spain's defence ministry said it supported the ombudsman's investigation, adding it would "highlight that the CNI has acted, at all times, in accordance with the legal system".

NSO said the allegations were false when they were made on Monday.

Spanish authorities have been trying to ease tensions with Catalonia's leaders since the allegations were made. Aragones called them "an unjustifiable disgrace".

Minister for the presidency Felix Bolanos said on Sunday after a meeting with his Catalan counterpart, Laura Vilagra, the CNI would conduct an internal investigation.

The Spanish government had a "clear conscience and nothing to hide", he said, and the main objective of the measures was to "clarify the facts as soon as possible".

He also pledged the government would convene the official secrets commission in parliament - where the director of the CNI would have to appear.

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But Vilagra said the measures were "insufficient", adding "a scandal of this magnitude cannot be managed in a cosmetic way".

Citizen Lab said almost all of the infections by the Pegasus spyware took place between 2017 and 2020 in the wake of Catalonia's failed independence bid, that plunged Spain into its worst political crisis in years.

"Strong circumstantial evidence suggests a nexus with Spanish authorities," it said.

(Reporting by Jessica Jones; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn speaks to the crowd before former President Donald Trump takes the stage at a rally on April 9, 2022, in Selma, N.C. Chris Seward/AP

A super PAC spent $300,000 in an ad campaigning against North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn.

The PAC is connected to North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.

The ad appears to be the latest sign of discontent and frustration with Cawthorn among Republicans.

A super PAC connected to North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis spent over $300,000 in an ad campaigning against Rep. Madison Cawthorn, per Axios.

The ad targeting Cawthorn, a Republican representing North Carolina's 11th Congressional District, is the latest sign of frustration aimed at Cawthorn by Republicans.

"Madison Cawthorn lied about being accepted to the Naval Academy to get elected. Now, Cawthorn's been caught lying about conservatives. In perpetual pursuit of celebrity, Cawthorn will lie about anything," said the 30-second ad posted to YouTube by the super PAC Results for NC, Inc.

The ad continued: "An attention-seeking embarrassment, Cawthorn's antics help him but hurt us. Lying about conservatives, stolen valor, Madison Cawthorn lies for the limelight."

The ad, which cost $310,000, according to Federal Election Commission filings, referenced Cawthorn's claims during his 2020 campaign run that he had planned to attend the Naval Academy before he was in a car accident that left him partially paralyzed in a wheelchair.

It also appeared to reference Cawthorn's recent claims that he had been invited to an orgy by people he "looked up to" and witnessed prominent figures consuming drugs right in front of him. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy later summoned Cawthorn to a meeting and told reporters that Cawthorn's comments were "unacceptable."

Cawthorn's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on Sunday.

Tillis has endorsed North Carolina State Sen. Chuck Edwards, who is running against Cawthorn.

"Madison Cawthorn has fallen well short of the most basic standards Western North Carolina expects from their representatives, and voters now have several well-qualified candidates to choose from who would be a significant improvement," Tillis said in his endorsement of Sen. Edwards.

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On Friday, Politico reported on photos of Cawthorn, a staunch conservative, wearing lingerie. Cawthorn quickly responded, calling the pictures "goofy vacation photos during a game on a cruise."

"I guess the left thinks goofy vacation photos during a game on a cruise (taken waaay before I ran for Congress) is going to somehow hurt me?" Cawthorn tweeted. "They're running out of things to throw at me..."

Read the original article on Business Insider
Coal shortages require Vietnam to diversify supply sources

Vietnam is now in need of diversifying energy supply sources as it is facing a shortage of coal supply for electricity, cement, and fertiliser production due to impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia - Ukraine conflict.



According to Vietnam Electricity (EVN), thermal power plants are struggling with serious coal shortages. The coal supplied in the first quarter approximated 4.5 million tonnes, 1.36 million tonnes lower than the expected volume under signed contracts. As a result, many of the plants have halted or reduced operations.

Vietnam imported nearly 36 million tonnes of coal worth more than 4.3 billion USD last year. (Photo: VNA)



Two major providers - Vietnam National Coal and Mineral Industries Holding Corporation Limited and Dong Bac Corporation - have increased mining and imports. However, they said difficulties remain, posing the risk of electricity shortages in the dry season starting in April.



Coal demand in the cement industry is also urgent since domestic supplies are limited while demand is growing to serve post-pandemic recovery. The sector will need tens of millions of tonnes of coal to manufacture over 100 million tonnes of cement in 2022.



The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) said Vietnam needs to import 18 - 25 million tonnes of coal for power and fertiliser production this year.



Recently, Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Hong Dien held an online meeting with CEO of the Minerals Council of Australia Tania Constable and leading mineral traders in Australia to promote coal imports. He asked the companies to boost supplies for Vietnamese enterprises from April.



Dien also held a working session with South African Ambassador Mpetjane Kgaogelo Lekgoro to seek coal for thermal power plants in April and May.



The Vietnam Energy Association (VEA) highly valued the ministrys moves but also said it is not easy to access coal sources.



It pointed out that Vietnams total coal demand in 2022 is about 90 million tonnes, including nearly 50 million tonnes exploited domestically and over 40 million tonnes imported, which is a challenge to ensuring sufficient supply.



Besides, import prices are also soaring. Last year, the country imported nearly 36 million tonnes of coal worth more than 4.3 billion USD, down 19 million tonnes in volume but up by over 500 million USD in value from 2020. In Q1 of 2022, import prices surpassed 220 USD per tonne, up 170 percent year on year.



These factors will put pressure on power generation and many other industries, the VEA went on.



VEA Vice Chairman Nguyen Van Vy held that apart from boosting coal import, the industry and trade sector should promote domestic mining under signed contracts.



In the long run, authorities need to diversify supply sources from many countries to avoid over-dependence on just a few sources. It is also necessary to encourage Vietnamese firms to buy overseas coal mines.



Particularly, amid unpredictable changes and numerous risks in the global market, Vietnam should consider setting up a national coal reserve, Vy recommended.
A suspected gang member was arrested Friday after he was found with a stolen gun and narcotics, according to authorities.

Israel Juarez, 31, of Merced, was booked into Merced County Jail on multiple charges including suspicion of felony possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, violation of parole, possession of ammunition by a prohibited person, participation in criminal street gang activity and carrying a loaded firearm, as well as misdemeanor possession of narcotics, receiving stolen property, and resisting, according to jail records.

About 5:22 p.m., officers stopped a vehicle in the area of Childs Avenue and R Street that was occupied by several known gang members, according to a Merced Police Department news release. Authorities said one of the people was on probation.

Police said as officers attempted a probation search of the vehicle, Juarez admitted he had a firearm.

Juarez reportedly attempted to flee as the officers tried to detain him and collect the gun. Juarez was apprehended and the officers found a stolen 9mm handgun in his waistband, cocaine and marijuana, according to the release. Authorities said Juarez is prohibited from possessing firearms and ammunition.

Juarez remains in custody in lieu of $404,500 bond.

Merced police ask anyone with information to contact Officer Rocha at 209-388-7770 or rochat@cityofmerced.org.

Some crimes can be reported through the Merced Police Department website and anonymous tips can be submitted by calling 209-385-4725.

Anonymous tips can also be submitted to law enforcement through the Merced Area Crime Stoppers website.
Terry Crews is speaking out on the infamous event that occurred between two of his "dear friends" at the 2022 Oscars.

Crews, 53, recently spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about his upcoming memoir, "Tough: My True Journey to Power," when he was asked about his opinion on Will Smith slapping Chris Rock.

The Emmy-Award nominee quickly praised Rock for keeping his composure after being assaulted on stage, but refused to "demonize" Smith for his actions.

Terry Crews says Chris Rock "saved Hollywood" by keeping his composure after Will Smith slapped him during the 2022 Oscars. Getty Images

"Both Will Smith and Chris Rock are dear, dear friends of mine," he told the outlet. "I love them both as brothers, but there was a time in my life [where] I was Will Smith at that moment, and let me tell you, I've done worse than Will."

WILL SMITH RESURFACES IN INDIA FOLLOWING CHRIS ROCK OSCARS SLAP

"Way overkill, just  the punishment did not fit the crime. Like, people were like, 'What in the world are you doing?' My wife even had to be like, 'You got to promise me you will never go off like this. You did not need to pick this man up and put him on his head, on the concrete,'" Crews recalled.

Crews went as far as to say his friend "saved Hollywood" that Sunday night by not retaliating on stage and during the live broadcast.

"When I look back, by what Chris did, by just deciding to hold everything together, it actually, I think in a lot of ways saved Hollywood," Crews shared with the outlet. "Because if there would've been a brawl on that stage, I don't know if Hollywood would've ever gotten any respect again, you know? It's hard to even imagine what would've happened."

Crews went on to show love to Rock while recounting times in his past when hes been in both Rock and Smiths position.

"The definition of toughness where I grew up and the way I was, it was always the ability to strike, the ability to punch, the ability to set things straight, to even the score," he explained. "But the true definition of toughness was what Chris did in taking a punch and then holding everything together and then showing tremendous endurance and resilience in the middle of obstacles."

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WILL SMITH SLAP: JADA PINKETT SMITH MAKES FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE SINCE OSCARS

"I think it was a miracle what Chris did. I really do. I couldn't believe his poise in that moment. I thought, holy cow, we owe him a lot. I think every performer owes him so much because it just really saved Hollywood in that moment. I'm very thankful to Chris, but also I understand Will. I'm not [one] to demonize Will at all because I was there," he went on to add.

Crews is one of many Hollywood stars to share opinions on the controversial moment that took place at the 94th Annual Academy Awards last month.

Smith slapped Rock after Rock cracked a joke about Pinkett Smiths bald head, referring to the 1997 film "G.I. Jane," starring Demi Moore. Pinkett Smith, 50, has struggled with alopecia.

"Jada, GI Jane 2, I cant wait to see it," Rock, 57, said while onstage at the Oscars with the actress in attendance.

WILL SMITHS OSCARS SLAP HAS BEEN A NIGHTMARE FOR HIS FAMILY: REPORT

"Wow, Will Smith just smacked the s--- out of me," Rock said after he was slapped by Smith.

"Keep my wifes name out of your f----- mouth," Smith replied.

Terry Crews and Will Smith pose at Netflix Films: "Bright" and "Death Note" panel during Comic-Con International 2017 at San Diego Convention Center. Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images

Earlier this month, the academy announced that Smith was banned from attending the Oscars or any other academy event for 10 years following his slap of presenter Rock at this years ceremony. The decision came after a meeting of the academys board of governors to discuss a response to Smiths actions.

"I accept and respect the academys decision," the actor said in a statement obtained by Fox News Digital at the time. Smith also previously resigned from the academy and publicly apologized.

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Smith made his first public appearance since the slap in Mumbai, India on Saturday, smiling and posing for photos with adoring fans.

He also waved to nearby onlookers shouting "Will! Will!"

Meanwhile, Rock has been performing stand-up since the Oscars incident. In his first stage appearance since the slap, he told a Boston crowd he's "still kind of processing what happened."

"At some point, I'll talk about that s---, and it will be serious, and it will be funny," Rock shared.

Fox News Mariah Haas contributed to this report.
Motley Fool

While the American people can't count on receiving any additional stimulus funds from the federal government at current, that doesn't mean individual states have also put an end to their assistance. In fact, residents of the following four states can expect to receive additional stimulus payments in the month of May. Read on to find out the details surrounding the additional stimulus from each state and who qualifies. Golden State Stimulus I: Residents who normally receive California Earned Income Tax Credit (CalEITC) or file their taxes with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) qualify for a one-time $600 or $1,200 payment.
A die-hard Pittsburgh Steelers fan jumps the wall at the 1979 Super Bowl to watch his favorite team, a Muslim teen girl (comedian-attorney Yasmin Elhady) conquers 9/11 adversity and wins over students at an Alabama high school to become class president, and a working-class guy is slowed down by the cops in his blitz to get his pregnant girlfriend her ideal dessert (a Maple Butter Blondie) from Applebees.

Such are the tales, all true, on Warner Horizon TV and Peacocks True Story With Ed & Randall, on which hosts and executive producers Ed Helms and Randall Park sit down with a guest (sometimes two) and hear them tell outrageous, but oh-so-true stories from their lives.

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Contenders TV Docs + Unscripted  Deadlines Complete Coverage

Part of the conceit of the show, which is based on an Australian format, is that Helms and Park havent heard their guests great yarns before. Ed and I were in the dark, Park said during Deadlines Contenders Television: Documentary + Unscripted event about how the True Story producers keep a lid on their guests and their stories before each sit-down.

What you see on screen is our honest, initial reactions to these stories, he added.

Reminiscent of Comedy Centrals Drunk History, as each guest recounts their grand memory on True Story, theyre re-enacted by a string of comedic character actors, i.e., Adam Pally as Steelers fan Rick Steigerwood, Matt Walsh as the Alabama principal at Elhadys school, and Marc Evan Jackson as an episodic narrator.

While Daily Show sit-downs, and even NBCs 1980s reality show Real People, often took an angle on the kookiness of regular folk, a string running throughout the stories in True Story is that theyre tales of triumph and optimism.

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The empathy of the tone was so appealing, and having the most genuine, real interaction with these storytellers, Helms said about what drew him to the docuseries. Theyre really being vulnerable telling these stories from their lives.

We really set out to create a warm and safe environment in that studio, so that these storytellers would really share and open up to us.

Elhadys tale in Episode 2 about her emigration from Egypt to Alabama, where she became class president down to getting the cheerleaders on her side, is one of hope.

Said Helms, Theres some pretty intense themes in that story from being an immigrant family dealing with racism, and just overcoming so many obstacles, theres some heavy things.

He adds, We were caught off-guard about the intensity of that story, in part because shes a bubbly personality.

Check out Monday for the panel video.

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Click here to read the full article.
Former President Trump stumped for Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance on Saturday, while acknowledging during his rally that Vance has said some bad sh about me.

Hes a guy that said some bad sh about me, he did, Trump said. But, you know what? Every one of the others did also.

[In] fact, I went by that standard, I dont think I would have ever endorsed anybody in the country  They all said bad, but they all came back, the former president continued. But I will tell you he was tough  but the others were tough and they all  a lot of them  said some really bad things. And ultimately I put that aside.

Vance conceded during the rally, I wasnt always nice.

The president is right. I wasnt always nice, but the simple fact is, hes the best president of my lifetime, and he revealed the corruption in this country like nobody else, he said.

The Hillbilly Elegy author has been bashed by super PACs and others for previous comments he made against Trump, including saying, Im a never-Trump guy. I never liked him.

He has also been slammed for previously saying he might have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton.

Vance has already apologized for his past comments, including during a Fox News interview in July 2021.

Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump back in 2016, Vance said at the time. And I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because Ive been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy. I think he was a good president, I think he made a lot of good decisions for people, and I think he took a lot of flak.

More than 30 Ohio Republican leaders wrote to Trump earlier this month to urge him not to endorse Vance. Those appeals ultimately did not deter the former president from backing the Hillbilly Elegy author, however; Trump announced his endorsement for Vance last week.

During the rally, Trump touted Vances Yale law credentials and experience as a former Marine.

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Hes a fearless MAGA fighter. He fights like crazy, and he loves Ohio and he frankly  hes a great Buckeye, Trump said.

Trumps endorsement of Vance, which came late in the Ohio Senate race and just weeks away from the May 3 primary, is a major asset for the Ohio Republican candidate given Trumps influence within the GOP party.

Vance, who was trailing rivals in the primary prior to receiving Trumps backing, only has a few weeks to leverage that endorsement, however.

Unlike Trumps remarks about Vance, who has since reversed course after his past criticism of Trump, the former president did not hold back from going after other lawmakers and politicians, many of whom have also been critical of him.

He called out several by name, including cryin  Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.); little Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.); Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), whom he called a terrible senator; lyin Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R); and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

One name not mentioned during his speech, however, was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who made headlines this week after a New York Times report and audio recordings aired on MSNBC and CNN signaled that he planned to urge the then-president in the days after the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

The only discussion I would have with him is that I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign. I mean, that would be my take but I dont think he would take it. But I dont know, McCarthy says in audio aired by MSNBC this week from a Jan. 10 House leadership call he was on.

Both McCarthy and Trump said on Friday that their relationship was still intact following the release of the audio. The California Republican said he had spoken to the former president twice that day and claimed the call was overblown.

No, Ive never asked the president to resign, never thought he should resign, McCarthy also asserted.

He made a call. I heard the call. I didnt like the call, Trump told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Friday, referring to McCarthy. But almost immediately as you know, because he came here and we took a picture right thereyou know, the support was very strong.

Trump said of McCarthy and others who previously criticized him but later backed him, They realized they were wrong and supported me, noting to the Journal, I think its all a big compliment, frankly.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) before giving a news interview on Capitol Hill in Washington, on March 2, 2022. (T.J. Kirkpatrick/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON  There was a time in the nations capital when lines mattered, and when they were crossed, the consequences were swift and severe.

House Speaker Jim Wright, a Democrat, lost his job in 1989 amid charges of corruption and profiteering. Almost a decade later, Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, lost his after disappointing midterm elections.

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Gingrichs expected successor, Robert Livingston, then admitted he had violated the publics trust by having an extramarital affair  even as he demanded President Bill Clintons resignation for having an affair with a White House intern  and bowed out on his own.

More recently, in rapid succession, Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota and Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, both Democrats, were forced to exit Congress amid charges of sexual harassment during the #MeToo era. On the Republican side, Reps. Blake Farenthold of Texas, Patrick Meehan of Pennsylvania and Trent Franks of Arizona were also driven out by allegations of sexual impropriety.

Yet when the House Republican leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, was shown to have lied about his response to the deadliest assault on the Capitol in centuries and President Donald Trumps culpability for it, there was little expectation that the consequences would be swift or severe  or that there would be any at all.

Dissembling is not a crime, but doing so to conceal a wholesale reversal on a matter as serious as an attack on the citadel of democracy and the possible resignation of a president would once have been considered career-ending for a politician, particularly one who aspires to the highest position in the House.

Not so for a Republican in the age of Trump, when McCarthys brand of lie was nothing particularly new; maybe it was just a Thursday. On Friday, another House member, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said under oath at an administrative law hearing in Atlanta that she could not recall having advocated Trump imposing martial law to stop the transfer of power to Joe Biden, a position that would seem difficult to forget.

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Its a tragic indictment of the political process these days  and the Republican Party of late  that truth doesnt matter, words dont matter, everybody can be elastic in areas that were once viewed as concrete, said Mark Sanford, a former Republican governor of South Carolina who lied to the public about his whereabouts when he was pursuing an extramarital affair in South America and was censured by the state House of Representatives. You cross lines now, and there are no longer consequences.

Sanfords political comeback as a Republican member of the House ended when he crossed the one line that does still matter in his party: He condemned Trump as intolerant and untrustworthy. Trump called him nothing but trouble, and Sanford was defeated in a primary in 2018.

It was Trump who showed just how few consequences there could be for transgressions that once seemed beyond the pale for the nations leaders in 2016, when he survived the release of leaked audio in which he boasted of sexually assaulting women  then went on to win the presidency. In the years afterward, he survived two impeachment trials, on charges of pressuring Ukraine for his own political gain and of inciting the Capitol riot, and he continues to spread the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Those episodes were vivid proof, if any more were needed, that tribalism and party loyalty now outweigh any notion of integrity, or even steadfast policy beliefs. But if there were any questions about whether the end of Trumps presidency would begin to restore old mores and guardrails, the past months have put those to rest.

Last month, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., angered fellow Republicans by saying lawmakers he looked up to had invited him to parties involving sex and cocaine. The allegations drew condemnation from McCarthy, who told Republican lawmakers that Cawthorn had later admitted they were untrue, though the House Republican leader stopped short of punishing him.

Cawthorns troubles seemed to get worse Friday when Politico published photos of him in womens lingerie, undercutting the image he presents of himself as a social conservative. Hardly chastened, Cawthorn responded on Twitter: I guess the left thinks goofy vacation photos during a game on a cruise (taken waaay before I ran for Congress) is going to somehow hurt me? Theyre running out of things to throw at me.

He then asked people to share your most embarrassing vacay pics in the replies.

In Missouri, Eric Greitens, who resigned from the governorship in 2018 amid charges that he stripped the clothes off his paramour, taped her to exercise equipment in his basement, photographed her and told her he would release the nude photos if she told anyone of their affair, is running for the Senate as a Trump-loving conservative. When his ex-wife accused him of domestic violence in a sworn affidavit last month, he pressed on, near the top of the polls, saying she was being manipulated by Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and Karl Rove, President George W. Bushs former political adviser.

The Greitens campaign has received tremendous support from donors and patriots across the country who see the deception and lies peddled by establishment RINOs, said Dylan Johnson, his campaign manager, using the acronym for Republicans in name only. Since they launched these unfounded attacks in the last few weeks, the campaign has seen an exponential increase in the rate of donations, sign-ups and engagement.

McCarthys latest travails with the truth are reminiscent of the last time he had the speakership in his grasp and instructive about how Trump has changed the landscape.

Then, as now, the California Republicans troubles really started when he told the truth. In 2015, after Speaker John Boehner handed over the gavel, McCarthy made the mistake of saying on camera that the appointment of a special committee to examine the terrorist attack on a U.S. government compound in Benghazi, Libya, was aimed at least in part at diminishing the approval ratings of Hillary Clinton, who had been secretary of state at the time of the attack. Fellow House Republicans were furious, insisting that their pursuit of the issue had nothing to do with politics. They gave the speakers gavel to Rep. Paul Ryan.

This time, the truth McCarthy told was that Trumps conduct on Jan. 6 had been atrocious and totally wrong and that he planned to seek his resignation. The lie McCarthy told was that he had said no such thing, and that The New York Times had made it up, a statement that was quickly refuted by his taped voice telling Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., exactly what The Times said he had said.

But unlike in 2015, partisan hatred of the media and a desire for party unity might carry the day. Republicans said Friday that they were singularly focused on winning control of the House. Their voters are far more concerned with the policies of Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi than the words of the House minority leader, whom most of them have never heard of, said former Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah.

Conservatives and Republicans think its an unfair fight in the media; its always a Republican issue that gets the ink and not the Democrats, said Chaffetz, who challenged McCarthy for the speakership in 2015 when he stumbled. "They feel picked on.

Thats not to justify anything, but the treatment in the national media is something that bolsters Republicans.

As the news media parsed Greenes testimony Friday during a long-shot hearing to determine whether she was an insurrectionist disqualified from seeking reelection, Greene was fundraising off what she says is persecution. On the witness stand, she laughed off the charges that she had supported the rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, because the evidence against her had been reported by CNN and other outlets that she said could not be trusted.

In her fundraising appeal, she made the most of her day on the stand.

The deck has been so stacked against me that I had to file a lawsuit to stop this charade, she wrote to supporters before asserting with no evidence that she would probably have to take her battle to stay on the ballot to the Supreme Court. Fighting their fraudulent lawsuit could cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Indeed persecution, not propriety, is a watch word, not only in Washington but in state-level fights in which Republicans say their actions are merely to counter the overbearing efforts of socialist liberals and woke corporations.

Rep. Charlie Crist of Florida, who was a Republican governor of his state before he became a Democratic congressman, insisted that honesty was as important today as it was when Abraham Lincoln was extolled as Honest Abe and a myth grew up around George Washington admitting he had chopped down a cherry tree because he could not tell a lie.

Crist is now seeking the governorship as a Democrat, and he said Friday that if he won a contested primary, he planned to make honesty central to his campaign to unseat Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican.

It already is part of this campaign, he said. It needs to be and it should be. It goes to the core essence of integrity.

For Republicans, the ultimate arbiter of lines not to be crossed and the consequences to be paid remains Trump. For now, the former president signaled all is fine with McCarthy: I think its all a big compliment, frankly, Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Friday. If Trump decides McCarthy must pay for his prevarications  or for the truths he tried to hide  the price still could be high.

Take it from one who knows: Sanford.

We live in very strange times in politics, he said as he was hustling to his sons wedding rehearsal dinner. I hope they can self-correct, but I worry they cant.

 2022 The New York Times Company
Apr. 24Larry Bird is the most recognized Indiana State basketball player of all time, but it was Tyreke Key who had Tennessee fans excited Saturday night.

Key, who started 97 of his 114 career games for the Sycamores and averaged 14.5 points in the process, announced via social media that he would be playing his fifth and final college season with Rick Barnes and the Volunteers. The 6-foot-3, 205-pound guard is returning to Tennessee, having played at Clay County High School in Celina near the Kentucky state line.

"Home Sweet Home," Key posted on Twitter, adding emojis of an orange heart and an orange.

Key signed with the Sycamores in 2017 and was productive from the start, making the Missouri Valley Conference all-freshman team for the 2017-18 season and earning All-MVC second-team honors as a sophomore. He was an All-MVC first-team selection for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons, averaging 17.2 points and 5.3 rebounds in 2020-21.

After deciding to use his extra year due to the coronavirus outbreak in Terre Haute, Key eventually underwent shoulder surgery and did not play this past season. His 1,650 career points with the Sycamores ranks sixth in program history, and he wound up picking the Vols over Oklahoma, Ole Miss and Texas Tech.

Key joins point guard BJ Edwards, a four-star signee out of Knoxville Catholic, as the newcomers to Tennessee's 2022-23 roster, but more will be on the way. Since the Vols ended their 27-8 season with an NCAA tournament second-round loss to Michigan, fifth-year senior guard Victor Bailey elected to play his "super senior" season at George Mason, and four freshmen also have departed: point guard Kennedy Chandler (declared for NBA draft), guard Quentin Diboundje (East Carolina), forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield (currently in transfer portal) and center Handje Tamba (currently in portal).

Santiago Vescovi, a junior guard this past season, is going through the NBA draft process while maintaining the ability to return to the Vols.

Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will visit Ankara before heading to Moscow next week to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and then to Ukraine for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a U.N. statement said on Saturday.

Guterres will visit the Turkish capital on Monday, where he will be received by President Tayyip Erdogan, the statement said. The U.N. aid chief, Martin Griffiths, said on April 18 that Turkey was a valuable host for humanitarian talks between Ukraine and Russia.

Eri Kaneko, Guterres' associate spokesperson, told a news briefing on Friday that Guterres would head to Moscow on Tuesday and meet Putin as well as have a working meeting and lunch with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, hoping to discuss what can be done to bring peace to Ukraine.

The United Nations also said on Friday that Guterres would meet with Zelenskiy on Thursday, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and staff at UN agencies to discuss the scaling up of humanitarian assistance efforts.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Leslie Adler)
The U.S. is upping its aid to Ukraine as Russia steps up its offensive strategy against the Donbas region. And to further illustrate U.S. support, president Zelenskyy says two top U.S. officials are set to meet with him in Kyiv. To help break this all down, retired brigadier general Peter Zwack joined American Voices with guest host Maria Teresa Kumar.
By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Alvaro Bedoya will be confirmed to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Sunday, giving the agency enough votes to investigate oil companies Democrats say are "gouging" consumers with high gasoline prices.

Vice President Kamala Harris will be on hand to break an expected 50-50 Senate tie over Bedoya's nomination, giving Democrats a 3-2 majority among FTC commissioners. Currently, there are two Democrats and two Republicans, resulting in deadlocks.

"He (Bedoya) will give Lina Khan and the FTC the majority to go after the oil companies and go after gouging," Schumer said during a press conference in New York City. Khan, a Democrat, chairs the FTC.

Bedoya, a visiting law professor at Georgetown University, is a former chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law.

Gasoline prices are averaging more than $4 per gallon nationally and significantly higher in western states.

That is up from around $2.90 nationally a year ago, according to the American Automobile Association.

The American Petroleum Institute, representing oil and natural gas companies, argues petroleum prices are determined by supply and demand, not by individual oil firms.

Schumer, however, blamed corporate "wartime profits" following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a special operation.

Meanwhile, Schumer has accused oil companies of orchestrating billions of dollars in stock buybacks, a move he said enriches investors "but it doesn't do anything to increase productivity, increase (oil) production or anything else."

Legislation also will be introduced this week giving the FTC more power to protect consumers, Schumer said without elaborating.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, interviewed on CNN on Sunday, urged passage of legislation expanding FTC authority to act against price gouging.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Sarah N. Lynch and Susan Heavey; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
U.S. and Ukrainian officials on Sunday discussed the possibility of Russian President Vladimir Putin expanding his invasion from the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine into the neighboring nation of Moldova  another former Soviet state and non-NATO member in Eastern Europe.

I think where they go from here remains to be seen, deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told NBCs Meet the Press in an interview, referring to Russian forces. But they are a long way from cities like Odesa  the Black Sea port city in southern Ukraine  and certainly from Moldova.

Russian forces have a lot of fighting still to do, Finer added, and we think the Ukrainians are going to be very effective in fending them off.

Pressed on how the Biden administrations wartime strategy would change if Russia began making moves toward Moldova, Finer responded that the United States has shown an ability to be nimble and to adjust our assistance and our approach as the Russian war aims have evolved.

We will continue to do that over time, depending on how things evolve on the battlefield, Finer said.

Finers remarks came after Russian news agencies reported last Friday that Rustam Minnekayev, the deputy commander of Russias central military district, said Russia plans to take full control of the Donbas and the southern part of Ukraine as part of its new offensive in the country.

Control over the south of Ukraine is another way to Transdniestria, where there is also evidence that the Russian-speaking population is being oppressed, Minnekayev reportedly said at a meeting in Russias central Sverdlovsk region.

Transdniestria, or Transnistria, is a pro-Russia breakaway region of Moldova, which borders Ukraine to the southwest. Moldova, like Ukraine, was part of the Soviet Union until Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev dissolved the sprawling communist state in 1991.

Minnekayev also reportedly said that Russia plans to establish a land corridor between the Donbas and Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula south of Ukraine that Russia seized and illegally annexed in 2014.

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Asked on Sunday about a potential Russian invasion of Moldova, Igor Zhovkva, deputy head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told NBC that Russian forces can move anywhere they want, but they will not, we will not let them do this.

The actual war of Russia started in 2014 by capturing the Crimea and part of Donbas. So, yes, now they want to capture the whole Donbas. Yes, they want to have the connection between Donbas and the Crimea, Zhovkva said.

As far as the Moldova is concerned, yes, we heard those announcements of Russian officials, Zhovkva continued. Who knows? You never know with Russia, but  that could be a high possibility.

After retreating from around the capital of Kyiv in northern Ukraine earlier this month, Russian forces last Monday launched their anticipated assault in the Donbas, which is home to two breakaway areas largely held by Moscow-backed separatists: the so-called Donetsk Peoples Republic and Luhansk Peoples Republic.

In an address last Friday, Zelenskyy repeated his warning that Russias invasion of Ukraine was intended only as a beginning, and that Putin then intends to capture other countries.

All nations that, like us, believe in the victory of life over death must fight with us. They have to help us, because we are the first on this path. And who is next? Zelenskyy said. If anyone who can become next wants to stay neutral today so as not to lose anything, this is the riskiest bet. Because you will lose everything.

Doug Lute, a retired Army lieutenant general and former U.S. ambassador to NATO, agreed with Zelenskyys assessment of Putins ambitions on Sunday.

I think he would like to do that. President Putin would like to do that. He would like to expand the power of Russia in his neighborhood. He would like to recreate something like the old Russian empire, Lute told ABCs This Week in an interview.

However, such a restoration of the Soviet Union is not within Putins capabilities, Lute said, adding: There's a big gap here between his aims and his means.
(Reuters) - Russia has deployed Iskander-M mobile battlefield missile launchers within 60 km (40 miles) of the Ukrainian border, General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said on Sunday.

"Then enemy has increased the number of troops in the Belgorod region by transferring and concentrating additional units," the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in its daily morning update.

"According to available information, Iskander-M launchers have been deployed 60 km from the border with Ukraine," it said, without providing more detail on the location of the systems.

Reuters could not immediately to verify the reports. There was no immediate reaction from Moscow to the reports.

Belgorod is a city and the administrative centre of Russia's Belgorod region, north of the border with Ukraine.

The Iskander, a mobile ballistic missile system codenamed SS-26 Stone by NATO, replaced the Soviet Scud missile. Its two guided missiles have a range of up to 500 km (300 miles) and can carry conventional or nuclear warheads.

Russia said on Friday it wanted to control all of southern Ukraine. Kyiv said this showed Moscow had wider goals than its declared aim of demilitarising and "denazifying" the country. Ukraine and the West call the invasion, now in its third month, an unjustified war of aggression.

(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by William Mallard)
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy - The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images

Ukraines government has urged the UK to ensure not a single drop of Russian oil enters the country, as it pushed for a total and immediate boycott on Russian fossil fuels.

Oleg Ustenko, economic adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said it was no time for half measures. It comes amid concerns Britain may adopt a definition of Russian oil that allows some Kremlin supplies into the country, even under the impending embargo.

The UK Government is banning Russian oil imports to try and limit inadvertently aiding Putins war effort, giving UK buyers until the end of the year to adapt before the policy comes into force.

However Whitehall says it is still working with industry to develop a clear definition of what constitutes Russian oil, raising concerns that products containing some molecules from the countrys produce might still be allowed through.

Diesel and other refined oil products can contain a mix of supplies from several countries under long-standing industry practice or because they have been stored in mixed tanks.

There are also concerns that oil from Russia is increasingly being mixed with supplies from other countries to obscure its origin, as traders try to keep energy supplies flowing while avoiding criticism for aiding the Kremlin.

In a statement to the Telegraph, Mr Ustenko said: "We would welcome the UK engaging with Ukraine on how they define Russian oil - after all it's our people being killed with the proceeds.

"For us, every drop of Russian oil is Blood Oil. For the UK to really stand alongside Ukrainians, we need to see a total - and immediate - boycott on Russian fossil fuels.

Russia will always seek to find loopholes in whatever sanctions and policies the UK puts in place. This is no time for half-measures.

The only way to avoid customers in Britain inadvertently helping Putin is to ensure not a single drop of Russian oil enters the country or is traded by UK-based companies."

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Shell, one of the worlds largest oil and gas companies, has pledged to withdraw from Russian oil products, but defines refined versions, such as diesel, as not being of Russian origin if less than 50pc of the blend is from the country.

The UK typically gets about 8pc of its oil from Moscow, almost all in the form of refined products diesel and jet fuel. Disruption to diesel markets amid the war has forced up UK diesel prices to an average 176.11p as of Sunday.

While Britains embargo is impending, the EU is still debating whether to ban Russian oil imports amid concerns over the impact on its own economy. Both the UK and the EU have also not yet banned imports of natural gas from Russia.

The UK gets less than 4pc of its gas directly from Russia but is connected to EU markets which are heavily reliant. Gas was flowing normally to Europe via Ukraine as of Sunday, Gazprom said.

Dominic Kavakeb, senior adviser at the campaign group Global Witness, said: Every drop of oil we import from Russia is of direct benefit to Putins barbaric crimes against Ukraine.

What is needed has been obvious since even before Ukraine was invaded; a full embargo on Russian oil - including blended oil - and gas that has given Putin both the resources and power to enact his bloody designs.

A Government spokesperson said: We remain absolutely committed to phasing out imports of Russian oil by the end of the year.

We continue to work with industry to develop a clear definition of what constitutes Russian oil, one that will continue to provide an economic blow to the Putin regime.

This will ensure industry have a clear understanding of what they can and cannot import.

The UK Petroleum Industry Association, which represents filling stations, refiners and others involved in fuel supply, declined to comment.
KYIV, Ukraine  Russian forces called in airstrikes on a besieged steel factory in the southern city of Mariupol to try to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops holding out in the strategic port, Ukrainian officials said Sunday, while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would meet in Kyiv with two top American officials.

Zelenskyy gave few details about the logistics of his planned talks with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on what was the 60th day since Russia invaded Ukraine. But he told reporters he expected the Americans to come bringing not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons.

The visit would be the first to Ukraines capital by high-level U.S. officials since the invasion began Feb. 24. While visiting Poland in March, Blinken stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil to meet with the countrys foreign minister. Zelenskyys last face-to-face meeting with a U.S. leader was Feb. 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris.

The meeting was set to take place as Ukrainians and Russians observed Orthodox Easter, an occasion Zelenskyy highlighted the allegorical significance of to a nation wracked by nearly two months of war.

The great holiday today gives us great hope and unwavering faith that light will overcome darkness, good will overcome evil, life will overcome death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win! he said, speaking Sunday from the ancient St. Sophia Cathedral.

Russia has been trying to take Mariupol for nearly two months, and the city on the Sea of Azov has seen some of the wars worst deprivations. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere, and establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014.

Some 2,000 troops have been fighting tenaciously to hold on to the last remaining Ukrainian outpost in the city, the Azovstal steel plant, which also has civilians taking refuge in its labyrinthine tunnel system.

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Russian forces have continued to pummel the plant, hitting it with air strikes, including by long-range aircraft, Oleksandr Shtupun, spokesman for the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff, said Sunday.

Mariupol has been blockaded for most of the war. Ukrainian officials have said they expect to find thousands of dead civilians and evidence of war crimes there when the fighting ends. Satellite images have shown what appear to be mass graves dug in towns to the west and east of Mariupol.

In the last day, Russia also pressed its attacks elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists controlled some territory before the war and the Russians are aiming to gain full control over Ukraines eastern industrial heartland.

Shtupun said Russian forces intensified their assault operations toward the cities of Popasna and Siverodonetsk in Luhansk, and Kurakhiv in Donetsk. Luhansk regional Gov. Serhiy Haidai said Sunday that eight people were killed and two others were wounded in a Russian barrage on Saturday.

The Russians also have shelled the Dnipro region west of Donbas, where at least one person was killed by a Russian missile, according to regional Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko.

Russia has pulled back forces from Kyiv, and the north of the country to feed into the Donbas offensive, but the British Ministry of Defense said Sunday that Ukrainian forces had repelled numerous assaults in the past week.

Despite Russia making some territorial gains, Ukrainian resistance has been strong across all axes and inflicted significant cost on Russian forces, the ministry said in an intelligence update.

Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganize forces from prior offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness, it said.

In attacks on the eve of Orthodox Easter, Russian forces pounded cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine. A 3-month-old baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa, officials said. Zelenskyy said 18 more were wounded.

The war started when this baby was one month old. Can you imagine what is happening? Zelenskyy said. They are just bastards. ... I dont have any other words for it, just bastards.

The Ukrainian military said Saturday it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.

The command post was hit on Friday, killing two generals and critically wounding another, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said in a statement. The Russian military did not comment on the claim, which could not be confirmed.

If true, at least nine Russian generals have been killed since the start of the invasion, according to Ukrainian reports.

On Saturday the Azov Regiment of Ukraines National Guard, which has members holed up in the Mariupol steel plant, released a video of around two dozen women and children sheltering there. Its contents could not be independently verified, but if authentic, it would be the first video testimony of what life has been like for civilians trapped underground there.

The video shows soldiers giving sweets to children who respond with fist-bumps. One young girl said she and her relatives had seen neither the sky nor the sun since they left home Feb. 27.

The regiments deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, told the AP the video was shot Thursday. The Azov Regiment has its roots in the Azov Battalion, which was formed by far-right activists in 2014 at the start of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine and has elicited criticism for some of its tactics.

More than 100,000 people  down from a prewar population of about 430,000  are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate that over 20,000 civilians have been killed in the city.

Yet another attempt to evacuate women, children and older adults from Mariupol failed Saturday. Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupols mayor, said Russian forces did not allow Ukrainian-organized buses to take residents to Zaporizhzhia, a city 227 kilometers (141 miles) to the northwest.


Ukraine celebrated Orthodox Easter on Sunday, two months to the day since Russia began its unprovoked and bloody war on the country.

Easter festivities looked markedly different in Ukrainian churches, where stained glass windows have been boarded and statues wrapped in protective materials since the invasion began Feb. 24.

Easters eggs in [R]ussia are traditionally coloured in red. This year they are blood-coloured. Ukrainian childrens blood, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The country began its celebration amid a curfew, as Ukraines presidential office prohibited residents of all 24 regions from going outside overnight.

Those curfews prevented some traditional midnight Masses from being held, leading many Ukrainians to celebrate one of their most important holidays of the year by watching services on television, according to The New York Times.

Some officials in eastern areas like Luhansk and Sumy encouraged the Orthodox faithful to attend services remotely, amid possible Russian provocations and with many churches already damaged or destroyed in the war, CNN reported.

In Lyiv in the west, people reportedly gathered at the Greek Catholic Church of the Transfiguration on Saturday, carrying wicker baskets filled with cheese and sausages to be blessed before being eaten after Mass on Sunday.

One soldier outside St. Volodymyrs Cathedral in Kyiv used his helmet as an Easter basket, according to NPR.

Many Ukrainians, displaced after fleeing their country, celebrated from afar, away from family members who stayed behind to fight or aid the resistance.

From Germany to Poland, priests offered blessings to Ukrainian refugees, however, with over five million Ukrainians having fled the country, some parishes struggled to accommodate the influx of Orthodox worshippers, Axios reported.

We are enduring dark times. And on this bright day, most of us are not in bright clothes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday. But we are fighting for a bright idea. On the bright side. And the truth, people, the Lord and the holy heavenly light are on our side.

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We have all been praying for the last two months, he added. And in the Resurrection of Christ, which symbolizes the great victory of life over death, each of us asks the Lord for one thing. And speaks the same words to heaven. The words of a great and united prayer. Great and Only God! Save our Ukraine!

Both Ukraine and Russia are home to majority Orthodox populations. Ukraines church was granted independence in 2019 after centuries of being subordinate to Moscow.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Late Palm Springs resident Michael Moser, pictured right, met his husband, Michael Rudder, pictured left, in San Francisco in 1989 at a philanthropic event.

An 18-year-old Victorville man has been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of Palm Springs resident Michael Moser at the Desert Premium Outlet Stores in Cabazon in March.

Reginald Trice III was arrested Friday on suspicion of the murder at a residence in the 15500 block of Morada Road in Victorville, the Riverside County sheriff's officials said in a press release issued Saturday evening.

He was booked at the Robert Presley Detention Center, where he was being held without bail. He is due in court at 8 a.m. Monday in Riverside, jail records show.

The case remains an active investigation, and no further details will be released, sheriff's officials said.

'A really exceptional human'

Sheriff's deputies were called to the outlet stores just before 7 p.m. on March 24 and found Moser suffering from a gunshot wound. He was provided with medical treatment but ultimately died.

Moser, 65, lived in Palm Springs with his husband, Michael Rudder. During his career, Moser worked for several luxury brand companies, including Tiffany, Chanel and Ralph Lauren, and most recently as a vice president of retail for Harry Winston, before leaving the post in November 2021.

Whenever Moser went on a business trip during the three-decade relationship, he would leave a card  or two, or three  for Rudder.

They would contain messages: All I will ever need is you by my side to hold my hand and walk through life.  I love you, Michael.

Moser had been on a business trip to San Francisco, flying out of Los Angeles International Airport and returning on March 24.

At 5:37 p.m. that evening, Moser had called Rudder to let him know he had landed at LAX and was heading back to the desert.

That was the last time Rudder spoke to his husband.

He was an ideal human being. He would light up a room.  He was very kind and very purposeful in his life, Rudder said in describing Moser in a March 27 interview with The Desert Sun.

If anyone has information regarding this investigation, they are encouraged to call Investigator Birmingham at the Cabazon Sheriff Station at (951) 922-7100 or Investigator Letterly with the Central Homicide Unit at (951) 955-2777.

Desert Sun staff writer Tom Coulter contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Victorville man arrested in shooting death of Michael Moser in Cabazon
A burnt-out car is seen on the street after a missile launched by Russian invaders hit near the Kharkiv Regional State Administration building in Svobody (Freedom) Square on Tuesday, March 1, Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine. Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the war in Ukraine will only end with Russia's full withdrawal.

"This war should be finished when we clean our territories from Russian occupants," Shmyhal said on "Face the Nation."

So far, more than 5.1 million Ukrainians have fled their homeland since the beginning of the war.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the war in Ukraine will only end when Russian troops fully withdraw from the country.

"This war should be finished when we clean our territories from Russian occupants," Shmyhal said in an interview with CBS News' "Face the Nation," which aired Sunday.

Shmyhal said he believes the war will end when Russia exits Ukraine, and once there are "guarantees of safety for our country from our partners" put in place, including using frozen Russian assets toward rebuilding and recovery.

Since Russia first entered Ukraine on February 24, Ukrainians have escaped the country en masse. So far, more than 5.1 million Ukrainians have fled their homeland since the beginning of the invasion, according to data from the United Nations Refugee Agency. In the first week alone, more than 1 million Ukrainians left.

Ukrainians who spoke to Insider during the invasion have painted a grim picture of the devastation, describing hearing missiles fire through the sky in the dead of night, sharing a single bulletproof vest as Russian soldiers tore through their towns, and witnessing troops shooting at homes and hospitals.

Shmyhal said Ukraine is in the middle of negotiations with Western countries to send armed weapons and medical assistance, adding that Ukraine is looking to receive up to $5 billion a month to support its troops and fight back against Russia.

"We have many negotiations with G20 countries, their ministers of finances of these countries, the international financial organization, IMF, World Bank," he said. "So all of them approve this amount and all of them are in the sense that we need humanitarian support for internally displaced persons."

Read the original article on Business Insider
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Sunday said Democrats are going to lose in the 2022 midterm elections if they do not deliver on more of their legislative priorities.

Asked by co-anchor Dana Bash on CNNs State of the Union if touting accomplishments is a winning strategy for Democrats, Warren said that while it is important, that strategy is not enough.

I am very glad to talk about what weve done, obviously, and I think the president deserves real credit, but its not enough, Warren said.

Weve got less than 200 days until the election, and American families are hurting. Our job while we are here in the majority is to deliver on behalf of those families, and that means making government work for them, she added,

The Massachusetts Democrat called for putting an end to price gouging, addressing corruption in Washington and canceling student debt.

There is so much we can do, and if we do it over the next 200 days, were gonna be in fine shape. This is what democracy is about. Take it to the people what weve done, but we need to get the work done, she said.

Pressed on if Democrats will lose control of Congress should they not accomplish more ahead of the midterm elections, Warren said she believes the party is going to be in real trouble.

Yeah, I think were going to be in real trouble if we dont get up and deliver. Then I believe that Democrats are going to lose. Democrats win when they do what? When they work on behalf of working people, and we cant just rest on what weve already done. We need to be fighting going forward, she said.

Democrats face a difficult battle to retain their House and Senate majorities given historic trends against a presidents party in the first midterms of his administration. The party also has just a five-seat majority in the House, while the Senate is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.

Warren penned an op-ed in The New York Times last week warning that Democrats must deliver on their promises to avoid being beaten in the midterm elections.

She wrote that Democrats are headed toward big losses in the midterms if they fail to use the months remaining before the elections to deliver on more of our agenda.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
The Difficult Reunification of Eastern Churches

Baghdad -- A high level meeting between delegations from the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East is set for 9 May in Chicago, United States, the Baghdadhope blog reports.

This first step on the long and difficult path could be a decisive moment for reconciliation and reunification after decades of divisions and opposition that followed the schism in 1968.

The leaders of the two Churches, Patriarch Mar Awa II and Metropolitan (and Vicar Patriarch) Mar Yako Daniel, issued a joint statement to this effect.

Still, "For the journey towards unity we must first prepare our hearts, with great humility," said a leading Assyrian speaking to AsiaNews on condition of anonymity. Once this is done, practical, doctrinal and pastoral issues must be addressed.

"Many issues have to be dealt with," the source noted, "from the name of the Church and the date of Easter -- which some want to be based on the Julian calendar, like Coptic Orthodox and Armenians, rather than the Catholic calendar -- to the integration of priests and bishops and the patriarchal election." Above all, "The complex path cannot be based on sentimentality, and has political overtones."

Both Churches claim direct continuity with the historical Church of the East. In 1933 the then Patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII was forced into exile from Iraq to Cyprus, then to the United States.

In 1964, the growing flow of migrants from the Middle East to the West led the patriarch to adopt the Gregorian calendar in use in the countries of the Diaspora in lieu of the Julian calendar used at home. Four years later, the schism was consummated.

Several factors explain the break. In addition to the calendar issue, many Church members who remained in their homeland want the patriarchal see in Baghdad. Others opposed Natar Kursi, the practice whereby the patriarchal title passes from uncle to nephew, which was the case of Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII.

Mar Thoma Darmo, the then Metropolitan of Trichur (India) of the Eastern Church, moved to the Iraqi capital and appointed three bishops, who in turn elected him patriarch of the Ancient Church of the East, a position he held for only one year before his death in 1969.

Since then, relations between the two Churches have experienced ups and downs, but with the new millennium, things begin to slowly improve. Yet, overcoming divisions and restoring ancient unity takes time.

Another issue that must be dealt with is the succession to Patriarch Mar Addai II, who passed away on 11 February, which will be the key topic on the agenda of the synod of the Ancient Church of the East, set for 30 may in Chicago.

It is reasonable to expect no major changes until a new patriarch is chosen. However, a decision will have to be made as who will lead a reunified Church. A similar choice will have to be made about the patriarchal see. Currently, the Ancient Church of the East is headquartered in Baghdad while the Assyrian Church of the East is centred in Ankawa, Erbil, where the future cathedral is under construction.

For the Baghdadhope blog, finding answers to these questions will not be easy. After all, "nothing is easy for Iraqi Christians." However, "even though they are few in numbers and divided among different Churches, their union, formal but also practical, is the only way to face the danger of their slow but inexorable disappearance that has hung over them for decades."
The rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party in the 1930s came on the back of votes from millions of ordinary Germans  both men and women.

But aside from a few high-profile figures, such as concentration camp guard Irma Grese and concentration camp murderess Ilse Koch, little is known about the everyday women who embraced the National Socialist German Workers Party, known more commonly as the Nazi Party. What little data we do have on ordinary Nazi women has been largely underused, forgotten or ignored. It has left us with a half-formed understanding of the rise of the Nazi movement, one that is almost exclusively focused on male party members.

And yet more than 30 essays on the subject Why I became a Nazi written by German women in 1934 have been lying fallow in the archives of the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto for decades. These essays were only unearthed three years ago when three Florida State University professors arranged to have them transcribed and translated. They have since been made available digitally, but have not received widespread attention.

Not all Cabaret

As scholars of Holocaust studies, crimes against humanity and political behavior, we believe the accounts of these women give an insight into the role of women in the rise of the Nazi party. They also point to the extent to which womens attitudes on feminism differed after the Great War  a time when women were making gains in independence, education, economic opportunity and sexual freedom.

The German womens movement had been among the most powerful and significant in the world for half a century before the Nazis came to power in 1933. Top-quality high schools for girls had existed since the 1870s, and German universities were opened to women at the beginning of the 20th century. Many German women became teachers, lawyers, doctors, journalists and novelists. In 1919, German women got the vote. By 1933, women, of whom there were millions more than men  Berlin had 1,116 women for every 1,000 men  voted in roughly the same percentages as men for Hitler and National Socialist candidates.

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Everyone was everyones enemy

The essays unearthed at the Hoover Institution give an insight as to why some of them did.

Dissatisfaction with the attitudes of the Weimar era, the period between the end of World War I and Hitlers rise to power, is clear in the womens writing. Most of the essay writers express distaste with some aspect of the political system. One calls womens voting rights a disadvantage for Germany, while another describes the political climate as haywire, and everyone was everyones enemy. Margarethe Schrimpff, a 54-year-old woman living just outside of Berlin, describes her experience:

I attended the meetings of all  parties, from the communists to the nationalists; at one of the democratic meetings in Friedenau [Berlin], where the former Colonial Minister, a Jew by the name of Dernburg, was speaking, I experienced the following: this Jew had the audacity to say, among other things: What are the Germans actually capable of; maybe breeding rabbits. "Dear readers, do not think that the heavily represented stronger sex jumped up and told this Jew where to go. Far from it. Not one man made a sound, they stayed dead quiet. However, a miserable, frail little woman from the so-called weaker sex raised her hand and forcefully rejected the Jews brazen remarks; he had in the meantime allegedly disappeared to attend another meeting.

These essays were originally collected by an assistant professor at Columbia University, Theodore Abel, who organized an essay contest with generous prizes with the cooperation of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. Of nearly 650 essays, roughly 30 were written by women, and Abel set them aside, explaining in a footnote that he intended to examine them separately. But he never did. The mens essays formed the basis for his book, Why Hitler Came To Power, published in 1938, which remains an important source in the global discourse about the Nazi rise to power.

Summarizing Abels findings, historian Ian Kershaw wrote in his book on Hitlers rise to power that they showed that the appeal of Hitler and his movement was not based on any distinctive doctrine. He concluded that almost a third of the men were attracted by the indivisible national community  Volksgemeinschaft  ideology of the Nazis, and a similar proportion were swayed by nationalist, super-patriotic and German-romantic notions. In only about an eighth of the cases was anti-Semitism the prime ideological concern, although two-thirds of the essays revealed some form of dislike of Jews. Almost a fifth were motivated by the Hitler cult alone, attracted by the man himself, but the essays reveal differences between men and women in the reason for the enthrallment with the Nazi leader.

The cult of Hitler

For men, the cult of personality appears to center around Hitler as a strong leader charging toward a Germany which defined itself by those it excluded. Its not surprising that women, on the cusp of exclusion themselves, were less captivated by this component of Nazism. Rather, the womens essays tend to refer to religious imagery and sentiment conflating piety with the Hitler cult. The women appear to be moved more by Nazisms proposed solutions to problems such as poverty rather than the supposed grandeur of Nazi ideology in the abstract.

In her essay, Helene Radtke, a 38-year-old wife of a German soldier, describes her divine duty to forget about all my household chores and to perform my service to my homeland.

[Insight, in your inbox each day. You can get it with The Conversations email newsletter.]

Agnes Molster-Surm, a housewife and private tutor, calls Hitler her God-given Fuhrer and savior, Adolf Hitler, for Germanys honor, Germanys fortune and Germanys freedom!

Another woman replaced the star on her Christmas tree with a photograph of Hitler surrounded by a halo of candles. These men and women shared the message of National Socialism as if it was gospel and refer to new party members as converts. One such woman describes early efforts to convert her family to Nazism as falling on stony soil and not even the slightest little green sapling of understanding sprouted. She was later converted through conversations with her mailman.

The essays do not only serve as historical curios, but as a warning as to how ordinary people can be attracted to extremist ideology at a time of social distress. Similar language has been used to describe the current political climate in the United States and other countries. Perhaps, as some do today, these women believed all their societys ills could be solved by the restoration of their nation to a perceived state of former glory, no matter the cost.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Sarah R. Warren, Florida State University; Daniel Maier-Katkin, Florida State University, and Nathan Stoltzfus, Florida State University.

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Sarah R. Warren received funding for a portion of this work from the Florida State University Center for Undergraduate Research and Academic Engagement.

Daniel Maier-Katkin receives funding from National Science Fondation, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of State

Nathan Stoltzfus does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Comparisons between the 18th-century queen and contemporary female figures are in no way limited to Carrie Johnson (Getty)

The hashtag #CarrieAntoinette, which compares prime minister Boris Johnsons wife Carrie Johnson to the French queen Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), has been criticised as sexist. Commentators feel it relies on gender stereotypes and distracts from unfolding political events.

Those events include the recent fines issued by the Metropolitan police to those who attended illegal Downing Street parties during the pandemic, including Johnson and his wife. Focusing on Carrie distracts from Boriss actions, which have made him the first prime minister to break the law.

Comparisons between the 18th-century queen and contemporary female figures are in no way limited to Carrie Johnson. Even in her own time the French queens image was used for political gain and to comment upon the evils or good of women. Since then, Antoinette has become something of a pop culture icon, appearing across film, television and, more recently, social media in works that often seek to explore the performance of gender and the power that might accompany it.

Todays Marie Antoinette is a pastiche. Part historical detail, part cinematic influence, the Antoinette of popular imagination is regularly used as shorthand for the evils of excess, for femininity and indulgence. She is a queen steeped in centuries of myth and subject to constant reinvention.

From revolution to reinvention

Comparison on social media between Carrie Johnson and the ill-fated consort of King Louis XVI, executed by guillotine during the French Revolution, first appeared in 2020. This was in response to the Johnsons controversial refurbishment of their Downing Street flat. Reportedly. Reportedly disliking the John Lewis furniture nightmare left over by previous prime minister Theresa May, the couple decided to redesign the property and install gold wallpaper at 840 per roll.

Marie Antoinettes own extravagances ran to near-constant renovations of her palace Petit Trianon. The easily drawn connections between Johnson and Antoinette prompted satirical artist Cold War Steve to share an image swapping the government flat for the throne room at Versailles, depicting the prime ministers wife in period clothing amid stacks of money.

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But what of the behaviour of excessive men? Do people remember Louis XVI of France in the same way? No

During her own lifetime, Marie Antoinettes image was coded with political meaning and circulated both to assert and undermine the power of the royal family. During the French Revolution, in which the queen was imprisoned and eventually executed, her image appeared on both sides of the English Channel in sympathetic and critical renderings. Some images portraying her as a greedy aristocrat and others a noble victim. Satirical images often focused on the excessive hubris of the French court and the eventual dismantling of royal wealth.

Queen of the silver screen

In the centuries since her death, Marie Antoinettes image has been constantly revisited, often providing a mirror to reflect contemporary issues. However, her status as a pop culture icon was really cemented in the late 20th century.

The queen was invoked in Madonnas famous 1990 MTV Awards performance of her hit song Vogue. In a wonderfully camp performance, Madonna used Antoinettes likeness to invoke the lavish ballrooms of 18th-century France to draw connections between the rich queer culture that voguing was born into. It was a highly stylised performance of femininity by male and female dancers alike.

Then there is Antoinette on screen. Actresses from Lise Delamare and Jane Seymour to Diane Kruger have all taken their turn in portraying her in films. Perhaps the best known iteration today is Sofia Coppolas Marie Antoinette (2006) starring Kirsten Dunst. Indeed, the aesthetic influences of Coppolas playfully anachronistic depiction of the pre-revolutionary French court and the relationship between consumption and female power can be seen everywhere from Netflixs Bridgerton to drag.

It is this fictional Antoinette, with its exaggerated references to excess and luxury in relation to femininity and rich visuals, that has most influenced our contemporary digital iteration of the queen.

Prime minister Boris Johnsons wife Carrie has been compared to the ill-fated French queen over the Partygate controversy (PA Wire)

The excesses of femininity

Marie Antoinette has recently taken up court on social media. In another rendering of Carrie Johnson as the queen by Cold War Steve, we see Johnson bedecked in silk and reclining in a chair, surrounded by cakes and (a repeating theme for the artist) stacks of money. But rather than taking cues from 17th-century artists such as French painter Charles Le Brun, Cold War Steves version of the queen is, instead, lifted from Coppolas 2006 film.

In this satirical image Johnsons face is imposed onto a cut out of actress Kirsten Dunsts body. Interestingly, Coppolas version of Marie Antoinette is based on a relatively sympathetic biography of the real-life queen by British historian Antonia Fraser. Certainly, the filmic rendition of her focuses on her humanity rather than infamy. But despite this nuance, Coppolas work  itself a visual amalgamation of innumerable pop and art history references  has proved to be fertile ground for social media users and content creators. The films bold visual elements transpose easily to a recognisable shorthand for contemporary questions of gender and power.

Marie Antoinette memes and cartoons like the ones of Johnson are only going to multiply online as images continue to be layered, copied and pasted, sliced and filtered online to explore the supposed dangers  and pleasures  of excessive women. But what of the behaviour of excessive men? Do people remember Louis XVI of France in the same way? No. His reign is over and he doesnt figure in our contemporary cultural consciousness. But as long as there is a fascination with glamorous, powerful or even wayward women, it is likely that Antoinette will continue to command our attention for a long time to come.

Madeleine Pelling is a research associate in material and visual cultures of 18th-century Britain, at the University of York. This article first appeared on The Conversation.
Wichita police are investigating a shooting that left a Wichita man dead Sunday overnight after he left a night club, according to police spokesman Chad Ditch.

Officers responded to a shooting call around 1:20 a.m. on Sunday in the 1300 block of North Hydraulic. They found Nyron Bowen, 31, of Wichita, who had been shot multiple times, Ditch said.

Bowen was taken to a nearby hospital where he later died.

Investigators say Bowen was leaving the American Legion night club at 1335 North Hydraulic, when witnesses reported hearing several gunshots. Bowen was found just south of the night club with multiple gunshot wounds to his body, according to Ditch.

The investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information is encouraged to call police investigators at 316-268-4407 or Crime Stoppers at 316-267-2111.
Wildfires are sweeping through the West and Southwest amid dry and windy conditions as the 2022 fire season roared to a vicious  and in many cases, early  start.

Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado were battling to contain fires on multiple fronts, officials said.

In New Mexico, two major fires combined, burning 54,000 acres since 19 April as nearly 500 personnel battled to stop the blazes, which were only contained on Sunday at 12 per cent, according to an update from New Mexico Fire Information, an interagency site.

Many roads in and around the areas were closed, and shelters were set up for residents already issued evacuation orders; the state is operating on a Ready, set, GO! system. Multiple communities that hadnt already been given mandatory orders to leave remained at the previous two warning levels.

Half the state has a fire issue, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said Saturday, as more than 20 active wildfires burned in at least 16 of the states 33 counties, in the wake of winds that gusted up to 90 mph (145 kph) the previous day. At least 200 structures had been destroyed, she added.

With so many fires burning in April, well before the normal May or June start of the wildfire season, "our risk season is incredibly and dangerously early," said the governor, who declared a state of emergency for several affected counties.

In Arizona, which has been battling the extensive Tunnel Fire for a week, many residents were returning to their homes on Sunday morning following the lifting of evacuation orders. They were warned to be vigilant, however, as firefighters struggled to contain the blaze, which had already burned 21,000 acres as of Saturday.

The Tunnel Fire started about 15 miles northeast of Flagstaff, and it claimed 30 homes, displacing dozens of families.

Seven hundred miles north in Colorado  which has been beset by wildfires since just before New Years Eve  crews were battling at least seven blazes over the weekend. Residents were still reeling from fires in and around Boulder County starting at the end of December which destroyed entire swathes of neighbourhoods.

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The number of red flag warnings that have been issued this April is higher than any April in at least the last 15 years, the Denver Post reported last week.

Molly Mowery, executive director of the Littleton-based Community Wildfire Planning Center, told the Post that, in addition to climate change, conditions were worsened by a century of unchecked development and land management practices that suppress naturally occurring wildfires and allow plantlife and fire fuels to accumulate beyond normal amounts.

According to a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Frontiers Report published earlier this year, Dangerous wildfire weather conditions are projected to become more frequent and intense and to last longer, including in areas previously unaffected by fires around the globe.

This is due to climate change, including hotter temperatures and drier conditions with more frequent droughts. Land-use change is another risk factor, including commercial logging and deforestation for farms, grazing land, and expanding cities.

In Colorado, experts and residents have been witnessing the phenomenon firsthand.

Its like we just dont know what normal feels like anymore, Becky Bollinger, of the Colorado Climate Center, told the Post.
A Kansas City, Kansas, woman Ive been talking to for months  someone I know the FBI wants to interview, too  says she went to work for former KCK police detective Roger Golubski when she was only 12 years old. And she remained in his employ  under his control, really  for decades.

Golubskis lawyer, Morgan Roach, did not respond to a request to respond to this womans many serious allegations.

She and Golubski met right after her mother had died, when he answered a call that a bunch of kids had broken into a building. He let her go, she says, in that he didnt bring her down to the police station that day, or ever. But he never let her go in a larger sense, and in return for that favor drew her into the drug business.

A few years later, in what sounds like a particularly sordid Ponzi scheme, she began to be rewarded for bringing in other girls her age, who were paid for dancing and for sex at parties for important people, where one prominent KCK official liked to put out his cigar on girls skin.

One day, she took me on a tour of drug and trafficking houses, and pointed out Golubskis late mothers former home on Ella Avenue. Thats where, before high school started most mornings, she and those shed recruited to work for Golubski would go for breakfast.

Instead of seeing the detective as their tormentor, she said, they saw him as someone who was helping them out by giving them money they could then bring home to their own mothers.

When I told her I thought that sounded like Hamas handing out social services while drafting innocents into a terror organization, she said I would never understand. I saw it as feeding my brothers and sisters. I brought girls to him, yes, but as a result, some of them are people who own their own businesses today.

The former Kansas City, Kansas, police detective has been accused of raping and extorting dozens of mostly Black women.

That man is on the bottom of the totem pole

Did any of her friends ever complain that she had drawn them into a life of pain and degradation? No, they were helping their mamas.

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Over the years, though, its also true that a lot of these women who worked for Golubski came up missing.

Did Golubski himself kill them? Some, she said. He was told to, because you cant keep them too long or they want to get off drugs and have more of a life. When they threatened to leave, or talk, thats what happened.

Meanwhile, you make sure you have enough on them to be able to run them. They were made to do as they were told, she said, because if its my mama or your mama, its going to be your mama.

Some of those who went missing, however, had nothing to do with Golubski themselves, but were killed to send a message to a brother or father or boyfriend who wasnt doing as he was told. You dont break the horse; you break everyone around the horse.

When she finally left this life, four years ago, because of something one of her children had said, she didnt exactly give two weeks notice. I just stopped answering the phone, and you dont do that. Right after that, she was shot, not by him, but in a hit that obviously did not succeed.

Yet when I first met her, she was still defending Golubski, who has been accused of raping and extorting dozens of mostly Black women. The FBI believes him directly responsible for at least one murder.

He wanted to be a priest, but he had sinned

A lot of people are looking at one person, but that man is on the bottom of the totem pole, she told me back then. He wanted out a long time ago. He did a lot wrong, but he never wanted to be in police in the first place. He wanted to be a priest, but he had sinned.

In a deposition just over a year ago, one of the few things Golubski said other than that he was invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was that he had wanted to become a priest, and had spent four years in a Catholic seminary.

Golubski does feel guilty about the life hes led, she said, and over the years would sometimes dress as a priest, light candles and pray at a makeshift altar. To punish himself, he still lays in the basement on a twin bed.

But no, at least until lately, she said, he did not worry about being arrested. Why would he, she asked, when so many people whove said something have been ignored and disbelieved.

He said multiple times that if I go down, you all go down.

In the time Ive known her, shes begun to come to terms with what he is, and what he dragged her into when she was still a kid. Sometimes, shes overcome with remorse, at one point asking me, Am I any better than he is?

Answer: There is no comparison between a child who was preyed upon when she had no options and the grown man who preyed on her because he could.

She does not believe there will ever be justice for any of the survivors of the system he was only part of.

And no, she said, hes not out of the business, even now: The system still goes on.

Since she stopped working for him and the cartel that still controls so much and so many in Wyandotte County, she said, there has been more than one attempt on her life.

To talk to the FBI, whose agents have been looking at Golubski and corruption in the KCKPD on and off since the 1980s, shed need to feel theyre serious, rather than on the wrong side of this themselves, just as she used to be.

Nothing thats happened so far has convinced her thats the case.
The WT Department of Nursing held its bi-annual health fair Saturday at the Hillside Church north campus in conjunction with various organizations to give free public health screenings. Among the services offered at the health fair were screenings for STDs, HIV, colorectal cancer, blood sugar and blood pressure measurements.

Informational booths were conveniently located all around the building to educate community members on resources and programs that are available to them. COVID-19 vaccinations and other low-cost adult vaccinations were offered at the event.

West Texas A&M nursing student Dylan Maya gives a blood pressure screening to an area resident Saturday at the WT Health Fair at the Hillside Church North Campus.

Dr. Priscella Correa, WTs Baptist Community Services Professor of Nursing, outlined the impact of events like this on the community.

If you have someone with cancer detected early on or has high blood pressure identified early on, you could save a persons life and change the trajectory of their family, Correa said.

Dr. Priscella Correa, West Texas A&Ms Baptist Community Services Professor of Nursing, gives instruction to WT nursing students Saturday at the WT health fair.

She said this type of event is essential for nursing students in how to interact with the community that many of them will be serving in the area.

This is a great opportunity for students to meet their community and build a rapport to educate those that need it most about their health, Correa added. We are trying to look at health disparities with the ability to bring screenings and community resources to the population, meeting them where they are to make a difference for their health."

Correa said that the university is looking at expanding its health fair services to more rural settings for future events.

Students and staff of the West Texas A&M nursing program available at the WT Health Fair Saturday at Hillside Church north campus.

Alyssa Davis, a senior nursing student at the fair who gave blood pressure screenings to the area participants, spoke about her experience with the event.

I got more knowledge about this community as a whole; it is essential to know the people whenever you are working to help them identify health issues early," Davis said.

She said events like this give people the ability to prevent or identify issues that may be arising within their own personal health.

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Joel Pena, a nursing student who graduates next year, said that the experience he gained in a leadership role was invaluable to understanding community care better.

What really stuck out about this event was the diversity in the northeast area of Amarillo, Pena said. "This was an eye-opening experience where I was able to find out a lot of the available resources, so now I can pass that information to my patients.

He said he did not realize the number of available resources with the biggest detractor of knowing where to look for them.

Nursing students need to know about this information to pass it on to our patients. A big part of our job is educating our patients, Davis said.

Area community services were on hand Saturday to educate the community at the WT health fair at Hillside Church north campus in Amarillo.

Both Davis and Pena plan to work in the Texas Panhandle as nurses when they graduate.

Texas Tech University pharmacy students Saturday give free blood glucose checks at the WT health fair at Hillside Church north campus in Amarillo.

Other community resources that were available at the WT health fair included:

High Plains Food Bank, Legal Aid of Northwest Texas, Texas Panhandle Centers, Coalition of Health Services: Nurse Family Partnership, Uniting Parents, Storybridge, Texas Workforce Commission Vocational Rehabilitation Services, FirstCare Health Plans, Region 16 Education Service Center, Catholic Charities of the Texas Panhandle, Family Support Services, Haven Health Clinics, Amarillo Public Health Department, Panhandle Behavioral Health Alliance and Get FIT to Stay Fit, and others.

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: WT Health fair prepares students to give back to community
Volunteers at Methodist Jennie Edmundson Hospital come in all forms. Perhaps none are more valued than our volunteer pastors. Alexis Johnson is one such volunteer. Her service has proven to be invaluable to all that call upon her.

Alexis is an ordained elder with the Iowa United Methodist Church. She has served as a full-time pastor since July of 2006 and has been at Broadway UMC in Council Bluffs since July of 2018.

Alexis gave her first sermon at an Easter sunrise service her junior year of high school, after which her pastor related that he felt she was called to ministry. It took until her third year of undergraduate work to hear the call for herself.

The summer after college graduation, Alexis did her Clinical Pastoral Education unit. She then went on to the Iliff School of Theology for three years of study.

Alexis and her husband, Rev. Mark Johnson, have been married for nine years. She and Mark met during her second appointment in West Branch. Together they have two children, 7 and 5. Their daughter, Magdalene, is named after the first preacher of the good news. Alexis and Marks son is named Nehemiah, after the reviver and wall builder. In addition to her two balls of energy, their family consists of Rufus, their St. Bernard, as well as their two cats, Goose and Doc.

Although her free time comes at a premium, Alexis does have a few hobbies that she engages in whenever possible. Those include reading books of various genres as well as cross stitch and playing Nintendo Switch.

Historically, the pastors of Broadway UMC have a history of serving as chaplains at Methodist Jennie Edmundson. Several members of the church are also Jennie Ed volunteers and have benefited from Methodist Jennie Eds work in cancer care.

When asked what makes a good chaplain, Alexis stated that a pastoral volunteer should be there not only for patients, but also as a source of encouragement for hospital staff.

We should represent MJEs values and vision well and be willing to help as we are able, states Alexis. A lot of it is about clear communication with the nursing staff, who are always the ones calling us.

Alexis ends by stating, It is important to me that my words and actions reflect the love God has for all people. It is my hope that people feel seen, heard, and respected as whole persons rather than as means to an end.

Alexis and other pastoral staff are on-call seven days a week, 24-hours a day. We here at Methodist Jennie Edmundson Hospital thank you for your dedication and service.

 Jennie Edmundson

Hospital
Regret can weigh on anyone, even those whose accomplishments and fame seem to belie any hint of guilt.

But General Grenville Dodge made a decision, against the backdrop of the Civil War, that stayed with him until the end of his days. The builder of the majestic house that bears his name could never get the image of this young man out of his head; could never forget that he ordered the death of 21-year-old Sam Davis.

In the closing years of his life, Dodge wrote, I regretted to see the sentence executed, but it was of the fates of war, which is cruelty itself, and there is no refining it.

Sam Davis was a member of the southern gentry. He had plans for his life: to marry, have children, take charge of the family plantation and grow old as a man held in high esteem. History, however, would bring him a much shorter life and a greater legacy riddled with complexity.

In early 1863, Gen. Dodge was stationed in Corinth, Tennessee, charged with organizing, developing, and managing a clandestine intelligence network to procure information for the Union Army using spies placed throughout the Confederacy. Conversely, the program sought to identify southern spies within Union ranks. Referred to as the secret service, Dodges program would eventually develop into the Department of Army Intelligence, but in its infancy, Dodge personally nurtured it. Second only in priority to the collection of useful intelligence was the protection of each of his agents and their sources. (Even after the Civil War, General Dodge refused to share the identity of his agents.)

By November of that same year, Union soldiers captured young Sam Davis. Immediately, it was clear that Davis was a courier, not a spy. Davis wore an incomplete Confederate uniform and a dyed Union army overcoat, complete with cap. He had a note from a Confederate general identifying him as a courier. He was arrested along with several others in Confederate uniforms and civilian clothes.

Hidden in Sam Daviss shoes: an array of material meant for Confederate General Braxton Bragg: newspaper clippings, letters, and information telling the location of Gen. Dodges troops. But the discovery of papers stolen from Dodges battlefield desk and found in Daviss possession distressed and aggravated Dodge greatly.

Davis appeared before Dodge who warned the young courier he would be tried as a spy and hung unless he divulged the identity of his commander, known only by the alias E. Coleman. Unknown to Dodge, Coleman (real name Captain Henry Shaw) had been captured separately from Davis but placed in the very same prison cell! Not only was Shaw Sam Davis commander, but had also been his teacher. Davis refused to identify Shaw, exclaiming as he sat on his coffin, I would rather die a thousand deaths than betray a friend.

Many pleaded with Davis to comply. They saw him as a kind, demure, handsome young man, as well as educated and well spoken. Stretching his neck, they agreed, would prove unpalatable. Citizens from nearby towns approached Dodge to plea for Daviss life. Yet Davis would not relent. In a letter to his mother before his execution, Davis wrote, Dear mother. O how painful it is to write you! I have got to die to-morrow to be hanged by the Federals. Mother, do not grieve for me. I must bid you good-bye forevermore. Mother, I do not fear to die. Give my love to all.

A Cincinnati-based reporter sent the following dispatch: All nature seemed to be in mourning, and many warm hearts, loyal and true, but more that were not, melted into sympathy. Four companies of the 111th Illinois and two companies of the 7th Iowa were drawn up, forming a hollow square with fixed bayonets, with the gallows in the center of it. Hundreds and thousands were the spectators; the soldiery paraded about the guard; the citizens, gazing with scowls from their dwellings. The Provost Marshal took off the prisoners hat, for his hands were tied behind him, and then Chaplain Young, of the 81st Ohio, addressed the throne of mercy in behalf of his soul.

The officer in charge of the execution reportedly became unnerved by Davis youth and calm demeanor and had trouble carrying out orders. Adding to the pathos, Davis purportedly said to him, Officer, I did my duty. Now, you do yours.

Soldiers tied a white hood over Davis head and sprung the trap door. Many witnesses turned away as Davis writhed in agony for three minutes. He stood it like a man, one Union soldier noted in his diary the following day. He never paled a bit but stood it like a hero. His friend and commander, Captain Shaw (aka E. Coleman), witnessed the hanging from his jail cell. What was going through Shaws mind as he saw his protegee suffer and die on his behalf?

Years later General Dodge wrote, I have often regretted the fate of this young man, who could brave such a death when his life rested in his own hands. His mind was one of principle, though engaged in a wrong cause.

Dodge would write often of Davis. As the years passed, Dodge possessed more and more reticence about his decision, while the legend of Sam Davis grew. Daviss martyrdom produced poems, novels and plays about his life. Every schoolchild in Dixie knew the story. He was dubbed the Nathan Hale of the South, and citizens of Nashville erected a statue of Davis downtown.

One of the donors was General Grenville Dodge.

The statue portrays Davis with a rifle over his shoulder, head slightly down, cap off, canteen at his side and conveying a stoic comportment. It is the image of a martyr.

Fast forward to our own day.

The statue of Sam Davis is among those Confederate monuments under scrutiny. What exactly the statue represents generates a wide chasm of opinion. Some say it represents the common young soldier of the Confederacy. They suggest that moving the statue would erase and cover up history. Others cite that this statue, erected over 45 years after Davis death, represents the Souths efforts to generate monuments to celebrate the noble lost cause in the midst of racist Jim Crow laws. They see it not as a monument, but as a beacon of white supremacy.

General Dodges feeling of regret produces ripples that reach out to us today. History is alive and, as always, the past, present, and future are in conversation at the General Dodge House.
She has survived the Great Depression, Dust Bowl, World War II, Cold War, Great Recession and a bout with COVID-19.

On Sunday, Helen Rothe will turn 101.

So whats her secret?

Just live from one day to the next, Rothe said.

She was born April 24, 1921 to George and Ruth Selders in Otis, Colorado, where her family farmed until she was a toddler. When she was 2 or 3 years old, they moved to a farm near Griswold.

Helen was the third-oldest of 10 siblings who attended school in Griswold. To attend high school, she moved into town and worked as a housekeeper and babysitter for local veterinarian Harry Kirk and his wife, Mabel. After high school, she worked at a local hotel for a short time.

She fell in love with Elmer Rothe, who had grown up on a neighboring farm. On Jan. 30, 1940, the two eloped to Maryville, Missouri. After getting married, they lived on the Rothe farm for about 10 years, then moved to Council Bluffs. Elmer got a deferment from military service because he was a farmer.

The couple had four daughters: Jean (who passed away about 15 years ago), Sherry, Karen and Denise. Helen sewed clothes for the children out of feed bags, which were made out of sturdy cotton, daughter Sherry Swanger said.

They did that on purpose, because they knew a lot of people were struggling, she said. Wed pick our bag, and shed make something out of it.

Some bags were nice enough that her mother could turn them into gingham dresses or other fancy duds, Swanger said.

Helen also liked to bake cakes and other goodies, she said.

Once they moved to Council Bluffs, Elmer worked as a mechanic, then in construction. He got a job working on paving Iowa Highway 92, according to Swanger.

The section of Iowa Highway 92 from U.S. Highway 71 to Fontanelle was paved in 1949. The section between Council Bluffs and Highway 71 was paved in 1955. In 1958, Highway 92 would be realigned along the former Iowa Highway 100 instead of along U.S. Highway 6 as before.

Working on the highway was hard on the family, Rothe said. They lived in a trailer so they could move as the work progressed.

It wasnt fun, she said.

Every time they did 10 miles, we moved, Swanger said. Sometimes I would have 12 days in a school, sometimes I would have 15. They hardly knew my name before we were gone.

In spite of the upheaval, the children did well in school, Rothe said.

You and Dad were both readers, Swanger said. We saw you reading, so we wanted to read.

When Elmer finished the paving work, the family moved into a house in Council Bluffs, Swanger said.

What a joy to live in a house after living in a trailer! she said.

Helen never got involved in a parent-teacher organization or booster club but used to play pinochle and pitch in card clubs, Swanger said.

The couple moved to a different house in Council Bluffs in 1991. Elmer passed away in 2000.

Helen moved to Bethany Lutheran Home in 2012.

Theyve been very good to me, she said.

On Sunday, family and friends will hold the party they couldnt have on Rothes 100th birthday because of the pandemic, Swanger said.

Well definitely have cake, and itll have the number 101 on it, she said. Were going to have hot fudge sundaes, too. She loves those.

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Disappointed in

Grassley, ErnstI am writing today to express my dismay that both of our Iowa senators voted against confirming Ketanji Brown Jackson to the United States Supreme Court. This incredible woman is so amazingly qualified, having served at three levels of courts, and having clerked for some of the best and brightest. As Corey Booker stated in the hearings, How qualified does a [black] woman have to be?

Iowa Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst have clearly indicated that level of qualifications are irrelevant to the job. They clearly demonstrate that quality and content of ones character are not the factors upon which they should judge this judge. It is not lost on me the significance of refusing to confirm Judge Brown Jackson on the historic anniversary of MLKs assassination. I expect history will look back on this moment in the way we look upon those pictures of Ruby Bridges walking to her first day in desegregated school.

I wonder how will Iowa voters look upon these senators in November.

Candella Foley-Finchem

Glenwood

Its almost

No Mow May Spring is coming, birds are chirping, bees are buzz, well maybe not so much. Over the past few decades, bees and other pollinators that we depend on for our food have suffered serious declines. Loss of habitat, increased use of pesticides and herbicides, disease, climate change, etc. have individually and together contributed. With so many factors it seems that there is nothing that we as individuals, especially those of us living in the city and the suburbs can do. But wait, one good and easy thing we can do is to really do nothing (at least for a month or so). Thats right, put away the lawn mowers and rakes and spreaders, put up your feet and support No Mow May.

First started in 2019 by the UK conservation Plantlife, its gaining traction in many cities across North America. Just leave your lawn untouched during the month of May during that critical stage when pollinators are first emerging and need the early pollen and nectar to begin life.

So, give yourself a break and give the pollinators  the bees, butterflies and others that do so much work to produce much of the food we eat  a hand. It wont make the lawn great for them, but it will make it better.

Tom Reardon

Council Bluffs

Not trusting SummitThis meeting doesnt count. Zero points for Summit.

In order to move forward in this process, Summit is required by an IUB statute to hold public meetings. As an affected landowner, I attended. The meeting went like this; Summit Solutions gave a glowing description of their understanding of Ag things because they are an Ag company. The presenter talked for an hour, and then said we had time for questions. This session was very important to farmers in attendance. Three questions were asked; then he said it was time for lunch. No more questions, so several went unanswered.

After lunch, the Summit personnel went around to separate tables, visiting with farmers, this was the divide and conquer segment! I guess asking if anyone had questions. No one could hear what was being discussed at the next table but everyone may have needed to know the question & answer. I noticed an observer floating around the room listening to everything being said. She didnt say anything; I noticed if a small issue arose she quietly provided information to the Summit personnel.

I asked at my table if Summit has a risk assessment tool/program for heavy metal contamination of soil after pipeline construction. My person asked if I meant soil samples, then ask to read the study I had with me. None of Summit personnel knew for sure about any risk assessment tool.

The study showed pipeline right of way had elevated levels of soil contamination with chromium, cadmium, cooper, nickel, lead, and zinc according to the Potential Ecological Risk Index and human health risk assessments tools. These tools should help find sources of heavy metal pollution from pipeline construction to prevent water contamination from occurring.

This meeting doesnt count.

Brenda A. Barr

Hancock County

Make sure

kids get mealsWithout swift action from Congress, children in Iowa are at risk of losing access to meals this summer and many more next school year.

Thats because critical child nutrition waivers will soon expire and so far, Congress has failed to authorize USDA to extend them.

These waivers are an important tool that allow schools and community organizations to serve meals in ways that work best for their communities while they grapple with ongoing pandemic-related challenges like supply chain disruptions, rising food prices and staffing shortages.

But in a few months, meal programs will once again be turned on their heads, forced to transform how they operate; many wont be able to operate at all.

Without flexibility from the waivers, many schools will be unable to open summer meal sites. Children in rural communities, who already face barriers to accessing summer meals, will be at particular risk when meal providers will no longer be allowed to meet kids where they are by reimagining traditional summer meal service.

School food budgets, already taking a hit from rising food costs, will go deeper into the red because of decreased reimbursements. Schools will also face financial penalties for not meeting federal nutrition requirements if certain products arent available due to supply chain disruptions.

Congress and the White House must work together to fix this. Senators Grassley and Ernst, please dont pull the rug out from under schools working to feed kids. Doing so would fail the 1 in 8 kids facing hunger in Iowa.

Jillien Meier

Director, No Kid Hungry Campaign

Bethesda, Maryland

Hate for Muslims

must stopThe continuing hate speech (including renewed calls for mass violence and genocide), discriminatory policies, dehumanization, harassment, and violence targeting Muslims have reached dangerous levels over the past three weeks.

During the Hindu festival of Ram Navmi and Hanuman Jayanti, the Hindu extremists rampaged through Muslim neighborhood areas in at least 8 Indian states. They attacked Muslims, their families, homes, businesses, and places of worship.

The exact details about the loss of lives and property are unknown, as most violence-affected areas continue to be under strict curfew or other arbitrary restrictions by the state. On Sunday, Ibris Ahmed, 28, who went missing during the Hindu extremist violence in Madhya Pradeshs Khargone, was found dead in a hospital.

The Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which rules most of the violence-affected states, instead of taking action against the Hindu extremists, is actively targeting the Muslim victims through arbitrary arrests, bulldozing houses and shops by falsely accusing them of participating in the violence.

We strongly condemn this large-scale, well-orchestrated nationwide violence against Muslims and express our deepest concerns that it has the potential to turn into a full-blown Muslim and Christian genocide in the coming months.

Mohammad Sajed

Glen Ellyn, Illinois

Religion has lost its capacity to inspire civic goodAt a time when America could use its traditional services, religion has receded into a deep obscurity occasioned by its own narrow view of life.

In ancient times, religion was unquestionably the leading force of nature, in no small part because it was all about unraveling the mysterious laws of the physical world and of its various societies. High priests were the leading scientists, historians, and ethicists of their time, and the number two seat in government everywhere was drawn from their ranks.

Today, priests and pastors hide behind glitzy pulpits in front of almost nonexistent congregations inviting all to join with them in exclusive private societies having little credibility in the community and even less social governing power among the citizenry. They display contempt for science, an inability to decipher their own historical scripture, and leaders sporting the ethical capacity of common politicians, lawyers, and product marketers. Preaching about forgiveness, love and service seems their one remaining strong suit.

If America was founded on divine guidance mediated through its faith-inspired founding fathers and mothers, it is easy to see why it has gone off the rails today. Americas faith is flopping around like a fish out of water with no one available to release it back into the stream.

Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross, Utah

RIP Robert MorseDecades before he appeared on TV in Mad Men, Robert Morse was a star in the stage and film versions of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. Farewell to this legend at age 90. We still believe in you.

Paul Bacon

Hallandale Beach, Florida
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The Moroccan National Tourism Office (ONMT) has unveiled its latest international ad campaign under the theme Morocco, Land of Light.

The campaign is the cornerstone of the Offices promotional action dedicated to international tourism, both in traditional and emerging markets.

Morocco, Land of Light aims to position Morocco among the most coveted global tourist destinations, strengthen its reputation and attractiveness to the international public and reinforce its trendy image, especially among younger generations of travelers.

The campaign features three components, namely a visual identity of the Morocco brand, a major promotional film and many display variations.
Lincoln County commissioners Monday will consider taking several steps to finalize a planned June 22 celebration of the North Platte courthouses centennial.

The meeting will begin at 9 a.m. in the commissioners room in the courthouse, 301 N. Jeffers St.

County Board members will decide whether to close the courthouse June 22 to regular public business. Centennial festivities for county residents are planned that day from 3 to 7 p.m.

After hearing an update on celebration plans, commissioners will decide whether to authorize Chairman Chris Bruns to sign contracts related to the centennial event.

A 10:30 a.m. discussion on updating Lincoln Countys official seal will precede the County Boards centennial agenda items. An executive session will follow it.

In other business, commissioners will:

 Hear an update on the Lincoln County Agricultural Societys plans for a new education center at the North Platte fairgrounds.

 Decide whether to be a pilot county for trying out employee benefit services software being offered by the Nebraska Association of County Officials.

 Discuss whether to authorize Bruns to sign a state grant award for Community Connections in North Platte to provide community-based juvenile services.

 Hear Region 51 Emergency Managements quarterly report by Director Brandon Myers.

 Hold a noon meeting with county department heads under the County Board and the countys independently elected county officials.
The future of North Plattes planning and zoning codes will be the main subject of public city meetings on consecutive days Monday and Tuesday.

After their initial debate on the topic stalled earlier this month, City Council members will resume discussion of a package of proposed residential zoning updates during a three-item work session at 5:30 p.m. Monday.

Itll be the second time the council has taken up the subject during a nonvoting session. The first was Feb. 3, when the city Planning Commission previewed its update package for council members.

Council members Monday also will discuss possible updates to city user fees and a possible study of whether to reopen North Plattes 1972 landfill, closed since 1993. The landfill subject first came up last August.

The planning panel, which again will be invited to attend Mondays council work session, will start reviewing the other parts of city zoning codes during its 5:30 p.m. monthly meeting Tuesday.

No formal votes on those codes will take place at either meeting. Both will be held in the City Hall council chamber, 211 W. Third St., and will be livestreamed on the citys YouTube channel for those not attending in person.

Both meetings also fit into an ongoing long-term review of whether zoning codes need adjustments, said Planning Administrator Judy Clark.

That process, she told the council April 5, was triggered by a 2020 state law requiring Nebraska cities and villages to review them to encourage more missing middle housing like duplexes and townhouses.

Clark said the Planning Commissions package of residential updates, which the council tabled that night and pulled off their agenda April 19, amounts to the firstfruits of that review.

What I dont think people understand is were not stopping at residential, she said Friday. We are looking into possible changes for the whole zoning chapter of North Plattes codes.

Planning Commission members, who advanced their residential updates March 22, will resume their overall review at Tuesdays regular meeting, Clark said.

Codes to be discussed cover agricultural, commercial and industrial zoning, performance standards and regulations on using ones home as ones workplace.

The planning panel likely will need several more months before its ready to offer another set of zoning updates, Clark said.

The package already before the council would reduce the number of types of residential zoning districts from four to three, while adding new types for mobile home parks and suburban residential districts.

Council discussion April 5 centered on concerns about the citys level of enforcement when someone carries on an activity on a property not allowed under its zoning.

Councilman Ed Rieker moved that night to amend the zoning-update package to say such an activity would be permanently allowed if the city hasnt enforced its prohibition for at least five years.

Rieker withdrew his amendment after Mayor Brandon Kelliher suggested more research was needed.

Council members voted 7-1 to table an ordinance with the residential zoning updates, then pulled it off the table April 19 so Kelliher could withdraw it for more work.

The enforcement issues raised by Rieker, Clark said, likely would be more germane to whatever commercial zoning updates the Planning Commission might propose in time.

Starting with that panels Tuesday discussion, itll probably take another six months to a year to do that (overall) analysis, she said.

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Photo: Kevin Hagen/AP/Shutterstock

For weeks, Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin was dogged by reports that investigators were looking into him as part of a probe into campaign finance fraud. Then in mid-April, he surrendered to authorities as Manhattan federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment that charged the lieutenant governor on five counts, including bribery. They allege that Benjamin used his previous position as a state senator to direct $50,000 in state funds to a real-estate developer in exchange for thousands of dollars in donations to Benjamins unsuccessful 2021 campaign to be city comptroller. He resigned from office hours after he pleaded not guilty and was released on a $250,000 bond that same day.

Benjamin is just the latest in the seemingly never-ending revolving door of New York state politicians who have stepped down following accusations of political corruption  from legislative leaders such as State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate majority leader Dean Skelos, who were both convicted on federal corruption charges, to statewide officeholders including Eliot Spitzer, who resigned as governor after it was revealed that he was a patron of a high-end escort service.

The indictments against Silver and Skelos were made possible from leads by the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption, a panel formed by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo to root out corruption in state politics. Cuomo later dissolved the commission following the passage of new ethics laws in the legislature, prompting Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of New York at the time, to continue some of the panels investigations.

Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School, has particular insight into New Yorks long-running corruption problem. A previous member of the Moreland Commission and the prior chair of the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board, he discussed why the state is so crooked in a recent interview.

What was your reaction to the news about Brian Benjamin?

Well, I mean, a couple different things. One is There we go again, in the sense of the number of senior people in state government who have been caught in various scandals over the last 10 to 15 years. Some of them are more personal, like Governor Eliot Spitzer or Attorney General Schneiderman, but some of them look more like traditional corruption, like Speaker Sheldon Silver, Majority Leader Dean Skelos, Alan Hevesi, comptroller some years back. And this is kind of classic corruption.

What do you think we can expect to see in the coming weeks?

In some ways, I think the indictment of him is pretty straightforward. Obviously the government has to make its case on the facts. Im assuming based on newspaper accounts that Benjamins counsel is going to try and make an argument that this doesnt fit the model of corruption because he himself didnt get any money out of it. I dont know that thats a winning argument, but Im sure theyre going to try.

The other, of course, is whats going to happen with the position. Will the Democrats be able to get him off the ballot? I know theres already a bill or at least a proposal, I dont know if its actually in the legislature, to amend the law to make it somewhat easier for somebody to resign their nomination, which seems to make sense. Somebody has already resigned the job. They should be able to resign the nomination for reelection. The next one is, you know, the governor is going to have to decide whether she wants to appoint somebody and I guess be super careful about how she does it.

The indictment against Benjamin seems to indicate that he wasnt entirely truthful during the vetting process for the governors ticket, and Governor Hochul has said that she believed that he passed his background check. Do you think the traditional vetting processes that are used are robust enough to catch some of these red flags early on, or are some changes necessary?

I obviously cant speak to what they actually did in terms of how much they probed. I mean, on the one hand, youre hopeful that people will be truthful, but I guess you cant count on it  particularly if the stakes are high enough. This underscores the need to have a pretty thorough investigation, especially in a situation like this where it wasnt an election to become lieutenant governor where somebody personally is out there campaigning and theres an opponent whos going to be scrutinizing. This all happened fairly quickly. I mean, you understood why. Shed only just become governor and just wanted to make sure there was a backup there. But you know, during the course of a long campaign, its more likely that critical things will come out. And of course, something quick like this, when it was also being done kind of behind-the-scenes. I mean, it just underscores the need to maybe take more time and have the opportunity for a more thorough investigation to check into the statements that a candidate is making.

New York has unfortunately garnered a reputation for political corruption thats sometimes only rivaled by states like Illinois. Obviously, theyre not the only places where these things happen, but is there something unique about New York and Albany and how their politics function that lends itself to these scandals?

I think the notion of using your public position to do favors for someone so theyll do favors for you, thats not unique to New York. Theres often the argument that things are often worse in a place where the state capital is more remote from the center of activity, in the way that Albany is remote from New York City, and some people have argued that when state capitals are further away, theres less immediate scrutiny. But I dont think this has anything to do with that. This, I think, its just the classic example of I will use my public influence to do something for you if you use your private position to do something for me. And thats, you know, that kind of deal-making is everywhere. The particular deal here involves some illegalities, like the use of straw donors to get New York City public funding. But the underlying deal-making that comes close to the line  when is a deal a deal? When is a deal just politics, and when is a deal corrupt, is often a very hard question.

Some people have made the argument that a state or even a city thats controlled by one political party is more likely to have higher levels of political corruption and shady deal-making.

In New York, weve seen it on both sides. I mean, maybe the better way to put it is you can only make these kinds of deals if youre in a position of power. And it could be in a one-party jurisdiction or it could be in a two-party one, where the two parties themselves make some deals about splitting up who gets to call and how many chips. So Im not sure thats the key thing. I think its more, you know, there is a kind of acceptance of a certain level of deal-making. And its hard to police when a deal is, well just call it traditional politics, and when a deal crosses a line and becomes criminal.

In the past, you served on the Moreland Commission and also on the Conflict of Interests Board. What did those roles teach you about the nature of public corruption in the state?

A couple of things. One is that its important to drill into the idea that these jobs are public-service jobs. Theyre not there for your personal gain. Thats obviously very important. Second, you need to have effective oversight and enforcement agencies. Its unfortunate that, at least in New York, so often the enforcement is coming from federal prosecutors rather than from the state itself. But you need to have good rules. Unfortunately, sometimes you can have good rules and people still violate them. And thats really what happened in the Benjamin case  just getting the straw donors, getting contributions to be made in the name of other people so they would fall under the threshold that allows them to be matched. Theres no rule that could prevent that, but doing that is illegal. So the real trick was figuring out that thats what was happening. And I understand that some of this came from the Campaign Finance Board noticing that some of their checks were sequential. I dont know enough about how the investigation of this went, but there may have been some, you know, even basic administrative things that help catch misconduct. I mean, I think there, at least the rule was clear, and it was just broken. And in some ways, its hard to prevent people from just breaking the rules.

I should say that they claim that the rule was broken. The governments got to prove the facts. The factual allegations are pretty clear. This was a pretty straightforward set of relations and claims. They have to prove them, but its pretty straightforward.

There have been many attempts to rein in political corruption, such as the Moreland Commission and also JCOPE, the states ethics commission that has been criticized for not being substantial enough. In your view, what are some actions that could be taken by lawmakers right now to combat this issue?

This particular incident, its not clear that theres a lot that could be done. The main thing is the idea that there can be member items, which in effect, as I understand from the indictment, is Benjamin basically being able to promise his donor that he would be able to put something specifically in the budget for the donor. The more you can have these kinds of member items, which are very popular, the easier it is that they can be corrupted. Theyre pretty straightforward, such as grants that are often to community-based organizations. Theres a lot of appeal in the ability of public officials to direct money to community-based organizations that may do good work. But they are the basis of a kind of deal-making that can lead to a situation like this.

So one thing is either to ban them or to have much more disclosure about who gets the benefit from them so it can be a better matter of public record. This is a hard one to draw a lot of lessons from because, in some ways, it was not that complicated. At least, the violation of the campaign finance law was very clear. I dont think you could write the law any differently to prevent this from happening. Its a matter of capturing it. But you know, in the quid pro quo, the reason that it was attractive to the donor was the ability to violate the campaign finance laws in order to get a large grant from the state. And so maybe you have to work on that side of it, the ability of an individual to direct state funds in that relatively unaccountable way.

Would you say the Benjamin situation was more of a situation where the laws detected it in the way it shouldve been?

I think thats right. Obviously the system was broken, but the system caught it. I mean, you could say its unfortunate that it took federal law enforcement to catch it and it wasnt caught by state law enforcement. And I dont know why that is, and thats, I think, a deeper question as to why so many of our state corruption cases are being brought by the Southern District or the Eastern District and have not been brought by the DA. Thats a separate question, and I dont know the answer to that. Its not clear to me that this is a matter of writing new laws. The law was relatively clear, and the guy broke it, or at least thats the claim.

This interview has been edited and condensed.
Abortion-rights protesters at the Republican National Convention in 1972, a year before Roe v. Wade. Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Republican-run state governments are lining up to roll back abortion rights in anticipation that the Supreme Court will let them do so in the Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization decision, expected to come down near the end of the current SCOTUS term. The draconian nature of a lot of the pending state laws (some set up to take effect the minute SCOTUS acts) has gotten a lot of attention. Indeed, according to the Washington Post, by refusing to create exceptions for pregnancies called by rape or incest, a lot of these new laws are throwbacks to the distant past.

But how far back will red states take us? In many cases, back to 1973, when 33 states totally banned abortions and 13 more allowed them in limited circumstances. In some of these red states, reproductive rights would be restricted even more than they were in 1973.

The pre-Roe state abortion landscape

As late as a decade before Roe, legal abortions were rare, as the Guttmacher Institute explains:

In the early 1960s, only Pennsylvania prohibited all abortions, but 44 other states only allowed abortion when the womans life would be endangered if she carried the pregnancy to term. Alabama, Colorado, New Mexico, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia permitted abortion if the life or physical health of the woman was in jeopardy; Mississippi allowed abortions in case of life endangerment or rape.

The cause of abortion-law reform began with promulgation of a model state abortion statute by the highly influential American Legal Institute in 1962, recommending a ban on most abortions with exceptions at any stage of pregnancy in cases where the life or health (not limited to physical health) of the mother was endangered; or severe fetal abnormalities were likely; or the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest. These allowed abortions were referred to as therapeutic, as determined by a physician; there was no idea of any general right to an abortion absent some doctor-certified exception.

Beginning with Colorado in 1967, 13 states would enact laws based on the ALI model statute by 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court began considering Roe v. Wade. Notably, six of the 13 with moderately liberal laws were in the South (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Arkansas); another was conservative Kansas, and still another California, whose ALI bill was signed into law by Ronald Reagan. Its worth noting that the ALI model of generous physician-regulated exceptions to a general abortion ban was endorsed by many religious groups, including the Southern Baptist Convention, later a bulwark of hard-line opposition to legal abortion.

On a separate track, four states (all in 1970) decriminalized abortions prior to fetal viability: Hawaii was first, followed by New York (which had a Republican trifecta in power at the time), and then Washington and Alaska. There were minor variations in these laws, but the most important was that all but New York had burdensome residency requirements for those seeking legal abortions. So it was New York that became the national mecca for women (or at least these those with the means to get there) seeking legal abortions prior to Roe.

What Roe established

When finally handed down, Roe essentially required all 50 states to emulate the four that had decriminalized pre-viability abortions. More specifically, Roe set up a three-trimester scheme, as summarized by Justias Supreme Court Center:

In the first trimester of pregnancy, the state may not regulate the abortion decision; only the pregnant woman and her attending physician can make that decision. In the second trimester, the state may impose regulations on abortion that are reasonably related to maternal health. In the third trimester, once the fetus reaches the point of viability, a state may regulate abortions or prohibit them entirely, so long as the laws contain exceptions for cases when abortion is necessary to save the life or health of the mother.

So the broadest of the ALI exceptions to any ban on abortion  that protecting abortions necessary to save the health (including mental health) of the mother  was extended into the third trimester by Roe, along with an unconditional right to first-trimester abortions and a conditional right to second-trimester abortions. This decision was revolutionary in its impact on both the 13 reform states that adopted the ALI model and the 33 states that banned nearly all abortions. But the legitimacy of Roe was buttressed by the fact that the seven justices signing onto the decision included three appointed by Richard M. Nixon. There was also immediate majority public support for the decision.

The post-Roe landscape

With bans on pre-viability abortion placed off the table by the Court, the emerging anti-abortion movement shifted its focus to the areas still subject to control by the federal government and the states, notably funding and the regulations on late-term abortions allowed under Roe.

The movements first big post-Roe victory was in Congress in 1976 with the Hyde Amendment, which banned Medicaid funding for abortions in all cases other than pregnancies threatening the life of the mother. By the early 1990s, the Hyde Amendment had expanded to other federal health-insurance programs and included exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest  but no health exception. Thats the form of the amendment that remains in place today.

While most anti-abortion activists (when pressed) opposed rape/incest exceptions all along, allied Republican politicians did not. And for the most part, until recently, anti-abortion activists have grudgingly accepted rape-incest exceptions as politically prudent, because they are very popular. (The political folly of doing otherwise was reinforced in 2012 when two Republican Senate candidates in deep-red states lost, and forfeited the chance of a GOP takeover of the Senate, in no small part because they defended the no-exceptions position in ways that made them look both sexist and idiotic.)

Where the anti-abortion movement universally drew the line, though, was in opposing the physician-regulated health exception (particularly if extended to mental health) that was in the original ALI model and was incorporated by Roe. Their attitude was perfectly reflected in John McCains remark during a 2008 presidential candidate debate with Barack Obama that the health exception had been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything.

By then the terms of debate had already been shifted by the 1992 Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which affirmed a right to pre-viability abortions but dismantled Roes trimester structure and adopted a new standard in which states could enact abortion laws that did not impose an undue burden on the right to choose. This represented a green light to conservative lawmakers looking to erode abortion rights by hook or crook.

The new red-state militancy toward abortion exceptions

The vast recent wave of new state legislation imposing abortion restrictions that are clearly unconstitutional under Roe was the product of two developments: the expansion of Republican state legislative and gubernatorial power stemming from the GOP landslide of 2010, and the emergence of a conservative block on the Supreme Court that is clearly open to a revision and perhaps a reversal of Roe. Its no accident that states enacted a record 89 laws restricting abortion laws in 2011, right after the 2010 landslide, or that this record was broken in 2021 with 108 restrictive laws, right after Justice Amy Coney Barretts confirmation as the sixth Federalist Societyvetted conservative on the Court.

The increased pace and audacity of Republican anti-abortion activism in the States in the last few years was exemplified by two unprecedented trends in laws enacted in anticipation of SCOTUS demolition of Roe: (1) bans imposed at ever-earlier phases of pregnancy, particularly those keyed to a disputed first-trimester appearance of a fetal heartbeat (i.e., heartbeat laws enacted in eight states: Ohio, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Texas), culminating in an Oklahoma law making the performance of abortion at any stage of pregnancy a felony offense and near-total bans enacted in Alabama, Arkansas, and Utah; and (2) abandonment of rape-incest exceptions in ten states  Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas.

Significantly, the state law before the Supreme Court in the Dobbs case, Mississippis, does not have a rape-incest exception for its proposed ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy (nor does the Texas heartbeat ban that is waiting in the wings for SCOTUS review).

And the far frontier of fetal personhood

There is little doubt that for all the agitprop about states (or the people) being allowed to set abortion policy instead of unelected judges, the ultimate goal of the anti-abortion movement has always been and continues to be federal constitutional protection of fetal life from conception, making abortion illegal from coast to coast, and presumably forever. This is the object of the Human Life Amendment that Republican national platforms have endorsed since 1980, and more broadly of the fetal personhood movement that is enjoying a renaissance in anti-abortion circles, as reflected in the bold new willingness to discard very popular exceptions to abortion bans.

The prevailing dream of abortion opponents is that once SCOTUS has discarded a constitutional right to abortion, it will eventually embrace the idea that the fetus is a person in the meaning of the 14th Amendment (and echoing a conservative Christian interpretation of the Declaration of Independence), flipping Roe on its head.

The verdict on the extremism of red-state abortion bans

In answering the question of how far back Republican-controlled states are willing to turn the clock on abortion, a lot obviously depends on exactly what SCOTUS does in Dobbs. All of the proposed bans would be more restrictive than Roe, and than the four states that anticipated Roe by recognizing a right to pre-viability abortions. But a few states are poised to go back to the total abortion bans that prevailed between 1880 and 1967, and that continued to prevail in 33 states prior to Roe  those embracing total abortion bans without rape-incest exceptions, such as Alabama, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. The states with heartbeat laws without rape-incest exceptions, like Louisiana, Missouri, and Texas, would come close to that reactionary standard insofar as bans would prohibit abortions at a stage of pregnancy where many people are not even aware they are pregnant.

By abandoning health exceptions, virtually all Republican-controlled states would end late-term abortions entirely, which would be more restrictive than laws in the 13 states that adopted the ALI model between 1967 and 1972.

Whatever you can say about the state laws currently on the books, however, theres no question a clean reversal of Roe would intensify the radicalism of anti-abortion activists and the Republican Party they own lock, stock, and barrel. Unless this development produces a powerful public backlash that helps lift Democrats to power in more states, or brings back to life the dead tradition of pro-choice Republicanism, Dobbs could introduce a very dark period for what we now think of as reproductive rights.
She's not wrong. But that summary plus George doesn't sound good either.

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When I saw "Ol Parker", I thought she was using a term of endearment, like " That ol' Parker Is such a dear." kind of thing. My mistake.

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Hes Thandiwe Newtons soon to be ex and a screenwriter director. He actually has an interesting filmography. He wrote and directed Imagine Me and You, which is one of my faves but a lot of people get him confused with Oliver Parker, another screenwriter director.

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I guess she's got a point. I also think we don't see much of those late 90s/early 2000s type movies because everything is a fucking sequel or superhero movie, and therefore a little romcom is never gonna make $$$.

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ia and I also think social media has changed the way some of these rom coms would have plots. Nowdays you can look up someone online and find out everything you want. A lot of rom com movies from back in the day just wouldn't work now. (You've Got Mail for example.)

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You never see those 90s women movies anymore either - a few years back my daughter and I got in the habit of watching one every Sunday night because I wanted her to see all these chick-filled movies and theyre so good. Stuff like A League Of Their Own, Boys On The Side, Waiting To Exhale, Steel Magnolias, How To Make An American Quilt, The Joy Luck Club, etc. etc.

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that sounds like such a lovely tradition

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Agreed. Everything these days is either a shitty remake or a remake of a remake or just something very formulaic that tries to capture the "magic," of past great movies but fails to do so.



90s movies were truly some top tier shit that jut can't be replicated

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I agree a lot of the recent ones are lacking except for maybe some of the Netflix releases before and during the pandemic.



I finally watched My Best Friend's Wedding. I surprisingly have never come across it or been spoiled so it was unexpected lol.

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Thats amazing youve never been spoiled lol especially with amount of times the real villain of MBFW is Michael gets said around here. I swear it gets brought up on ONTD at least once a month haha

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She also aged out of the genre. Most romcoms from her generation were about 20-30-year-olds, and modern romcoms are hard to find these days.



ETA: Kind of on topic, but I was (pleasantly) surprised when I saw an interview where Joachim Trier mentioned the 'frozen in time' sequence in Worst Person in the World was partially inspired by the scene in Notting Hill where Will 'walks' through all four seasons.



Edited at 2022-04-24 06:53 pm (UTC)

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the lost city was so fun and sandra is 57

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Sandy seems to be the exception of that rule, but I also considered The Lost City more of a comedic action-adventure than a straight forward romcom

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Bless that woman's genetics, she is incredibly beautiful and charimatic. It was nice to see them give her that role vs some barely out of highschool someone.

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That movie stunk. But I love that Sandy is still getting roles like that

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I think you're right about the role of ageism in the romance genre. It sucks they don't put older women in romcoms because I think older women are weighing a different set of expectations/demands when considering when to enter into a relationship and it makes for interesting storytelling.

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That sequence is pure genius.

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she's not wrong! many of the late 90s/early 00s romcoms were p bad too but it'd be nice to see some kinda resurgence



marry me was cute. obviously formulaic but v charming

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I agree. I watched Marry Me when I had Peacock and loved Jennifer and Owen together; it was so much fun!

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Oh, I forgot to finish that before we cancelled Peacock! Do they end up together?

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Ohhh should I watch it before my peacock subscription is gone??

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i love romcoms.



but romcoms these days have def been relegated to streaming only mostly.

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Rom-Coms stopped being good when they starting casting for star power instead of actual fucking chemistry. Movies are so sexless and bland these days.



Edited at 2022-04-24 06:51 pm (UTC)

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I don't care about sexless, but the chemistry is much too often non-existent or strong sibling-vibes.

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funny enough, I've always saw her and george clooney as siblings lol

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Yep! Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone come to mind. Same for Jlaw and Josh Hutcherson, among many others. I know there has since been other couples but those two especially were the strongest that gave off sibling vibes

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Lack of chemistry between the leads in romantic comedies is striking, when it's the most important thing there.

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That Nina Dobrev netflix movie where she's catfished/catfishes a dude still comes up in my head bc it's truly beyond this world just how non-existent her chemistry with the guy she's supposed to be with is. There's not even a teeny tiny shred of it.

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agreeeed. i miss chemistry.

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Most romcoms these days are pretty forgettable. The last one that I thought delivered on all fronts was Palm Springs. I really loved that movie.

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Ohh I should really watch that

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Tbh I figured it was just cos studios don't really seem to be making romcoms much anymore - apart from maybe the Hallmark/Lifetime/Netflix type ones

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i mean she kinda plays the same character in every romcom

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I strongly disagree! Her character in my best friends wedding is vastly different than in pretty woman or notting hill! Shes just ridiculously charming in everything, even when shes being an awful person like in MBFW

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That final scene in My Best Friend's Wedding, via now very dated phones, with all the dancing is great.



She was the villain in that film, essentially, and pulled it off well.

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Ooooh, this is a strong but wrong take.

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I miss Jlos romcom run

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While not a romcom, she had great chemistry with Clooney in Out of Sight.

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Their chemistry was out of this world, that movie is so underrated.

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I love that film

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Agreed. That was the only movie of hers I liked and thought she had good chemistry with anyone

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Did you watch Marry Me yet?

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i did too but then i watched marry me lol

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I agree. There hasn't been a good romcom in so long. We need good modern rom coms but it's rare to even find one these days worth watching.

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I just finished watching Little Italy because I found out my friend worked on it, and Julia's made some points. They don't make it at least watchable anymore

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lmao the accents in that one

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They qualify as an anti-Italian hate crime

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i like how hayden christensen's character didn't have an italian accent as a little kid, but he sounds as if he's watched too many bad mobster movies

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that movie makes me scream every time i think about it lol. i hope your friend got good stories!!

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lmao the irony of her niece being the female lead

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And we need MORE QUEER ROMCOMS.

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and ones that don't center white characters!

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The way I couple queer to colour while society DOESN'T just shows there's no God. Or maybe that my brain's lazy, but I'm going to go with blaming deities.

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I hate how every movie / tv show with gay characters has to be about how they never end up being together or some BS time jump where they meet each other again years later, having lived a miserable straight life



Not every gay relationship has to be depressing! Mine for example thankfully wasnt and neither was my coming out really. Yes it sucks that people have to still come out in the first place but give me a happy movie for a change!

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I want more GAY romcoms. Exclusively same sex attracted.

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Nnnn and that aren't a little sad, like The Half of It. I ADORED that movie, but it wasn't so much a romcom as a cute and a little heartbreaking movie about 3 kids stuck in a little town, with some focus on the two girls and their budding relationship.



So, it's a cute movie, but not light hearted enough to be a romcom that you can put on the background or just to relax on Sunday.



Edited at 2022-04-25 12:42 am (UTC)

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The Asia-Pacific region is particularly at risk from the effects of climate change

A recent report found that relatively few companies in the Asia-Pacific region have adopted net-zero carbon emission strategies to date. Nevertheless, there are grounds for cautious optimism as pacesetters in the region announce ambitious targets and experiment with innovative decarbonization strategies.

State of play

The report, published in April by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), found that by the end of 2021 just 8% of companies in the Asia-Pacific region had signed on to plans to reach net-zero carbon emissions. Furthermore, less than one-third of responding companies had adopted science-based targets.

The CDP, a non-profit organization that maintains a global environmental disclosure system, analyzed data from 3879 companies across 21 markets, which together account for around 14% of global market capitalization.

The report warned that the gap in corporate efforts to control emissions had to be closed if the targets of the 2015 Paris Agreement are to be met.

The urgent need for action was recently underlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes Sixth Assessment Report, published in August 2021. Among other warnings, it noted that 3 billion people around the globe are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

A substantial proportion of the most at-risk populations are in the Asia Pacific. Indeed, the CDP predicts that exposure to climate-related hazards could erode between 5.5% and 26% of its collective GDP by 2050.

Ongoing carbon emissions are also a concern. In 2020, the Asia Pacific was responsible for 52% of global energy-related CO2 emissions and had a decarbonization rate of 0.9%  significantly below the world average of 2.5%. A global average of 12.9% is needed to limit the Earths temperature increase over pre-industrialization levels to 1.5C.

Regional trailblazers

While the situation is worrying, the CDP report outlined a few reasons for cautious optimism.

More and more companies in the region are signing up to climate targets, with firms competing to display climate leadership; for example, 2021 saw a 29% increase in corporate disclosures relative to the previous year, according to the CDP report.

At the same time, there is growing awareness of the commercial opportunities associated with net-zero actions.

In the middle of last year Grab and Gojek  Southeast Asia's biggest super apps that specialize in ride-hailing and delivery  pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions.

While Singapore-based Grab did not provide a timeframe for its transition, the company expressed that it was aiming for "a net-zero-carbon future", which it will achieve in part by adopting electric vehicles and partaking in reforestation programs.

Indonesias Gojek  which has since merged with e-commerce firm Tokopedia to form a holding company, GoTo  committed to net-zero by 2030. This will involve shifting its entire fleet to electric vehicles and producing zero waste. Gojek is setting an ambitious standard in the industry: Uber, for its part, aims to reach net-zero by 2040.

Other tech start-ups are contributing to the movement towards net-zero emissions by nudging consumers towards green alternatives. Carro, also based in Singapore, is one of the regions largest online car marketplaces, and last year it launched low-interest car loans which only apply to hybrid and electric cars.

Another area where the region is making strides is green or sustainability-related bonds, with banks in the Asia Pacific increasingly participating in environmentally friendly lending and net-zero portfolios. At the end of 2021, for instance, Malaysias CIMB Group, which operates throughout ASEAN, committed to mobilizing RM30bn ($7 billion) in sustainable finance through to 2024 and achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

On a similar note, 2021 saw Nippon Life Insurance  one of Japans largest private institutional investors  announce a goal to achieve net-zero emissions for companies in its stock and bond portfolios by 2050.

Energy transition

The Asia Pacific region, and China in particular, is also at the forefront of many sustainable energy developments.

After a decade of building solar and wind power plants, China now has some 570 GW of installed renewable energy capacity and is the worlds largest producer of wind turbines and solar panels.

Other countries are also expanding their footprints in the space. Thailand, for example, has for some years been trialing innovative approaches to expand its renewable energy segment. Australian blockchain firm Powerledger has been working with Thai Digital Energy Development to foster the countrys energy trading infrastructure, enabling the trading of renewable energy certificates and carbon credits. In April this year, the firm announced a further expansion of the project.

As these and many other examples show, innovative efforts to achieve carbon neutrality are gathering pace among companies in the Asia Pacific. With a growing number of firms committing to science-based, net-zero carbon emissions targets, the regions business community could yet rise to the urgent challenge of slowing or halting the damaging effects of climate change.

By Oxford Business Group

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Due to its commitment to OPEC, Iraq may not be able to export as much oil as it really wants to.

Calls were made for Iraq to ramp up its oil production after OPEC refused to increase its output in line with the United States and International Energy Agency requests. As Iraqs oil exports reach record highs, the potential for further growth is evident. Investments in the countrys energy infrastructure could make Iraq a bigger global player in the oil industry as countries around the globe search for new oil and gas partners. Iraq was pressured to increase its oil output last week, according to Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar. Jabbar stated that Iraq would supply oil to help lessen the impact of shortages being felt worldwide. Meanwhile, OPEC is sticking to its original plan to raise output across its member states by 432,000-bpd in May.

Iraq holds approximately 145 billion barrels of oil, making it the fifth-largest oil state in the world. With production levels of around 4.4 million bpd, Iraq could help move away from dependence on Russian oil if it can increase its output. Its currently exporting most of its crude to China, India, Turkey, South Korea, and the U.S. While India has turned to Russia for its cheap oil exports in recent weeks, Iraq is maintaining its role as a major oil exporter to India.

And Iraqs oil trade looks positive as it announced its highest exports for 50 years in March, at a value of $11.07 billion. Exports rose in response to fears of shortages, as sanctions were imposed on the purchase of Russian oil. Countries around the globe are looking for alternative oil and gas partners to ensure they have enough oil as well as to halt the rapid increase in oil prices. Although it has decreased slightly over the past month, the Brent Benchmark is still very high, at almost $109 a barrel. Greater output could help alleviate some of the pressures felt by rising energy prices at a time when the global economy is still recovering from the Covid pandemic.

However, Iraqs Deputy Prime Minister Ali Allawi stated that it would be sticking to OPEC plans for output, explaining Its unlikely that we can export more, but we can certainly substitute for imports of oil byproducts and gas. Allawi also said, Iraq is "basically a follower and does not set policy in Opec". But, Opec has been "a successful cartel" and it would be "rather foolish to pull out from a successful cartel", he stated.

With oil revenues contributing around 90 percent of Iraqs income, this could be a time for Iraq to be strategic in its immediate and mid-term plans for its energy sector. Ironically, Iraq still imports much of its energy needs, buying natural gas from Iran to meet its electricity needs. It also purchases many of its refined oil products as it does not have a well-established refining industry. The country experiences regular power cuts and requires significant investment in its infrastructure to improve its energy security.

Related: Russias Oil Production Has Dropped By 10% Since The Start Of The War In Ukraine

But while Iraq states its commitment to OPEC as the main reason for not increasing its crude output, this may not be the only cause. Iraq has previously failed to meet OPEC production quotas, falling 130,000 bpd short of its target in March. Although Iraqs oil fields have the capacity to pump over 5 million bpd of crude, poor storage and export facilities mean that it is unable to meet this output level.

Major bottlenecks in Iraqs oil infrastructure mean that the quantity of the oil that the country exports is limited. Further, regular issues across the countrys oil fields often have an impact on production levels. While the West Qurna 2 field resumed production two weeks early following maintenance, protests halted output at the Nassiriya field in April. In addition, Iraq is attempting to increase oil exports from its Gulf terminals in the south, but several delays to infrastructure developments have made this impossible.

Most recently, the Iraqi government halted work on the development of the 1 million bpd crude export pipeline from Iraq to Aqaba in Jordan. It has decided, instead, to wait until the next government is formed to take any further action on the project. The oil ministry stated, The project is still under technical study and neither has it been awarded nor has a contract with any party been concluded.

Three months prior, the Jordanian government had shown optimism over getting the project underway. But with the government formation process facing constant delays, there is no telling how long Jordan will have to wait to see progress on the pipeline project. If it goes ahead, the pipeline is expected to cost around $8.5 billion. But no clear financing plan has been established by either country.

Iraq is currently seeing huge potential for the growth of its oil industry, as countries around the world look to it to fill the gap left by Russia. An increase in its exports could help boost its economy substantially. However, its ongoing commitment to OPEC, coupled with severe underinvestment in the countrys energy infrastructure, makes an increase in output and export levels of crude unlikely.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

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The market is likely to remain tight for years to come, or at least until the completion of new LNG hubs in Qatar and the United States.

The Wests push to diversify away from Russian gas has created a particularly tight LNG market.

In just one year, the global market of liquefied natural gas (LNG) turned from a buyers market to a sellers market, with LNG suppliers commanding a tight market as buyers scramble to secure gas from providers other than Russia.

The European Unions target to diversify gas supplies, speed up the roll-out of renewable gases, and replace gas in heating and power generation in hopes of cutting EU demand for Russian gas by two-thirds before the end of the year has created a global race for spot LNG supply. In this race for LNG supplies, Europe is currently winning over Asia, the traditional outlet for most of the global spot supply.

This has not been the case for several months now, even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as Europe was plunged into an energy crisis in the autumn of 2021 with low levels of gas in storage and rebounding industry demand post-COVID.

The Russian war in Ukraine and the determination of the EU to reduce its reliance on Russias gasat around 40 percent pre-warfurther made Europe the preferred destination of spot LNG cargoes, especially cargoes from the United States.

Spot supply will not be able to cover current needs or replace a large portion of Russian supply because more than half of the global LNG trade is contracted under long-term agreements, leaving fewer spot cargoes with flexible destination terms.

Thats why buyers are now looking to sign long-term contracts for LNG supply. It also is a way to hedge against skyrocketing spot prices.

And sellers rule the market. In this tight LNG market, which is set to become even tighter through the mid-2020s until major new capacity in the U.S. and Qatar comes online, LNG exporters, suppliers, and developers are demanding from future long-term buyers much higher prices for contracts, traders familiar with the negotiations tell Bloomberg.

The largest LNG suppliers are now offering buyers 10-year term contracts with a start date in 2023 at rates that are 75 percent higher than those for similar deals agreed upon only last year, Bloombergs sources say.

The price of long-term LNG contracts is generally linked to the price of oil or Henry Hub prices and is lower than the near-record-high spot LNG prices. However, with demand skyrocketing as Europe races to replace Russia, the gap between long-term and spot LNG prices is narrowing.

There is anecdotal support  via industry channel checks  of increased appetite and discussions by European and Asian LNG buyers in recent weeks, looking to secure long-term LNG volumes and equity in LNG projects, Saul Kavonic, Head of Australia Integrated Energy and Resources Securities Research at Credit Suisse, told Nick Toscano of Sydney Morning Herald at the end of March.

The Russian war in Ukraine and the Wests determination to wean off Russian gassooner rather than lateris the most structural bullish event in the history of the global LNG market, Kavonic said.

According to Credit Suisses analyst, the war in Ukraine and its consequences on global gas flows would eclipse the previous major market shift and surge in LNG demand that resulted from Japan shuttering its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011.

Ukraine could have more than 10 times the impact of Fukushima and last much longer, Kavonic told Sydney Morning Herald.

For example, Germany, which until two months ago had only sporadically thought of LNG import terminals and imports, now seeks a long-term deal with one of the worlds top LNG exporters, Qatar.

The global race to procure LNG supply is bullish for U.S. developers and exporters, but with facilities maxed out, the United States can do little more in the short term to ease the tight market. In the longer term, environmental concerns about the greenhouse gas emissions of the LNG supply chain, from fracking to methane leaks, could put a limit on the amount of LNG America will be able to send to Europe a decade or two from now.

Nevertheless, competition for LNG supply by 2025 will be fierce, due to the EUs shift away from Russian fossil fuels.

With only modest volumes of new LNG supply coming onstream during this period and Europes decision to diversify away from Russia now irreversible, the stage is set for fierce competition, Gavin Thompson, Vice Chairman, Energy  Asia Pacific, at Wood Mackenzie, said earlier this month.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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The US could enter the lithium market in a very big way. At least, thats what some experts are claiming. The global demand for lithium is on the rise, especially in the US. This should come as no surprise, as lithium-ion batteries are essential to electric vehicles and energy storage. Still, the question remains: is the US capable of breaking its reliance on lithium imports from Argentina, Chile, Russia, and China?

Lithium Production Needs to Increase

Because of the increased demand for electric vehicles, lithium extraction technology has seen heavy investment. These millions arent just coming from the likes of General Motors either, but the US Energy Department.

Right now, much of the focus is on direct lithium extraction (DLE). These technologies aim to extract lithium from brine using filters, membranes, ceramic beads, and other micro-level solutions. While such methods are successful, its unclear whether they can be scaled up for commercial production.

DLE technology necessitates vast amounts of potable water and electricity. Before the US could boost lithium production, we would need a clear plan to provide ample amounts of both. Since these resources are not particularly abundant, it also gives detractors more ammo to criticize lithium investment.

Looking to Geothermal Sources

According to this report, geothermal technologies are about to unlock large amounts of lithium hidden in naturally occurring hot brines. These are essentially concentrated saline solutions that circulate through super heated rock in places like San Diegos Salton Sea. In doing so, the solutions pick up many of the elements contained within the rock, including lithium.

The previously-mentioned issue of water supply is clearly addressed through this method. After all, geothermal power plants use heat from the earth to generate a constant supply of steam. This allows them to run the turbines necessary to produce electricity.

The report also stated that if current tests are successful, the 11 existing geothermal plants along the Salton Sea could produce enough lithium metal to meet US demand 10 times over.

Science Paving the Way to the Lithium Market

Cypress Development Corp recently announced results from its Lithium Extraction Pilot Plant in Amargosa Valley, Nevada. It stated that the lithium extracted via the ion exchange in the recovery area boasts superior separation efficiencies. At the same time, major cations exceeded 98%. Results have also identified preliminary extraction rates of between 83% and 85% within the washed tails.

Meanwhile, lithium extractions performed with the Lionex process are clocking in at 98%. Perhaps most importantly, the report stated that overall impurity removal exceeded 99%. US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm remarked at an energy conference last month that DLE technology was a game-changer and a great opportunity for the United States.

This should come as no surprise to energy insiders. Recently, Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hathaway Inc. was given a US $15 million grant by the US Energy Dept. to test DLE technology. Again, the site of the tests will be Californias Salton Sea.

Scoping Study in North America

Just 700 km from CentrePort Canada, Snow Lake Lithium is creating the worlds first all-electric, fully renewable lithium mine. Meanwhile, Snow Lake Resources Ltd. has commissioned a scoping study to assess the proposed creation of a Lithium Hydroxide Plant in South Manitoba. The company called the study a strategically important step toward creating North Americas first fully renewable, fully-electric, and fully integrated lithium processing operation.

Starting this month, the study will accelerate the company towards commercialized lithium production. Its hoped the research will identify the technologies, innovations, skills, and potential partners required to create a world-class lithium hydroxide plant in Manitoba .

The creation of a lithium hydroxide plant would greatly impact North American industry. Specifically, it would enable the integration of a domestic supply of this critical resource. Electric car companies could improve output and potentially even lower prices.

Waiting for the Future

Snow Lake Lithium currently has 11.1 million metric tons of inferred resources at 1% Li2O. The mine has further plans to expand its resources based on the current active drilling campaign.

The scoping study mentioned above will commence in April 2022 and should complete by Spring 2023. Meanwhile, Snow Lake Lithium will continue its engineering evaluation and drilling program across its Thompson Brothers Lithium Project site. Company leaders expect that the mine will transition to commercial production in late 2024.

Only time will tell if the US and its northern neighbor can capitalize on this massive opportunity. Until we experience a breakthrough, the entry into the global Lithium Market remains a matter of baby steps.

By AG MetalMiner

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SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has signed emergency declarations as 20 wildfires continued to burn Sunday in nearly half of the states drought-stricken 33 counties.

One wildfire in northern New Mexico that started April 6 merged with a newer fire Saturday to form the largest blaze in the state, leading to widespread evacuations in Mora and San Miguel counties. That fire was at 84 square miles (217 square kilometers) Sunday and 12% contained.

An uncontained wind-driven wildfire in northern New Mexico that began April 17 had charred 81 square miles (209 square kilometers) of ponderosa pine, oak brush and grass by Sunday morning north of Ocate, an unincorporated community in Mora County.

Meanwhile in Arizona, some residents forced to evacuate due to a wildfire near Flagstaff were allowed to return home Sunday morning.

Winds and temperatures in New Mexico diminished Saturday but remained strong enough to still fan fires. Dozens of evacuation orders remained in place.

Fire officials were expecting the northern wildfires to slow Sunday as cloud and smoke cover moves in, allowing the forests to retain more moisture. But they added that the interior portions of the fires could show moderate to extreme behavior, which could threaten structures in those areas.

More than 200 structures have been charred by the wildfires thus far and an additional 900 remain threatened, Lujan Grisham said.

Fire management officials said an exact damage count was unclear because its still too dangerous for crews to go in and look at all the homes that have been lost.

We do not know the magnitude of the structure loss. We dont even know the areas where most homes made it through the fire, where homes havent been damaged or anything like that, said operation sections chief Jayson Coil.

Some 1,000 firefighters were battling the wildfires across New Mexico, which already has secured about $3 million in grants to help with the fires.

Lujan Grisham said she has asked the White House for more federal resources and shes calling for a ban of fireworks statewide.

We need more federal bodies for firefighting, fire mitigation, public safety support on the ground in New Mexico, she said. Its going to be a tough summer. So thats why we are banning fires. And that is why on Monday I will be asking every local government to be thinking about ways to ban the sales of fireworks.

Wildfire has become a year-round threat in the West given changing conditions that include earlier snowmelt and rain coming later in the fall, scientist have said. The problems have been exacerbated by decades of fire suppression and poor management along with a more than 20-year megadrought that studies link to human-caused climate change.

In Arizona, two large wildfires continued to burn Sunday 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of Prescott and 14 miles (22 kilometers) northeast of Flagstaff.

Coconino County authorities lifted the evacuation order Sunday morning for residents living in neighborhoods along Highway 89 after fire management officials determined the Flagstaff-area wildfire no longer posed a threat.

The fire near Flagstaff was at 33 square miles (85 square kilometers) as of Sunday with 3% containment. It forced the evacuation of 766 homes and burned down 30 homes and two dozen other structures since it began a week ago, according to county authorities.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey declared the fire a state of emergency Friday for Coconino County to free up recovery aid to affected communities.

The wildfire near Prescott began last Monday and was at 4.8 square miles (12.4 square kilometers) and 15% contained as of Sunday morning as helicopters and air tankers dropped water and retardant to slow the fires growth.

The cause of the wildfires in New Mexico and Arizona remain under investigation.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
FREEMAN HONORED AS REALTOR OF THE YEAR

Herb L. Freeman, CRB, GRI, REALTOR, Associate Broker with NP Dodge in Omaha, Nebraska, was honored as the 2022 Nebraska REALTOR of the Year during the Nebraska REALTORS Association Grand Luncheon April 5th. The Nebraska REALTOR of the Year is the highest honor awarded by the Nebraska REALTORS Association and is given to a member who exemplifies service not only to the association, but to the community and the real estate industry at large.

Freeman has been a licensed REALTOR since 1972 and has served in many capacities for the Omaha Area Board of REALTORS, Nebraska REALTORS Association and the National Association of REALTORS. For the Omaha Area Board of REALTORS Freeman has served on several committees and is a former Past President and Director of the board and the Great Plains REALTORS MLS and served as a director of the Great Plains Regional MLS. Freeman is a Past President and Director of the Nebraska REALTORS Association and has served on several committees over the years. Freeman is currently serving on the Governmental Affairs Committee, License Law Committee and the Past President's Advisory Board. Freeman is a former Director for the National Association of REALTORS and has served on several committees.

Outside of the REALTOR Associations, Freeman's accomplishments include: Former Principal Member for The Realty Alliance, Former Second District Broker Member of the Nebraska Real Estate Commission, Past President of the Omaha Area Better Business Bureau, Past President of the UNO Alumni Association and Past President of the First Unitarian Church of Omaha. Freeman is currently serving as a Director for Nebraska Investment Finance Authority (NIFA).

Freeman holds a master of Business Administration from UNO, and was an English teacher at a Tech High School before going into Real Estate. He loves development and redevelopment of projects and is a member of Congress for New Urbanism and National Town Builders Association. Freeman was born and raised in Omaha, NE and currently resides in Yutan, NE.

Since 1917, the Nebraska REALTORS Association has served as The Voice for Real Estate in Nebraska. Our 5,000 plus members subscribe to the REALTOR Code of Ethics and take pride in the communities in which we work, serve and live. Visit us online at NebraskaRealtors.com.
With the lifting of a flag, the families of two Nebraskans killed in Iraq 15 years ago to the date unveiled memorial bricks meant to cement their service and sacrifice, as well as that of 49 others.

All 51 who were honored during the dedication ceremony at Omahas Memorial Park on Saturday served in the 73rd Cavalry Regiment and died while fighting in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 100 people, including nearly two dozen Gold Star families, were present for the ceremony and unveiling.

William J. Gainey told the crowd that he has heard the words they will not be forgotten many times throughout his life. The retired first senior enlisted adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the memorial bricks will help ensure that promise is kept.

Any time somebody reads their names on that beautiful memorial, they are remembered, Gainey said. They will never be forgotten.

Those in attendance included the families of 1st Lt. Kevin Gaspers of Hastings and Staff Sgt. Ken Locker Jr. of Burwell. Both men were among nine soldiers from the 5th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment killed in an attack by al-Qaida-linked terrorists on April 23, 2007.

For Pam Gaspers, Kevins mother and one of the family members who helped unveil the memorial bricks, time has helped ease the horrible pain felt immediately following her sons death. Some of that emotional space has been filled with pride in her son and his selfless desire to make the world a better place. It doesnt replace the loss, but it makes it more bearable.

One aspect that has remained largely unchanged, Pam Gaspers said, is the support for their family.

When the incident happened, the outpouring that we had in our community was wonderful. Everyone rallied around us  they really did, she said. And to still have this outpouring, it means a lot to us.

The fact that Saturdays ceremony occurred on the 15th anniversary of the deadly attack in Iraq was entirely coincidence.

Its a day that Mary Jo Yager and her children typically spend locked up at home. Its the day Yager lost her husband and her children lost their father, Ken Locker Jr.

Though difficult, Yager said it was important to come out so that her children could see that their fathers service mattered to many people. The memorial brick bearing Lockers name will provide the children with yet another connection to their father and his service  another place to go and see his name, Yager said.

Its nice seeing their dad and others are not forgotten, she said.

Omaha made a sensible location because of the Heartland Airborne Memorial, which was relocated to Memorial Park from its original home at Heartland of America Park near the Missouri River. The 73rd is part of the Armys famed 82nd Airborne Division, and the bricks commemorating the 73rds fallen soldiers are around the base of the Airborne memorial.

Retired 1st Sgt. Dan Falcon, president of the Heartland Airborne Memorial Association, said Saturdays event was about more than a new addition to the memorial. It was, as much as anything else, about honoring the families of the fallen.

Thats why we went out of our way to do everything possible to make it a special event, Falcon said. We want to honor them.

Gov. Pete Ricketts thanked the Gold Star families in attendance Saturday.

Our Gold Star families have lost something we can never replace, Ricketts said. But by being here, we can help them mend and let them know we will never forget the sacrifices their loved ones and they have made for us and what they have done for this country.

Omaha World-Herald: Afternoon Update The latest headlines sent at 4:45 p.m. daily. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
WASHINGTON (AP)  House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy had a positive call with Donald Trump and appeared to be suffering little political blowback Friday from the release of audio in which he suggested the president should resign shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

McCarthy worked swiftly to shore up support among Republicans, calling and texting many lawmakers about his conversation with Trump as he rushed to contain the fallout. Trump himself told The Wall Street Journal that he has had a very good relationship with McCarthy.

In the audio, first posted Thursday by The New York Times and aired on Rachel Maddows MSNBC show, McCarthy is heard discussing with House Republicans the Democratic effort to remove Trump from office after the president's supporters stormed the Capitol.

In the recording of a Jan. 10, 2021, discussion, McCarthy says he would tell Trump, I think it will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign.

McCarthy released a statement Thursday calling the report totally false and wrong. His spokesman, Mark Bednar, told the newspaper, McCarthy never said hed call Trump to say he should resign.

But on Friday, the Times released another recording, this time of a Jan. 11, 2021, Republican conference call. In the audio, McCarthy can be heard telling his caucus that he had asked the former president if he felt responsible for the deadly insurrection and that Trump acknowledged some responsibility.

I asked him personally today, does he hold responsibility for what happened? McCarthy says on this recording. Does he feel bad about what happened? He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened and hed need to acknowledge that.

In his first public statement since the audio was released, Trump told the Journal late Friday: Ive had actually a very good relationship with McCarthy. "I like him. And other than that brief period of time, I suspect he likes me quite a bit.

He made a call. I heard the call. I didnt like the call, Trump said. But almost immediately, as you know, because he came here and we took a picture right there  you know, the support was very strong."

When asked about the Jan. 11 recording, Trump told the Journal: No, thats false. I never claimed responsibility.

The release of the audio could threaten the Republican House leader's hold on power. McCarthy is in line to become speaker if Republicans win control in the fall's election, and he is heavily reliant on Trump's support to get there. But a person familiar with McCarthy's Thursday call with Trump described it as positive.

I'm not mad at you," Trump told McCarthy in a call Thursday afternoon, according to a second person familiar with the conversation. Both people were granted anonymity to discuss the call. McCarthy and his office did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the Trump call.

Trump and McCarthy had a strained relationship immediately after the Capitol attack, but mended their alliance after the GOP leader flew to the former presidents resort in Florida to patch up their differences.

The Times report Thursday was adapted from a coming book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for Americas Future, by reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns.

There has been no indication that McCarthy actually told Trump he should resign. In the same conversation, McCarthy told his colleagues he doubted Trump would take the advice to step aside rather than be pushed.

That would be my recommendation, McCarthy is heard saying in response to a question from Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who would emerge as a staunch Trump critic. I dont think he will take it, but I dont know."

The crowd that attacked the Capitol marched there from a rally near the White House where Trump had implored them to fight to overturn the election result. However, he has strongly denied responsibility for the violence.

Trump remains the most popular figure in the Republican Party, despite his role in inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection and his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election.

McCarthy indicated during an interview with The Associated Press this week in California how important Trump remains to his party and its prospects for winning control of the House this fall. Hell motivate, get a lot of people out, McCarthy said at a GOP event in Fresno.

President Joe Biden, asked about McCarthy's situation Friday, said: This aint your fathers Republican Party."

Biden suggested Trump's grip on the GOP is strong. This is a MAGA party now, he told reporters, referring to Trump's Make America Great Again slogan.

The audio depicts a very different McCarthy from the one who has been leading House Republicans over the last year and a half and who has remained allied with Trump even after delivering a speech on the House floor shortly after Jan. 6, during which he called the attack on the Capitol un-American." At the time, McCarthy called the assault among the saddest days of his career and told his fellow Republicans that Trump bears responsibility for the violence.

Even after the violence, though, McCarthy joined half of the House Republicans in voting to challenge Bidens 2020 election victory.

Since then, the California Republican has distanced himself from any criticism of Trump and has avoided directly linking him to what happened. Within weeks of the siege at the Capitol, McCarthy said he did not think Trump provoked the attack, as other prominent Republicans said at the time.

Instead, McCarthy has cozied up to Trump, visiting the former president at his Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago.

McCarthy, 57, has been strategically charting his own delicate course toward the speaker's gavel, well aware of the support he'll need from hard-right members who have created headaches with inflammatory actions and statements.

No other Republican leader in the House has amassed the standing to challenge McCarthy for the leadership. McCarthy has recruited the class of newcomers bolstering GOP ranks and raised millions to bolster Republican campaigns. He has tried to temper his closest rivals, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, even as he works to shore up the votes that would be needed to become speaker.

So long as Trump continues to back McCarthy, whom he had once fondly called My Kevin, the job is the Californians to lose.

Several Republican lawmakers came out in force Friday to defend McCarthy and reiterate that his road to speakership is still on track.

Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, tweeted that months from now, Republicans will win back the majority and and Kevin McCarthy will be Speaker of the House.

On a Fox Business show, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina said she supports McCarthy 100%.

Still, McCarthy has also been a person of interest for the House committee investigating the storming of the Capitol on Jan 6. The select committee, which Cheney vice-chairs, requested an interview with McCarthy in mid-January, seeking information on his communications with Trump and White House staff in the week after the violence, including a conversation with Trump that was reportedly heated.

McCarthy issued a statement at the time saying he would refuse to cooperate because he saw the investigation as not legitimate and accused the panel of abuse of power.

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Chris Megerian contributed to this report.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
A statewide emergency response was activated Saturday as wildfires continued to burn thousands of acres across Nebraska.

As of 5 p.m., active fires were burning in Perkins, Hayes, Furnas, Red Willow and Frontier Counties. Since Friday, fires have been reported in at least 12 counties.

The State Emergency Operations Center, a multi-agency group tasked with allocating resources during disasters, was activated Friday evening to coordinate a statewide response. The Nebraska National Guard was activated Saturday, and the state received an emergency grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to cover costs associated with the response.

According to the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, three firefighters have been injured and one fatality has been reported. A NEMA spokesperson was unable to provide any information about the death.

Multiple towns and villages were forced to evacuate as fires spread. Cambridge, a town in Furnas County, was placed under a mandatory evacuation order on Friday evening. The order was lifted at noon Saturday and reinstated just four hours later.

The town of Macy, on the Omaha Reservation, was ordered to evacuate Saturday afternoon. The order was lifted shortly after 6 p.m.

Dangerous conditions were not limited to the western part of the state. The National Weather Service issued a hazardous weather outlook Saturday for 16 counties in Iowa and Nebraska, including Douglas County. Strong winds and decreasing relative humidity were expected to push the fire danger into the very high or extreme category.

A brush fire broke out Saturday evening in Omahas NP Dodge Park, located along the Missouri River north of Interstate 680. According to emergency scanner traffic, crews managed to contain the fire just before 7:30 p.m. Additional details were not immediately available.

Drought conditions and high winds have made Nebraska susceptible to fires this spring. In early April, a fast-moving fire consumed an estimated 30,000 acres of south-central Nebraska in a little over 24 hours.

The weather service said breezy conditions were expected to remain in the Omaha metro area Sunday.

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As Nebraska prepares to choose our next governor, the state has a lot of positive things going on.

Our economy is healthy, unemployment is low and state coffers are full, thanks partly to an influx of federal COVID relief money. Underlying those physical assets, our people have a solid work ethic, a willingness to help our neighbor, a can-do attitude about solving problems. There are plenty of strengths to build on.

That said, Nebraska also faces some glaring issues that require state leadership. Broadband access is weak in some rural areas, hampering economic development. Housing  particularly affordable housing  is in short supply, keeping communities from bringing in new talent. Nursing homes are closing because of staffing woes and inadequate government reimbursements, hurting families and towns that want to ensure local care for their elderly.

Meanwhile, school finance issues routinely get in the way of efforts to lower property taxes. And Nebraska hasnt yet figured out how to address its overcrowded prison system.

Those issues and more will confront Nebraskas next governor.

Its important for Nebraska to have a leader who understands those issues and knows how to work with competing interests to find solutions.

Of the candidates in the Republican primary for governor, we think that leader is Brett Lindstrom.

A state senator from northwest Omaha for the past eight years, Lindstrom has experience with the states issues, a track record of working to build consensus, and a positive tone that will serve Nebraska well.

Lindstrom is a strong conservative, but not a radical ideologue. His experience in Nebraskas officially nonpartisan Legislature suggests that he will be able to negotiate reasonably with people, of all political stripes, to come up with pragmatic, effective policies.

Thats what Nebraska needs in order to solve real problems and move the state forward.

It doesnt help Nebraska to have a governor who is distracted by the culture war topic of the week. It doesnt make Nebraska better to choose a governor who postures about matters outside the states control, such as the U.S. border.

At times, some of Lindstroms rivals in the governors race have seemed almost joyously divisive, looking for opportunities to exploit us-vs.-them issues.

Nebraska doesnt need a governor who goes out of the way to pick fights.

In his legislative career, Lindstrom has shown that he can be the adult in the room. Hes someone who knows the value of seeking the changes that are possible, rather than insisting on having everything his way. He is a leader who recognizes that Nebraska will make the most progress when its diverse constituencies are pulling in the same direction.

Were all in this together, he says. You have to be reasonable. You have to listen. You cant have a thought that its my way or the highway.

Nebraska Republicans shouldnt be misled by criticism from Gov. Pete Ricketts, who has claimed that Lindstrom is not a conservative. Perhaps the governor is still smarting from the times that Lindstrom  and quite a few other Republican lawmakers  dared to disagree with Ricketts and override some of his vetoes.

Its certainly possible to be a conservative Nebraska Republican and not be a rubber stamp for Ricketts particular views about what that means. In a 2015 vote on the gas tax, for example, a supermajority of the GOP-dominated Legislature decided that it was important for Nebraska to chip away at a backlog of needed highway improvements  and that it was prudent to raise gas taxes to pay as you go for the extra work.

Were pretty sure that, if elected, Lindstrom can be expected to push conservative values and policies including lower taxes. In fact, its possible that Lindstroms experience and approach would make him more effective at achieving conservative goals than some of his rivals.

Among other things, Lindstrom won passage last year of his bill to reduce state income taxes on Social Security income.

Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert, a Republican, has endorsed Lindstrom, citing his knowledge of the Legislature and positive campaigning.

Whoever wins the Republican primary is expected to face State Sen. Carol Blood, the likely Democratic nominee. The GOP winner would be the favorite in the general election, given Nebraskas strong Republican tilt. That means that the May primary could well determine the states governor for the next four years.

We believe that Brett Lindstrom would do well in that job and is the best choice for voters in the Nebraska Republican primary.
BLOOMINGTON  On an individual level, the effects of climate change might seem impossible to counteract.

However, young volunteers with the Ecology Action Center learned Saturday how change is possible when they work together.

Around 60 environmentally-conscious crews with the EAC planted thousands of trees Saturday in the Bloomington-Normal Water Reclamation Districts buffer lands off West Oakland Avenue in Bloomington.

Michael Brown, executive director of EAC, said they worked fast enough to finish the work in one day, instead of two as originally planned. He added it was a beautiful day, where everyone was smiling.

Its just kind of a nice win-win, giving back as well as getting some sunshine and enjoying the nice outdoors, he said.

He said they planted native species like white oaks, burr oaks, black oaks, red oaks, Whetstone species, swamp white oaks, sweet gums and Kentucky coffee trees.

It's essentially a good diversity of native Illinois trees, Brown said. He counted 2,127 planted trees that day.

On Saturday, EAC coordinated volunteers with the Bloomington Kiwanis, along with the Future Farmers of America from Normal Community High School.

Mel Oliveros Perez said they were there because helping the Earth out feels great. The NCHS sophomore continued: I had a free Saturday. Why not?

Michael Canales, NCHS junior, said they need to help turn around whats going on with the environment.

Stuff like this is just one way you can help, he said.

NCHSs Lily Garcia, also a sophomore, said its important to replace all the trees being cut down to build new homes.

You see a difference when you work as a group, Oliveros Perez later said.

Brown explained their Tree Corps initiative kicked off over a year and a half ago to improve air quality, sequester carbon, address climate change, protect the watershed, build pollinator sources and wildlife habitats, and create a shading and cooling effect from trees in urban areas.

Our community is borderline non-attainment for the air pollutant ozone, and that contributes to respiratory disease, emphysema and asthma, Brown said. He noted that if the Twin Cities area does become non-attainment for ozone, there would be economic impacts from increased industrial regulations standards, mandatory vehicle emissions testing, and loss of federal transportation funding.

A few weekends ago, Brown said EAC planted a few thousand trees at Heartland Community College, and theyre also getting trees in the ground at Sugar Grove Nature Center.

Another partner of EAC is the ParkLands Foundation. He said last year they planted about 10,000 trees with them. Additionally, theyre putting in trees with Friends of the Constitution Trail, who Brown said has been doing that kind of work for years.

Tim Ervin, director of the Water Reclamation District, said coordinating with EAC on the project was a wonderful opportunity, and a good use of their buffer lands.

He explained that buffer lands between the water treatment plants exists to create setbacks from residential neighbors, offset their carbon footprint and leave room for future expansions. Ervin said they do not have current plans to expand.

The director said the trees will prove beneficial to the environment and wildlife for at least 100 years.

The investment made today will pay off for generations to come, said Ervin.

Contact Brendan Denison at (309) 820-3238. Follow Brendan Denison on Twitter: @BrendanDenison

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CHICAGO - The body of woman who washed up on the shore of the Chicago River on the South Side Friday morning marks the fourth person, and third woman, dead in the waters of the citys river and lake in a week.

Karina Alanis, 31, was found in the South Branch of the Chicago River off the 2600 block of South Damen Avenue about 7:50 a.m., according to Officer Roberto Garduno and the Cook County medical examiners office.

Alanis, of the 4800 block of South Marshfield Avenue, was dead at the scene after police marine unit officers pulled her from the water, Garduno said.

On Sunday, a mans body was recovered from Lake Michigan in the 3000 block of South Fort Dearborn Drive, in the Bronzeville neighborhood, according to the Cook County medical examiners office.

The still-unidentified man was also dead at the scene, according to the medical examiners office.

The bodies of two women  one of whom was 80  were pulled from the Chicago River in the West Loop and the South Side on Saturday at 10:40 a.m. and about 11:15 a.m.

A cause of death was not immediately known for any of the victims, according to the medical examiners office and it was not clear if police thought any of the deaths were connected.

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On a September afternoon last year, a state child welfare investigator drove into Alto Pass, a village in the rolling hills of Southern Illinois, to the home Alan Schott shared with his then-girlfriend and his two daughters. Someone had called the states child abuse hotline, claiming that Schott was neglecting the girls.

Though they were only 6 and 8, the girls knew enough to know why the investigator was at the door. The neglect allegation was at least the 10th report made to the state that Schott or the girls mother, who Schott had split up with several years before, was failing to properly care for them.

Schotts elder daughter pleaded with her dad to show them a couple things, according to a recording he made of the encounter. Just show them that we have electric. Here, Ill show you that we have electric.

Schott knew why the investigator was there, too. At 12, he had been taken from his parents and placed in foster care with relatives, including his grandmother; he didnt return home for about two years. And though, with each of his daughters births, he had vowed to not let them fall into the child welfare system, by the time the investigator from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services came that day, the girls had already spent more than 2 1/2 years in foster care, and had only been back with their father for six months.

The investigator told Schott that there were concerns he was using methamphetamine, and school officials said his daughters were showing up to school dirty, according to court records. When he refused to let the investigator into the home or take a drug test  both of which, by state law, he is allowed to decline to do  she called the sheriffs office for help.

Then she took the girls into temporary custody, which is within the discretion of DCFS investigators, within certain guidelines, to do. They were placed into foster care with Schotts grandmother, the same woman who had cared for him when DCFS determined that his own parents could not, and who had cared for his girls when they had been placed in foster care before.

I thought you guys were supposed to be for the kids, and for the families, but all you guys do is take them apart, a frustrated Schott told the investigator. His elder daughter echoed: Yeah, thats all you do. Thats all you ever do.

The Schotts are among thousands of families across Illinois who have moved in and out of the child welfare system  repeatedly investigated but often without getting the help they need to stabilize their lives. From January 2018 through June 2020, 33% of all confirmed reports of child maltreatment  about 17,500 cases  involved households with at least two previous investigations, according to DCFS investigative case data obtained and analyzed by The Southern Illinoisan and ProPublica. In far southern and southeastern Illinois, the rural area marked by poverty and industry decline that the Schotts have long called home, the rate of repeat investigations was 42%, the highest in the state. The region is served by DCFS's Marion office and its satellite offices.

Seen one way, those numbers arent surprising: They show that many families that come to the attention of DCFS continue to struggle. But among child welfare officials and academics, the volume of repeat cases is a sign that the system is failing to live up to its mission not only to protect children, but to increase their families capacity to safely care for them. The pattern of repeated investigations involving a single family or child victim is called recurrence."

For decades, child welfare officials across the country have used recurrence rates as an indicator of an agencys performance.

Illinois has long had one of the highest recurrence rates in the nation, according to comparative data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (The most recent data available is for fiscal 2019.) The data measures confirmed maltreatment that recurs within six months, though both DCFS and the federal government note that there are caveats to the state-by-state comparisons because of differences in how maltreatment is defined and what circumstances prompt an investigation.

Recurrence is complex, driven by a variety of factors. But child welfare experts and families tied up in multiple investigations said DCFSs resources arent adequate. Parents say that classes often arent helpful, drug counseling and mental health services can be hard to find, and direct financial aid is insufficient. And those problems have persisted for years.

For the past four years, DCFS inspector general, its internal watchdog, has called on the agency to ensure that families it has previously investigated are receiving the help they need. The U.S. Childrens Bureau, which provides funding and oversight to DCFS, has required voluminous corrective plans from DCFS detailing how it intends to improve child safety following investigations. The Illinois General Assembly and governors office have also pushed for improvement. When he took office in 2019, Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered a review of the agencys chief program intended to stabilize families and prevent recurrence, known as Intact Family Services, and promised to change the direction of DCFS.

Despite that pledge, Illinois recurrence rate reached a 10-year high in fiscal 2020, according to University of Illinois researchers, who monitor DCFS under the terms of a decades-old consent decree intended to improve the departments handling of children in its care. DCFS itself acknowledged three times in its most recent strategic plan that its recurrence rates are unacceptable.

It should be a wake-up call for all of us that the same families are experiencing the same difficulties over and over again, said Jerry Milner, a longtime advocate for better child welfare policies and former associate commissioner of the U.S. Childrens Bureau in the Trump administration.

Child welfare is going out, nothing is changing and weve got the same set of circumstances, Milner added. That should be a strong signal for us to look a lot deeper into what is happening.

State Sen. Julie Morrison, a Democrat from Lake Forest, suggested the problem is largely invisible to lawmakers. She said the only reports legislators receive on families investigated on multiple occasions relate to child deaths; they dont get information about the huge volume of repeat neglect investigations. She called that dearth of information a glaring problem.

DCFS director Marc Smith said Illinois mandates for professionals such as teachers and social workers to report maltreatment accusations are very aggressive, leading to increases in confirmed cases of abuse. Nonetheless, he acknowledged the problem, saying the agency will do everything it can to reduce the recurrence abuse and neglect rate.

Smith, a Pritzker appointee, emphasized that grappling with the poverty, unemployment and substance abuse that drive neglect is not DCFS task alone. He said DCFS, its sister human service agencies and the nonprofit organizations that share in the challenge have faced funding issues in large part because of Illinois persistent budget turmoil, particularly during the administration of Pritzkers predecessor, Bruce Rauner.

Child welfare advocates say that federal and state lawmakers have failed to make more funding available to help families with chronic troubles, and in recent years the department has turned to the default tool for child welfare agencies: removing children from struggling families. That has fueled a 120% surge in the number of children in foster care across the Marion service area over the past decade, even as the total child population in the area has declined. Overall, when children enter foster care in Illinois, they linger there longer than anywhere else in the nation.

So when a DCFS investigator showed up at Schotts door in September to again try to determine if he was neglecting his children, there was a good chance they would return to foster care. Their journey through the child welfare system raises an important question: For all the attention DCFS has given this family  and the thousands of other families facing intractable problems such as poverty, joblessness and substance abuse  are his daughters any closer to finding stability than when the agency first entered their lives?

A family under stress

Cases that lead to a childs death have always made headlines and sent shock waves through the child welfare system. But beyond those headlines are far more children who survive chronic neglect, children deprived of the basic care a parent or caregiver is expected to provide.

We chronicle the numbers of dead kids. We talk about them: So many kids died at the hands of their parents because of abuse and neglect. Those numbers are out there, and theyre horrific, said Morrison, who chairs the Senates Health Committee. But its the kids youre talking about, who are surviving, that we fail to see. After years of living in trauma, she added, those children leave home not the people who they have the right to be.

And at that point, she said, now, youve got an adult who were looking at trying to help recover.

At 34, Schott has dark blond hair, a mustache and beard, and big aspirations. He speaks softly, sometimes mumbling, and talks often about how hed like to one day go to law school to help other parents caught in the child welfare system. But he has also struggled to get up in the morning in time to get his daughters on the school bus, forgotten appointments and cycled through low-wage jobs and periods of unemployment.

Schott's youth was not easy. By his senior year in high school, he dropped out and spiraled into depression and addiction. His father was arrested on multiple occasions, including for making methamphetamine, and spent time in federal prison. At 19, Schott was arrested for drunken driving, and he subsequently racked up some two dozen additional criminal charges and several misdemeanor convictions, most of them for marijuana possession. As a young adult, I was just drinking myself to death, he said.

He was at a bar when he met the woman who would become the mother of his children. Although numerous attempts to reach her for this article, including through family and friends, were unsuccessful, public records paint a little bit of a portrait of her. She left school in the 6th grade, though she later got her GED and took courses to become a dental technician, court records show. She told a probation officer she first used marijuana in elementary school, and she has used methamphetamine and opiates. She has been arrested on numerous occasions and has convictions for such offenses as burglary, armed robbery and possession of methamphetamine. She had three children before she met Schott; in the years since they got together, the pair have split up and reconciled several times, but they have not been a couple for several years.

When their first child arrived in 2013, Schott vowed to be a good father and stay out of trouble. I aint never felt love like that before, he said. But a year later, the baby and her half-siblings were placed in foster care following a DCFS investigation that began when one of the children, then 5, was spotted riding her bike unsupervised with a 3-year-old friend a half-mile from home, according to court records. The children were returned to their parents a few months later, Schott said, and his second daughter was born shortly after.

Over the next four years, DCFS investigated the family three more times for various allegations, including that the couple engaged in explosive fights in front of their daughters, provided inadequate supervision and used drugs, according to DCFS files that Schott obtained and shared with The Southern Illinoisan and ProPublica. (The files do not disclose who made the allegations to DCFS; the anonymity of people who make them is protected by Illinois law.)

DCFS did not substantiate those neglect claims. But that doesnt mean the family wasnt struggling. They were living in poverty with unstable housing and unreliable transportation.

In many ways, the child welfare system isnt set up well to deal with families that cycle through investigations, often for neglect. Although neglect is frequently reported alongside physical or sexual abuse, 65% of substantiated repeat child maltreatment reports against families in Illinois involved neglect alone, according to a ProPublica analysis of case data from 2018 through mid-2020.

Neglect covers a broad range of conditions, including children being left at home alone while both parents are working; food or housing insecurity; failure to take children to the doctors office; substance addiction; or exposing children indirectly to violence.

Often, when an allegation of neglect is called in, the agency starts an investigation. Over the past three fiscal years, DCFS investigated about 254,500 cases. In about 23,000 of those cases, the allegations included forms of neglect that Illinois law considers potentially tied to poverty: inadequate food, clothing or shelter or environmental neglect.

If DCFS doesnt remove the children, agency officials typically offer help to families through its Intact Family Services program, which can include substance and mental health counseling, domestic violence prevention programs and parenting classes. But families are not required to avail themselves of those services unless ordered to by a court, and the vast majority of families participate in no services at all  whether because they decline to use them or because the services arent available.

Since 2013, about 70% of the tens of thousands of Illinois children identified by DCFS each year as victims of abuse or neglect went without DCFS services, according to data compiled by the University of Illinois Children and Family Research Center. Thats in part, child welfare experts said, because child protective services have little to offer when poverty drives so many of a familys troubles.

When children arent receiving what they need, and its a neglect concern related to a familys lack of resources, is child protection really the right response? How is that a helpful response? asked Melissa Staas, a supervisory attorney with the Children and Families Practice Group at Legal Aid Chicago. A better response is to support the family in accessing the resources they need.

Schott and his family encountered these shortcomings firsthand, entering into cycles of investigations without effective interventions. (DCFS declined to discuss the familys situation in depth, citing privacy concerns, although Schott had provided a waiver allowing it to talk to reporters about the family; the agency confirmed some basic facts about their case history.)

In the fall of 2018, when the younger girls were living with their mother, the older of the two missed several days of kindergarten, prompting a visit by school officials. When no one came to the door, the educators called the sheriffs office for help, according to a deputys report. The responding deputy wrote that the interior of the home, a trailer that sat atop a hill overlooking a sewage lagoon in rural Jackson County, was covered in so much debris he had trouble walking around.

The trailer had two bathtubs  one containing food scraps, the other piled high with dirty clothes. The stove appeared to be the only source of heat, while parts of the trailer floor had rotted out. Records show DCFS later found that the girls mother had failed to provide adequate food and shelter.

DCFS took the girls into protective custody, then placed them with Schotts grandmother, Peggy Schott, for the first time.

An agency mismatched

In Southern Illinois, the Schott story isnt unique. A 2020 report found that in the Marion service area, which covers 27 rural counties in Southern Illinois, performance has been consistently poor around recurrence for at least seven years. Over a five-year period, from 2016 through 2020, about 19% of children identified by DCFS as victims of abuse or neglect were the subject of a confirmed maltreatment investigation again within a year, according to University of Illinois data, compared with about 13% statewide. These figures likely underestimate the scope of the problem, as they dont capture families that, though their repeat investigations were ruled to be unsubstantiated, still face challenges in the home.

The lack of supports for parents in the region is one reason. Mental health counseling and other services often have waitlists or require traveling long distances to appointments, said state Sen. Terri Bryant, a Murphysboro Republican, who sits on a legislative subcommittee focused on child welfare. A lot of it is the absolute inability to get the people down here the services that they need, she said.

Many regional social service providers that DCFS sends parents to for help dont have the doctoral-level therapists with the deep experience that some of these families desperately need, said Joanna Wells, a clinical associate professor and director of the Southern Illinois University School of Laws Juvenile Justice Clinic, which provides legal services to children in Jackson County.

One afternoon late last year, a woman appeared in court in Union County, which sits just south of Jackson County. Her children had been placed in foster care, and shed been given a list of requirements she had to meet to get them back. Her lawyer told a judge the woman had completed all but one task: a class for parents whose children had been exposed to trauma. When asked why that task remained incomplete, the womans caseworker told the judge that the class was no longer offered. When it had been available, it was held 100 miles from where the mother lived.

We need to have a service she can actually complete, the judge said. Still, the judge declined to return the children to their mother, setting a next hearing for about five months later. The children, meantime, remained in foster care.

Because of the depth of struggles many parents face, and the shortcomings of the system in the Southern Illinois region designed to address them, Wells said, most cases do not close successfully.

DCFS acknowledged families it deals with face greater challenges in some parts of the state, including Southern Illinois: Parents and caregivers in these underserved areas have fewer options for services, and often have to travel farther to take advantage of them. These regions tend to have higher rates of poverty, unemployment and drug use.

Smith, the DCFS director, tied those challenges directly to aggressive funding cuts to service programs, most recently during the Rauner administration. Because those social services dont exist in the community, an outcome of that is engagement with DCFS, he said.

We have to figure out, as a state, how do we get more resources in communities that are poor, that are rural, that are isolated and dont have the support they need? Smith said.

Multiple attempts to reach Rauner were unsuccessful.

Schott dealt with the fallout of those shortcomings. When DCFS took his girls from their mothers home in 2018, he was in the middle of a three-week stint in jail connected to old charges for marijuana possession and DUI and couldnt come up with $950 for bail. He figured he wouldnt have any difficulty getting them back once he was released.

That wasnt how it would go. With the girls placed in foster care after they were removed from their mothers trailer, he became embroiled in court proceedings that would stretch on for 2 1/2 years as he worked to show he was fit to parent them. Though the process starts with DCFS, decisions about when to place children in foster care and when to return them are made by a judge.

Schott said that while his case wound its way through the legal system, he got little help from DCFS or Caritas Family Solutions, the private agency the state contracted with to manage the familys case, in meeting the requirements imposed by the court for getting his daughters back. He was obligated to attend therapy, take parenting classes, submit to random drug tests and undergo a substance abuse assessment; the assessment from a drug treatment provider did not recommend further services, court records show. He was expected to find a job and a place to live; he had been living with his grandmother, but was no longer allowed to stay with her once the girls were placed in foster care there.

DCFS can provide families with up to $800  or $2,400 with special permission from DCFS supervisors  in one-time emergency cash assistance to help with basic needs such as housing deposits, utilities and basic appliances when poverty conditions threaten to result in the removal of children or delay a familys reunification. A 1991 consent decree that specifically addressed the issue of DCFS removing children into foster care because of poverty led to the creation of this cash assistance fund for families. That consent decree requires the agency to make reasonable efforts to remedy poverty-related conditions that are a factor in a parent retaining or regaining custody of their children.

Schott said DCFS never provided him or his childrens mother with cash assistance. I asked them about helping her or helping me, either one, and they never helped us with anything, he said.

DCFS confirmed that Schott qualified for the funding and never got it. The agency said Schott declined the help, telling his Caritas caseworker he was employed and didnt need any assistance. Schott denied that he declined the help.

It is difficult to measure how many eligible families go without financial aid from the department, but data suggests that spending is not keeping up with need. From fiscal 2019 through 2021, DCFS closed investigations of roughly 19,400 families for poverty-related neglect. During that time, the department said it approved about 8,900 families for direct financial assistance. Families can qualify for funding even if neglect allegations against them are not substantiated.

DCFS officials provided statistics showing that under Pritzker, the number of families in the Marion service area receiving financial aid has increased.

Schotts aunt let him move into a vacant house she owns, about half a mile from where the girls were living with their great-grandmother on the outskirts of Murphysboro. But it needed renovations before DCFS would allow the girls to visit or move in, and he didnt have a lot of time or money to make them.

He also didnt own a reliable vehicle. Hed picked up work at a pasta manufacturing plant in Steeleville, 30 miles away from Murphysboro. To get there, he had to catch a van with other employees, which he said cost him about $60 a week. Getting to all of his appointments to fulfill the courts orders required hitching rides and borrowing cars.

He also had to schedule his work shifts around in-person therapy and parenting classes, which met three times weekly in the early months of his case. Hed already taken the parenting class once before, when the children were previously in foster care, but he tried to make the best of it. You can always learn things from what theyre trying to teach you, he said.

But the drug test requirements made his schedule that much more hectic. At the beginning of his case, Schott said, the phone calls came about once a month, and they came without warning. When he was summoned, hed have to find a way to leave work early and travel to Carbondale, about 40 miles away.

Schott completed the bulk of court-ordered obligations within about a year of his girls entering foster care. The court had set a goal of returning the Schott children to their parents within 12 months, so Schott figured he was close to getting them back.

But he wasnt close. His daughters spent another 18 months  30 months altogether  in foster care before he regained custody. This is not atypical. For the roughly 4,600 Illinois children exiting foster care in fiscal 2019, the latest year for which federal data is available, the median length of stay in the states custody was 31 months. That is far longer than any other state or district in the nation: Washington, D.C., was next at 21 months, and then Alaska at 20.

In March 2021, the judge in the Schott familys case terminated the mothers parental rights, ruling she had failed to make reasonable progress toward the completion of mandated services. The judge returned the girls to Schott, starting with a two-month trial period. Schott remembers being filled with pride.

I cried because that judge has been on my ass ever since I was 19 and got that DUI and stuff. I mean, shes really been on my ass, Schott said. I never expected to hear that woman say she was proud of me or want to shake my hand or none of that. And thats what she did at that court date.

A hard transition

For Schott and scores of other parents, regaining custody marks a critical point in the life of their case. Its a moment that requires additional support from the agency, not less, said DCFS officials in a recent report about its efforts to curb its recurrence rates.

But in that same report, the agency acknowledged that it doesnt always give that transition the attention it deserves. Returning children to parents also requires a significant amount of preparation, the report said, and the data suggest that is not happening, with an observed high degree of need for the parents and children, and the maltreatment happening soon after reunification.

Schott said the girls return to his home didnt come with much help. His caseworker met with him a few times; Schott said the meetings mostly involved assessments of his home and didnt delve into the more routine, day-to-day challenges of parenting he encountered.

Schott found the transition difficult. He had little experience fixing his daughters hair or picking out their clothes for school in the morning. Because he routinely stayed up late, he had a hard time waking up in time to get them ready for school.

In late March 2021, just two weeks after the girls returned to Schotts care, DCFS received a call that they were coming to school dirty. On the morning the report was made, the girls hadnt shown up for school at all, and someone had gone to their home to wake everyone up, the agency was told. DCFS launched an investigation and learned of additional troubles.

The girls were frequently missing school, and when they did arrive, they were often late, the older girl without her glasses and backpack. Her schoolwork and behavior began slipping, it was reported to the agency. One of the girls told the investigator that the house had no hot water. Schott told DCFS that his hot water heater had broken and he was working to get a new one.

Asked about its response to the Schotts family, Caritas directed all questions to DCFS. DCFS did not answer a question about what help was offered to the family during the transition, other than to say Caritas was providing unspecified services at the time of the investigation. Schott eventually obtained a water heater on his own, according to DCFS.

Schotts Caritas caseworker told the investigator she visited the house regularly, and, while cluttered, it was not a safety risk for the children. She reported that the family was poor but said that she did not have other concerns. She said that, as for the father, he was getting a chance to raise his daughters. DCFS eventually determined that the allegation was unfounded.

Meanwhile, the court awarded Schott full custody in May and closed his case. In court records, his caseworker noted as strengths that he was willing to participate in recommended services to improve his parenting, that he had provided for a safe place for them to live together and that he loves his children.

Four months later  the day his daughter tried to show investigators that the electricity worked  DCFS removed the girls, sending them back to their great-grandmother Peggys. In a statement, DCFS said that the investigator made the decision to place the children into temporary protective custody because the investigator had been unable to observe the home or confirm that Schott was not using drugs. When Schott received the list of what he would have to do to get his children back, it was almost identical to the one he had just completed.

Its the kind of situation that frustrates Jackson County States Attorney Joseph A. Cervantez, whose office petitions the court to place a child in foster care if it agrees with DCFSs recommendation to do so. He said the system offers the same thing over and over again. Whether there are good results or bad results, it continues to be the same.

A swing toward removals

In Illinois, as elsewhere, child welfare officials repeatedly turn to placing children in foster care to solve persistent problems in their homes. Removals peaked in fiscal 1997, when the state had more than 51,000 children in foster care. Those numbers fell dramatically over the following years and bottomed out in 2017, when the tally dropped to 14,000. Today, about 19,500 children live in foster care  the highest since 2002. Part of the issue is that calls to the agencys hotline have shot up, leading to more investigations. But the foster care population has grown faster than the number of substantiated maltreatment investigations, suggesting that the response to maltreatment is swinging toward removing kids from their parents custody and placing them in foster care.

Unlike in the 1990s when Chicago and Cook County drove the states high foster care rates, prompting lawsuits against DCFS and reforms, increases over the past five years have been largely driven by less-populated regions across central and southern Illinois, and drawn far less attention.

Over the past few years, children from the Marion service area were placed into foster care at a rate four times higher than in Cook County relative to their share of the population. Across Illinois, 91% of children entered foster care for reasons of neglect rather than abuse in 2020, according to Child Trends, a national research organization that analyzes state child welfare data reported to the federal government.

The Illinois child welfare system, which includes DCFS, regional courts and social service providers, is struggling to manage the volume of new cases. A reporters observation of more than 10 hours of juvenile court in two Southern Illinois counties offered a glimpse into the upheaval. The reporter heard multiple stories that showed the system sagging under the strain of removals, including one child sleeping in a service providers office and another in a foster familys bathroom due to a shortage of available foster care placements.

To DCFS Smith, the increasing removals are just one byproduct of rising DCFS engagement with families, and a lagging indicator of inadequate service options for families in need. Still, he stressed that the agency works hard to keep families together, petitioning courts to order kids removed from their homes into foster care only when there is an urgent and immediate necessity.

The burden of caring for children in the child welfare system frequently falls to relatives, who are often the first choice to serve as foster parents.

In Schotts case, that role fell to Peggy Schott, an 87-year-old widow and Army veteran who had worked for three decades as a forklift driver. Her little white house is decorated with figurines outside, and framed pictures of family and Jesus Christ inside. It often smells of something shes cooking. When the girls moved in with her, she placed a tiny table with two chairs for them in her kitchen.

But only weeks after they arrived, DCFS bounced them to another foster care home. The decision to place them with people who were not relatives caught the family by surprise.

On a Monday in early November, a Caritas caseworker called Peggy Schott to let her know the girls could no longer live with her. Schott had allowed her grandson to see his daughters without a Caritas worker present, as the agency required, according to a follow-up letter from DCFS explaining the move. Alan Schott had visited on a day when he and his grandmother had expected the caseworker to be there, and when she arrived the next day, Peggy Schott volunteered the information that her grandson had visited  evidence, she later said, that it had been an innocent mistake. She recalled the hour or so he spent with the girls as uneventful. The four of them had dinner together, and Alan Schott helped his daughters with their homework.

She could also point to positive reviews of her earlier care for the girls. Caseworkers had described her as a stable force in their lives. She made sure they went to school, were seen by doctors and attended therapy for emotional issues. Regardless, the caseworker told her someone would pick them up Friday to drive them to their new placement.

Peggy Schott had planned to keep the girls home from school that day and tell them what was going to happen. She hoped they could spend their final hours together doing something fun as a family. But while the girls were at school on Wednesday, a Caritas caseworker called and said she would pick them up at school. Someone would come by later to get their belongings.

It just upsets me because theyre just hurting those girls more and more, Peggy Schott said that day, upon learning of the change of plans. Theyve been through so much. And I mean, right now, theyre so mixed up. I just cant comprehend what this is doing to those girls.

She called the school, pleading to talk to the girls, or for someone to pass along the message to them that this wasnt her decision. After shed placed multiple frantic calls, a school official connected her to her younger great-granddaughter. Grandma loves you and Im going to miss you, she told her on the phone. But theyre going to take you away from me." OK, a tiny, quavering voice answered back, the only word the child could muster before hanging up the phone.

The burden of breaking the news to the older child fell to her teacher. When Peggy Schott reached her other great-granddaughter, the girl bellowed between sobs, Where are we going? She didnt know what to tell the girl; she didnt know herself.

Remember to say your prayers every night, OK? she said.

Five months later, the separation had taken an emotional and financial toll. Peggy Schott was worried about the girls, and about her grandson, who was becoming increasingly distraught.

As his daughters time in foster care dragged on, Alan Schott began to sense them growing distant. I dont know what to do about this situation, he said after one visit with the girls.

I dont know why theyre keeping my kids from me, he added. I need my kids. I deserve my kids.

Alan Schott had the right to challenge the states neglect case in court and was given a public defender to represent him. But when he and his grandmother concluded that the lawyer wasnt giving the case the attention they felt it deserved, Peggy Schott took more than $5,000 from her savings to hire an attorney.

Delays by lawyers for both sides pushed the proceedings back to mid-February, well past a 90-day deadline to have the case heard  meaning more time the girls spent in foster care.

Alan Schott arrived at the courthouse in Jonesboro on the morning of the hearing wearing a Carhartt jacket and work boots. He was nervous. Two days earlier, hed met with his lawyer, who told him the case would be difficult to win.

For about two hours, Alan Schott listened as a teacher, the principal and the lunchroom supervisor from his daughters school detailed their concerns. They said that while living with their father, the girls had been registered for school several weeks late, and often showed up wearing dirty or torn clothes and with their hair matted. The school employees testified that the girls seemed hungry, finishing their lunches and often asking for seconds. I still think about her every day, the older girls teacher testified. Is she OK? Hows she doing?

Alan Schott and his grandmother said they had taught the girls to eat everything on their plates and that the girls had been well-fed at home.

Alan Schotts lawyer, Charles McGuire from the Southern Illinois Law Center, questioned why more hadnt been done to help the family when school officials grew concerned. He was never given the chance to raise these children, the lawyer said.

Judge Amanda Byassee Gott later explained how she agonized over coming to a decision. The case, she said, quite frankly is a very close call by this court. She said she was very concerned for the girls well-being under their fathers care. But the state, she determined, had not proved that he had neglected them.

Later that day, a caseworker drove the girls to their great-grandmothers house, where Alan Schott and his daughters would stay until they could find their own home.

DCFS was out of their lives again, with little to suggest that this most recent ordeal with the agency had delivered any stability. If anything, Alan Schott and his grandmother said, the experience felt more traumatic and disruptive than helpful. The girls were excited on the day they came home, but things got harder in the following weeks. The younger child, in particular, didnt want to let her father out of her sight. The move back home also meant another school change, their fourth transfer in a year.

Its traumatizing to them, me, the rest of the family, and putting a burden on everybody, Alan Schott said. Its crazy and they shouldnt be allowed to do that.

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After five years of sustained and spirited measures implemented by the government since 2017 to stop illegal mining in the country, the fight against the menace is far from over.



Illegal mining, popularly known as galamsey, continues to wreak havoc to land, forest reserves and water bodies in mining communities, especially in the Ashanti, Eastern, Western and Western North regions.



The illegal miners have destroyed vast swathes of farmlands and left behind gullies that serve as death traps to the residents.



The Daily Graphics visit to a number of the mining areas in the Ashanti, Eastern, Western and Western North regions revealed the resurgence of the illegal mining in such enormity that the local authorities were almost helpless about the situation.



The communities include the Amansie West, Amansie Central, Amansie South, Akrofuom, Adansi North districts as well as the Obuasi municipality, all in the Ashanti Region.



In the Ellembelle, Mpohor District, Tarkwa and Prestea Huni-Valley in the Western Region as well as the Aowin and the Bibiani-Anhwiaso-Bekwai municipalities in the Western North Region, the illegal small- scale mining was pervasive.



The story was not any different at Nkatieso in the Bibiani-Anwhiaso-Bekwai municipality.



Areas such as Teleku-Bokazo, Nkroful and Esiama in the Ellembelle District are safe havens for the galamsey activities.



Destruction



In the Mpohor District in the Western Region, illegal mining activities had claimed many farmlands and left the Subri River heavily polluted.



In many of the areas, the galamsey activities had created insecurity challenges because of the influx of migrants to the mining communities.



At Manso Adubia and Manso Nkwanta in the Amansie South and Amansie West districts, for instance, the paper observed that the galamsey operators were virtually on a field day.



The roads linking the towns in these districts were dotted with excavators, abandoned pits, some of which have turned into mini-dams.

Sounds of excavators being used by the illegal miners could be heard from a distance.



Some of the illegal miners were also seen working briskly in some pits along the trunk roads.



The activities of the galamsey operators had also badly damaged portions of rail lines in the area.





The Oda, Offin and Subriso rivers had turned milky-brown, giving the indication that they were at the receiving end of galamsey activities.



Oda River is at Amansie Central; the Offin flows from Ashanti Region to the Central Region, while Subri is in the Adansi North District.



The story at Amansie Central and Akrofuom districts was not different as the galamsey operators had left behind gullies and abandoned pits that bred mosquitoes.



In the Eastern Region, the hotspots include Akyem Akokoaso, parts of Akyem Abuakwa South and Atewa.



Residents raise concern



Some residents of Wamase and Akrofuom in the Akrofuom District shared harrowing stories about the social impact of the galamsey menace on their communities.



Emmanuel Owusu expressed worry about the uncovered pits dotted across Wamase and said they had turned into breeding grounds for mosquitoes.



For 57-year-old Alex Awuah, galamsey activities had caused many untimely deaths in the area and needed to be tackled head-on to prevent further deaths.



"I can tell you that the number of people who died in uncovered galamsey pits in this area in less than 10 years are 32. Recently, a boy who completed senior high school (SHS) was running away from the police who had come to stop galamsey activities; but he fell into a pit and died," Ishmael Awuah, another resident, said.



Local authorities helpless



While the galamsey activities go on with impunity, the local authorities, who are supposed to stop the illegal activities, appear helpless.



The District Chief Executive (DCE) for Amansie South, Clement Opoku Gyamfi, described the destruction of land and forest reserves in the area by galamsey operators as disheartening.



"Galamsey is a serious menace, a canker and an albatross around our necks. We have not had it easy dealing with the menace at all because these people have their mode of operation. If you try to strategise to curb their activities, they keep changing their approach," he said.



Mr Gyamfi said the galamsey activities had caused many people to migrate from places to Amansie South, and that development had brought about insecurity in the area.



He called for the introduction of the community mining scheme (CMS) in the district as that would help reduce the illegal mining activities in the area.



"The fact is that people want to mine; and they know that there is gold in their land. However, large-scale companies have taken over; so they will definitely encroach on concessions and mine illegally. Once we want to curb it, there should be an alternative, and that is why CMS has to be introduced here," he said.



Uphill task



For his part, the DCE for Amansie West, Nii Lartey Ollenu, said the galamsey menace was a herculean task, if not a lost battle.



When the Daily Graphic spoke to him on March 25, this year about measures being taken to curb the illegal mining menace, he said all attempts by the District Security Council (DISEC) to clamp down on their activities had proven to be non-productive.



"Just yesterday, I deployed a taskforce to the field and they seized three excavators and took out their control boards. We are doing our best but the fact is that the people are difficult to tackle.



"They operate like armed robbers. You can go after them with all force, and even kill them; but they keep changing their strategy because it is a livelihood for them," Mr Ollenu said.



The Amansie West DCE stressed, however, that since the gold deposit remained the property of the state, the Amansie West DISEC would continue to do its best to protect it from criminal elements.



Galamsey affects education



Apart from the destruction of land and water resources, the DCE for Amansie Central, Michael Donkor, said the galamsey menace had negatively impacted on education in the area.



He said it was worrying that children in their teens, who should be in school, were actively engaged in galamsey at the expense of their education.



Mr Donkor said the level of truancy in schools in the area had reached alarming proportions and gave stakeholders in the education sector sleepless nights.



"Many children of school age spend their day in galamsey sites. What they say is that the purpose of going to school is to make money and they get that money from galamsey," he said.



Mr Donkor said a task force had been formed by the district assembly to monitor mining sites to ensure that all children were withdrawn and taken to school.



Aowin



In Aowin, some of the residents complained that many acres of cocoa farms had been destroyed by the illegal miners, while rivers such as Tano, Boin, Dusoe, had all turned brown as a result of the indiscriminate mining activities.



The leader of the Aowin South Concern Youth Association, Patrick Afful, alleged there was a cartel behind the illegal mining menace in the municipality.



"The galamsey situation here is getting worst by the day. As I speak now, food and water supply has been a major issue here," Mr Afful told the Daily Graphic in a telephone conversation.



They will face law



The Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources in charge of Mines, George Mireku Duker, warned that all persons who were still adamant to stop the illegality would be flushed out and fully made to face the law.



"It is unfortunate that people are still recalcitrant and not listening to calls to stop galamsey. We will go after them, and not rest until the small-scale mining space is sanitised," he said.



Mr Duker indicated that the Lands and Natural Resources Ministry would continue to work with other state institutions, local authorities and security agencies to deal with the menace.



The Tarkwa-Nsuaem Member of Parliament (MP) urged the municipal and district security councils in mining areas to up their game to close in on the activities of the illegal miners.



The deputy minister urged local stakeholders and residents of mining communities to see the fight against galamsey as a collective responsibility to save the environment and protect livelihoods.



Foreign participation



To that end, he called on local people to help put an end to foreigners participation in small-scale mining as it was against the country's mining laws.



"People from Burkina Faso, Togo, Cote d'Ivoire and Benin are involved in small-scale mining in some communities, and it is disheartening that Ghanaians are allowing this to happen.



Animals are dying because they drink from diverted water that has been polluted by mercury," Mr Duker said.



Initiatives



Touching on initiatives that will be rolled out to tackle the menace, he said the Lands and Natural Resources Ministry had acquired five patrol boats that would be strategically positioned on water bodies, while river wardens would be deployed to monitor illegal mining activities in water bodies.



"We need to permanently deal with mining in water bodies so these river wardens will be positioned there to monitor and report any illegal activities on the water bodies to the security agencies for them to act on it swiftly," he said.



Mr Duker also said processes were underway to deploy tracking devices on movable mining equipment to help monitor their movement.



"We have reached advanced stages with this tracking system and it will be launched very soon. We believe that the tracking system will help to reduce irresponsible mining activities," he said.



CMS way to go



Again, the deputy minister said the ministry and the Minerals Commission were focusing more on promoting the CMS to help reduce illegal mining activities.



Mr Duker observed that if more licences were given to local people to mine under the CMS, it would largely address galamsey.



He underscored the need for the fight against illegal mining to be depoliticised since such a tendency emboldened galamsey operators to perpetrate the illegal act.



Galamsey resurgence



When he took over the reins of power, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo vowed to clamp down on illegal mining activities in the country.



He put his Presidency on the line by pledging to fight the menace head-on, even if it meant losing the next election.



Subsequently, the government, through the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, declared a relentless war on galamsey.



From 2017, the government took the fight against illegal mining to a higher level by banning all forms of small-scale mining in the country for almost two years until it was lifted on December 14, 2018.



With an overwhelming support of the media, key stakeholders were rallied to take the war to the galamsey operators on all fronts.



An Inter-Ministerial Committee on illegal mining (IMCIM) was also set up, comprising relevant ministries such as Lands and Natural Resources; Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI); Local Government and Rural Development; Defence; and the Interior, to help bring sanity to the small-scale mining sector.



This was followed by the deployment of Operation Vanguard, a joint police-military taskforce, into mining communities to halt illegal mining activities.



Hundreds of excavators, boats for dredging and washing the ore, known as changfan machines, and other equipment were seized by Operation Vanguard at mining sites.



After the lifting of the ban, there was resurgence in galamsey activities in many parts of the country.



The galamstop drones and mining guards were also deployed to support the crackdown of the menace.



Fight not over



When he delivered a message on the state of the nation on January 6, 2021, prior to the dissolution of the Seventh Parliament, President Akufo-Addo called for an "open and dispassionate conversation" about galamsey and its future.



He observed that the devastating nature of illegal mining required a non-partisan conversation and broader stakeholder engagement on how to come out of the woods.



"Should we allow or should we not allow galamsey, the illegal mining that leads to the pollution of our water bodies and the devastation of our landscape? As I have said often, the Almighty having blessed us with considerable deposits of precious minerals, there would always be mining in Ghana, he observed.



National dialogue



Following that call, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor, convened a two-day national dialogue on small-scale mining in Accra on April 14, last year, bringing together all stakeholders to find the way forward to winning the galamsey war.



President Akufo-Addo, who opened the dialogue, reiterated the need for "an impartial and non-partisan dialogue" for the country to reach a consensus on a sustainable method of mining minerals.



The conference, which was on the theme: Sustainable small-scale mining for national development, brought together all ministers of Lands and Natural Resources in the Fourth Republic, all political parties, parliamentary select committees, mining industry players, faith-based organisations and civil society organisations.



At the end of the dialogue, the participants called on the government to take steps to put in place systems for the rigid application of the laws against illegal small-scale mining.



A 15-point communique read on April 15, this year by Mr Jinapor at the end of the dialogue stressed that sanctions and penalties imposed by the Minerals and Mining (Amendment) Act, 2019 (Act 995) should be applied to all those who infringed the law, irrespective of political colour or socio-economic status.



It described galamsey as a national emergency that required urgent and concerted effort to tackle.



It also called for similar consultations to be held in all mining regions and districts of the country.

Source: graphic.com.gh









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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Nigeria's president has said the country is in "shock and trauma" following the deaths of at least 100 people from an explosion at an illegal oil refinery.



President Muhammadu Buhari described the incident in Imo state, southern Nigeria, as a "catastrophe and a national disaster".



Many victims were burnt beyond recognition.



The police are now looking for the owner of the illegal refinery.



The damage to fishing and farming caused by the oil industry over the decades and the failure to share its wealth has led some to find other ways to make money.



Illegal refining is attractive in parts of the oil-rich Niger Delta as it is seen as being relatively easy to pull off, despite efforts to halt the practice.



Dozens of people were thought to have been working at the refining plants when they were caught in the huge fire.



The death toll has risen as emergency workers go through the scene. Ifeanyi Nnaji of the National Emergency Management Agency told BBC Igbo that the number killed now stood at 109.



"We learnt many bodies are in nearby bushes and forests as some illegal operators and their patrons scampered for safety," he earlier told the AFP news agency.



In a statement on Sunday, Mr Buhari offered his condolences to families of the victims and said those responsible for the explosions must be caught and brought to justice.



The authorities have been struggling to curb the proliferation of illegal plants where stolen crude oil is refined. The president ordered security forces to intensify efforts to shut these refineries.



It is not yet clear what caused the explosion that happened sometime overnight into Saturday, but accidents have been common in the past at similar dangerous sites where safety measures are not enforced.



There have been concerns over a lack of precautions at such facilities as well as over the environmental pollution they cause.



But Nigeria's official oil refineries do not work to capacity, causing frequent fuel shortages and price increases across the country.

Source: BBC









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Works and Housing Minister, Hon. Francis Asenso-Boakye has extended an invitation to private developers, including members of the Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA) to embrace the revised strategy of the government in the provision of mass affordable housing to the middle to low-income earning Ghanaians.



The Minister disclosed this when he addressed a gathering at the grand opening of Rehoboth Knightsbridge, Kwabenya, an affordable housing project by Rehoboth Properties Limited in Accra this weekend.



He narrated that due to the huge housing deficit in the country, the government has revised its strategy on affordable housing by providing free land banks with requisite infrastructure to the designated sites. 



Apart from the free land and infrastructure services to these sites, the government is providing tax incentives to participating developers with the aim of making the cost of construction much lower, thereby making the houses truly affordable. I, therefore, charge all private developers, especially members of GREDA to collaborate with the government in this course, added Asenso-Boakye.



The Minister also commended the management and staff of Rehoboth Properties Limited for their contribution to the provision of affordable housing in Ghana with the opening of Knightsbridge Kwabenya.



I commend the management and staff of Rehoboth Properties Limited for staying committed to the noble cause of providing affordable homes to our people, said Asenso-Boakye.



He concluded that as a government, we are committed to creating the enabling environment for the housing sector to thrive.



Managing Director of Rehoboth Properties, Mr Gideon Ayiku Akrofi indicated that the Knightsbridge Kwabenya affordable housing project is a strategic move to provide decent homes for all Ghanaians and to bridge the gap between high-income earners and middle to low-income earners.



The event was highly attended by notable dignitaries, including Rt. Hon. Prof. Mike Aaron Oquaye, former Speaker of Parliament; the ArchBishop of Action Chapel International, His Eminence Nicholas Duncan Williams; Prof. Mrs. Angela Ofori-Attah, a renowned clinical psychologist; Mr Dan Sackey, Managing Director of ECOBANK; and Mr. Patrick Ebo Bonful, the President of Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA).

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) has rolled out a series of activities nationwide to mark 30 years of uninterrupted constitutional rule in Ghana, beginning April 28.



The success of constitutional rule in Ghana is classified as a fundamental accomplishment of all Ghanaians, Mr Samuel Asare Akuamoah, the NCCE Deputy Chairman in charge of Operations, said in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Tema on Sunday.



He explained that the Commission, judging from the chequered democratic history of the country, set out to protect the Fourth Republic with the setting up of the Annual Constitution Week Celebration.



The Week was instituted in 2001 to commemorate the countrys return to constitutional democratic rule, significantly on April 28, 1992, when the electorate voted in a referendum to adopt the draft Fourth Republican Constitution, which subsequently came into force on January 7, 1993.



Since its inception, April 28 to May 4 has been observed as the Annual Constitution Week. This year marks 30 years of uninterrupted constitutional rule in the Fourth Republic, although it is relatively young when compared to developed democracies, Mr Akuamoah said.



As such, Ghanaians must work hard to consolidate the fledgling democracy towards the common good.



The NCCE would hold public lectures and dialogues on the theme: After Three Decades of Democratic Rule under the 1992 Constitution: Revisiting the Agenda for Constitutional Reforms.



Mr Akuamoah explained that democracy grew when people identified the shortfalls in its practice and took the appropriate remedial measures to set things right.



The Constitution is a living document and must be nurtured to grow. The nurturing of a living constitution is vital for the sustenance of Ghanas fledgling democracy and the promotion of sustainable development, he said.



In the course of operating the 1992 Constitution for the past 30 years, various segments of the Ghanaian society, including government officials, legislators, political parties, academics, civil society organisations, and constitutional experts have called for a thorough review of the document.



The NCCE Deputy Chairman acknowledged that concerns raised over the past 30 years were relevant to the effective functioning of the Constitution.



Some of the concerns related to the reapportionment of power, political authority, and the revitalisation of the various institutions of state with the requisite architecture and resources to make them work to make the Constitution a truly living document.



Mr Akuamoah said some stakeholders argued that there are several ambiguities and nebulous provisions that had hindered the Constitution to be an effective tool for promoting development.



It is plausible to posit from these concerns that the people are determined to secure basic rights, realise a vision of equality of opportunities and enhance the governance system that reflects their aspirations, he stated.



The lectures and dialogue will enlighten participants on how the 1992 Constitution had fared, over the years, and if there is truly a justification for its amendment.



They would also create a platform for the citizens to share their views on ways to sustain and consolidate the democratic successes chalked even in the face of a possible amendment of the 1992 Constitution, he said.

Source: GNA









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The Election Committee of Manhyia South Constituency of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has disqualified a Civil Servant working with the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) from contesting for the constituency chairmanship position.



Owusu Sekyere who works as a Technician Engineer at the KMA filed to contest for the position but was disqualified following a petition filed by the Ashanti Regional First Vice Chairman of the NPP, Kwabena Nsenkyire.



This allows his main contender, Richard Adjei Mensah Ofori Atta, popularly known as Tom Tom to go unopposed in the constituency elections in Manhyia South.



Petition



In his petition to the Chairman of the Constituency Elections Committee, Kwabena Nsenkyire said Owusu Sekyere fell within Civil Service regulations and state laws that barred Civil Servants from engaging in active politics including holding party positions.



That the neutrality principle of the Civil Service embedded in the laws of this state precludes any civil servant from partaking in partisan politics except he or she resigns.



"That Owusu Sekyere is still at post and currently on strike as a member of CLOSSAG. I, therefore, pray that your committee disqualifies him on the grounds aforementioned,  the petition said.



Constitutional Provision



The Election Committee report stated that, per the 1992 Constitution, Owusu Sekyere who is a Civil Servant is proscribed from contesting for a political position.



The Applicant is a worker at Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly as a Technician Engineer. He is a Civil Servant. He is proscribed from contesting under Article 94 (3) of the 1992 Constitution, the Election Committee stated in its report.



Signed by the chairman of the Committee, Dr Oheneba Owusu-Danso, the report cited the court case, Local Government Staff Association vs. Attorney General and 2 others ( Writ No. 11/16/2016 delivered on 14/6/2017 to buttress its position of disqualification of the applicant.



Other alleged infractions



Peacefmonline.com also learnt that all the Constituency Executives, the Six Electoral Area Coordinators, Patrons and Council of Elders of the Manhyia South Constituency of the NPP, signed a joint petition to the Election Committee indicating that they did not know the applicant as a party member in the constituency.



According to the petitioners, on record, Owusu Sekyere had never attended any party event.



Curiously, during his vetting, he took some supposed supporters from Atonsu to Manhyia South in a bid to hoodwink the Committee members into believing that he had a strong support base in Manhyia South.



Owusu Sekyere is also alleged to have used a fake official receipt to show that he paid his party dues.



Consequently, peacefmonline.com is reliably informed that the Manhyia South Constituency Communications Director of the party had reported the conduct of Owusu Sekyere to the Police CID for further investigation.



Petition and other reports attached







Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/peacefmonline.com/ghana









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Deputy Finance Minister, Dr. John Kumah, has urged Ghanaians to ignore assertions that the government has contracted a third party, ExpressPay, to ensure revenue monitoring and assurance for the implementation of the E-Levy.



According to the deputy minister, the claims by the Member of Parliament for Ningo-Prampram, Sam Nartey George, are false.



He added that the government has not paid ExpressPay US$40 million to build a system for the implementation of the E-Levy (Electronic Transfer Levy).



Ignore Sam George's ill-informed assertion on the rollout of E-levy  alleging that GRA and MoF have engaged the services of Express Pay to build a cloud-based system at the cost of $40m for the E-levy.



I wish to categorically state that Sam George's allegations are FALSE and must be discarded. There has not been any meeting at the Ministry of Finance that discussed the award of any contract to Express Pay, a series of tweets shared by Dr. Kumah on April 22, read.



The deputy minister, who is also the MP for Ejisu, added that the behaviour of Sam George is consistent with the conduct of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) to misinform Ghanaians about the levy.



As Ghanaians are aware, the NDC has demonstrated that it will only win the E-levy discussion on FALSEHOOD and I'm not surprised Sam George has taken a leaf from their playbook to once again create public disaffection for Government and the E- levy, he said.



He added that  (the) government's determination to ensure that there is total transparency in all matters relating to the E-levy has not changed.



Samuel Nartey George questioned the rationale behind the alleged plans of the government to purchase a system worth US$ 40 million for the implementation of the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy).



In a tweet shared on April 21, 2022, Sam George said that there is no need to purchase the system because the government has a system at the National Communication Authority (NCA) which can perform the same function.



According to the MP, the system will be bought from ExpressPay and will be to the benefit of some officials of the Ghana Revenue Authority and the finance ministry.







Source: Ghanaweb









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The crew of the first fully private mission to the International Space Station undocked from the space lab on Monday.

The crew of the first fully private mission to the International Space Station departed the orbiting laboratory on Monday to head back to Earth.

The three businessmen and a former NASA astronaut had spent more than two weeks on the station on a history-making mission organized by startup company Axiom Space.

The SpaceX capsule undocked from the ISS at 0110 GMT for the return trip and was scheduled to land in the ocean off the coast of Florida at around 1:00 pm local time (1700 GMT).

The four menthree of whom paid tens of millions of dollars for the rare chance to take part in the missionwere originally scheduled to spend only eight days on the space station.

Bad weather on Earth forced repeated delays in their return, however.

Private passengers Larry Connor, a US citizen who heads a real estate company, Canadian businessman Mark Pathy and Israeli former fighter pilot and entrepreneur Eytan Stibbe had blasted off from Florida on April 8, reaching the ISS a day later.

Former astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who holds dual US-Spanish citizenship, is the fourth passenger.

Once on board, the men conducted a series of experiments in cooperation with Earth-bound research centers, including on cardiac health and cognitive performance in low gravity, according to a NASA blog.

Space startup Axiom Space paid SpaceX for two-way transport to the space station, and also paid NASA for use of orbital accommodations.

Pathy spent considerable time in the station's famous observation cupola, photographing the Earth from 250 miles (400 kilometers) overhead.

The mission was dubbed Ax-1 in a nod to Axiom Space, which served as a sort of space travel agency, paying SpaceX for providing two-way transportation and NASA for the use of the orbiting accommodations.

NASA has already given the green light, in principle, to a second mission: Ax-2.

The departure of the Ax-1 crew left seven people on the ISS: three Americans, a German and three Russians.

Monday's sea landing of a manned SpaceX Dragon capsule will be the fifth to date.

SpaceX, owned by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, is now regularly ferrying NASA astronauts to and from the space station.

Last year, Musk's company launched another entirely private mission, but it simply orbited the Earth for three days, not linking up with the ISS.

Explore further First private mission readies for launch to ISS

 2022 AFP
The Tara research vessel left its homeport of Lorient in France in December 2020 to embark on a 70,000-kilometre journey. Since then it has traversed the coasts of Chile, Brazil and Argentina, as well as the Weddell Sea in Antarctica.

Scientists on Saturday began a five-month mission to study how plastic pollution in Africa's main rivers and climate change stresses are impacting microorganisms in the Atlantic ocean, they announced.

The survey is being staged from the 33-year-old Tara research schooner which arrived in South Africa's Cape Town on Friday ahead of the expedition up the West African coast.

The researchers will analyze how nutrients and pollution in major African riversthe Congo, Orange, Gambia and Senegalare affecting the Atlantic.

They will trace the sources of plastic pollution at river mouths, to understand their distribution and the types of material involved.

The research station will also cast nets that can go up to 1,000 meters below the ocean's surface, to collect samples from ecosystems called "microbiomes", to be analyzed in labs on land. The data gathered will help answer key questions about the world's oceans.

The researchers will also study the Benguela Current, which moves up from South Africa to the Namibian and Angolan coasts.

It pulls up cold water from the ocean depths in a process known as upwelling, bringing nutrients to the surface.

"You get more nutrients here than anywhere else in the world," Emma Rocke, a 42-year-old research fellow at the University of Cape Town, who is working on the vessel, told AFP.

"Understanding that, and characterizing it at a microbiome level is something that hasn't been done really ever, and more importantly, it's not incorporated in climate change models".

She said the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports published so far don't consider the microbiome, "yet without it, ocean life would not exist".

Marine biologists will later study an upwelling current off the Senegalese coast, the world's third most powerful after Benguela and the Peru-Chile upwelling system.

The Tara vessel is on its 12th global mission and it involves 42 research institutions around the world.

Tara Ocean Foundation executive director Romain Trouble, 46, said that this is the first time the ship has traversed the West African coast.

"There's very little data on this kind of microbiome, microscopic species, in this ecosystem," he said.

University of Pretoria's microbial ecology and genome professor Thulani Makhalanyane, 37, will be focusing on the effect of agriculture and plastic pollution from African rivers.

"In coastal communities, we expect to see evidence of a high degree of pollution," said Makhalanyane. "We are also interested in other polluters that are perhaps not as well characterized, things like antibiotic resistance genes".

The vessel left its homeport of Lorient in France in December 2020 to embark on a 70,000-kilometer journey. Since then, it has traversed the coasts of Chile, Brazil and Argentina, as well as the Weddell Sea in Antarctica.

Explore further Hidden upwelling systems may be overlooked branches of ocean circulation

 2022 AFP
Republican state Assembly candidate David Catalfamo is ramping up his criticism of incumbent Democrat Carrie Woerner of Round Lake as the nominating petitions of Catalfamos potential Republican primary opponent have been challenged.

Catalfamo, in a recent news release, criticized Woerner for co-sponsoring legislation which, if enacted quickly, would allow former Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, who has been indicted on corruption charges and resigned from office, to decline his spot on the June 28 Democratic primary ballot and be replaced by a new candidate, without Benjamin having to move out of state, one of the few reasons for declining that are available now.

This is clearly an effort to remove a scandal from the top of the (Democratic) ticket, Catalfamo said in a follow-up telephone interview.

Woerner said her co-sponsorship was in response to constituent concerns.

My staff tells me that we have had a number of calls from people outraged that this person (Benjamin) is still going to be running, she said, in a telephone interview.

Woerner said the impetus is not specifically to get Benjamin off the ballot, but to correct a flaw in election law that Benjamins situation has brought to light.

The legislation that Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, D-Scarsdale, introduced April 19, and Woerner and 15 other Democratic Assembly members co-sponsored, would allow a candidate to decline a nomination for party designation because of being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, being indicted for a crime or having resigned the office the candidate had been seeking re-election to.

Companion legislation had not been introduced in the state Senate, as of Sunday.

Catalfamo said the election law may very well need to be addressed, but the process should not be rushed.

Its not a Republican or Democratic issue, its a fairness issue, he said. You dont change the rules in the middle of an election.

Woerner said theres no evidence the law will be passed before the primary, but the issue needs attention either way.

Will this get taken up in the next four weeks? Who knows, she said.

Catalfamo, an economic development official and novelist from Wilton, is one of two candidates seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Woerner, a four-term incumbent, in the 113th Assembly District.

The other candidate is Scarlett De Witt, a restaurant worker and fashion model from Glens Falls.

Michael York, an earlier candidate, dropped out of the race when he was unable to get sufficient signatures on his nominating petitions.

Saratoga Springs Republican Chairman Michael Brandi and two others have challenged De Witts nominating petitions.

Brandi, as well as Robert Bush and Gae Bush of Malta, filed challenges alleging that nearly half of the signatures on De Witts nominating petitions are invalid for reasons such as witness inconsistencies, signatures not being dated, or the wrong town or city being listed, or because the signers are not enrolled in the Republican Party, according to complaints filed with the Board of Elections.

State Board of Elections spokeswoman Jennifer Wilson said the board is reviewing the challenges and does not have a specific time frame to issue a ruling.

De Witt, contacted Friday, said she is waiting for the boards decision.

I had been in contact with the Board of Elections prior to entering my signatures and they never mentioned some of these alleged violations, she said.

If De Witts petitions are disqualified, it will spare Catalfamo a primary.

Catalfamo said he was aware that several people had spotted some possible irregularities in De Witts nominating petitions, but he did not know if there was a formal challenge.

Catalfamo also criticized Woerner for voting in favor of the congressional redistricting plan, which a state Supreme Court judge and a state mid-level appeals court panel have both overturned.

The state Court of Appeals is now reviewing the case that claims congressional districts were unconstitutionally drawn to favor the Democratic Party.

It doesnt fit the test of logic, Catalfamo said, referring to the redistricting plan.

Woerner said she voted based on quantitative information available at the time.

Now its up to the courts to decide based on a qualitative aspect, she said.

Do I feel they were done fairly from a Capital District perspective? They seem to be, Woerner said.

Catalfamo has selected Upstate Matters as his campaign slogan.

He said he will focus on assuring that upstate interests are not overshadowed by those of the metropolitan New York City area.

Maury Thompson covered local government and politics for The Post-Star for 21 years before he retired in 2017. He continues to follow regional politics as a freelance writer.

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FORT ANN  The Fort Ann Central School District has lost the latest round in a long-running dispute with a neighboring property owner over a fence.

Michael Dornan, proprietor of Greenthumb Nursery and Country Store, owns three parcels adjoining the schools campus totaling about 120 acres. The issue dates back to 2015, when the district removed fences that surround an easement that allows Dornan to cross his property.

The district eventually replaced the fences, but without gates or some type of opening, to allow Dornan to maintain access to his parcels. He has a path that can go around the easement to the east side of his property line but it cannot handle the larger tractors.

The matter headed to court and in October 2020, Acting Supreme Court Judge Glen Bruening ordered that the 8-foot-high section of fence located at the northeast end of the right-of-way be removed within 60 days, so Dornan can access it from one of his parcels that connects with Route 4.

The district appealed that decision to the state Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department, which upheld the lower courts ruling, writing that the district may not unreasonably interfere with Dornans use of the right-of-way.

The Fort Ann Central School District had filed a motion to re-argue the case.

Dornans attorney, Lewis Oliver Jr., said that the court on April 14 denied the motion.

Oliver said his client has lost tens of thousands of dollars because he could not farm his property or plant crops without getting in and out of the right-of-way. He had to buy hay for his cows and firewood to heat his home and greenhouses. He also could not sell firewood or topsoil and his nursery business suffered.

The school district has wasted tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money over the last six years in an effort to destroy Mike Dornans business, Oliver said in a news release.

Dornan has claimed that the district was punishing him because he was an outspoken critic of the Common Core standards from 2013 to 2015.

Dornan has filed a civil rights lawsuit against former Superintendent Kevin Froats, who was the districts leader until retiring in January.

I hope the new Board of Education and the new superintendent will reexamine the school districts approach to living with its neighbors, Dornan said in a news release.

Superintendent of Schools Justin Hoskins said in an email on Friday that he would provide a statement, but had not as of Saturday.

The district has claimed in its legal filings that the right-of-way to cross district property applies to only one of Dornans properties and he does not have the right to use the right-of-way to access his other parcels.

School officials have said previously that changes to the fences were necessary to protect the safety of staff and students.

Michael Goot is night and weekend editor of The Post-Star. Reach him at 518-742-3320.

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GLENS FALLS  The Glens Falls Common Council was informed in October that it was not in compliance with the one person, one vote principle.

The Independent Redistricting Task Force was created to correct that issue.

According to numbers from the 2020 Census, Ward 1 had 2,554 residents; Ward 2 had more than 3,800; Ward 3 had more than 3,700; Ward 4 had over 1,800; and Ward 5 had over 2,700-plus residents.

At that time when I was city clerk I emailed the council and the mayor and said because it was October of 2021, nothing could be done last year, but it certainly could be revisited in 2022, said Bob Curtis, former city clerk and chairman of the task force. Here we are.

The task force is comprised of Curtis, Mary DeSantis, vice chairwoman, and members Janet Dimanno, Robin Barkenhagen, Connie Bosse, Nancy Kelley and Lee Braggs.

Curtis said the goal for the group is to ensure that there is no more than a 10% difference in population between each of the citys five wards, in line with a Supreme Court ruling from 1964 giving all citizens the right to equal legislative representation.

He said that Mayor Bill Collins selected him as the chair in part because of his 27 years of experience in the city clerks office. While in the position, he updated and maintained the city code and charter.

Curtis said that he had written about 90% of the citys local laws during the last 15 years prior to his retirement in December.

He said when Collins was sworn in to office in January, he announced that he wanted to make changes to the ward boundaries as a solution to the redistricting.

I think that was important because that was the first step for the city to look at this issue, and I think it sort of put everything in place, Curtis said.

Curtis said that the population of the city, which was 14,830 according to the 2020 Census, was divided by five to figure out what number each ward had to be within 10% of at the end of this process.

That number is 2,966.

Curtis told the other members of the force that he had spoken with Warren County Administrator Ryan Moore, who said that county officials will assist the task force however they can.

Our best way to approach this is to go to Warren County Planning. They have geographical information services. They have digital mapping, Curtis said.

He informed the force that Sarah Frankenfeld, who works in the GIS department at the county, will be helping out as well.

Curtis told the task force that he had not yet visited the county, but hopes that it is possible to have large maps of the city for them to utilize. He also said that he felt it was a good idea to either meet with Frankenfeld or have her attend a meeting of the task force to see what the county has and can give the group to get started.

At the end of the process, the task force will be responsible for writing out the changes.

Curtis mentioned that the task force could seek the assistance of an outside entity to write the language and look it over before a local law is drafted. The local law would be brought to the Common Council.

If the local law passes, it would be subject to a mandatory referendum on Novembers ballot.

Ultimately, its up to the voters, Curtis said.

If the vote passes in November, the new local law will be placed into the citys charter and the new boundaries would take effect in January 2023.

Bossee said that she doesnt feel that the residents of the city will have any issues as long as there is open communication from the task force about their results.

I think at the end of the day here this is a positive for the city, she said.

Curtis noted that if the vote passes in November, it would impact the Warren County Board of Supervisors due to the weighted vote system. He said that the five supervisors representing Glens Falls on the board would have their weighted votes changed.

Collins and Jim Clark, councilman at-large, have discussed taking a look at this every 10 years once the census information comes out, according to Curtis. He said that is something they can write into the local law.

The task force agreed that holding public meetings about the new boundaries would be a good idea. The process must be completed by mid-June and brought to the Common Council.

The members agreed that this would provide plenty of time to hold public meetings and allow for the referendum to be sent to the Board of Elections.

The countys Board of Elections must obtain that information three months prior to the election. Curtis said that gives the task force until Aug. 8.

Were only going to be together for a few months, but what we are doing will last a long, long time, he said.

The task force will hold its next meeting on Thursday at 6 p.m. at City Hall.

Jay Mullen is a reporter for The Post-Star covering the city of Glens Falls, Warren County and crime and courts. You can reach him at 518-742-3224 or jmullen@poststar.com.

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QUEENSBURY  Town residents and attorneys spoke out last week against the Hoffman Car Wash proposed for a lot with a vacant building near the Route 9 Walmart.

The company returned to the town Planning Board with an additional traffic study to supplement the original documents submitted in February, hoping the information would answer questions posed by board members.

Hoffman Car Wash representatives told the board that employees would be tasked with directing traffic flow into the business during peak seasons, including using signs to direct vehicles in line.

Queensbury Town Board member Harrison Freer began the public hearing by speaking on behalf of residents concerned with the traffic increase on Weeks Road, which runs between the car wash site on one side and the Walmart store and Montys Discount Wine & Liquor store on the other side.

There is a lot of concern about the traffic and congestion that will be created on Weeks Road, Freer stated.

Joseph Nichols, representing Queensbury Holdings, the owner of the property next door to the proposed project where the 40 Oak Classic American Grille now stands, outlined his clients points of opposition.

Nichols states his client is adamantly opposed to the project.

As the board has been made aware in prior public hearings, there is concern that the car wash would greatly increase traffic on the Route 9 corridor, among other concerns related to lighting, noise and pedestrian safety, particularly the students who board and disembark the school bus on Weeks Road, he said.

Queensbury Holdings also owns the access point to Route 9 that would be used by Hoffman and is attached to Hoffmans interconnecting roadway included in the site plans.

My client, rightfully so, is concerned that the interconnect proposed will overburden the access point to Route 9, which is owned by my client, and the applicant appears to believe to possess access and an unfettered right to share this with my client, Nichols told the board.

He cited the plans for an egress onto Route 9 already included in the companys proposal and suggested that the interconnect would be an unnecessary addition.

Nichols stated concern over the site plan illustration of the car wash using the access point owned by Queensbury Holdings rather than the Route 9 egress they were allowed with an easement from Warren County. He said his client would not allow the applicant to use property he owns.

The attorney went on to say that Hoffman was instructed by the Planning Board to work with Queensbury Holdings to establish an agreement regarding the access point, but prior to his involvement Hoffman would not work with his client, and since has only agreed to construct the interconnect rather than find a mutually amicable option.

Nichols mentioned the Warren County Pathway Corridor study completed in August 2019 that suggests aligning Sweet Road and Weeks Road to create a signaled four-way intersection that would mitigate traffic on Route 9. The proposed option would use the property the car wash wants to occupy to achieve the realignment of Weeks Road.

The owner of 40 Oak, Jim Campione, also spoke.

I chose to leave Lake George and come to Queensbury because I can stay open year-round here. Im gonna be dead. You may wait 40 minutes for a car wash, but you wont wait 40 minutes to get into a restaurant parking lot, Campione said. You are making this a death sentence for 925 Route 9.

Claudia Braymer, a lawyer representing the Whispering Pines apartment complex on Weeks Road, urged the board to consider the residents when looking at the traffic concerns.

This is the only way these people can access their homes, said Braymer, who is Glens Falls 3rd Ward supervisor on the county board, but appeared at the meeting as a client attorney.

She also spoke of the Warren County Pathway Corridor study suggestion, stating that upon approval of the car wash plans, the board would be forever foreclosing on the opportunity for the traffic mitigation strategy involving aligning Sweet Road and Weeks Road for a four-way intersection.

The matter was ultimately tabled until the Planning Board meeting on May 17 to allow the board to draft a special resolution to vote on the project.

Jana DeCamilla is a staff writer who covers Moreau, Queensbury, and Lake George. She can be reached at 518-742-3272 or jdecamilla@poststar.com.

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From The Post-Star in 1972:

Late melting snow and heavy rainfall caused flooding throughout the Adirondacks, The Post-Star reported on May 4.

At Johnsburg, the level of the Upper Hudson River was 11 feet, flooding trailers and camps along the river and placing the running of the annual White Water Derby canoe and kayak race in question.

The highest water in which the race was ever held was 6.7 feet in 1970, and one veteran canoeist told The Post-Star and Times at the scene, anyone who would try to get down that river now in an open canoe is crazy.

Flooding from the runaway Hudson continued that day, and White Water Derby officials announced that racing on Saturday would be run only on the side of the river nearest Route 28, and racing on Sunday would be on an alternative course about 2.5 miles shorter than the regular course.

The change in course did have an advantage, in one sense.

The new course is nearly all visible from Route 28 or on streets in North Creek, a plus for spectators who normally had to walk for miles to reach Spruce Mountain or Staircase Rapids on the regular course to view the races, The Post-Star reported on May 6.

On Saturday, about 200 canoes and kayaks participated on the opening day.

On Sunday, the day of the main race, the river level was down to 8 feet, still much higher than the previous 6.7-foot depth record on race weekend.

More than 10,000 spectators turned out to watch 278 boats start the race that nearly 100 boats were not able to finish.

Not only was the water rough, it was very cold, about 34 degrees, The Post-Star reported on May 8. Fifty persons were treated at first-aid stations, all for exposure, and 75 of the swamped boats were pulled out. Many others were brought to shore by their owners.

Douglas Bushnell of Buffalo, paddling his single-seat kayak, finished the 5.5-mile course in 27 minutes and 27 seconds, finishing first in his category as well as winning the overall best of the day award.

Bushnell also won the giant slalom event on Saturday.

PTA: Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Walton were elected co-presidents and Bud and Pat Taylor co-vice presidents of Sanford Street School PTA.

Centennial: The congregation of Penial Presbyterian Church in Granville conducted a special service to celebrate the churchs 100th anniversary. The Rev. Richard Evans of Bradford, Pennsylvania, a former pastor, preached on the topic Courage to Be. Evans, pastor in 1952-54, was the congregations first pastor that was not born in Wales, although he was of Welsh ancestry and was fluent in the Welsh language. Well able to converse in that tongue, he delighted the older members of the anniversary congregation by interspersing Welsh quotations throughout the sermon.  May 11

Math scholars: Paul Brown won first place, Mark Talley second, Louis Mansell third and Martha Wright fourth in the area Continental Insurance Co. high school math contest.  May 10

On stage: The Glens Falls High School Drama Club was set to present Symposium on Love May 18-19.  May 8

At the movies: Actress Connie Strickland was treated to a Mikes submarine sandwich when she visited the area to promote her starring role in the move Secretary, playing at The Paramount Theatre on Ridge Street.  May 5

Local government: Members of the Wilton Town Board agreed to consider establishing a town Planning Board.  May 9

Editorial: What makes prune juice taste like prune juice? Why is it that todays store-bought tomatoes, despite their enticing appearance, often lack the flavor of the tomatoes we used to buy? Researchers in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Science of the Davis campus of the University of California have been working on the prune juice question for five years, and still dont have the answer. They do think they can answer the other question: Scientists were so bent on making other changes in the tomato that they neglected keeping the flavor up to par.  This all sounds complicated, and it is.  May 11

Quotable: Astronomers say thunder on the sun is probably of such low frequency it couldnt be heard. Any volunteers to venture close enough to test the theory?  May 4

Maury Thompson was a Post-Star reporter for 21 years before he retired in 2017. He now is a freelance history writer and documentary film producer who routinely researches historic newspapers of the region.

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Boaters entering Brigantines secluded Baremore Quarters Cove off the Wading Thorofare Bay will likely notice a sprawling property that, when viewed from its shaded street side at 470 W. Shore Drive, is nearly impossible to recognize as that immense.

Back when Brigantine was little more than a blip on peoples radars, and long before it morphed into a sought-after resort town, the Haneman family purchased plots on West Shore Drive in a gradually expanding fashion. The family, whose name is befittingly regal in Brigantine, actually owns seven contiguous lots on West Shore Drive, and recently put a parcel that spans a stunning 30,740 square feet (roughly 212 by 145 feet, as lot depths vary) up for sale.

The property is being sold as one gigantic parcel, with a listing price of $6 million, but it was originally purchased as five separate lots by the Hanemans. With the procurement of certain variances to bring the land into compliance with the citys current zoning codes, the one large parcel could potentially be subdivided back into its original five buildable lots.

I think the property personifies our area; its uniqueness says it all, says Christian Lucia of RE/MAX Platinum Properties Linwood, the propertys listing agent. Theres one big home and a bevy of little buildings, like bungalows and some raised ranches. Its a little bit of everything that (the patriarch of the family) had built throughout the years.

Im told that when Mr. Haneman first bought on West Shore Drive, people told him he was crazy, that nobody was ever going to want that swamp land, and that it would never be worth a penny.

The propertys original owner was the late Howard Fritz Haneman, who was a renowned humanitarian and former president of the Atlantic County Utilities Authority. His father, Vincent Haneman, was Brigantines mayor for eight years and a New Jersey Supreme Court justice. A Bayshore Avenue park in Brigantine is named in honor of the younger Haneman, and the bridge connecting Brigantine to Atlantic City is named after his father.

Fritz Haneman had actually moved some of those buildings from other places in Brigantine and put them on new foundations on this property, says Lucia. One used to be an old boathouse, another used to be a fishing cabin. Its really got a lot of impressive features along with an incredible history behind it.

Throughout the years, as Mr. Haneman continued to build onto the property, he was crossing over his own property lines, and basically made five contiguous lots into one big lot, says Lucia. So a buyer would have to re-subdivide it into five lots, or maybe four, whatever they chose to do. Since the property sits on a bend in the road, it created pie-shaped lots, and the frontage of four of the five would currently be at 42 feet. The buyer would need a variance to come into compliance with the citys 50-foot frontage requirement.

The bend creates the deficiency, but because these were once five lots in the past, there really shouldnt be an issue getting that back, he adds. The depth of the lots is just incredible (in some cases surpassing 200 feet). These are enormous lots that are more than making up for the lack of frontage with depth and width at the rear, facing the sunset.

For more information about this unique parcel of land, qualified buyers can call the direct line of RE/MAX Platinum Properties Managing Broker Christian Lucia at 609-992-1051, his office number at 609-957-6064 or email him at homesbuychris@gmail.com.
OCEAN CITY  Mayor Jay Gillian has contributed $56,000 to his own reelection campaign, putting his fundraising ahead of challenger Keith Hartzell in the first reporting period, according to recently posted campaign finance reports.

Candidates spending more than $5,800 on a campaign are required to file two more finance reports, one 11 days before the vote, another 20 days after the election.

Ocean City holds its nonpartisan vote May 10. In addition to the race for mayor, there are three at-large City Council seats up for a vote. With less than a month to go, the city is in full campaign mode, with signs covering lawns, billboards near the bridge into town on 34th Street and advertisements on radio and social media.

Gillian is running for a fourth term as mayor. Hartzell has decided to challenge him rather than run for another term on council, which means if he does not unseat Gillian, he will be out of local government when council reorganizes in July.

According to Hartzells first campaign finance report to the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, his campaign took in $27,462 and spent more than $6,600. The report indicates more than $11,000 of that came from donations of $300 or less. Below that limit, contributors do not have to be identified by name in finance reports.

Among the largest contributors listed were Maria Chew, who gave $2,600 in February, Paul Levchuk, who gave $2,600 on the same day, and Lunds Fisheries, which contributed the same amount Feb. 17, according to the report. That is the maximum amount an individual can give a candidate in an election cycle, according to details posted to the ELEC website.

Will hotels on Ocean City Boardwalk pass go? It was the second time the group had met. Rumors swirled, as they often do, that the topic o

Contributors who put $1,000 toward Hartzells campaign as of this reporting period include Gregg Balin, Helena Hamilton, Harry Hill, Albert Kendro and Edward Vaughn.

Gillians finance report shows he put $50,000 toward his own campaign March 17, in addition to $6,000 contributed in January.

Gillian, owner of the Wonderland amusement park in town, has spent heavily on previous campaigns as well. A 2018 campaign finance report shows a contribution of more than $47,000 to his own campaign that year, and he contributed to each of his previous campaigns.

Under city ordinance, the job of mayor pays $20,600 a year. Council members make $10,300 a year, with the council president and vice president making a little more. The council presidents remuneration is set at $11,300.

Other contributors to Gillians campaign for 2022 include $2,000 from Carol and Anthony Frank and $1,000 from Jane and Scott Halliday. The report also shows $1,000 from fellow amusement park family Will and Janice Morey, in a contribution March 30. Will Morey is also a Cape May County commissioner.

So far, Gillian has spent $39,000, including on advertising with local media and on outdoor signs. Hartzells campaign spent a little over $3,000 with JASM Consulting, a public relations firm based in Ocean City, and $3,500 with Media Wize for internet media.

For the council candidates, incumbents Peter Madden and Karen Bergman are running as a slate with local businessman John Polchini. Tom Rotondi, a current member of council, is running for one of the at-large seats, as is former member Michael DeVlieger, who resigned from a ward council seat last year.

Environmental advocate Donna Moore is also on the ballot.

So far, Madden has raised the most money among the council candidates, bringing in $25,442 as of the first financing report. Of that, the campaign spent more than $16,000.

Notable contributors include Antwan McClellan, a former council member who is now a Republican state assemblyman, who gave $1,000.

Eustace and Julie Mita of Icona resorts contributed $2,000 on March 7, while two employees of Icona resorts also contributed, according to the report.

The report also shows a $2,500 contribution from Tom Londres of Metro Commercial Real estate in Mount Laurel, Burlington County.

Bergmans report indicates she does not intend to raise or spend more than $5,800 on the election, the cutoff for requiring a financial report, although her name is included in campaign material distributed on behalf of the ticket. Campaign material sent to Ocean City voters included the required disclosure that it was ordered and paid for by Peter V. Madden for Council. Polcini, known in town as Tony, shows he has raised $3,760 for the campaign, mostly from contributions under $300.

Rotondis finance report shows he raised $5,860 for the first reporting period, spending more than $4,000 of that. Contributors include Chris Glancey, the owner of Glancey Enterprises, who gave $1,000, and another $1,000 from the Vince Polistina Senate campaign, a Republican who beat out Democrat Vince Mazzeo in the 2nd District last year.

While Ocean Citys election is nonpartisan, the city is overwhelmingly Republican, and typically most of the candidates for office are also Republican.

Also contributing to Rotondis campaign was Alison Murphy, a staffer in U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drews office, and Patrick Rosenello, the mayor of North Wildwood, who each gave $500.

Moore also has filed a statement that she will not raise enough money for the campaign to require filing a finance report.

The ELEC website indicates there was no report filed for DeVlieger, but DeVlieger states he did file, under the title Neighbors Supporting Mike DeVlieger. He texted a copy after being contacted Thursday. The filing he sent says he will not raise or spend enough to require a detailed report.

Contact Bill Barlow: 609-272-7290 bbarlow@pressofac.com Twitter @jerseynews_bill

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On Easter morning, Ken Johnston and Deborah Price paused for a moment before entering the historic Bethel Othello AME Church in the Springtown section of Greenwich Township.

Johnston and Price had walked 6 miles that day, from the center of Bridgeton to the AME church. They had walked 10 miles the day before.

Tears welled in their eyes as they stood quietly, and reverently, before entering the white concrete church built by a free Black community between 1838 and 1841. An older church building "burned down mysteriously," Bethel Othello's pastor, the Rev. Jeffrey M. Johnson, later told The Inquirer.

Bethel Othello is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its role as a safe haven along the Underground Railroad.

"I was overcome with tears of joy as I felt the spiritual energy of the release some of our ancestors must have felt at finally reaching freedom," Johnston, of Philadelphia, recalled this week.

Deborah Price, of Willingboro, Burlington County, a volunteer at the Underground Railroad Museum in Eastampton, said the moment left her speechless.

"It's hard to put into words what those doors meant and just to walk through them," Price said. "It was what the church represented during that time. It was representing home and safety. The slaves were actually there. It was all those things, coupled with it being Easter."

"I saw Jesus walking, I saw Harriet (Tubman) walking with her many individuals through those doors. I saw ... I just felt like I was home."

It was the third weekend of walking for Johnston, a "walking artist" who came up with the idea to make a 165-mile trek across South Jersey, from Cape May to Burlington City, retracing the routes of the Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad was a network of safe houses, hidden spaces and secret routes, where abolitionists or "conductors" provided food, shelter and other assistance to enslaved Black people who were running to find freedom.

Documents show Harriet Tubman, the most famous leader of the Underground Railroad, worked in Cape May between 1849 and 1852 to earn money to finance her 19 trips to the South to free enslaved people.

But it's mostly oral tradition that Tubman brought freedom-seekers to Bethel Othello.

"Oh, Harriet was here," Naomi Morris, a lifelong member of Bethel AME, said with assurance.

Morris pointed to an area below the raised church altar that once had a trap door leading to a secret room below the floor.

The book "The Underground Railroad: Ties That Bound Unveiled," by Emma Marie Trusty, cites historian Francis Bazley Lee, who claimed Tubman was seen standing on the Delaware Bayshore in Greenwich, waiting to escort fleeing freedom seekers.

Earlier Sunday morning, at 6 a.m., Johnston and Price joined members of the Lower Greenwich Friends (Quaker) Meeting House for an Easter sunrise service near the Cohansey River.

In the months before starting their "Walk to Freedom" in Cape May on April 2, they had driven through the area scouting routes.

On those trips, they met members of the Quaker community, who told them about the oral histories of the area's connections to the Underground Railroad.

Cape May may receive $240,000 to repair fire damage to historic Black church CAPE MAY  Cape May County is set to provide Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church with $

One of the stories was that as freedom-seekers were ferried across the Delaware Bay, they made their way up the Cohansey to Springtown.

History says the Quakers, the Lenni-Lenape Native Americans and the free Black community all worked together to help Black people running from enslavement.

On the Saturday portion of last weekend's walk, Alvin Q. Corbett, of Eastampton, a researcher who lectures on the Underground Railroad in New Jersey, joined Johnston and Price on the walk from Millville to Bridgeton. There, they met with members of the Trinity AME Church of Gouldtown, in Bridgeton.

Linda Cuff Goff, whose family goes back to Gouldtown for generations, said she is pleased that Johnston and Price are making this walk.

"I was so impressed that people were willing to give up their time to walk this walk to freedom. There are so many things that people from this area don't know. They don't know their ancestors came from these settlements.

Trinity A.M.E. is also on the National Register of Historic Places, and the community it served was cited as "the oldest community of free, landowning Black residents in New Jersey and among the oldest in the nation."

Cape May, police union reach agreement on new contract CAPE MAY  An agreement has been reached between the city and its police union, officials sa

On Saturday, Johnston and Price were expected to continue their walk at 8 a.m. from Bethel Othello Church, at 1092 Sheppards Mill Road, and make their way toward Salem, a town founded by Quakers. It was expected to be a 16-mile walk.

They were to go west on Route 623 (Main Street-Canton Road) until they reached Route 658 (Friendship Road), then travel north/northwest toward Route 654 (Cross Road) into Quinton and then head west on Route 49 to the Salem County Historical Society at 83 Market St.

They were expected to continue the walk Sunday morning to Mannington Township and, ultimately, to Swedesboro in Gloucester County. The weekend journeys are expected to continue through May 8 when the final destination, in Burlington City, will be reached.

People can follow Johnston's journey on his Walk to Freedom blog.
ATLANTIC CITY  Hundreds of volunteers were in ODonnell Park Saturday morning with trash bags and grapplers ready to pick up litter for the citys first Community Cleanup Day.

The event, hosted by Stockton University and the city government, was in celebration of Stocktons 50th anniversary and its appreciation for the community.

Shuttle buses carried more than 500 volunteers to fulfill nine cleanup projects in each of the citys six wards. Some of those projects were to pick up street trash and beach litter, and to remove graffiti.

Brian Jackson, chief operating officer of Stocktons Atlantic City campus and one of the events main organizers, coordinated the cleanup, while Michael Cagno, executive director of the Noyes Arts Garage, coordinated the block party in ODonnell Park that started after the cleanup.

Jackson said Stockton has hosted cleanups in the past, but none on this scale.

Were not only celebrating Stocktons anniversary, but we wanted to celebrate the neighborhood and residents as well, Jackson said. Were always looking for ways to interact and collaborate with our neighbors and community.

Atlantic City tour showcases LGBTQ communities, opportunities ATLANTIC CITY  The Chelsea Economic Development Corp.s first LGBTQ Pride in Homeownership

Jackson said the event wouldnt be successful if it wasnt for the volunteers who ranged from casino employees to locals to high school students.

Other participants and sponsors included the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, Atlantic County Utilities Authority and more than 75 other organizations.

I think the community has a desire for more community-based events like this, said Jackson, who based his statement off feedback from locals at the event. People want to be here. It stresses the importance of community encouragement and involvement in the development of their kids.

David Ferrara, 19, a student in the marine science program at Stocktons Galloway Township campus, said he didnt realize how much litter there was in the area until he participated in the cleanup.

Even if I was there for hours, I still wouldnt be able to clean up all the trash I saw, said Ferrara, who picked up a black trash bag bursting at the seams with glass, cigarette butts, dud lottery tickets and more.

Besides benefiting the community, Jackson said the community cleanup will help Stockton students get more familiar with the area and let them see the problems residents and the city deal with.

Big turnout in South Jersey for legal weeds first day of sales EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP  On a quiet side street off Delilah Road, about 100 people waited patie

Sabahat Meah, 16, a junior at Atlantic City High School, went with his schools Leo Club to the cleanup.

It feels good to do something in the community, said Meah, who had never participated in a community cleanup until Saturdays event. I would definitely do this again.

Meah went to the citys 5th and 6th wards near the Albany Avenue Car Wash and Trenton Terrace in the citys Chelsea neighborhood. He said he filled five trash bags with litter he found in the wards.

Meah said the litter he and other members of the club found included whiskey bottles, car parts and even a horseshoe crab.

Ferrara, who has participated in other litter cleanups in the city, said this one was different and better because it offered a block party afterward, as well as free stuff from sponsors.

The party after the 11:30 a.m. cleanup went on until 4 p.m. Saturday. It featured two DJs, a live jazz band, art stands, cornhole, badminton and four food trucks.

Members of the Police Department, Fire Department and CRDA could be seen mingling with community members and volunteers, enjoying Saturdays spring weather.

Though he did not know exactly how much trash volunteers had cleaned up, Jackson hopes this isnt the last citywide cleanup Stockton will hold, noting the communitys positive feedback.

Im glad Im doing my part to make the world a better place, one trash piece at a time, Ferrara said.

Contact Selena Vazquez: 609-272-7225 svazquez@pressofac.com

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WILDWOOD  As summer creeps closer, work is nearing completion on the Boardwalk between Oak and Maple avenues.

City officials say the work, mostly funded by a $4 million state grant, must be completed and ready for visitors by Memorial Day weekend.

The city Board of Commissioners approved a contract with L. Feriozzi Concrete of Atlantic City in November. With an additional $4 million for the Boardwalk included in Gov. Phil Murphys budget proposal, another section of the wooden way is likely to be completed next winter as well.

The section of the Boardwalk between Oak and Maple has been blocked off since that work got underway.

City officials have said for years that the Boardwalk is in need of extensive repairs and renovations. Estimates run as high as $60 million for the total project, but Mayor Pete Byron said the repairs may come in at a lower cost if the city rebuilds the deck and repairs sections instead of replacing the entire Boardwalk.

Byron has said he hopes to complete the length of the citys Boardwalk for $35 million.

The Boardwalk is more than a century old. In 2020, a storm ripped up sections of decking near the Wildwoods Convention Center. Before that, state officials visited in 2019, inspecting some of the crumbling sections under the Boardwalk.

Visitors this summer will see some differences in the project area, according to Byron, and not just new decking. A new wood was used instead of the treated pine that makes up most of the boardwalks in the region, and the concrete section that supports the iconic tram cars has been removed.

The decking is a hardwood called cumaru, Byron has said. The wood also is known as Brazilian teak and is grown in northern South America, according to the Wood Database, an online resource. The site indicates the species is not listed as endangered or threatened.
If youre itching for a long stretch of upper 60s, 70s and 80s, Sunday and Monday are a missed opportunity. A warm front, loaded with 80s to the south of it, will be held at the door thanks to high pressure.

WATCH NOW: Drone footage of The SS Atlantus, the concrete ship off Sunset Beach The USS Atlantus is a tourist site for the thousands who visit the Sunset Beach part of Lowe

That will keep winds onshore Sunday, likely coming out of the east. So if you liked Saturday, youll love Sunday, especially since there will be more sunshine. That said, it will be warmer overall. Expect highs in the upper 60s for most inland towns, though those well inland, like Folsom, will likely top 70.

At the coast, air temperatures will stay in the 50s, with ocean temperatures in the low 50s.

Going into the evening, cloud cover will increase. Winds will turn to the southeast. Thatll put more moisture in the air, while keeping it pretty mild overnight. Lows will be in the upper 40s.

I still see areas of drizzle in the forecast on an overall gloomy Monday. As mentioned in the previous column, southeast winds are notorious for drizzle here. Otherwise, itll be a mostly cloudy day. Highs will stay cool again, ranging from 55 to 65 degrees as you go from the beaches to the inland Pine Barrens.

Winds will turn to the southwest Monday night. Well drop the oceans influence on our weather, which means less drizzle, and less clouds. The warming wind will also keep our temperatures up. Expect just 50s for the evening. Thats where well stay overnight. Seasonable low temperatures are in the mid- to upper 40s, so were not all that far off.

Tuesday will start out with sun. A ridge of high pressure overhead will feed in warm air from above toward the surface, and well maximize that warming potential with the southwest wind.

Anything before 5 p.m. will be dry and good for outdoor work. High temperatures will be in the mid-70s inland, with a cooling sea breeze keeping it in the 60s at the coast. Either way, itll be mild.

A cold front will then march through New Jersey, and a weak area of low pressure will ride along that front into our area. From about 5 p.m. until very early Wednesday morning, showers and even a thunderstorm will be around. Severe weather cannot be ruled out but is generally unlikely. We still need the rain to make up for our long-term deficit, so the 0.15 to 0.30 inches expected will be welcome.

Following this, well be back to cool and breezy conditions Wednesday and Thursday. Caught in a counterclockwise-spinning low-pressure system to our north, northwest winds, sustained 15 to 25 mph, will blow in chilly air. High temperatures will be 55 to 60 everywhere.

Lastly, happy birthday to my grandma Sunday.

Contact Joe Martucci: 609-272-7247 jmartucci@pressofac.com Twitter @acpressmartucci

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The remains of a woman were found just before Christmas along the banks of the Mississippi River in Andalusia.

That discovery was made 123 days ago. Or roughly four months. And still no identification has been made.

This is a really frustrating case, Rock Island County Coroner Brian Gustafson said last week. I wish I had answers for you. But in cases like these we have to keep reminding ourselves that there is only so much we can control. I cant walk into an Illinois State Police lab and demand results. We have to realize that the ISP has many, many cases.

These human remains were discovered Dec. 22, 2021, in the 16200 block of 78th Avenue West, Andalusia. Illinois State Museum, Research and Collection Center in Springfield examined them Jan. 5, according to a news release from the Rock Island Sheriffs Office.

The collection center concluded the remains are those of a woman, between 25 and 45 years old, between 5-foot-2 and 5-6, with ancestry characteristics of a Caucasian or African-American.

The remains then moved to the Illinois State Police lab, where they await DNA testing.

According to the ISP Forensics web page, the state has a backlog of 4,359 forensics cases involving DNA identification or other biological means of identification. All told, the ISP labs have a backlog of 7,472 cases  because the states forensics labs work to identify everything from weapons and tools used in crimes to drug chemistry and fingerprints.

The ISPs forensics lab in Springfield and its public information office declined to comment on the backlog of cases. Gustafson said those labs were more than just overworked.

For DNA theres always been a one-month or two-month wait, Gustafson said. Now, we are looking at six, sometimes eight months. COVID has really hurt the ISPs efforts. It has made it hard on the staff and really hurt their efforts.

Gustafson said obtaining DNA from the remains found in Andalusia didnt guarantee the woman would be identified  especially if her DNA isnt in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. Better known as NamUs, the system is a national information clearinghouse and resource center for missing, unidentified and unclaimed person cases across the United States.

If no one reported her missing. If no one managed to turn in her toothbrush or her hairbrush, who knows how long it will take to identify that person, Gustafson said.

The Rock Island County Sheriffs Office asks anyone with information regarding a missing individual who matches this description to contact them at 309-558-3827.

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A 49-year-old Sterling, Illinois, man has been arrested on child pornography charges.

Illinois State Police on Thursday arrested Joshua J. Robbins after serving a search warrant at his home in the 15000 block of Willow Court.

Robbins is charged with two counts of possession of child pornography-victim under the age of 13, and possession of child pornography-moving depiction.

Each of the three charges is a Class 2 felony under Illinois law that carries a prison sentence of three to seven years.

Robbins was being held Saturday night in the Whiteside County Jail on a bond of $100,000 or 10%.

A first court appearance is scheduled for Monday in Whiteside County Circuit Court.

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Banknet Conferences

Previous Conferences

More than 30 Conferences, Seminars & Exhibitions organized by Banknet Conferences



Seminar on "BPO in the Financial Sector- Challenges & Opportunities" with Indian Institute of Banking & Finance (IIBF) on 5th March 2004, Mumbai



"IT for Banks - International Trends, Best Practices & Singapore Experience"- Seminar & Workshop with Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), Singapore on 17th September 2004, Taj President Mumbai



Banknet's "First CTO Summit"- Conference on 21st February 2005 at Taj President, Mumbai.



Banknet's "First Conference on Payment Systems in banks" at Taj Lands End, Mumbai on the 20th May 2005 with Reserve Bank Of India's newly formed Department of Payment and Settlement Systems (DPSS)



Banknet's "First Bank Tech Summit" on 22nd September 2005 at Taj lands End, Mumbai with HSBC Bank



Banknets "Second Annual Conference on Payment Systems in Banks" at Taj Lands End, Mumbai on January 17, 2006 was India's Largest Banking Conference. More than 500 participants represented more than 100 Banks & FIs and nearly 50 IT Companies.



Banknets "Second Annual CTO Summit" on 10th May 2006 at Mumbai, was attended by 300+ participants from 121 organizations.



Banknet's "Second International BankTech Summit" on 21st September 2006 had More than 300 participants of 128 organizations from 10 countries.



Banknets Third Conference on Payment Systems in Banks on the 10th January, 2007 at Taj Lands End, Mumbai, India was inaugurated by Mr M V Nair, Chairman & Managing Director, Union Bank of India.br>

Banknet's "Third Annual CXO Summit" with Indian Institute of Banking & Finance (IIBF) was organized on 19th April, 2007 at Taj President, Cuffe Parade, Mumbai.



Banknet's Conference on ATM Industry in India was organized on the 31st May 2007 at Mumbai. Report on Indian ATM Industry and ATM User Survey Report was released at the conference.



Banknets "Third International Bank Tech Summit" on 10th October 2007, Mumbai, India had large number of exhibitors and 350 participants



Banknets "Fourth International Conference on Payment Systems" on 16th January, 2008 at Mumbai, India had speakers from Ministry of Finance, Nasscom, IIM Ahmedabad, RBI, Major Banks, FIs, Insurance companies, IT Cos, Business Schools and Corporates



Banknet's "First Seminar on Mobile Banking & Payments" on 26th August 2008 was organized at Taj President, Cuffe Parade, Mumbai.



Banknets "Fourth Annual Edition of International Bank Tech Summit" with a large Exhibition was organized on September 16th 2008, at Taj Lands End, Mumbai, India



Banknet's "Fifth Annual Conference on Payment Systems" on 9th Jan at Mumbai had 20 prominent speakers from McKinsey, KPMG, IIM, IBA and major banks & IT Cos.



Banknet's "Fifth Annual CTO-CXO Summit" was organized on 5th June 2009 at Hyatt Regency, Mumbai was addressed by 23 C-Level Speakers from major Banks and IT Companies.



Banknet Master Class Workshop on Re-thinking Banking Business with a Payments Lens conducted by McKinsey was organized on the sidelines of Banknet's 5th International Bank Tech Summit on 24th Sept 2009



Banknet's "Sixth Annual Conference on Payment Systems"on 22nd Jan'10, at Mumbai focused on "RBIs Vision for Payments Systems in India for 2009-12". Banknet Master Class was also conducted at the conference.



Banknet's Insurance Technology Forum on 1st June 2010 at Mumbai brought together Insurance & Technology Professionals from more than 30 companies on one platform



Banknet's "6th Annual CTO-CXO Summit" on 22nd June 2010 brought together on one platform C-level Executives like CEO, COO, CIO, CTO etc. from 56 major banks, FIS and IT Cos to discuss top priorities for banks in India.



Banknet's "6th International Bank Tech Summit" on 24th September 2010, Mumbai focused on New Technologies like Green Technologies, Cloud Computing, Social Media Technologies in addition to Risk Management, Compliance, Business Intelligence, Data Mining, CRM, Security, Financial Frauds etc



Banknet's "7th Conference on Payment Systems in banks" at Taj Lands end, Mumbai was inaugrated by Dr. K. C. Chakrabarty, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India (RBI)



Banknet's "7th International Bank Tech Summit" at Taj Lands End, Mumbai, India focused on "Strategies & Management of Technologies for BFSI in the Next Decade"



Banknet's "7th Conference on Payment Systems in banks" at Mumbai also featured a Technology Exhibition



Banknet's Banking Information Technology Summit (BITS) on "Leveraging the power and promise of technology" was organized at JW Marriott, Mumbai.



In addition Banknet Conferences & Banknet Group was associated with nearly 30 Indian & Global events



Supported "BANK on IT for students of MBA Banking course at NMIMS, Mumbai.



Strategic partners of Financial Insights- FinTech Asia at Intercontinental Hotel, Bangkok, Thailand.



Supporting Organization for Indiatimes Strategy Summit featuring Finance Guru JIM ROGERS at Mumbai & Delhi



Knowledge Partner of Economictimes.Com India CFO Summit 2005- Understanding Financial Governance



Exclusive Supporting organisation to Workshop on "Building a cost effective business continuity and disaster recovery framework"



Media Partner for "2nd Business Process Outsourcing Forum for Banks and Financial Institutions" organised by Informa at Surrey, UK.



Associated with The Economic Times BIFT Expo (Seminar & Exhibition) at Mumbai.



Associated with FICCI-SEBI-CRISIL "Seminar on Corporate Governance", at Mumbai.



Associated with FICCI's "The Private Sector and IT for Development", at Mumbai.



Supporting Organization for FICCI's 8th Conference & Exhibition "Indian Insurance Sector: Achievements and Prospects", at New Delhi.



Supporting Organization & advisor to Conference & Exhibition "Indian Banking: Global Benchmarks 2003" organized by FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) at Mumbai.



Exclusive Marketing partner & Supporting Organisation from India to The Asian Banker Summit 2003, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia



Associated with Round Table on 'Banking & IT'-Redefining the path organised by Microsoft



Marketing Advisor to The Economic Times BIFT Expo at Mumbai



Associated with the National Conference on e-Information Security in Banking and Financial sector: Issues and Challenges organised by State Bank of India



Organised IT Exhibition at International Banking Summit of The Indian Institute of Bankers (IIB)



Associated with Seminar on Customer Relationship Management (CRM), organized by IBM India



Associated with Seventh International Conference on Insurance organized by FICCI



Associated with Conference on "Indian Banking: Global Benchmarks" organized by FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry)



Associated with National IT Conference for Banks, Financial Services, and Insurance Industry organized by NASSCOM & IBA(Indian Banks' Association)



Sole Indian associate to "Virtual Banking 2000", world's first ever online Banking Conference, coordinated by British Chartered Institute of Bankers.



Official host for India "BankTech 2001", International Exhibition and Conference on Technology Solutions for the Banking, Insurance, and Finance Industry.



Associated with "Bank Technology India 2001".



Associated with "CIO Meet" organized by "CIO" Roundtable & "Computer Associates".



Associated with e-Banking Asia Singapore & many other conferences/seminars




Two Davenport men are facing federal child pornography charges after federal prosecutors took over their cases that initially were filed in Scott County District Court.

David Michael Woods, 49, is charged with two counts of production of child pornography and one count each of distribution of child pornography and possession of child pornography.

Jason Richard Heider, 46, is charged with one count each of production of child pornography, receipt of child pornography and possession of child pornography.

Federal authorities arrested both men Tuesday. Each is being held in the custody of the U.S. Marshals pending trial.

During an arraignment hearing Friday in U.S. District Court, Davenport, District Judge Stephen Jackson scheduled a trial date of May 31 for both men.

Woods was arrested Feb. 16, 2021, on two counts of third-degree sexual abuse filed against him in Scott County District Court by Davenport Police. Each of the charges is a Class C felony under Iowa law that carries a prison sentence of 10 years.

The charges allege that Woods sexually abused a 12-year-old victim multiple times between November 2020 and January 2021, according to court documents. Shortly after being arrested, Woods was released on a $50,000 cash-only bond.

Woods was arrested again on June 22, 2021, on two counts of two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor involving the same victim. Both of those charges also are Class C felonies. His bond in that case was set at $500,000, cash only.

Heider was arrested Sept. 30, 2021, on a charge of second-degree sexual abuse, a Class B felony that carries a prison sentence of 25 years.

According to the arrest affidavit filed by Davenport Police Officer Evan Obert, Heider committed sexual abuse upon a 12-year-old victim, while another person aided and abetted the act by being present and taking photographs of the act. Heider was in possession of a cell phone that had messages admitting to the sex acts with the victim. The messages also discussed another person being present during the sex acts.

Heider had been in the Scott County Jail on a bond of $25,000, cash or surety.

Both men were in the Scott County Jail awaiting trial at the state level when federal authorities arrested them. Scott County authorities dismissed the state charges against the two men.

Both Woods and Heider are facing a federal prison sentences of 15-30 years for the production of child pornography charges. Each also faces a minimum prison sentence of 5-20 years for the distribution and receipt of child pornography charges. Each also faces up to 10 years for the possession of child pornography charges.

There is no parole in the federal system.

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Authorities say a Davenport man on methamphetamine "frantically" stole and crashed an SUV into the Mississippi River while a disabled, elderly man was inside the vehicle, killing him.

Joshua Scott Peters, 36, was arrested and charged Friday by the Muscatine County Sheriff's Office with homicide by vehicle - operating under the influence, a Class B felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison. Peters was also charged with leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death, a Class D felony punishable by up to five years in prison; first-degree theft, a Class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison; and driving while barred.

Peters was being held Friday in the Muscatine County Jail on a $500,000 cash-only bond.

According to a criminal complaint and arrest affidavit, deputies were called at just after midnight on Friday to the Fairport State Recreation Area at 3284 Highway 22 in Muscatine for a report of a missing person and a stolen vehicle.

Deputies had previously been dispatched to the campground about an hour prior at around 11 p.m. Thursday on a report of a disturbance but did not locate any subject or vehicle involved in the incident.

Muscatine County Sheriff's deputies met with the wife and daughter of William A. Talbot, 71, of Davenport. The pair told deputies their blue 2016 Chevrolet Equinox had been stolen from the campground while they were setting up their tent and that Talbot was inside the vehicle.

According to the complaint, the wife and daughter told deputies they did not know who had stolen the vehicle.

"This was later found to be untrue," the complaint states.

A follow-up news release issued Saturday by the Muscatine County Sheriff's Office states Peters and Talbot knew each other through a family member of Talbot's.

During their investigation, deputies determined Peters, Talbot, Talbot's wife and Talbot's daughter arrived at the campground at about 8 p.m. Thursday and that Peters ingested meth roughly an hour later at about 9 p.m. At 11 p.m. an alleged altercation occurred between Peters and several unidentified individuals, court records state.

"Peters frantically got into the driver's side seat of the vehicle and fled the scene with (Talbot) in the passenger seat," according to the criminal complaint. "Witnesses advised (Talbot) attempted to get out of the vehicle and was unable to do so."

The complaint alleges Peters stole the vehicle and fled the scene without permission from either registered owner of the vehicle.

Peters turned west onto Highway 22 as he fled the campground and was driving erratically  braking, swerving and accelerating in an aggressive manner as he drove  witnesses told authorities. At some point, Peters made a U-turn on Highway 22. While traveling eastbound on the highway Peters lost control, left the roadway and entered a south ditch, authorities allege. He then struck a road sign and drove about 255 feet before reaching Tombstone Trail in Montpelier at Clark's Ferry Recreation Area, according to the criminal complaint.

Peters then turned south and drove the vehicle into the Mississippi River. He was able to escape as the vehicle began to submerge, leaving Talbot inside, authorities allege.

The vehicle sank to the bottom of the river and was located and recovered late Friday morning by Muscatine County Search and Rescue with Talbot's body inside. The Iowa State Patrol, Midtown Towing and Muscatine County Medical Examiner's Office also assisted.

While speaking with Talbot's wife and daughter, deputies were called to a report of homeowners holding at gunpoint a man "completely soaked in water and acting very strange" who had shown up at their home in Montpelier, courts records state.

The homeowners told authorities the man, later identified as Peters, stated he believed he was in a car crash and was trying to get a ride to Davenport.

"Peters exhibited signs of impairment to include the inability to sit still and provide consistent statements about the incident," Muscatine County Sheriff's Deputy Jacob Walker wrote in the signed criminal complaint and arrest affidavit.

Walker wrote that Peters admitted to using methamphetamine in a post-Miranda interview. Peters also failed a field sobriety test and a sample of his blood was taken "to determine the drug content."

Peters made an initial appearance Friday morning in Muscatine County District Court and was granted a court-appointed attorney from the Public Defender's Office.

He is next scheduled to appear in court on May 2 at the Muscatine County Courthouse for a preliminary hearing.

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French citizens are voting today; not only to elect a president, but to decide the fate of western democracies as well.

Thats not an exaggeration.

If Marine Le Pen wins, she has promised to withdraw from NATO and indicated earlier that she also wishes to take France out of the European Union and form a close relationship with Russia. It is hard to see how the EU could hold together in the event of such a blow.

Britains withdrawal after the Brexit vote was the first casualty. If France goes, look for other defections and the gradual dissolution of the union. There are already two dictators in Europe: Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus and Viktor Orban of Hungary (an EU member). With Putin in Russia, Modi in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil, and other strongmen in lesser countries, its easy to detect a worrying pattern.

Its hard to imagine French voters choosing an openly Fascist leader, regardless of how they feel about Emmanuel Macron. But who really thought Britons would be sufficiently careless to vote for Brexit or for Americans to elect an incompetent TV performer as president.

At a time when President Biden has pulled members of the EU together and Nato has muscled up to support Ukraine in its fight to remain free of Russias control, a victory by Le Pen would signal that Fascism had not been defeated in World War II; it had merely gone underground.

It is sobering to consider how the world has changed over the past 75 years; since the conclusion of World War II, when Fascism was soundly defeated and the world made safe for democracy. The solidarity of those days, when countries around the globe banded together in the United Nations to put an end to war and colonialism, seemed to promise a continuing spread of peace and individual freedom. There were sure to be bumps along the way, but the path was forward.

Unfortunately, the bloated wartime military establishments of the United States and Russia were not reduced at wars end, but became permanently rooted in both countries. It was almost inevitable that they would remain in competition for dominance, either on the field or in what became known as the cold war. This country then stumbled into taking up a French colonial war in Vietnam; followed by a miscalculated battle in Korea and a mindless invasion of Iraq. The world war had fractured into endless regional conflicts.

The basic competition between dictatorial communism and American democracy appeared to end when the soviet Union collapsed, leaving capitalist democracy ascendant. Yet, here we are, with dictators on the rise in six continents and the champions of the west, the United States, Great Britain, and France, having trouble holding on to representative governance. Add a brutal war erupting again in Europe at the behest of a self-obsessed Vladimir Putin and it seems like deja vu all over again.

How is it that dictators have become so attractive to voters? Admittedly, democracies can be messy, especially in this country where the U.S senate, despite the intent of our founding fathers, has become the only legislative body in the world to be ruled by a minority, assuring that nothing needful can be done.

True, the world is beset with nearly insoluble problems like the current pandemic, financial inequality, racism, and the imminent threat of climate disaster. Unregulated capitalism has taken control of this country by purchasing politicians and dividing voters through broadcast and social media. We may avoid electing a dictator in 2024, but we are certain to remain subject to an oligarchy of the wealthy.

It is not surprising that average voters prefer to absolve themselves of the responsibility of sorting things out and leave it to a superficially attractive individual. That certainly appears to be the case both in Britain and here at home. Will France yield as well?

We should have an answer by the evening news.

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Lead in drinking water is an urgent national problem, but you wouldnt know it from listening to certain members of Congress.

This neurotoxin known to cause devastating cognitive and behavioral problems is especially harmful for infants and children. Today, there are an estimated 10 million lead pipes carrying  and potentially contaminating  U.S. drinking water. Replacing those pipes is essential to safeguarding public health and ensuring safe drinking water for all.

But last fall, 200 House Republicans voted against spending $15 billion to replace lead service lines, as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law. Thirty Republican senators also voted against the law.

While debating funding for lead pipe replacement in the Build Back Better Act, which would have contributed billions more, several Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee balked at this investment, casting it as only a problem in big cities disproportionately located in blue states. Indeed, Oklahoma GOP Congressman Markwayne Mullin called lead funding a bailout for cities.

Despite such rhetoric, red states also have a significant lead problem. Of the 15 states with the highest number of lead service lines, seven voted for President Donald Trump in 2020. For example, solid red Missouri, ironically nicknamed the lead state as a former global producer of lead, has an estimated 330,000 lead service lines, the sixth highest in the nation. (Of Missouris seven House members, all but one voted against the infrastructure bill.)

Or consider Indiana, with 290,000 lead service lines. Indianas seven House GOP members and both its senators voted against the bipartisan infrastructure law. In the House committee hearing described above, Indiana Rep. Larry Bucshon said lead service lines were the result of decades and decades of mismanagement, in my view, at the local level, suggesting they are not the federal governments responsibility.

While lead-contaminated water may be associated with cities such as Flint and Newark, lead water pipes are just as big of a problem in less urban states. Iowa and Kansas, with 160,000 lead lines each, are among the top six states for lead pipes per capita; Texas has a whopping 270,000 lead lines.

If members of Congress could put partisan politics aside, they would have a real chance to solve this problem through new technologies, innovative strategies and contracting and procurement reforms. Leaders from both sides of the political aisle can also make the case for funding to match the scale of states lead pipe problem.

Today, we have an opportunity to address lead in drinking water. If we saw this as a national problem, not a red- or a blue-state one, we just might be able to come together and solve it.

Maureen Cunningham serves as the chief strategy officer and director of water at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center, as well as being an elected council member in the town of Bethlehem, NY. This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, which is run by The Progressive magazine and distributed by Tribune News Service.

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Russias invasion of Ukraine was an intolerable horror from the start.

It has escalated into a genocide with both targeted and indiscriminate killings of Ukrainian civilians in what amounts to a terror campaign to subdue a people.

President Joe Biden was correct to call Russian atrocities a genocide, and even if the declaration is not yet official policy, it raises the moral urgency for all free governments to engage in meaningful and even painful steps to defeat a nihilistic and murderous dictator.

We are glad that the U.S. is again leading the world in confronting a European crisis that threatens to become a global war. U.S. security aid to Ukraine during the Biden administration is now greater than $2 billion. Total European funds to the Ukrainian military forces now total about $1.6 billion.

Its important that our European allies deepen their commitment to providing direct military aid. But the reality is that Europes greatest lever against Russian aggression has yet to be pulled, and that is dramatically reducing the German purchase of Russian energy.

There is no question that this would amount to a great sacrifice for the German people. Cutting off all Russian gas supply would send the German economy into recession. There would also be an impact on the way of life for Germans who rely on Russian gas to heat their homes and power their places of work.

But the corresponding effect on the Russian economy and the Russian war machine would likely be far more impactful. The Russian war machine relies on direct payments for energy. Cut off the payments, and you cut off the money.

Its simple in theory and excruciating in practice because of its real and immediate impact on peoples lives and nations economies.

Nevertheless, Germany has a moral imperative to take clear, positive steps toward sharply reducing its purchase of Russian energy, such as reversing a decision to shut off nuclear plants by years end. We are talking about ending a genocide, and, as Germany has recognized in its own laws and culture, the nation has an enhanced responsibility in this regard.

Ukrainians have fought bravely and have shown the world that they can defend their nation. But they cannot hold on forever.

Free nations everywhere will have to make sacrifices. We urge Europe to act now to support Ukraine, to help end the war and to benefit all of humanity.

This editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News.

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It was a big week for pot enthusiasts in the Quad-Cities. Wednesday marked 4/20, the unofficial holiday for cannabis users. The dispensary in Milan held special sales that drew large crowds. Snoop Dogg, a widely known partaker, played the Taxslayer Center in Moline the next night.

Even the Moline Police Department got in on the fun with some lighthearted tweets using Snoop's song titles to warn drivers about extra patrols around the holiday.

Recreational marijuana has been legal for adults in Illinois for three years now, and, in our eyes, the program has largely proven successful.

Retail sales from the state's 101 licensed dispensaries topped a whopping $1.4 billion last year alone. That generated some $408 million in taxes that were reinvested back into programs aimed at lifting up communities like ours. Twenty percent went to treating mental illness and curbing drug abuse. Another 25% went to a program that awards grants to communities harmed by violence and economic disinvestment.

There have been road bumps, however. The state faces lawsuits over how it awards licenses for new dispensaries. And Illinois has fallen far short of its goal to bring diversity to the industry. Only one of the 226 people with ownership stakes in an Illinois license is African American, for example.

Nevertheless, lawmakers have used Illinois' system as a road map for legalization in other states, including New York and New Jersey. Cannabis is now sold legally in a third of the country, 18 states, with no signs of slowing momentum. Earlier this month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to legalize pot at the federal level and expunge convictions for federal marijuana crimes. (The bill faces certain doom in the GOP-controlled Senate, but the legalization movement hailed it as a milestone.)

Pot legislation is also dead on arrival in Iowa, where conservative leaders in Des Moines have said they won't entertain bills that would create a recreational marketplace. That's despite the popular opinion of Iowans. Fifty-four percent favor legalizing weed, according to a Des Moines Register poll from last year.

Meanwhile, Illinois is poised to award 185 dispensaries this year and plans a lottery for another 50 additional licenses. Some analysts say marijuana could soon grow to a $3 billion industry in Illinois.

While we don't blame Iowa for taking a more cautious approach, it's hard to ignore that kind of money  and, more important, the kind of good it could do in schools and communities.

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To celebrate Arbor Day members of ClayWorks! In the Bitterroot are decorating some of the trees on Main Street in Hamilton with handmade colorful stoneware and porcelain flowers.

Planting trees and listening to the mayors proclamation and poetry are also part of the plan for April 29. Arbor Day is a day to express appreciation for all trees and this year is the 150th anniversary.

ClayWorks! member Susan Lewis said the town needed cheering.

After a long two and a half years of COVID ceramic artists from Hamiltons only pottery studio, ClayWorks! In the Bitterroot, resolved to brighten things up, Lewis said.

She recalled her appreciation of the ceramic poppies art installation at the Tower of London to commemorate Britains involvement in the First World War but knew she wanted to create a lighter, happier spin on the idea.

What was coming up was spring and everyone wanting to get outside, Lewis said.

To usher in spring, ClayWorks! members Lewis, Kelly Price and Jackie Crawford organized the Arbor Day Flower Project, a charity event to create flowers.

Volunteers made over 230 clay flowers which will be displayed in the trees for Arbor Day beginning April 25 and continuing through the first part of May. When the exhibit ends, the flowers will be offered for sale in the ClayWorks! studio during Culture Crawl on June 11. The funds will benefit Hamiltons Supporters of Abuse Free Environments (SAFE) and the ClayWorks! building fund.

Lewis said ClayWorks! is a for-profit organization and choosing SAFE was a solid choice for her as she sees the good work of the SAFE organization.

My background is in law enforcement and I worked against child abuse and domestic violence, Lewis said.

SAFE Board member Alene Tunny said the efforts by ClayWorks! are appreciated as SAFE has just launched a $1 million capital campaign to build a new facility to meet community needs. Supporters of Abuse Free Environments (SAFE) provides services and housing for adults and children fleeing domestic violence and have outgrown their current shelter.

We thank ClayWorks! for creating the flowers and including SAFE in the fundraiser, she said.

To involve the community, the ClayWorks! studio opened its doors to the public for flower creation during the March Culture Crawl event. A one-time-only class on simple flower making was offered, all materials were free to the public, and Lewis, Price, Crawford and other volunteer clay artists assisted community volunteers.

The event was well attended and people loved the experience, Lewis said. Flower designs were chosen by each artist and fashioned with artistic license from clay such as stoneware and porcelain. This approach resulted in a great variety of flowers and colors running the gamut from sunflowers, poppies, roses, dogwoods and more.

Special thanks to all the ClayWorks! members who made copious flowers, including Robin Ireland, Jean Dreischer and Cheryl Bouman who graciously donated their time and good humor, and David Sylvester, ClayWorks! kiln master who worked tirelessly firing kiln after kiln load of flowers for this event, Lewis said.

She said ClayWorks! In the Bitterroot especially appreciates the help of Amy Fox, Hamiltons director of parks and urban forestry.

Fox said that before approving the project she first checked with an arborist to be certain the temporary flower installation would not harm the trees.

Silvia McNeil had great advice on the best way to attach the flowers, Fox said. ClayWorks! has been crafting the flowers and Im working on informational signs to place by the trees. The signs talk about the benefits of trees in cities, it is called urban forestry. Trees provide a lot of benefits in the urban environment and keeping them healthy is important.

Community members are invited to attend Hamiltons annual Arbor Day celebration at 10 a.m. on Friday, April 29, in front of City Hall. The city is planting two trees to replace older trees that have been removed. Hamilton Mayor Dominic Farrenkopf will read an Arbor Day proclamation and a poem he wrote for the occasion.

Fox said Hamilton has been a member of the Tree City USA program since 2001.

The city of Hamilton recognizes that Hamiltons trees are an important part of our everyday life, Fox said. They provide shade, habitat for insects, birds and other small animals. Trees clean the air and add beauty to our parks and streets. Im trying to encourage residents if they have removed trees, or have an open area, to plant trees.

She said the cooperative efforts by ClayWorks! are appreciated as a fundraiser for SAFE and to bring color to downtown Hamilton.

Technically, it is spring but it doesnt look or feel like it, Fox said. This will give colors to the trees before the leaves come out. Im excited to see how it turns out.

Attend the Hamilton ceremony and take a stroll down Main Street to enjoy the floral exhibit on Arbor Day, Friday, April 29. To purchase a flower attend the flower sale at ClayWorks studio during the Culture Crawl from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, June 11. Make a purchase that will benefit SAFE and ClayWorks! First-come, first-served.

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Eager to adapt Jon Krakauers book, Under the Banner of Heaven, producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer looked for ways to include as much detail as possible in a two-hour film.

We worked very hard on it for years and yet there was a creative frustration that sort of blocked our belief that we should really go forward with it as a movie, says Howard. We couldnt tell the entire story.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black was on a similar path, trying to figure out how to tell a story of religious extremism. The answer was to expand Krakauers story and provide details over the course of several nights. Enter: "Under the Banner of Heaven" on FX.

I like stories, if they can be honest, that are cautionary tales about the dangers of extremism, says Grazer. This definitely is all about that. That theme is transferable to so many things that are going on in our world today in a larger scale.

To connect the dots, Black created a character who investigates the 1984 murder of Brenda Wright Lafferty and her baby daughter in a suburb in the Salt Lake Valley. Played by Andrew Garfield, hes a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who has his own questions about religions.

I grew up in this faith and at least half of my family is still very active in this faith, Black says. Particularly in very challenging times, we see people move to the extremes  to the fundamentals. And, in this case, its this family who was faced with a very tough time in Utah. We tried incredibly hard to make the distinctions between modern, contemporary Mormons and fundamentalist Mormons.

Like Black, Garfield was intrigued by questions of faith and doubt. Its only there that I think we start to really get into what we are doing here.

To make sure church officials wouldnt question the limited series accuracy, Black talked with them and asked for suggestions. He also brought cast members to meet with Mormons so they wouldnt lean into stereotypes or fail to make distinctions between mainstream Mormonism and fundamental Mormonism.

The folks in my family who are very traditional and would rather not look to the past, Im sure, arent going to be pleased, he says of the series. But if the truth shall set you free and this is a church that claims to be ever-changing, why are we afraid of the truth? Why are you afraid to look closer? And when is the church going to change? Thats the question.

Garfields character reflects that concern. It is about, ultimately, the pursuit of the truth in the face of potential loss of ones family, ones social structure, ones life, he says.

Black says the world is wrestling with changes that suggest were moving backwards. Theres clearly world conflicts that are deeply concerning. And in times like these, people often turn to God. Unfortunately, when they go back to the fundamental rules, which are mostly incredibly outdated, we get in trouble and you see a turn toward violence and misogyny. We are in one of those times right now, where there is the danger of people turning back to political, legal, historical and religious fundamentalism. This is a cautionary tale about how that happens.

Under the Banner of Heaven also delves into the history of the Mormon faith as a way of explaining what prompted Laffertys murder and why those involved felt justified.

Wyatt Russell, who plays Dan Lafferty, one of the brothers convicted of murder, says he has encountered fundamentalist Mormons during vacations. "It looked like they were in the 1800s," he says. "There was this dichotomy between the world that we live in and the world that they still live in.

"I couldn't help but wonder if they were born into a different place, what would they be like? They are trapped in this sort of scenario where the outside world is something that's unobtainable."

Thanks to the research he and the other actors did, Russell felt a sense of sadness because Lafferty was born into the situation "and led down this rabbit hole in a way that only fundamentalist, extremist views can kind of lead you down."
Six people were shot, one fatally, within a span of about eight minutes on Friday evening at three separate locations in Petersburg. At least four of the victims, including children ages 11, 12 and 16, were just enjoying the evening when they were struck by gunfire, police said.

The spate of gun violence in such a short span had Petersburg authorities scrambling to keep up, with Police Chief Travis Christian calling Virginia State Police for assistance. Police have not determined if the three shooting incidents are related.

It was eight minutes between all three calls, said Petersburg Deputy Police Chief Emanuel Chambliss on Saturday. Our detectives are still out right now, working on trying to determine if theyre related and whos responsible.

The first call police received at 8:44 p.m. was of shots fired along a retail strip in the 1800 block of South Crater Road. Upon arrival, officers learned the shooting had actually occurred a block east in the 1800 block of Fort Mahone Street, where a party was being held in a commercial building.

Officers located Jamar Jones, 30, of Petersburg, suffering gunshot wounds. He died after being taken to a hospital.

The shooting occurred in a commercial space that can be leased for parties, and Jones was reportedly among the undetermined number of people attending a party there Friday evening, Chambliss said.

We havent determined how many people were there, he said. There was evidence [of a shooting] collected on the outside and inside of that location.

As police were at that scene, they received another call of shots fired and at least one person wounded in a residential area in the 200 block of Holly Hill Drive, about a mile south of the Fort Mahone Street shooting.

Officers located four victims at the Holly Hill Drive scene  a man, 31, and three juveniles, ages 11, 12 and 16  Chambliss said. The juveniles included one boy and two girls. None of the victims sustained life-threatening injuries, police said.

They were residents just enjoying the evening and unfortunately got hit by gunfire by somebody being careless, with no regard for human life, Chambliss said. All four were innocent bystanders; theres no indication that they were doing anything illegal while they were at their residence.

Within minutes of the Holly Hill Drive incident, police received a third report of gunfire and a person shot in the 1800 block of Boydton Plank Road, about four miles away in the citys west end.

However, police couldnt locate a victim upon arrival. We did not locate any evidence that a shooting had occurred there, Chambliss said.

Police soon learned a juvenile male suffering from a gunshot wound had been taken by personal vehicle to an emergency medical facility off Interstate 95 in Colonial Heights, Chambliss said. The victim was later transferred to a Richmond hospital.

Due to multiple, coinciding shooting scenes, Petersburgs police chief requested forensic investigative assistance from Virginia State Police to process the crime scene at the Holly Hill Drive location, spokeswoman Corinne Geller said Saturday.

State police provided both uniform [officers] and investigative resources, Geller said. All evidence collected has been turned over to Petersburg Police, which remains the lead [agency] at all three scenes.

Anyone with information about the shootings or heard or saw anything at the three locations is urged to contact Petersburg/Dinwiddie Crime Solvers at (804) 861-1211. Information can also be provided anonymously at www.p3tips.com. Crime Solvers pays a reward for tips that lead to an arrest and conviction.
Three Philadelphia men were hammered with multiple life sentences Friday for their roles in a May 2019 triple slaying in Spotsylvania County.

Michael Coleman, 39, Rachel Ozuna, 34, and Kyrrus Ozuna, 14, were all killed on May 26, 2019, in their home at 8312 Arlene Acres Drive. All three were found a few days later with their throats slit and their arms and legs bound.

During a weeklong trial in Spotsylvania Circuit Court in January, prosecutors showed that a group of five came to Spotsylvania to rob Coleman, a drug dealer who was known to deal in large quantities of drugs and money.

The Philadelphia group, referred to as the Get Money Brothers, left Spotsylvania with drugs and about $100,000 in cash, according to evidence presented by the prosecution.

A toddler and an infant were unattended in the home until May 29, when Kyrrus Ozunas father came looking for his son and found the gruesome scene.

Three of the defendants, Montel J. Wilson, 29, Hugh C. Green, 33, and Jamal K. Bailey, 33, were all sentenced by Judge Ricardo Rigual on Friday to two life sentences plus at least 150 years. All were convicted by a jury of at least 18 offenses, including multiple counts of murder.

Wilsons brother, Durward Allen, 30, was ordered by Rigual to serve 18 years in prison. Allen had previously pleaded guilty to robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery and a firearms offense.

Allen drove members of the group to the area of Colemans home, the evidence showed, but he did not participate directly in the slayings. Still, Riguals sentence exceeded the recommended state sentencing guidelines for Allen, which called for a maximum penalty of 14  years.

The fifth member of the conspiracy, 37-year-old James C. Myers, testified for the prosecution during the trial. As part of a deal, Myers pleaded guilty to felony murder and conspiracy and will receive between 24 and 32 years when he is sentenced July 28.

Fridays sentencing hearings lasted all day and featured emotional testimony from the victims families, who spoke in detail about the devastating impact the killings have had on them.

Detectives collected mounds of cellphone data, bank records, pictures and videos that connected the defendants to the crime.

During the trial, Myers described how Wilson planned the robbery of Coleman and said Green killed Coleman and Rachel Ozuna at Wilsons command. Myers said Green refused to kill the teenager, so Bailey stepped in and did it.

Defense attorneys repeatedly attacked Myers credibility, but were unable to sway the jury. Wilson testified that he did a lot of drug business with Coleman, who once lived in Philadelphia, and had no reason to cut off a profitable arrangement.

Bill Neely, who represented Green, again argued that Myers lied during his testimony and was likely the real killer. He also said Coleman had considerable fault in the deaths.
Editors note: This is the second of three stories examining how policy decisions and a limited investment into the Virginia Department of Health led Latinos to being among the most likely to get infected, hospitalized and die in the first two years of the pandemic  and how a working class immigrant neighborhood in Richmond didnt give up.

Her final messages to him were all desperate variations of are you still alive?

Please dont be dead.

I cant do this without you.

Dont make me do this without you.

For much of the past 20 months, Maria Fuentes has hidden her grief so she doesnt have to tell her three grandchildren why he never answered them  why he never came home.

When they ask why they havent seen him, she says he left for his construction job before they woke up and returned long after they went to bed. Sometimes, she concocts stories about how he went back to Guatemala to take care of his family and cell service isnt too great over there.

Sometimes, she lets herself believe it, too  to pretend, however briefly, that her husband, Yuki Mendez, didnt die in a place he wouldnt have chosen: in a hospital bed and on a ventilator at 40 years old.

The truth would break them, she said in Spanish, shaking her head.

Left unsaid on the couch of the town home they shared for seven years at The Communities at Southwood was how for her, the truth almost did.

Two years into the pandemic, COVID is killing more Virginians every day than it was when Mendez died on July 28, 2020. But accepting the scale of mourning has become routine  a ruthless tally reduced to faceless numbers in hopes that looking away can mean finally moving on from an ongoing crisis.

There are an estimated 9 million people like Fuentes in the U.S. reeling from the loss of a loved one to COVID, seeing the countrys rush to heal and return to a normal that will never be within their reach.

Normal led to the virus killing so many Latinos in the U.S. within two years that their life expectancy dropped by almost four years. Normal allowed nearly 70% of the 1,022 recorded deaths among Latinos statewide to occur in the first half of the pandemic, the same time frame the Virginia Department of Health reported Latinos ages 35 to 44 were dying at 11 times the rate of their white counterparts.

And normal in Virginia meant essential workers and immigrants like Mendez, immunocompromised residents, and people inside nursing homes and prisons would be left in a pandemic to fend for themselves.

The speed in which the virus invisibly burned through Virginias Latino communities between March and September 2020 can be seen as an indictment of at least a generation of federal as well as state leadership, which repeatedly neglected to pass paid sick leave, prioritize language access or adequately equip its public health department with the tools to thwart disease ahead of a crisis.

A five-month investigation from the Richmond Times-Dispatch found that without the federal money arriving in April 2020, not even one of the richest states in the U.S., led by physicians who swore to prioritize the most vulnerable, could protect them.

For Mendez and thousands of others, the help arrived too late.

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deployed its first all-Latino COVID response team to Southwood in June following infection rates so severe that local health districts pleaded for help, he was already in the hospital.

He was deteriorating when Google Translate popped up on the VDH site for COVID information on June 18 or then-Gov. Ralph Northams first partially-in-Spanish COVID briefing, where Northam lamented how Latinos were nearly 50% of the states cases and more than a third of hospitalizations.

Virginias workplace protections that could have helped when there wasnt enough protective equipment on the construction site went into place on July 27, 2020.

Mendez died the next day.

For others who continue to navigate being uninsured essential workers living in multigenerational households without access to quality health care or paid sick leave, VDHs record $1.4 billion in federal COVID grants isnt a substitute for legislative action.

And it isnt a permanent solution to sustaining a state health department where at least 43% of the full-time workforce in 2021 was propped up by contractors forced to resign when the federal money funding them expires.

The federal relief also couldnt undo the loss of time after more than 20 years of unheeded warnings from public health officials and community organizations signaling how a lack of long-term funding and urgency could prove disastrous in an emergency.

Americans are great innovators when theres a crisis, acknowledged Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who as governor led Virginia through H1N1 and the financial crisis. Then we sometimes turn our attention away when there isnt.

In interviewing nearly 70 VDH workers, community leaders, public health experts, legislators and residents at Southwood  a neighborhood home to the largest concentration of Latinos in Richmond  The Times-Dispatch found that the sluggish COVID response allowed the first year of the pandemic to play out as an answer to who loses when there is a scarcity of resources.

Solutions will require a genuine desire to work at this problem for a long period of time, said Madhav Marathe, division director at UVAs Biocomplexity Institute  which has conducted infectious disease modeling for more than 20 years and advised the VDH throughout the pandemic.

If we dont do that, we have essentially lost all the difficult lessons we learned from this, and all of us paid a tremendous price for it, he continued. This is not just one crisis. There are many more awaiting us ... we should not forget. I really hope we do not forget.

There were moments before March 2020 when it didnt seem like everything was aligning against Maria Fuentes. She survived witnessing her 18-year-old sons final minutes when he was killed in Honduras six years prior, before he could fulfill his dream of owning an auto-repair shop. She followed through on her promise to protect her then-11-year-old daughter by chasing hope in the U.S.

In South Richmond, she found a till death do us part kind of love  someone to face lifes challenges with  who took care of her when her aching hands began to weaken and a hemorrhage left her briefly unemployed.

The first wave of the coronavirus upended years of moving forward.

By late March 2020, Fuentes lost her job as a housekeeper. Clients started canceling. Schools began sending kids home. The working-class immigrant neighborhood that became her support system was soon overwhelmed with sickness, with rent looming ahead.

No te preocupes, her husband reassured her.

Construction work is steady, he said. Transportation and construction workers also accounted for nearly half of workplace deaths in the U.S. in 2020, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Then, their physically intense labor was deemed essential and employees like Mendez were hailed as heroes by officials.

Words wouldnt shield him from the virus infiltrating his lungs.

The first round of federal COVID relief funds for state and local governments to respond to the pandemic were in limbo through April and May when the General Assembly was unclear on how to distribute the money, couldnt decide how to spend it and had to navigate limitations on its use.

Federal and state officials, The Times-Dispatch found, initially failed to give priority for protective masks or testing to front-line workers outside of those in health care settings, which had a greater chance of having access to gear and accurate COVID information than others in lower-income jobs  especially those not fluent in English.

Statewide messaging also didnt consider basic facts for many working-class Latino families.

Officials said to socially distance when research showed Latino immigrants were among the most likely to occupy crammed living spaces. They said to stay home when most blue-collar Latinos couldnt. They said to speak to your health care provider when state data showed more than 40% of Latinos in Virginia reported not having one.

In Virginia and most states, there is still little-to-no public accounting of the more specific impact the virus had on workers in front-line occupations like Mendez, immigrants, residents with disabilities or people who arent fluent in English. Richmond-area hospitals either do not track COVID deaths by language proficiency or do not publicly release the information.

But a Boston hospital found that early on in the pandemic, its non-English-speaking COVID patients were 35% more likely to die.

A state-ordered language access audit of Virginias agencies released in December 2021 detailed how nearly every state agency  including the VDH and suppliers of critical services like rent relief or unemployment  said they could not meet the needs of people with limited English proficiency most of the time.

A 2004 legislative watchdog report and the December audit recommended the General Assembly pass a statewide language access policy to guide agencies through these decisions and prevent similar mistakes. The legislature rejected bills to adopt those recommendations in the 2022 session.

With more than 1 million people in Virginia estimated to speak a language other than English, there was never any debate on whether we should communicate with non-English-speaking communities or communities with limited English proficiency, said Maria Reppas, VDHs director of communications. Reppas was tasked with overseeing the procurement of translations alongside the agencys health information team.

It was more the mechanics of how to do it, who should do it, when and the frequency of those materials being translated, Reppas continued.

***

Internal emails at VDHs central office from the first month and a half after Virginias first case detailed a consistent scramble to keep up with translating the volume of materials as information kept rapidly changing. Oftentimes, the fastest option was to pull documents from the CDC.

Spanish language materials couldnt always be easily found on the VDH website, if at all. Neither could the other five most common languages in Virginia, prompting sharp criticism from organizations that took on the burden of translating information for their communities to ensure COVID information was getting out.

Members of the Virginia Latino Advisory Board said they were translating executive orders through May 2020. Sacred Heart Center, a Richmond nonprofit focused on Latino communities, was shifting money to call thousands of Latinos to share COVID updates and ask what they needed. Richmonds Office of Immigrant and Refugee Engagement was translating local orders. Spanish radio was relaying information about school closures because at the time, most correspondence was in English.

Fuentes, who struggles to read in Spanish, turned to national Spanish media like Telemundo for coronavirus information and then later relied on community health worker Shanteny Jackson and medical interpreter Xiomara Vidal, the two VDH workers in Southwood who had spent years building trust among residents of the nearly 1,300-unit apartment complex.

They had helped Fuentes vaccinate her children. She had seen them transport residents to get groceries for their families, help them pay their taxes and connect people to organizations for domestic violence survivors. But the misinformation moved faster than they could.

On April 15, 2020, Jackson emailed her supervisors at Richmond and Henricos health districts.

Residents worried the virus was spreading, she wrote, and they were unsure how to keep safe. They needed more resources, more information on how to protect their families. The Richmond City Health District launched a testing event the following week, but Fuentes heard in conversations with her friends that being tested was painful.

So she never went.

Two weeks later, Dr. Norman Oliver, the state health commissioner, told reporters there wasnt a good breakdown of COVID data available for Latinos. Fairfax Health District said laboratories werent consistently reporting it, but what the local health department had was Latinos accounting for 51% of infections.

By mid-May, Fuentes couldnt taste what she was cooking. At first, she thought she forgot to salt the frijoles. Then, a man she had given food to the week before couldnt smell the meals Fuentes prepared for him, and her husband came home from work feeling feverish. Her headaches began coinciding with a heaviness in her body that wouldnt subside.

She tried to self-medicate to alleviate the symptoms. Some Vicks VapoRub underneath the nose. Hot tea to coat the throat. Soups to settle the stomach.

But every day she felt a little better, her husband kept getting worse. His feet swelled so much he couldnt walk, and his chest refused to take in a full breath of air.

Fuentes didnt think the last time she would see him would be the day he entered Chippenham Hospital in May. They were meant to grow old together. They were meant to have more memories.

In one of his final voice memos to Fuentes, Mendez urged her not to give up on Southwood  not to let go of the apartment they built a life in. But the rent relief she was eligible for was only in English. When she called the line, speakers answered in English. They still do.

She quietly sobbed as she recalled his words to a reporter and gripped the gold chain with an attached crimson pendant that used to be his. The inscription read, el cuerno de la abundancia. The cornucopia of abundance  a symbol of peace and prosperity. For the past year and a half, shes prayed for both.

***

Virginia officials promised the data was driving the COVID response when the data was incomplete and relying on outdated and underfunded data systems that for at least a decade, local and state officials forewarned couldnt handle a public health crisis.

Without enough VDH workers available who knew how to trudge through what existed, delays on knowing where to marshal resources were predictably inevitable. Ethnicity and race, for example, were separated on a state level until June 15, making the statewide devastation on Latinos unknown for months.

Richmond and Henricos health districts, which is one of the most well-resourced local health departments in the state, had one full-time data person and one epidemiologist who spent roughly half their time dedicated to data analysis when the pandemic started.

And even then, local public health workers like Deanna Krautner, Richmond and Henricos chief operations officer, likened their ability to respond to building the plane while we were trying to fly it at the same time.

When little was known about the virus and even less was made public about where the virus was spreading, legislators called on the VDH to expand its demographics data, publish infections by ZIP code and list the outbreaks inside nursing homes.

Last year, Oliver told The Times-Dispatch that he couldnt stand up at a media briefing and say the VDH had only four people working on this at the time.

But that was the truth, he said.

An indirect result of this means that to this day, some of the best information about what the COVID impact on Latinos looked like before June 2020 lies in anecdotes from the people who were living through and responding to the panic on the ground.

More than 15 Southwood residents and community leaders recalled stories of employers telling workers that if they stayed home, theyd be fired or not paid. Others were requiring a negative test to return to work when test results were taking weeks to arrive, making people avoid getting tested to dodge the possibility. Some testing sites were open only during work hours.

Church leaders told The Times-Dispatch of construction workers in their congregations being worried about crews from New York City joining Richmond and Chesterfield sites to help with staffing at the height of the early surge.

Entire households were getting infected and wouldnt seek testing in fear of public charge  a Trump-era rule that threatened to affect the immigration process of any non-citizen who sought out public benefits  or misinformation around costs for uninsured people.

When the CDC arrived to Richmond in June 2020 to provide damage control of the severe infection rates among Latinos, CDC team member Francisco Ruiz said in a news release of its findings that, Through our conversations with community members, it was apparent that the current political climate had a direct effect on health seeking behavior among Latino immigrants.

We learned that a hostile atmosphere around immigration and immigrants hindered health-seeking behaviors.

The CDC did not make the response team available for interviews.

VDH officials were hesitant to talk about the influence of politics in public health, especially in a pandemic undermined by the Trump administration  a pattern public health historian Merlin Chowkwanyun said is common when funding streams rely heavily on the federal government and can be jeopardized if one is a little too overly critical.

But in State Board of Health meetings, some board members grew increasingly concerned with how little support public health seemed to receive in the then-Democratic-controlled state legislature, noting that without it, overcoming the pandemic would be nearly impossible.

I reached out to a number of legislators on both sides, asking them to be particularly supportive of what we as a Board were recommending, and I didnt get much response, said Board of Health member Jim Edmondson in a Sept. 3, 2020, meeting. We need some help. We need some champions in the legislature. And at the moment, I dont think we have them.

***

Its been almost two years since Fuentes last held her husbands hand. Sometimes, she still reaches for it.

Sometimes, she peeks out the door at 5 p.m. when the construction crews start arriving home as if hell be among them. Sometimes, she looks over her shoulder after flipping tortillas on the comal at dinnertime as if hes sitting in the high-top dining chair ready to make her laugh again.

Instead, theres only the reminder of the virus that killed him.

On a recent Wednesday morning, Fuentes took out a stack of photos she hasnt looked at since the month before he died. He loved documenting everything, she said. The stills depicted a grinning Mendez with the world ahead of him  at Libby Hill Park. In front of his first Southwood apartment. Beside his three children.

Fuentes wishes she could tell politicians how it didnt have to be this way  that another world is possible.

And we deserve to see it.

Reporting for Essential and Overlooked was supported by the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism 2021 National Fellowship and the Dennis Hunt Fund for Health Journalism.
Cally James couldnt stop giggling as she staked out a spot in a bubblegum pink room that looked like it had leapt straight off an album cover.

Her cousin and her aunt jumped in to be part of the shot. Even her grandmother got in on the fun, grabbing a handful of the prop money that covered the floor, and tossing it into the air.

Granny just threw money at me, James, 14, said in disbelief, still laughing.

The family snapped a photo then looked around to see what they should try next. The doughnut wall? The flamingo ball pit? The cascade of roses?

I was overwhelmed, James said later as she pointed out some of her favorite booths in the technicolored Soshal Selfie Studio. I didnt know which one to do first.

Theres not a lot of other things that look like this out there, she said.

The Soshal Selfie Studio, which launched in March, is a first for Roanoke, introducing the region to the growing phenomenon of venues that merge the concepts of photo studio, interactive art and social media mecca.

Selfie studios got their start as a curiosity but began rapidly multiplying as their whimsical, eye-catching installations began drawing crowds. Destinations like the Color Factory in San Francisco and the Museum of Ice Cream in New York were first created as Instagram-perfect pop-up projects but are still going years later and now span multiple cities.

In Virginia, selfie studios now pepper the state, reaching from Virginia Beach to Richmond to Danville.

Soshal (pronounced social) is the first in the Roanoke region. Owner Connie Mills said she was drawn to the idea both as a fun and novel new option for afternoon outings and its potential power as a resource for professional creatives and local businesses.

I think it has the ability to evolve into something thats not just a selfie shop, she said. ... Social media is the way we communicate now. Its so big, and its not going anywhere. This is really a place for people to create content.

Mills, a Roanoke native with a background in event planning and music, spent months curating the opening look for Soshals 1,750-square-foot space located in a Peters Creek Road shopping center. Walls were painted and repainted to get just the right combination of bold, vivid backdrops. Delivery boxes piled up as she picked out props and scenery  a set of golden angel wings, a shipment of oversized cherries, a clawfoot tub that would be filled with rainbow-hued confetti.

The end result is over 20 stations and walls that invite visitors to take center stage and make themselves the stars of their own photo shoots.

To hear people gasp when they come around the corner, and see all the colors and everything has been just the best, said Mills, adding the options will be refreshed regularly and she hopes to partner with local artists on designs in the future.

It will be ever-changing, she said. Well keep evolving.

The sheer number and variety of the setups is part of the appeal of the selfie studio sensation. With a quick pivot, shutterbugs can switch among an array of unique and camera-ready scenes.

That was part of the attraction for photographer Chris Tribble, of Snapkraklepop Photography, whos booked time at the studio for a style shoot next month.

Its definitely a neat place to work out of, he said. Its very cool and eye-catching  Im very excited to shoot there.

The ease of set changes can be a boon for professionals who want to get a diverse mix of shots without eating up time by setting up and breaking down their own backdrops, Tribble said. It offers a fun and on-trend addition to the options available to visual artists.

To see something like that open here, its amazing, Tribble said. It makes me feel like Roanoke is continuing to grow.

Social media savvy attractions are now part of the zeitgeist. The embrace of the selfie  which in 2013 was dubbed word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries  can be seen in everything from high-brow art, where immersive exhibits are helping museums connect with a new demographic, to Virginias campaign to bolster its brand by putting up photo-friendly LOVE signs.

Mills said she envisioned Soshal as a site with versatility. Its not just an array of set pieces for photos  its a place for families to gather, a date night destination, a team building experience for workplaces.

It is, at its core, a place to make memories, Mills said. We want it to be a place where you can have fun and express yourself, she said.

On a recent Sunday, Soshal hosted parties celebrating birthdays and families seeking out fresh ideas for spring break excursions. Those who roamed among its mini-installations ranged in age from 7 to 67.

Brandy Campbell, of Roanoke, picked the selfie studio as the spot to ring in her 47th birthday with three generations of her family. The studio, which she came across on social media, struck her as a unique way to band together the teens in the family, whod been eager to try out the viral trend, and her parents, who arent social media buffs but are working on stepping up their selfie game to capture more moments with their grandkids.

Laughter rippled across the studio as the family hopped from booth to booth, and hammed it up for their camera phones.

This is too funny, Campbell said as the kids dove into an ocean blue ball pit complete with a bright pink flamingo float.

Her niece, Cally James, urged her sister to pull a serious face for one of the photos. But that just made both of them laugh more. Family patriarch, Darrell Lee, surprised everyone by leaning over the edge of the ball pit, which the family later declared one of their favorite stations, and tumbling into it backwards.

You may have to call 911 to get me out of here, he joked as he found himself submerged until just his head was visible.

Moments like these were what Campbell had hoped for in her birthday plans. To have the whole family here together, doing fun stuff, is just special, she said. ... We try to make a lot of memories with the kids. Theyre only young once.

Upbeat music played as other groups continued to filter into Soshal. Mills helped set up customers with softly glowing ring light stands, provided by the studio, and Bluetooth remotes for hands-free photo snapping.

Over the course of the afternoon, groups captured new pictures, filmed Instagram boomerangs or recreated trending TikTok dances.

This was so fun, exclaimed Tylesha Rose, 12, who explored the studio with her mom and her cousin. I want to come back next weekend.

The family video-chatted with her cousins parents to show them the multi-colored backgrounds. Her aunt said to be sure and get pictures. Rose assured her that they were on it.

We got pictures, she promised.

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Two women were killed and a man injured in wrecks that occurred last Monday and Tuesday in Floyd County, Virginia State Police reported.

Taylor Leigh Bedsaul, 25, of Floyd, and Alicia Michelle Borer, 30, of Columbus, Ohio, died. Thomas M. Jasikoff, 69, of Fort Myers, Florida, was hospitalized.

State police said that the first crash was a single-vehicle incident that occurred at 10:46 a.m. Monday on U.S. 58 just east of its intersection with Virginia 780. Michael A. Borer, 61, of Ottawa, Ohio, was driving a 2020 Ford Explorer west when he ran off the left side of the highway, hit an embankment and turned over, according to the state police.

The police account noted that Michael Borer was wearing his seatbelt and was not hurt, but Alicia Borer, who was in a back seat, was thrown from the vehicle and died at the scene.

The second crash was at 10:22 a.m. Tuesday, state police said. It was on Virginia 8, 2.2 miles south of the roads intersection with Virginia 710.

Bedsaul was driving south in a 2001 GMC Sonoma, crossed the center line and hit a northbound 2019 Honda CRV, state police said.

Bedsaul was not wearing her seatbelt and died at the scene, state police said. Jasikoff, the Hondas driver, was wearing a seatbelt.

State police said that speed was a factor in the wreck.

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A Montgomery County man accused of dozens of child sex crimes entered no contest pleas last week to two charges, had the remainder dropped and was sentenced to serve four years behind bars.

In a plea agreement approved Tuesday in the countys Circuit Court, Coy Allen Bryant, 30, of Christiansburg, was convicted of aggravated sexual battery and of taking indecent liberties with a child. Judge Robert Turk imposed a total prison term of 30 years, to be suspended after Bryant serves four years.

The rest is to be suspended for 26 years and Bryant will be on probation for 25 years after his release, Commonwealths Attorney Mary Pettitt wrote in an email after the hearing. Bryant will have to register as a sex offender, complete sex offender treatment, and is not to have contact of any kind with the victims and their family, Pettitt wrote.

Bryant was arrested in July on 46 charges that included two counts of rape and multiple counts of sexual abuse of a child, forcible sodomy, animate object sexual penetration, and more.

According to a prosecution summary of the evidence regarding the two charges on which Bryant was convicted, he abused two girls at the home of a relative with whom he had a connection.

The prosecution said that the girls were attacked on separate occasions in 2015 and 2019 when the girls were 12 and 13. In both incidents described by the prosecution, the girls were sleeping and awoke to find Bryant either groping them or preparing to perform a sexual act on them.

The Roanoke Times does not identify the victims of sex crimes.

Attorney Sheila Moheb of Roanoke, who represented Bryant, wrote in an email after the hearing that, Trials are inherently risky, even with favorable evidence.

I believe the plea agreement we entered into reflects the risks of litigation on both sides, Moheb continued. Nevertheless, Mr. Bryant is looking forward to completing his time and putting these matters behind him.

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GOOCHLAND  A circuit court judge on Friday found that the state Office of Emergency Medical Services violated the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and ordered the agency to comply with a request from an advocate for addiction recovery.

The case stemmed from a monthslong back and forth in 2021 between the recovery advocate, Michael McDermott, and OEMS, which is under the Virginia Department of Health.

The offices failure to provide data it previously had turned over pushed me to the brink, McDermott said in an interview. Its a shame that public dollars had to be used here.

Judge Timothy K. Sanner in Goochland County ruled that the offices referral of McDermott to an online data portal violated FOIA because the portal doesnt have all the information he asked for and the office didnt cite any FOIA exemption. The judge found the data portal is failing to comply with FOIA and found that some data on overdoses may have been omitted.

The judge ruled that McDermott prevailed in his case, and ordered the office to either provide McDermott with the data he requested or cite a FOIA exemption by May 9.

He ordered the office to pay $200 for McDermotts court filing fees and $5,850 in attorneys fees. Attorney Andrew Bodoh represented McDermott.

McDermott, 69, is recovering from substance use from his mid-teens until he was 41, and now helps others in recovery. He gathers state overdose data and analyzes it in charts on his website, Faces and Voices of Recovery of Virginia (www.favorva.org).

After receiving data on overdoses reported to EMS agencies in Virginia from 2017 to 2020, McDermott sought 2021 numbers. Thats when, he said, he began months of phone calls and emails with state officials, who told him that a data migration stemming from a new vendor was hindering their ability to provide data.

McDermott took the issue to court, and a Goochland general district court judge in October ruled that the state didnt need to turn over the 2021 data because the data migration was hindering the states ability to do so. McDermott appealed to circuit court for Fridays hearing.

The judge on Friday, after a hearing that lasted about three hours, found that McDermott requested overdose data, including alcohol overdose data, from January 2021 to September 2021. OEMS did not meet a Sept. 30 deadline and never asked for an extension under FOIA, the judge found.

In November 2021, the OEMS associate director referred McDermott to the data portal and told him the data he sought was there.

McDermott analyzed the data in the portal and found that it didnt match the historic data he had for several years prior to 2021; the numbers of overdoses in the portal were significantly lower than the data the agency had previously given him.

He noticed substantial anomalies in the data, Bodoh said in court. All of this indicated that somehow the government was messing up on its data management  that it was not giving him all the data he requested.

McDermott found that while his historic data showed about 50% of overdoses as being alcohol-related, the portal showed that number being only about 5%.

He testified in court that it was only last week that he realized alcohol overdoses were not in the portal data.

McDermott filed his court case against OEMS Director Gary Brown, who sat in the courtroom on Friday.

OEMS Associate Director Adam Harrell testified that alcohol-related incidents are not included in the portal because OEMS does not believe local EMS agencies can accurately determine if someone is intoxicated, and data on alcohol overdoses may not be accurate.

But Harrell acknowledged that the office can provide McDermott with alcohol data; the search and data compilation take about 15 days, he said. And he said the office anticipates alcohol data being included in the portal by the end of the year.

Theres another wrinkle in the case aside from the lack of alcohol overdose data in the portal.

The overdose data that is available in the portal shows a steep drop-off in overdoses in the summer of 2021: The number was 1,900 in May and 2,000 in June, then it dropped to 750 in July and just 275 in August before returning to standard levels, McDermott said in court.

Bodoh asked OEMS Harrell about that, and he agreed it was an anomaly.

I see an area in that graph that needs further research by epidemiologists, Harrell testified.

Bodoh argued that even if OEMS does not think its alcohol-related data is accurate, McDermott still has a right to get that public information and interpret it how he wants.

Bodoh acknowledged that the office was trying to help the public by making data available in the portal, but said the office still needed to comply with FOIA. And it needs to fix any problems with the portal so other people will get truthful data, he argued.

Assistant Attorney General Krista Mathis Samuels, representing OEMS, said the office believes the data in the portal is accurate, and officials thought they had reached an agreement with McDermott. But she acknowledged the FOIA violations.

Obviously, there are issues with the way that my client responded to the FOIA request, she said.
Indian students enroll in a medicine course at Vietnam university

Ho Chi Minh City-based Hong Bang International University has just welcomed first 20 Indian students majoring in Medicine.









Hong Bang International University representatives welcome Indian students



These are excellent students who have passed the capacity assessment round as well as interviews by professors in the field of Health and International Language and Culture at this university.



They will follow a training programme in English based on a standard programme developed by the Ministry of Education and Training and the Ministry of Health of Vietnam that is close to medical training programmes deployed in advanced countries in the world.



In addition to theoretical and clinical knowledge, the Indian students will also study Vietnamese language and Vietnamese culture. In particular, they will take part in internship courses at FV Hospital, Thong Nhat Hospital, Cho Ray Hospital, and Nguyen Trai Hospital.



After six years of study, graduates can participate in medical examination and treatment at hospitals and other medical facilities. They can also teach at medical and pharmaceutical training institutions, work at research institutes, health science management agencies, and international organizations operating in the field of health.



Vietnamese Ambassador to India Pham Sanh Chau highly appreciated the universitys initiative to enroll foreign students, saying educational institutions in Vietnam are making constant efforts to become a destination for international students.



The move will help reduce brain drain, attract foreign students, improve the teaching capacity of lecturers, and finally increase Vietnams position in the world education map, he said.
RICHMOND  Angela Sailor, the governors chief diversity, opportunity and inclusion officer, is on leave because of a family matter, the governors office said Friday.

We wish the Sailor family all the best during this difficult time and she remains a valued member of the Youngkin administration, Macaulay Porter, a spokesperson for Gov. Glenn Youngkin, said by email.

The secretary of the commonwealth has been overseeing the offices duties, Porter said. Sailor is not being paid while on leave.

Rosa Atkins, who was the first assistant superintendent for diversity, equity and inclusion in the Virginia Department of Education under Gov. Ralph Northam, is now the states interim chief diversity officer.

Atkins also was an assistant superintendent for talent acquisition and development in the education department under Northam. He named her acting superintendent of public instruction in the final days of his administration in January.

Northam created the states Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in 2019 in the aftermath of his blackface yearbook photo scandal.

The Youngkin administration calls it the Office of Diversity, Opportunity and Inclusion.

When Youngkin named Sailor to the job in January, he also issued an executive order to refocus the office, tasking Sailor and her staff with work on economic opportunity, cooperation among religious groups and promoting free speech and civil discourse at colleges and universities.

Other job duties included ensuring the states history curriculum is honest, objective, and complete, and being an ambassador for unborn children.
Many Virginians are unaware of the natural beauty and recreational opportunities that await them at 41 state parks scattered conveniently across the commonwealth.

They also probably do not realize that two more state parks are awaiting funding, namely Mayo River State Park in Henry County and Sweet Run State Park in Loudoun County.

There are nearly 2,000 campsites and nearly 300 climate-controlled cabins of various sizes plus some yurts throughout the state. Many cabins are available year-round.

Boating, fishing and swimming are featured at many of the parks, which are increasingly popular yet chronically under-funded. Virginia is one of only 17 states that relies on general funding and to an extent on the fees paid by visitors for parks instead of a dedicated source of sustainable funding.

Evidence of the love and support that Virginia residents demonstrate for their state parks is found in the last two times that parks went before voters.

In 2002, they overwhelmingly supported spending $119 million for state parks and in 1992 they voted 2-1 in favor of spending $95 million. However, the money approved in bond referendums was designated for acquisition and construction of new state parks and cannot be used to staff, operate or repair parks.

As a result, the 41 parks are not operating to their full potential even though few better places in Virginia teach about plants and animals and the history and culture of people who once lived there.

Many miles of walking trails and natural beauty attract folks from Virginia and beyond, helping make the parks a significant generator of Virginias growing tourism and recreational economy.

Unfortunately, not all Virginians can participate in the educational, recreational and spiritual nature of the parks many offerings.

Some communities find themselves under-represented in park attendance. While some lack transportation, others are unable to afford the $5 to $10 a day fees for a car to enter a park.

I recently joined group of state park lovers who meet periodically to seek greater access to the parks for everyone and to propose initiatives for parks sustainability.

One topic that emerged is a proposed bill in this years General Assembly that would have created a parks pass to allow all cars with Virginia license plates unlimited free access to every Virginia State Park, but that also would require each Virginia driver to pay $5 per year when car registration is paid. The bill died on a 7-7 committee vote.

Some ideas on how to improve access to the parks include grants for transportation to them in buses or vans from low-income communities.

Other ideas from other states that have established dedicated funding sources for parks include real estate transfer fees, lottery funds and a variety of other sources.

Currently, Virginias budget for parks is still a work in progress. Budget conferees offer very different levels of funding for a system that remains underfunded.

Hopefully, conferees will support the 12 staff positions funded in the House version of the budget as well as $85 million for deferred maintenance and the $20 million for parks operations in the Senates version. This is not yet sustainable funding, but it may be the best the state can do this year.

The Virginia General Assemblys appropriations from the states general fund to operate and maintain our state parks have fallen short of adequate levels for many years.

Our parks are beautiful stretches of land along rivers, lakes and streams where every Virginian could enjoy the wonders of nature.

Wouldnt it be a great gift for better access for every child of Virginia to learn about and experience nature?

Gibson is a member of Virginias Commission on Civic Education.
The sky blue and wheat gold of Ukraines flag flutters above Freedom Plaza in downtown Roanoke, home to the citys war memorial honoring those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country.

Before a gathering of Roanoke Valley Ukrainian-Americans and Ukraine supporters who sang along as the Ukrainian national anthem played, Mayor Sherman Lea told the assembled, This city of Roanoke stands in solidarity with Ukraine.

After the ceremony, Lea further elaborated on the citys choice to raise the Ukrainian flag Wednesday morning. We had some citizens come before council  Ukrainian citizens came forward and asked us to do that. The council agreed to do something to show not only our community and others, but show the world that we support Ukraine.

Lea described Russian President Vladimir Putins assault on Ukraine as horrendous, talked of being mortified by the Russian militarys brutal tactics, and expressed how moved he was by Ukraines plight. Those people are putting their lives on the line to have what we sometimes take for granted.

Roanoke wants to acknowledge its immigrant populations, he said. We have over 105 nationalities, they are part of our community.

The international nature of Roanokes population is implicitly acknowledged through the efforts of such invaluable nonprofit agencies as Local Colors of Southwest Virginia, that promotes interaction, understanding and sharing of traditions between residents of many backgrounds. The Local Colors Festival, which returns to Elmwood Park on May 21 and which is one of modern Roanokes grandest traditions, began humbly in 1991 with an event that celebrated only four nationalities: Kenya, Russia, South Korea and China.

An even older cultural nonprofit, Roanoke Valley Sister Cities, also adds to Roanokes multicultural goodwill, by facilitating connections between people who live in similar sized communities all over the world, including cities in Brazil, China, South Korea, Kenya, France, Poland and, yes, Russia.

Sister Cities not political

Roanoke Valley Sister Cities is not a political organization, yet this tiny agency found itself the focus of a political brouhaha when Gov. Glenn Youngkin, in response to Putins horrifying assault on Ukraine, called for Roanoke and Norfolk to end Sister City ties in Russia. Norfolk obeyed the governor. The Roanoke City Council declined, recognizing that such a move would run completely counter to the spirit of the citizen diplomacy program that President Dwight Eisenhower founded, with its mission to promote democracy and peace through direct connections with the worlds many peoples, regardless of their governments policies.

However, political hay continues to be made about the sister city relationship between Roanoke and the Russian city of Pskov  most prominently by former mayor and current council candidate David Bowers. This is the same politician who once had to be schooled by none other than Star Trek actor George Takei that the U.S. corralling Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II was A Bad Thing not worthy of praise.

To be clear, the raising of the Ukraine flag had no connection whatsoever to the Roanoke Valley Sister Cities program. However, in raising that flag while leaving the relationship with Pskov intact, council members continue to blaze the correct trail.

For those who seek an official condemnation from Roanoke leaders of Putins unprovoked, unconscionable war on Ukraine, the Ukrainian flag displayed prominently before city hall, on the flagpole normally occupied by the Virginia flag, makes plain the Star Citys view.

Neither of the visible downtown symbols of the Roanoke-Pskov connection are obtrusive, not the Russian flag in Pearl Fu Plaza  named after the longtime Roanoke citizen who grew Local Colors into the pageant it is today  nor the totem sculpture that pays tribute to Pskov in Century Plaza. To even find them, you need to be looking for them, and know where to look.

Whats even more important: the emblems used by Roanoke Valley Sister Cities dont endorse governments. They symbolize friendships between citizens.

Russia not a monolith

It should also be noted that theres no shortage of Russian nationals horrified by Putins actions, including but by no means limited to residents of Pskov. If you go on Radio Free Europe, you will find out whats going on in Pskov and other cities, as far as people expressing their opinion, and the retribution of the Russian government against people who express their opinions, said Roanoke Valley Sister Cities President Mary Jo Fassie.

In an interview with Cardinal News, Bland County novelist Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, an immigrant from Moscow, lamented that Russians who oppose Putins wars have no one to turn to for help. I dont see anyone ever helping Russians, especially now, she said. A lot of good people are there who hate wars, but theyre held hostage.

In Pskov and elsewhere, people are tying green ribbons all over their cities, because green is the color that combines the yellow and blue flag of the Ukraine, Fassie said.

The Roanoke regions interaction with Pskov has primarily involved student exchanges between Ferrum College and Pskov State University. For multiple reasons, that exchange is on hold.

Rather than addressing the Ukrainian crisis through a destructive change such as severing the Pskov connection, a better, lasting positive change would be to forge a sister city tie between Roanoke and a Ukrainian city. Although it wont be possible to cement such a partnership while the war rages, Fassie said that a proposal along those lines has been discussed.

Roanoke hasnt added a new Sister City to the lineup since 1998, but thats not because it cant be done. Rather, for such a relationship to begin, someone must come to Roanoke Valley Sister Cities with a written proposal that can be brought to the parent organization, Sister Cities International. For whatever reason, people who have come to the Roanoke Valley organization to pitch a possible sister city over the past two decades havent followed through with a proposal.

If officials from a foreign city arent already involved in a sister city plan, the parent organization can match the petitioning city with a petitioning city from the requested nation, Fassie said.

The most recent Sister City added was St. Lo, France, an effort led by the late D-Day veteran and once upon a time Roanoke Times employee Bob Slaughter, a man who got things done, his labors leading to the founding of the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, his memories helping to shape the terrifying and heroic opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan.

Rather than tearing good things down, lets raise flags, lift spirits, and forge new friendships and covenants.
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A new report shows that nearly 2,000 homeless people died in Los Angeles County during the first year of the pandemic, an increase of 56% from the previous year, driven mainly by drug overdoses
Doctors at MUSC Health are applauding a change that will give moms on Medicaid an extension in coverage.

Instead of being covered for two months after giving birth, they are now covered for a year. I think itll save lives, said David Soper, M.D., senior medical director of womens health.

Traditionally, obstetricians have focused on prenatal care and intrapartum care, Soper said. Intrapartum refers to the time during labor and delivery. The goal is to deliver a healthy baby safely. Once this is accomplished, theres a tendency to breathe a sigh of relief and think that everything else is going to be just fine. But we know that more than half of all pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality occurs postpartum.

The South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services recognized that risk in pushing for the extension, which takes effect this month. The change is possible under the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. It has the potential to affect a lot of people, because Medicaid covers almost half of all births across the country, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Soper said it can help those women transition from seeing OB-GYNs to primary care doctors, who will be able to help with a range of potential problems. Women who develop medical complications of pregnancy, for example hypertension or diabetes, are at risk to develop those conditions later in their lives when they are not pregnant. And some new mothers will note a persistence of their hypertension or diabetes despite the delivery.

So they need continuing care, Soper said. Newly recognized high blood pressure and heart failure, along with diseases associated with blood clots, can require more continuing care than the first eight weeks of coverage.

Mental health problems can also continue or crop up after childbirth. Postpartum depression, also called peripartum depression by the American Psychiatric Association because it can begin during pregnancy, affects an estimated one in seven women. It can be treated with psychotherapy and medication, Soper said. He said the Medicaid extension will increase the odds that women suffering from mental health problems after childbirth will get help through resources such as MUSC Healths Reproductive Behavioral Health Division.

We have a very organized approach to depression, anxiety and other mental disorders that occur during pregnancy, Soper said. The extension will allow these patients to continue care after the immediate postpartum period.

Soper said his team is thrilled to see mothers get more of the care they need, whatever category they fall into. I think the Medicaid extension will play a very important role in the long-term health of mothers, he said. They no longer need to ignore themselves while they care for their newborn. By paying attention to the mothers medical conditions, we can ensure that mother and baby remain healthy well after delivery.
Seguin, TX (78155)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 76F. Winds SE at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 76F. Winds SE at 10 to 20 mph.
Russia warns it will deploy Satan 2 nuclear missiles capable of hitting UK by the autumn

Russia has announced it will deploy its recently tested Satan II missile by the autumn, as tensions between Moscow and the west mount amid the Ukraine war.

The Kremlin announced the first test launch of its new, nuclear-capable Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system on Wednesday, with experts warning the warhead could target the UK as well as Europe and the US.

The Sarmat is capable of carrying 10 or more nuclear warheads and decoys, and of striking targets thousands of miles away in the United States or Europe.

This week's test, after years of delays due to funding and technical issues, marks a show of strength by Russia at a time when the war in Ukraine has sent tensions with the United States and its allies soaring to their highest levels since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

Russia tested the new missile this week (Russian Government)

The target stated by Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Roscosmos space agency, is an ambitious one as Russia reported its first test-launch only on Wednesday and Western military experts say more will be needed before the missile can be deployed.

Rogozin said in an interview with Russian state TV that the missiles would be deployed with a unit in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, about 3,000 km (1,860 miles) east of Moscow.

He said they would be placed at the same sites and in the same silos as the Soviet-era Voyevoda missiles they are replacing, something that would save colossal resources and time.

The launch of the super-weapon was a historic event that would guarantee the security of Russia's children and grandchildren for the next 30-40 years, Rogozin added.

The Kremlin said countries will think twice before threatening Russia when its new missile is deployed (AP)

Mr Putin claimed the missile, which hit its targets after traveling roughly 6,000km (3,700 miles), is virtually impossible to defend against with current technology.

The new complex has the highest tactical and technical characteristics and is capable of overcoming all modern means of anti-missile defence. It has no analogues in the world and wont have for a long time to come, he said during a video briefing with defence officials.

Story continues

Western concern at the risk of nuclear war has increased since Russian president Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine on 24 February with a speech in which he pointedly referred to Moscow's nuclear forces and warned that any attempt to get in Russia's way will lead you to such consequences that you have never encountered in your history.

The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility, United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres said last month.

The Sarmat, nicknamed Satan II by some Nato leaders, replaces the Soviet-era Voyevoda system, and has been in development for years. Mr Putin announced development of the ICBM in 2018.

The launch is the latest public invocation of Russias nuclear programme, in the context of the countrys invasion of Ukraine.
And theyre off, as the callers of horse races say, but in this case, it means the government will no longer enforce mask mandates on airplanes, trains, buses, subways and other forms of public transportation.

U.S. District Court Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, a judge for the Middle District of Florida, said the rule exceeded the authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Transportation Security Agency. To complete the analogy, perhaps we can say that the government behaved like a horses patootie.

Videos of airline passengers ripping off their masks and cheering appeared on websites as flight attendants made the announcement. The attendants, too, must feel relief as too many suffered abuse while telling passengers to wear masks or to wear them properly.

As people began to grow tired of what many believed to be this arbitrary and ineffective mandate, growing numbers of airline passengers (me included) took advantage of the option to lower their masks while drinking and eating the snacks airlines offer these days. Some prolonged their munching and sipping to extend the time they could remain unmasked. Did anyone believe that if the virus were on a plane, it would suspend infecting people while they ate and drank with their masks down?

Airlines had touted the air filtration systems they had installed near the start of the pandemic as state of the art. The International Air Transport Association said, The risk of catching an infection on an aircraft is typically lower than in a shopping center or office environment.

It didnt matter to the federal government, which seems to seize any opportunity to limit our freedoms and ability to make our own choices. The conflicting information coming from the CDC added to widespread confusion and contributed to the distrust and animus many felt toward Washington. The Justice Department has just announced that it intends to appeal Mizelles decision if the CDC thinks mask mandates are still needed.

What should concern all of us is how easily freedom can be lost. Too many Americans behaved like sheep, abiding by what they were told by so-called experts. These scientists claimed divine-like wisdom. Dr. Anthony Fauci went so far as to proclaim that attacks on him were actually criticizing science. Objections to Faucis pronouncements were not treated seriously. Gods are not to be doubted. When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a book questioning the efficacy of vaccines and the motives of the pharmaceutical companies, he was immediately cast out among the anti-vaxxers rather than having his concerns addressed.

This is what freedom looks like: If you want to wear a mask, wear one. If you dont want to wear a mask, dont wear one.

Ive seen people driving alone in their car with a mask on. It makes me laugh, but its their choice.

The government hates giving up power over its citizens. Thats probably why the CDC tried to extend the mask mandate for public transportation an additional 15 days.

I know people who have been vaccinated three times, but still became infected with the current COVID-19 variant, which appears to me to be the least harmful of them all when it comes to hospitalizations and deaths. As with the flu and common cold, people can take precautions, but decide for themselves what those precautions should be.

Many will wonder what the reaction will be the next time the federal government tries to adopt one-size-fits-all mandates. Will we again resemble sheep, or will we have learned some lessons this time around? Will we, as they said in the 60s, be more aggressive to question authority?

By the way, Judge Kathryn Mizelle was appointed by former President Trump. Elections have consequences and in this case the consequences are good for travelers.

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SOUTH SIOUX CITY -- Decked out in a top hat and purple suit jacket, it was readily apparent that Camdyn Meier was meant to play eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka.

"I was going to play the part in 2020 when COVID hit and we had to cancel the show," the 16-year-old Sioux Cityan explained. "Now, I get to play him again two years later."

Indeed, Meier has the titular role in "Willy Wonka Jr.," a stage musical based upon Roald Dahl's beloved children's novel "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

The show, which is being presented at the New Stage Players Theatre, 3201 Dakota Ave., April 30 and May 1, is a Penguin Project production, according to New Stage Players co-founder Kristy Tremayne.

"The Penguin Project gives young people with developmental disabilities or special needs the opportunity to develop creative and social skills while participating in a musical production," she said.

Director Deb Morgan doesn't notice disabilities when she sees her actors.

"No, I just see some terrific kids with differing abilities," she said. "They all bring something wonderful to the table."

Indeed, the "Willy Wonka" cast includes actors who have autism, down syndrome, spina bifida and other conditions.

Such performers are identified as "artists" and they are paired off with "mentors," who are actors without disabilities.

"The bond between our 'artists' and 'mentors' is really amazing," Morgan said. "The friendships continue on and off the stage."

It helps when there are experienced actors like Meier, who made his Penguin Project debut as Daddy Warbucks in New Stage Players' 2019 production of "Annie."

"Being in 'Annie' was so much fun and I was able to meet a lot of new people," he said.

Among those new people was Bella Wall, who played the part of Little Orphan Annie in the production.

"I like performing," the 19-year-old said. "I like to get a reaction form the audience."

Indeed, Wall is making the most of her supporting role of the self-centered, rude and chewing gum-obsessed Violet Beauregard in "Willy Wonka."

"Playing Annie was hard because the entire show revolved around me," she noted. "In 'Willy Wonka,' I can just be rude and then go off stage until my next scene."

Yet Violet can't hold a candle to greedy, snobby spoiled brat Veruca Salt, as played by Karlee Hughes.

"Am I anything like Veruca in real life?" Hughes, 16, said with a laugh. "No, I'm just an actor playing a role."

Plus Hughes has been plenty of research for her role.

"I've watch the original movie version (1971's "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" with Gene Wilder) and the newer version (2005's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" with Johnny Depp)," she said. "I liked the Johnny Depp version better because Veruca gets to be tougher."

Meier disagrees, preferring the Gene Wilder version over the newer movie.

"Johnny Depp was simply a scary Willy Wonka while Gene Wilder played all of the emotions," Meier said. "Willy Wonka was practically bipolar in the old movie."

Watching her young troupe of actors rehearse their scenes, director Morgan can't help but smile.

"These kids have been through so much in their lives," she said. "Here, they get to be creative, build their self-confidence and show a different side of themselves."

Wall is already showing her creativity as a graphic design student at Western Iowa Tech Community College, while Meier wants to continue in theater.

"I love acting," he said. "I want to do it for as long as I can."

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The retrial of a man charged with killing 18 older women in the Dallas area over a two-year span has begun, after the first jury to hear a case against him deadlocked last fall. Forty-nine-year-old Billy Chemirmir faces life in prison without parole if hes convicted of capital murder in the smothering of 81-year-old Lu Thi Harris. Chemirmir's attorney entered a not guilty plea for him on Monday. Chemirmir has been charged with capital murder in all 18 of the womens deaths. But hes currently only scheduled to stand trial in Harris' death.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and top Republican challenger David Perdue are bickering over who was to blame for 2020 and 2021 Republican election losses in their first of three debates Sunday. Perdue is showcasing debunked claims that Democrats fraudulently won the 2020 presidential election. Kemp says he followed the law that Perdue lost his Senate seat because of weak record. The debates come as time grows short to persuade the many Georgia voters who will cast ballots ahead of election day May 24. Counties can begin mailing absentee ballots Monday. Early in-person voting begins May 2. Both Kemp and Perdue are telling supporters that they are the best Republican to defeat Democrat Stacey Abrams.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  The U.S. secretaries of state and defense met Sunday night with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the highest-level visit to the countrys capital by an American delegation since the start of Russia's invasion.

The secretive meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, which was confirmed by a senior Ukrainian official, came as Ukraine pressed the West for more powerful weapons against Russia's campaign in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where Moscow's forces sought to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops in the battered port of Mariupol.

Yes, theyre meeting with the president. Lets hope something will be decided on further help, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych told Russian lawyer and activist Mark Feygin on his YouTube show Feygin Live. The United States has not yet commented.

Reporters who accompanied Austin and Blinken to Poland were barred by Pentagon and State Department officials from reporting the Kyiv visit until the two men physically left Ukraine. U.S. officials cited security concerns.

Before the session with Blinken and Austin, Zelenskyy said he was looking for the Americans to produce results, both in arms and security guarantees.

"You cant come to us empty-handed today, and we are expecting not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons,'' he said.

Zelenskyys last face-to-face meeting with a top U.S. official was Feb. 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris, five days before Russias invasion. While the West has funneled military equipment to Ukraine, Zelenskyy has stressed repeatedly that his country needs more heavy weapons, including long-range air defense systems and warplanes.

In an apparent boost for Ukraine, polling agencies said French President Emmanuel Macron would win reelection over far right candidate Marine Le Pen, who has faced questions about her ties to Moscow. The result was hailed by Frances allies in the European Union as a reassuring sign of stability and continued support for Ukraine. France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and is supplying weapons systems to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy's meeting with U.S. officials took place as Ukrainians and Russians observed Orthodox Easter. Speaking from Kyiv's ancient St. Sophia Cathedral, Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, highlighted its significance to a nation wracked by nearly two months of war.

The great holiday today gives us great hope and unwavering faith that light will overcome darkness, good will overcome evil, life will overcome death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win! he said.

Still, the war cast a shadow over celebrations. In the northern village of Ivanivka, where Russian tanks still littered the roads, Olena Koptyl said "the Easter holiday doesnt bring any joy. Im crying a lot. We cannot forget how we lived.

The Russian military reported hitting 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, including fortified positions and troop concentrations, while its warplanes destroyed 26 Ukrainian military sites, including an explosives factory and several artillery depots.

Since failing to capture Kyiv, the Russians have aimed to gain full control over the eastern industrial heartland, where Moscow-backed separatists controlled some territory before the war.

Russian forces launched fresh airstrikes on a Mariupol steel plant where an estimated 1,000 civilians are sheltering along with about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters. The Azovstal steel mill where the defenders are holed up is the last corner of resistance in the city, otherwise occupied by the Russians.

Zelenskyy said he stressed the need to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, including from the steel plant, in a Sunday call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is scheduled to speak later with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Arestovych, the Zelenskyy adviser, said Ukraine has proposed holding talks with Russia next to the sprawling steel mill. Arestovych said on the Telegram messaging app that Russia has not responded to the proposal that would include establishing humanitarian corridors and the exchange of Russian war prisoners for the fighters still in the plant.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is scheduled to travel to Turkey on Monday and then Moscow and Kyiv. Zelenskyy said it was a mistake for Guterres to visit Russia before Ukraine.

Why? To hand over signals from Russia? What should we look for? Zelenskyy said Saturday. There are no corpses scattered on the Kutuzovsky Prospect, he said, referring to one of Moscows main avenues.

Mariupol has endured fierce fighting since the start of the war because of its location on the Sea of Azov. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere, and allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

More than 100,000 people  down from a prewar population of about 430,000  are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate over 20,000 civilians have been killed. Recent satellite images showed what appeared to be mass graves to the west and east of Mariupol.

Children in an underground bunker were seen receiving Easter presents in a video released Sunday by the far-right Azov Battalion, which is among the Ukrainian forces at the steel plant in Mariupol. The groups deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, said the video was shot at the plant.

One toddler is seen wearing homemade diapers made of cellophane and people are seen hanging laundry on makeshift hangers.

Please help us, one woman in the video said through tears, appealing to world leaders. We want to live in our city, in our country. We are tired of these bombings, constant air strikes on our land. How much longer will this continue?

Mykhailo Podolyak, another presidential adviser, tweeted that the Russian military was attacking the plant with heavy bombs and artillery while accumulating forces and equipment for a direct assault.

Zelenskyy over the weekend accused Russians of committing war crimes by killing civilians and of setting up filtration camps near Mariupol for people trying to leave the city. He said the Ukrainians  many of them children  are then sent to areas under Russian occupation or to Russia itself, often as far as Siberia or the Far East.

The claims could not be independently verified. But they were repeated by Ukrainian lawmaker Yevheniya Kravchuk on ABCs This Week.

They have pulled these people from Mariupol -- they are put to filtration camps ... its sort of something that cant be happening in the 21st century, Kravchuk said.

Zelenskyy highlighted the death of a 3-month old girl in a Russian missile strike Saturday on the Black Sea port of Odesa. The baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at Odesa, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, citing social media, reported that the infant's mother, Valeria Glodan, and grandmother also died when a missile hit a residential area. Zelenskyy promised to find and punish those responsible.

The war started when this baby was 1 month old,'' Zelenskyy said. "Can you imagine what is happening? They are filthy scum; there are no other words for it."

For the Donbas offensive, Russia has reassembled troops who fought around Kyiv and in northern Ukraine. The British Ministry of Defense said Ukrainian forces had repelled numerous assaults in the past week and "inflicted significant cost on Russian forces.

A fire erupted early Monday at an oil depot in Russia near its border with Ukraine, but Russia's Tass news agency gave no immediate cause for the blaze.

NASA satellites that track fires showed something burning at coordinates that corresponded to a Rosneft facility some 110 kilometers (70 miles) north of the Ukrainian border. Moscow previously has blamed Ukraine for attacks on the Russian region of Bryansk, which borders Ukraine.

The spiritual leaders of the world's Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics on Sunday appealed for relief for Ukraine's suffering population.

Associated Press journalists Yesica Fisch in Sloviansk, Ukraine, Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Cara Anna, Inna Varenytsia and Oleksandr Stashevskyi in Kviv and AP staff around the world contributed.

Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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CAYCE, S.C. (AP)  A police K-9 officer, volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician in central South Carolina was shot and killed while responding to a domestic disturbance early Sunday, police said.

Roy Andrew Drew Barr, 28, had just begun talking to a man outside the house when someone inside opened fire shortly before 3 a.m., said Chief Chris Cowan of the Cayce police department at a news conference. He said Barr was hit by one bullet.

The man who shot Barr killed himself after seven-hour standoff, said the South Carolina state police, which has been asked to investigate the shooting. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division's statement listed Barr's age as 27.

Barr became a police trainee in 2016 and a K-9 officer in October 2020, Cowan said. He was paired with a black Labrador and posed with her for his official department photo.

He loved his dog, Molly, and he loved his job. He loved being a K-9 officer and he was good at it, Cowan said.

Barr didnt have a wife or kids and instead was committed to serving his community, he said.

He was married to this profession, Cowan said.

Barr had survived a shooting in 2017, when he was still a trainee, news outlets reported. The gunman in that case is serving a total of 30 years in state and federal sentences.

Cayce is a suburb of nearly 14,000 people just west of Columbia.

Our hearts are breaking in Cayce," Mayor Elise Partin told reporters earlier Sunday. Officer Drew Barr has been an important part of the Cayce family since 2016.

The Monetta Volunteer Fire Department said Barr was the captain of their department in Aiken County, WSPA-TV reported.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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When Morningside University President John Reynders looks back on his tenure, he should be particularly proud of the investment made in agriculture.

His schools commitment to growing an industry that built Siouxland can only continue to pay dividends. When the school bought 76 acres of Woodbury Countys century-old farm recently, it demonstrated its commitment to giving students the hands-on experience they need to launch careers in all sectors of the agriculture world. In the future, this will be where innovations take root and advancements are made.

As much as prognosticators want to play their tech cards in the career market, they really need something as vital  and as simple  as agriculture to keep the world moving forward.

Considering the number of ag-related industries in the region, it makes sense  and dollars  to look at where weve been and build on that for the future.

The Regina Roth Applied Agricultural and Food Studies Department, named for one of the leaders in the food industry, was a great first step. Launched in 2015, it answered a call for programs that would train students to face the needs of a growing world.

Morningsides land purchase not only helped keep a piece of the county farm in local hands, it also served as a promise to Siouxland farmers that research would be done on the soil theyve been tilling for years.

Tom Paulsen, head of the schools ag and food studies department, said it would push the program to a new level.

Now, as the third college in Iowa to offer a major in agricultural education, Morningside has the ability to help meet the demand for some 58,000 jobs annually in agriculture. In less than a decade, the department has blossomed and has been able to branch into several subspecialties, including food safety and environmental law.

For students, Morningside is a great place to get one-on-one instruction. With test fields, theyll have the advantages of larger ag schools.

For Siouxland, for students, for agriculture and for consumers, this is definitely a win/win.

Morningside University is growing where its planted.

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Pachinko, the Apple TV+ series adapted from Min Jin Lees novel, is the rare story tackling the impact of Japanese colonial policies on Korean identity. In 1910, Japan colonized Korea as part of its imperial expansion into the East Asian continent. Many Koreans were conscripted to support the Japanese economy through forced labor, taken as sexual slaves for the imperial army, or were forced or left little choice but to leave for lands abroad by the ever-decreasing opportunities available at home. By the end of Japanese colonial rule in 1945, this home would no longer exist, with the U.S. and the Soviet Union dividing Korea into two occupation zones.

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Yet, as the opening of Pachinko states, the People endured.

Told through the lens of a single family over four generations across 70 years, this story, adapted by Soo Hugh, captures how Japanese imperial ambition continues to affect Koreans and their descendants, and is key to understanding how the violence of colonialism manifests in the modern day as long-standing discriminatory attitudes remain. We meet Sunja in 1930s Korea as the child of a barely-surviving lodge owner, whose life takes a turn after meeting a Korean yakuza member named Hansu. They survive, but life is difficult under Japanese rule, where rations are poor and treatment by Japanese officials is rough.

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Their life is uprooted following a hastily arranged marriage after Sunja becomes pregnant with Hansus illegitimate child. Rather than Japan being a land of opportunity, they find that the discrimination against them by imperial forces at home persists in Japan. The refusal of many landlords to rent to Koreans, with many jobs barring ethnic Koreans as well, leaves them a target for harassment while forcing them into slum housing.

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Sunjas experiences, as well as other moments highlighting anti-Korean sentiment such as the mass killing of Koreans baselessly accused of looting in the aftermath of the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923, are recounted through flashbacks. But the Apple TV+ version of the story is primarily seen through the eyes of Solomon, a third-generation Korean living in Japan. His life is in stark contrast to Sunjas: A successful graduate of an American university, he works for an international bank in Japan that seeks to close a lucrative real estate dealone prolonged by Han Geum-ja, an older Korean lady who refuses to sell the final plot of land necessary to complete a long-in-development project.

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While many of the other landowners have already sold their properties for sizable cash sums, Han Geum-ja is determined to live the rest of her days in the place she calls home, a place where she has control over her destiny. In an attempt to change her mind, Solomon appeals to their shared heritage as Koreans living in Japan, even going a step further by asking his grandmother Sunja to speak with her.

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As the three share a meal, they speak about the Korea of old. Sunja and Geum-ja are of the generation that came to Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, people who, following Korean independence, now live stateless in the country theyve called home for most of their lives. As they reminisce, Solomon learns more of the hardships faced by Sunja after she moved to Japan; her decision to marry and her circumstances left her little choice but to leave Korea, even if it made the journey no less easy. She misses that home, even as she realizes it has changed beyond recognition.

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Understanding their sacrifices, no wonder Geum-ja has held off on this deal for so long. No wonder Solomon, now understanding his mothers sacrifice and why she was so determined to stay, changes his mind and implores Geum-ja at the final moment not to sign the contract, a move that costs him his job.

Korean identity has, in part, been defined by the adversity faced under Japanese rule. Having closed itself off from the rest of the world for over 250 years , Japan underwent a period of rapid modernization following Western ideas beginning with the Meiji Restoration in 1868. After drafting a new constitution inspired by Western models in 1889, the country embarked on its own colonial conquests in East Asia for the purposes of increasing its political and economic strength in the region. Under this unequal relationship, defined by military force and political control, propaganda efforts positioned the role of Japanese forces as protective, a necessity for countering Western forces in the region. In reality, what became known by the 1930s as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere existed mostly as a tool to aid the military and economic strength of Japan through the exploitation of those living on the continent.

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Japan has since issued apologies for some of those actions. In 1993 and 2015, the government apologized and paid compensation to the victims and families of those forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during colonial rule. Yet even ignoring the refusal to accept any responsibility for atrocities for almost 50 years or the gravity of the pain inflicted on the victims and their families, attempts to walk back this apology or engage in denialism by ruling Liberal Democratic Party politicians, alongside the downplay or absence of references to these acts in Japanese textbooks, ensure tensions remain fraught. This is without discussing present-day hate groups like Zaitokukai that seek to target and strip the rights of Koreans living in Japan, frequently engaging in intimidation campaigns against Koreans and Korean schools.

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Koreans who lived in Japan prior to the end of colonial rule and their children are still classified as Special Permanent Residents, not citizens. Whether from marriage, conscription, or people leaving in search of economic opportunities no longer available in an increasingly-impoverished colonized Korea while Japans economy prospered, those who moved and chose to remain after the war were effectively made stateless, given a status of Zainichi Korean that othered them within Japanese society.

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As we witness in Pachinkos early episodes, unfair treatment facing Koreans in Japan merely continued the treatment many faced at the hands of Japanese officials and emigrants at home. Forced to live in squalor without well-paying jobs, many were forced towards organized crime and jobs in sectors Japanese workers were less-interested in, such as the titular pachinko, a game that itself exists in a legal gray area due to links to gambling. Ties to the yakuza and criminality by some smeared all Koreans, connotations which persisted beyond colonial rule, with this unsubstantiated criminal supposition driving persistent anti-Korean attitudes that remain, even as Korean pop culture continues to grow in popularity in the country.

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Although Lees novel was a bestseller in the US, no official Japanese translation of the novel existed until a two-part release in July 2020. Meanwhile, the book received only limited coverage in Japan, mostly in reaction to the books American sales success prior to its translated release. (A Korean translation was released in 2018, and has recently jumped to the top of South Koreas bestseller list.) A New York Times interview with Leesubsuquently translated by Courrier Japanand an opinion piece from Newsweek Japan recalling the story for an unfamiliar Japanese audience before equating its US success to the universality of the immigrant experience and the discriminatory attitudes faced by immigrants around the world, remain some of the few major outlets to discuss Pachinko in the Japanese language. Response to the book upon its translated release and the Apple TV+ series has been muted, although while one article highlights the shows approach to issues like comfort women, the same piece also discusses how a vocal minority on sites like Facebook claim Pachinko is anti-Japanese.

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Amidst all this is a story with far more to say than simply recounting colonial pain or seeking sympathy for hardship. On the contrary, theres a defiance that defines the series from the moment those opening words flash on our screen all the way until the series finale. Even the opening title sequence, featuring the cast dancing in a pachinko parlor interspersed with archival footage, feels like an act of defiance and an attempt to assert an identity in spite of their circumstances.

Min Jin Lee has emphasized the similarities in anti-Korean sentiment faced by Koreans in Japan and in America, having initially been inspired to write of Pachinko after learning the history behind the novel at Yale. Rather than assuming that life will be better elsewhere, the storys characters hold fast to their unique identities as Koreans living in Japan. Ultimately, Solomon chooses not to stay in the US, while Sunja chooses to keep living in Japan despite growing more isolated with age and returning to visit Korea after her conversation with Geum-ja. In a quote supplied for Newsweek Japans editorial, Lee emphasizes that Japanese people are not responsible for the past. All we can do is understand it and live truthfully in the present. In the end, only by listening and understanding can we attempt to make a change to a cycle of discrimination that endures today, with understanding as a crucial step in that journey.
In a third-floor medical suite with sweeping views of a Texas highway, staff members at Houston Womens Reproductive Services are adapting to the new demands the states restrictive abortion law has placed on their jobs.

They try to schedule every patient for a visit on the same day she calls, lest that patient lose a single valuable day of the narrow window for care. They linger on the phone with frantic women who are already terrified that theyll be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, even though they are just a day or two late on their period. And they have pivoted, in many cases, to dispensing emotional and logistical support instead of medical care.

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The clinicians are confronting novel reactions from patients, too. In addition to questions of spiraling desperationhow much time do I have? Why cant you help me? Where do I go? How can I get there?they are seeing an unprecedented outpouring of anguish. They have also noticed a troubling rise in feelings of regret.

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Because under the Texas law, people dealing with unplanned pregnancies have little time to consider their options: The law prohibits abortionsusing the threat of expensive lawsuits brought by private bounty huntersif they occur after the onset of fetal cardiac activity, which usually appears around four weeks after conception, in what health professionals call the sixth week of pregnancy.

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But that doesnt mean patients have six weeks of pregnancy to obtain a legal abortion. They have, roughly, one.

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It takes about five weeks for the first glimmer of a pregnancy, a gestational sac, to show up on a uterine ultrasound. About seven days after that, fetal cardiac cells begin moving in unison, at which point clinics like Houston Womens Reproductive Services are no longer permitted to terminate the pregnancy. The week in between these two milestones is a precious, fast-closing window that patients can easily miss.

The timing is made even trickier by another Texas law that requires each patient to see the same doctor for two separate appointments, scheduled at least 24 hours apart, before terminating her pregnancy.

The average patient used to come to the office around the seventh or eighth week of pregnancy. Now, many patients are coming in so early that their pregnancies are undetectable by the ultrasound machine, even if their pregnancy tests come back positive. They are often distraught when told to return in a week for another ultrasound, especially if their work and family obligations would prevent them from traveling out of state if they miss their chance in Texas.

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Women are peeing on sticks every day, said Catalina Leano, 51, the lead nurse at Houston Womens Reproductive Services. People are coming in in chaos and desperation, with this anxiety that youre either too early or youre too late.

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Marjorie Eisen, 65, a patient counselor at the clinic, said, Every time the doctor and the technicians go into a room to do an ultrasound with the patient, everybodys holding their breathjust hoping were not going to get cardiac activity.

A single day can make the difference between a simple set of pills taken at home and the expensive, stressful, and time-consuming process of seeking an abortion out of state. The only other legal option is state-mandated childbirth.

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The women who work at the Houston clinic are diverse in age and life experience, but they share a sense of purpose that drives their work. Many entered abortion care as clinic volunteers, drawn in by the prospect of helping women live full, independent lives; some, like Eisen, have worked in the field for 30 years or more. If they didnt feel personally invested in abortion rights, the staff members told me, they wouldnt show up every day to persevere in a medical practice the state is actively trying to obstruct. Several employees expressed gratitude for the abortions they were able to get when they were younger, which allowed them to pursue parenthood, education, and career paths on their own terms.

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A ticking time bomb takes a feeling of control away from the pregnant person.  Jeana Nam

So it came as a demoralizing shock when the staff began noticing how the Texas law, also known as S.B. 8, filled some of their patients with frantic uncertainty.

Since it opened in 2019, Houston Womens Reproductive Services has provided one single medical service: medication abortion. So in previous years, the vast majority of patients had already arrived at the decision to get an abortion when they made their initial appointments.

Now, about once a week, a patient wont show up for her second appointment. Or shell come to the clinic for that second visit, seemingly ready to pick up her medication, and then leave without it. Sometimes, women will go home without the pills and call later that same day, having changed their minds again, and ask if theres still time to come back. Occasionally, a patient who rushed to get an abortion will contact the clinic later to express feelings of ambivalence or remorse.

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They frequently tell us, I just dont feel like Ive had enough time to think about this,  Eisen said of patients. The legislators who passed the ban claimed to want Texans to have fewer abortions, but in fact, in some ways, we think its rushing people.

In other words, the restrictive nature of the law does more than hamper a patients access to abortion. It distorts her decision-making process.

According to several studies, abortion regret is remarkably uncommon. In one study of 667 women whod had abortions, 84 percent said they had only positive feelings or none at all about the abortion theyd had five years ago. Though 54 percent of the participants said the decision was very or somewhat difficult to make, over 95 percent said it was the right decision for them.

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Other studies have found that the vast majority of patients believe their abortions did them more good than harm, that having an abortion does not increase a patients risk for depression or anxiety, and that the level of uncertainty patients experience in deciding to terminate a pregnancy is comparable to or significantly lower than for other health care decisions.

In Houston, when people had more time to process the news of their pregnancies, theyd usually arrive at the clinic secure in their choice. Maybe theyd already spent a couple of days envisioning how having a childoften, a third or fourth childwould change their lifes trajectory, or talked through their options with a partner, parent, or trusted friend.

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Now, the counselors at Houston Womens Reproductive Services say theyve never seen so many patients struggling with indecision and self-doubt.

That has been, I think, the cruelest aspect of this law, said Jeana Nam, 27, who works there as a counselor. A ticking time bomb takes a feeling of control away from the pregnant person.

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For many other patients, the decision remains clear. One 24-year-old woman who visited the clinic in April told me that she knew right away what she needed to do when she learned she was pregnant. I have three kids right now. My youngest is 6 months, and my oldest is 4, she said. Right now just isnt the time to have another one.

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On a Wednesday in April, I sat in the backroom of the clinic while Eisen and Nam answered calls from women seeking care. One patient, whom Ill call Rebecca, told Nam shed tested negative on several pregnancy tests but was sure they were wrong. Her normally regular period was six days late. You can come in for an ultrasound, but its really unlikely that were going to see something if your tests are negative, Nam told her. I dont want you to waste your $100.

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Rebecca had recently moved to Texas and didnt have health insurance or a primary care doctor to see about a late period. She insisted on making an appointment for later that day. Nam gave her a time slot and hung up the phone. She was like, Because of this law, Im freaking out,  Nam said. Maybe seeing an empty uterus on her ultrasound will give her peace of mind.

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In between calls, staffers spoke about the patients who, due to tight scheduling, the abortion bans cruel precision, and the unpredictable snafus of everyday life, had missed their window of opportunity. One woman had a late period but a negative at-home pregnancy test; her clinician at Houston Womens Reproductive Services advised her to take another test in a week. Three weeks later, when the patient remembered to take her second test, she was positive. She hurried into the clinic for an ultrasound, but she was already too far along to receive the abortion she wanted.

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To advise patients on timing, Leano makes careful note of the details in each ultrasound image. If theres a yolk sac within the gestational sac, the fetus will start to sprout from that in about a day or two. And then within a day, the cardiac cells start beating together, Leano said. So I tell the patient, Youre super early. But because of this ridiculous law, you really have a day or two to come back. Because by the third or fourth day, I cannot guarantee you theres not going to be a heartbeat. 

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Does the state really want women to take more time and think about it? No. They just want to control women.  Kathy Kleinfeld

The clinicians say they always tell patients that if theyre not sure if they want to terminate a pregnancy, its better to wait until theyre ready, even if that means seeking care out of state. But they also cant pinpoint with exact certainty when any given pregnancy will cross the legal threshold for termination. I mean, this is a biological process, Leano said. All I can do is go by intuition. And that doesnt give women enough time to think about it. So theyre making a rush decision, and thats when regret comes.

Kathy Kleinfeld, the clinics administrator and founder, typically exudes calm competence and good cheer, but grew angry when I broached this consequence of the law. Its pretty ironic, because Texas is a state that said, Oh, wait, you need to take 24 hours. You need to have your ultrasound, then go home and think about it, because we want you to be sure,  she said. All this pressure on, We want you to be sure of your decision before you go through with this. And then they institute a six-week ban, which essentially gives women just a matter of days to find out theyre pregnant, make a decision, get an appointment, and go through with it. So which one is it? Does the state really want women to take more time and think about it? No. They just want to control women.

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When the law first went into effect, employees at Houston Womens Reproductive Services would direct patients who could no longer get an abortion in Texas to an online directory of abortion providers around the country, filtered by distance and ability to care for patients at various points in pregnancy.

But they found that many patients were often too deep in a state of shock at being turned awaymultiple employees described the typical reaction as a deer in the headlights lookto absorb a generic recommendation. So workers began asking a series of questions to help narrow down a patients options. (Can you drive, or do you have the ability to fly? Do you know somebody in another state who can help you? Does anyone else know you need an abortionand might they have a cousin or an aunt you can stay with?) They also give patients a handout that lists a hotline for financial assistance and contact information for clinics in Tulsa, Denver, and Fort Lauderdale that Kleinfeld knows and trusts.

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The nearest out-of-state clinics are in Louisiana, but for most patients who cannot fly, Oklahoma is a better option. Louisiana abortion providers, now inundated with Texas patients, are booking appointments several weeks out, and a state law requires patients to appear for two in-person visits 24 hours apart. (As another indication of the total collapse of abortion-access infrastructure in the South, Houston Womens Reproductive Services now frequently sees early-pregnancy patients whove traveled to the clinic from Louisiana, even with the Texas ban, because they were able to get an earlier appointment there than they could get in Louisiana.) Oklahoma has a similar law, but the first appointment can be performed by phone, which makes it possible for Texans to complete the round-trip journey in a single (grueling) day. More Texans have gone to Oklahoma for abortions in recent months than any other state.

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But that option may soon be eliminated. Earlier this month, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a law that will criminalize all abortions, save those provided to save a pregnant persons life, when it goes into effect in August. The Oklahoma House has also passed a separate bill that applies the novel legal workaround of the Texas lawthe private-bounty-hunter enforcement method, which has allowed the law to remain in effect even as it is challenged in courtto a ban on all abortions. If the bill passes the state Senate, it will take effect as soon as Stitt signs it.

The option of traveling out of state at all already feels like an impossibility to some pregnant Texans. They beg us, you know, I cannot go to another state. My parents dont know. My husband will kill me. I dont have the money. My kids depend on me. Im the only breadwinner,  Leano said regarding the clinics patients. It just tears you apart.

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Viewed through one lens, the rush of people keeping close track of their cycles and catching their pregnancies early shows determination and resilience. It does speak to womens resourcefulness, Kleinfeld said. We know that women will always obtain services they need. History has shown that again and again. This is just one more example of how these laws make it harder, but people who have the resources and the wherewithal and the knowhow can get it done and do get it done.

But that resourcefulness can also be understood as a distress signal from a terrorized population whose reproductive capacity has been seized by the state.

The suffering abortion providers are witnessing in Texas points to a looming domestic human rights crisis on the horizon: a rapid disintegration of the reproductive health care infrastructure that has saved the lives of countless patientsand dramatically improved the physical, mental, and economic outlooks of entire generations of womenin the decades since Roe v. Wade was decided.

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A tidal wave of anti-abortion legislation is making its way through state courts, part of an effort to prod the Supreme Court into weakening or overturning Roe. If it does, the costs will compound over decades, as women are criminalized and consigned to poverty for lack of access to legal abortion.

For now, Kleinfeld maintains a spreadsheet of all the patients the clinic has seen for ultrasounds and, upon the detection of fetal cardiac activity, been forced to turn away. Its more than 200 names long and excludes the thousands of people who learned by phone, while trying to make an appointment, that their pregnancies were too advanced to receive care in Texas. Unless these patients come back to the Houston clinic for follow-up care, Kleinfeld never learns how they fared. Another abortion provider in town told Kleinfeld shed started calling and texting such patients to check in but had trouble reaching them. She soon realized they probably didnt want a reminder of their predicament from someone who couldnt help.

Leano still thinks about one panic-stricken woman who begged her to make an exception to the rule. The patient said that, a little over a month earlier, she had awoken, disoriented, in a strange hotel room; she believed someone had drugged her drink. She wasnt on birth control because she wasnt sexually active. That day, at the clinic, Leano performed an ultrasound that revealed the movement of fetal cardiac cells. She had to send the patient away.

Weeks later, Leano considered contacting the patient to check in, but stopped herself. When you are an abortion provider, you want to check on somebody, but I dont want to remind them of this place, or that moment in their lives, Leano said. I wonder, and I carry them with me, you know? But its justI cannot reach out. Because I dont want them to remember this.
Chris Lancaster trainee If Only Id Known posted a blowout victory in the $10,500 featured fillies and mares pace on the Saturday (April 23) card at Century Downs, which celebrated the seven-year anniversary of harness racing moving to the new Calgary oval.

Assigned the outermost post in the feature, driver Michael Hennessy hustled If Only Id Known to the lead and blazed the track by each beam, posting a clip of :27.1, :55.3 and 1:24.3 before scooting clear of her competition around the final turn to a 1:54.1 victory. The four-year-old Shadow Play mare paced over the line 11-3/4-lengths better than Jessies Girl, who rallied for second. Outlawstormywether finished third and Miss Itunes took fourth.

Co-owned by Lancaster with Rob Ostashek, If Only Id Known won her second race from 13 starts this season and her ninth from 35 overall. She has now banked $104,807 and paid $2.40 to win.

As part of the festivities for Century Downs seven-year anniversary, a pair of Hall of Fame announcers visited the track. Vance Cameron, voice of harness racing on Prince Edward Island, and Roger Huston, the voice of the Little Brown Jug and longtime caller at The Meadows, both called races at the Calgary oval.



Vance Cameron (R) with the connections of Juliogetthestretch

Cameron called races on the first half of the card with Huston then taking over the mic from Race 7 until the nightcap in Race 13. For Cameron, Century Downs is the 20th different Canadian racetrack he has called at while for Huston it marked his 152nd track of announcing.



Roger Huston (fourth from R) in the winner's circle with Team Kootenay Lager

Racing began at Century Downs in 2015, taking over as the home of harness racing in Calgary after Alberta Downs hosted its final meet in 2014. The track is a unique harness configuration as an 11/16ths-mile oval, a sixteenth larger in circumference than the traditional five-eighths oval.

To view Saturdays harness racing results, click the following link: Saturday Results  Century Downs.
The Central Ontario Standardbred Association and TROT Magazine are pleased to announce the third annual COSA Fantasy Stable Contest.

Administered by Standardbred Canada, the 2021 contest proved to be even more popular than the inaugural one, with 1,166 entrants (up more than 25% from the previous year). Focussing on the Ontario Sires Stakes program, the contest is FREE to join and asks participants to assemble a stable of trainers, drivers, and Ontario-based stallions, as well as both two and three-year-old OSS-eligible racehorses for the upcoming season.

The number of categories this year goes unchanged, so each stable will include:

Three drivers (dollars accumulated equal to 5% of their 2022 OSS earnings)

Three trainers (dollars accumulated equal to 5% of their 2022 OSS earnings)

Four sires (dollars accumulated equal to 10% of their progeny's 2022 OSS earnings)

12 OSS two-year-olds (dollars accumulated equal to their TOTAL 2022 earnings - from May 20 onwards)

12 OSS three-year-olds (dollars accumulated equal to their TOTAL 2022 earnings - from May 20 onwards)

"The contest has been very popular in its first two years and it works well to help put a focus on the Ontario Sires Stakes program itself," commented COSA Director Matt Bax. "The OSS is a great program, and the fantasy contest has people following it more closely than ever. We believe that it's a fun way to try and get more people watching and maybe even get more involved."

The Grand Prize that will go to the winner of the contest is once again valued at over $4,000 - a night in a private suite at Woodbine Mohawk Park, with $2,500 in betting vouchers and $1,500 in food and drink.

The winner of the inaugural contest in 2020 was Peterborough's Dan Davis, and in 2021 it was Whitby, Ontario's Tyler MacKendrick. There will once again be HPI vouchers of different denominations awarded as prizes to all of those finishing in the top 20 spots.

Full contest rules are available here. The contest is now open, with the closing date pegged as 5:00 p.m. (EST) on Friday, May 20.

To enter the contest, click here.
Woodbine Mohawk Park would like to inform all racing participants that Monday mornings (April 25) qualifiers have been cancelled.

The cancellation is due to expected inclement weather.

Qualifiers will next be held on Friday morning (April 29) at 10 a.m.

(Woodbine)


Working as a reporter for this newspaper more than a decade ago, a book idea came to me while I was out on assignment.

In 2011, I was asked by my editors to write about Black activists demands to reclaim an African burial ground. The sacred place had been covered by asphalt and utilized as a parking lot by Virginia Commonwealth University. Researching the history of the space, I came upon an article about a nearby archeological dig that three years earlier had uncovered the remains of Lumpkins Jail, termed the Devils Half Acre by the enslaved people who passed through.

The piece told the story of Robert Lumpkin, a brutal slave trader who ran a business that housed enslaved people before and after sale to the Lower South, where they would toil on cotton and sugar plantations. It also referenced Mary Lumpkin, who was described as an enslaved woman who had given birth to Robert Lumpkins children and acted as his wife.

For years after I read that piece, I thought about her. I wondered what it meant for an enslaved woman to be in her position, living in his jail. I knew she was likely forced to have Robert Lumpkins children, since as an enslaved person she could not consent. I wondered why her compelling and important story had not been told. I thought about why I knew so little about the lives of the enslaved in Richmond or the role of the slave trade in the city.

A quest for Mary Lumpkin

The questions nagged at me, long after I finished the piece on the burial ground, and after I left the paper to write my first book, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County. My interest in Mary Lumpkin launched me into a seven-year quest for information about her life. I used all my reporting tools to uncover more details about her. I sifted through crumbling court papers and searched old newspapers. I studied U.S. census records, marriage documents, and death records. I traveled to the other places she lived to look at school and property records, to see the town where she was buried. This is what I found.

Mary Lumpkin was born enslaved in Virginia in 1832. Described as nearly white and fair faced, she may have been the daughter of an enslaved woman and her enslaver, his relative or an overseer. She was likely sold away from some or all of her family as a young child, perhaps by the time she was 8 years old, when census records show there was an enslaved child in Robert Lumpkins possession.

Twenty seven years her senior, Robert Lumpkin likely got his start in the slave trade as an itinerant salesman, selling goods from the back of a wagon, when he noticed scrappy young men crisscrossing the state, buying up enslaved people on courthouse steps, in taverns, and from farmers who needed cash, and then reselling them for profit.

After the transatlantic slave trade was abolished Jan. 1, 1808, the domestic, or downriver, slave trade from the upper South to the lower South more fully developed, creating demand for safe holding cells for enslaved people before and after sale. Richmond was the second biggest port city for domestic slave sales, after New Orleans, and in 1840, Virginia was responsible for shipping about half of all enslaved people sold across state lines.

Life in Richmond

By 1844, Robert Lumpkin was operating a slave jail that had been constructed in 1830. The 41-foot jail facility held over 100 people and sat at the center of the plot, which was surrounded by tall fences and tracking dogs. A two-story brick house faced the street, and the property also had a large boarding house or hotel for visiting enslavers and slave traders that also served as an auction house and a kitchen or bar to prepare them food and drinks.

In addition to providing lodging for both enslaved people and their enslavers, Robert Lumpkin punished enslaved people for a fee. There were iron rings on the floor of the jail where enslaved people, even children, would be chained down and flogged by an overseer.

As I linked together tidbits of information I gathered about Mary Lumpkin and Lumpkins Jail, I wondered how she fit into this world, where she surely witnessed daily violence. If she was treated like a child when she first arrived, it did not last long. By the time she was 13, she was forced to have Robert Lumpkins children. She gave birth to a daughter, who was born enslaved, just as she was. Four more children who lived to adulthood would follow. Once Mary Lumpkin had children, her focus must have been on protecting them.

It seems likely she and the children lived in the compounds main house with Robert Lumpkin. She may have run the operations of the house and contributed to operating the slave jail. She employed other enslaved women, including Lucy Ann Cheatham, an enslaved woman about her age who became a lifelong friend. Not long after Mary and Lucy Ann met, Marys new friend was shipped to New Orleans on a slave ship, likely in chains, and forced to bear the children of slave trader John Hagan, who may have noticed her while she was working at Robert Lumpkins jail.

As I continued my research, I learned that other enslaved women had been forced to have the children of slave traders and lived near Mary Lumpkin in the slave-trading district. They surely knew one another, and I wondered if their connections made them feel less isolated and empowered them to ask for more from their enslavers. Mary Lumpkin surely benefited in some ways from her relationship to Robert Lumpkin, as she was permitted to stay with her children and to move around the property, if not Richmond. In his home, the children were educated and enrolled in music lessons. Mary learned to read and write, too.

As her daughters approached puberty, Mary Lumpkin likely worked with Robert Lumpkin to keep them from sharing her fate. In 1856, at the ages of about 9 and 11, they made the long journey to the free state of Massachusetts to attend a female seminary in the coastal town of Ipswich.

A home in her name

While they were there, Mary Lumpkin traveled to Pennsylvania, perhaps with Robert Lumpkin, and purchased a house in her name, evidence of the autonomy she sought and was provided by Robert Lumpkin. After the girls had finished two years of schooling, they moved to Philadelphia and met up with their two eldest brothers, Robert and Richard.

In this city throbbing with life and home to many free and newly free Black Americans, the four children lived with Harriet Barber, a formerly enslaved woman from Virginia who had been forced to have the children of her enslaver, too. They likely lived in her home, along with other children and young women from Virginia she boarded or employed, but its possible they lived in the house Mary Lumpkin owned. Other children of enslaved women and Richmond slave jail owners were their neighbors.

Early in 1860, Mary Lumpkin and her youngest son, John, joined them, and they likely lived in the home she owned in Philadelphia for the duration of the war. Her eldest daughter married and had a child. Robert Lumpkin continued operating his Richmond slave jail until Confederates evacuated the city in 1865 and he was forced to set free the enslaved people he imprisoned.

After the war, Mary Lumpkin returned to Richmond, to Robert Lumpkin and the former slave jail. She likely needed money, and perhaps he had agreed to let her go north in 1860 on the condition that she would return when it was safe. Her children likely stayed behind in Philadelphia.

Inheritance and a legacy

Robert Lumpkin died in 1866, leaving Mary Lumpkin all his possessions, including the Richmond jail compound, the Philadelphia home she had purchased, and a house he had bought for his brother, a slave trader in Alabama. A year later, Mary Lumpkin encountered a white preacher from the North working on behalf of the American Baptist Mission Home Society, and agreed to rent the compound for use as a school to train freemen as ministers. It became the cornerstone for Virginia Union University, one of the first Historically Black Colleges and Universities in America.

Virginia Union University has educated generations of Black men and women. In recent years, the school has reclaimed Mary Lumpkins story as one of only a few Black women involved in the founding stories of HBCUs. The school named a road through campus for her and dedicated a plaque in her honor.

Yet much work remains to be done to tell the story of Mary Lumpkin and the other enslaved people who suffered at Lumpkins Jail and to share more broadly the impact of the domestic slave trade out of Richmond, which separated children from their parents and husbands from wives.

At the site of the Lumpkins Jail archeological dig, Richmond has a special opportunity to share this history. Few slave trading sites still exist in the United States, and Lumpkins Jail is unique in this country as a preserved site. After the archeological dig, it was covered with fill dirt to protect the remains of the jail, and some hope it will be incorporated into a national slavery museum, enabling visitors to walk across the same jail yard where Mary Lumpkin walked.

Richmond City Councils now defunct Slave Trail Commission has worked for years to bring the story of slavery to Virginians, and some funding has been set aside by the state to develop a museum and memorial.

In 2020, Mayor Levar Stoney announced that over a five-year period the city would spend between $25 million and $50 million to commemorate slavery in Shockoe Bottom, including $3.5 million for a memorial park. Former Gov. Ralph Northam allocated an additional $9 million for improvements to the Slave Trail and the development of the museum and memorial, which he said the city would oversee. Last year, the project was projected to cost up to $220 million.

This year, Richmond City Council allocated $1.3 million to begin work on a museum and surrounding campus. The funding allows for a museum foundation consisting of members from the Slave Trail Commission to hire professional staff and puts $1 million toward design of the museum and campus.

If Richmond moves forward with these plans, the city could become known for telling the full story of slavery, in all its ugliness. It could be known as the city that, once it took down Confederate monuments that told a false history, embraced the truth, telling the painful history of the way children were separated from their mothers, and husbands from their wives. It could tell the story of Mary Lumpkin, a woman who showed resilience and self-determination as she not only survived the worst of circumstances but delivered her children and herself to freedom.

Kristen Green worked as a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch from 2010 to 2012. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County. It was the recipient of the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Nonfiction and the Peoples Choice Award. Kristen holds a masters in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, and she is a fellow with Virginia Humanities. She lives in Richmond with her husband and two daughters.
Twelve Panhandle high schools brought a total of 749 students to the Western Nebraska Community College for a full day of music Thursday, April 21. Students competed in various small and large, vocal and instrumental performances at the annual District Music Contest.

The contest is less competitive between schools and more self-competitive, as the main goal of the contest is for students to learn and grow in their musical talents.

They get written comments from the judge, and the judges are all professional musicians, site coordinator Nathaniel Johnson, the instrumental instructor at WNCC, said. Theyll get a score; the score is not really that big a deal. Everybody wants a one (the best rating), but really, its the comments that are going to (help them) get better, and the comments are always very encouraging: Hey, you might want to work on intonation, rather than Thats out of tune. Fix it, because we all want them to do well.

Many band and vocal instructors said they were pleased with the way their students performed Thursday. Mitchell choir director Nikki Bunnell said she was proud of her kids giving it their best efforts.

They travel well and they perform really well, and Im really proud of them today, she said. Theyve all came and just gave it their best. I like taking them places to perform and let them show off a little bit.

Bunnell said that she wouldnt be able to give students opportunities like this without the support of her administration.

(I want to give) a huge shout out to my kids and all the hard work that they put in and a huge shout out to my very supportive admin that dont ever tell me no, she said. I really appreciate all the support.

Scottsbluff had the most entries combined and brought nearly 150 chorus students alone, according to choir director Brad Ronne. Those students made up four different choirs and two show choirs. He said he always enjoys bringing the students to the contest to see the joy they bring through their performances.

The kids have done a great job performing and just had fun performing, he said.  (I loved) just seeing their joy in singing. Weve been able to do some performances that just brought joy and brought joy to the audience, and that was fun.

Gering chorus students might have had the toughest day ahead of them going into District Music Contest simply because they would also be opening their musical Bye Bye Birdie that same night. Still, chorus director Shelly Muggli said her students did really well for what they still had ahead of them.

We didnt take as many groups as I normally do. We took all my big groups, but we normally have solos and small groups that we do a little more of, but with musical, all my kids that normally do it are in musical and theyre exhausted, and we just didnt have time to get all done, Muggli said. But the groups that are here, its been top notch.

I couldnt have asked for better performances. The kids have been fabulous. They put it all out there. Theyre exhausted, but they put it all out there, and its been really, really great today.

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In wrapping up our thoughts on the 2022 Legislature, lets first recall a noteworthy achievement by its small but active western Nebraska delegation 39 months ago.

Except for the weeks following Mike Groenes early departure in February, our geographic half of the state has had the same six senators the past six years.

No longer. Three other term-limited western lawmakers finished their last regular session Wednesday, and only two will take their place with the eastward removal of Gothenburg Sen. Matt Williams District 36.

But this group of senators, including the two not yet finished, has maximized its influence to western Nebraskas lasting benefit.

Back in January 2019, five of our regions six lawmakers were elected to chair one of the Legislatures 15 standing committees.

And the nine-member Appropriations Committee  arguably the most important committee and certainly the most time-consuming  had two westerners: Chairman John Stinner of Gering, now term-limited, and Sen. Steve Erdman of Bayard, who has two more years in office.

Thats making the most of our voice.

Four of the six still were committee chairs as 2022 began. Three are departing: Stinner, Executive Board Chairman Dan Hughes of Venango (formerly Natural Resources Committee chairman) and Williams, who chaired the Banking, Commerce and Insurance Committee.

Erdman and Gordon Sen. Tom Brewer, chairman of the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, will return. Whether appointed North Platte Sen. Mike Jacobson joins them depends on District 42 voters verdicts in May and November.

Kudos are due the three others who spoke for the last time (barring a special session) on the Unicameral floor Wednesday.

If you tuned in to Nebraska Public Medias telecasts recently, you might well have seen Hughes or Williams in the presiders chair during the Legislatures protracted debates and filibuster outbreaks.

While the lieutenant governor and the speaker are the first two in line to preside, a handful of other lawmakers do so when they cant. Its a measure of honor, if a small one.

Dan Hughes is a Perkins County farmer; Matt Williams, a Gothenburg banker. Two very different backgrounds, at least on the face of things.

But they share two notable qualities: evenhanded coolness, even amid the most emotional and bitter floor debates, and a sense that they werent sent to Lincoln to represent their districts alone.

Williams Rural Workforce Housing Act, which he wrote and saw enacted in 2017, has spurred vitally needed new housing stock not only in Dawson County but also across all of rural Nebraska. He won approval to extend and refuel the program this year.

And Hughes vision regularly extended well past southwest Nebraska as a Natural Resources Committee member all of his eight years and its chairman for the four middle years of his tenure.

Its ironic that Hughes District 44 once included Keith County decades ago but hasnt touched Ogallala and Lake McConaughy for a good number of years.

You wouldnt know that from the attention Hughes paid to his neighboring county and its stellar tourist attraction.

He had Lake Macs thrice-annual Colorado invasions in mind with his 2021 bill that (in its final form) authorized the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission to charge nonresidents twice as much for park permits as those with licensed Nebraska vehicles.

Hughes also sat on the special STAR WARS committee that specifically, not to mention refreshingly, included McConaughys tourism needs in its charge.

With Legislative Bill 1023s authorization of a 100-slip Lake Mac marina, recommended roads improvements and major Game and Parks upgrades already in progress, Ogallala and Keith County have much for which to thank their neighbor.

Of course, neither those projects, Williams housing fund nor the major North Platte initiatives endorsed by the Legislature this year would have gotten through without the Appropriations Committees blessing.

Stinner, a retired banker and longtime Scottsbluff-Gering community leader, deftly guided his committee in balancing the needs of all Nebraska, and especially his adopted part of it, through lean and fat fiscal times.

Western Nebraska have once-in-a-generation chances to renew our region due in large part to the people who have spoken for us in Lincoln.

Its our hope western Nebraskans will elect successors who build bridges  as Stinner, Hughes and Williams have  but never let metro Nebraskans forget theres a state beyond their skyscrapers and tall hills.
After a two-year hiatus, the Fifth Creek Presbyterian Church, 1547 Mocksville Highway (Highway 64 East), will again celebrate a special worship service, the Kirkin of the Tartans, on Sunday, May 1, at 11 a.m. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, Fifth Creek Church had held this special service regularly for more than 20 years.

Although the worship service revolves around the heritage of the Scots and Scots-Irish Presbyterians who settled in the Carolina piedmont in the 1740s, and so is a sort of Heritage Sunday, people of all races and creeds are invited for this special occasion and will be welcomed. Holy Communion (The Lords Supper) will also be celebrated during the service.

The concept of the Kirkin of the Tartans was developed by the Rev. Peter Marshall (1902-1949) during World War II to strengthen the bonds of kinship between the British and American peoples. Rev. Marshall was pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., and was the Chaplain of the United States Senate from 1947 until his death in 1949.

The Kirkin of the Tartans refers to the bringing into the church (the kirk) the colorful tartan plaid flags of the various families of the congregation to be blessed. Many of the congregation are of Scottish or Scots-Irish descent.

In addition, two special tartans will be carried into the sanctuary, the Tartan of the United States and the Tartan of the Carolinas, so that all of those present during the worship service can point with pride to one or both of the flags and say, truthfully, Thats my tartan.

A number of the members of Fifth Creek Churchs congregation will wear Scottish clothing to the service. Adding to the festive air of the day will be the playing of bagpipes on the church lawn (the green) before the worship service and in the sanctuary during part of the service.

Following the service in the sanctuary, a Scottish-influenced meal will be served to all in the fellowship hall. Besides Scottish fare, traditional Southern dishes will be much in evidence. The tables typically groan under the load of food they support. Guests may bring a dish to add to the feast, but there always is plenty of eatables.

The Rev. Bill Bates is pastor of Fifth Creek Presbyterian Church, which was founded in 1846.

Worship starts at 11 a.m. and a meal in the fellowship hall will be served following worship. Pipin on the Green will commence around 10 a.m., so plan to arrive in time to hear the skirling of the pipes, guaranteed to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, Laddie.

Highland dress or the wearing of some plaid is encouraged, but not mandatory.

O.C. Stonestreet is the author of Tales From Old Iredell County, They Called Iredell County Home and Once Upon a Time  in Mooresville, NC.
Today is the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. It has been 107 years since the monstrous crime committed against the Armenian people. Many Armenian celebrities living in Armenia and abroad refer to the Armenian Genocide by publishing photos and videos.

Famous Lebanese-Armenian designer Krikor Jabotian also took to his Instagram to commemorate the victims.

"As we remember the 24th of April 1915, we honor the souls of all those who perished during the mass killing of Armenians.

To recognize the Armenian Genocide is to recognize and condemn all genocides and crimes that are still being committed against humanity around the world," he wrote on his Instagram sharing a photo.

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Today is the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

On this day, Armenians around the world commemorate the victims of the Armenian Genocide. Many Armenian celebrities living in Armenia and abroad refer to the Genocide by publishing photos and videos.

American-Armenian businessman, co-founder of Reddit Ohanian made a post on his Twitter page.

This is also my first birthday where I don't need to ask the US to finally acknowledge the #ArmenianGenocide, which is a nice change. Grateful for the small victory, he tweeted.

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Wu Yiling is one of Chinas highest ranked scientists. With a fortune that neared $6 billion, he was also part of the worlds 500 richest people.

Wu Yiling is one of Chinas highest ranked scientists. With a fortune that neared $6 billion, he was also part of the worlds 500 richest people.

That was until last week, when the son of another Chinese billionaire sparked debate online with a post doubting the efficacy of Wus drug used to treat Covid-19. The herbal remedy, Lianhua Qingwen, is one of three traditional treatments the central government has recommended and was sent to households in Shanghai and Hong Kong during the latest omicron wave.

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After a meteoric rise in Wus Shijiazhuang Yiling Pharmaceutical Co., the warning by Wang Sicong sent its shares tanking by the maximum 10% limit for two consecutive days. The slide then continued, taking the stock for its worst weekly plunge ever and down 35% from an April 11 peak. The wealth of Wu and his family has dropped $2 billion to below $4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Now Yiling is facing a test to restore its market recognition, said Kenny Ng, a strategist at Everbright Securities International in Hong Kong. In the short term, demand for Lianhua Qingwen should still be strong as the pandemic in mainland China is not yet eased, but in the long term, investors need to rethink whether its revenue can maintain decent growth as Covid subsides around the world.

Debate over the efficacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine -- or TCM -- has intensified in recent weeks as the nation fights its worst outbreak since the early days of the pandemic. While the government has been promoting the remedies, they havent received the nod from regulators with global credibility, and the World Health Organization hasnt approved or recommended the use of Lianhua Qingwen to treat Covid-19.

The plunge in Yilings shares started on April 15, after Wang, the son of property billionaire Wang Jianlin, shared a video on Weibo questioning whether the WHO had ever recommended Lianhua Qingwen as a coronavirus remedy. That came after he called on the Twitter-like platform for Chinas securities watchdog to investigate Yiling.

Both posts were later deleted, and on Tuesday Weibo banned Wang because his account violated related laws and regulations, according to a notice on his personal page. The following day, Yiling vowed to take legal action against defamatory statements and reiterated its Lianhua Qingwen has some rare adverse effects such as nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain.

A representative for Yiling declined to comment.

Wu, the son of a doctor in the northern Hebei province, became interested in medicine when he was a teenager. The 72-year-old studied the traditional Chinese practice and received his masters degree from the Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine in 1982. He then worked as a doctor before founding Yiling in 1992. The company, which produces treatments to help with conditions including colds, cardiovascular diseases, tumors and diabetes, listed on the Shenzhen exchange in 2011.

Lianhua Qingwen came shortly after the outbreak of SARS, and in 2003 the nations drug regulator approved it to fight the virus. That same year, Wu was elected as a member of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference, a top national government advisory body. Then in 2009, he joined the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the highest rank a scientist can achieve in China.

While some TCM treatments have several producers, Yiling is the sole maker of Lianhua Qingwen. China has recognized the capsules -- a mixture of honeysuckle, rhubarb root, sweet wormwood herb and other natural ingredients -- as an effective way to reduce mild Covid-19 symptoms such as fever and sore throat. Singapore, which last year warned the remedy wasnt approved to treat the coronavirus, is now doing a trial.

The pandemic has been a clear win for Yiling. Sales jumped 51% in 2020 and rose to 10.4 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) in the first three quarters of last year -- already 32% higher than for all of 2020. That year, Lianhua Qingwen accounted for one-third of the traditional drugs used to treat flu-like symptoms in Chinas public hospitals, while Yilings respiratory remedies made up almost half of its revenue, according to the latest available annual report.

In a push to elevate Chinese innovations, President Xi Jinpings government has been promoting TCM as a Covid-19 treatment to allies worldwide. Its sent specialists to Cambodia and supported clinical trials in Pakistan, while Russia has been selling Lianhua Qingwen since 2020. The remedy is now available in more than 20 countries.

The rise of Lianhua Qingwen has been a boon for Wu and his two children, who together own 55% of Yiling. Shares of the company, the only listed TCM maker with a treatment recommended for Covid-19, have almost tripled in the past three years, compared with losses for Chinese stock indexes.

But questions and comments are now inundating the page of Yilings investor-relations platform, urging the company to further clarify market concerns and provide compensation.

We have enough of your companys empty talks, wrote one investor who wasnt identified other than with the auto-generated name cninfo943685. Please show more solid clinical-trial data and the latest sales results to restore market confidence.
The sun unleashed a massive solar flare on Wednesday, which has the potential to impact satellite communications and global positioning systems

The sun unleashed a massive solar flare on Wednesday, which has the potential to impact satellite communications and global positioning systems, the Centre of Excellence in Space Sciences India (CESSI) said.

The X2.2 class solar flare eruption took place at 3:57 UTC (9.27 IST) from the solar magnetic active region AR12992, Dibyendu Nandi, Associate Professor and Coordinator of CESSI at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata told PTI.

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Solar flares are powerful bursts of energy that can impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to spacecraft and astronauts.

This solar flare is classified as an X-Class which denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength.

Strong ionospheric perturbation is ongoing over India, South East Asia and the Asia-Pacific regions. Expected high frequency communication blackouts, satellite anomalies, GPS scintillations, airline communication impacts, the CESSI said on Twitter.

Nandi said the CESSI had predicted the eruption of an X-Class flare on April 18. He said the scientists at CESSI were studying the impact of the flare.

According to NASA, the biggest flares are known as 'X-class flares' based on a classification system that divides solar flares according to their strength.

The smallest ones are A-class (near background levels), followed by B, C, M and X, it said.

According to NASA, similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy output. An X class flare is ten times an M class eruption and 100 times a C class flare.
Technology entrepreneur Jack Dorsey leaves after his talk with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris on June 7, 2019. A regulatory disclosure Friday, April 22, 2022, from digital payments company Block Inc. says that its co-founder Dorsey is changing his role from Block's CEO, president and chairperson to Block Head and Chairperson," effective immediately. Credit: AP Photo/Francois Mori, File

Technology entrepreneur and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has a new title: Block Head.

A regulatory disclosure Friday from digital payments company Block Inc. says that its co-founder Dorsey is changing his role from Block's CEO, president and chairperson to "Block Head and Chairperson," effective immediately.

It's a semantic change only and there "will be no changes in Mr. Dorsey's roles and responsibilities," the filing said.

Dorsey co-founded the payments business as Square in 2009. It was renamed Block in December to reflect its growth to encompass the Tidal music streaming service, Cash App and TBD54566975, a financial services platform primarily focused on Bitcoin.

Dorsey also co-founded Twitter and was its CEO until stepping down in November. Twitter has said he will remain on its board until May.

Dorsey's title change resembles a Tesla filing last year in which CEO Elon Musk added "Technoking of Tesla" to his official role at the electric car maker. The two know each otherMusk is now offering to buy Twitter for more than $43 billion.

Explore further From Square to Block: Another tech company changes its name

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The search continued on Saturday for a soldier swept away by the Rio Grande as he tried to rescue migrants struggling in the water along the U.S. border.

The service member was working a mission in Eagle Pass, a city that shares a border with the Mexican state of Coahuila. On Friday, he selflessly attempted to help two migrants who appeared to be drowning as they illegally crossed the river from Mexico to the United States, according to a press release from the Texas Military Department.

The soldier has not been seen since. His name has not been released, though his family was notified about his disappearance on Friday.

At the time of the incident, the national guardsman was assigned to Operation Lone Star, an initiative launched by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to combat what he called a crisis at the border.

Abbott in a statement said his office is working with the Texas National Guard and other law enforcement agencies as they search for the missing soldier in Eagle Pass. Updates will be provided as additional details become available.

Personnel for the Texas Military Department, Texas Department of Public Safety and Border Patrol have all joined in the search efforts, with the Texas Rangers and TMD leading a probe into the incident.

After a preliminary investigation by the Texas Rangers, officers suspect that both migrants were involved in illicit transnational narcotics trafficking. They remain in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.

The search for the missing TMD soldier will continue until we have exhausted all available resources, a press release said. The Texas Military Department is thankful to all interagency partners for their continued support in this operation to locate our missing soldier. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the family of the soldier.
More years ago than I really care to count, the childrens librarian in my little town in rural northwestern Connecticut, apparently tired of my endlessly renewing the same book over and over again, pressed a copy of The White Mountains by John Christopher into my 8-year-old hands.

Mrs. Bullock was her name. She was the mother of one of my schoolmates. Shed taken note of my reading habits, such as they were, and decided to take matters into her own hands. If I liked the book Id been endlessly renewing, she argued, Id love this one.

She was right. I read every volume in Christophers pulpy series, which followed the adventures of young people rebelling against alien overlords bent on keeping a servile population under their collective thumb with futuristic tech that suppressed their individuality and free will.

It was the start of my lifelong love of books and libraries. And viewed through the prism of 40-odd years, it was an oddly prescient choice.

Students and their teachers in schools across the country  and now public libraries  are waging a brave fight against the king of organized book- banning campaigns that once only seemed the province of the worst kind of totalitarian governments  or dystopian science fiction.

As Pennsylvania Capital-Star Washington Reporter Ariana Figueroa made astonishingly clear in a recent story, hundreds of books, across dozens of states, are being banned at alarming rates.

A majority of the bans were seeing across the country have targeted books written by authors who are people of color, LGBTQ+, Black and indigenous. The books feature characters, and deal with themes, that reflect the experiences of marginalized communities, Figueroa reported.

And while those behind these campaigns hide themselves behind the mask of parental control, what I think theyre really concealing is fear: Fear of a country and world thats changing around them. Fear of voices that were kept silent too long who are now speaking up and demanding their seat at the table of power. Perhaps most importantly, fear of the erosion of their own privilege.

Books are more than printed matter. Theyre conduits to an endless universe of knowledge. And they are the greatest democratizer weve ever invented.

Take one down off the shelf, read it, and finish it, and it will nudge you to another, and another. Before long, youre navigating the twists and turns of human experience, letting your own curiosity be your guide, allowing it to bring you to places youve never been, and to introduce you to people, places, and cultures you might never have met or experienced on your own.

And thats why, when theyve sought to erase people and cultures, every authoritarian from the beginning of time until now has destroyed their books and burned their libraries.

After the the Romans tore down ancient Carthage, brick by brick, and sold its people into slavery in 146 B.C.E., they gave the Carthaginians books to the citys adversaries, who either destroyed or lost them, silencing them forever.

The Nazis held well-documented book burnings in 1933. And in a modern twist, Vladimir Putins Russia is struggling to keep the truth of its savage invasion of Ukraine from its own people.

Last year, students in a Pennsylvania school district about 40 minutes south of Harrisburg made nationwide headlines when they took on  and won a reversal of  a year-long ban on a list of anti-racism books and educational resources by or about people of color, including childrens books that dealt with the Rev. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks.

The school boards president, Jane Johnson, told The Washington Post at the time that the board was trying to balance legitimate academic freedom with what could be literature/materials that are too activist in nature, and may lean more toward indoctrination rather than age-appropriate academic content.

Hear that? Indoctrination? Thats the voice of fear talking. Its a way to push back, without appearing to push back, against arguments that youre trying to silence or erase those whose voices badly need to be heard.

When a student  or anyone  picks up a book, its a moment of singular liberation. Its their first step down that hallway of knowledge. Its the start, rather than the end, of the adventure. And theres no telling where it might take them  perhaps even to the halls of power themselves.

And if theyre very lucky, they will have their own Mrs. Bullock to help guide them down those twisting and turning corridors, always nudging them along, gently prodding and testing them, but never, ever standing in their way or blocking the path.

Only the fearful do that.

An award-winning political journalist, John L. Micek is Editor-in-Chief of The Pennsylvania Capital-Star in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Email him at jmicek@penncapital-star.com and follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek.
Eight ladies attended the April 4 meeting of GFWC/NFWC Caring Women junior womans club at First-Faith United Methodist Church.

President JoAnn Oseka opened the meeting, asking everyone with plastic bags, pop tabs, pillowcases, Literacy Council items, jeans and items for the Crisis Center to leave them with the person responsible for collecting.

The District 5/6 basket was assembled for the NFWC convention on April 7-8 in Lincoln. Sandy Kendall gave the Thought for the Day.

Oseka read a thank-you note from GI Express for the donation used to make purchases for Wreaths Across America.

Emails received from NFWC President Mary Jo Jarecke were read. Amendments to the NFWC bylaws were reviewed and approved. Deb Grim was approved to be a delegate to the NFWC convention.

It was decided to not send a donation to Ukraine.

Twelve pillowcases made by Caring Women members were delivered to Hope Harbor.

Go Big Give fundraiser donations are to be given to Oseka.

Liz Gerberding has three of the recommended ESO books to read if anyone wants to borrow them.

On April 1, members placed a total of 80 blue pinwheels at three different locations in Grand Island in recognition of Child Abuse Recognition month.

Caring Women will donate $100 for the postage used to send six care packages to the latest enlisted military personnel from Grand Islands unit.

The Groundwater Festival will be May 17. Oseka has sign-up sheets for those helping.

Officers elected for the next term are: Oseka, president; Deb Grim, vice president; Gerberding, secretary; and Connie Sears, treasurer.

Upcoming events:

May 20-22  Cleaning tables for the Nebraska Fire School at Fonner Park.

June 11  Six ladies needed to volunteer at Grand Theatre.

The next meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. May 2 at First-Faith UMC. Installation of officers will be held. Gay Crandall will have the Thought for the Day.
Whether between staff or with clients, the team at Tally Creative is all about lifting people and clients up.

I think everyone needs that cheerleader on their side, said Julie Wright, Tally Creative co-owner and creative director of brand development. I think our success is that not only do we lift our clients up, but we really try to lift our team up. We are trying to be thought leaders when it comes to company culture.

Being thought leaders has skyrocketed the successful branding company since its beginning four years ago as of June 1. The firm boasts a record of having served almost 200 Grand Island-area companies, assisting with everything from naming a company to designing logos.

The company also stretches into schools, taking school portraits.

We work with clients of all sizes, from someone thats just starting their first business, all the way up to companies that have hundreds of employees in multiple locations, Wright said.

Consultation fees are as low as $100, Wright said.

The terms marketing agency and advertising firm are commonly tossed around, though a bit elusive to define. Tally Creative, Wright said, is a branding agency.

Until you know what your own brand is can you market that well. How do you expect your customers to know who you are? Thats really what we specialize in.

To be sure, standby elements like radio ads, billboards and flyers arent forgotten, but the business first focuses on their clients brand.

The Tally brand itself is growing, in part due to the unique post-COVID labor market. Its turned out a boon for Tally, which turns the obstacle into an opportunity for both client and agency, Wright said.

As careers become a little bit more fluid, its hard to get that one person thats going to be your videographer for the next 20 years, she said. Thats where Tally shines: just being an extension of their team.

Utilizing agencies like Tally sometimes save businesses money  and more commonly, a lot of extra work, equipment acquisitions and headache, Wright said.

By the time you add editing software, cameras, microphones, lighting and computers, thats often an expense employers dont consider when theyre thinking of adding a video division to their business, or a podcast.

Soon Tally will offer podcasting assistance and equipment usage. Wright said the purpose of adding the studio is to not only tell (a clients) story, but have that professional production, the professional audio, the professional video behind it, so their podcasts can go from what they had in their head and come to life.

Besides the addition of professional podcast services, Tallys office space is getting an addition, too, in the space that was once Alley Cat Antiques. Wright, along with her husband, Dana, also co-owner and Director of Creative Design, purchased the site a few years ago. Much of the renovations they have done themselves.

Every night and weekend Dana is over here doing something, Julie Wright said. He was even over here this morning working on some projects and before work. Its a labor of love, and we have great partners that are experts  but we definitely do all we can.

An original pressed-tin ceiling and bare bricks will remain, echoing the look of Tallys current space, keeping continuity between the original space and additional.

We are always trying to keep that downtown feel: the bare brick, tin we  we make it look different than a strip mall. Thats the character downtown and thats what we want to keep intact.

Taking up the under-construction space will be a studio for services like headshots, product photography and videos, Julie Wright said. This is an opportunity to have a big studio, and its going to be quiet and clean.

The Tally team numbers seven people. On a given day, Julie Wright said, the team could be taking care of as many as 20 clients.

Besides the seven humans, Tally has two furry employees: a dog named Skyler who when asked, gets more excited about the word work than walk; and a cat, Betty, rescued from a large commercial parking lot in Grand Island. The two have run of the office, and get plenty of pets, scritches, treats and toys in repayment for lifting the spirits of staff and greeting visitors.

In between lifting the profiles and spirits of their clients, nurturing and uplifting their team, the Wrights said their proudest Tally accomplishments arent about products.

Julie Wright said supporting clients is what she is most proud of, reinforced during the pandemic. We had some clients that come to us and just theyve reached their max level of stress just. Weve been able to of be that sounding board and creative about the way that weve pivoted their marketing.

When that marketing has helped them get over that hump, and they can kind of breathe that sigh of relief, is very rewarding. We could be in their corner.

Dana Wright, who is a University of Nebraska at Kearney graduate with an art and marketing background, struggled to name just one project that made him most proud.

We are behind the scenes to help others look good and succeed. I dont think I can pick one proudest moment, theres been so many of them over the last four years.

In Grand Island and central Nebraska, you have an opportunity to make a huge difference in the marketing world, as opposed to being a small piece of a large cog of big city. I think its such a beautiful market here. There are a lot of beautiful people that we can help and we have helped.

Were excited to do that.

Jessica Votipka is the education reporter at the Grand Island Independent. She can be reached at 308-381-5420.

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KEARNEY  A Ravenna man is charged with three felonies for allegedly assaulting a pregnant woman.

Fernando Contreras, 47, of Ravenna is charged in Buffalo County Court with two counts of felony third-degree assault on a pregnant woman and one count of assault by strangulation or suffocation of a pregnant woman. The alleged incident happened on April 6.

Records detailing the incident were sealed at the request of deputy Buffalo County Attorney Mike Mefferd, who cited the document contains confidential information.

Contreras was arrested on a Buffalo County warrant on April 12, and is being held at the Buffalo County Jail on a $150,000 bond. He is scheduled to appear in court in May.
Rain threatened cyclists in the early morning Saturday but by midday more than 100 riders on the Northeast Texas Trail between Roxton and Clarksville enjoyed sunshine and mild temperatures for a celebratory Gran Fondo 50 ride. The days events in Roxton, Paris, Reno, Detroit, Bagwell and Clarksville celebrated the completion of the longest hard surface portion of the 130-mile trail between Farmersville and New Boston, which when completed will be the longest recreational trail in Texas and the fourth longest in the United States.
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At their April meeting, the Prince of Orange DAR chapter met at St. Andrews United Methodist Church and learned about Gold Star Mothers from guest speaker Elaine Johnson.

In order to be categorized as a Gold Star Mother, a mother must have lost a child in active military duty. Darius Jennings from Orangeburg County was killed in service in Iraq in November 2003. He and 15 other soldiers were attacked while in a Chinook helicopter. Darius was a young man all about service. His plans were to help open a community center to assist children with special needs after his time was served in the military.

Johnson and several other Gold Star mothers traveled to Iraq in 2013, desiring closure to their childrens experience. While in Iraq, they toured schools, hospitals and military bases. In order to travel, the ladies had to hire private security guards due to the anti-American sentiment. Elaine and the other mothers took school supplies to the children, who were most excited and grateful for every item delivered.

Johnson is currently working to bring attention and honor to all the sons and daughters who have lost their lives actively defending the United States. She hopes to fulfill her sons dream of a community center for children of special needs and has located a property in Cope.

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COLUMBIA  The South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) and Dominion Energy are pleased to announce the winners of the second annual Strong Men & Women in South Carolina History student writing contest. One winner was selected from each of South Carolinas five regions: Central Savannah River Area (CSRA), Lowcountry, Midlands, Pee Dee and Upstate.

The winners are:

 Tyleigh Spiller, junior - Homeschool/Edgefield (CSRA)

 Hayley Hylton, junior - Oceanside Collegiate Academy (Lowcountry)

 Shaniya Jeffcoat, senior - Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School (Midlands)

 Jayla Jones, junior - Lake City Early College High School (Pee Dee)

 Sarai Winkler, junior - Governors School for the Arts and Humanities (Upstate)

For the second year in a row, we have witnessed so many talented young writers share their incredible stories of inspiration, said State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman. I want to thank all of the students who participated this year, and I congratulate our five winners  Tyleigh, Hayley, Shaniya, Jayla, and Sarai.

The contest, which builds on the SCDEs long-standing South Carolina African American History Calendar, encourages South Carolina high school juniors and seniors to write a 500-word essay about an African American with ties to the Palmetto State who has been an inspiration in their life.

In South Carolina, one of our greatest natural resources is our people, said Keller Kissam, president of Dominion Energy South Carolina. We are honored to spotlight these talented high school students and to give them the opportunity to tell us  in their own words  about the men and women who have had an everlasting impact on them and our great state.

Winners will receive an Apple MacBook Air, and their school or home school association will be awarded $1,000. The students will also be recognized during the unveiling ceremony of the 2023 South Carolina African American History Calendar in October.

View the winning essays: https://scafricanamerican.com/2022-student-writing-contest-winners/.

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The theme of todays Industry Appreciation special section and online collection is Building on a strong foundation. Despite the pandemic and its ongoing impact, the industrial sector in Orangeburg, Calhoun and Bamberg counties continues to push ahead. Not even a pandemic can keep things down.

Orangeburg County boasts a diverse industrial landscape of more than 100 firms. Its lineup of international firms continues to grow, with 2021 actually producing a record level of industrial acquisitions that can increase the 20% of the countys population employed in manufacturing.

Its not just Orangeburg County owing much to industry. A 2020 study shows the entire state has reason to appreciate manufacturing.

SC Future Makers, a nonprofit workforce and education organization affiliated with the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance, released the economic impact study of South Carolina's manufacturing industry. Prepared by Dr. Joseph Von Nessen, research economist with the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina, the study documents the uniquely large footprint that manufacturing maintains in the Palmetto State that has an estimated economic impact that totals between $194 billion and $206 billion annually.

Key economic impact findings from the study include:

 16% of the state's GDP is associated with manufacturing; manufacturing supports, either directly or indirectly, over 30% of all jobs statewide.

 Industries pay well with an average annual salary that is 33% higher than the state's average wage.

 Manufacturing creates more jobs than virtually any other sector and has a multiplier effect of 2.4.

 38% of South Carolina's General Fund revenue comes from the manufacturing industry.

 South Carolina manufacturing is largely anchored by the aerospace, automotive and tire sectors along with their extended supply chains. These three sectors experienced growth at a collective rate of more than three times the state average over the past decade.

The study reinforces the strong foundation the manufacturing industry has in South Carolina and the economic stability it creates.

In Orangeburg County, there is particular reason this year to be optimistic.

The past year represented over $100 million in announced capital investment and over 400-plus new jobs, record numbers.

Headlining 2021-22 in economic development was a major agribusiness development in the states leading agribusiness county: Georgia-based Premium Peanut announced in September that it would establish operations in Orangeburg County. It will be the state's first peanut-shelling plant.

The grower-owned company said it would invest $64.3 million and create 130 new jobs. Premium Peanut plans to invest $27.5 million in buildings and $36.8 million in equipment over five years.

The company in March announced it was locating to the South Carolina Gateway Industrial Park in Santee. It is breaking ground on a 220,000-square-foot building on about 42 acres. The industrial park consists of about 1,322 acres near the U.S. 301 and U.S. 95 interchange.

And more things are happening at the park.

A 125,000-square-foot expandable Class A structure with tilt walls that can be subdivided for smaller users is currently under construction. And DP World Americas plans to develop parcels at the park for the placement of speculative buildings. Orangeburg County Council has agreed to provide DP World with financial incentives to develop the parcels.

More development is coming to a county that is positioned for growth, in manufacturing and with other enterprises. Combine the development moving from Charleston and Columbia toward Orangeburg County with the new interchange at Interstate 95 and U.S. 301, and plans to widen Interstate 26 through the county and improve the I-95/I-26 interchange, and the logistics stars are aligning.

Orangeburg County has reason to appreciate industry, and were looking for even bigger and better things going forward.

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A company owned by peanut growers is planning to invest $64.3 million and bring 130 new jobs to Orangeburg County.

Portions of the new peanut-shelling facility are expected to break ground in late spring 2022.

That is an investment made by peanut farmers, Premium Peanut President and CEO Karl Zimmer said during the September 2021 announcement of the company's arrival.

We are very much looking forward to working with growers and peanut farmers in South Carolina and welcoming them as part of Premium Peanut, he said.

Zimmer made the announcement in front of a group of more 100 people at Palmetto Peanut Company in Calhoun County. Palmetto Peanut is the largest among the state's 12 peanut-buying stations.

Premium Peanut plans to invest $27.5 million in buildings and $36.8 million in equipment in Orangeburg County over the next five years. The company will locate its 220,000-square-foot plant at the South Carolina Gateway Industrial Park. The park, which is owned by DP World, was formerly known as the JAFZA Magna Park.

It will be the state's first peanut-shelling plant.

Georgia-based Premium Peanut was founded in 2014. The company says it has one of the newest and largest peanut shelling facilities in the world.

The company began shelling peanuts in 2016 with about 140,000 tons in shelling capacity. The company has grown to a plant capacity of 300,000 tons, which is about 10% of the nation's peanut crop.

The company has also operated an oil mill since 2018.

Premium Peanut now has more than $250 million in revenues.

We have a problem, Zimmer said. We are out of capacity. The market is still growing and the opportunities are still growing.

The company's customers consist of major snack, candy and peanut butter manufacturers domestically, as well as customers in more than 30 countries around the world.

Premium Peanut is owned by over 400 peanut growers throughout Georgia and now South Carolina.

Zimmer said the company has been so successful that investors have made enough to pay back the initial investment and the stock value has doubled in seven years.

The company looked at multiple sites and states for its shelling facility before settling on Orangeburg County.

As part of its arrival in Orangeburg County, Premium Peanut has received a 30-year fee-in-lieu of taxes incentive.

Its also been placed in a multicounty industrial park with Dorchester County. A multicounty industrial park is an incentive mechanism and is not a physical park.

The company also will receive job development tax credits.

S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster, who attended the announcement, said, When our people work, people want to invest in us, including Premium Peanut.

That is why they are coming here  because it is about the people.

McMaster presented the company with a brass plate with the state's motto: While I breathe, I hope.

These jobs will have above-average wages, Orangeburg County Administrator Harold Young said. It will also definitely be a benefit to the citizens of Orangeburg County.

We value our farmers and manufacturing in Orangeburg County, Orangeburg County Development Commission Executive Director Gregg Robinson said. This is a perfect marriage and a one-of-a-kind facility in South Carolina.

S.C. Commissioner of Agriculture Hugh Weathers of Bowman said the project means jobs and investment in Orangeburg County, which will add to tax rolls and provide good-paying jobs.

Weathers said the shelling facility is just another opportunity to market one of the state's star crops.

Here is one more marketing opportunity because they will need more acreage of peanuts, Weathers said.

Peanuts are currently purchased at a buying station. The S.C. Department of Agriculture grades the peanuts for the farmer.

You have a dried peanut in storage, Weathers explained. Up until this investment, those peanuts would then be freighted to Virginia, North Carolina or Georgia for shelling and then for manufacturing into peanut products or a whole peanut.

With the addition of the shelling plant, the next level of value will now be in South Carolina, so that is tax revenue," Weathers said.

When agribusiness thrives, all of South Carolina benefits from it, he said.

Weathers noted that 25 years ago, about 10,000 acres of peanuts were planted in the state. In 2002, federal legislation was amended and opened up more peanut opportunities for South Carolina farmers.

In 2017, about 120,000 acres were grown in the state.

Orangeburg County farmer Danny Mixon, a board member of Premium Peanut, has been growing peanuts in Orangeburg County since 1979.

When I brought my peanuts to the buying point and I dumped them, all the money I could make was on how much I made, what price I got and how much I had in it, Mixon said. Now farmers get to share in the profit.

They are not captured by a market, because whatever the market is, they are going to share in it, he said. It makes a big difference for the farmer.

This is a dream come true, Mixon continued. We started a buying point when peanuts were in this area and now there is a tremendous amount of peanuts and three buying points.

Orangeburg County Council Chairman Johnnie Wright said, This is a team.

We all hope to benefit from this event in one way or the other. We are just grateful for the opportunity. Let's keep Orangeburg moving forward, he said.

Premium Peanut Chairman Ken Fountain said coming to South Carolina is a win.

Growers interested in learning more should contact the Palmetto Peanut buying point.

Individuals interested in joining Premium Peanut should visit the company's careers webpage at https://secure6.saashr.com/ta/6154256.careers?CareersSearch

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With the help of a fluffy dandelion, a childs vivid imagination takes flight in Carmela Full of Wishes, a world premiere stage adaptation of the book by Matt de la Pena and illustrated by Christian Robinson. Now playing at Chicago Childrens Theatre, this heartwarming tale of an exuberant Latina girl celebrates family, community and hope  perfect themes for young audiences and pandemic-weary caregivers in search of meaningful in-person activities.

Patrons who arrive early to the West Loop venue will find an inviting lobby space where children can create a simple craft that later becomes a collective prop during the show. Upon entering the theater, the vibrant colors of the set (designed by Regina Garcia) transport the audience into a whimsical storybook setting, with an urban landscape rendered in a style evocative of a watercolor painting. Blue and red electric lights represent telephone wires, complete with birds perched on top, while a streetlight and fire hydrant stand in opposite corners.

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Carmela, the eponymous dreamer, makes her entrance on a scooter that she will use throughout the show, zooming up and down between the seats that line the stage on two sides. Giddy with excitement that she is turning 7 today, Carmela announces that one of her dearest wishes has come true: she is now old enough to visit the laundromat with her older brother.

Colombian actress Maria Clara Ospina plays Carmela in an open, engaging manner, with every emotion dialed up to full blast, which suits the ages of both the character and the audience. Carmelas costume (by Jazmin Aurora Medina) includes a tutu worn over red leggings with colorful sneakers, aiding in the suspension of disbelief required when an adult performer plays a child. In the role of Carmelas brother, Juan Gonzalez Machain leans into the impatience often provoked by a tag-along sibling, although it eventually becomes clear that he loves his little sister.

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Maria Clara Ospina and Juan Gonzalez Machain in "Carmela Full of Wishes" at Chicago Childrens Theatre. (Joel Maisonet photo / HANDOUT)

As the pair travels to the laundromat, stopping for various errands along the way, Carmela introduces the audience to the sights, sounds and smells of her neighborhood, a largely Latinx community in an unspecified city or town. Chicago-based Texican playwright Alvaro Saar Rios, who adapted the book for the stage, weaves Spanish into the dialogue in a way that feels authentic to the characters yet accessible to English-speaking audiences. Michelle Lopez-Rios, his wife and longtime collaborator, directs this production.

When Carmela finds a white dandelion growing along the sidewalk, she struggles to decide which wish to make before blowing its seeds into the breeze; her active imagination presents too many options to narrow down. This plot device leads to a series of episodes in which Carmelas wishes come to life on stage  ranging from childish visions of candy to deeply held dreams of a better life for her family.

We learn that the childrens Mami (Jasmin Cardenas) works long hours in an expensive hotel, while their Papi (Christopher Alamo) is a migrant worker who is currently absent, having been born in a different country and in need of proper documentation to come home to his wife and kids. In one of her daydreams, Carmela wishes for a luxurious bed for her sleep-deprived Mami; in another, she imagines being reunited with her Papi and singing their favorite song together. Seeing the familys difficulties through the eyes of optimistic Carmela, sorrow is tempered with hope.

Carmela Full of Wishes marks the second time Chicago Childrens Theatre has adapted a book by de la Pena and Robinson, following the 2018 world premiere play Last Stop on Market Street, which since has been produced by nearly a dozen U.S. theaters. These productions are part of a broader effort by the theater, under the leadership of artistic director Jacqueline Russell, to bring diverse, contemporary voices from childrens literature to the stage in world premiere plays and musicals, many of which go on to be performed in other cities.

Juan Gonzalez Machain plays Big Brother, Maria Clara Ospina is Carmela and Jasmin Cardenas plays Mami in "Carmela Full of Wishes" at Chicago Childrens Theatre. (Joel Maisonet photo / HANDOUT)

Chicago Childrens Theatre also works to make theater more widely available to local students, partnering with Chicago Public Schools to provide free and reduced-price tickets to under-resourced schools. In addition to its work on stage, the theater offers virtual learning resources on its YouTube channel and in-person performing arts and STEAM educational programs for children up to age 14.

Carmela Full of Wishes is open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays, with weekday performances for schools and other groups. While children ages 5-10 are the prime audience for this production, the theater welcomes patrons of any age; the opening performance held the attention of several younger children throughout its 65-minute run time. With its picture book visuals, charming cast, strong Latina protagonist and universal themes, Carmela Full of Wishes is well worth an outing for anyone with a little person in their life.

Review: Carmela Full of Wishes

When: Through May 22

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Where: Chicago Childrens Theatre, 100 S. Racine Ave.

Running time: 65 minutes

Tickets: $32 at www.ChicagoChildrensTheatre.org
Arnett Engineered Solutions LLC, a pump and valve manufacturer and provider, announced in August 2021 that it plans to establish operations in Bamberg County.

The company is to invest $2.5 million and create 19 new jobs.

Arnett Engineered Solutions is thrilled to be growing our operations and purchasing the beautiful facility at 61 Innovation Drive in Bamberg, South Carolina. We look forward to joining the Bamberg community to work with and serve its greatest asset: wonderful people. We also want to extend our sincere gratitude to the team at SouthernCarolina Alliance for their assistance with a seamless transition into the area, Arnett Engineered Solutions Director of Operations Emilyn Gjertsen said.

The $2.5 million will be to purchase of the building at CrossRhodes Industrial Park south of Bamberg on U.S. 301. The building was previously occupied by Freudenberg, which was formerly Tobul Accumulators.

Established in 2013, Arnett designs, manufactures and distributes valves and pumps for a large portfolio of companies in various industries.

Located at 61 Innovation Drive, Arnetts new facility will increase the companys operating capacity to meet growing demand.

We celebrate Arnett establishing operations in Bamberg County and creating 19 new jobs in our state. We look forward to the impact this great company will have in the community, Gov. Henry McMaster said.

Bamberg County Council Chairman Larry Haynes said, Bamberg County welcomes Arnett Engineered Solutions LLC and we appreciate their job creation and investment in our community. Every good job changes the future for a family, and we look forward to working with Arnett CEO Chase Arnett and his team in the coming years.

The new facility is expected to be operational by September 2021. Individuals interested in joining the Arnett team should visit the companys contact webpage.

Its always a big win for South Carolina any time a company decides to invest in our state and our people. Todays announcement is a testament to the pro-business environment weve cultivated within our borders, and I look forward to watching them succeed right here in South Carolina, Secretary of Commerce Harry M. Lightsey III said.

Congratulations to Arnett Engineered Solutions LLC and Bamberg County. Arnett will be an asset to our local and regional economies, and we are proud that they have chosen a new home in the SouthernCarolina region of South Carolina, SouthernCarolina Alliance Chairman Marty Sauls said.

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DP World Americas plans to develop parcels at its 1,322-acre South Carolina Gateway" Industrial Park in Santee for the placement of speculative buildings.

Orangeburg County Council has agreed to provide DP World with financial incentives to develop parcels for future buildings.

Council has given tentative approval to an ordinance placing the parcels into a multicounty industrial/business park with Dorchester County. The multicounty park is an incentive mechanism designed to encourage economic development.

Orangeburg County attorney Jerrod Anderson said the company wants the multicounty industrial park designation to woo lessors to the county to lease and do business in the county.

Two pads have been built at the site to house future speculative buildings.

One pad is on a 22-acre site and will house a 250,000-square-foot speculative building.

The other pad is on a 20-acre site and will house a 125,000-square-foot speculative building, according to the project's website.

The 125,000-square-foot building will be an expandable Class A structure with tilt walls that can be subdivided for smaller users.

The park's master plan projects upwards of 6.5 million square feet of building space.

About 350 acres are currently available for sale or built-to-suit development at DP World Americas. According to an OCDC flyer, about 806 acres of the site can be developed.

Project officials say the park can handle industrial, warehousing, manufacturing and ancillary services.

DP World Americas plans are just the latest movement at the park.

Georgia-based shelling company Premium Peanut announced that it plans to invest $64 million in the park and to bring 130 new jobs to the area over the next five years.

The investment will include $27.5 million in buildings and $36.8 million in equipment. The company will occupy about 42 acres.

The DP World Americas site has power through Tri-County Electric Cooperative, natural gas from Dominion, water from the Lake Marion Regional Water System, sewer service from Orangeburg County/Santee, telecommunications through Verizon and Frontier and fire protection from the Santee Fire Service and Orangeburg County Fire Service.

The site also has access to CSX rail.

The property is also certified by the S.C. Department of Commerce, meaning that substantial wetlands, environmental, geotechnical and archaeological studies have been performed.

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An Italian fabric maker is locating manufacturing operations in Orangeburg County.

Pratrivero USA Inc., a division of Pratrivero Nonwovens, is investing $17.6 million and creating 34 new jobs in the former Mayer Industries building at 3777 Industrial Boulevard. Industrial Boulevard is near Interstate 26s Exit 145.

The investment includes $6.5 million in buildings and $11.1 million in machinery and equipment. The 34 new jobs will be realized within the next three years.

Headquartered in Italy and family-owned and operated for 14 generations, Pratrivero Nonwovens provides fabrics used in a variety of sectors including furnishings, advertising banners, footwear, packaging and the automotive industry.

Located at 3777 Industrial Blvd. in Orangeburg, Pratrivero USAs Orangeburg County facility will produce stitchbond, a nonwoven fabric produced by mechanical bonding of fiber layers with continuous filaments. The facility will also include distribution operations.

Operations are expected to be online in September 2022. Pratrivero USA is working with readySC to support future recruitment.

Pratrivero USA is looking forward to being part of the Orangeburg County industrial family. We are very excited about this new investment and feel by choosing such a great location and working with the wonderful people in this community, we will succeed," Pratrivero USA President Paolo Barberis Canonico said.

"The approach that Orangeburg County has taken to include a training program with Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College to help us find and train people specifically for our industry is a wonderful benefit for Pratrivero USA and the people we will be hiring.

Orangeburg County Council unanimously gave third and final reading to a fee-in-lieu-of-taxes incentive for a company previously known as Project Stallion. A public hearing was also held. There were no comments during the public hearing.

Council also gave unanimous first reading to an ordinance for the project to enter into a joint county industrial park between Dorchester County. The joint county industrial park is not a physical park but an incentive mechanism used to attract economic development.

Pratrivero would be the 29th international company to call Orangeburg County home. There are about 17 different countries with a manufacturing presence in Orangeburg County.

Officials praised the announcement:

Pratrivero USAs new operation in Orangeburg County is another testament to South Carolinas pro-business environment and workforce. We are excited to have Pratrivero USA join our roster of global companies that operate within our state," Gov. Henry McMaster said.

South Carolina has deep roots in the textiles industry, and we are excited to continue that tradition with Pratrivero USAs new operation in Orangeburg County. Congratulations to Pratrivero USA and the positive impact they are making in the Orangeburg community, Secretary of Commerce Harry M. Lightsey II said.

Were thankful for Pratriveros decision to invest its operations in Orangeburg. We appreciate Pratriveros leadership and investors for believing in our people and location. This $17.6 million investment is a big win for the City of Orangeburg, Orangeburg County, and all committed to supporting this project and company well into the future. We look forward to celebrating their continued prosperous relationship," City of Orangeburg Mayor Michael Butler said.

"Orangeburg County warmly welcomes Pratrivero! We look forward to their pursuit of excellence extending into Orangeburg County, and with our citizens, Orangeburg County Administrator Harold Young said.

Were grateful for another economic development announcement in Orangeburg County. We value our international diversity as it makes us stronger as a state. This $17.6 million investment and creation of 34 jobs is a wonderful way to kick off 2022. This announcement by Pratrivero USA brings 28 foreign companies representing 17 countries to Orangeburg County. It is indeed a great day in our county. Thank you for your investment in our community. We value you and look forward to a long-term relationship, Orangeburg County Council Chair Johnnie Wright said.

We welcome Pratrivero USA to the robust community of businesses that have found success in Orangeburg County. The companys commitment expands the scope of international operations within the county, as well as the growing textile industry. Thank you, Pratrivero USA, for your commitment to Orangeburg, and congratulations to our friends and partners in the county and beyond on todays announcement, Central SC Alliance Chairman W. Keller Kissam said.

The origins of Pratrivero S.p.A, as it it known today, go way back.

The first official reference to a textile activity by the family as fabric manufacturers is documented in a manuscript of the Municipality of Trivero, Aug. 20, 1663, according to the company's website.

Ajmo Barbero, namesake of the family's ancestors, is recorded on a payment made to the Duke of Savoy and the local feudal lord, made partly in cash and partly using a fabric, "the grey twill," as the object of the payment, according to the company's website.

The company also has a plant in Greenville, as well as two in Italy. The company's Greenville plant specializes in interior filler and exterior covers and borders primarily for mattresses.

The arrival of Pratrivero comes on the heels of Turkish-based mattress company BRN Sleep Products announcing in July 2021 its plans to invest $4.3 million and create more than 300 new jobs in Orangeburg County over the next five years.

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Ive been trying to get inside Wyomings prisons (without actually being sentenced, if possible) since I started covering crime in the state about a year and a half ago.

But with COVID-19 rates high among incarcerated people and frequent lockdowns as a result, in-person visits just werent possible for a while.

As cases have declined in recent months, the Department of Corrections has opened up visitations, shed masks inside prisons and begun to invite the press to tour the facilities.

In March, Star-Tribune photojournalist Lauren Miller and I visited the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution in Torrington, which bore the brunt of the coronavirus in the states prisons. It also houses the hospice unit for those incarcerated in Wyoming, as well as a mental health unit and a larger slate of medical offerings.

Id been hearing about the medical facility there, and finally got to meet one of the prisons doctors. I saw the dental examination room, which a source had told me takes months of requests to get in with an appointment. I saw people receiving dialysis, just a few days after machines came back online after being out of commission (which meant sending inmates out to dialysis centers in places as far as Casper, Cheyenne and Gillette).

This week, I toured the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins with a larger group of reporters. We saw the large cracks in the walls and floor, caused by an ongoing problem with water underneath the current facility. We heard about the old prison building, closed in 2001, thats now condemned and home to pits of snakes in the summer. Like in Torrington, we were shown the small isolation rooms (with optional leg shackles) that hold people on suicide watch or who have been violent to staff.

Ive had a comic on my cubicle wall for a few months, showing a man in a cell filling out a job application. Who needs parole? hes saying, the Wyoming State Prisons so desperate for staff, Im just gonna apply for a job. Based on what we heard from several employees there, that picture of the staffing shortage isnt far off.

While phone calls and letters have been valuable, theres no match for going out and witnessing for yourself. Walking around the state penitentiary on Wednesday, I told the warden it was good to finally see what Ive been hearing about  what an actual pod looks like, full or empty, or where they placed COVID-positive people.

If youve been in these prisons, or if you have a loved one there, these things arent surprising. If you havent had a reason to think about what goes on inside the barbed wire fence, then its easy to assume everything is kosher. But its your tax money thats funding these places  so I think its important you know whats going on.

Next, Im planning on making a trip to the Wyoming Womens Center in Lusk in mid-May.

If there is anything else youre wondering about the states prisons, if you have questions youd like me to ask or if you or a loved one has experiences to share, let me know. You can reach me at (307) 266-0544, ellen.gerst@trib.com or send me a letter at P.O. Box 80, Casper WY 82602.

Follow city and crime reporter Ellen Gerst on Twitter at @ellengerst.

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When Wyoming Sen. Anthony Bouchard announced he would seek to unseat Rep. Liz Cheney, cash quickly flowed into his campaign.

Bouchard was the first Republican to challenge Cheney after she voted to impeach former President Donald Trump. Within a week of his January 2021 announcement, his campaign had raised $50,000.

Since then, his fundraising has continued to fall off while his cash on hand has dwindled, federal campaign finance records show.

In the first three months of 2021, the state senator raised about $334,000 and had $164,000 in the bank. Fast forward a year to the first quarter of 2022, and Bouchard collected a mere $10,500 and has just under $50,000 on hand.

That $10,500 sum is the smallest quarterly amount his campaign took in since he entered the race.

Bouchard said hes been focusing on his senatorial duties, as opposed to campaigning, over the past few months. The Wyoming Legislature was in session for parts of February and March.

As we actually go into the real campaign season ... were gonna turn it back on, he said.

Bouchard joined the race only a week after Cheneys impeachment vote. Announcing early allowed him to get ahead of the pack.

The firebrand senator, who represent parts of Laramie and Goshen counties, is know for a combative and provocative style of politics. Hes been quick to attack fellow Republicans for not being conservative enough.

During last months budget session, his Senate colleagues voted to strip him of his committee assignments after accusing him of using intimidating tactics against members of the Senate and members of the public.

If were going to save America, we need fewer status quo Republicans, he wrote in a Thursday Facebook post.

Bouchards style has attracted a following, and in 2021, the state senator raised nearly $635,000. Of that, almost 73% came from small individual donations, federal campaign finance records show.

Almost 11% of Bouchards 2021 cash came from donors who gave over $2,000. Those donations equaled just over $68,000. Donations between $200 and $2,000 account for the rest of the 2021 haul.

The biggest source of financial support for the senator came from Wyoming. About 8.6% or $55,000 came from donors who live here. Donations from Colorado, where Bouchards family spends time, accounted for almost 4%. California and Florida, two states where Bouchard has connections, trailed closely behind.

Bouchard experienced a stark decline in donations in the fundraising quarter that ran from July to September. He collected $65,500, compared with $213,000 during the prior three months.

Midway through the second quarter of 2021 Bouchard made national headlines after it was revealed that he impregnated a 14-year-old girl when he was 18 and living in Florida. He told the Star-Tribune he married the girl when she was 15 and he was 19. They divorced a couple years later.

As the state senators fundraising steadily declined, Cheney and the Donald Trumps pick for Wyomings House seat, land attorney Harriet Hageman, broke personal fundraising records.

Cheney raked in nearly $3 million over the first quarter of 2022 and Hageman raised over $1 million. These numbers brought Hagemans cash on hand to $1.06 million and Cheneys to $6.77 million.

In the August primary, Bouchard is expected to siphon away some support from Hageman as both are competing for voters dissatisfied with Cheney. Additionally, there are two other Republican candidates who have raised money and two more who are registered but have not collected donations. With seven candidates in the Republican primary, the winner could achieve less than 50% of the vote.

Bouchard was the highest profile Republican to stay in the race after Trump endorsed Hageman. Hes tried to depict her as no different than Cheney.

Liz Cheney and Harriet Hageman have both positioned themselves against each other, and Ive been someone who has worked for the people, he said.

The state senator has also posted photos of Cheney and Hageman together  taken from before the campaign  to illustrate his point.

Follow state politics reporter Victoria Eavis on Twitter @Victoria_Eavis

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The Southwest is turning to upstream reservoirs as the water level in Lake Powell continues to fall.

Regulators plan to release an extra 500,000 acre-feet of water from Wyomings Flaming Gorge Reservoir between May of this year and April of next year to prevent Lake Powell, a reservoir on the Colorado River thats a major source of both water and electricity, from becoming so depleted that it stops generating hydropower.

Prolonged drought and high temperatures fueled by climate change have shrunk the water level in Lake Powell, which sits on both sides of the Utah-Arizona border, to about one-quarter of capacity. The first-ever planned effort to ease the effects of drought at the reservoir comes less than a year after regulators announced an emergency release of 125,000 acre-feet from Flaming Gorge  about 4 feet in elevation loss  for the same purpose last summer.

If approved by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the additional release is expected to lower the water level at Flaming Gorge by 10 feet from its current elevation  including a 6-foot drop by August  and by about 15 feet compared with the estimated water level without any drought response.

Historically, theres been less demand for water from Flaming Gorge than other upper-basin reservoirs. The lower demand kept its water level high, which in turn kept it popular for recreation  an important factor affecting decisions about releasing some of that water.

We believe that the boat ramp in Wyoming should still be functional. You should still be able to launch and retrieve boats, said Jeff Cowley, administrator of the Interstate Streams Division of the Wyoming State Engineers Office. But its possible, he said, that the elevation loss could affect some docks and other structures.

Wyoming and the three other states in the Upper Colorado River Commission  Colorado, Utah and New Mexico  approved the release from Flaming Gorge on Thursday as part of their 2022 Drought Response Operations Plan. Cowley said it and other water conservation strategies, including some taken at Lake Powell itself, will have a significant probability of keeping the reservoir at a safe level for the next year.

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College Boy Jesse (Jesse Stewart) is the new leadeer of the legendary D All Starz soca band.

Jesse, the 2020 International Soca Monarch (Groovy), will fill the void left by his late cousin, soca icon Blaxx (Dexter Stewart) on the legendary Roy Cape-founded bands frontline. Blaxx, a huge supporter of Jesses relatively young career, passed away from Covid-19 on March 28.
President Joe Biden on Sunday commemorated the 107th anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide, issuing a statement in memory of the 1.5 million Armenians who were deported, massacred or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination.

The statement did not reference the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which Biden has called a genocide. Yet Biden used the anniversary to lay down a set of principles for foreign policy as the United States and its allies arm Ukrainians and impose sanctions on Russia.

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We renew our pledge to remain vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms, the president said. We recommit ourselves to speaking out and stopping atrocities that leave lasting scars on the world.

In 1915, Ottoman officials arrested Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople, now Istanbul. The Biden statement notes that this event on April 24 marked the beginning of the genocide.

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Fulfilling a campaign promise, Biden used the term genocide for the first time during last years anniversary. Past White Houses had avoided that word for decades out of a concern that Turkey  a NATO member  could be offended.

Turkish officials were angered by Bidens declaration a year ago, with the foreign ministry issuing a statement that said, We reject and denounce in the strongest terms the statement of the President of the US regarding the events of 1915 made under the pressure of radical Armenian circles and anti-Turkey groups.
Thirty-eight per cent of the murders committed in Trinidad and Tobago for the year thus far 
Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds center and President Boad of Directors Trinidad and Tobago Police Credit Union Auldric Neptune cut the ribbon to officially open the Trinidad and Tobago Police Credit Union new Flagship Headquarters, Barataria yesterday. Looking on is other boad members. Photo ISHMAEL SALANDY.
There are food shortages in the world already due to the war in Ukraine: the UK imposed a series of limits on cooking oil

There are food shortages in the world already due to the war in Ukraine: the UK imposed a series of limits on cooking oil

Supermarkets across the UK have imposed restrictions on oil sales due to the war in Ukraine.

UK supermarkets limit cooking oil purchases after supplies hit by Ukraine war. As a result, all are now being rationed both in-store and online in a number of major supermarkets. It is now possible to buy no more than 1-3 bottles of oil per customer, the Daily Mail reports.

This is because most of the sunflower oil consumed in the country comes from Ukraine, where Russia's invasion has caused huge disruption to exports. Due to the shortage of sunflower oil, the demand for olive and rapeseed oil has increased.

As a consequence, the British customers can buy a few bottles of oil. Images have also been posted on social media of signs in Iceland's stores limiting sales of two-litre and five-litre bottles of sunflower oil to one per customer.

Tom Holder from the British Retail Consortium said the restrictions are a temporary measure 'to ensure availability for everyone'.

"But yes, we are limiting purchases and we've moved into smaller packs to allow existing stocks in the market to service more customers, Richard Walker, managing director of Iceland supermarkets, said.

UK food manufacturers that use sunflower oil as an ingredient in their products, such as crisps and oven chips, have also reported concerns over supplies. In a move to ensure such items remain available, the Food Standards Agency has allowed suppliers to switch to using rapeseed oil.

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Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren is slamming Rep. Kevin McCarthy as a liar and a traitor over recordings that show the House Republican leader  despite his denials  placing responsibility on then-President Donald Trump for the Capitol riot and suggesting Trump should resign.

Its unusually strong language to use against the House Republican leader, who is in line to become speaker  second in presidential succession  if Republicans win control of the House in the November elections.

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But Warrens statement reflects a swell of Democratic criticism against McCarthy. They point to his recorded comments in January 2021 as proof that GOP lawmakers at the highest levels privately acknowledge Trumps role in the insurrection at the Capitol yet continue to defend him in public.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks during a Senate Banking Committee hearing, March 3, 2022 on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Tom Williams/AP)

McCarthy, R-Calif., denied a New York Times report last week that detailed phone conversations with House Republican leadership shortly after the riot that he thought Trump should resign. He called it totally false. But in an audio first posted Thursday by the newspaper and aired on Rachel Maddows MSNBC show, McCarthy is heard discussing the possibility of urging Trump to leave office amid the Democratic push to impeach him.

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Asked Sunday about her reaction, Warren, D-Mass., called the circumstances outrageous.

Kevin McCarthy is a liar and a traitor, she told CNNs State of the Union.

That is really the illness that pervades the Republican leadership right now, that they say one thing to the American public and something else in private, Warren said. They understand that it is wrong what happened, an attempt to overthrow our government and that the Republicans instead want to continue to try to figure out how to make 2020 election different instead of spending their energy on how it is that we go forward in order to build an economy, in order to make this country work better for the people who sent us to Washington.

Shame on Kevin McCarthy, she said.

There was no immediate response Sunday from McCarthys office to a request for comment.

The crowd that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, marched there from a rally near the White House where Trump had implored them to fight to overturn Democrat Joe Bidens victory in the presidential election, saying falsely the election was stolen. Trump has denied responsibility for the violence.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

McCarthy has been a person of interest for the House committee investigating the storming of the Capitol. The committee requested an interview with McCarthy in mid-January, seeking information on his communications with Trump and White House staff in the week after the violence, including a conversation with Trump that was reportedly heated.

McCarthy issued a statement at the time saying he would refuse to cooperate because he saw the investigation as not legitimate and accused the panel of abuse of power.

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Trump and McCarthy had a strained relationship after the Capitol attack, but made amends after the GOP leader flew to the former presidents resort in Florida to smooth things over.

Their alliance renewed, McCarthy is now relying on Trump to help Republicans win the House majority in this Novembers midterm elections.
February, according to Customs and Border Protection data released Monday  the highest monthly total in more than two decades.

While many are preparing for an increased number of migrants entering the immigration system, the number of apprehensions could possibly go down. One of the reasons the number is so high is actually because of Title 42. The rate of people crossing multiple times greatly increased since the policy was enacted, inflating the numbers, since more than half of the migrants apprehended were expelled under the public health policy.

Arizona saw its highest monthly number as well in March, since at least October of 2019, at more than 57,600 encounters  at least 25% higher than any other month this fiscal year.

March marks the halfway point of fiscal year 2022, and there have already been nearly 275,000 migrant encounters on Arizonas southern border, compared to about 312,000 in all of fiscal year 2021.

The Border Patrols Yuma Sector, southwest of Pima County and stretching into the eastern part of California, saw a huge increase in crossings that started last year, many involving families and mostly of people from countries farther away from the U.S., like Cuba, Colombia, Brazil, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

The Tucson Sector saw a substantial increase in March compared to previous months. In the Tucson Sector the majority of apprehensions involved single adults from Mexico.

What lies next

Migrants who are from countries farther than Central America are less likely to be returned under Title 42.

Of the migrants not expelled under Title 42, those who are deemed eligible to request asylum are processed by Customs and Border Protection, then sent to a local nonprofit that helps asylum seekers, which helps arrange transportation to a family member who is their sponsor in the U.S., typically in another state.

The Pima County Grants Management Department is putting together a budget with its community partners to address the anticipated surge of asylum seekers after Title 42 ends.

The countys current expenses for the services it provides, which include food, shelter, transportation and other services, is $1.6 million a month, according to Regina Kelly, director of the Grants Management Department.

The county has been covering these increasing costs using grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, sometimes paying up front and then being reimbursed.

The $1.5 trillion federal spending bill that became law on March 15 included $150 million for FEMAs Emergency Food and Shelter Program to assist migrants.

Pima received its first installment of $3.2 million from these new grants this past week, which officials anticipate will cover costs through June, based on current expenses. And if the the county is inundated with asylum seekers in June, it will ask FEMA for more money, Kelly says.

Along with the countys plan to cover expenses, community partner Catholic Community Services is making adjustments to be able to receive more asylum seekers, says Teresa Cavendish, Catholic Community Services director of operations.

The nonprofit runs the Casa Alitas Welcome Center, where the asylum seekers typically go for a few hours or a night and can receive clothes, a shower, food, COVID tests and vaccines, and help arranging transportation to their sponsors.

All indications are that there will be a significant increase in the number of people needing assistance, especially in the Tucson Sector, Cavendish says.

The Tucson Sector is likely to see a bigger change than in the Yuma Sector because Title 42 is being used in the Tucson Sector at a far higher rate.

Of the 122,600 apprehensions in the Tucson Sector this fiscal year, 82% were expelled under the policy. Conversely, in the Yuma Sector, only 11% of the 149,100 apprehensions resulted in a Title 42 expulsion.

When the Department of Homeland Security is no longer expelling people under Title 42, it will process those who are unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the United States, such as a valid asylum claim, for removal under immigration laws.

As well, if the number of people coming into the immigration process increases, there will likely be more people in immigration detention and prosecuted through the courts. Neither the District of Arizona U.S. Attorneys Office nor the courts would comment on whether they are anticipating higher numbers or whether there is preparation taking place.

With the increasing number of apprehensions at the border, some politicians have called for Title 42 to continue, including both of Arizonas U.S. senators, Democrats Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema.

Its unacceptable to end Title 42 without a plan and coordination in place to ensure a secure, orderly, and humane process at the border, Kelly said in a statement on April 1, following the announcement to end Title 42.

From my numerous visits to the southern border and conversations with Arizonas law enforcement, community leaders, mayors and nonprofits, its clear that this administrations lack of a plan to deal with this crisis will further strain our border communities. The Department of Homeland Security says it does have a plan. Congress recently appropriated $1.45 billion for a potential surge of migrants at the southern border. The DHS plan includes additional resources to increase the holding and processing capacity at the border and to remove those who cant prove a valid claim to stay in the states as well as working with other countries to address root causes of migration.

Many who say Title 42 should not yet be rescinded talk more about needing it for border security instead of its intended purpose as a pandemic precaution.

Kelly and Sinema are part of a bipartisan group of senators who are asking for more details and introduced legislation earlier this month to delay the end of Title 42 by at least 60 more days to give agencies more time to develop plans to deal with a possible influx of migrants.

Also, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who is running for the Senate, is one of three Republican attorneys general suing the Biden administration over the decision to end Title 42.

If Title 42 ends, it will result in an even greater crisis at the border that will have a devastating impact, not just on border states, but across the country, Brnovich said in a tweet earlier this month.

Unequipped towns

Betto Ramos, coordinator at a migrant resource center and a migrant shelter in Agua Prieta, Sonora, says the number of people they are serving has greatly increased over the last year and especially in recent months.

In the nearly 16 years theyve been operating, theyve received more than 80,000 migrants, out of which more than 30,000 were in 2021, and 14,000 have been in the first three months of 2022. Theyre currently serving about 200 people a day, though sometimes more, like last Monday, when about 80 people arrived every four hours.

When Title 42 ends, Ramos thinks the number of migrants they serve will go down. People will likely not be crossing numerous times and will be more likely to be deported to their home countries if they are not allowed to stay in the United States.

The resource center and shelter, which are partners of the binational Presbyterian border ministry Frontera de Cristo, dont have a position on Title 42, Ramos says.

We know that the policies only get stricter, he said. After Title 42 is lifted, people who are migrants will suffer more.  All the policies in both Mexico and the United States, in my experience, do not

favor the immigrant population.

Not all migrants arriving in Agua Prieta, south of Douglas, Arizona, attempted a crossing there. Some are transported by Customs and Border Protection from Nogales or Sasabe, which are 100 to 200 miles away, and dropped off at the border.

One of the reasons the number of encounters has increased in the last two years is actually because of Title 42. The count is the number of times Border Patrol apprehends someone crossing the border, rather than the number of people apprehended.

While there were more than 221,000 encounters on the entire U.S. southern border in March, nearly 56% of those people were expelled under Title 42 or immigration law, according to court documents.

Since many migrants are dropped off right on the southern side of the border, often in small towns that have few services for them and might be more than 100 miles from where they crossed the first time, many try to cross again, inflating the number of apprehensions.

In 2021, 27% of encounters at the northern and southern U.S. borders were with individuals apprehended more than once by the Border Patrol. The figure was 26% in 2020 but only 7% in 2019, prior to Title 42.

Many migrants are coming now because of different issues in their countries of origin, Williams says.

Political and economic distress, violence and natural disasters, which in many cases have been exacerbated by the pandemic, are forcing more people to leave their countries of origin that are farther away, such as Haiti, Cuba countries in South America. As well, the pandemic has made it harder for people to migrate to South American countries or for migrants already established there to stay.

Those in favor of ending the policy, like the Kino Border Initiative, a binational organization that provides humanitarian aid to migrants in Nogales, Sonora, say it subverts migrants rights under both domestic and international law to make an asylum claim, and that it leaves migrants to wait in border towns in often dire and dangerous conditions.

There are about 700 migrants in Nogales who have are waiting for the chance to ask for asylum, about 500 of whom have been waiting more than six months, says Joanna Williams, executive director of the Kino Border Initiative. Williams estimated that 75% of people waiting are families.

Ending Title 42 should be done because its a moral issue, Williams said. It should be done because of the humanitarian issue, because just on a basic level, we need to have a system in which we operate within the law. And the law says that people should have access to asylum and therefore there should be some channel for that.

Contact reporter Danyelle Khmara at dkhmara@tucson.com or 573-4223 . On Twitter: @DanyelleKhmara

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Lake Powell, facing an existential crisis from drought and climate change, is getting a nearly 1 million acre-foot reprieve.

The way has been cleared for the federal government to send a half-million acre-feet of water from an upstream reservoir to Lake Powell. At the same time, the feds will keep nearly 500,000 more acre-feet in Powell instead of letting it flow downstream to Lake Mead.

These actions should prevent Lake Powell from falling so low in the near future that Glen Canyon Dams power-generating turbines would have to be shut off.

But many experts agree the fix is only temporary as long as river flows keep declining as they have since 2000. More steps, including additional conservation, will be required to keep the river system sustainable in the long run, authorities said.

The two short-term fixes for Powell announced late last week are:

The seven Colorado River Basin states wrote a letter to U.S. Assistant Interior Secretary Tanya Trujillo, accepting Interiors April 8 proposal to hold back 480,000 acre-feet of water from the ailing Lake Powell reservoir at the Arizona-Utah border. That water had been scheduled to flow to Lake Mead for delivery to cities, farms and tribes in the Lower Colorado River Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada.

That means Lake Mead will get 7 million acre-feet from Powell in the water year 2021-22, which ends Sept. 30, 2022  the lowest release from Powell in many years. But at least for the rest of this year and into next year, the cuts in deliveries from Powell won't reduce the amount of water Arizona cities and farms get from CAP -- Lake Mead will simply absorb the cuts and fall lower.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the rivers four Upper Basin states signed off on a related proposal to send a half-million acre-feet to Powell from the Flaming Gorge reservoir upstream, at the Utah-Wyoming border. The water will leave Flaming Gorge between May 1, 2022, through April 30, 2023.

Both actions almost certainly insure Powell will get through the upcoming year if not longer without falling below 3,490 feet. Thats the level at which Glen Canyon Dam could no longer generate electricity. Today, Powell stands at about 3,522 feet, more than 75 feet below where it stood two years ago, as arid conditions in the West have reduced flows into the 59-year-old reservoir. It is 24% full, holding about 5.75 million acre-feet or nearly 1.9 trillion gallons of water.

Also, Interior Department officials had expressed concerns that operating the dam with the lake that low could imperil much of the dams concrete and steel infrastructure. Below 3,490 feet, Powells water would have to be routed downstream through a set of four outlet tubes, lying away from the dams turbines, that have never handled water for an extended period before.

It should get us through the low period right now to March and April 2023 and significantly reduce the chance of Powell falling below 3,490, said Eric Kuhn, former general manager of the northern Colorado-based Colorado River Water Conservation District. But if we had another bad year in winter 2022-23, theres still a chance it could go below 3,490 in the winter of 2023-24.

In a statement accompanying the public release of the states letter to Trujillo, Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke said: The Basin States response agrees immediate action is necessary to support operations at the dam . . . While the emergency responses receiving consideration from the Secretary of the Interior are unprecedented, more work is required across the entire Colorado River Basin to ensure the stability of the system. In the Lower Basin, significant additional conservation is required to support the elevations in Lake Mead, now and for the future.

There are two separate problems on the river right now, said John Fleck, an author and former head of the University of New Mexicos Water Resources Research Program. One is to protect the dams physical infrastructure and to maintain its power generation, and these actions at Flaming Gorge and holding back water from Lake Mead helps a great deal with that problem.

We have another problem, related to this problem  the imbalance between supply and consumption. That is why the reservoir is going down. These moves do nothing for that, said Fleck.

In the seven states letter to Trujillo, their water leaders recounted past efforts to get a handle on the problem of declining river flows and reservoirs. Those include the 2007 guidelines they approved that set the first threshold levels in Lake Mead where shortages in deliveries will be declared; the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan, which instituted a series of Lower Basin cutbacks that take effect as Lakes Mead and Powell keep declining; and a plan to compensate water users for saving up to 500,000 acre feet in the Lower Basin this year.

But the letter added, Our collective efforts notwithstanding, record low runoff, particularly over the past two years, has contributed to historically low storage in Colorado River reservoirs. We appreciate your continuing efforts to work closely with each of the Governors representatives as we face extraordinary circumstances on the Colorado River as a result of historic drought, low-runoff conditions, and depleted storage over the past two decades.

The four Upper Basin states of New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming approved the 500,000 acre-foot release of water from Flaming Gorge to Powell as part of what they call a Drought Response Operations Plan. The Interior Department must approve that release, but that is likely a formality at this point.

Developing the 2022 Drought Response Operations Plan is an unprecedented and significant action by the Upper Colorado River Basin states to protect the Colorado River System for all who rely on it, said Rebecca Mitchell, Colorados representative to the four-state Upper Colorado River Commission that manages Upper Basin water issues.

When added to 161,000 acre-feet released last year from Flaming Gorge and Blue Mesa Reservoir, near Gunnison, Colorado, Mitchell said: The Upper Basin has contributed 661,000 acre-feet of water to protect critical elevations at Lake Powell. The Upper Basin States are doing our part to protect the Colorado River system.

Flaming Gorge sits on the Green River and is designed mainly for electric power production and water storage, with a power regime thats aimed at also protecting habitat for the rivers imperiled native fish.

Unlike Lakes Powell and Mead, Flaming Gorges water levels have been relatively stable. The reservoir currently holds slightly below 3 million acre-feet and is about 78% full.

Theoretically, the reservoir could release a half-million acre-feet annually for five or six years before reaching dangerously low levels, although Kuhn said, I dont think they have six years to keep delivering water from Flaming Gorge to Powell while authorities search for longer-term solutions.

I think this gives them another year, maybe two at the most, of continued well below average hydrology for planning, Kuhn said. I think one of the advantages, one of the good things about this, is that theyre leaving some water in Flaming Gorge for future years if they need to draw on it.

Reclamation has left themselves with the ability to do this again through 2024. At some point, they are going to run out of those options  they arent going to be there.

Utahs Upper Colorado River Commissioner, Gene Shawcroft, was quoted by KUNC radio in Fort Collins as lauding a spirit of collaboration between the upper basin states. While the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had the pen most of the time, Shawcroft said the four states were involved in every word of the agreement and worked collaboratively so the federal government was not in greater control of their fates.

But Utah environmentalist John Weisheit said the reclamation agency and the states are operating on hope and prayers.

I think its totally ridiculous. Five hundred thousand acre-feet (from Flaming Gorge) is going to do nothing but delay the inevitable, said Weisheit, director of the Moab-based Living Rivers, which advocates draining Lake Powell and sending its water to Mead to restore Glen Canyon upstream and to reduce evaporation in the reservoir system.

They are burning the furniture to stay warm. Its desperation. These managers are responsible for 40 million people living in the Colorado River Basin, and they are failing.

Colorado River researcher Brad Udall added the federal government's moves make sense for one year but that beyond that, it's time to find longer-term fixes for the depleted river.

"I worry that were looking for spare quarters in ash trays rather than finding long term solutions," said Udall, of Colorado State University.

Photos: Glen Canyon Dam dedicated in 1966 after years of construction Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam Glen Canyon Dam, bridge, construction Glen Canyon Dam, bridge, construction Glen Canyon Dam, bridge, construction Glen Canyon Dam, bridge, construction Glen Canyon

Contact Tony Davis at 520-349-0350 or tdavis@tucson.com. Follow Davis on Twitter@tonydavis987.

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Older adults in the LGBTQ community are more likely than other seniors to experience isolation, advocates say.

They are four times less likely to have children, twice as likely to live alone, and twice as likely to be single, according to a 2011 national health study co-authored by the Center for American Progress and Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Elders.

That reality heightens the importance of having a supportive community, and Southern Arizona Senior Pride works to help provide it.

In 2021, for instance, its Community Cares Program made 1,195 individual visits to isolated, homebound, and disabled community members, helping people to connect and feel connected.

Part of healthy aging is having companionship, gatherings and affirmations of who you are, said Southern Arizona Senior Pride board secretary and longtime volunteer Joyce Bolinger.

You cant survive without community, Bolinger said.

Senior Pride also creates a safe space for LGBTQ older adults to be their real selves, its leaders say.

Being out of the closet is a process that some LGBTQ older adults are still undergoing, advocates point out. They grew up in different times when being homosexual was a crime or was said to be related to some sort of mental illness, they note.

Being a homosexual was a big deep dark secret that you didnt tell anyone, said Robert Bell, Southern Arizona Senior Pride board vice-chair and longtime volunteer. It just was too dangerous to be real, to tell people who you really were.

For Erin Russ, coordinator of Senior Prides advance medical care planning program, Senior Pride is a place where she can recharge and talk to people who understand and support her struggles.

Being out and living authentically makes a big difference, Russ said.

Southern Arizona Senior Pride previously did grassroots volunteer activities under the auspices of Wingspan, a community center that served the LGBT senior community. After Wingspans closure in 2014, Senior Pride stepped up and continued the mission of building community for LGBTQ older adults.

In partnership with Pima Council on Aging, Interfaith Community Services, Southern Arizona Gender Alliance and Elder Alliance, Senior Pride offers programs that encourage social interaction, education, fun, cultural appreciation and identity.

From cultural events and workshops to social gatherings and support groups, Senior Pride says it provides social solutions in a safe environment for LGBTQ individuals to share their stories, losses and grief. It also has monthly gatherings in Himmel Park.

Its wide range of programs  health and wellbeing, social and learning, and arts and culture  work to empower LGBTQ seniors.

We share the history, we share our stories, we share the trauma and we share the pride, said executive director and longtime volunteer Lavina Tomer.

As board chair and volunteer Bruce Hyland put it: (Were) still fighting the good fight out there.

Diana Ramos is a University of Arizona journalism student apprenticing with the Arizona Daily Star.

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PHOENIX  All abortions will not become illegal in Arizona even if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the historic Roe v. Wade decision, Gov. Doug Ducey says.

The governor said the law he signed earlier this year outlawing abortion after 15 weeks takes precedence over an Arizona statute that has been on the books since before the 1973 abortion ruling, Ducey said in an interview with Capitol Media Services.

That state law makes it a crime for anyone who performs an abortion at any time at all during pregnancy. And it even outlaws providing a woman with drugs or any other method of terminating a pregnancy, with no exceptions except to save the life of the mother.

The statute was never repealed after the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision ruling that concluded women have a constitutional right to abortion, at least prior to a fetus becoming viable. That generally occurs somewhere around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The law Ducey signed last month outlaws abortions after 15 weeks. While it is not enforceable now as it runs afoul of Roe v. Wade, it built on the contingency that the Supreme Court will uphold a nearly identical Mississippi law.

But it also is possible that the justices may go further, voiding Roe v. Wade entirely. And that could allow Arizona to enforce its pre-1973 law that remains on the books.

Ducey, however, told Capitol Media Services that will not happen in Arizona.

The law of the land today in Arizona is the 15-weeks law, Ducey said. And that will remain law. Ducey says that will be the case regardless of whether the justices uphold the Mississippi law or overturn Roe v. Wade entirely.

Ducey does not dispute that the states pre-1973 law never was repealed. But he said thats irrelevant and that the new 15-week ban takes precedence  and becomes the only enforceable law.

This law was signed this year, Ducey said. I think that the law that you signed in 2022 supersedes 1973.

That, however, is not the interpretation of Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, the sponsor of SB 1164, which became the new law.

The 15-week ban does not replace the underlying law, Barto told Capitol Media Services. It makes it clear that the complete ban would go into effect if Roe is overturned.

And Barto said that should be obvious to Ducey.

She pointed out that the bill sent to the governor  which he signed  actually spells out that approval of the 15-week ban does not repeal, by implication or otherwise, 13-3603 (the pre-1973 anti-abortion law), or any other applicable state law regulating or restricting abortion.

That shouldnt be news to the governors office, Barto said, adding that Duceys interpretation is not how the new law reads.

Ducey, however, is not backing down. His press aide C.J. Karamargin said that the language in the new law is not what will decide the issue.

Intent matters here, Karamargin said. And were confident that the new laws will take precedence and prevail.

But Karamargin sidestepped repeated questions of whether it always was the intent of his boss, in signing the new law, to override the pre-1973 statute and keep abortions legal in Arizona for the first 15 weeks, regardless of whatever the U.S. Supreme Court decides. Instead, he said, Ducey approved it because he believes its good policy.

It isnt just Barto who believes that Ducey is misreading the law that he signed.

She said a lot depends on what the Supreme Court decides in its ruling on the Mississippi law that is expected by the end of June.

If the justices simply uphold that law and do no more, then that clears the way for Arizona to begin enforcing its own 15-week ban. But Herrod, who is an attorney, said the situation is different if the justices decide to reverse and repeal Roe v. Wade and its constitutional right of women to terminate a pregnancy regardless of state law.

If Roe is overturned, our contention would be that abortion is not legal in Arizona because of the pre-Roe law, she told Capitol Media Services.

It may not be as clear as Barto and Herrod contend, said Murphy Bannerman, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Arizona. And some of that, she said, is because the anti-abortion statute actually goes back to territorial days.

Theres an argument that the (pre-1973) law shouldnt stand because it was before we were a state, Bannerman said. She said it ultimately could be up to a court to decide whether the old law is automatically resurrected, whether it can be resurrected with legislative action, or whether it becomes a legal nullity.

The issue goes beyond whether Arizona could enforce its outright ban.

Last year lawmakers approved and Ducey signed a separate measure that makes it a crime for a medical professional to terminate a fetus at any stage of pregnancy if they know that the reason the woman is seeking the procedure solely because of a genetic defect. That law, which has no exception even if the fetus is not viable outside the womb, carries a penalty of up to a year in prison for doctors and others; there is no penalty on the woman.

But U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Rayes barred the state from enforcing the law.

He said it imposes an undue burden on women, making it contrary to federal court rulings. And that, he said, outweighs any interest the state claims in promoting life.

Attorney General Mark Brnovich had no luck asking the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to set aside the injunction.

So Brnovich asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intercede, filing a 38-page legal brief with Justice Elena Kagan. She is the justice that handles emergency appeals from the 9th Circuit.

Kagan, however, has yet to respond to the request, leaving the 2021 law unenforceable for now.

If Roe is overturned, however, that could pave the way for the state to implement the law.

Howard Fischer is a veteran journalist who has been reporting since 1970 and covering state politics and the Legislature since 1982. Follow him on Twitter at @azcapmedia or email azcapmedia@gmail.com .

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LAS VEGAS, N.M. (AP)  Maggie Mulligan said her dogs could sense the panic while she and her husband packed them up, agonized over having to leave horses behind and fled a fast-moving wildfire barreling toward their home in northeast New Mexico.

"We don't know what's next," she said. "We don't know if we can go back to the horses."

Mulligan and her husband, Bill Gombas, 67, were among the anxious residents who hurriedly packed up and evacuated their homes Friday ahead of ominous Western wildfires fueled by tinder-dry conditions and ferocious winds.

Keep scrolling for a collection of images from the western wildfires

Over a dozen sizable fires were burning in Arizona and New Mexico, destroying dozens of homes and as of Saturday burning more than 174 square miles (451 square kilometers).

Winds that howled Friday remained a concern on Saturday in northern New Mexico where two fires merged and quadrupled in size to a combined 66 square miles (171 square kilometers) in mountains and grassland northwest of Las Vegas.

The merged fires burned some structures but no figures were available, said fire information officer Mike Johnson. "They were able to save some structures and we know we lost other structures that we weren't able to defend."

Wind-blown clouds of dust and plumes of smoke obscured the skies near the fires, said Jesus Romero, assistant county manager for San Miguel County. "All the ugliness that spring in New Mexico brings  that's what they're dealing in."

An estimated 500 homes in San Miguel were in rural areas of Mora and San Miguel counties covered by evacuation orders or warning notices, Romero said.

Dangerous wildfire spread rapidly across areas of southern Nebraska for a second time this month, scorching thousands of acres and prompting forced evacuations from several towns. The latest fire blazed across an estimated 47,000 acres, starting near the Kansas state line and extending north to near the Harry Strunk Lake dam, the Valley Voice newspaper said. Full coverage here:

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PHOTO GALLERY

Photos: Wildfires burn parts of America's Southwest

Davenport reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writers Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Arizona, Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada, and Colleen Slevin in Denver contributed to this report. Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Attanasio on Twitter.

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TOKYO  Japan welcomed the reelection of French President Emmanuel Macron as key to the unity of Group of Seven at a time when its members need to work together to end Russias invasion of Ukraine as soon as possible.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida congratulated Macron in his Twitter messages in both Japanese and French, saying, I hope to closely work with President Macron in a wide range of issues, including Russias invasion of Ukraine and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihiko Isozaki on Monday extended heartfelt congratulations to Macron on his reelection.

As we face a critical moment to end Russias outrageous aggression and defend the peaceful world order, the G-7 unity is required more than ever, and we plan to continue working closely with France led by President Macron, Isozaki said.

Japan, worried about the impact of Russian invasion of Ukraine in the East Asia where China is increasingly taking assertive military actions, has tried to play a greater role as part of G-7 and has joined in sanctions against Moscow and provided support for Ukraine in line with other members.

Isozaki called France an important, special partner for Japan that shares universal values including freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. He said Tokyo intends to strengthen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

CANBERRA, Australia  Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is welcoming President Emmanuel Macrons reelection to a second term in France as a great expression of liberal democracy.

Macron was scathing of Morrison after Australias conservative government canceled a 90 billion Australian dollar ($66 billion) submarine contract in September.

Macron accused Morrison of lying to him about the state of the French contract before a deal was announced for the United States and Britain to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. Morrison denied misleading Macron, who refused to take the Australian leaders phone calls.

On Monday, Morrison tweeted: Congratulations Emmanuel Macron on your reelection as President. Another great expression of liberal democracy in action in uncertain times.

We wish you & France every success, in particular your leadership in Europe and as an important partner to Australia in the Indo-Pacific, Morrison added.

KYIV, Ukraine  Ukraines leader has congratulated Emmanuel Macron on winning a second term as president of France  and beating a far-right rival seen as close to Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelenskyy called Macron a true friend of Ukraineon Sunday and expressed appreciation for his support.

Tweeting in French, Zelenskyy said: Im convinced that we will advance together toward new joint victories. Toward a strong and united Europe!

Macron has sought a diplomatic solution to Russias war in Ukraine. France has also sent significant weapons to Ukraine and Macron is planning more.

In a TV debate ahead of Sundays runoff, Macron assailed challenger Marine Le Pens past ties to Russia, notably a loan her party got from a Russian-Czech bank in 2014.

PARIS  Watching Frances presidential election results was especially stressful for Yasmina Aksas.

The 19-year-old law student could have been forced to remove her headscarf if far-right leader Marine Le Pen had won instead of incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

Speaking to AP as the first projections came in showing Macron in the lead, Aksas was visible relieved  but far from overjoyed.

Its still 40% of people voting for Le Pen. Its reassuring that its Macron but its not a victory, said Aksas, who is active in feminist and social justice organizations. It reflects nothing of what I think and what I identify with.

She expressed concern about extremist language and ideas that used to be limited to militant far-right groups but have now entered the mainstream.

Under Macrons presidency, she described encroaching limits on Muslims in the name of fighting extremism. They made it a problem for everyone while remaining vague about who the menace is.

So if you feel concerned about what theyre doing, like closing mosques, associations, when they say theyre targeting jihadists, you shouldnt feel targeted, otherwise you are suspected of not being part of the republic.

MORE STORIES:

 Macron vs Le Pen: France votes in tense presidential runoff

 Frances presidential rivals: Key moments, private lives

 EXPLAINER: How Frances old-school voting system works

 Follow all AP stories on France's 2022 presidential election at https://apnews.com/hub/france-election-2022

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

LONDON  A European economist says that if exit polls hold true and Emmanuel Macron wins the election against his right-wing challenger Marine Le Pen, France will most likely remain an engine of growth and progress in Europe for the next five years.

Economist Holger Schmieding says France has outperformed Germany for the past five years. He says France under Macron would likely remain on track for a sustained period of faster gains in employment and per-capita GDP. He says a dynamic France next to a still somewhat strong Germany is a major positive for Europe.

The economist says Macron has strengthened the French economy by more than any of his predecessors since Charles de Gaulle.

BERLIN  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was the first foreign leader to call President Emmanuel Macron and congratulate him on his reelection, Scholz office said.

The Federal Chancellor and the President confirmed their intention to continue the close and trusting relationship between Germany and France, not least in view of the current challenges such as the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, Scholz office said in a statement.

It also said the result signified a clear commitment to Europe and the European unification process, adding that Scholz and Macron agreed to meet as soon as possible.

The Czech prime minister also sent his congratulations to Macron.

France is our vital partner, we are keen on developing our great relationship further, Petr Fiala tweeted.

PARIS  Rights groups have breathed a sigh of relief at Marine Le Pens failure to become French president, but warned against complacency and urged the victor, Emmanuel Macron, to fight racial profiling and discrimination against Muslims, and better protect migrants.

Cecile Coudriou, head of Amnesty International France, cited egregious human rights failings under Macrons presidency including Frances treatment of refugees and asylum at its borders, systemic discrimination in the form of ethnic profiling by police, disproportionate and dangerously vague counter-terror laws, curbs to the right to protest, intrusive surveillance that impacts the right to privacy, failing to uphold climate commitments and selling arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Antiracism group SOS Racisme said : This victory, which might look large in a cursory analysis, is not so much a victory as a relief. The reality is that Marine Le Pen ... has progressed by about eight points in five years.

It criticized Macrons law against so-called separatism by radical Muslims and government ministers criticism of wokeism or Islamo-leftism. It blamed Macrons arrogance, (economic) liberalism, brutalization of the social movement and nods to the far right for worsening tensions in France. It is definitely not neutral to help trivialize the far right by choosing it as its opposition and winking at it, it said.

PARIS  President Emmanuel Macron said a simple Thank you! after winning reelection, and praised the majority who gave him five more years at the helm of France.

Macron also thanked people who voted for him not because they embrace his ideas but because they wanted to reject far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

Im not the candidate of one camp anymore, but the president of all of us, he said.

Macron comfortably won reelection to a second term Sunday, according to polling agencies projections.

He arrived on the plaza where his supporters gathered, beneath the Eiffel Tower, to the sound of the Ode to Joy, the European Unions anthem, hand in hand with his wife, Brigitte.

PARIS  Supporters of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen gathered at her election-night even in Paris Bois de Boulogne booed loudly as provisional results were announced.

But they quickly looked ahead to June legislative elections  as did Le Pen in her concession speech.

Francois Denormand, a retired dentist planning to run for a seat as a lawmaker for Le Pens National Rally party in Junes legislative elections said that what he called the third round starts tomorrow.

We must continue to fight, he said. We can lose the battle but not the war.

Nineteen-year-old Paul Renkert, waving a French flag, admitted that Im sad.

Renkert, who had traveled from the eastern Alsace region, said he had invested time in Le Pens campaign because I believe in the future of France.

He is looking ahead to the legislative elections and five years in the future when a new president is elected. Le Pen has not made known her intentions, but I dont think shell abandon us, he said.

Guests from abroad were among those invited to the soiree. Among them was Tom Lamont, with Belgiums far-right Vlaams Belang party, an ally of Le Pens National Rally. He, too, sent out a message of hope. Its a disappointment she lost but we see the right-wing movements is growing in France  and maybe in five years we will have a right-wing president here, he said.

MADRID  Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says that with the victory of Emmanuel Macron as projected by polling agencies, Democracy wins, Europe wins.

Citizens have chosen a France committed to a free, strong and fair EU, Sanchez, who is also leader of Spains Socialist Party, wrote, referring to the 27-nation European Union.

Sanchez, Portugals Antonio Costa and Germanys Olaf Scholz had published a joint open letter ahead of Sundays election presenting the vote as a choice between Macron, a defender of democracy in a strong European Union, and Marine Le Pen, an extreme-right candidate who openly sides with those who attack our freedom and democracy, values based on the French ideas of Enlightenment.

PARIS  French far-right figure Eric Zemmour, who failed to reach the runoff in the presidential election, has called for a nationalist coalition to be created in France's parliament.

Zemmour spoke after polling agencies projected that far-right leader Marine Le Pen, head of the National Rally party, had lost the presidential election to centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

Zemmour, who created his own party, Reconquest, in recent months, said the national bloc must get united.

He suggested such a coalition ahead of Junes parliamentary elections, with the aim to fight both Macrons party and the left.

Zemmour received 7% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election on April 10.

European leaders have been quick to congratulate French President Emmanuel Macron on his re-election.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has often sparred with Macron over Brexit and other issues, swiftly congratulated the re-elected president.

Calling France one of our closest and most important allies, Johnson said he looked forward to continuing to work together on the issues which matter most to our two countries and to the world.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi said that Macrons victory is splendid news for all of Europe.

He said France and Italy are working side by side, along with the other European partners, to construct a stronger, more cohesive, more just European Union, capable of being a protagonist in the greatest challenges of our times, starting with the war in Ukraine.

Portugals Prime Minister Antonio Costa says that, by voting for Emmanuel Macron, French people have demonstrated once again their commitment to the European project.

Costa, a socialist who was re-elected earlier this year in a landslide victory, wrote Sunday in a tweet that he was enthusiastic about working together with the centrist politician during the next four years.

The Portuguese prime minister made a case for voting to elect Macron in an open letter also signed by his Spanish and German counterparts, Pedro Sanchez and Olaf Scholz.

PARIS  Leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said Sunday that Marine Le Pens defeat in the French election is very good news for the unity of our people, and vowed to lead the fight against Emmanuel Macrons party in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Melenchon, who failed to reach the second round by a few hundred thousand votes and had urged his supporters not to vote for Le Pen, said Macrons presidential monarchy survives by default and under the constraint of a biased choice.

In his address, Melenchon exhorted Macrons opponents to vote in Junes parliamentary elections to choose a different path and elect a majority of leftist lawmakers. Melenchon said he would be prepared to lead an opposition government.

Courage, action, determination, always refusing fatality and resignation, Melenchon said.

BRUSSELS  Several European leaders and politicians have swiftly congratulated French President Emmanuel Macron for his reelection, as his far-right rival Marine Le Pen conceded defeat in Sundays presidential election.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted in French, together we will make France and Europe advance.

The Dutch prime minister also tweeted in French his hope to continue our extensive and constructive cooperation in EU and NATO.

In Germany, politicians around the political spectrum offered support, including from the pro-business Free Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and conservative Christian Social Union.

Many in Europe had worried Le Pen would undermine European unity and its post-war order.

PARIS  French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has conceded defeat in the presidential runoff, handing victory to incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

She said her unprecedented score in a presidential election represents a shining victory in itself.

The ideas we represent are reaching summits, she said.

French polling agencies are projecting that centrist Macron has won the runoff against Le Pen that took place Sunday.

PARIS  French polling agencies are projecting that centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron will win Frances presidential runoff Sunday, beating far right rival Marine Le Pen in a tight race that was clouded by the Ukraine war and saw a surge in support for extremist ideas.

If the projections are borne out by official results, Macron would be the first French president in a generation to win a second term, since Jacques Chirac in 2002. But he would face a divided nation and a battle to keep his parliamentary majority in legislative elections in June.

Five years ago, Macron won a sweeping victory over Le Pen to become the youngest French president. The margin is expected to be way smaller this time: Polling agencies Opinionway, Harris and Ifop-Fiducial projected that Macron would win between 57% and 58.5% of the vote, with Le Pen getting between 41.5% and 43%.

PARIS  Voter turnout is lower than usual in Frances presidential runoff Sunday, apparently reflecting voter frustration with both candidates, centrist President Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen.

Turnout at 5 p.m. Paris time (1500 GMT) stood at 63%, the Interior Ministry said. That was below the 65% at the same time in the last presidential runoff in 2017, when Macron overwhelmingly beat Le Pen, and the 72% in when Socialist Francois Hollande won the presidency in 2012.

Polls before Sundays election gave Macron a solid lead over Le Pen, but to keep it he needs the support of many left-wing voters who shunned both him and Le Pen in the first-round election on April 10. Many of those voters may choose to stay home this time instead.

Polling agency projections and early official results are expected after final voting stations close in France at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT).

LE TOUQUET, France  The two candidates for Frances presidential runoff have cast their ballots  and basked in adoring crowds outside their polling stations.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen went first, cheerily greeting election workers in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, in Frances struggling former industrial heartland. She emerged from the ballot booth beaming to drop it in a transparent box. Outside, she took selfies with supporters.

Then came incumbent Emmanuel Macron, who shook dozens of hands  and was handed a small child to hold up  on his journey from his family home in the resort town of Le Touquet on the English Channel to his voting station.

Inside, he greeted yet more people, posed for photographs with his wife Brigitte, and cast his ballot with a wink for the cameras. The voting booths were shielded by curtains in the red-white-and-blue of the French flag.

About 48.8 million voters are eligible to take part in the runoff, which is being watched around Europe. Early results are expected Sunday night.

PARIS  France began voting in a presidential runoff election Sunday with repercussions for Europes future.

Centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron is the front-runner, but he's fighting a tough challenge from far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

The centrist Macron is asking voters to trust him for a second five-year term despite a presidency troubled by protests, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. A Macron victory in this vote would make him the first French president in 20 years to win a second term.

The result of voting in France, a nuclear-armed nation with one of the worlds biggest economies, could also impact the conflict in Ukraine, as France has played a key role in diplomatic efforts and support for sanctions against Russia.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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More than 25 area restaurants, catering businesses and other food venues will take part in the 2022 Taste of Tulsa, a fundraising effort of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Oklahoma.

The event will take place 6 p.m. Saturday, April 30, in the Sequoyah Ballroom of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, 777 W. Cherokee St. in Catoosa.

Proceeds from the event support the organizations one-to-one, evidence-based mentoring programs, which are designed to create positive, measurable outcomes for young people to reach their fullest potential.

Among the participating restaurants are Ailas Catering Events, Andolinis Pizzeria, Andy Bs, Batter Than Good Baking Co., Bravos Authentic Mexican Cuisine, Charlestons, Coming Right Up Catering, Empire Slice House, Foxy Tacos, Graze Craze, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Hot Mess BBQ, Janes Delicatessen, Kilkennys Irish Pub, Longhorn Steakhouse, Margarets German Restaurant, Neighborhood JA.M., Nolas Creole & Cocktails, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Osage Casino, Pamelas Tamales, Performance Food Service, P.F. Changs, Sisserous, Society Burger, The Melting Pot, The Tavern and Torchys Tacos.

Tickets are $250. To purchase and for more information: bigoklahoma.org.

Elder Care brings back Good, Bad, BBQ

The 24th annual The Good, The Bad, & The BBQ, will take place 6 p.m. Saturday, May 7 at Hughes Ranch, 63 County Road 2696, Bartlesville.

The event will benefit programs and services at Elder Care, the only comprehensive resource center in northeast Oklahoma specializing in providing assistance for those aging in place. Its primary service area encompasses Washington, Osage and Nowata counties, where it annually assists some 1,500 seniors.

The outdoor event includes dinner catered by Dinks Pit Bar-B-Que, music by Brandon the DJ, a cash bar, and live and silent auctions. Auction items feature travel packages, unique jewelry pieces, private parties, tickets to sporting events, one-of-a-kind artwork and many more items.

Tickets are $100. To purchase and for more information: abouteldercare.org.

Signature Symphony Overture

The Signature Symphony at Tulsa Community College will present its annual fundraising gala, Overture: Make Music with Us, beginning at 6 p.m. Saturday, May 7, at River Spirit Casino Resort, 8330 Riverside Parkway.

In addition to a cocktail reception, dinner, and live and silent auctions, the evening will feature performances by the orchestras Signature Quartet, Brass Quintet and other ensembles that will test your music knowledge with a game of Name that Tune.

Overture helps to sustain the Signature Symphonys ongoing work to provide music education, community enrichment and premier concerts to the greater Tulsa area.

This years event is sure to be one of the most entertaining fundraising events with multiple participation opportunities. Attendees will definitely be able to join in on the fun, making music with us and dancing the night away, said Cathy Campbell, Overture co-chair.

Tickets are $150. To purchase and for more information: signaturesymphony.org.

Run for the Roses returns

After a two-year hiatus, the Tulsa Boys Home will host its 18th annual Run for the Roses, a Kentucky Derby-themed fundraising event, beginning at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, May 7 in the Pavilion at Expo Square, 4145 E. 21st St

This will be the first time the event has been held in person since 2019.

Guests will enjoy the sights and sounds of Churchill Downs through a simulcast of all afternoon Derby Day races on giant screens, along with the opportunity to place bets on all afternoon races. Other activities include live and silent auctions, food and an open bar.

Proceeds from the event will go toward the organizations annual $262,500 food budget.

Tickets are $200. To purchase and for more information: tulsaboyshome.org.

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New Mexico faces a long and potentially devastating wildfire season, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said Saturday, as Southwestern wildfires cause destruction and force people from their homes.

Hundreds of structures were lost in a growing number of wind-driven blazes across drought-stricken New Mexico, Lujan Grisham said Saturday.

Over 20 active wildfires were burning in at least 16 of the state's 33 counties, in the wake of winds that gusted up to 90 mph (145 kph) on Friday, Lujan said during a briefing streamed online. So half the state has a fire issue."

With so many fires burning in April, well before the normal May or June start of the wildfire season, our risk season is incredibly and dangerously early," Lujan Grisham said.

Wildfire has become a year-round threat in the West given changing conditions that include earlier snowmelt and rain coming later in the fall, scientist have said. The problems have been exacerbated by decades of fire suppression and poor management along with a more than 20-year megadrought that studies link to human-caused climate change.

New Mexico as of Saturday had the most major wildfires burning of any state, though neighboring Arizona also had large fires that included one that burned 30 homes near Flagstaff on Tuesday.

Winds and temperatures in New Mexico diminished Saturday but remained strong enough to still fan fires, and dozens of evacuation orders remained in place.

Over 200 structures have burned, Lujan Grisham said, not providing specifics on locations or the numbers of homes included in that count.

With fires still burning and charred areas too dangerous to enter, it's not safe for you or us to have a complete assessment to date," she said, indicating that the number of lost structures would rise.

She appealed to residents to refrain from using fireworks or burning trash and to evacuate when fire warnings are issued. You need to leave. The risks are too great," she said.

The largest blazes were concentrated in northern New Mexico, where two major fires merged and numerous villages were threatened by advancing flames as residents heeded calls to leave.

Maggie Mulligan said Friday her dogs could sense the panic while she and her husband packed them up, agonized over having to leave horses behind and fled a fast-moving wildfire barreling toward their home.

We dont know whats next, she said. We dont know if we can go back to the horses.

Mulligan and her husband, Bill Gombas, 67, were among the anxious residents who hurriedly evacuated their homes Friday ahead of ominous wildfires fueled by tinder-dry conditions and ferocious winds.

The merged fires burned some structures but no figures were available, said fire information officer Mike Johnson. They were able to save some structures and we know we lost other structures that we werent able to defend.

Wind-blown clouds of dust and plumes of smoke obscured the skies near the fires, said Jesus Romero, assistant county manager for San Miguel County. All the ugliness that spring in New Mexico brings  that's what they're dealing in."

An estimated 500 homes in San Miguel were in rural areas of Mora and San Miguel counties covered by evacuation orders or warning notices, Romero said.

Elsewhere in the region, the fire danger in the Denver area on Friday was the highest it had been in over a decade, according to the National Weather Service, because of unseasonable temperatures in the 80s combined with strong winds and very dry conditions.

Lena Atencio and her husband, whose family has lived in the nearby Rociada area for five generations, got out Friday as winds kicked up. She said most people were taking the threat seriously.

As a community, as a whole, everybody is just pulling together to support each other and just take care of the things we need to now. And then at that point, its in Gods hands, she said as the wind howled miles away in the community of Las Vegas, New Mexico, where evacuees were gathering.

Areas ordered Saturday to evacuate because of another large fire still growing in northern New Mexico included Philmont Scout Ranch. Meanwhile, the nearby town of Cimarron remained on notice for possible evacuation, according to Colfax County officials.

The scout ranch, owned and operated by the Boy Scouts of America, attracts thousands of summer visitors, but officials said no scouts were on the property and staff were previously evacuated because of poor air quality.

The Flagstaff-area fire also burned numerous other buildings when the flames blew through rural neighborhoods Tuesday.

A shift in wind had crews working Saturday to keep the fire from moving up mountain slopes or toward homes in rural neighborhoods near areas that burned Tuesday, fire information officer Dick Fleishman said. It has got us a little concerned."

Davenport reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writers Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Arizona, Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada, and Colleen Slevin in Denver contributed to this report. Attanasio reported from Las Vegas, New Mexico, and is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Attanasio on Twitter.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Ukraines leader petitioned for more powerful Western weapons as he prepared to meet with top U.S. officials in the war-torn countrys capital Sunday and Russian forces concentrated their attacks on the east, including trying to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops holding out in the battered port city of Mariupol.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the planned visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during a lengthy Saturday night news conference held in a Kyiv subway station. The White House has not commented.

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Zelenskyy said he was looking for the Americans to produce results, both in terms of arms and security guarantees. You cant come to us empty-handed today, and we are expecting not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons, he said.

The visit would be the first by senior U.S. officials since Russia invaded Ukraine 60 days ago. Blinken stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil in March to meet with the countrys foreign minister during a visit to Poland. Zelenskyys last face-to-face meeting with a U.S. leader was Feb. 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris.

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While Ukraines Western supporters have funneled military equipment to Ukraine, Zelenskyy has stressed repeatedly that the country needs more heavy weapons, including long-range air defense systems, as well as warplanes to fend off Russia.

His meeting with Austin and Blinken was set to take place as Ukrainians and Russians observed Orthodox Easter, when the faithful celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Speaking from Kyivs ancient St. Sophia Cathedral, Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, highlighted the allegorical significance of the occasion to a nation wracked by nearly two months of war.

The great holiday today gives us great hope and unwavering faith that light will overcome darkness, good will overcome evil, life will overcome death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win! he said.

Still, the war cast a shadow over celebrations. Residents of rural villages battered by the war approached the day with some cautious defiance.

How do I feel? Very nervous. Everyone is nervous, Olena Koptyl said as she prepared her Easter bread in the northern village of Ivanivka, where Russian tanks still littered the roads. The Easter holiday doesnt bring any joy. Im crying a lot. We cannot forget how we lived.

The Russian military reported that it hit 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, including fortified positions and troops concentrations, while Russian warplanes destroyed 26 Ukrainian military sites, including an explosives factory and several artillery depots.

Most of the fighting Sunday focused on the eastern Donbas region, where Ukrainian forces are concentrated and where Moscow-backed separatists controlled some territory before the war. Since failing to capture Kyiv, the Russians are aiming to gain full control over Ukraines eastern industrial heartland.

Russian forces launched fresh airstrikes on a Mariupol steel plant where an estimated 1,000 civilians are sheltering along with about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters. The Azovstal steel mill where the defenders are holed up is the last corner of resistance in the city, which the Russians have otherwise occupied.

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Zelenskyy said he stressed the need to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, including from the steel plant, in a Sunday call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is scheduled to speak later with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Guterres is scheduled to travel to Turkey on Monday and then continue on to Moscow and Kyiv. Zelenskyy criticized Guterres for planning to visit Russia before Ukraine, calling it a mistake.

Why? To hand over signals from Russia? What should we look for? Zelenskyy said during Saturdays news conference. There are no corpses scattered on the Kutuzovsky Prospect, he said, referring to one of Moscows main avenues.

Mariupol has been the focus of fierce fighting since the start of the war due to its location on the Sea of Azov. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere, and allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

More than 100,000 people  down from a prewar population of about 430,000  are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate that over 20,000 civilians have been killed. Recent satellite images showed what appeared to be mass graves dug in towns to the west and east of Mariupol.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, called for a localized Easter truce. He urged Russia to allow civilians to leave the steel plant and suggested talks to negotiate an exit for the Ukrainian soldiers.

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Podolyak tweeted that the Russian military was attacking the plant with heavy bombs and artillery while accumulating forces and equipment for a direct assault.

Earlier, during his nightly address to the nation, Zelenskyy accused the Russians of committing war crimes by killing civilians, as well as of setting up filtration camps near Mariupol for people caught trying to leave the city.

From there, he said, Ukrainians are sent to areas under Russian occupation or to Russia itself, often as far as Siberia or the Far East. Many of them, he said, are children. The claims could not be independently verified.

Zelenskyy claimed that intercepted communications recorded Russian troops discussing how they conceal the traces of their crimes in Mariupol. The president also highlighted the death of a 3-month old girl in a Russian missile strike Saturday on the Black Sea port of Odesa.

In attacks on the eve of Orthodox Easter, Russian forces pounded cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine. The baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at Odesa, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, citing social media posts, reported that the infants mother, Valeria Glodan, and grandmother also died when a missile hit a residential area. Zelenskyy promised to find and punish those responsible for the strike.

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The war started when this baby was one month old, Zelenskyy said. Can you imagine what is happening? They are filthy scum, there are no other words for it.

For the Donbas offensive, Russia has reassembled troops who fought around Kyiv and in northern Ukraine earlier. The British Ministry of Defense said Sunday that Ukrainian forces had repelled numerous assaults in the past week and inflicted significant cost on Russian forces.

Poor Russian morale and limited time to reconstitute, re-equip and reorganize forces from prior offensives are likely hindering Russian combat effectiveness, the ministry said in an intelligence update.

The spiritual leaders of the worlds Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics appealed for relief for Ukraines suffering population.

From Istanbul, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I said a human tragedy was unfolding. , Bartholomew, considered the first among his Eastern Orthodox patriarch equals, citing in particular the thousands of people surrounded in Mariupol, civilians, among them the wounded, the elderly, women and many children.

Pope Francis, speaking from a window overlooking St. Peters Square, renewed his call for an Easter truce, calling it a minimal and tangible sign of a desire for peace.

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The attacks must be stopped, to respond to the suffering of the exhausted population, Francis said without naming the aggressor.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling that expressly limits the scope of its 2020 McGirt decision to major criminal cases would be an acceptable if not optimal result of the states ongoing litigation in the matter, Gov. Kevin Stitt said Friday.

If its limited just to criminal (cases), we can absolutely fix this, Stitt said during a visit to the Tulsa World. We absolutely can sit down and fix this.

To be clear, Stitt said his first choice is for jurisdictional matters to revert to pre-McGirt. In the state and through national news outlets, hes portrayed the decision as disaster for the state  a view not universally shared.

An outright reversal, however, would be unusual.

On Wednesday, the high court will hear oral arguments in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, one of the states 30 challenges to McGirt. In a January order, the court said it will only review McGirt as it applies to non-Indian defendants charged with crimes against tribal members.

The state would like the court to go further. While most of the attention arising from the McGirt decision has been on criminal cases, Stitt said Friday his bigger concern is not what was in Justice Neil Gorsuchs opinion.

Its what isnt.

Some people say (the) reservations exist for all purposes, Stitt said. Thats the big question we want resolved. If its a reservation for all purposes, great. Let me know. That means Im not the governor of eastern Oklahoma.

The McGirt ruling found the Muscogee Nation reservation was never properly dissolved, and that the state has no jurisdiction over major criminal offenses committed by American Indians within the boundaries of that reservation.

Courts have since interpreted the decision to extend to the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole and Quapaw reservations, and expanded it to include cases involving American Indian victims of major crimes committed by non-Indians.

Some legal experts have argued that the ruling should also extend to civil law and other matters, including taxation. This month, an Oklahoma Tax Commission administrative judge concluded that a Muscogee citizen working for the tribe and living within the reservation borders should get a refund on state income tax.

We are willing and able to sit down and talk, but I will not agree that (tribal members) do not have to pay taxes to the state of Oklahoma, said Stitt. That would be me giving up our sovereignty as the state of Oklahoma.

During a 70-minute meeting, Stitt also spoke at length on the states efforts to recruit a large maker of electric vehicle batteries to northeastern Oklahoma, and on criminal justice reform.

Stitt said he expects to meet with the chief executive officer of the unnamed company  widely speculated to be Panasonic  early next week. Last week, the Legislature passed a new incentive program that could rebate more than $600 million to the facility, and as much as $85 million to a second unnamed manufacturer.

Both companies would build at Pryors MidAmerica Industrial Park.

Acknowledging opposition from some lawmakers, area residents and MAIP tenants, Stitt said he is determined to push for what he called a generational impact project, which  according to news reports and this weeks legislation  would involve as much as $5 billion in capital investment and employ 4,000.

What excites me is that weve been trying to diversify away from oil and gas, so Im excited to plant the flag, Stitt said. Theres a lot of (industry) disruption right now. A lot of money is flowing into electric vehicles, into manufacturing, a lot of research and development dollars are flowing into electric vehicles. ... Theres not these opportunities that come along all the time.

Stitt touted the reduction in the number of Oklahomans incarcerated during his term and said anonymous television ads attacking his mass commutations of a few years ago endanger future progress on that front.

I believe Im going to win (reelection), he said, but the Legislature will never pass another meaningful criminal justice bill if a Republican gets taken out over the issue.

Stitt appeared taken aback by the suggestion that the state has not lived up to the provisions of State Question 781, which specifies that money saved by lower incarceration rates is to be plowed back into community treatment and assistance.

Public safety is No. 1, Stitt said. At the same time, we have to look at rehabilitation. Ninety-nine percent of the people in prison are going to eventually get out. So how do we bring some of those services behind the prison wall to get them back into the workforce?

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Vietnamese Minister of National Defense General Phan Van Giang and his Chinese counterpart Sen. Lt. Gen. Wei Fenghe had a meeting in Guangxi, China on Saturday, focusing on building peaceful and stable border areas.

Their talks were part of the seventh Vietnam - China Border Defense Friendship Exchange, co-chaired by the two ministers in Longzhou County of Chinas Guangxi Province and Quang Hoa District of Vietnams Cao Bang Province on the same day.

In the morning, the Vietnam Peoples Army delegation led by Gen. Giang began exchange activities in Longzhou, with the welcome ceremony for the delegation hosted by Minister Wei at Shuikou International Border Gate.

After the ceremony, the two ministers joined a border landmark saluting ceremony, painted a landmark, and planted a friendship tree at the border gate before conducting their talks at the countys Convention Center.

Gen. Giang told his Chinese counterpart that the Party, state, government, and Peoples Army of Vietnam attach great importance to strengthening their traditional friendship and promoting comprehensive strategic cooperation with China, considering this one of the top priorities in Vietnams foreign policy.

Giang also thanked the Chinese government for its donations of COVID-19 vaccines and medical supplies to Vietnam during the COVID-19 fight.

The seventh friendship exchange, taking place amid complex COVID-19 developments, demonstrates the important common perception between the two Parties, states, and armies, and the high respect for each other, the Chinese defense minister said.

The event will further strengthen the China - Vietnam friendship, solidarity, political trust and practical cooperation, and contribute to building a peaceful and stable border, for the happiness of the two peoples, Minister Wei added.

The two sides agreed to continue spurring the exchange of delegations at all levels, effectively implementing existing exchange and cooperation mechanisms, and coordinating with and supporting each other at multilateral military and defense forums.

Both ministers stressed the need for the effective coordination and implementation of three legal documents on the land border, strictly protecting the border, preventing crimes and illegal entries and exits, and barring the coronavirus from spreading across the border.

They frankly discussed existing problems between the two countries and agreed to resolve them by peaceful means and international law, for the common interests of the two nations.

In the afternoon, a welcome ceremony for the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army delegation led by Minister Wei took place at Ta Lung International Border Gate in Cao Bang Provinces Quang Hoa District.

The two sides painted landmark 943 and planted a friendship tree at Ta Lung Friendship Cultural Center before visiting and giving gifts to Ta Lung Town Elementary School, among other activities.

This border defense friendship exchange reflected the bilateral friendship and collaboration, the Chinese official told the school, adding that he hoped its teachers and students would contribute to developing the two nations cooperative ties, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

Minister Giang emphasized that every bilateral exchange has the same focus on promoting solidarity and friendship for a border of peace and mutual development.

Chinas National Defense Minister Wei Fenghe paints the border landmark at Shuikou International Border Gate in Longzhou County of Chinas Guangxi Province on April 23, 2022. Photo: Nguyen Bao / Tuoi Tre

The defense ministers of China and Vietnam are seen at a friendship tree planting ritual at Shuikou International Border Gate in Chinas Guangxi Province in this photo on April 23, 2022. Photo: Nguyen Bao / Tuoi Tre

The Chinese Peoples Liberation Army delegation led by National Defense Minister Wei Fenghe (front wow, right) is welcomed at Ta Lung International Border Gate in Vietnams Cao Bang Province on April 23, 2022. Photo: Nguyen Bao / Tuoi Tre

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Here are todays leading news stories:

Politics

-- Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh attended on Saturday the fourth Asia-Pacific Water Summit and proposed three groups of measures to enhance international cooperation, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

-- Minister of National Defense Phan Van Giang and his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe co-chaired on Saturday activities of the seventh Vietnam-China Border Defense Friendship Exchange in Vietnams Cao Bang Province and Chinas Guangxi Province.

COVID-19 Updates

-- The Ministry of Health documented 10,365 COVID-19 cases on Saturday, raising the countrys tally to 10,554,689, with 9,081,494 recoveries and 43,004 deaths.

Society

-- Three people in a family were killed and another hospitalized after a truck crashed into a house while descending a slope in north-central Quang Binh Province on Saturday evening.

-- A monkey weighing nine kilograms has been anesthetized and brought to the wildlife rescue station in Cu Chi District, Ho Chi Minh City after it attacked three people earlier this week.

-- A 51-year-old woman from north-central Nghe An Province was sentenced to 30 months in prison for raising three tigers at home. The woman said she had bought the tigers from Laos when they were still cubs.

-- A 37-year-old suspect in the April 17 murder of a man at his home in District 12, Ho Chi Minh City had committed suicide at a rented room in Cu Chi District, police confirmed on Saturday.

Lifestyle

-- A hot air balloon festival was organized in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum on Saturday morning as part of the localitys tourism promotion program following the COVID-19 outbreak.

Sports

-- Vietnamese boxer Dinh Hong Quan defeated his Filipino opponent Delmar Pellio to win the lightweight International Boxing Federation (IBF) Asia belt following their match in southern Ba Ria-Vung Tau on Saturday evening.

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At least three people in a family were killed and another hospitalized after a truck crashed into a house while descending a slope in Quang Binh Province, north-central Vietnam on Saturday.

The accident occurred in Dan Hoa Commune, Minh Hoa District at around 8:00 pm, Dinh Van Chinh, the communes chairman, confirmed later the same day.

A truck carrying goods was descending a slope in Bai Dinh Village when it slammed into a house on the side of the road.

A woman and her two children, who were sitting in the yard, were fatally hit by the truck.

The three victims were later identified as C.T.S., 62, D.M.H., 27, and D.T.A.H., 32, according to Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper.

A 26-year-old relative of S. was severely injured and is now in a critical condition.

The truck driver was also wounded and has been taken to the hospital.

Police officers have arrived at the scene to investigate the serious accident.

Bai Dinh Village is situated at about seven kilometers from Cha Lo International Border Gate.

Hundreds of trucks travel through the village on a daily basis.

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A Vietnam court has sentenced a woman to 30 months in prison for unlawfully breeding three tigers at home.

The Peoples Court in north-central Nghe An Province on Saturday gave the jail term to 51-year-old Nguyen Thi Dinh on charges of violating regulations on the management and protection of endangered, rare animals, as prescribed in the Vietnamese Penal Code, a source from the Education of Nature Vietnam (ENV) confirmed.

Dinh had previously bought the three tigers when they were cubs from Laos and raised them in her house, located in the provinces Yen Thanh District, until her law-breaking act was uncovered last year.

On August 4, 2021, local police raided Dinhs home and detected three adult tigers, weighing from 225 to 265 kilograms, being kept in cages in the basement.

Early last month, the same court handed a seven-year sentence to a 40-year-old man, Nguyen Van Hien, for the same offense.

Hien, also a resident in Yen Thanh, was caught illegally keeping 14 tigers, weighing nearly 200 kilograms each, at his home also on August 4, 2021.

Nine among the 17 tigers seized from Dinh and Hien have so far died of unknown causes, whereas Nghe An authorities have transferred the remaining eight to a zoo in Ba Dinh District, Hanoi.

Illegal tiger farming has been taking place for a long time in Nghe An, mainly in the three districts of Dien Chau, Yen Thanh, and Quynh Luu, according to ENV.

Tigers and many other wild animals are strictly banned from being traded in, imported to or exported from Vietnam as they are on the list of endangered wildlife protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), to which the country has been party since 1994.

Transporting, trading, capturing or killing wild animals or parts thereof is a criminal offense in Vietnam punishable by between six months and 12 years in prison, according to the Penal Code.

As some people believe that tiger-derived products can cure bone and joint illnesses, tigers are in demand in Vietnam for their meat, bones, and skin.

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How CPC elects delegates to upcoming Party congress

Xinhua) 08:06, April 24, 2022

* The Communist Party of China, the world's largest governing party, will convene its 20th national congress in the second half of the year.

* The quinquennial event will review the work of the past five years, chart the course for the future, and elect new central leadership.

* A total of 2,300 delegates will be elected from over 95 million Party members to attend the upcoming national congress.

BEIJING, April 23 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China (CPC), the world's largest governing party, will convene its 20th national congress in the second half of the year.

The quinquennial event will review the work of the past five years, chart the course for the future, and elect new central leadership.

The Party is in the process of electing delegates to the congress, which started in November 2021.

Here is a closer look at how the Party elects 2,300 delegates from its over 95 million members.

WHAT IS THE PROCEDURE

The delegates are elected from 38 electoral units, including provincial-level regions, central authorities, the central financial sector, and Beijing-based centrally-administered state-owned enterprises.

The whole procedure generally consists of five parts: the nomination of candidates by Party members; a nominee review; public notification of the candidates for feedback; candidate shortlists; and the final vote in each electoral unit.

The elected delegates will be vetted by a qualification review committee before the national congress.

For example, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region elected by secret ballot 48 delegates to attend the 20th national congress at a two-day CPC Guangxi regional congress closed Friday.

The final vote took place following a meeting of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Regional Committee of the CPC on April 17, which came up with a 55-people list of preparatory candidates for the CPC National Congress delegates.

The process has engaged 100 percent of Guangxi's primary-level Party organizations and 99.15 percent of Party members, said local authorities, adding that Party members working on the frontline accounted for more than 70 percent of all the nominees.

WHO IS ELIGIBLE

The delegates should be exemplary members of the Party and meet stringent criteria. Political integrity is put first in the assessment. According to the Party leadership, the candidates should first and foremost have solid ideals and convictions and high moral standards.

Members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) review the Party admission oath at the memorial of the first National Congress of the CPC in east China's Shanghai, June 3, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Ying)

Qualified delegates must be clean and honest. Corrupt officials will be banned from being nominated. In Guizhou Province, a negative list has been established to disqualify those who violate political discipline and rules or have problems with integrity, among others, for nomination as delegates.

Different electoral units have their specific requirements for selecting candidates. Nominees in Tibet must have a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation and take a clear-cut stand against separatism.

"The candidates' overall performance and qualifications were taken into careful consideration when I made my recommendations," said Zhao Dianbang, a veteran CPC member from Qinghai Province who has been a Party member for more than 50 years.

HOW SEATS ARE ALLOCATED

The 2,300 delegates are elected by 38 electoral units. The seats in the 20th CPC National Congress are allocated mainly based on the number of Party organizations and Party members of each electoral unit.

The quotas for delegates to previous CPC national congresses are also taken into account when it comes to the allocation of seats to different electoral units.

According to the allocation formula, the number of delegates to the 20th CPC National Congress for each electoral unit is basically the same as the 19th national congress.

By convention, some retired Party officials will be invited to attend the 20th national congress.

HOW TO ENSURE A BROAD SPECTRUM

As the delegates are to represent 95 million CPC members, their spectrum is carefully designed. They will come from all walks of society, different regions of the country, and various demographic groups, including both genders and ethnic minorities.

Grass-roots members will account for a significant proportion of the delegates. Party members working on the frontline should have at least one-third of the total seats, while those for officials will not exceed two-thirds. Excellent members among farmers, workers, and technicians will be priorities.

Different professions, ranging from business people, scientists to doctors, as well as different levels of administrative units, from provinces, metropolises to villages, will all be represented.

The Party authorities in Nanchang, the capital city of east China's Jiangxi Province, distributed a list of 133 local grass-roots role models to its 260,000 members as a candidate reference.

In southwest China's Yunnan Province, home to various ethnic minority groups, delegate seats are properly distributed among them.

Photo taken on June 22, 2021 shows an exterior view of the Museum of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, capital of China. (Xinhua/Ju Huanzong)

HOW TO HAVE A CLEAN ELECTION

Canvassing and buying votes are strictly prohibited.

Party disciplinary agencies and organization departments nationwide have been gearing up for the election, with tip-off hotlines operating round the clock to process people's complaints.

Large-scale awareness campaigns have been unfurled, using previous election scandals as examples to warn Party members of malpractice and deter potential offenders.

All steps of the election procedure are under close supervision, and those who violate Party disciplinary rules and election protocols will not be tolerated.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Hongyu)
Two men in their 40s were killed and two other men were injured in a shooting in Englewood Saturday night, police said.

Around 7:30 p.m., officers responded to reports of a shooting in the 1900 block of West Garfield Boulevard where four men were on the sidewalk when they were shot by someone in a gray vehicle driving by, the Chicago Police Department said in a media notification.

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A 42-year-old man was shot several times and was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

A 48-year-old man was shot several times and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital where he was pronounced dead, police said.

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A 24-year-old man was shot in the back and in the left arm and was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in serious condition, police said.

A fourth man was shot and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital to recover, police said. Police did not know his condition.

As of 9:30 p.m., detectives were still at the scene investigating the shooting, police said.
For some public school teachers, the turning point came when stress from teaching during and after the pandemics campus closures started to affect their health. Others succumbed to a rising tide of workload, paperwork and lesson planning. Fatigue at being a target for angry parents and rebellious students returning after at-home learning pushed some educators to the edge, while others found jobs that paid better or left more room for family life.

Or it could be what a Charles Butt Foundation statewide poll of Texas teachers last spring found when a sizable majority of those who had contemplated leaving the field blamed feeling overworked, undervalued and underpaid.

Whatever the reasons, school districts are scrambling to fill vacancies, and have added hiring incentives and programs to boost the pool of prospective teachers.

Last summer, Waco Independent School District was working to fill teacher openings left from 235 resignations and 15 retirements through the previous school year. Still, by the start of the 2021-22 school year in August, the district was able to narrow its list of teaching vacancies to 10. Five months later, the vacancy list stood at 16 by the time students returned in January from their holiday break. The district now employs 1,007 teachers.

Were struggling to get more experienced candidates, Superintendent Susan Kincannon said. Theres more competition than Ive ever seen before.

Kincannon has launched several grow your own initiatives she hopes will build the pool of potential teachers for the district.

Waco ISD has struggled for years with teacher turnover and a growing inexperience in its teacher workforce. In the latest state-required Texas Academic Performance Report, the Waco district reported 52% of its teachers had five or fewer years of experience with first-year teachers fully 10% of all teachers. The percentage of first-year teachers is nearly double that of local districts Robinson and China Spring, the next two local districts to Waco when first-year percentages are ranked.

Before the pandemic, the district saw more than 40% of its teachers with five or fewer years of experience.

Teacher turnover, 18.4% last year, also had well exceeded 20% for years before the pandemic, higher than the state average of 16.8%.

Q&As: 10 questions with Waco ISD candidates on district issues Waco ISD candidates, in their own words: 10 questions with hopefuls running for school board in the May 7 election.

Waco ISD is not alone in a search for teachers. This week Midway ISD trustees approved a $2.3 million salary increase for teachers and district staffers, hoping to make district salaries more competitive in the area. In Killeen, school administrators and trustees discussed salary increases and incentives in light of a projected shortfall of more than 200 teachers, and the Texas Tribune reported in February that the states largest public school district, Houston ISD, had more than 700 teacher vacancies last summer.

Last month, Gov. Greg Abbott called on the Texas Education Agency to create a task force addressing the statewide teacher shortage, propose policy changes and expand the teacher certification process. The 28-member task force, when announced, had only two teachers. The agency has since expanded it to 52 members, many of whom are teachers, but with meetings only every other month, any recommendations will take time, much less any implementation of those recommendations.

There is no silver bullet, Waco ISD District 2 Trustee Stephanie Korteweg said.

Korteweg was a Waco ISD teacher for 12 years before stepping away in recent years.

The problems leading teachers to leave Waco schools for other districts or quit the field entirely are familiar to Pam Fischer, a veteran Provident Heights Elementary School physical education teacher and president of the Waco chapter of the Texas State Teachers Association.

While pay continues as an ongoing concern for her members, complaints over mushrooming duties and an expanding day to do it all have increased over the last four or five years, Fischer said.

When youre having to work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. just to get everything done, its hard to have a family life. Its hard to have a personal life, Fischer said. Lesson plans are getting longer and theyre not taking anything away from teachers.  If they give us something more to do, they need to take something away.

A Charles Butt Foundation poll of 919 Texas teachers last year found that of those who had considered leaving teaching, 79% cited an excessive workload and long hours and 75% blamed an administrative workload. The leading reason at 87% was work-related stress.

Low pay ranked high in a survey of 65,000 Texas American Federation of Teachers last November, in a study conducted by the state teachers union and the left-leaning Every Texan, formerly the Center for Public Policy Priorities. Released earlier this month, its study, The Lost Decade, found that despite salary increases over the last 11 years, teacher salaries had not kept up with the cost of living. Despite an influx of $11.6 billion in state funding in 2019 due to an overhaul of school financing, the increase did more to reduce corporation taxes than improve school employee pay, the study contended.

Doubled my workload

Former Waco ISD elementary school teacher Susan Duty said an increased workload that accompanied a return to all in-person classes this fall proved the last straw. Duty had taught reading at Cesar Chavez Middle School from 2014 to 2020 before leaving to pursue writing as a career. Volunteering to help on campus during her time away from teaching persuaded her to go back into teaching, and as school began in August, she was ready to start as a fourth grade reading and social studies teacher.

Within weeks, due to student and staff shifts caused by COVID-19 absences, her duties expanded.

It changed to third and fourth grade and doubled my workload, she said. This was an extraordinary rug-pull and it got worse from there.  We all started to drown.

Increasing stress eventually impacted her health to the point that she felt she had to leave by midyear.

Its not that I didnt want to be a teacher. I felt like I cannot be one any more. Thats the nature of the beast, she said.

Duty shared her experience with Waco ISD trustees at their December meeting, and video of her remarks was widely reposted on social media.

She said she is not sure she would return to teaching again.

The system would be the same and I probably would be ground to a pulp again, she said.

Duty was one of 33 Waco ISD teachers who resigned before the end of the contracted school year, a move that could lead to suspension of teacher certification for a year or more. The Texas Tribune recently reported 471 teachers had left their schools in midyear despite a possible penalty to their teaching careers.

Several Waco teachers interviewed for this story declined to be identified out of concern over retaliation or possible impact on future jobs. The district has no policy banning employees from talking with the media but asks them to route inquiries through the communications department, Waco ISD spokesperson Alice Jauregui said.

Parents in the classroom

ShaLynna Mosely, a Midway ISD kindergarten teacher who took an early retirement after last spring, said she felt free enough to comment on why she left teaching, and that her experience during campus closures and the return to in-person classes mirrored that of other teachers who felt they could not be identified to comment.

Mosely had taught elementary school for 28 years, 23 at Woodway Elementary, and has a masters degree in education, but that did not seem to carry much weight with central district administrators or her students parents. Teaching kindergarteners online not only required extra work to adapt and create required lesson plans, but introduced parents into her online classroom with ideas of their own on how things should be run.

Parents were brutal. They didnt want (their children) pushed or challenged. They only wanted positives, she said. I was contradicted and confronted by parents online and in front of the kids.

Superiors and administrators she felt should have supported her were unwilling to oppose parents, she said.

A return to in-person classes presented another problem: kindergarteners with no experience of being in a classroom or sharing with others.

Kids were throwing furniture, kids cursing, and good kids get overlooked, she said.

Mosely put in for retirement in spring 2021. She has a Realtors license and shifted from teaching to real estate.

Do I miss it? Not a bit. I miss my friends and I miss being around kids, she said.

Korteweg, the Waco ISD trustee, said what she is hearing from teachers these days often relates to the pressures of meeting state and district demands and the related paperwork.

Theres a lot of stress. Ive talked with teachers who were up to 10 or 11 oclock every night or who kept working after dinner, she said. Things like inputting grades twice  that makes no sense.

She is well aware of the extra things many teachers do to meet students needs that are not part of their official duties. She remembers having small boxes of dry cereal on hand for those who had no home breakfast and making visits that showed the challenging home environment of others.

What helped her get through the tough times was the support of fellow teachers and the joy of seeing students learning and achieving goals. While school trustees find state and federal requirements limit what they can do to reduce teachers paperwork, the board can provide the occasional soft touch to support teachers, such as converting unused snow days to pay or providing a comp day that teachers can use as they wish, she said.

Developing teachers

Waco ISD Superintendent Kincannon said she hopes to further shrink the districts teacher shortage through pay incentives, hiring bonuses and training programs that put both district paraprofessionals and middle school students on tracks that lead them to becoming teachers.

(The teacher shortage) was front and center when I arrived and the turnover rate was at 26%, Kincannon said.

The superintendent and her staff started the ball rolling to create a Future Educators Academy that would put students interested in teaching as a career into a curriculum track leading to a college degree and certification.

With planning coordination from McLennan Community College, the academy is set to begin, with 50 eighth graders enrolled and another 10 expected to join next fall. By the time they graduate from high school, participants will be on their way to an associates degree from MCC and a path to another two years through Tarleton State University or Texas Tech University and teacher certification.

To address the issue of beginning and inexperienced teachers in the district, Waco ISD and MCC have worked on an Opportunity Culture program at five schools to develop teacher leadership. Under the program, an experienced teacher will lead a team that includes one or more student teachers and paraprofessionals, with an eye on strengthening skills and practices that lead to improving student performance. The lead teacher, called a multi-classroom teacher, can earn a stipend of $13,000 or more.

Kincannon said teachers with little classroom experience is a major problem for the district. This is one of our No. 1 problems. You have to practice to get better and it takes four or five years to hit your stride. We have too many new teachers and it really worries me.

The district also is stepping up financial incentives, both to keep teachers in the district and attract new ones.

Administrators, with board approval, have earmarked $8.1 million in federal COVID-19 relief money for retention bonuses of $10,000, distributed in three payments beginning in December 2023, and $5,000 for new teachers hired by August 2022. Waco ISD starts new teachers at an annual salary of $50,250 with additional stipends ranging from $5,000 to $8,000 for bilingual elementary teachers and secondary math and science teachers.

The state-approved Teacher Incentive Allotment allows the district to designate recognized, exemplary and master teachers and add up to $31,000 to their salaries.

Kincannon said she will also ask the board for more salary bumps during its meeting Thursday.

As for measures beyond salary increases, Kincannon and her staff are listening to teacher suggestions.

Teachers are worried about the things that teachers constantly are worried about, such as classroom behavior and overtesting, she said. Were trying to unpack that.

Classroom experience

At Baylor Universitys Department of Education, demand is outstripping supply, said Suzanne Nesmith, the departments associate dean for undergraduate education. About 100 students graduate annually with bachelors degrees and teaching certificates, almost all of whom are finding jobs.

Most are still going into public schools. Some choose to stay in the Waco area while others choose to go back home, Nesmith said.

She said Baylors professional development school collaborations with Waco ISD and Midway ISD give Baylor teaching students more classroom experience than the standard semester of student teaching at most universities.

Its like theyve already experienced their first year, she said.

The department also has created a graduate degree designed to cap an undergraduate degree in another discipline with a masters degree in education.

Nesmith said pandemic pressures exacerbated ongoing problems in public education, from teacher shortages in urban and rural school districts to increasing teacher workloads without an increase in pay. Solving the question of teacher supply is more than putting bodies in classrooms, she said.

You have to be called to teach. If you see it as a job, its not going to be for you, Nesmith said.

Alternative certification

For people who did not get a education degree or teaching certificate in college, alternative teaching certification programs can provide a ticket to becoming a teacher.

MCCs Alternative Teacher Certification program takes people with bachelors degrees and adds instruction in pedagogy plus classroom experience to create a state-certified classroom teacher. Those starting the program in June can be in a classroom by August with MCC supervision for that first year of teaching, program director Laura Conrad said.

The MCC program has some 40 participants working as first-year teachers in local school districts, split roughly between elementary and secondary schools. Support of new teachers is crucial, and MCC instructors keep a close eye on their teachers-in-training to provide assistance where needed.

The first year of teaching is a challenging year.  Its Important to support that first year, Conrad said.

Enrollment in the MCC program has declined slightly in recent years. Conrad said some districts, including Waco ISD and Midway ISD, are trying out new approaches to build the pool of prospective teachers with a program aimed at helping their paraprofessionals and teachers aides become certified teachers. About 150 people are enrolled in that program, and roughly a third are teaching in the classroom, she said.

She said she hopes the programs can meet the districts needs.

As long as we have schools and kids in our communities who need education, we need teachers, Conrad said. We need to stop chewing through so many professionals.

Kincannon said time and attention are crucial to the issue of teacher shortages as districts work their way out of pandemic disruptions.

Im hopeful we can come back in the fall and get closer to normalcy. We need to stay focused on the work weve initiated, Kincannon said. Ive been 32 years in public education and Ive never seen anything like this. Its been the most disruptive, stressful time I can remember. But we will get through it.

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A $15.4 million project to rebuild Spring Valley Road through Hewitt is starting this week, a little more than a year after the project was put on hold.

Crews with Big Creek Construction on Monday will begin restriping and other preparatory work for the 2.2-mile project between Hewitt Drive and Sun Valley Boulevard.

The Texas Department of Transportation project, which is scheduled to wrap up in 2024, will add continuous turn lanes and shoulders to the two-lane road and replace ditches with curbs and gutters.

Built as a farm road in the 1950s, Spring Valley Road now bisects suburban housing developments in Hewitt and runs past Spring Valley Elementary School.

The road is known for its congestion, especially around pickup and drop off times at the school, Hewitt City Manager Bo Thomas said.

Its going to be a big deal because theres a lot of traffic carried on that stretch of road, both from people coming through the community and those who are residents in the neighborhoods off Spring Valley, Thomas said. Its going to have a huge impact during the course of construction on traffic flow. Theres not going to be a pretty way to do this one.

Midway Independent School District is working to mitigate congestion by building a new driveway behind the school connecting to Angel Fire Drive. Thomas said the driveway should be finished in time for the start of school in August.

The project has been in the planning stages for several years, and the city of Hewitt paid for utility relocations along the route.

But in 2020, state officials directed the Waco Metropolitan Planning Organization to cut $70 million from its four-year Transportation Improvement Plan, citing budget uncertainties. Spring Valley was one of five MPO-supported projects cut from the plan in January 2021.

Thomas said that was frustrating for city leaders who had been banking on the Spring Valley project.

It was the timing of it, he said. Hewitt had already gone through the process of indebting its residents to relocate those utilities. Then it looked like the project could get kicked to 2025 or 26.

Thomas said the TxDOT Waco office was able to identify funding to begin work on the project this year.

A TxDOT Waco District spokesperson said the agency will work closely with Hewitt, Midway ISD and local media to communicate closures and other project updates.

He said Sun Valley Boulevard and Hewitt Drive can be used as alternate routes to bypass construction.

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The McLennan County Elections Office has already received more than 1,200 mail-in ballots for the May 7 city and school board elections, nearly ten times the number of mail-in ballots cast in last years spring elections. Early in-person voting will run Monday through Saturday and May 2-3, and mail-in ballots have to be back to the elections office by Election Day.

One of the McLennan Countys most popular polling places, at the First Assembly of God church on Bosque Boulevard, will not be in use for early voting or on Election Day. The West Waco Library, 5301 Bosque Blvd., will take its place. It is a little less than a mile away from the church.

The May 7 election will feature contested city council races in Waco, Woodway, McGregor and Lorena; school board races in Waco, La Vega and Lorena school districts; sales tax reauthorization in Bellmead; a $39 million bond election for a new elementary school in Connally ISD and two state constitutional amendments. Every eligible voter in the state has at least the constitutional amendments to weigh in on.

The county will conduct elections for each entity except Connally ISD, which will hold its own election. Connally voters will have to go to separate locations to vote on both the school bond and the constitutional amendments.

For the county-conducted elections, early voting will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday; closed Sunday; and open again from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. May 2-3.

All eligible voters can cast an early in-person ballot at any of the five early polling places:

McLennan County Elections Administration Office, 214 N. Fourth St., Suite 300

Robinson Community Center, 106 W. Lyndale Ave.

Waco Multipurpose Community Center, 1020 Elm Ave.

West Waco Library, 5301 Bosque Blvd.

Hewitt City Hall, 200 Patriot Court.

For the Connally ISD bond election, early voting will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday; closed Saturday and Sunday; and open again from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 2 and from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. May 3.

The polling place for Connally ISD is the Board Room in the Connally ISD Administration Building, 200 Cadet Way.

County Elections Administrator Jared Goldsmith said 2,996 people had requested mail-in ballots for the May elections conducted by the county with 1,203 ballots mailed in by Friday. A signature verification committee will start reviewing ballots Monday, and voters whose ballots are rejected will be notified and given an opportunity to correct the issue. The deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot for the May 7 election is 5 p.m. Tuesday.

Last year, the county elections office received only 124 mail-in ballots, but Goldsmith said demand for mail-in ballots tends to be higher in even-numbered years with state primaries, even though primaries are typically held separately. In 2018, the county received 467 mail-in ballots for the May elections.

The May 2020 elections were moved to November 2020 because of COVID-19 concerns, and the county received 10,794 mail-in ballots for that election, pointing to the vastly lower turnout for May elections.

Overall, Waco ISD saw 57.1% of its 52,981 eligible voters turn out in November 2020, compared to just 5.1% of the 50,847 eligible in May last year, and 2.4% of the 8,058 eligible in May 2018. The eligibility number was lower in 2018 because only one Waco ISD board district had a contested race on the ballot, while the other years had an at-large race.

The city of Waco saw 61.5% of its 71,653 eligible voters turn out in November 2020, compared to just 11.4% of the 20,652 eligible in May last year, and 5.6% of the 10,993 eligible in May 2018. Like Waco ISD, the eligibility number varies based on the voting population of the districts whose representatives are up for election.

This year in Waco, the May 7 election will have city council races for District 1 and the unexpired term of the District 2 seat.

District 1 incumbent Andrea Barefield is seeking reelection against challengers Russell Rhodes and Epharm Herring while District 2 incumbent Alice Rodriguez is seeking election against challengers Tiffany Vidana and Armando Arvizu.

Waco ISD will have board races for the District 4 seat and the unexpired term for one of its at-large seats.

Hope Balfa-Mustakim and Jonathan Grant are running for the District 4 seat, and Marlon Jones and Angelo Ochoa are running for the at-large seat.

The two statewide constitutional amendments would reduce the school property tax burden for some homeowners. Proposition 1 would reduce school taxes on the primary residences of elderly or disabled homeowners.

Proposition 2 would expand the homestead exemption for school taxes from $25,000 to $40,000, meaning most homeowners would pay less in school taxes on their primary residence. According to reporting by The Texas Tribune, the author of Proposition 2 said it would knock $176 off the annual tax bill for the average homeowner.

The state plans to provide additional funding to school districts to make up for the lost local revenue, which would cost $600 million annually for Proposition 2 and $744 million between 2024 and 2026 for Proposition 1, according to The Texas Tribune.
Almost daily, the great passage of time leaves us with fewer and fewer individuals who survived the Holocaust that, more than anything else, made World War II an undeniable battle of good versus evil. Yet as those of the Greatest Generation who can actually tell us of the lessons of World War II also dwindle in number, the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia leaves those of us who benefited from their long-ago sacrifices facing a similar moral test amidst reports of genocide.

For some among us, time has already minimized or even trivialized memories of the six million Jews who perished in concentration or extermination camps during Hitlers reign of fascism. The grandchildren of boomers in America are too often ignorant of this history because the Holocaust isnt taught sufficiently in our schools. And in an era when Americas own racism  including the lynching fever that gripped Waco more than once  is marginalized in classroom curricula by parents seeking to cancel out critical race theory, the Holocaust becomes problematic. Despite the films, photos and documented stories of Holocaust survivors, the Holocaust is now denied by many.

For the Holocaust survivors, their families and the world Jewish community who lost millions of Jewish men, women and children through murder by gun, poison gas, scientific experimentation, mistreatment, starvation and other diabolical actions, the Holocaust is remembered annually. This year the formal observance in Waco is 6 p.m. Wednesday at Jones Theatre in the Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center on the Baylor University campus, just in advance of Holocaust Memorial Day.

The ceremony takes on added significance this year. Despite the slogan Never Again  a vow that atrocities such as those executed by Hitler and his Nazi henchmen would never again be tolerated  the world faces some 80 years later the very same genocide, this time amidst unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine. Daily stories of Russian military forces targeting civilians with missiles, bombs, bullets, starvation and suffering as well as the forced movement of captured civilians into filtration camps should remind all who imagine themselves conscientious that evil still exists. No war or rallying cry will forever crush such evil, only temporarily defeat it in its latest guise while we hope and pray the next generation has the resolution and courage to meet it head on.

The similarities between Adolf Hitler and his reign of terror and Vladimir Putin and his Russian death squads are frightening, almost unbelievable  especially when you consider Putin seemed so amiable during his visit to President Bushs nearby ranch and the community of Crawford in November 2001. Bush told the press that Putin seemed to enjoy a little Texas barbecue, pecan pie, a little Texas music.

Yet, as was the case in the 1930s and early 1940s, the world now watches in disbelief. Hitler and Putin insisted they had limited plans in place as the invasions began. Hitler lied his way into conquering Poland and then driving his armies onward into other countries in hopes of building an Aryan empire. A key part of that plan: eliminating and liquidating those who were not of Aryan descent, particularly the worlds Jewish population.

Putins announced aim is to eliminate Nazis from Ukraine. That would be laughable if the deadly consequences werent so dire: The popularly and democratically elected president of Ukraine is a Jew who lost three uncles to the Nazis in the last world war. Putins true aim appears to be expanding the Russian empire based on his belief that Russia is being threatened by the Western powers, including the United States  itself grappling with fascist impulses on its soil  and NATO, a military alliance seen as the best solution to preventing another Hitler or Stalin. And NATO was not solely envisioned by our European allies but by members of Americas Greatest Generation who liberated the Nazi extermination camps and helped corner Hitler in the rubble of Berlin in the final days of the war in Europe.

And so it is that those who observe Holocaust Memorial Day this year will light yellow candles not only in memory of those who perished in the Holocaust but in memory of those who lost their lives in this years invasion of Ukraine. The candle was created in 1981 as a special symbol for individuals who want to remember those who died in the Holocaust and whose families also died, leaving no one to mourn. The candle has a special significance, particularly to those of Jewish descent. The color signifies the hue of the armbands that Nazis required Jews to wear to more readily target them, making their murder, deportation and degradation easier. The candle carries the word Jude  German for Jew  and is designed to burn for 24 hours, traditional length of Jewish mourning for someone who has died.

With the war in Ukraine raging and its outcome uncertain, those who claim to be moral, spiritual and conscientious face an additional obligation to mourn those in Ukraine who have lost their lives in yet another plague of mans inhumanity to man  and in a part of the world that sure ought to know better. May the refrain of Never Again be repeated around the world so we never again witness the ruthless Russian actions we see today. The memories of World War II, the Holocaust and Ukraine must be revisited regularly lest we allow the history lessons of prior times to be forgotten, lulling us into a complacency that becomes a self-fulfilling legacy of future horror.

Harry Harelik, a native Wacoan, was a self-employed CPA and foundation executive director till recent retirement. He is a longtime supporter of local nonprofit organizations.
Elected officials listen to voters, and Texas government could do so much better if voters were more demanding.

And if there were more Texans voting.

Look at how crisis concentrates political attention on problem-solving  and the problems politicians work on when voters arent alert.

In the 2019 legislative session, after a 2018 election in which voters sent a get serious message to state officials, public education and property taxes were the subjects at the top of the list, just under voters dissatisfaction with then-President Donald Trump.

In the session before, lawmakers were distracted by other issues  political issues  like the bathroom bill that set out to regulate which bathrooms transgender Texans would be allowed to use. It didnt pass, but enough voters were unhappy enough to get the elected class in line.

The states top officials didnt say specifically that they wouldnt be working on another bathroom bill, but they said they would concentrate on serious meat and potatoes issues. And thats what they did, passing legislation designed to slow the growth of property taxes and reworking public school funding to put more of the load on the state and less on local schools. It wasnt property tax relief, as some had promised  taxes arent going down, just rising at a slower pace  but it was serious work.

All that happened in between those two sessions was an election that saw Democrats taking a bite out of the Republican majority in the Legislature and Republicans in statewide office holding on, but with smaller margins of victory than they had seen in a long, long time.

Voters speak, and politicians listen. That particular feedback loop actually works, whether you think votes count or not. The turnout in the 2018 election was 53%. Thats mediocre, unless you look at recent history. Turnout is higher in presidential election years, when the hoopla of a national race pulls in voters who often arent interested in other elections. But 2018 was an off-year election, like the one this year. And in the previous off-year cycle in 2014, turnout was 33.7%. Four years before that, 38% of the registered voters showed up.

The message in 2018 was in the results of the elections, but also in the high interest level of the voters. And the reaction of the elected class was like the difference between normal highway traffic and highway traffic when the state troopers are out in force.

When fewer of us are watching, lawmakers pursue their own political ends.

If youre working in the Legislature and the list of voter demands is slight, you can turn to personal pet projects and political issues that pay off with primary election voters  that relatively small number of partisans who show up in March, when more than four out of five of the states registered voters are off doing something else.

Its not complicated. Elected officials of all stripes listen closely to their voters so those voters wont send them home. Not always, not every one, and not every time, but on average, voters toss out the bad eggs.

But which voters, and which kinds of bad eggs? General elections draw the biggest crowds, because thats where statewide races are decided, and those are the big, noisy pileups that capture attention. But most legislative races are decided in the primaries, when most of us dont vote.

The political maps drawn by legislators sort the state into Republican and Democratic districts, and as you would expect from a Legislature with a GOP majority, there are more Republican districts than Democratic ones. Lawmakers themselves decide which party has the best and often overwhelming chance to win in each district. Theyre usually chased by hordes of litigants, but this year, the courts have so far let them be, leaving the Legislatures preferences in place for this election cycle.

That leaves the real choice to the primary voters from each party, and since theyre doing the real choosing in Texas congressional and legislative races, they are the voters those elected officials listen to. Theyve protected themselves behind a minority of the electorate, and they spend their official time on issues important to that group.

Only 17.5% of the states registered voters showed up for the March primaries this year. They are often demanding, spurring the people they elect to govern in a particular way. What changes the outcome is when those small electorates swell, giving some of the quieter voters in each party a chance to be heard.

Votes do count.

Ross Ramsey is executive editor and co-founder of The Texas Tribune. He writes regular columns on politics, government and public policy.
The 50-year-old Old Will County Courthouse at Ottawa and Jefferson Streets in downtown Joliet is threatened with demolition and was listed last week by Landmarks Illinois on its 2022 list of Most Endangered Historic Places in Illinois. (Susan DeMar Lafferty / Daily Sou / Chicago Tribune)

A poorly worded inscription on a plaque at the base of a monument outside the Old Will County Courthouse implies credit for the monolithic 1969 concrete structure should go to architect J.C. Cochrane, designer of Illinois Capitol and other notable buildings.

He designed the Lake County Courthouse in Crown Point, Indiana, as well, so one doesnt have to travel all the way to Springfield to discover his busy, classical style doesnt really fit the imposing flat stone walls of the Joliet edifice.

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Also, Cochrane died in 1887, a major impediment to designing postmodern architecture.

In the plaque writers defense, Cochrane had designed an earlier, much more ornate courthouse for Will County in 1884, where the countys legal business was handled for 80 years before it was unceremoniously demolished to pave the way for the modern structure now known as the old courthouse.

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A century-old postcard shows the former Will County Courthouse, which was demolished in the late 1960s. (Daily Southtown file)

Architect Otto Stark, known for designing the office building at 55 W. Wacker Drive in Chicago, is credited with the design of the 1969 courthouse, which won architecture awards at the time.

Starks design is appropriately stark, in a style called Brutalist, not because its brutal, but because the French term for raw concrete is beton brut, and the old courthouse features plenty of that material. It was a popular style in the turbulent late 60s, especially for government buildings. Much like in Joliet, Lake Countys ornate 1878 courthouse in Waukegan was torn down in 1967 and replaced with a Brutalist-style successor.

A half-century later, Starks courthouse in Joliet is facing the same fate as its predecessor. Will County officials seem intent on demolishing it now that they have a brand new steel and glass courthouse with an award-winning design across the street.

That imminent danger helped put the Old Will County Courthouse on the 2022 list of Most Endangered Historic Places in Illinois, announced last week by the preservation advocacy group Landmarks Illinois. It joins the Eugene S. Pike House in Dan Ryan Woods on Chicagos South Side, the Century & Consumers Buildings on South State Street in the Chicagos Loop, Rockfords Elks Lodge No. 64 and Gillson Park in Wilmette.

Its the shortest list in the 25 years Landmarks Illinois has been compiling it, which is encouraging to Bonnie McDonald, the organizations president and CEO. She said other resources the organization offers have helped make a dent in the number of historic structures at risk due to redevelopment or demolition by neglect.

Our programs around technical assistance and grant funding and resources are growing, she said. Because those are growing, the number of endangered properties are shrinking.

Since issuing the first Most Endangered list in 1995, the group has featured about 300 sites, McDonald said, with about a 50% success rate.

We think of that as a success because these properties come to us in imminent danger, she said. The wrecking ball is coming. Theyre deteriorating, and often times its seen as a last resort. To have had success with over half of them, we feel like its a triumph.

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Construction of a new courthouse in Joliet is shown in 2018, looking west from the Old Will County Courthouse. Now that the new courthouse has been completed, county officials want to demolish the old structure. (Ted Slowik / Daily Southtown)

One of their most proud triumphs isnt far from the courthouse. The Joliet Penitentiary made the list in 2002, just months after its last inmates were transferred to other state prisons. In a Tribune story about that years list, Landmarks Illinois officials said the prison would be one of the groups most difficult challenges, requiring creative thinking to come up with an adaptable use plan for that structure.

Now called the Old Joliet Prison Historic Site and managed by the Joliet Area Historical Museum, the site is still being stabilized with the help of millions in grant funds while also offering tours and hosting concerts, an annual haunted house and other events.

That success was largely the result of a group of active local supporters, McDonald said, a crucial element to getting on the Most Endangered list.

We require local support, she said, an organization we can work with to ensure success.

If we have a nomination from a single person, or we find there isnt a local support base, we will work with whoever we can, but we wont put it on the Most Endangered list.

While lots of preservation efforts receive grants, resources and other support from Landmarks Illinois, the Most Endangered list is a way to rally public support around an effort as well as generate ideas for showcase projects. Including properties that dont have a local support, or ones where the wrecking ball is truly right down the road and (demolition) is a week away would be counterproductive, McDonald said.

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The purpose of the list is to identify opportunities around these places and address challenges, and find solutions that can be used across the state, she said. These are models for other communities.

We want it to be meaningful and to make a real difference. These are examples of larger issues around the state like public ownership and lack of public funding, owners who are using demolition by neglect, and policy issues. Thats really the purpose of this list.

Sometimes, it doesnt work out. Another Brutalist building, the Prentice Womens Hospital in Chicago, appeared on the Most Endangered list for four consecutive years starting in 2009 before demolition began in 2013.

But McDonald prefers to focus on the success stories, such as Chicagos James Thompson Center, another regular that came off the list this year after four years now that a sale and renovation plan seemingly have spared it.

People ride the elevator inside the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago in December. The recent sale of the building is considered a preservation win by Landmarks Illinois. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

The Thompson Center also is encouraging because it involves an architectural style thats just now coming around to being considered historic.

Not everyone sees postmodernism as historic and significant, McDonald said. How can something built in my lifetime be historic?

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This is really a story about how places gain significance for different generations. Theres a large group of people who see Brutalism and postmodernism as beautiful and significant. They tend to be younger people, under 40. It takes about 60 years for an architectural style to start to have a constituency of support.

Theres no doubt that being easy on the eyes can help a preservation effort along. The Eugene S. Pike House in Chicagos North Beverly neighborhood is a stately old home built in 1894 by a prosperous developer whose estate was purchased by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County in 1921, later becoming Dan Ryan Woods. According to its Landmarks listing, the district planned to use the house as a superintendents headquarters and it eventually became the Watchmans Residence in the 1960s.

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Empty for years, the house has had active preservation support from the Beverly community, but it needs extensive repairs and a Forest Preserve District effort a few years ago didnt generate any reuse ideas.

McDonald said district officials are open to saving the structure and working with the community on a renewed effort to find another suitable use for the Pike House.

That kind of partnership isnt evident with the Old Will County Courthouse, where government officials seem intent on demolition while a group called the Courthouse Preservation Partnership is hoping to stave off its doom.

McDonald said Landmarks Illinois still hopes to have a constructive dialogue and an opportunity to suggest reuse ideas for the old courthouse. But until then, adding the Brutalist structure to this years list is a way to continue to bring that dialogue to the public, she said.

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While it may not fit the profile of most historic structures, the Brutalist courthouse in Joliet has another very important quality that makes its preservation paramount, McDonald said  the countless people who have interacted with it over its five decades.

It tells the story of our community, she said. Its part of the story of the people who live here.

Landmarks is a weekly column by Paul Eisenberg exploring the people, places and things that have left an indelible mark on the Southland. He can be reached at peisenberg@tribpub.com.
WATERLOO  Waterloo Community Schools may buy the building where its employee health clinic is located.

The Board of Education Monday will consider a recommendation to purchase 1709 University Ave. for $192,500. The board meets at 5 p.m. in the Education Service Center, 1516 Washington St.

Currently, the property is owned by Red Dirt LLC, according to a board memo, but the district has an option to buy it.

Waterloo Schools has had the clinic, which is available to employees and their dependents, since August 2020. It is operated in a partnership between UnityPoint Clinic and HealthPartners, the districts insurance provider, to lower the cost of and provide more timely access to health care.

The districts lease expires July 31. Officials could also renew the lease during the 90 days prior to its expiration.

In other business, the board will:

Consider extending its busing contract with Durham School Services for one year through July 31, 2023. The boards facility committee, which reviewed the companys performance and costs, is recommending the extension. It includes 6.6% more in projected costs for the district related to employee wages, office and shop increases, and general operating expenses.

Consider approving school resource officer agreements for the next two years with the cities of Waterloo and Evansdale. Under the recommendations, the city of Waterloo would continue assigning six police officers within the district for a total cost in 2022-23 of $308,053, an $8,972 increase from the current year, and $323,455 in 2023-24. The city of Evansdale would continue assigning one officer to schools there for a total cost of $35,087 the first year, a $1,022 increase, and $36,841 in the second year.

Hold a public hearing on the sale or disposal of the Elk Run Early Childhood Center, 316 McCoy Road, and the former site of Longfellow School, 233 Edwards St. Later in the meeting, the board is expected to authorize accepting offers through May 16.

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WATERLOO  The Black Hawk County Health Department is recommending new lead-based paint regulations in hopes of continuing to limit the hazardous chemical from inside living quarters.

The Board of Health will hold a public hearing on the proposed measure at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Pinecrest Building, 1407 Independence Ave., on the fourth floor in Room 420. If approved, it would move onto the Board of Supervisors for final adoption.

The actual language of the proposal was not available online nor included within the public notice for the upcoming hearing, but both explained the supposed rationale behind the recommended local changes:

An increase in the number of pertinent definitions  30 term definitions, up from the previous fourteen.

Increase applicability  clearer guidelines on when and how to pursue risk assessments.

Robust lead hazard reduction requirements; increased detail in several areas, specific hazards, effective mitigation practices and

prohibited methods of hazard reduction.

Clear compliance and enforcement procedures, adoption of current Black Hawk

County procedure for enforcement.

Additional protections for tenants.

Updated regulatory language for hearings, variance requests and for the filing of injunctions.

Cedar Falls to experiment with 'No Mow May' next month City Council engaged in some back-and-forth Monday before voting 6-1 to allow for grass and weeds to exceed eight inches in height throughout May in support of bee pollination.

Homes built in the United States before 1978 are likely to have some lead-based paint. It was banned from residential use that year due to the devastating health effects it can have on people, especially young children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Children could be poisoned by chewing on painted lead surfaces, eating paint chips or breathing in lead dust, according to the CDC. The agency also says lead exposure can lead to brain damage, slowed development and learning problems, among other effects.

Whether the countys code already regulates paint-based lead is unclear because it appears to have not been updated online for a few years.

In reviewing the code for the two largest cities in Black Hawk County, Cedar Falls was found to have guidelines for lead based paint.

Dwelling units should comply with Housing and Urban Development lead-based paint regulations pursuant to the Lead Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Action, the citys code states.

If the property was constructed prior to 1950, the residents, upon occupancy, shall be furnished the notice required under the Housing and Urban Development lead based paint regulations, and procedures regarding the hazards of lead based poisoning, the symptoms and treatment of lead poisoning and the precautions to be taken against lead poisoning, it reads.

Waterloo does not seem to have any specific language pertaining to lead-based paint.

But there have been previous efforts by city officals, in partnership with the health department, to dedicate funding to lead abatement, with an emphasis on the oldest, low-income, and highest minority concentrated neighborhoods.

Both cities have adopted internationally recognized building code standards into local policies, meaning some semblance of lead paint regulations are likely law without being directly stated within ordinance.

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WATERLOO  The 27th Waterloo Honor Flight is set to take off next month, transporting 80 Cedar Valley veterans and their guardians to the nations capital.

All honorees on this trip served during the Korean War and Vietnam War eras, but one World War II veteran was added Thursday when a cancellation opened up a seat open. As a result, retired U.S. Army Reserve Maj. Gen. Evan Curly Hultman will attend as the ranking officer on his second Honor Flight.

I went on the very first one, and I told the guys at that time that I didnt want to take a seat at any other one to deprive somebody else of the opportunity, Hultman said. But they got some open seats this time and they said, we want you, so here I am.

The flight will leave from Waterloo Regional Airport on May 11, taking veterans to several memorials in Washington, D.C., and to Arlington National Cemetery before returning home that evening.

For many, its a moment of appreciation for their service, especially for those who were in the military during the turbulent years of the Vietnam War. That includes honoree Dennis Petersen of Cedar Falls, who was a Marine in Chu Lai from December 1966 to January 1968.

To be honest with you, I spent more time trying to stay out of trouble in airports  than I did in Vietnam, Petersen said. Those people yelling at you and wanting to spit on you. It just wasnt a good experience.

Lifelong friends Ricky Troyna and David Barlow are traveling together as honorees, having served in the Navy and Army, respectively. Reflecting on the upcoming trip, Troyna said that it can be difficult to convince veterans to go. Many, he said, dont want to be recognized and are missing out on a great opportunity.

It took me years to get over this too, Troyna said. You know, yes I did it, but I didnt want anything for it, I just went and did what I was supposed to do and helped support our country. And of course as I got older, then you start thinking, Well, you know what? It would be nice to see all the memorials they have in D.C.

Of all those sites, Troyna said, he is most keen on visiting the Korean War Memorial, where his uncle, Edwin Hahn, has his name engraved on the wall.

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WATERLOO -- The Waterloo Noon Kiwanis will meet Tuesday, April 26, at the Elks Lodge for a noon luncheon. Nonie Fairchild will be presenting on the Homicide/Other Violent Crimes Program in Waterloo. HOVC is a nonprofit providing services to victims and families who have been affected by a violent crime. Their service area is in Black Hawk and six other counties.
As the war in Ukraine continues, most Americans are appalled by the inhumane treatment Ukrainians are receiving from the Russian government and troops. President Biden, who has handled the situation superbly, has even referred to the behavior as genocide. In the U.S., there is hope the Russian people will grow tired of the battles and their losses in both resources and troops. The desire is pressure will be exerted leading to a voluntary Russian withdrawal and an end to the war. Some are even hoping for an ouster of President Putin.

These are unrealistic expectations.

To understand why, we must examine the relationship between Vladimir Putin and the Russian people. Putin is not a newbie in Russia. He has been president since 2012 and before that from 2000 to 2008. He also served as prime minister from 2008 to 2012. While polls and elections are suspect in Russia, Putin is popular, with approval ratings over 80%. He will be around for a while.

According to Stanislav Kucher, a journalist and former Russian TV presenter, the Russian belief is Putin is the only leader capable of saving the country. The reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev have lost popularity over time. Prior to the introduction of price liberalization and privatization, the old Soviet Union at least provided security and stability. The loss of personal freedoms necessary to ensure these goals was a sacrifice most people were willing to make. The reforms led to a healthier economy and a significant increase in personal consumption. But almost paradoxically, these benefits gradually resulted in a decrease in the emerging body of personal freedoms. Simultaneously, government propaganda convinced the people Russias problems were the result of America, NATO, and the West. Somebody elses fault.

Enter Putin, who promised a return to Russias greatness in a new Russian world. Russia has long suffered from an inferiority complex, especially compared with the U.S. A return to deserved greatness promised by Putin was eagerly embraced by a huge majority of Russians. An effective Russian propaganda machine convinced the country Ukraine should be a part of Russia and that the invasion was actually designed to liberate large groups of Ukrainians from U.S. and NATO control.

So, a combination of big lies, Russians misperceptions of the global political situation, unrealistic assumptions about their place in the current world, and a growing frustration of a country again lagging behind other advanced nations creates incredibly strong support for Putin. He is seen as the one who can make Russia great again.

This is Putin's main political and psychological victory. He did what only one Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, had done before him: Tied his political longevity to the self-esteem of the Russian people. And they love him for it.

Expecting Putin to be ousted by the Russian people is unrealistic. Instead, we may be treated to an extended period of Russian aggression designed to restore that nation to what its people see as their rightful place in the world order. This makes a Western/NATO approach to dealing with Russia a longer term issue that will not be solved by the Russians themselves.

Fred Abraham is professor emeritus at the University of Northern Iowa. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not reflect those of the university.

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As a state legislator (2007-2011), I was honored to represent 30,000 Cedar Valley constituents and represent Iowas 3 million citizens while in a leadership position with the Board of Parole (2011-2014). To me, people always came before party.

It perplexed many of my fellow legislators when I supported my constituents values and went against the party line. Now, Im perplexed by the actions of Iowa Republicans who are supposed to represent our wishes in Washington, D.C.

In 1972, then Iowa House of Representative Chuck Grassley voted for Iowa to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Now, as a U.S. senator, hes not carried that banner forward; hypocrisy prevails in his demeanor.

In 2021, the U.S. House passed legislation to remove the ERA ratification deadline and make the ERA the 28th Amendment to our Constitution. Iowa GOP Reps. Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Randy Feenstra voted no. We can only interpret they must want sexual discrimination to remain in America.

Republicans are stonewalling any forward action on the ERA, despite 78% of Americans favoring the ERA. When was the last time four out of five adults agreed on anything?

When discussing a bill requiring women to register for the military draft, Sen. Joni Ernst said, Because we have opened up every position to women in the military, I think its imperative that women say we want to be treated equally. Two words  treated equally  appear to be of importance to Ernst. Yet hypocrisy reigns when she and Grassley ignored requests by the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women to participate in a round-table discussion regarding ratification of the ERA. Silence speaks volumes, doesnt it?

The Paycheck Fairness Act would help women receive equal pay for equal work plus address bias and discriminatory workplace practices. Who voted against the bill that would cut the poverty rate for women by 50% and add nearly $5 billion to Americas GDP? Iowas three Republican representatives  Hinson, Miller-Meeks and Feenstra  lemmings to their partys dictum.

Across America, women only earn 82 cents on average for every dollar a man makes for doing the same job. In Iowa, women earn 77% of what men earn, ranking Iowa as 37th for pay equality.

With the actions  and non-actions  by Iowas GOP delegation on the ERA and Paycheck Fairness Act, its obvious they want women to remain at a lower caste than men. Maybe our Republican legislators feel America should be a patriarchal society where women succumb to and are controlled by men. Discrimination abounds by their representation.

Its safe to say our Republican delegation dont know, or are ignoring, that 70% of all Iowa female-head of households are struggling to make ends meet. I can only surmise they are purposely ignoring that the World Bank calls investing in women as smart economics.

Research reveals economic growth for women has a critical multiplier effect. Women share their personal economic gains with their families and community, reinvesting 90% of their income in food, health care, home improvement and schooling for themselves and their children.

Lets face it. Womens progress is societys progress.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), reflecting on the ERA and womens rights, said we cant be silent about things that matter. I concur.

We can no longer elect candidates to public office who do not support womens equality. On Tuesday, Nov. 8, lets vote to end sexual discrimination in America by electing supporters of the ERA and Paycheck Fairness Act.

Doris Kelley of Cedar Falls is a former member of the Iowa House of Representatives.

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In Reutov, near Moscow, huge graffiti was created with a Ukrainian grandmother who was mocked by radicals in Ukraine for meeting them with flag of the USSR of her father.

The author is an unknown local resident.

WtR
WE KNOW THE TRUTH AND NOT AFRAID OF IT. DO AND ARE YOU?

April 23, 2022 by By Ambassador Oleg V. Stepanov

We at the Embassy of Russia in Canada respect and love to read The Hill Times. However, the other day, I came across the piece Ukraine: the impact of the atrocities by Gwynne Dyer published in April 11, 2022 edition. In the beginning, I was eager to write a commentary in response due to the outrageous nature of the article. But, having given it a thought, decided to bring to the attention of the readers and the editorial team a broader perspective.

As everyone knows, the Second World War was won mostly by the enormous sacrifice of the Soviet Union (hereinafter I would refer to it as Russia  the colloquial name used in the West). The story served by Mr. Dyer in his op-ed denigrating the Red Army is based on the false narrative invented on the terminal stage of the War in Europe by the Nazi Goebbels propaganda machine. And after the fall of Nazi Germany the story was re-launched with a doubled effort by the U.S. military intelligence and the CIA in coordination with the notorious Gehlen Organization (comprised of rehabilitated Nazis, RHSA, Abwehr and SS officers) to confront Russia/Soviet Union.

Such fictitious stories became a part of the psychological information operations and propaganda policy aimed at dehumanizing and demonizing Russia and Russians in the unfolding Cold war.

My country lost to the WWII 27 million lives including about 15 million non-military toll  all civilian victims of the genocide unleashed by the German occupants supported by practically all of continental Europe that either joined the Nazis on the battlefields or economically sustained their fight. No other country in the world, with the exception of China, suffered on such a large scale during the war.

Not even did the Russian soldier manage to defeat Nazism. But having achieved the victory he stayed human and humane. He found inner strength to forgive the unforgivable crimes committed by Germany and other nations that had sided with it, to reconcile in a noble pursuit that no global wars were fought ever again. After the Victory, despite our country from Leningrad in the north to the Caucasus in the south was in ruins, the same Russian soldier  sometimes at the expense of the interests of his own people  was feeding and caring for the former enemy and helping to rebuild.

The Russian soldier is kind and will always lend a hand to the sincerely penitent foe. So is the story behind the memorial in Treptower Park in Berlin. The Soldier Liberator holding in his arm a little girl has real prototypes  sergeants Nikolay Masalov and Trifon Lukyanovich who both saved German kids during the Berlin operation in April 1945.

There are veterans of that war in my country and in the former allied nations, Canada among them, who are still alive and know this unvarnished truth. Ask them. But this article is also about broader picture.

Let me be clear. I am personally against sweeping generalizations, but here providing a snap picture of the historical perception within Russian society. We understand that on a philosophical level the denigration of Russia emanates not simply from the strategic need of propaganda and information warfare. It is deeply rooted in the farthest corner of the Western soul. Every time it alleges Russia is committing atrocities, the West attempts to conceal in a secret room its own sins and liberate itself from guilt for its dark past. By demonizing us the West is trying to escape the shame it feels looking at its own reflection in the mirror.

What is the dark past, youll ask? The total genocide of the indigenous peoples of what now is known as the United States. The disgraceful and bloody history of colonialism by the British Empire (of which Canada was a part)  as a result millions and millions of dead, enslaved, tortured, harassed, traumatized. The list of others is long and well documented.

As a matter of fact, there is the most vivid example that is given little thought in this country, Canada, at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. The nation advertising itself as the beacon of democracy is still having trouble coping with the need to seek national reconciliation and bear responsibility for horrendous crimes of genocide and cultural extirpation against the First Nations.

We all support the modern effort by Canadian society to find inner peace. But everyone has to remember that while Canada was lecturing others on human rights and democracy in the second half of the 20th century the First Nations children in residential schools were subject to horrendous abuse and cultural cleansing until 1996.

Russia and Russians wont be hurt by the allegations in fake atrocities. We know those are lies. We also know that this article wont change the views of those who on purpose or unwillingly in ignorance against the backdrop of the current historic moment are pouring on the Ukrainian propagandist mill to retrospectively reproduce the historical fakes.

However, our chief concern is that such narrative warfare is targeting Canadian audience in attempt to distort the real picture by intentionally falsifying history.

On the other hand, we also know that people of Canada whose grandfathers fought alongside my compatriots to liberate the world from Nazism are thoughtful and in terms of critical analysis can tell the truth from the lie. That is of high value especially on the eve of commemorating the upcoming anniversary of the Victory in the war in Europe celebrated on May 8th in Canada and on May 9th in Russia.

WtR
On April 20, 2022, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi had a phone conversation with Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan.

Wang Yi said, China and Armenia are good friends enjoying mutual trust and good partners featuring sincere cooperation. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties 30 years ago, bilateral relations have withstood the test of the rapidly evolving international landscape, always stayed on the right course, and achieved fruitful results. The Chinese side is satisfied with the outcomes of bilateral cooperation and is full of confidence in the prospect of bilateral relations. The two sides should take the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties as an opportunity to continue to implement the consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries and push forward the sustained development of bilateral relations in its 30s.

Wang Yi said, China will, as always, respect Armenia's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and support the development path chosen by the Armenian people in line with their national conditions. China believes that Armenia will continue to firmly support China's position on issues concerning China's core interests, adhere to the one-China principle, and oppose "Taiwan independence" in whatever forms. China welcomes Armenia's early participation in the Global Development Initiative.

Mirzoyan extended congratulations on the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries, appreciated China's firm support for Armenia's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and stressed that Armenia will continue to pursue the one-China principle and fully support China in safeguarding its core interests. Armenia attaches great importance to developing relations with China, and stands ready to deepen exchanges and cooperation with China in various fields, strengthen communication and coordination on international and regional affairs, and push for greater progress in bilateral relations.




Request for Proposal (RFP) 23-440-5000-00030

Title: Legal Services to the Patient Compensation Fund Advisory Board regarding Open Meetings Act Issues and Administrative Procedures

Purpose: The State of New Mexico Office of Superintendent of Insurance is seeking to solicit sealed proposals to establish a contract through competitive negotiations for the procurement of competent legal services to the Patients Compensation Fund Advisory Board (Board) to provide advice on Open Meetings Act issues, Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) issues, administrative procedures, procurement issues, and related matters as assigned. Such representation shall include, but not be limited to, advising the Board on the requirements of the Open Meetings Act and IPRA, other applicable New Mexico statutes, administrative procedures, procurement questions, drafting of decisions and reports, and as requested, advice on proposed legislation affecting the New Mexico Medical Malpractice Act.

Issuance: The RFP will be available on April 25, 2022. A copy of the RFP can be accessed at http://www.osi.state.nm.us or by contacting the RFP Procurement Manager, Michelle Lopez, 1120 Paseo de Peralta, Old PERA Building, Room 414; PO Box 1689 Santa Fe, NM 87504-1689; Phone (505) 470-7168; email: MichelleJ.Lopez2@state.nm.us. Mandatory specifications and submission deadlines apply to this procurement. Potential Offerors are advised to review the RFP carefully.

Journal: April 14-23, 2022
PUBLIC NOTICE REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL

The State of New Mexico is seeking office space for approximately 5,172 leasable square feet for the Department of Corrections within the city limits of Roswell, NM: This is official notice that the State of New Mexico intends to release a Request for Proposal (RFP) on or about Monday, April 25, 2022.

This RFP will be available for free download Monday, April 25, 2022 and can be found online at:

https://bids.sciquest.com/

apps/Router/

PublicEvent?CustomerOrg=StateOfNewMexico&tab=PHX_NAV_SourcingOpenForBid&tmstmp=1467214109161; potential Offerors must be registered at: https://solutions.sciquest.com/apps/

Router/RegistrationChecklist or at the following location: General Services Department, Facilities Management Division, 2542 Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87502. This RFP contains all conditions governing this procurement for agency leased space requirements and architectural program, along with the rating and ranking process. All contact regarding this RFP shall be made to Facilities Management Division Leasing

Specialist, Sarah Gano at 505-629-9577 or sarah.gano@state.nm.us

Journal: April 17-23, 2022
The rolling of the train.

Thats the sound that is music to Ed Davis ears.

Its also a sound that reminds Davis of growing up  and his own time riding the rails across the United States.

Traveling by train is a unique way of seeing the country, Davis says. Theres no better way to see America than through the windows of a train. You see life that is unvarnished and its captivating.

Davis is on the 15-city, 30-day, 6,500-mile The Great American Whistle Stop Book Tour, which brings the author to Albuquerque on Sunday, April 24 and Monday, April 25.

Davis is on the tour to support his novel, The Last Professional.

I wanted to go on an old-school book tour, he says. Not many authors do it that way, much less by train.

The first stop will be from 1-4 p.m. Sunday, April 24, at the Wheels Museum, 1100 Second St. SW. The organizers are hosting Travel Along the Rails HOBO Event, which is complete with book presentation, silent film, lunch and a costume contest. The event is $20 and reservations are required at 505-243-6269 or email leba4@aol.com or jmariecoen@unm.edu.

Davis will then participate in a book talk/signing at Treasure House Books, 2012 South Plaza NW in Old Town from 1:30-3:30 p.m. Monday, April 25. This event is free and open to the public.

The Last Professional follows Lynden Hoover 15 years after suffering through a childhood trauma that still haunts him. Hoover gets help from The Duke, an old hobo who calls Americas landscape his home and adheres to a time-honored code. Bonds are formed, and secrets exposed as The Duke flees Short Arm, his relentless and brutal nemesis.

The Duke mentors Lynden on life on the tracks, using the vibrant language of the boxcar life gleaned from years riding across great swaths of country. With the help of the trusted knights of the road, Lynden and The Duke head to a harrowing climax with Short Arm where generations collide, and lives hang in the balance.

It took Davis 40 years to write the novel.

I began it four decades ago and put it on the back burner after my wife and I began a family, he says. I wouldnt change it at all.

The novel was inspired by Davis life on the rails.

While growing up, Davis was nomadic, often found hopping box cars and freight trains  from Reno to Vancouver, through the Sierras and up and down the Golden State.

As a young man he lived on $5 a day, worked as a carny and even slept under the same bridge Jack Kerouac once did. Living as a part-time hobo, he and his friends  the knights of the road  experienced a world that no longer exists. Those treks across the country eventually led Davis to become a successful business owner, a champion discus thrower, author and a loving husband to his wife, Jan, who on occasion had even hopped the trains with him.

Its been an incredible journey for me, Davis says. The crazy thing is trains are the biggest rolling machines on the face of the earth. Yet, they are almost invisible. They can travel places cars cant. Ill finish the trip back in my hometown in California.
For years travelers on the old Route 66 and on Interstate 40 have seen the catchy slogan Tucumcari Tonite! on billboards promoting the east-central New Mexico towns motels as a motorists destination.

Perhaps the towns most famous motel has been the Blue Swallow, its name and bird lit up at night.

Tucumcari Tonite! is also the title of a new story-packed book on the history  and prehistory  of the Tucumcari area. Its subtitle is A Story of Railroads, Route 66 & the Waning of a Western Town.

The author is historian David H. Stratton, who has a long and special affection for the town. Stratton was born and raised in Tucumcari, just two blocks from Route 66 and a few blocks from the once-hopping railroad yards.

Stratton was boyhood buddies with Phares, son of W.A. Arch Huggins, the man who built the Blue Swallow in 1939; his wife, Maud Huggins, named the motel. In the books introduction Stratton wrote that she wanted the title and the color of the gracefully swooping blue bird to suggest peaceful, soothing rest and sleep.

Stratton writes of another Arch, Arch Hurley, a well-remembered, community-minded Tucumcari resident. On July 31, 1935 Hurley got off the Rock Island Railroads westbound No. 11 passenger train at Tucumcari.

He was returning from Washington, D.C., where his long, unrelenting lobbying effort finally succeeded. He announced that the federal government had approved the building of Conchas Dam on the Canadian River, an anticipated boon to the economies of Tucumcari and surrounding farmers.

Before and during the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, some farmers had come to eastern New Mexico to homestead on 160 acres of free public land. Most were unable to earn a living.

Its not that fertile. They stayed four, five years and left in droves, Stratton explained in a phone interview from his residence in Olympia, Washington.

And in more recent years, Stratton said farmers werent getting sufficient water from Conchas because the level of the lake behind the dam didnt fill up high enough to reach the irrigation canals.

The profile of Hurley and the dams construction is one of many examples showing Strattons ability to find the drama in stories that combine people, places and events relevant to Tucumcari.

The town was founded in 1901 from scratch by the Rock Island Railroad, Stratton writes. Rock Islands plan was to push west to meet up with El Paso and Northeastern Railroad at the Pecos River, hoping for a transcontinental connection that didnt happen.

Tucumcari did find itself as an operational division point between the Rock Island and the Southern Pacific. By 1910 the town had become a major regional railroad center.

Stratton identifies three German Jewish merchants  two brothers and their brother-in-law  as Tucumcaris Founding Fathers for their enterprise in establishing a town site, in nurturing Tucumcaris early growth and in watching it become a trading center for the areas rural communities. The merchants relied on their knowledge of Rock Islands plans for a rail juncture between its main line and northern New Mexicos coalfields at Dawson.

Stratton extensively explores the strong local impact and the behind-the-scenes machinations of the national Great Railroad Strike of 1922. Tucumcaris rail workers, though of different skills and of different unions, were all affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. All went out on strike.

The strike began over a federal decree for a 12.5% wage drop and quickly became violent over the hiring of replacement workers. Into this maelstrom Stratton introduces Alex Street, an FBI agent in a surreptitious, railroad-backed role as an apparent peacemaker. Street was a former sheriff of Quay County; Tucumcari is the county seat.

In the preface, Stratton gives an overview for readers of what follows.

For the most part it is a case study with scholarly intent of the influence of 20th century transportation development, largely of railroads and highways in the context of national trends, and its effect on one Western town, he writes. Strattons intent may be scholarly, but his writing style is aimed at the general reader. Technology  diesel engines replacing steam engines  hit Tucumcari hard. So did the federal interstate system. Its highways skirted hundreds of the nations small towns like Tucumcari. Those towns had counted on the business that flocks of tourists brought. They stopped off on their travels on roads like Route 66 that ran through, not around, their communities.

Asked what he thinks of Tucumcaris future, Stratton said he hopes there might be some outside force that would rescue the town from its enduring economic woes. He noted that Tucumcari has no skilled labor to attract any kind of industry. A lot of people are on Social Security, on welfare. Theres a lot of retired people.

Stratton taught for about half a century, most recently at Washington State University. He is 95 and still writing.

Historians look forward to retirement to catch up on everything they didnt do for 30 years because of teaching requirements, he said.

Tucumcari Tonite! is Strattons second book regarding New Mexico history. The first was Tempest over Teapot Dome: The Story of Albert B. Fall.
Editors Note: Fire officials said Sunday morning that the Calf Canyon and Hermits Peak fires have burned 48,251 acres. Check back with us for the latest on this developing story.

Melissa Gallegos was frantically gathering what she could Friday afternoon when an officer pulled into her driveway in El Aguila and told her it was time to leave.

Ashes fell from the sky and smoke whirled on gusty winds as she grabbed pictures off the walls  whatever she could hold in her arms  weighing what to take, and what to leave.

I was just going from room to room, kind of looking, it was just so scary, she said.

Within a half-hour, Gallegos drove away from the only home she knows with her 5-year-old grandson and three dogs. Among the few treasures she took was a 100-year-old photo of her grandparents wedding and a painting of her father, who died when she was a baby.

Im still hoping and praying that, of course, I have a home to get back to, she told the Journal on Saturday.

But only time will tell.

The 51-year-old was one of hundreds who evacuated as the Calf Canyon Fire tore through communities in northeast New Mexico, destroying homes and consuming mountainsides. By Saturday the blaze had merged with the neighboring Hermits Peak Fire, burning a combined 42,300 acres.

The fire led to widespread evacuations in Mora and San Miguel counties, where some 900 structures were threatened.

As of Saturday evening, no loss of life had been confirmed and officials struck a hopeful tone on their firefighting efforts and the blazes predicted growth.

Jason Coil, an operations section chief with the Southwest Area Incident Management Team, said crews had some success on Saturday surrounding the fire  like the frame of a puzzle. He said they were focused on keeping the flames from crossing N.M. 518 and moving into communities north of the blaze, such as Mora.

I feel like, in a couple days, if we continue to see the success that we did today that well be able to say we got a frame all the way around that puzzle and then well start working on filling it in the middle, he said.

Fire behavior analyst Stuart Turner said they were also expecting the fire to slow on Sunday as cloud and smoke cover moves in, allowing the forests to retain more moisture.

Im not expecting a big growth day (Sunday) but we will see some perimeter growth, he said, noting that interior portions will still see moderate to extreme fire behavior, which could threaten structures in those areas.

Despite the good news, officials pleaded with residents to follow evacuation orders.

You cant see even in the middle of the day, Coil said in an earlier briefing. Theres embers falling all around you, the smoke has pushed all the way down to the valley floors because of the winds. And if you choose to stay in that environment, its not likely that youll get out of there.

Carl Schwope, incident commander, said the fire was devastating on Friday and made a significant impact to private property. He said the extent of the damage is unknown.

This is a large fire area, theres a lot of places to cover  to get accurate information about the devastating effects of this fire could take two to three days, he said, asking for patience from residents.

Meanwhile, videos had flooded social media, from Pendaries Village, showing a mile-long line of towering flames and smoke eating swaths of forest just above untouched homes and cattle grazing in a valley below. One woman commented, I see this even when I close my eyes. Unbelievable and horrific!

Residents took to Facebook to express frustration at a lack of information, ask about whether their homes still stood and share maps of the fires spread. Others mourned their homes and properties already lost, including a Pendaries lodge overtaken by the blaze.

The Taos County Sheriffs Office shared several photos of charred homes south of Mora, some of them mere skeletons, framed or swallowed by the amber glow of flames.

Gallegos said as she escaped from the lush mountains where she was raised, where her family has owned property for generations, she saw a herd of elk had fled the forests and joined some cows in a meadow. A friend who drove by later said the same field had since been completely wiped out by the blaze.

It just happened so fast. It was expected, but yet, kind of hard to believe. Were kind of in denial, she said. Gallegos said multiple people in the area refused to leave their homes and livestock but she hoped they had a change of heart.

Its very devastating  losing your home or knowing that you could lose your home, but material things can be replaced and lives cant, she said. I dont know, as of now, if theyve left or theyre still there.

Those in the surrounding communities have only been able to watch in horror. They do what they can for their neighbors who are fleeing the flames.

Harold Garcia, a San Miguel County commissioner and lifelong area resident, said hes never seen anything like the Calf Canyon Fire.

This guys a monster. Its a huge monster. I mean, its just, its unbelievable, he said.

Garcia said he spent all day Saturday at the evacuation center in Las Vegas where hundreds of evacuees came through, many of them he knows personally. He said some knew their homes were gone, others were still waiting for news.

All of them were scared.

Theyre dealing with it the best way they can. I mean, what other way is there to deal with it? Theyre devastated, Garcia said. He said some residents have been evacuated twice in the past two weeks, first for the Hermits Peak Fire and now this.

Its taken a toll on everyone  as an elected official. I feel totally helpless, Garcia said. What do you do? I mean, you cant just turn a switch that says off on it. Theres no such thing. Youre at the mercy of the fire.

Las Vegas Mayor Louie Trujillo said he has been on pins and needles since Friday.

Its completely nerve-wracking  the last 24 hours has just been somewhat emotional, he said. A mixed bag of anger, sadness, adrenaline and  for many  a call to action as multiple homes have been lost in Pendaries, where he and his partner own a second home.

Its absolutely paradise, I hate to think of whats left of it, he said.

Trujillo said authorities have been knocking on doors and asking people to leave but some refused. In that area the homes, farms and ranches are often a familys livelihood, one thats passed down through generations.

Of course, the risk is  do they have enough communication to let people know, Hey, Im still OK. My house is OK. But there are people who have chosen to stay and sit it out, Trujillo said.

Amid the grief and uncertainty, Trujillo and Garcia both said the city and villages have come together.

Thats the way the community is  people are very, very sensitive to one another, Garcia said. The neighbors have shown how neighborly they are  how compassionate that we are. Its just amazing.

For hours people drove up to the evacuation center, unloading donations of food and goods, others offered their homes to evacuees and their land to the livestock.

I dont think theres anything that we lack except rain. And thats not coming anytime soon, Trujillo said.
STATE OF NEW MEXICO

COUNTY OF BERNALILLO

SECOND JUDICIAL

DISTRICT COURT

Case No. D-202-CV-2020-01127

QUICKEN LOANS INC.,

Plaintiff,

v.

JOHN J. PARRA,

Defendant(s).

NOTICE OF SALE

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that on May 24, 2022, at the hour of 10:15am the undersigned Special Master will, at the main entrance of the Bernalillo County Courthouse, 400 Lomas NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102, sell all the right, title and interest of the above-named Defendants in and to the hereinafter described real estate to the highest bidder for cash. The property to be sold is located at 8609 ROBBY AVE. SW, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO 87121, and is situate in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, and is particularly described as follows:

LOT NUMBERED THIRTEEN (13), IN BLOCK NUMBERED SEVENTY-FIVE (75), OF WESTGATE HEIGHTS, UNIT 3, AN ADDITION TO THE CITY OF ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO, WITHIN THE TOWN OF ATRISCO GRANT, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO, AS SHOWN AND DESIGNATED ON THE PLAT FILED IN THE OFFICE OF THE COUNTY CLERK OF BERNALILLO COUNTY, NEW MEXICO, ON APRIL 22, 1977, IN PLAT BOOK D7, FOLIO 167.

as the same is shown and designated on the plat thereof, filed in the office of the County Clerk of Bernalillo County, New Mexico, on April 22, 1977 in Plat Book D7, Folio 167, including anyimprovements, fixtures, and attachments, such as, but not limited to, mobile homes, (hereinafter the "Property"). If there is a conflict between the legal description and the street address, the legal description shall control.

THE FOREGOING SALE will be made to satisfy a judgment rendered by the above Court in the above entitled and numbered cause on March 7, 2022 being an action to foreclose a

Deed of Trust on the above described property. The Plaintiffs Judgment, which includes interest and costs, is $129,689.03 and the same bears interest at 4.37500% per annum from March 7, 2022 to the date of sale. The Plaintiff and/or its assignees has the right to bid at such sale and submit its bid verbally or in writing. The Plaintiff may apply all or any part of its judgment to the purchase price in lieu of cash. The sale may be postponed and rescheduled at the discretion of the Special Master.

NOTICE IS FURTHER GIVEN that in the event that the Property is not sooner redeemed, the undersigned Special Master will, as set forth above, offer for sale and sell the Property to the highest bidder for cash or equivalent, for the purpose of satisfying, in the adjudged order of priorities, the judgment and decree of foreclosure described herein, together with any additional costs and attorneys fees, including the costs of advertisement and publication for the foregoing sale, and, reasonable receiver and Special Masters fees in an amount to be fixed by the Court.

NOTICE IS FURTHER GIVEN that the real property and improvements concerned with herein will be sold subject to any and all patent reservations, easements, all recorded and unrecorded liens not foreclosed herein, and all recorded and unrecorded special assessments and taxes that may be due. Plaintiff, its attorneys and the Special Master disclaim all responsibility for, and the purchaser at the sale takes the property subject to, the valuation of the property by the County Assessor as real or personal property, affixture of any mobile or manufactured home to the land, deactivation of title to a mobile or manufactured home on the property, if any, environmental contamination on the property, if any, and zoning violations concerning the property, if any.

NOTICE IS FURTHER GIVEN that the foregoing sale may be postponed and rescheduled at the discretion of the Special Master, and is subject to all taxes, utility liens and other restrictions and easements of record, and subject to a one (1) month right of redemption held by the Defendants upon entry of an order approving sale, and subject to the entry of an in rem order

of the Court approving the terms and conditions of sale.

NOTICE IS FURTHER GIVEN that the purchaser at such sale shall take title to the above described real property subject to a one (1) month right of redemption.

PROSPECTIVE PURCHASERS AT SALE ARE ADVISED TO MAKE THEIR OWN EXAMINATION OF THE TITLE

AND THE CONDITION OF THE PROPERTY AND TO CONSULT THEIR OWN ATTORNEY BEFORE BIDDING.

Witness my hand this 28th day of March, 2022.

By: /S/ Robert Doyle

Robert Doyle, Special Master

Legal Process Network

P.O. Box 279

Sandia Park, NM 87047

(505) 417-4113

Journal: April 2, 9, 16, 23, 2022


STATE OF NEW MEXICO

COUNTY OF BERNALILLO

SECOND JUDICIAL

DISTRICT

No. D-202-PB-2022-00314

IN THE MATTER OF THE

ESTATE OF JAYME MHOON, Deceased.

NOTICE TO CREDITORS

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that Francisco Leger, Personal Representative of the Estate of Jayme Mhoon, Deceased, that all persons having claims against the Estate of Jayme Mhoon, Deceased, are required to present their claims within four months after the date of the first publication of this Notice to Creditors or the claims will be forever barred. Claims must be presented to the Personal Representative at the address below.

Dated: April 20, 2022

Personal Representative

Francisco Leger

c/o Elisabeth A. Millich, Esq.

Millich Law

1201 Lomas Blvd NW, Ste C

Albuquerque, NM 87102

/s/Elisabeth A. Millich

Elisabeth A. Millich, Esq.

Journal: April 23, 30, May 7, 2022
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  With wildfires igniting around New Mexico, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham called on state residents Saturday to heed evacuation orders and brace for a long fire season.

In a briefing, the governor said there were 20 active wildfires burning in 16 different counties around New Mexico as of Saturday afternoon  or in nearly half the states 33 counties.

It is only April and yet we are seeing fire spread  that we have only ever seen in late May or June, Lujan Grisham told reporters.

She also said dry conditions and ferocious winds  gusts in excess of 90 mph were recorded at the top of Kachina Peak at Taos Ski Valley  had created an unprecedented day of fire activity on Friday.

While winds were slightly slower and temperatures lower on Saturday, the governor said the fire danger would likely continue to be omnipresent.

We are cognizant this is going to be a tough, long week and I want New Mexicans to be prepared for that, Lujan Grisham said.

In all, the governor said more than 1,000 firefighters were working to battle blazes across the state, including crews from other states.

With several fires growing rapidly, Lujan Grisham said she spoke with White House officials Saturday about the possibility of getting emergency federal aid and expressed concern about the possibility of severe fire damage to New Mexico watersheds.

But the governor said her primary focus was on saving lives.

I dont want to minimize how dangerous the situation is and how dramatic it is, Lujan Grisham said.

We need people to leave areas that have fire warnings, the governor added. Theres no reason for us to lose anyone because they made the decision to stay despite mandatory evacuation orders.

Meanwhile, the governor also said a complex fire that started in San Miguel County was threatening roughly 900 structures.

It was unclear Saturday how many homes and other structures had already been destroyed by the complexs two fires  the Calf Canyon and Hermits Peak fires  that merged.

However, more than 200 structures have already been burned statewide due to fires this year, Lujan Grisham said.

The governor, who was joined for Saturdays briefing by top state forestry and emergency management officials, said investigations into the causes of many of the fires were still ongoing.

But Lujan Grisham and other officials expressed frustration that one of the blazes  the Hermits Peak Fire in San Miguel County  was started by the U.S. Forest Service as a prescribed burn. The fire then blew out of control due to high winds.

State Forester Laura McCarthy said the fire could prompt changes in how government agencies conduct prescribed burns, which are used to reduce the potential for large out-of-control blazes.

There probably wont be any more prescribed burning in the spring, she said.

While New Mexico law prohibits the governor from banning firework sales statewide, Lujan Grisham said she would urge cities and counties to enact local bans. She said she had already spoken with several New Mexico mayors about doing so.
On April 20, 2022, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi met with Cambodian Ambassador to China Khek Caimealy Sysoda and Lao Ambassador to China Khamphao Ernthavanh, respectively, in Beijing at their requests.

Yang Jiechi said, China-Cambodia and China-Laos relations, having withstood the test of time and grown even stronger with closer people-to-people bonds, have entered a new era of building a community with a shared future. The China-Cambodia free trade agreement and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership came into force at the beginning of this year, and the China-Laos Railway opened to traffic successfully with good benefits. The two sides have firmly rendered mutual support on issues concerning each other's core interests. The two sides should ensure sound implementation of the important consensus reached by leaders, strengthen strategic communication, consolidate political mutual trust, improve the quality of economic and trade cooperation, and work for more outcomes in cooperation and exchanges in fields such as pandemic response, people's wellbeing, and people-to-people and cultural exchanges. China is ready to work closely with the two countries in multilateral coordination and collaboration, to jointly safeguard regional peace and stability, and uphold international fairness and justice.

Yang Jiechi stressed, this year kicks off the implementation of the comprehensive strategic partnership between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). China supports Cambodia's role as the rotating chair of ASEAN and stands ready to work with ASEAN to build a peaceful, safe and secure, prosperous, beautiful and amicable home together.

The two ambassadors thanked China for providing valuable assistance for the two countries' pandemic response and economic and social development. The two countries firmly support China's just position on its core interests and major international issues, expect to work with China to advance Belt and Road cooperation, and will actively promote the development of the ASEAN-China comprehensive strategic partnership.
As crews battled the large Calf Canyon-Hermits Peak complex fire on Saturday, several other wildfires raged across the state.

Cerro Pelado

The Cerro Pelado Fire that started about 7 miles east of Jemez Springs on Friday has grown to 4,688 acres and is 0% contained as of Saturday evening.

Sandoval County spokesperson Stephen Montoya said in an email that a few structures have burned, but there is no total on how many.

The communities of Sierra Los Pinos and Los Griego have been evacuated.

New Mexico State Police have closed N.M. 4 from the junction with N.M. 126 east to Los Alamos.

Cooks Peak

The Colfax County areas of Miami, Sweetwater, Rayado, Philmont Scout Ranch and Sunny Side are under mandatory evacuations from the Cooks Peak Fire.

In Mora County, authorities evacuated Los LeFebres, Los Huerros, and areas east of County Road 009 and north of N.M. 120.

The blaze has burned more than 48,600 acres and is 0% contained.

Mitchell

A fire on private land east of Mosquero in Harding County has burned 20,000 acres and is 0% contained.

Residents near Bueyeros were evacuated.

The fire is pushing to the east, but no structures are currently threatened, according to the Harding County Sheriffs Office.

Campbell Road

The Campbell Road Fire east of Des Moines in Union County has burned about 2,000 acres and is 90% contained.

New Mexico State Forestry firefighters will work this weekend to mop up hotspots and secure containment lines.

East

A fire near Mimbres has burned about 100 acres of the Gila National Forest and private land.

The fire is 10% contained.

Simona

A bosque fire south of Belen in Jarales is 75% contained and has burned 165 acres.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  All five Republican candidates for governor in New Mexico have pledged to boost border security.

But each is also making the case that he or she is uniquely well-suited to take on the issue, as GOP voters prepare to choose a nominee.

The candidates ideas range from deploying the New Mexico National Guard  broadly supported by the GOP field  to a mix of individual ideas that include investments in roads and broadband, a standalone border agency and a 150-person strike force in the Department of Public Safety.

The debate comes as law enforcement encounters with migrants trying to cross the border from Mexico into the United States jumped 33% in March compared with the previous month, according to federal data for the entire Southwest border. Increased migration is also expected in late May, as a federal order restricting asylum, which Republicans have seized on in a key election year, expires.

For New Mexico, the border is also an economic strength. State exports hit a record high of $5.4 billion last year, driven largely by activity around the Santa Teresa port of entry.

Much of the Republican campaigning has focused on connecting border security to New Mexicos broader debate over crime and public safety.

State Rep. Rebecca Dow of Truth or Consequences said the U.S. Border Patrol has an infrastructure wish list that New Mexico could support by tapping into its budget surplus. The state, she said, could help pay for fiber optic cables needed for electronic surveillance, and contribute to the cost of roads and access points used by the Border Patrol.

Criminals are bringing drugs across our border or engaged in human trafficking, and it has to stop, Dow said in an interview. Border security is national security.

Mark Ronchetti, a former meteorologist at KRQE, a CBS affiliate, said he has spoken with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and other public safety officials about whats worked  and what hasnt  in their states.

He is proposing a 150-person strike force of law enforcement agents in New Mexico focused on fighting drug and human trafficking. He envisions increased traffic stops and vehicle inspections, in addition to the deployment of drones and K-9 units.

Were going to create the most highly trained force possible, Ronchetti said.

Both Dow and Ronchetti have launched television campaign ads focused on the border, but they are not the only candidates talking about the issue.

Jay Block, a Sandoval County commissioner and retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, has proposed a new border security agency, and Greg Zanetti, a West Point graduate and financial adviser, has touted his service as a brigadier general in the Army National Guard.

The Republican candidates also aim criticism at Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, whos seeking reelection this year.

Lujan Grisham, a former congresswoman, withdrew most of the states National Guard troops from the border in 2019 after she took office. She said then that she doesnt oppose investments in border security, but that it was inappropriate for the state to militarize our border.

In a written statement Friday, a campaign spokeswoman said Lujan Grisham has approved over $31 million to improve public safety in border counties, including upgrades to surveillance and communication systems that facilitate collaboration between local and federal law enforcement.

The governor has worked with southern New Mexico communities to ensure they are safe and thriving places to live, spokeswoman Kendall Witmer said.

Troops

Four of the five Republican candidates  all but Ethel Maharg, who was not available for a Journal interview  expressed support for deploying the National Guard to support federal immigration authorities. New Mexico has a 180-mile border with Mexico.

Federal law limits military involvement in law enforcement, but the Republican candidates say the guard can be used to free up Border Patrol agents to focus on immigration.

In 2018, for example, National Guard troops sent to the border by then-Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican, helped with vehicle maintenance, caring for horses used by Border Patrol agents, and surveillance.

I will ask the Border Patrol what skills  they want the guard to bring to them, Block said.

Zanetti, who served in the guard, said troops can serve as a force multiplier to help federal agencies, but careful coordination is required.

Theres more complexity to this than you think, he said. Dow and Ronchetti say they, too, see a role for the National Guard at the border.

Wasteful

Opponents of a guard deployment say it would damage the morale of guard members, who arent trained on immigration enforcement.

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico described the idea as a wasteful and unnecessary misuse of resources at a time when New Mexicans need investments in infrastructure, economic opportunities and social services.

Many of the people coming to our southern border are there to legally request asylum, Nayomi Valdez of the ACLU of New Mexico said, and living up to our American values means greeting them with dignity, not the barrel of a gun.

The deployments, she said, also escalate tensions in peaceful communities.

Witmer, the Lujan Grisham campaign spokeswoman, said the governor has taken a holistic approach to the border by working with business to grow southern New Mexicos economy, and investing in behavioral health and addiction programs.

Governor Lujan Grisham is focused on delivering for New Mexicans and their families, not co-opting false solutions from other states, Witmer said.

Candidate ideas

In a series of Journal interviews, the Republican candidates outlined their own strategies for bolstering border security and explained why they believe theyre the best choice to address the issue:

 Block said he would establish a new border security agency modeled on similar efforts in Arizona and Texas.

This is a law enforcement organization that is going to be focused strictly on the border, he said.

More broadly, he said, he looks at the border through the lens of a pro-life candidate, given the number of people dying as they try to come into the U.S.

The arrival of fentanyl through the border, he said, is particularly personal.

My mother had a very bad drug issue, he said. I dont want other families to go through what I went through. Im very sensitive to how this affects families.

 Zanetti said he has an adult view of the border that goes beyond 30-second sound bites offered by rivals.

As a retired brigadier general, he said, he knows first hand the practical questions that must be answered before deploying troops to the border.

His military service, he said, took him to borders in Europe, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and the U.S. boundary with Mexico.

If you want a governor who understands how to secure the border without draining the treasury, Zanetti said, you might want a governor who was a brigadier general in the New Mexico National Guard, whos worked the border before, our border  and a governor who understands money.

 Ronchetti said he has spoken with the Arizona governor and other officials about practical steps a state can take to bolster border security.

His plans call for establishing a strike force with 150 agents in the Department of Public Safety, akin to a new arm of the State Police.

The group would focus on drug and human trafficking, he said, especially combatting the flow of fentanyl.

State drones and K-9s, he said, can help fill in gaps in border security.

Border security is personal security in your home because of the drug trade, Ronchetti said.

Traffic stops, he said, would be coordinated to avoid disrupting legal trade with Mexico.

 Dow, a member of the state House since 2017, said she is the only candidate who represents a district close to the border, giving her practical insight into the needs of local and federal law enforcement.

I will follow the lead of our Border Patrol agents, and our county and local law enforcement, she said.

With a surplus and record-high state budget, Dow said, New Mexico is well-positioned to help pay for capital projects that would help the Border Patrol focus on its core mission without interfering with legal commerce.

The state, she said, could aid federal agents by helping to fund fiber optic lines that support electronic surveillance, and building or improving roads needed by law enforcement in the border region.

The primary election is June 7 and absentee balloting begins May 10.
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio  An Air Force major general with ties to Albuquerque has been convicted by a military judge of one of three specifications of abusive sexual contact in the first military trial of an Air Force general.

The charge faced by Maj. Gen. William Cooley during the weeklong court-martial at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio had three specifications, one alleging a forcible kiss and two alleging forcible touching in 2018. Cooley was convicted Saturday of the forcible kissing specification but acquitted of the other two.

Officials said the verdict marks the first court-martial trial and conviction of a general officer in the Air Forces 75-year history.

A former commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory, Cooley was charged with abusive sexual contact in an encounter with a woman who gave him a ride after a backyard barbecue in Albuquerque nearly four years ago. He was in the city for a work conference at Kirtland Air Force Base, home to AFRLs Space Vehicles and Directed Energy directorates. Officials said the woman is a civilian who is not a Department of Defense employee.

Cooleys lawyers had argued that what occurred between Cooley and the woman was consensual, according to media reports of the court proceedings.

Cooley was to be sentenced Monday morning and could face as much as seven years in jail as well as loss of rank, pay and benefits.

Cooley had the option of a trial by court member jurors or by military judge, and chose to have the case heard by the judge.

Today marks the first time an Air Force general officer has been held responsible for his heinous actions, the womans attorney Ryan Guilds, said in a statement, the Dayton Daily News reported.  Hopefully, this will not be as difficult for the next survivor.

Cooley was fired from his research laboratory position in January 2020 after an Air Force investigation and has worked in an administrative job since then. A message seeking comment was left for his attorney Saturday.

This case clearly demonstrates the commitment of Air Force leaders to fully investigate the facts and hold Airmen of any rank accountable for their actions when they fail to uphold Air Force standards, Col. Eric Mejia, staff judge advocate for Air Force Materiel Command, said in a statement.

An Albuquerque native, Cooley graduated from Highland High School and earned a masters degree from the University of New Mexico. He was twice assigned to Kirtland, most recently as a commander of Phillips Research Site and Material Wing director, Space Vehicles Directorate, between 2010 and 2013, according to previous reports.
CHURCH ROCK  The gale-force winds that swept across New Mexico on Friday, driving fires and evacuations, gave Dine residents in a small western New Mexico community an opportunity to demonstrate first hand the danger they live with every day.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission members were in the Red Water Pond Road community, about 20 minutes northeast of Gallup, to hear local input on a controversial plan to clean up a nearby abandoned uranium mine. It was the first visit anyone could recall by NRC commissioners to the Navajo Nation, where the agency regulates four uranium mills. Chairman Christopher Hanson called the visit historic, and the significance was visible with Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and other Navajo officials in attendance.

As commissioners listened to 20 or so people give testimony over several hours Friday afternoon, high winds battered the plastic sheeting hung on the sides of the Chaaoh, or shade house, making it hard for some in the audience of many dozens to hear all that was said.

This is like this every day, community member Annie Benally told commissioners, mentioning the dust being whipped around outside by the wind. They say its clean, its OK. But we have more piles back there and you see it blowing this way.

Benally was referring to piles of contaminated radioactive soil and debris at two adjacent abandoned uranium mines. One mine is near enough to the shade house that its gate is visible. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants to move some of that waste to a mill site regulated by the NRC, where contaminated groundwater is still being cleaned up. To drive north of Church Rock to the Red Water Pond Road community is to appreciate how close that mill site is to the surrounding community. It sits 1 mile south of the shade house, on private land but right next to a highway driven every day by local residents.

After Friday afternoons listening session, the federal commissioners conducted a public meeting in Gallup in the evening where they heard from EPA officials. The NRC is expected to decide in June whether to permit the EPA to move the mine debris to the mill.

The swirling dust outside was a consistent theme during the Friday afternoon session as residents described a generational struggle with significant health risks from uranium contamination.

Im glad we dont have air sampling going, because that might scare some people, said Dariel Yazzie, head of the Navajo Nation EPA Superfund program. Yazzie connected the swirling dust outside to historic uranium exposure experienced by residents. Prior to running water being made available to them, people used to haul water in open containers, he said. Guess what? Youre sitting there with a little bit of dust on you. Everything had dust on it. Where does that dust come from? Right behind us.

Residents described growing up playing in contaminated landscapes, drinking water from mine sites, not told that it was dangerous. Commissioners heard about the worry parents feel about whether their children are safe playing outside. Others implored commissioners to help speed up the cleanup process, which has taken decades, as health impacts like cancer and lung disease, which have stretched across generations, continue.

This is not right, it brings anger, said Benally about decades living with the contamination. Im 64 years old now, when they first came I was only 12. How long are we going to stay here, and plead and cry. She urged commissioners to save the dust on them so that when theyre back home theyll remember.

The multiple hours of testimony concluded with remarks by Nez, who put a point on the message residents were sending: the mining waste should be moved completely outside of their community.

This is what the Navajo people live with, just imagine 500 open uranium mines on a windy day, Nez said. The Navajo people in this area have lived with this for a very long time, so we plead with you, I plead with you, lets get this waste, and get it way far away from the Navajo Nation.

The EPA cleanup plan wouldnt move the contamination far, though, just to the nearby mill site. At the public meeting Friday evening, NRC commissioner Jeff Baran asked San Francisco-based EPA Region 9 Superfund and Emergency Management Director Michael Montgomery whether there are other disposal locations outside Indian country but still reasonably close.

Montgomery said current law only allows the EPA to go so far. It cant site or create facilities for disposal, or ask a private party to do it either, he said. The agency is working to identify locations on federal land for other mine cleanups, Montgomery said, but for the Church Rock area there are no easy solutions for taking the waste out of Indian country. Should the NRC not approve the current plan, the agency would be at an impasse that would take years to move beyond, he said.

Montgomery suggested that Navajo aspirations to remove all uranium mine waste from their land would be difficult to achieve by the EPA alone.

If the solution for all the mines is to take all the waste off of tribal land, its going to require a dialogue thats possibly outside our authority, he said.

Montgomerys answers seemed to confound Baran.

Would EPA proceed with the mill site option if the community it is meant to benefit opposes it? he asked.

There are a lot of perspectives within the community, Montgomery said. You cant always get everyone to agree.

Nez challenged those remarks later in the meeting after Baran asked him if he wanted to respond to any of Montgomerys comments.

Ive heard 100% of my Navajo relatives there say they didnt want the waste. So Im just wondering who are these individuals who cant agree? he asked.

New Mexico In Depth is a nonprofit news organization that produces investigative, data and solutions-rich stories that can be catalysts for change.
SOCORRO  Since going operational in 1980, the Very Large Array (VLA) in Socorro County has seen continual upgrades and additions  and a recently announced planned project would expand and enhance learning opportunities for STEM students.

Associated Universities Inc., which operates the National Radio Astronomy Observatory through a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation, is submitting a congressionally directed spending request to the tune of $10 million for a planned Next Generation Learning Center at the VLA, according to a NRAO news release.

Dave Finley, press officer for NRAO in Socorro, said the proposed learning center would be a state-of-the-art facility serving both STEM education and conceivably giving Socorro County an economic boost.

One of the things that we hear people complaining about trying to attract new industry here is that we dont have enough highly trained STEM personnel here in the state to provide the workforce that would attract this kind of economic development, he said. So, we would take a big role in attracting students into these science, technology, engineering, mathematics careers.

And do it by providing training and resources for both the formal education K-12 and for informal education, which is the kind of thing we do with tours and events for the public at the VLA. We have a lot of very good STEM jobs here in New Mexico. With NRAO, New Mexico Tech. With the various universities. With Sandia and Los Alamos laboratories, and the like.

The idea is simple: Create a facility adjacent to the VLA operations building that would offer in-person and virtual STEM education to K-12 students, and enlarge and enhance the visitor center, Finley said.

We feel this will contribute to the development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce by attracting New Mexico students, who are 60% Latino and 11% Native American, into STEM careers, he said.

The proposed Next Generation Learning Center at the VLA would incorporate and expand what the VLA has provided over the years.

Weve had a Visitors Center out there since 1983 and its exhibits have evolved over all that time, Finley said. Were calling it a learning center because its certainly going to continue to be a visitor center, with much-enhanced exhibits and a much better experience for the tourists, but its also going to be a hub for STEM education.

Finley believes the enhancements will make the center a more attractive tourist destination.

That will draw more tourists and will, of course, bring economic impact right here to the local community, he said. We get tens of thousands of visitors yearly, prior to COVID, and they come from all over. One year, I went through the guest book that people sign, and it was all 50 states and more than 40 other countries.

He said NRAO has been working on this upgrade for some time.

This isnt something that we just came up with, he said. We now have a concept design. We hired an architectural firm. We have an on-board fundraiser.

The selection of the location was a no-brainer.

It will be right out there at the VLA, where we are now, he said. Its right there where people have been driving to for many years.

The plans call for starting with the former cafeteria building, which hasnt been used as a cafeteria for many years, and build out from that.

We will renovate and alter it, and also build an extension onto it, he said. We spent many hours with an architect walking over the area, who was asking many questions about what we wanted, and then to produce a design that incorporates what we feel we need.

Finley said the final concept is the result of finding out what other people would support and needed.

We have looked to a lot of people for advice and support, basically, in what they want, he said. And the result is that weve been getting unanimous support for this.

Finley said the project is getting positive endorsements, both nationally and around the state, including from New Mexico Tech, the University of New Mexico, Intel, Associated Universities, Air Force Research Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia Labs, the state Public Education Department, the state Economic Development Department, and other agencies and institutions.

He said the project is estimated to cost in the neighborhood of $20 million.

The total budget is $20 million, so were asking Congress for half of that in a congressionally directed spending request. Its a senate committee that can put this earmark in the budget, Finley said. Our senators particularly wanted to see expressions of support from the community, and we got it from those institutions.

At its most recent meeting, the Socorro County Commission passed a resolution to support the project.

The resolution requests Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., put forward the congressional funding request.

Sen. Lujan and Sen. (Martin) Heinrich will make the pitch to the senate committee. What they needed was all this show of support from the local and regional community and statewide to convince this senate committee that we should get this $10 million, Finely said. Weve also been in close communication with (Rep.) Yvette Herrells office, as well as (Rep.) Melanie Stansbury in Albuquerque. Theyve been working with us on this.

The new facility would then be a normal part of the NRAO budget.

Our funding agency is the National Science Foundation, he said. They are very supportive of STEM education, both formal and informal, so it will be part of our normal running of the VLA and then the next-generation VLA.

The Next Generation Very Large Array Learning Center would be located adjacent to the arrays operation building.
KYIV, Ukraine  The U.S. secretaries of state and defense met Sunday night with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the highest-level visit to the countrys capital by an American delegation since the start of Russias invasion.

The secretive meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin came as Ukraine pressed the West for more powerful weapons against Russias campaign in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where Moscows forces sought to dislodge the last Ukrainian troops in the battered port of Mariupol.

Blinken and Austin told Ukraines president, Volodomyr Zelenskyy, and his advisers that the United States would provide more than $300 million in foreign military financing and had approved a $165 million sale of ammunition.

They also said that U.S. President Joe Biden would soon announce his nominee for ambassador to Ukraine and that American diplomats who left Ukraine before the war would start returning to the country this coming week

Reporters who accompanied Austin and Blinken to Poland were barred by Pentagon and State Department officials from reporting the Kyiv visit until the two men physically left Ukraine. U.S. officials cited security concerns.

Before the session with Blinken and Austin, Zelenskyy said he was looking for the Americans to produce results, both in arms and security guarantees.

You cant come to us empty-handed today, and we are expecting not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons, he said.

Zelenskyys last face-to-face meeting with a top U.S. official was Feb. 19 in Munich with Vice President Kamala Harris, five days before Russias invasion. While the West has funneled military equipment to Ukraine, Zelenskyy has stressed repeatedly that his country needs more heavy weapons, including long-range air defense systems and warplanes.

In an apparent boost for Ukraine, polling agencies said French President Emmanuel Macron would win reelection over far right candidate Marine Le Pen, who has faced questions about her ties to Moscow.

The result was hailed by Frances allies in the European Union as a reassuring sign of stability and continued support for Ukraine. France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and is supplying weapons systems to Ukraine.

Zelenskyys meeting with U.S. officials took place as Ukrainians and Russians observed Orthodox Easter. Speaking from Kyivs ancient St. Sophia Cathedral, Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, highlighted its significance to a nation wracked by nearly two months of war.

The great holiday today gives us great hope and unwavering faith that light will overcome darkness, good will overcome evil, life will overcome death, and therefore Ukraine will surely win! he said.

Still, the war cast a shadow over celebrations. In the northern village of Ivanivka, where Russian tanks still littered the roads, Olena Koptyl said the Easter holiday doesnt bring any joy. Im crying a lot. We cannot forget how we lived.

The Russian military reported hitting 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, including fortified positions and troop concentrations, while its warplanes destroyed 26 Ukrainian military sites, including an explosives factory and several artillery depots.

Since failing to capture Kyiv, the Russians have aimed to gain full control over the eastern industrial heartland, where Moscow-backed separatists controlled some territory before the war.

Russian forces launched fresh airstrikes on a Mariupol steel plant where an estimated 1,000 civilians are sheltering along with about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters. The Azovstal steel mill where the defenders are holed up is the last corner of resistance in the city, otherwise occupied by the Russians.

Zelenskyy said he stressed the need to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, including from the steel plant, in a Sunday call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is scheduled to speak later with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Arestovych, the Zelenskyy adviser, said Ukraine has proposed holding talks with Russia next to the sprawling steel mill. Arestovych said on the Telegram messaging app that Russia has not responded to the proposal that would include establishing humanitarian corridors and the exchange of Russian war prisoners for the fighters still in the plant.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is scheduled to travel to Turkey on Monday and then Moscow and Kyiv. Zelenskyy said it was a mistake for Guterres to visit Russia before Ukraine.

Why? To hand over signals from Russia? What should we look for? Zelenskyy said Saturday. There are no corpses scattered on the Kutuzovsky Prospect, he said, referring to one of Moscows main avenues.

Mariupol has endured fierce fighting since the start of the war because of its location on the Sea of Azov. Its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere, and allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

More than 100,000 people  down from a prewar population of about 430,000  are believed to remain in Mariupol with scant food, water or heat. Ukrainian authorities estimate over 20,000 civilians have been killed. Recent satellite images showed what appeared to be mass graves to the west and east of Mariupol.

Children in an underground bunker were seen receiving Easter presents in a video released Sunday by the far-right Azov Battalion, which is among the Ukrainian forces at the steel plant in Mariupol. The groups deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, said the video was shot at the plant.

One toddler is seen wearing homemade diapers made of cellophane and people are seen hanging laundry on makeshift hangers.

Please help us, one woman in the video said through tears, appealing to world leaders. We want to live in our city, in our country. We are tired of these bombings, constant air strikes on our land. How much longer will this continue?

Mykhailo Podolyak, another presidential adviser, tweeted that the Russian military was attacking the plant with heavy bombs and artillery while accumulating forces and equipment for a direct assault.

Zelenskyy over the weekend accused Russians of committing war crimes by killing civilians and of setting up filtration camps near Mariupol for people trying to leave the city. He said the Ukrainians  many of them children  are then sent to areas under Russian occupation or to Russia itself, often as far as Siberia or the Far East. The claims could not be independently verified.

Zelenskyy highlighted the death of a 3-month old girl in a Russian missile strike Saturday on the Black Sea port of Odesa. The baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at Odesa, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, citing social media, reported that the infants mother, Valeria Glodan, and grandmother also died when a missile hit a residential area. Zelenskyy promised to find and punish those responsible.

The war started when this baby was 1 month old, Zelenskyy said. Can you imagine what is happening? They are filthy scum; there are no other words for it.

For the Donbas offensive, Russia has reassembled troops who fought around Kyiv and in northern Ukraine. The British Ministry of Defense said Ukrainian forces had repelled numerous assaults in the past week and inflicted significant cost on Russian forces.

A fire erupted early Monday at an oil depot in Russia near its border with Ukraine, but Russias Tass news agency gave no immediate cause for the blaze in oil storage tanks.

NASA satellites that track fires showed something burning at coordinates that corresponded to a Rosneft facility some 110 kilometers (70 miles) north of the Ukrainian border. Moscow previously has blamed Ukraine for attacks on the Russian region of Bryansk, which borders Ukraine.

The spiritual leaders of the worlds Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics on Sunday appealed for relief for Ukraines suffering population.

___

Associated Press journalists Yesica Fisch in Sloviansk, Ukraine, Mstyslav Chernov and Felipe Dana in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Cara Anna, Inna Varenytsia and Oleksandr Stashevskyi in Kviv and AP staff around the world contributed.

___

Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
PARIS  French President Emmanuel Macron comfortably won a second term Sunday, triggering relief among allies that the nuclear-armed power wont abruptly shift course in the midst of the war in Ukraine from European Union and NATO efforts to punish and contain Russias military expansionism.

The second five-year term for the 44-year-old centrist spared France and Europe from the seismic upheaval of having firebrand populist Marine Le Pen at the helm, Macrons presidential runoff challenger who quickly conceded defeat but still scored her best-ever electoral showing.

Acknowledging that numerous voters cast ballots for him simply to keep out the fiercely nationalist far-right Le Pen, Macron pledged to reunite the country that is filled with so many doubts, so many divisions and work to assuage the anger of French voters that fed Le Pens campaign.

No one will be left by the side of the road, Macron said in a victory speech against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower and a projection of the blue-white-and-red tricolor French flag. He was cheered by several hundred supporters who happily waved French and EU flags.

We have a lot to do and the war in Ukraine reminds us that we are going through tragic times where France must make its voice heard, Macron said.

During her campaign, Le Pen pledged to dilute French ties with the 27-nation EU, NATO and Germany, moves that would have shaken Europes security architecture as the continent deals with its worst conflict since World War II. Le Pen also spoke against EU sanctions on Russian energy supplies and faced scrutiny during the campaign over her previous friendliness with the Kremlin.

A chorus of European leaders hailed Macrons victory, since France has played a leading role in international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions and is supplying weapons to Ukraine.

Democracy wins, Europe wins, said Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

Together we will make France and Europe advance, tweeted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi called Macrons victory splendid news for all of Europe and a boost to the EU being a protagonist in the greatest challenges of our times, starting with the war in Ukraine.

Macron won with 58.5% of the vote to Le Pens 41.5%  significantly closer than when they first faced off in 2017.

Macron is the first French president in 20 years to win reelection, since incumbent Jacques Chirac trounced Le Pens father in 2002.

Le Pen called her result a shining victory, saying that in this defeat, I cant help but feel a form of hope.

Breaking through the threshold of 40% of the vote is unprecedented for the French far-right. Le Pen was beaten 66% to 34% by Macron in 2017 and her father got less than 20% against Chirac.

She and hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, one of 10 candidates eliminated in the first round on April 10, both quickly pitched forward Sunday night to Frances legislative election in June, urging voters to give them a parliamentary majority to hamstring Macron.

Le Pens score this time rewarded her years-long efforts to make her far-right politics more palatable to voters. Campaigning hard on cost-of-living issues, she made deep inroads among blue-collar voters in disaffected rural communities and in former industrial centers.

Le Pen voter Jean-Marie Cornic, 78, said he cast his ballot for her because he wanted a president who would prioritize our daily lives  salaries, taxes, pensions.

The drop in support for Macron compared to five years ago points to a tough battle ahead for the president to rally people behind him in his second term. Many French voters found the 2022 presidential rematch less compelling than in 2017, when Macron was an unknown factor.

Leftist voters  unable to identify with either the centrist president or Le Pen  agonized with Sundays choice. Some trooped reluctantly to polling stations solely to stop Le Pen, casting joyless votes for Macron.

It was the least worst choice, said Stephanie David, a transport logistics worker who backed a communist candidate in round one.

It was an impossible choice for retiree Jean-Pierre Roux. Having also voted communist in round one, he dropped an empty envelope into the ballot box on Sunday, repelled both by Le Pens politics and what he saw as Macrons arrogance.

I am not against his ideas but I cannot stand the person, Roux said.

In contrast, Marian Arbre, voting in Paris, cast his ballot for Macron to avoid a government that finds itself with fascists, racists.

Theres a real risk, the 29-year-old fretted.

Macron went into the vote as the firm favorite but faced a fractured, anxious and tired electorate. The war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic battered Macrons first term, as did months of violent protests against his economic policies.

In celebrating victory, Macron acknowledged a debt to voters who helped get him over the line, not to support the ideas I hold, but to block those of the extreme right.

I want to thank them and tell them that I am aware that their vote obliges me for the years to come, he said. I am the custodian of their sense of duty, of their attachment to the Republic.

___

Associated Press journalists Sylvie Corbet, Elaine Ganley, Angela Charlton and Thomas Adamson in Paris, Sam Petrequin in Brussels Michel Spingler in Henin-Beaumont, and Alex Turnbull in Le Touquet, contributed.

___

Follow APs coverage of the French election at https://apnews.com/hub/french-election-2022
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A voice for the Voiceless: Dine composer wins the ...

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New Mexico Department of Transportation

Planning Division

RFP No. 22-30

New Mexico Statewide Public Transportation Planning Study

The New Mexico Department of Transportation (NMDOT or Department) is requesting proposals from qualified experienced, and professional companies interested in completing a study to update the New Mexico Statewide Public Transportation Plan.

Proposals shall be valid for one hundred twenty (120) days subject to all action by the New Mexico Department of Transportation. NMDOT reserves the right to reject any or all proposals in part or in whole. Proposals shall be submitted to the NMDOT Electronically. Proposals submitted by hard copy or facsimile will not be accepted.

Electronic proposals must be submitted through Bid Express, which may be accessed at the following website: www.bidexpress.com. Offerors must register prior to the submission deadline and create an account and a digital I.D. with Bid Express in order to submit proposals electronically.

Do not wait until the day proposals are due to sign up with Bid Express. Interested Offerors must use a PC with Internet Explorer to be issued an I.D. form from Bid Express. The I.D. validation process involves notarization and will take more than a couple of hours. Electronic proposals must be in a PDF format in order to submit through Bid Express no later than 2:00 P.M. (Mountain Daylight Time) on Tuesday, May 24, 2022.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYMENT: All qualified Offerors will receive consideration of contract(s) without regard to race, color, religion, sex or national origin or other protected class. Proponents of this work shall be required to comply with the Presidents Executive Order No. 11246 as amended.

Request for Proposals will be available by contacting Vanessa Sanchez by telephone at (505) 795-0877, or by email at VanessaA.Sanchez@state.nm.us or by accessing NMDOTs website at:

http://dot.state.nm.us/content/

nmdot/en/RFP_Listings.html

ANY PROPOSAL SUBMITTED AFTER THE DATE AND TIME SPECIFIED ABOVE WILL BE DEEMED NON-RESPONSIVE AND WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.
STATE OF NEW MEXICO

COUNTY OF LEA

FIFTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT



Case No. D-506-CV-2020-00183

WESTSTAR MORTGAGE CORPORATION,

a New Mexico corporation,

Plaintiff,

vs.

DANIEL BOLIN and KAYLA BOLIN,

Defendants.

NOTICE OF SPECIAL

MASTERS SALE

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the undersigned Special Master will, on Friday, the 29th day of April, 2022, at 1:45 p.m. , at the front entrance of the Lea County Courthouse, Fifth Judicial District Court, 100 N. Main, Lovington, NM 88260, sell and convey all of the right, title and interest of the parties in the above-entitled action in and to that certain real property (the Property) located at 103 W. Alice Street, Lovington, NM 88260 (the Special Masters Sale).

The Special Masters Sale is being made pursuant to the Summary Judgment Reforming and Foreclosing Deed of Trust and on Note entered in the above-entitled cause on March 3, 2022 (the Judgment), in an action to reform a Deed of Trust and foreclose the interests, mortgages, and liens of the parties, under which the Plaintiff was determined to have a first position Deed of Trust and security interest in the Property which is prior to any liens, mortgages, or claims of interest of the other parties herein.

The Property is more particularly described as follows:

For Surface Title Only: Lot 2B being a portion of the East Half of the Southwest Quarter of the Northwest Quarter (E/2SW/4NW/4) of Section 31, T15S, R36E, N.M.P.M., Lea County, New Mexico and being more particularly described as follows: Commending at the Southwest corner of said Northwest Quarter of Section 31 as monumented by a found  inch rebar with no markings N 00 28 40 W along the West line of the Northwest Quarter 1,319.98 feet to the North 1/16 corner of Sections 36 and 31 as monumented by a PK nail and washer stamped CLS PS 10856 from whence the Northwest corner of said Section as monumented by a found  rebar no markings bears N 00 28 40 W (The basis of bearings); thence N 89 25 41 E along the Northerly line of the Southwest Quarter of the Northwest Quarter 661.88 feet to the Easterly line of said Lot 2B; thence S 00 41 42 E along said line between Lot 2B and Lot 2C, 460.86 feet; thence departing said Easterly line S 89 25 41 W 190.00 feet along the Southerly line of Lot 2B and the Northerly line of said Lot 2C to the Westerly line of said land; thence departing ad Southerly line N 00 41 42 W along said Westerly line 460.86 feet to the point of beginning, and MOBILE/MANUFACTURED HOME DESCRIPTION: 2014 CHAMPION 02NIG1081P, 125000HA002598AB, which is affixed, attached to, and taxed as part of the real property pursuant to NMAC  3.6.5.33,

together with all structures and improvements thereon.

The Property will be sold as is, without warranties, express or implied. By way of example, and not limitation, there are no warranties relating to title, possession, quiet enjoyment, condition, or the like in this disposition.

The Property will be sold free and clear of all liens, interests and encumbrances, except claims for unpaid ad valorem taxes and redemption rights.

The redemption period is one (1) month.

The lien of the Plaintiff secures a Summary Judgment Reforming and Foreclosing Deed of Trust and on Note against Daniel Bolin and Kayla Bolin, dated March 3, 2022 in the amount of $210,867.20 as of the Judgment date, plus interest thereon at the rate of 5.25% per annum, until paid in full; plus amounts advanced or incurred by Weststar for escrow and as otherwise permitted by the Deed of Trust (e.g., property taxes, insurance, property inspection or protection), after December 15, 2021, through entry of the confirmation order following the foreclosure sale awarded by this Judgment, which amounts may be set forth in the confirmation order; plus attorneys fees, tax, costs and expenses incurred after December 20, 2021, through entry of the confirmation order, which amounts may be set forth in the confirmation order; plus costs of sale and interest on all of said amounts at the rate of 5.25% per annum, until paid in full.

The Property will be sold to the highest bidder for cash in lawful currency of the United States of America. In payment of a bid, the Special Master will accept only cash or a bank cashiers check issued by a federally chartered and insured bank or a New Mexico State chartered and federally insured bank. If paid by cashiers check the bid must be paid with immediately available and collectible federal funds, subject to verification by the Special Master. The cash or cashiers check from the successful bidder must be received by the Special Master no later than 3:00 p.m. on the date of the Special Masters sale.

Plaintiff may bid and purchase the Property at the Special Masters sale, and may bid all or a portion of the Judgment in lieu of cash towards the purchase price.

Proceeds of the sale will be distributed first to the Special Master to satisfy his fees, costs and expenses, and then to payment of the Judgment owing to the Plaintiff. Any excess proceeds will be distributed pursuant to further order of the Court.

/s/ Faisal Sukhyani

Faisal Sukhyani

P.O. Box 53608

Albuquerque, NM 87153

MOSES, DUNN, FARMER & TUTHILL, P.C.

Karla K. Poe

Attorneys for Plaintiff

P.O. Box 27047

Albuquerque, NM 87125-7047

(505) 843-9440

Journal: April 3, 10, 17, 24, 2022


On the afternoon of April 22, 2022, Premier Li Keqiang had a phone conversation with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa at Ziguang Pavilion of Zhongnanhai leadership compound at the latter's request.

Li Keqiang said, China and Sri Lanka are strategic cooperative partners featuring profound traditional friendship. China is ready to work with Sri Lanka to consolidate political mutual trust, strengthen solidarity and mutual assistance among developing countries, deepen practical cooperation in various fields, and push for sound and stable development of bilateral relations.

Li Keqiang pointed out, China relates deeply to the difficulties and challenges faced by Sri Lanka, and stands ready to provide much-needed livelihood assistance within its capacity for Sri Lanka. China is ready to play a constructive role in the steady economic and social development of Sri Lanka based on the principle of non-interference in its internal affairs and on the premise of respecting Sri Lanka's will. China supports continuous progress in bilateral practical cooperation projects, and hopes for an early start of the negotiation and conclusion of the free trade agreement, so as to enhance mutually beneficial cooperation.

Mahinda thanked China for providing emergency humanitarian assistance for Sri Lanka and appreciated China's strong support to Sri Lanka at its trying times. He said, Sri Lanka is ready to strengthen cooperation with China in finance, economy and trade, tourism and other fields, advance the negotiation of the bilateral free trade agreement, and constantly deepen bilateral cooperation.

Wang Yi and He Lifeng attended the above activity.
KYIV, Ukraine  The sun came out as Ukrainians marked Orthodox Easter in the capital, Kyiv, on Sunday with prayers for those fighting on the front lines and others trapped beyond them in places like Mariupol.

St. Volodymyrs Cathedral in Kyiv was ringed by hundreds of worshippers with baskets to be blessed. Inside, a woman clutched the arm of a soldier, turning briefly to kiss his elbow. Other soldiers prayed, holding handfuls of candles, then crossed themselves. An older woman slowly made her way through the crowd and stands of flickering candles. One young woman held daffodils.

Outside the cathedral, a soldier who gave only his first name, Mykhailo, used his helmet as an Easter basket. He said he didnt have another.

I hope Ill only have to use the helmet for this, he said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a service elsewhere in Kyiv urged Ukrainians not to let anger at the war overwhelm them.

All of us believe our sunrise will come soon, he said.

The spiritual leader of the worlds Orthodox Christians called for the opening of humanitarian corridors in Ukraine, saying a human tragedy was unfolding in the country.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I spoke Saturday night in Istanbul during midnight Mass. He is considered first among equals among Eastern Orthodox patriarchs, which gives him prominence but not the power of a Catholic pope.

With the Orthodox church split by the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, some worshippers hoped the holy day could inspire gestures of peacemaking. The church can help, said one man who gave only his first name, Serhii, as he came to a church in Kyiv under the Moscow Patriarchate.

He and others brought baskets to be blessed by priests for Easter, with flicks of a brush sprinkling holy water over offerings of home-dyed eggs, lighted candles and even bottles of Jack Daniels.

Residents of rural villages battered by the war approached the holiday with some defiance.

Well celebrate Easter no matter what, no matter much horror, said Kateryna Lazarenko, 68, in the northern village of Ivanivka outside Chernihiv, where ruined Russian tanks still littered the roads.

How do I feel? Very nervous, everyone is nervous, said another resident, Olena Koptyl, as she prepared her Easter bread. The Easter holiday doesnt bring any joy. Im crying a lot. We cannot forget how we lived. She and 12 others spent a month sheltering from Russian soldiers in the basement of her home before the soldiers withdrew.

In eastern Ukraine, the scene of Russias latest offensive, worshippers expressed unease along with hope for negotiations.

God will make them understand and they will reach an agreement, because this should be stopped, said Aleksandra Papravkina in Bakhmut. Otherwise, Ukraine will not exist.

Ukraine, meanwhile, prepared for the first high-level U.S. trip to Kyiv since before the war began on Feb. 24 after Zelenskyy announced he would meet in Kyiv on Sunday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Zelenskyy in a news conference Saturday night gave few details but said he expected results  not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons.

Pope Francis renewed his call for an Easter truce. Without naming the aggressors, Francis urged them to stop the attack to help the suffering of the exhausted people.

___

Oleksandr Stashevsky contributed to this report from Ivanivka.

___

Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Huang Shuqin, one of China's most prestigious female directors, passed away at 82 in a Shanghai hospital on the night of April 21 after battling diseases for quite some time, according to an obituary released by the Shanghai Film Association.



Over her decades-long career starting from late 1970s, Huang, remarked as not being prolific but a perfectionist, helmed a total of ten movies and five TV series as well as two stage shows. These works vary from the Gong Li-starring biographical movie A Soul Haunted by Painting and the popular TV series Fortress Besieged, adapted from late scholar Qian Zhongshu's namesake masterpiece.

The oldest daughter of renowned director Huang Zuolin and actress Jin Yunzhi, Huang Shuqin was born in Tianjin in 1939, before she moved with her parents to Shanghai a year later.

Graduating from the Beijing Film Academy, Huang Shuqin started her filmmaking career as the deputy director to assist iconic auteur Xie Jin in A, Yao Lan (Ah, The Cradle) and Legend of Tianyun Mountain, respectively released in 1979 and 1980.

Since her directorial debut Dang Dai Ren (The Modern People) released in 1981, she endeavored to explore a wide range of themes, from women's status quo to overseas Chinese people. With the well-rounded and influential characters in her films, Huang Shuqin established her signature style to examine the societal changes in the era through the joys and sorrows of ordinary people.

One of her most famous stories which exemplifies her devotion happened while she was filming Fortress Besieged. She was sitting on a wheelchair to go to the filming set of Fortress Besieged, as she suffered a comminuted fracture of the right calf in an accident while checking for suitable sets. Gathering some of the then most famous stars, including actors Chen Daoming and Ge You, the drama won Huang Shuqin the best director prize at the 10th Flying Apsaras Awards, one of China's highest honors for the television industry.

Huang's 1994 TV series Nie Zhai (Redemption)  about five children leaving Yunnan province to seek their biological parents in Shanghai  was also a smash hit, shattering a string of records by attracting more than 42 percent of the television audience. A lot of people are expressing their grief over the departure of Huang Shuqin on China's social platforms such as WeChat and Sina Weibo.

With Shanghai still in the harsh battle against pandemic, her son Zheng Dasheng, also an established director, said the funeral will be held in a simple way, according to the Chengdu-based Red Star News.
What is evil? Most of us can provide an assortment of frightening examples, but when pushed, have difficulty describing exactly what evil is. Observing the War in Ukraine, we can agree with Paul Chalaux, author of Why All People Suffer: How a Loving God Uses Suffering to Perfect Us, that suffering is a detector of evil.

Theologians have studied evil for centuries but curiously enough, there seems to be no discipline outside of theology that studies evil academically, or as a separate discipline within the Humanities. Many philosophers and theologians have described evil as a deficit of the good and we will examine this idea. Using an assortment of intellectual tools from the past, coupled with modern wisdom, a map of the darkness caused by evil can be charted.

A critical notion, ignored by many, is the role of the human will in making bad choices. We can say that the will, like a heat-seeking missile, is attracted to and motivated by anything that appears to be good, unvetted as it were by cultural constraints and intellectual considerations. Let us use a crude but compelling example. A fifty-year-old man may be attracted to a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl. His will apprehends a certain good relating to his own sexuality and hers, but his intellect, if properly informed, will tell him to steer clear of sexual entanglement and help her to achieve her potential, by not engaging in acts that properly belong to romance, marriage, and the long horizon of her childbearing or professional years. Disregarding long-term goods in favor of the gratification provided by short-term goods can have negative social consequences that reverberate through generations. Sexual predators, such as Hugh Hefner, Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Clinton, and Jeffery Epstein, for example, probably ruined the lives of countless young women by turning the natural instincts of these women from long-term commitments to short-term gratification.

This deficit of the will, in terms of not immediately grasping the social dimensions, and long-term political, and other consequences of unvetted bad choices, began to be addressed scientifically, and in a creative manner, when Andrew M. Lobaczewski, a professor of psychiatry, and a group of psychologists in Poland, developed analyses of the methods of those who oppressed Communist society in the 1950s and 60s. Lobaczewski spent his early adulthood suffering under the Nazi occupation of Poland, closely followed by the brutality of Soviet occupation after the war. His experience of these horrors led Lobaczewski to develop the concept of Ponerology (from the Greek word poneros meaning evil). Ponerology is the study of evil, particularly from a political, social, and psychological perspective, rather than a religious judgment.

His book, Political Ponerology: The Science of Evil, Psychopathy, and the Origins of Totalitarianism, describes the genesis of political and social evil. He describes the origin of what he calls macrosocial evil, which tends to come about when psychopaths and sociopaths, under various political systems, take charge of governance and create pathocracies. Joseph Heller described one extreme aspect of this ponerogenic process in his book, Catch-22:

It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

In ponerogenic processes, [notes Lobaczewski] moral deficiencies, intellectual failings, and pathological factors intersect in a time-space causative network to give rise to individual and national suffering.

We see this ponerogenic process at work today in Ukraine, Russia, and the United States. The half-truths and lies that Lobaczewski defines as paralogical, meaning they have the appearance but not the substance of logic and reason, have become endemic in almost all modern societies.

The recent restrictions in Europe and the United States over the COVID pandemic are the specific result of paralogical thinking. Some of the policymakers are simply hypochondriacs, who should never have been allowed to influence public policy, but others may be psychopaths.

Ian Hughes pointed out in his important book Disordered Minds, [that] the whole point of democracy is to try to protect the mass of people from this pathological minority. This was the central idea of the American constitution and the Bill of Rights. Democratic principles and institutions were established to limit the power of pathological individuals.

Lobaczewski described the psychological and pathological characteristics of sociopaths, long before Putin and COVID arrived on the scene but unfortunately does not, like many of those who are concerned about political and social ethics, clearly define good and evil.

The answer to the question of what evil is may lie in an astonishing quote, written on a blackboard in Rome fifty years ago, by Fr. Jubal Cain, professor of scholastic theology: Evil is the absence of a good that could and should be present. I never forgot that line and daily employ it like a knife to cut through the ridiculously unclear media chatter about what constitutes right and wrong action.

If we understand evil as something that is missing, rather than as something positive, then the nature of evil becomes transparent. What is morally good is something that could and should be present in actions and choices. Langston Hughes wrote:

I am so tired of waiting. Arent you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind? Let us take a knife and cut the world in two and see what worms are eating at the rind.

When we ask ourselves about moral and intellectual goodness, we are invoking a scale, which involves choices between good, better, and best in terms of choice of action. Put into the simplest, ethical terms, how we define goodness falls into two radically different categories. One is theistic with God as the source of goodness. The second is atheistic with goodness based on processes merely related to stochastic (meaning random and relativistic) relations between molecular, quantum, and other physical structures.

There are, of course, many principles that atheistic ethicists and religion-based ethicists can mutually agree on, but the fundamental differences should not be glossed over. There are moral grey areas on both sides but no honest discussion between advocates will be served by pretending both sides believe in roughly the same principles -- they dont.

The older notions of virtue and vice, distinguished from a religious association with the diabolical and sin, might function as a secular map of the darkness of evil. The notion of a separation between moral, intellectual, and spiritual excellence (virtue) can do much to illuminate the culturally estranged territory of good and evil. Theodore Roosevelt noted that educating a man in mind and not morals was to create a monster.

Ideologies, or power structures opposed to schemas of virtue and vice, are merely symptomatic of ponerogenic processes that seek to obscure the consequences of evil. Political structures that understand that the Divine inclines us in the right direction, and that evil inspires us in the wrong direction, need to codify this understanding more clearly without endorsing any specific religion.

The adoption of ponerology by major universities would mark a large step in the right direction in developing a new set of political principles, ordered towards the good, for the third millennium. A larger explanation of these principles may be found at www.founderscodeusa.com

Image: Pixabay
While many people have made videos to cheer on those working on the front lines of the fight against the latest COVID-19 outbreak in Shanghai, Chien Meishuang has been spending her time in lockdown at home in front of her easel, painting and writing simple heartwarming messages on her works.

The paintings, which she has posted on her social media accounts, are part of her Journal of the Pandemic Lockdown, a project she started two years ago. Her works have now won acclaim and have even been featured by news outlets such as Xinmin Evening News, Youth Daily and China News Service.

"We are all facing a difficult time when everybody is distressed from being cooped in their homes," Chien tells China Daily. "I simply wanted to spread some positivity and let others know that there is a silver lining amid the dark clouds."

The Taiwan native, who lives in Shanghai, is getting to know her neighbors better and being on the receiving end of their kindness.

"At the beginning (of the lockdown), I only asked them for some oil so that I could cook the beef that was provided by the municipal government. But they became very concerned about my well-being and started providing me with all kinds of food," says Chien, founder of LusiArt Cultural and Creative, a visual arts studio in the city's Tianzifang area.

To document this experience, the artist created a painting, titled Zhongguo Haolinju, or Good Neighbors in China, marking the first new addition to her project this year. Chien has gone on to create more than 40 paintings for her pandemic journal series so far this year.

Other scenes depicted in her latest works include volunteers using a water sprinkler as an improvised tool for disinfection, delivery men having a quick lunch and her neighbors welcoming a 70-year-old man who returned from hospital after recovering from COVID-19.

"It is because of the pandemic that I have made friends from all walks of life in the area where I live. These individuals have provided infinite inspiration and stories for my works," she adds.

In 2020, Chien made a painting after learning from her friend Zhou Jun, a public servant in the city's Dapuqiao community, about an anonymous philanthropist who donated 1,000 protective hazmat suits. The painting, with the words "he made me believe the world is truly a beautiful place" on it, quickly went viral. One of Chien's latest creations is inspired by an image Zhou posted on WeChat that shows public servants working through the night.

"As long as an artwork can touch people's hearts, I believe it is good art. It doesn't matter how simple it is," says Chien.
I believe that Dr. Anthony Fauci is a medical dictator, and I have reached this conclusion through personal experience. Under his guidance at the NIH, every level of government, as well as the private sector, has been affected by his medical advice.

Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled that requiring masks on airplanes is unconstitutional as the CDC had overstepped its authority when demanding the practice. It was a great decision and many airline companies immediately removed their mask requirements. Both airline passengers and employees noted what a relief this was.

Some airline officials commented that many of the passenger conflicts reported over the past couple of years were related to the requirement to wear masks.

After my last visit to see my doctor, it was clear that Dr. Fauci was guilty of medical tyranny. I was required to wear a mask. All the staff were required to wear masks, though many wore the mask below the nose  one wonders if that does any good at all.

When I asked my doctor if they were going to be the last to eliminate the mask requirement he told me that it depended on what the local hospital required.

When I talked to the hospital, I was informed that they have to require masks because if they did not follow the CDC directives, the federal government would cut off their Medicare payments.

The CDC generally follows the lead of Dr. Fauci, and most of the world and the World Health Organization follow the lead of the American CDC.

So, one man, Dr. Anthony Fauci, substantially affects the policies of the CDC, which controls the policies of the various private sector hospitals, which controls the policies of the local doctors and their medical practices.

Even though the good judge ruled that the airline mask mandates were unconstitutional, most of us will be required to wear a mask at some point or another as we have to go to the hospital, visit Hospice, or see a doctor.

This is a national tragedy, that we as Americans would allow one person to have the power to control our freedom, and none of us put up as much as a whimper. We need to rise up en masse and request that this doctor be retired because his flip-flopping indicates he is against real medical science. One doctor, Dr. Scott Atlas, who worked for President Trump and wanted to debate the issue with Dr. Fauci found that he and his team were not open to any medical science debate at any point.

The thing I find so hard to believe is that prominent medical doctors have studied the pandemic, masks, and vaccinations for nearly two years, and concluded that masks really do not prevent transmission, or even offer extra personal protection. Unfortunately, the only science accepted is that put forth by the CDC and the federal government.

Even worse are lockdowns. Our churches were closed, and those who insisted on remaining open to follow Hebrews 10:25 were arrested and fined, some even jailed. In one state, California, singing was banned because it was believed it was spreading more air and thus the disease.

Lockdowns have negatively affected children more than adults. Science has shown that children are less likely to get seriously ill with Covid-19 than are older people. To keep them out of school is harming them academically  they lost at least a year of training, one which they will never regain. To force them to stay at home is affecting them psychologically and to keep them on the playground in the cold while distanced is contributing to emotional and physical health issues.

Some feel that vaccinations at least help to prevent disease. In a land of liberty, each individual has the right to vaccinate themself, but to force everyone to be vaccinated, or to be in lockdown is simply criminal. There is no scientific or legal justification for doing any of these things. Those who have analyzed the Spanish Flu of 1918 concluded that neither masks nor lockdowns did anything to slow or prevent the spread of the disease.

America was founded on the basis of the freedom of the individual. We often quote the Declaration of Independence, especially the text that says: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

We often stop at that point. We need to at least quote the next part: That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

When the Constitution was written and each state debated approving the document, there were a number who felt their natural rights were not sufficiently protected. Thus, they wrote twelve amendments, ten of which were adopted. We call these ten amendments The Bill of Rights.

Now you can read the Bill of Rights from one end to the other and you will not find any statement that it will not be in effect during a medical emergency. These are God-given natural rights, not given by any government or agency, and to be protected by all levels of government. This is important  all oaths taken from the President to the lowest city official swear (or affirm) to preserve and protect (or support) the Constitution of the United States.

America is in serious trouble because we have generally lost the ability to think for ourselves. If the government says we have to do something we just do it, without thinking if it is really necessary or even beneficial.

Some people have become so convinced that masks are necessary that when they see someone who is not wearing a mask they become very angry. They think such a person will cause them to catch a plague, much like the Black Plague of years past.

Fear is a tremendous motivator. First, it was global warming or climate change. Then came this pandemic, conveniently adding an additional fear factor. If you can get people to fear the unknown they will generally do what is asked of them. This state of fear is completely irrational and not supported by medical science.

We as Americans are primarily in trouble because we have no understanding of the Bible, or of the U.S. Constitution. We are a constitutional republic and not a dictatorship or a socialist country. It is long past the time to turn this ship around and face the truth. We have let ourselves be brainwashed under the guise of teaching truth, only to find at last that most of this is all lies. Doctors know better, but most are afraid they will lose their license if they attempt to speak the truth. This is medical tyranny.

It is past time that we banded together and demanded our freedoms back. This is not a Democrat or Republican issue, but it is a national issue, and it could already be too late to do anything about it, but we can start with the expulsion of the medical dictator known as Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Jim Hollingsworth has written four books: Climate Change: A Convenient Truth; Cortez: A Biography; The Ancient Culture of the Aztec Empire; and Abortion Compassion. The book on climate is now in a second edition. All are available where books are sold. Jim receives mail at jimhollingsworth@frontier.com
My quiet neighborhood in the capital, which is patrolled by the Metropolitan Police, the U.S. Park Police, and the Secret Services Foreign Missions Branch, has been the site of an unprecedented number of crimes. Someone -- identity unknown as far as I know -- tried to break into and presumably rob the Peruvian ambassador whose home is about four blocks away. Four blocks in the opposite direction, a sniper shot four people and then killed himself. The roads were blocked by law enforcement. The search for the shooter involved police helicopters circling overhead for hours. At about the same time the shooter was committing suicide, a woman leapt eight stories from an apartment building a block from my home, apparently to escape from a man who was abusing her. Then, some distance from here, at the Supreme Court, a man set himself on fire.

All this as spring in Washington is at its most glorious. The dogwoods are in full blossom, the tulips and daffodils are in bloom and the azaleas are about to bathe every lawn and hillside in red, pink, and white. Beautiful cardinals are swooping about gathering nesting materials. The juxtaposition of the glories of nature with the madness of men was dramatic. Id find this depressing -- except on the national scene, this has been a rare, wonderful week for the rational.

It seems that on multiple occasions sanity is prevailing over nuttiness.

Mask Mandates

Florida U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle issued a ruling ending mask mandates on public transportation, indicating they infringed on Americans rights and were imposed without adhering to the laws governing administrative rule-making. Regardless of the attacks on her as out of line, her decision was in perfect accord with a recent Supreme Court decision that also said the CDC had overreached its authority when it limited evictions. Stephen Carter writes:

Last August, in Alabama Association of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services, the justices rejected the CDCs claim that the Public Health Service Act granted the authority to restrict evictions of renters during the pandemic. The court held that the statutes language, though broad, wasnt as broad as the government argued. The CDCs interpretation of the PHSA, the majority wrote, strains credulity. Which leads us to the problem: The CDC justified its transportation mask mandate by citing exactly the same language. Judge Mizelle quotes the Supreme Court majority to the effect that since enactment in 1944, the PHSA has rarely been invoked and has generally been limited to quarantining infected individuals and prohibiting the import or sale of animals known to transmit disease. Here, wrote the judge, the CDC went well beyond those limits. Intuition might suggest that masking travelers, unlike regulating landlord tenant relations, is close to the Acts core purpose, but Judge Mizelle, again following the Supreme Courts example, closely parses the statutory language and finds no support for the CDCs action.

Most travelers and airline personnel were elated to be able to breathe freely again, and those who dont are free to continue masking up, but Dr. Fauci seemed disconsolate that his dictatorship over the country was over. This is a CDC issue, he said, It should not have been a court issue. In so doing he exposed his own hubris. If the Constitution made the CDC a coequal -- or even superior branch -- it must be in invisible ink. After some flummoxing, the administration said it would appeal, but this is not to say that Mizelle will be overruled or even that the appeal is a serious effort to do so. The Department of Justice did not seek to have her order stayed. It did not even ask for an emergency appeal. And clearly because to do so would be unpopular, the congressional Democrats are making no effort to revive the rule by imposing a federal mask mandate on air travel, interstate bus routes, and train transportation. Most likely sometime after they file the appeal, the CDC will end the mandate rule on the ground that it is no longer necessary snd argue that the appeal should be dismissed as moot because it no longer exists. Such a ploy would allow the fans of the administrative state to keep the Supreme Court from ruling squarely on the scope of the CDCs authority so they again could try such a stunt -- ruling the country (often most arbitrarily and discriminatorily) under the pretext of protecting us from some disease.

CNN+ Folds

Bleeding viewers and revenue, the honchos at CNN decided it was a swell idea to create another venue, CNN+, which would be a subscriber-only streaming service. It must be nice to be a network executive, because no matter how bad your judgment and loss to stockholders, you still rake in the big bucks. On April 30  a little over 30 days from its creation, CNN+ will cease to exist. CNNs chief media correspondent Brian Stelter is yet again a laughingstock, having this week said with a straight face that it was too early to tell if CNN+ was a success or failure. Wait a month after its demise and let us know.

Netflix and Spotify

There are lots of ways that favored (that is Democratic) pols and their families clean up when out of office. For the Obamas, it was a reported $65 million book deal and, apparently, generous production deal contracts with Netflix and Spotify. Netflixs woke offerings did not appeal to more than the kind of selective audience who showed up for Biden campaign appearances. Netflix stock lost $50 billion in one day after it announced that for the first time in 10 years it had lost subscribers.

Spotify and Netflix both reportedly were not enthralled with the products the Obamas produced for them, so both contracts were not extended.

Disney Agonistes

In the parade of losers, we cant ignore Disney. For motives that defy reason, it decided to attack Floridas Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature for enacting a law that barred teachers from discussing their sex lives with young students in their care. The media and the bright lights of the sort who publish in the New England Journal of Higher Education distorted the language and import of the law, mislabeling it the Dont Say Gay law. It has nothing to do with gays and everything to do with what parents consider the best age and venue (school or home) for such discussions. Outside of the legacy media and academia, the law has wide support. Tucker Carlson:

The polling firm Public Opinion Strategies found out why they do: "Fully two-thirds of voters believe it is inappropriate for teachers or school personnel to discuss gender identity with children in kindergarten through third grade." Well, of course it is. Everyone thinks that. So, if there was ever a law that accurately reflected public opinion, which should matter in a democracy, this was the law, but across the country, in the state of California, Bob Iger [former head of Disney] was watching and Bob Iger didn't like it.

In any event, the Florida legislature decided that Disneys dishonest campaign against this legislation required a suitable response, and stripped the company of its decades-long legislatively granted self-governance (the 27,000 acres of Reedy Creek district) and tax exemption. The company tax tab for listening to Iger and its wokester staff is estimated at $20 million per year. And that doesnt include the public response -- many are waving Mickey goodbye.

Twitter vs. Elon

The outfit that has delighted in silencing anyone who disagrees with its views and deplatforming them like Soviet-era censors is coming closer to being taken over by Elon Musk, a libertarian sort who does believe, oddly enough to the left, that free speech means you can say things with which he disagrees. This is a concept unknown or disregarded on college campuses where anything the Left doesnt like is attacked as racist or triggering or offensive and must be silenced. He secured the financing ($46.5 billion) to buy the company this week, and I wish him and his financial backers well in his bid to buy up all the companys shares from stockholders and turn this juvenile operation into a meaningful, adult one.
The Australian version of 60 Minutes recently aired this 17-minute segment about the level of apprehension and preparation now going on in Poland over the possibility of war with Russia. According to it, Poland is taking the possibility of a Russian attack very seriously. The military is exercising near the border and is actively expanding and mobilizing. And also, ordinary Poles are terrified about the possibility of war and are making plans on how to flee if worse comes to worst.

I disagree. I am an American expat who has lived in retirement in Poland since 2007. Admittedly I live in the western portion of Poland hundreds of miles from the Belarus and Ukraine borders; nevertheless, I think I have my finger on the pulse of what Poland is really thinking I have yet to meet one single person who is at all worried that Russia might attack Poland next. I think Aussie 60 Minutes cherry-picked the most frightened Poles it could find and falsely made them representative of Poland as a whole.

The first question is, does Putin have any interest in attacking Poland and absorbing it into the greater Russian empire? Theoretically, he might.

There are two reasons why Putin decided to attack Ukraine. One of them, in a word, is NATO. To Putin, but really to any competent ruler of Russia, Ukraine in NATO is a red line, just as Russian missiles in Cuba in 1962 were a red line to JFK. NATO is why Putin attacked South Ossetia in 2008  to prevent Gruzia (Georgia) from joining NATO  and is why he annexed Crimea in 2014 after the Maidan coup detat overthrew the pro-Russian government.

But the other reason why Russia attacked is Putins vision of a Russia with the restored borders the USSR had when it collapsed. And part of his vision for a restored Russia is his belief that the three great Slavic peoples of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine really are one people and belong together, much as Adolf Hitler felt about Volksdeutscher everywhere when he anschlussd Germanic Austria into the Greater German Reich in 1938. Putin expressed such views recently in a paper he wrote, On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.

A Polish legend holds that once upon a time, all the Slavic people lived together as one nation and had a common language, but the three Slavic brother-kings decided to split up and go their separate ways because their homeland wasnt big enough to support everybody. Rus went east and founded Russia. Czech went south and established, more or less, Bohemia. And Lech went west and founded Poland.

If Putin wants to take this idea of pan-Slavic brotherhood farther to include Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, he could. And by the way, this logically could also even include Bulgaria and the south Slavs of the former Yugoslavia. It was Russias historic ethnic and Orthodox affinity with Serbia that caused it to declare war on Austro-Hungary after the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princeps shot Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 which provoked Austro-Hungary to declare war on Serbia, all of which set off the great chain reaction of the Guns of August that launched WWI. I dont think Putins idea of a pan-Slavic union includes the south Slavs. But then again I never thought hed attack Ukraine either...

But will he attack Poland? I still think not for six reasons

1) Demographics: According to this site, Russias population in 2018 was 146.9 million, and has dropped slightly since then to about 146.2 million. As for Polands population, different Internet sources give slightly different numbers but, basically, its population has held steady at around 38 million from 2016 to now. That yields a population ratio of 3.85 to 1. Given Russias need to spread out its armed forces to cover thousands of miles of borders and Polands ability to concentrate everything on short borders  see below  this ratio lowers in Polands favor.

According to this site, Poland has 120,000 troops on its eastern borders now, plus 10,000 Americans and small amounts from other NATO countries. That compares with the 170,000 that Russia mobilized to attack Ukraine  less now by however many thousands of troops have been killed / captured / surrendered / wounded in action, and otherwise maimed by non-combat causes such as frostbite, self-mutilation, and radiation exposure at Chernobyl.

Furthermore, Russias numbers have been in steady decline because of emigration and the aging of its population, whereas Polands population can remain as young as ever thanks in part to immigration from Ukraine. For years Ukrainians have seen in Poland the same thing that indigent Mexicans see in the United States: a wealthier country that is worth emigrating to.

2) Short Borders: Poland would have about 200 km of borders with the Kaliningrad Enclave to defend plus about 350 km with its border with Belarus, and less than 100 km more to defend were Russia to attack Poland via Lithuania through the Suwaki gap. Poland also has 400 km of borders with Ukraine

3) NATO: Relative to Russia, NATO is stronger than ever. For this reason alone it is almost inconceivable that Russia would ever attack.

4) Quality of Equipment: Poland has all the latest NATO equipment and training that Ukraine lacks. NATO hasnt given Ukraine everything that Poland has, but even what NATO has donated is giving Russia fits.

5) Historical Motivation: Ukraine has profound historical motivation to fight Russia. If nothing else, the Great Famine and Holomodor of around 1930 profoundly motivates Ukraine to fight with far more vigor than the Russians have.

And Poland has at least as much motivation. The 18th-century partitions of Poland left half of Poland under Russias thumb for over a century  and dont forget the fourth partition of Poland in 1939 too! Poland drove off a Bolshevik assault on Poland in 1920 immediately after establishing independence on the very day WWI ended in 1918.

Poland's changing borders (credit: Krzysztoflew CC BY-SA 3.0

To this day, Poland feels more aggrieved about the Katyn Forest massacre of 20,000 Polish Army officers than it does about the 3 million Polish Christians (not to mention Polands additional 3 million Polish Jews) all of whom perished at German hands during WWII. Poland had to put up with a quasi-Russian occupation of Poland after WWII for about 45 years.

I live outside Legnica which for years was known as Maa Moskwa  Little Moscow  because half the inhabitants were Russian soldiers. It was the headquarters for the entire Western Front; if the USSR had ever decided to attack NATO and Western Europe, Moscow would have sent the orders to the Western Front headquarters in Legnica which then would have processed them in detail. The locals were extremely happy to see the Russians go, and then to take and possess via squatters rights the thousands of housing units that had suddenly become vacant and available for nothing when the Russians left.

To this day, many Poles believe that a vile Russian conspiracy consciously killed off dozens of top leaders in the Polish government on a crashed flight to Katyn about 12 years ago. On that occasion, Russia was trying to make a good-faith effort to atone and make amends for the Stalinist crimes at Katyn during WWII. The accident was caused by the Polish leadership on the airplane who insisted on flying to Smolyensk in the midst of thick fog instead of diverting either to Minsk or Moscow because they were in a hurry to make it to the ceremony on time.

But many Poles nevertheless believe in this conspiracy theory because it complements and reinforces their natural antipathy to Russia. Conclusion: Poland  will  fight. Understand that.

6) Quality of Manpower  Despite the fact that Russia has many fine military units, it continues to bulk out its forces with draftees who are poorly trained, supplied, and motivated. According to Victor Suvorov (a pseudonym), writing in the 1980s in his Inside the Soviet Army, Russia does semi-annual induction classes, so that at any given time, there are four classes of draftees who are all doing 2-year terms in the Russian army. The system is brutal and dehumanizing and results in the poor morale and lack of motivation that has characterized the Russian Armys recent performance in Ukraine. And now word is, Putin is calling up ex-soldiers who were already discharged after fulfilling their military obligations and is having a supplemental and universal draft on top of this, all to replace his losses. They will be so much cannon fodder. Lotsa luck with that.

Russias experience in Ukraine has shown that its army is incompetent. At one time Poland also drafted as per the Soviet / Russian model, but wisely went all-volunteer about a dozen years ago. Unlike Russias army, Polands army is wholly professional. Its soldiers want to serve.

Russias army has taken a fearsome licking at the hands of a Ukraine whose valiant army simply fights well below Polands weight class. It will take Russia many years to recover.

Conclusion: Russia will never attack Poland. Take that, Aussie 60 Minutes!
Mickey Kaus has spotted an interesting article that ran in Tablet magazine by Michael Lind, about the smothering effect monied leftist foundations are having ... on the left.

Does anyone else notice a disturbing resonance between the non-profit-industrial-complex's limited (i.e. crushingly confomist) idea of debate and @BarackObama's apparent idea of "healthy, inclusive democracy" on social media? https://t.co/U6MhhbLkYV  Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) April 24, 2022

Lind's argument is this:

The centralized and authoritarian control of American progressivism by major foundations and the nonprofits that they fund, and the large media institutions, universities, corporations, and banks that disseminate the progressive party line, has made it impossible for there to be public intellectuals on the American center left. This is not to say that progressives are not intelligent and/or well-educated. It is merely to say that being a progressive public intellectual is no longer an option, in an era in which progressivism is anti-intellectual. If you are an intelligent and thoughtful young American, you cannot be a progressive public intellectual today, any more than you can be a cavalry officer or a silent movie star. Thats because, in the third decade of the 21st century, intellectual life on the American center left is dead. Debate has been replaced by compulsory assent and ideas have been replaced by slogans that can be recited but not questioned: Black Lives Matter, Green Transition, Trans Women Are Women, 1619, Defund the Police. The space to the left-of-center that was once filled with magazines and organizations devoted to what Diana Trilling called the life of significant contention is now filled by the ritualized gobbledygook of foundation-funded, single-issue nonprofits like a pond choked by weeds. Having crowded out dissent and debate, the nonprofit industrial complexProgressivism Inc.taints the Democratic Party by association with its bizarre obsessions and contributes to Democratic electoral defeats, like the one that appears to be imminent this fall.

We all know that these monster leftist billionaire-bankrolled outfits conspire to create chaos, as well as ostracize anyone who thinks differently on the right.

But it turns out, they've made any exchange of ideas on the left into an absolute dead zone. There's no thinking, no debate, no exchange of ideas that's going on in the left. The left takes its talking points from the "program officers" of far-left money behemoths such as George Soros's Open Society Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Omidyar Foundation, or a few Silicon Valley-ish others. That's why all of a sudden, borders must be open, gay marriage is no longer open to debate, transgender indoctrination is de rigeur, and greenie nonsense and critical race theory permeate all fields of public policy no matter how tenuous the connection. Anyone, including anyone on the left, who might just prefer a more nuanced interpretation of the proclamation or be concerned about cost-benefit analysis, is dubbed an instant bigot, and all the foundation cash upon which the little magazine, or the university endowment, or the activist organization is dependent, is swiftly cut off. That keeps them in line and the "program officers" in firm control.

What a dumpster fire.

The item that sticks out in Lind's piece is this:

At a conference sponsored by the Ford Foundation that I attended more than a decade ago, an African American community activist complained to me privately: Immigration is hurting the people in the neighborhoods we work in. The employers prefer illegal immigrants to young Black workers. But if we say anything about it, Ford will cut off our money.

So that's been going on, under the radar -- leftwing community organizers have been willingly silent or else silenced, whenever the issue of open borders comes up. They are the ones who are hurt the most as Joe Biden opens the border but have gone dead silent as the big foundation money that runs some of their community organizations holds the whip over them.

That's sellout behavior, for sure. But it's also why Joe Biden feels free to open the border, and his Homeland Security Secretary feels free to simply ignore U.S. law, all with just a few measures to conceal the activity from the public. They know the left will say nothing. They've actually got it made. It certainly explains the brazen arrogance and detachment from reality that we are seeing in the failing Biden administration.

Yet on some level, these Bidenites also know that the bought-silence of the activists isn't the sentiment on the leftist "street." They do, after all, pay lip service to border enforcement, claim to be enforcing Title 42 (which they are doing only sporadically now), and employ night flights to sneak illegal aliens into cities across America without too much crowd visibility for the Fox News cameras. They don't like minorities to see these things and draw their own conclusions about what it means for their prospects. Anyone who's at the lowest rung of the economic ladder and trying to get a leg up is completely undercut by mass illegal migration, which is either heralded on the left or else covered up with complainers silenced.

That one quoted remark from the leftwing community organizer, describing how minority communities are hit the hardest by the influx of cheap, subliterate, third-world labor, and are angry about it, but unable to voice that anger, tells us a lot about just why huge numbers of black and Latino voters are moving sharply towards Republicans as the midterm approaches. They literally have no leaders, no advocates, no spokespeople, nobody speaking up for their economic interests, and it's on an issue that affects them fundamentally. They've all been sold out to the Soros penny, because those who take the Soros penny, do the Soros bidding.

It's ugly stuff. What it will take to detach a leftist activist from his love for Soros money is an open question. Right now, it seems that only the mass exodus we are seeing now to the GOP is the potential wake-up call, but only if the big foundations run out of cash and lay off leftists as a result. Then we'll start to hear some truth-telling in the silenced communities. It may just be an issue for Republicans to take up as they take power after the next mid-term -- ending the tax breaks, zero-financial transparency, and naked partisan political activity, of the non-profits and forcing them to live like the rest of us. Along with social media, and cash-fattened universities, these silencing foundations should be a prime target.

Image: World Economic Forum, swiss-image.ch/Photo by Sebastian Derungs // CC BY-SA 2.0. Image filtered with Graphite by BeCasso.
The venerable American Library Association (ALA), formed in 1876, is another American institution thats abandoning the pretense of being a neutral organization dedicated only to ensuring that American libraries remain welcoming places that pass on the knowledge of the ages and provide a safe intellectual haven for Americas youth. Thats because the ALA just elected an open Marxist to be its next president.

In 1731, Benjamin Franklin and his Junto Club (a club of tradesmen coming together for intellectual improvement) founded the first lending library in America, the Library Company of Philadelphia, at a time when few people had easy or affordable access to books. The men shared books with each other but it was a cumbersome system. They decided to pool their money and create a single repository of books from which all could draw.

Very soon, Franklin was able to boast that the original library, and the copies it spawned,

[H]ave improved the general Conversation of Americans, made the common Tradesmen and Farmers as intelligent as most Gentlemen from other Countries, and perhaps have contributed in some Degree to the Stand so generally made throughout the Colonies in Defence of their Priviledges.

Suddenly, because 90% of the books were in English, not Latin or Greek, ordinary people, not just the gentry, could read novels, history, travel books and, of course, books about science, mathematics, engineering, and other practical endeavors. Civic improvement meant raising each persons level of knowledge and competence so that ordinary men could understand their rights as Englishmen, rights founded in liberty.

Image: Emily Drabinski. YouTube screen grab.

Things are different now. On April 13, the ALA held its election for president. The winner, who will take over the ALA in July 2023, is Emily Drabinski, who describes herself as a Marxist lesbian. According to her bio, unlike Franklin, she doesnt view libraries as an aggregation of knowledge for the improvement of individuals. Instead, libraries are meant to create mass movements for the public good:

I believe in building worker power as a means of transforming our workplaces, communities, and ourselves. I am running for president of the American Library Association because I believe our institutionsschool, public, academic, and special librariesare fundamental infrastructures of the public good. This crucial moment calls for leadership that understands the importance of mass movements for restoring and expanding investments in us. We must help our publics understand the connections between our daily practices of selection, acquisition, description, circulation, and preservation of information to broader movements for a more just society.

In her platform, which convinced enough ALA members to hand her a victory, Drabinksi is very clear about the role libraries should play in America and its not about improving each individual:

Equity as action. Social and economic justice and racial equity requires that we make a material difference in the lives of library workers and patrons who have for too long been denied power and opportunity on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, national origin, spoken language, and disability. As ALA president, I will direct resources and opportunities to a diverse cross section of the association and advance a public agenda that puts organizing for justice at the center of library work.

Other operating believe systems are the green new deal, fighting against the dominance of North American and European publishers and vendors that restrict access and audience for readers and researchers around the world, fighting against corporate control of core library functions (which isnt a bad idea except that she wants to replace big corporations with big government), and collective organizing for collective power.

Drabinksis tweets and retweets provide more insight into her values, which are firmly on the left, encompassing everything from old-fashioned union organizing to new-fashioned environmentalism and social wokism:

When I was a little girl, I would head to the nearby public libraries after school let out and my mother would pick me up there an hour or two later. Shed know that I was happily reading wholesome childrens books, everything from history to autobiographies to novels. (I never did hit the science books.) Nowadays, though, if I had young children, Id be worried that time spent in the public library would see them being indoctrinated in Marxism and gender madness, with a little pornography on the side.

Oh, one more thing: Drabinski ends her platform with this rather ominous phrase: Remember: there are more of us than there are of them, especially when we work together. I think shes talking about you and me.
Four years ago, Barack Obama was the front man for the Democrat party. Sure, he was on a mission to damage this country in favor of globalism, but he was doing it with "a wink and a smile." Because of his amiable personal qualities, he made far left agenda look appealing.

Joe Biden's party is not the party of Obama. They "came in like a wrecking ball." Obama could only dream of the destruction they caused in just one year. However, the Democrats made the same mistake as other invaders: they expected that Americans would welcome them as "liberators" from Trump's "fascism." The Democrats confused the demented shrieking of the Twitter mob with a public outcry.

Ramping up "hate Trump" hysteria gets you only so far. At some point, you need to govern  and govern they can't. Their policies cause a new disaster every day, and the only thing they are attempting is to find a plausible "villain." The world map does not have enough countries we could blame for this administration's failures.

The partial cause of the Democrats' trouble is their destructive social agenda. Americans are fully rejecting it, and the midterm prospects look grim. And so, the party that believes that every woman must "roar" trots out damsels in distress.

Here is an MSNBC clip that looks more staged than an HGTV renovation set. Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz went on MSNBC to complain about "online harassment":

You feel like any little piece of information that gets out on you will be used by the worst people on the internet to destroy your life, and it's so isolating.

And just a couple of weeks later, to prove her point, Taylor Lorenz went on to release personal information of another Twitter user.

In defense of this outrageous act of intimidation of a private citizen by a powerful news outlet, the WaPo assured us that Ms. Lorenz's "reporting methods comport entirely with WaPo's professional standards," farther claiming that the identity of the woman being unmasked was already "publicly known." That raises the question of why Taylor Lorenz needed to go into the Libs of Tik Tok's "complex online history" to find her real name, when all she needed to do was look up the "public record" that the WaPo claims is out there.

We'll leave that question to the historians and move on to Jen Psaki. The public face of the Biden administration rarely displays powerful emotion. She does not share your worries about short supply of toilet paper or daily heists on your local shopping mall. But if you oppose the indoctrination of your children, you'd better believe Jen "is going to get emotional:"

I'm going to get emotional about this issue because it's horrible! But it's kids who are bullied, and all these leaders are taking steps to hurt them, and hurt their lives and hurt their families! ... It's completely outrageous! Sorry, this is an issue that makes me completely crazy.

The same people who tried to destroy the lives of conservative boys are calling you a "child-killer" if you don't submit to the far-left agenda. Here is MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace making a tearful argument that shielding elementary-schoolers from inappropriate material is equivalent to war crimes:

The Russians get their soldiers to rape children by dehumanizing them. Dehumanization as a practice is a tactic of war. It is being deployed in politics and people like you and I sometimes lose the plot and admire its effective  not its substance, but even the analysis of these tactics loses sight of what this speech brings us back to which is that dehumanization has a cost right now.

The Democrats are in despair because they are not a party of yesterday  but neither are the Republicans. The party that Nicolle Wallace used to represent is dead  and she is duly mourning its demise. Democrats are terrified of the new Republican Party because they know how effective it is.

The new Republican Party will not trade political favors for campaign donations. They follow the data, not ideology. They are beholden to their constituents, not the party bigwigs or the powerful corporations. And when it comes to dealing with the media, they give as good as they get.

This party appeals to everyone  even the Democrats' most reliable voting blocs. If you are an honest, hardworking, motivated American, the new Republican Party works for you. The Democrats' only way to win is to bribe you by "delivering on their agenda," which means another fat check from the government.

The American people are on to them. They will fail.

Tanya Berlaga is a freelance writer, translator, and publisher and is currently a contributor to Right Wire Report, The Liberty Loft, and Free Speech Movement.

Image via Pexels.
Last week, with Floridas governor Ron DeSantis leading the charge, the state of Florida took direct aim at the Disney Corporation because of the companys woke aggression against Florida law and against Floridas and Americas children. News is out now that, within days of the news about Disneys loss of self-governing status, ExxonMobil announced that it would no longer fly in front of its corporate office any flags associated with social or political organizations, including the LGBTQ++ or BLM flags. Its easy to believe that ExxonMobil is sensing a change in the political wind and is returning its corporation to its core business, rather than engaging in woke activism.

In Florida, the trigger for legislative action against Disney was the companys open declaration that it intended to wage war against Florida for daring to pass a law protecting Floridas five- through eight-year-olds from LGBTQ++ indoctrination in the classroom. Sensing a corporate entity that had gotten way too big for its britches, Florida withdrew from Disney a self-governing privilege it conferred on the company back in 1967.

Of course, Disney retains its freedom to speak on any subject it wishes. However, it no longer has a unique standing denied to all other corporations in Florida. In Florida, all corporations are now being treated equally when it comes to self-governance within a geographic region.

Some Republicans instantly castigated Florida for withdrawing from Disney a privilege bestowed on it 55 years ago when it appeared that Disney would serve the state of Florida. These Republicans just arent bothered that Disney broke that bargain. Instead, they embrace failure whenever possible because thats their comfort zone.

Image: ExxonMobil flying the pride flag in June 2021. Twitter screen grab.

ExxonMobil, however, seems to have decided that the We-Love-Losing-Republicans do not represent the average American, nor do they represent the conservative legislatures controlling a critical mass of American states. Suddenly, its a real concern for corporations that the various tax benefits states have conferred on them arent rights, which are inherent in individuals or corporations but are, instead, privileges that can be withdrawn at will. Other states may be exercising that will now that average Americans are realizing realize that the leftist agenda brings with it economic collapse, race hatred, child sexual grooming, open borders, and a host of other sins, both social and economic, that are tearing America apart.

So it was that ExxonMobil announced a policy change that represents a U-Turn from the recent corporate habit of flying huge flags outside corporate headquarters and offices celebrating BLM and LGBTQ++ pride, along with myriad and random other leftist causes:

Exxon is banning the LGBTQ pride flag from being flown outside its Houston corporate office during pride month in June. The company updated guidance on acceptable flags which can be displayed outside offices, which included banning "external position flags," including the pride flag and Black Lives Matter flag, according to the new policy obtained by Bloomberg News. The rule does permit a flag representing an LGBTQ employees group to be flown, but it can't prominently display the Exxon corporate logo, according to the report.

Its to be hoped that ExxonMobil also stops this kind of Pride Month pandering on the internet:

In honor of Pride Month, we asked our ExxonMobil colleagues around the world to tell us about their experiences and the importance of inclusion. These are their words. pic.twitter.com/szBoGThJBS  ExxonMobil (@exxonmobil) June 16, 2021

Activists instantly sounded off about the fact that ExxonMobil was no longer being supportive of the LGBTQ++ group. But of course, corporations dont need to support groups.

Here is what corporations should be doing: Abide by state and local laws (and, one could add, moral principles); treat their employees well regardless of said employees race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identification, religion, or country of national origin; provide a good product or service; and make money for the shareholders. Thats it. Thats all that corporations should do.

Im old enough to remember a time when corporations advertised their product, not their politics. That was a saner world and it seems that ExxonMobil has decided that its time to return to that world. Its to be hoped that other corporations looking at what happened to Disney, and looking at other Red state legislatures that are chomping at the bit to follow suitclimb on board the ExxonMobil bandwagon and also begin focusing on product, not politics.
The media and others are in full campaign mode for 2022, and it seems the only story they focus on is January 6, when there was a protest. The FBI said it wasn't an insurrection. Why do the media and other Democrats repeat that lie?

This week, the story is that Mark Meadows was warned by intelligence that there might be violence. That clearly means that Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, and others were warned yet did nothing. Yet no stories about them, and no subpoenas asking about what they knew.

Trump's chief of staff was warned of possible violence on 6 January before attack

Mark Meadows was aware of intelligence briefings about the threat of violence ahead of the 6 January riots, according to new filing from House committee

I watch ABC News every night, and they seem to have something on January 6 but rarely anything about the illegal activity at the border. A border guard died last week saving someone, yet I didn't see the story.

The Russian collusion story was the greatest threat to our republic in my lifetime, yet when Durham has a new filing, most of the media still don't cover it because that is Democrats threatening our elections.

There is massive information about the pure corruption of the incompetent Biden and his family yet very little coverage because the media don't care.

It is pathetic that Obama, who spread misinformation for eight years, says how concerned he is about misinformation.

Image via Pixabay.
According to South Korea's military, North Korea tested its twelfth missile launch of the year. Two missiles were launched from the city of Hamhung and soared 68 miles with an altitude of 15 miles off the country's east coast. Kim Jong-un was present and viewed his government's "new tactical weapon" with delight. According to the Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, their military and intelligence agencies conducted an emergency meeting to discuss counteractions and assess the danger.

South Korea's President Moon Jae-in has ordered all government ministries to detect any advancement from North Korea. The U.S. special envoy to North Korea reiterated the need for a strong response from Washington and Seoul. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Defense stated, "We are aware of the North Korean statement that they conducted a test of a long-range artillery system. We analyze all activities in close coordination with our allies and partners." In addition to that statement, The US is committed to the defense of South Korea, Japan, and the United States.

North Korea has continued to increase its testing of missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), despite violating international law. North Korea conducted 12 tests in the first four months of 2022 compared to just four tests in 2020 and eight in 2021. Duyeon Kim, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said North Korea's goal is to create missiles that can penetrate defense systems with "features that can fly them under the US and South Korea's radars." In March, North Korea test-fired an ICBM with the capability of hitting the U.S. mainland in its first long-range missile test since 2017.

North Korea's ultimate goal is to have a nuclear weapons arsenal against U.S. troops in South Korea and Japan in case of an invasion. Professor Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies says North Korea can use a limited number of nuclear weapons against the U.S. "They have some deterrence, but what I think the North Koreans really, fundamentally want is the ability to use a much larger number of nuclear weapons against U.S. forces in South Korea and Japan if they thought an invasion was underway," said Professor Lewis on CNBC's Squawk Box Asia.

According to Lewis, North Korea is working toward conducting a test on its nuclear weapons capabilities. North Korea sealed off entrances to its nuclear testing tunnels in 2018. Still, satellite images captured in March show construction on tunnels North Korea had previously tested. During Donald Trump's presidency, two summits were held with Chairman Kim to negotiate the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. The second one held in Hanoi ended immediately, as neither side was able to agree on the removal of economic sanctions. "In a sense, the gloves are off," said Professor Lewis. "They don't really feel bound by any of the commitments they made in 2018 when the diplomacy period started."

Twenty twenty-two is an important year for the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea (DPRK). It is the tenth anniversary of Kim Jong-un's rule and the 110th anniversary of the birth of North Korea's founder, Kim II-sung. President Lee Sang-hyun of the South Korean think-tank Sejong Institute said Kim may be under stress to "show off his achievements." April is an important month, and it provides an opportunity "to show off to the world about their country's missile and nuclear capabilities."

The U.S. and South Korea began joint military defensive simulations. South Korea's president-elect, Yoon Suk-yeol, has promised to expand drills to deter North Korea's developing nuclear and missile threats. Yoon and Kim do not have any confirmed meetings before Yoon takes office but anticipate that he will take a hard-line approach. When it comes to North Korea's nuclear program, "we know that there's going to be a nuclear test when Kim Jong-un feels like it."

Image via Pixabay.
Threats and strong messages do not result in deterrence. George Washington famously said, "If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace...it must be known that we are at all times ready for war". Not being ready invites insult. Unfortunately, being ready is a full-time job.

When Vladimir Putin began his attack to seize Crimea, he did It secure in the knowledge that there would be no NATO ground response. NATO did move air and naval forces around, but the option of something like a large NATO armored exercise in Poland was not possible. Such a move could have influenced Putin's risk/reward calculation.

NATO Allies have armor but are not about to do something so provocative without US participation and the United States could not participate. In October 2013, the United States withdrew its last armor from Europe. Putin's choice of early 2014 was not a coincidence.

The United States decided to rebuild a ground capability in Europe as evidenced by its actions. A program initially called the European Reassurance Imitative, later renamed the European Deterrence Initiative (EDI), began to increase and improve US military presence in Europe, with an emphasis on ground capabilities. The annual budget requests for EDI beginning in 2016 were $3.6 billion, $4.8 billion, $6.3 billion (upgraded to $6.5 billion by Congress), $5.9 billion, and $4.7 billion. Beginning in 2017 there was additional money for lethal aid to Ukraine.

In the current crisis, in addition to providing aid to Ukraine, NATO has increased its strength to deter Russian attacks against NATO. Unlike 2014, the United States has been able to play a major role in this effort. The widely publicized deployment of the ready brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division conceals a much larger contribution made possible by years of planning and funding in EDI. Before the end of March, at almost no additional cost, the United States had an armored division in Europe along with a command architecture that could command and control a much larger force.

As part of EDI, the United States put a continuous rotational Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT) in Poland. Additionally, we established a prepositioned set of equipment for another ABCT. The prepositioned set replicates a technique for rapid reinforcement used during the Cold War. The equipment is the same equipment used by units in the United States. It is maintained by the 405th Field Support Brigade. When activated, the 405th will draw the equipment and issue it to troops flown in from the United States. The United States also permanently stationed a division headquarters in Poland. We reactivated V Corps headquarters at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and, in 2020, put a forward element of this headquarters in Poland.

As the current crisis developed, the V Corps moved the bulk of its headquarters to Europe. The rotational ABCT in Poland was stopped from rotating back to the States and the already planned deployment of the replacement ABCT went ahead. Soldiers from an ABCT from the 3d Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia, were flown to Europe and issued equipment by the 405th Field Support Brigade. The exercise budget of EDI covers such efforts. Before the end of March then, at very little additional cost, there were 3 American ABCTs in Europe. Or another way to look at it, there is an American armored division in Europe. There is also a command architecture that could command and control a Corps.

What a difference from 2014! That is real deterrence. These capabilities could have been used for deterrence during the yearlong Russian build-up. They were not. However, once the crisis began, they were quickly called into action, a step only possible because the capabilities already existed.

Crisis management is much easier when there are capabilities to manage. Those capabilities don't appear magically-- it takes planning, funding, and tenacity.
AstraZeneca, a multinational biopharmaceutical company, is keen to cooperate with China on a wide range of topics, including global anti-epidemic cooperation and promoting healthcare innovations, said the head of the company at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2022.

"In order to reinforce the achievements in the global fight against COVID-19 and share the health and wellbeing, addressing timely and equitable access to vaccines and vaccination is urgent for the world," Leif Johansson, chairman of AstraZeneca, said in his speech via video link at the Boao forum.

As of the first quarter of 2022, AstraZeneca has delivered more than 2.8 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine to more than 180 countries worldwide, about two-thirds of which were exported to go to low-income countries and regions.



He said that AstraZeneca is committed to working with all parties to bridge the vaccine gap and strengthen exchanges on anti-pandemic experience through digital means.

Johansson pointed out that China has scored world-renowned achievements in developing the digital economy, and the application of digital technologies such as 5G, big data, and artificial intelligence has significantly improved the quality of medical services and accessibility of treatment for patients in China.

In terms of China-Europe cooperation, Leon Wang, executive vice-president and international and China president of AstraZeneca, spoke highly of the significant role that Chinese companies played in promoting close economic and trade exchanges between the two sides.

Faced with multiple challenges posed by the pandemic, he suggested all parties should seek common ground while reserving differences so as to explore more potential for the global economic recovery and achieve a win-win outcome.

During the forum, a series of investment and cooperation projects were signed between AstraZeneca and local governments in China, including building a rare disease diagnosis and treatment center in Qingdao, building the Traditional Chinese Medicine Innovation Industrial Base in Chengdu, and building the International Life Science Innovation Campus in Hangzhou and Guangzhou.



In particular, AstraZeneca's antibody combination therapy Evusheld (tixagevimab and cilgavimab) has already been authorized for emergency use in the United States, and recently approved in the EU and UK for pre-exposure prevention of COVID-19, according to Leif Johansson. He said that efforts are also being made to introduce this medicine into China.

"We will work with the Hainan Boao Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone Administration to realize the pilot trial of Tixagevimab and Cilgavimab for COVID-19 pre-exposure prophylaxis in Hainan as soon as possible so as to contribute to China and the world's fight against COVID-19," Wang said.
My guess is that then-V.P. Harry Truman imagined he'd be president sooner than later. President Roosevelt's health was not a public issue, but everybody in Washington knew he was a sick man. It was a matter of time when the nation was fighting a war in Europe and the Pacific.

On April 12, V.P. Truman became President Truman. Two weeks later, President Truman learned about what it really to be president. On this day in 1945, he was briefed on whatever was going on in New Mexico:

America's secret development of the atomic bomb began in 1939 [sic -- it was 1941] with then-President Franklin Roosevelt's support. The project was so secret that FDR did not even inform his fourth-term vice president, Truman, that it existed. (In fact, when Truman's 1943 senatorial investigations into war-production expenditures led him to ask questions about a suspicious plant in Minneapolis, which was secretly connected with the Manhattan Project, Truman received a stern phone call from FDR's secretary of war, Harry Stimson, warning him not to inquire further.) When President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, Truman was immediately sworn in and, soon after, was informed by Stimson of a new and terrible weapon being developed by physicists in New Mexico. In his diary that night, Truman noted that he had been informed that the U.S. was perfecting an explosive great enough to destroy the whole world. On April 24, Stimson and the army general in charge of the project, Leslie Groves, brought Truman a file full of reports and details on the Manhattan Project. They told Truman that although the U.S. was the only country with the resources to develop the bombeliminating fears that Germany was close to developing the weaponthe Russians could possibly have atomic weapons within four years. They discussed if, and with which allies, they should share the information and how the new weapon would affect U.S. foreign-policy decisions. Truman authorized the continuation of the project and agreed to form an interim committee that would advise the president on using the weapon.

Do you wonder how he slept that night?

Looking back, I have a couple of thoughts.

Would a modern U.S. senator have kept the whole thing quiet as then-senator Truman did in 1943? What a story to leak to a friendly reporter. It would have hurt the war effort, and Truman was willing to give his commander in chief the benefit of the doubt. It was a kind of honor and seriousness missing today.

President Truman did make the decision to use the bomb. He understood that it had to be done to the end the war sooner rather than later. Nevertheless, it must have been a heck of a meeting when he learned that the decision would be his to make.

PS: Click for my videos and podcasts at Canto Talk.

Image via Picryl.
Last week, New York Times reporters Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin leaked a recording allegedly of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) telling Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) that he would recommend to then-President Donald Trump that he should resign.

The audio was played on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC where the NYT reporters were promoting their latest anti-Trump book This Will Not Pass

The following is the transcript of the leaked conversation

CHENEY: I guess theres a question. When were talking about the 25th Amendment resolution, and you asked if, you know, what happens if it gets there after hes gone, is there any chance, are you hearing, that he might resign, is there any reason to think that might happen? MCCARTHY: Ive a few discussions. My gut tells me no, Im seriously thinking of having that conversation with him tonight. I havent talked to him in a couple of days. From what I know of him, I mean you guys know him too, do you think hed ever back away? But, what I think Im going to do, is Im going to call him. This is what I think, we know itll pass the House. I think theres a chance itll pass the Senate, even when he is gone. And I think theres a lot of different ramifications for that. Now, I havent had a discussion with the DEMs, that if he did resign, with that happen? Now, this is one personal fear I have. I do not want to get into any conversation about Pence pardoning. Again, the only discussion I would have with him is that, I think this will pass. And it will be my recommendation you should resign. I mean, that would be my take. But I dont think he would take it. But I dont know.

On a separate call, McCarthy allegedly said the following about Trump,

"I had it with this guy. What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it."

Liz Cheney has denied leaking the conversation.

McCarthy has branded the NYT reporting as false and wrong.

My statement on the New York Times pic.twitter.com/PWi2WkoWzh  Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) April 21, 2022

Before we leap to conclusions and demand the tough action against McCarthy, we have to remember who the actors are.

They are Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and reporters from the New York Times. These are the very organizations and individuals who relentlessly peddled vicious lies about President Trump that he had colluded with Russia to rig the 2016 elections.

It wasnt just the Russia collusion scandal. Back in 2017, Daniel Payne of The Federalist compiled a lengthy list of blatant lies or unashamed exaggerations and distortions about Trump. The fabrications were usually about Trump's supposed bigotry, buffooneries, incompetence, mistakes, and crudities. They were all from unconfirmed sources and they all turned out to be complete falsehoods.

Since it is looking like the GOP is going to take back the Senate and the House, it would make sense for the Democrats to allow establishment 'RINO' Republicans to remain in the party who can help the Democrats behind closed doors starting next January.

If McCarthy is indeed a traitor who wanted to stab President Trump and the MAGA movement in the back, why would the leftist media promote the conversation and hurt McCarthys reelection chances and that of him being made Speaker of the House?

There is a possibility that the January 6th committee want to use the audio as evidence to claim that Trump was such a tyrant that McCarthy, despite being angry with Trump, was mortally afraid to take on Trump in public. Trump will hence be pronounced a danger to democracy who must not be allowed to run in 2024.

The Democrats know that Trump can defeat them in 2024. The Democrats know the only way they can survive in 2024 is to prevent Trump from running and hope the GOP chooses a weak candidate. The other obvious option is to tamper with standard electoral practices to rig the elections much as they did in 2020.

There are other serious questions that need to be asked.

First: who recorded the telephonic conversation, if Cheney is indeed innocent?

In the past, both General Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign aide Carter Page were subjected to surveillance without much justification and the details were leaked to the media.

Is it conceivable that spying on GOP personnel is now standard practice in Washington in order that conversations can be leaked to the media and be amplified for political purposes? That would be undemocratic and unfortunate. It would place the US in the same league of 3rd world nations or totalitarian states where opponents are surveilled.

Now lets assume that the conversation was authentic.

Could McCarthy be given the benefit of doubt that he was having a conversation with a colleague and him thinking out loud about the options?

The obvious instinct is to think of McCarthy as a turncoat who wanted to get rid of Trump but feigned support when saw he the direction of the wind beyond Washington.

What if he claims he was under stress and that caused him to say that he had it with Trump', but when he thought it over with a calmer mind he felt differently?

The biggest challenge the GOP faces in 2022 is the possibility of weak, compromised, corrupt, or Washington loyalists in the party, who will during the moment of need abandon their base. These are the Romney variety of lawmakers who say the right thing and receive President Trump's endorsement to win. But once they are elected their loyalty changes.

Even if we accept that the stressful situation compelled McCarthy to vent out of frustration, it reveals a very important aspect of his character.

If history has taught us anything, it is obvious that the GOP upon winning in 2023 will be subjected to hell after their victory. There is a likelihood that the Democrats may not accept the results. If they do accept the results, they may use their activist wing to permanently occupy Washington and conduct protests each time the GOP attempts to pass their agenda.

During such times, the last thing the GOP needs is a representative or leader who immediately capitulates under pressure.

There are truly no easy answers or solutions for these revelations because the authenticity is in question and the leakers are untrustworthy.

In the coming weeks, the GOP leadership must seriously and privately investigate the matter to establish the authenticity of the tape to decide their next course of action.

It often takes one solitary vote to pass or repeal a bill or decide the course of impeachment that dictates the future of the nation.

At this juncture, the GOP cannot afford to have a weakling in its ranks within power.

Photo credit: Senate Democrats CC BY 2.0 license
In 2019, Joe Bidens relationship with Hunters business dealings had become an issue thanks to the Democrats attack on Donald Trumps July 2019 phone call to Ukraines president Zelensky. While loudly calling for Trump to be investigated for the phone call, Biden had a clear message: I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings. Would it surprise you to learn that theres a 90% or greater certainty that Joe was lying through his teeth, set in their usual death head's grin?

The reason Biden was compelled to deny any involvement in Hunters business dealings was that two things had emerged in 2019: The first was that Hunter Biden was sitting on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian oil and gas company, despite knowing nothing about Ukraine or oil and gas. The second was the emergence of a video in which Biden boasted about threatening to withhold American taxpayer money from Ukraine unless that nation called off a prosecutor who was getting too close to Burisma.

These revelations led to President Trump, during the call with Zelensky, asking the latter if he could look into these concerns about serious corruption during the Obama administration. There was nothing either subjectively or objectively wrong with this call but it gave Democrats an excuse to try to squeeze Trump out of the White House via impeachment while deflecting attention from Joes conduct. Still, Joe had to issue that denial: I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.

Image: Joe and Hunter Biden by Andrea Widburg.

Now, though, the New York Post has information from visitor logs during the Obama administration that almost certainly put the lie to Bidens words:

Hunter Bidens closest business partner made at least 19 visits to the White House and other official locations between 2009 and 2015, including a sitdown with then-Vice President Joe Biden in the West Wing. Visitor logs from the White House of former President Barack Obama reviewed by The Post cast further doubt over Joe Bidens claims that he knew nothing of his sons dealings. Eric Schwerin met with Vice President Biden on November 17, 2010 in the West Wing, when he was the president of the since-dissolved investment fund Rosemont Seneca Partners. The logs also reveal that Schwerin met with various close aides of both Joe and Jill Biden at key moments in Hunters life when he was striking multi-million dollar deals in foreign countries, including China.

Sure, its possible that these were just social visits but is it probable? The greatest likelihood is that Schwerins visits had a business purpose.

The same article also provides some insight into just how incestuous Democrat D.C. is:

In October 2009, just months after Hunter co-founded Rosemont Seneca, Schwerin met with Evan Ryan, Vice President Bidens assistant for intergovernmental affairs and public liaison, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building where the vice presidents office is based, according to the visitor logs. While working in the halls of power Ryan acted as a conduit for Hunter Biden and his cronies, hard drive emails show. In one email from February 18, 2010, Ryan received a request from Chris Sloan, Director of Government Relations for the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades advocating that union lawyer Craig Becker be nominated to the National Labor Relations Board. Sloan asked that Vice President Biden press Obama on the issue. Hunter was CCed. Thanks Chris  I will forward this one, she responded to both. [snip] Ryan went on to marry Antony Blinken, who now serves as President Bidens Secretary of State, while she herself was appointed to a plum gig as White House Cabinet Secretary in January 2021.

And then there's an interesting consciousness of guilt out there when it comes to the combination of Rosemont Seneca and then-Vice President Biden: Wikipedia has deleted Rosemont Senecas entry:

Wikipedia editors removed the entry for Rosemont Seneca Partners earlier this week on the ground that it was not notable, archived comments from its Talk Page reveal. The deletion happened Wednesday. The investment company co-founded by Hunter Biden has been at the heart of numerous questions surrounding his overseas business dealings. This organization is only mentioned in connection with its famous founders, Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz, said a Wiki editor identified only as Alex who additionally warned that keeping it around ran the risk of the page becoming a magnet for conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden.

Considering that, of late, one alleged conspiracy theory or misinformation after another has proven to be true (everything from the falsity of the Steele dossier to the ineffectiveness of the vaccines to the uselessness of masks to Chinas involvement in COVIDs origin), you and I know exactly what conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden Wikipedia fears. The online encyclopedia, which can be relied upon only for information that has no political relevance, is afraid of those conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden that happen to be completely true.
Austria's Nehammer holds 'direct, hard' talks with Putin Vienna said it is not "a visit of friendship"

(ANSA-AFP) - MOSCOW, APR 11 - Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer met Vladimir Putin on Monday, the first European leader to visit the Russian president since the start of Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine. Just over an hour after the meeting started at around 4:00 pm local time (1300 GMT) in Putin's residence in Moscow, Nehammer's office sent out a statement saying that it had ended. In the statement Nehammer said the meeting was not "a visit of friendship," adding that conversation between the two men had been "direct, open and hard". "I mentioned the serious war crimes in Bucha and other locations and stressed that all those responsible have to be brought to justice," he said. Russia denies its forces have committed war crimes. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Austrian side had requested the meeting be held behind closed doors. No joint press conference will be held but Nehammer is expected to address reporters alone at around 7:00 pm local time (1600 GMT). (ANSA-AFP).





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Two crew members from the RRS Sir David Attenborough are to become the first same-sex couple to marry in the British Antarctic Territory.

Stewards Eric Bourne and Stephen Carpenter, who have been together for 20 years, will be married by Will Whatley, the ships captain, at the British Antarctic Surveys (BAS) Rothera Research Station.

The exact date will depend on the weather but the ceremony is expected to take place on Monday.

Mr Carpenter said: Antarctica is such an incredible place.

We have been together for 20 years but now weve both been to Antarctica together, it felt like the perfect place for us to finally tie the knot.

The pair are both experienced seafarers and have travelled the world together on a variety of ships.

Mr Bourne has spent the last three years working for BAS and the pair decided Antarctica would make the perfect venue for their nuptials after Mr Carpenter joined the ships crew.

The couple are stewards on the RRS Sir David Attenborough (BAS/PA)

Weve even had the co-ordinates of the wedding location engraved into our rings, Mr Carpenter said.

The ceremony will be attended by the 30 crew of the RRS Sir David Attenborough, followed by a reception with around 100 staff from the research station.

Food will be prepared by the stations chef and the facilitys resident band will provide the music.

Mr Bourne said: Were both very proud to be the first same-sex marriage to happen in British Antarctic Territory.

BAS is such a welcoming and accepting employer, and we feel very lucky to be able to live and work in such an incredible community and place together.

The wedding will be registered with the British Antarctic Territory Government, which is based in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and will be valid in the UK.

The couple will hold a second celebration for family and friends later in the year, in the warmer climes of Spain.
The Earl and Countess of Wessex attended a church service on a calmer day for the couple after experiencing protests earlier in the tour.

Edward gave a reading from the Apostles chapter of the Bible during a lengthy service at the Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Saint Lucia on Sunday, which was held to mark the Queens platinum jubilee.

Sophie, wearing a spotted dress, sat with her husband at the front of the church and they joined in with all hymns and prayers.

The Earl and the Countess of Wessex attended a church service to mark The Queens Platinum Jubilee (Joe Giddens/PA)

Both were warmly welcomed by all who attended.

The two engagements carried out by the couple avoided crowds, with the small service beginning their day, followed by a visit to a monument dedicated to Nobel Laureate Sir William Arthur Lewis.

The third day of their Caribbean tour was a quiet day, following a protest from a group of around 15 demonstrators who displayed placards during their visit to St Vincent and the Grenadines on Saturday.

Protesters with with banners protesting against British colonialism in St Vincent and the Grenadines (Joe Giddens/PA)

Banners on show included end to colonialism, #CompensationNow, down with neo-colonialism and Britain your debt is outstanding.

Edward and Sophie are due to travel to Antigua and Barbuda on Monday, where an organisation has already warned the pair to avoid phoney sanctimony over slavery.
A British man imprisoned when his child was only a few months old has been released after being detained in Yemen without charge or trial for five years.

Luke Symons, according to Amnesty International, had been held by Houthi rebels in Sanaa, the capital of the civil war-torn country, since his arrest at a security checkpoint in April 2017.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Mr Symons would soon be reunited with his family after an ordeal that saw him mistreated and put in solitary confinement.

NEW: Delighted that Luke Symons, who was unlawfully detained, without charge or trial since 2017 in Yemen by the Houthis, has been released and will shortly be reunited with his family. I pay tribute to our Omani and Saudi partners and our team for securing his release. pic.twitter.com/7BZVEXiicf  Liz Truss (@trussliz) April 24, 2022

Kevin Brennan, MP for Cardiff West, had campaigned for his constituents release and raised his unlawful imprisonment with Boris Johnson at Prime Ministers Questions in January.

The Labour politician tweeted: This is terrific news  after five years finally my constituent Luke Symons has been released from captivity.

Thanks to all at the FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) and most of all to Lukes family for their tireless campaigning.

In a statement, Mr Truss said :I am pleased that Luke Symons, who was unlawfully detained, without charge or trial since 2017 in Yemen, has been released.

Luke was 25 when he was unlawfully detained by the Houthis. His son was only a few months old at the time.

He was allegedly mistreated, in solitary confinement, and refused visits by his family.

He has been flown to Muscat and soon he will be reunited with his family in the UK.

In #PMQs I asked the Prime Minister to ensure his Government does more to bring home my constituent, Luke Symons, who is being held captive in Yemen. I have asked this of several Foreign Secretaries now, including Boris Johnson. The USA can get citizens home, why can't the UK? pic.twitter.com/sZD8mVeFy6  Kevin Brennan MP (@KevinBrennanMP) January 5, 2022

We thank our Omani and Saudi partners for their support in securing his release.

I pay tribute to our excellent staff for their hard work in returning Luke home.

Mr Symons release comes after a two-month truce was implemented in Yemen on April 2.

It is the first nationwide ceasefire in the past six years in the Middle East countrys deadly civil war that erupted in 2014.

That year, Iranian-backed Houthis seized Sanaa and forced the internationally recognised government into exile.

A Saudi-led coalition entered the war in early 2015 to try to restore the government to power.

Amnesty said Mr Symons had been seized while at a checkpoint in the south-western city of Taiz in spring 2017.

His relatives told the human rights agency they believed he had been arrested because he held a British passport and was suspected by the Houthis of spying, although he was never formally charged with any crime.

The family told Amnesty that Mr Symons, whose wife is said to be a Yemeni national, had been beaten by his captors in a bid to extract a confession of spying out of him and that his physical and mental health had suffered as a result of being placed in solitary confinement.
A British university student is among volunteers tackling period poverty among Ukrainian refugees.

Ella Lambert, 22, is coordinating the distribution of thousands of disposable pads to hospitals in the war-torn nation and to women in refugee camps.

The University of Bristol student founded the non-profit Pachamama Project  which provides period products to camps in Lebanon, Afghanistan and Uganda  after learning how to sew reusable pads over lockdown.

It has since snowballed into a global network of more than 1,000 volunteers.

University of Bristol student Ella Lambert, who began sewing reusable sanitary products for refugees over lockdown (Ella Lambert/PA)

This week, Ms Lambert distributed 1,000 pads at the Global Expo centre and Ptak Expo centre, both in Warsaw, before coordinating efforts to secure a larger supply alongside Florida-based non-profit, Pads4Refugees, run by Melissa Robel, 42.

Speaking from Poland, Ms Lambert told the PA news agency: The need for sanitary products is huge.

Talking to the women and hearing their stories first hand, we know exactly how much people need them.

You could say its the least of their worries, but if youve got people in the Metro station without products who are on their period, thats a huge additional challenge to deal with when they are just trying to reach safety.

University of Bristol student Ella Lambert coordinating the distribution of sanitary products for Ukrainian women in Warsaw (Ella Lambert/PA)

They dont have proper washing facilities so we are handing out disposable products.

They also have a minimum amount of clothes, and if they bleed through them, thats a terrible situation to be in.

Ms Lambert said organisations with a focus on feminine hygiene are needed alongside general aid charities because the stigma surrounding periods prevents some women from accessing the products.

The languages student, from Chelmsford in Essex, told PA: We were speaking to an organisation today who were in the Metro station and someone saw a pack of pads in their bag, and they whispered: Do you mind if I have one?

They asked all her friends if they had pads, and none of them had any.

Its quite easy to go up to someone and say: I could do with some food, or: I need a place to sleep, but people dont feel comfortable asking for sanitary products, especially if theyve already bled through their clothes.

Its very dehumanising.

I think it helps that we are a period poverty organisation, so I will introduce myself as that.

Sanitary products being handed out in Warsaw refugee camps by British student Ella Lambert and her team (Ella Lambert/PA)

The Pachamama Project and Pads4Refugees have also distributed 3,000 reusable pads to hospitals in Lviv, western Ukraine, which were transported by Polish charity the Yorghas Foundation this week.

Miss Lambert said many women have lived in the camps for several weeks, because they plan to return to Ukraine when it is safer, so a constant supply of essentials is needed in the border countries.

The women are paying for the pads through donations to a fundraiser, which can be accessed here  https://pads4refugees.org/
You are here: China

Beijing Municipality reported 15 locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases from 10 p.m. Friday to 4 p.m. Saturday, local authorities said Saturday.



The cases were reported in districts of Chaoyang, Shunyi and Fangshan, according to a press briefing held by the municipal government.

Preliminary epidemiological investigations indicated that the latest cluster of virus transmission had lasted for a week, with school students, tour groups and families involved, said Pang Xinghuo, deputy head of the municipal disease prevention and control center.

Pang added that more cases could emerge as the screening work intensifies.
Boris Johnson branded Russias aggression towards Ukraine nauseating during a conversation with the UN secretary-general before he travels to Moscow.

The Prime Minister, in his phone call with Antonio Guterres on Sunday afternoon, made clear the importance of global solidarity with Ukraine in the face of blatant aggression by the Kremlin, No 10 said.

The United Nations chief has faced criticism from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for choosing to visit Russia before he travels to Kyiv.

Mr Guterres is scheduled to travel to Turkey on Monday and then Moscow and Kyiv, but Mr Zelensky said it was a mistake for the Portuguese diplomat to arrange his trip in that order.

Why? To hand over signals from Russia? What should we look for? Zelensky said on Saturday.

There are no corpses scattered on the Kutuzovsky Prospect, he said, referring to one of Moscows main avenues.

Offering a readout of Mr Johnsons talks with the secretary-general, a Downing Street spokeswoman said: The Prime Minister described Putins actions in Ukraine as nauseating and blatant aggression, which is having devastating consequences for Ukraines people.

Next week, I will meet with President Vladimir Putin in Russia and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine. We need urgent steps to save lives, end the human suffering and bring about peace in Ukraine.  Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) April 23, 2022

They discussed their shared concerns on attacks in areas besieged by Russian forces, such as Mariupol and Kherson, and the need to secure a ceasefire, facilitate humanitarian efforts and allow civilians to leave.

The Prime Minister made clear the importance of global solidarity with Ukraine, with the UK continuing to work closely with international partners to support Ukraine to defend itself.

Britain has positioned itself as one of Kyivs closest allies both in the run-up to and during the invasion by Russia.

As a result, London has been keen to push for Western capitals to do more to back Ukraines military as they look to hold back the onslaught from Russian president Vladimir Putins forces.

Conservative Party chairman Oliver Dowden urged France and Germany to step up their own efforts as he warned Mr Putin would keep on going and going as he seeks to capture Ukrainian soil in the east and the south.

Calling for more support from Nato allies, the Cabinet minister told Sky News Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme: I think weve had very positive noises from France and Germany but I would like to see further action from them.

He said Mr Johnsons call last week with world leaders, including US president Joe Biden and French president Emmanuel Macron  who looked on course for a second term on Sunday following election exit poll results in France  was part of an effort to lobby for more military backing.

While the West has funnelled military equipment to Ukraine, Mr Zelensky has stressed repeatedly that the country needs more heavy weapons, including long-range air defence systems, as well as warplanes.

It was a message he was expected to impart on US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, during their trip to Kyiv on Sunday  the first visit by senior Washington officials since Russia invaded Ukraine 60 days ago.

Bill Browder, a financier and critic of Mr Putin, said Russias war machine was unlikely to slow down until Europe seriously addressed its dependence on the Kremlins energy exports.

Ukrainian servicemen attend an Orthodox service during the Easter celebration at the frontline position of 128 brigade of Ukrainian army near Zaporizhzhia (AP Photo/Andriy Dubchak)

Every day Europe  Germany, France, Italy, Austria and various other places that are totally dependent on Russian gas  send Vladimir Putin a billion dollars every day, he told Sophy Ridge.

To put it in really simple terms, this war costs Vladimir Putin a billion dollars a day and every day he gets a billion dollars from Europe and so thats kind of a wash.

If we really do want to stop this war and we want to stop it from spreading then we have to stop giving him the money and to stop giving him the money means that Germany is going to have to tighten their belt significantly.

They are going to have to experience some economic pain.

Most of Sundays fighting focused on the Donbas in the east, where Ukrainian forces are concentrated and where Moscow-backed separatists controlled some territory before the war.

Since failing to capture Kyiv, the Russians are aiming to gain full control over the eastern industrial heartland.

The Russian military reported hitting 423 Ukrainian targets overnight, including fortified positions and troop concentrations, while its warplanes destroyed 26 Ukrainian military sites, including an explosives factory and several artillery depots.

In the south, Russian troops launched fresh airstrikes on a Mariupol steel plant where an estimated 1,000 civilians are sheltering along with about 2,000 Ukrainian fighters.

The Azovstal steel mill where the defenders are holed up is the last corner of resistance in the city, which the Russians have otherwise occupied.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff told a crowd at the Times Festival of Books that the core of the Republican Party believes "truth is for losers." (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

California Rep. Adam B. Schiff spoke candidly to a crowd at USC on Saturday afternoon, criticizing Republican House members for their attempts to overturn the 2020 election and singling out Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, recently revealed to have told colleagues he had wanted President Trump to resign, for having no ethical compass and partaking of a culture in which truth is for losers.

Schiff (D-Burbank) spoke with Times opinion columnist Robin Abcarian at Bovard Auditorium on the first day of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. His memoir, Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could, won the Times Book Prize for Current Interest on Friday night.

The revelations of the last two days were prominent on Schiffs mind. Were learning again what a craven human being [McCarthy] is. Were learning in these tapes that at the time of that attack  he was privately talking with Republican colleagues about calling on Trump to resign, acknowledging that Trump was responsible for some of that bloody attack. Yet, he added, we know from what happened thereafter that he would deny all of this.

Schiff told a personal story about McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) to bolster his point. I sat next to McCarthy on a cross-country flight and engaged in small talk, Schiff recalled. Later, McCarthy repeated that private conversation to a media outlet but lied, according to Schiff, about the California representatives side of the exchange. Confronting McCarthy later, Schiff was apoplectic.

Schiff said McCarthys response was, You know how it goes. I said, No, Kevin I dont know how it goes. You just make s up. That is how he operates and in that sense; he was really made for a time like this when, within his party, truth is for losers. You say what you need to say, you do what you need to do to take power and to keep it. Someone with that lack of devotion to the truth or any ethical compass simply cannot ever be allowed in my view to go near the speakers office.

Schiffs book focuses not on Trumps attempts to invalidate the 2020 election, but on his colleagues. Donald Trump could not have succeeded in doing any of the damage he did to our country but for the fact he had so many willing enablers in the Congress of the United States, he said. I wanted to ask, How does it happen that people allow themselves to be so badly used? A lot of these people were my colleagues, and some of them were people I had admired and respected because I believe that they believed what they were talking about. It turned out that none of that mattered to them.

Schiff did praise Republicans who opposed the insurrection. I have such great respect for Liz Cheneys devotion to our democracy. When she called out the Big Lie, and refused to tell it, it became apparent that she was going to lose her position. But Elise Stefanik put up her hand and said, Ill tell the Big Lie, Ill tell any lie you need me to, if I can have [Cheneys] position. Tragically, there have been at least 100 Elise Stefaniks and Devin Nuneses for every Adam Kinzinger.

Schiff also expressed disappointment with the pace of the Justice Departments investigation of the insurrection. He said he understands Atty. Gen. Merrick Garlands desire to appear nonpartisan but found that line of thinking flawed.

I am concerned that you can draw a straight line between the failure to hold Trump accountable for the Russian misconduct leading to Ukraine, and the Ukraine misconduct leading to the insurrection, he said. If theres still a failure to hold Trump accountable, the risks to the country are tremendous.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) speaks at the California Republican Party convention in Anaheim on Saturday night. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, under scrutiny for saying after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that he would urge then-President Trump to resign, alluded to the turmoil during a speech Saturday night at the California GOP convention.

As we go out to earn this majority, theyre going to attack you, theyre going to attack me. Theyre going to attack President Trump, he said, speaking of GOP aims to win control of the House in the November election.

Theyre not just going to use the Democrats; theyre going to use the media as well, he said. We have to be united, and we have to be prepared for it.

The Bakersfield Republicans speech before a friendly audience in Anaheim came after a tumultuous two days, starting with a New York Times report that he had told fellow GOP leaders in early 2021 that he planned to urge Trump to resign. McCarthy vehemently denied the report, calling it totally false and wrong and denigrating the reporters, but hours later, audio was released of him making such comments on a recorded call.

The 57-year-old Trump confidant has been widely expected to become the next speaker of the House  second in line to the presidency after the vice president  if the GOP takes control of the chamber in the November election as anticipated.

However, questions have swirled about his prospects since the release of the audio  less because McCarthys denial was proved to be false and more over speculation on Trumps reaction to the disclosures. Some say McCarthys fate fully depends on the former president.

The potential threat to McCarthy would have been if Trump went full bore against him. But without that, its hard for opponents to use that. Hes been very resilient and survived attacks in the past, said Matt Shupe, chairman of the Contra Costa County Republican Party. You would be grossly underestimating him to say that hes down and out.

On Friday, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that although he was not happy about McCarthys comments on the recording, their relationship was unharmed. McCarthy had ultimately not urged him to quit, Trump said, but had instead quickly turned to supporting the then-president.

Some say Trumps words are a ploy to smooth over the matter until the election.

MAGA-land is enraged.... Theyre going to play nice through the election, but Kevin McCarthy is not going to be the speaker of the House if the Republicans win back the House, said a California Republican who is closely tied into Trumps network, and who asked for anonymity to candidly discuss the situation.

Wherever this leaked audio came from, its not good for Kevin, the source added.

Trump representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

Also Friday, facing questions after speaking to high school students in Kern County, McCarthy told reporters that he was not a liar, saying he had never asked the president to resign.

The article he called false did not say hed asked Trump to resign  only that hed told fellow Republican leaders he was considering doing so, as the recording confirmed.

The only discussion I would have with him is I think [an impeachment resolution] would pass and it would be my recommendation you should resign, McCarthy says in the audio recording provided to MSNBC by New York Times reporters. I mean that would be my take, but I dont think he would take it. But I dont know.

For a party licking its wounds after a crushing defeat in last years attempted recall of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, this weekends convention was supposed to be a moment of optimism. The walls were plastered with campaign signs. Vendors hawked hats with Trump spelled out in white rhinestones and bedazzled with American flags. They displayed T-shirts featuring a Rosie the Riveter-like character with a flag bandanna in her hair and Trump tattooed on her biceps. Drinks and food flowed freely at candidates' hospitality suites.

Delegate Gerri Grego of South Lake Tahoe said she was most looking forward to meeting candidates. I find that quite often when you meet someone in person, you get that inner confirmation or not about the person themselves and it helps guide you, Grego said.

She was unaware of the McCarthy uproar.

Stacie Lehfeldt, a convention guest from Oakley, said she learned of the revelations Friday morning on television, but said she needed to learn more. I try not to watch too much because media is so liberal, one-sided, she said.

I was hearing something was going on, something that he had said supposedly, and it was on a recording, but I don't trust anything they say [is] recorded, the 55-year-old said.

The GOP is expected to retake control of Congress due partly to rising inflation and President Bidens low approval ratings, and because the party controlling the White House typically loses seats in the first midterm election of an administration. Speaker after speaker at the convention pointed to these issues, as well as crime and homelessness, as reasons they were hopeful about Republicans prospects even in a state where they are vastly outnumbered by Democrats.

Culture war issues were also a constant theme. Speakers criticized transgender athletes, warned of what they said was indoctrination of schoolchildren, and lambasted what they deemed to be critical race theory.

This is our destiny as Republicans: to fight the evil woke, said Eric Early, a candidate for attorney general.

GOP efforts to win statewide offices in California are long shots, with Democrats holding a nearly 23-percentage-point edge in voter registration over Republicans as of March. But there could be some good news for state Republicans after the election. If the GOP takes control of the House, McCarthy could take the speakers gavel from San Francisco Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who is reviled among conservatives.

Think if you will of this time next year. The speaker of the House will be from California, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina said to applause at a Friday night dinner. Now, for those of you who think I might be confused, I should have said he will be from California.... Good times are coming. Never give up. Never surrender.

McCarthy was in the running for House speaker before, in 2015. But he dropped out of the race suddenly, saying he did not believe he could unite the divided GOP.

The former state lawmaker, who was first elected to Congress in 2006, has been a controversial figure among California Republicans. He is popular with party leadership and elected officials in part because of his fundraising prowess. In the first three months of this year, McCarthy shattered records by raising more than $31 million through his campaign committee, leadership PAC and multiple joint fundraising committees, according to the Federal Election Commission.

When Republicans take the House, I have no doubt that he will be the next speaker of the House, said state party Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson, a McCarthy protege. Hes an amazing leader. Not only do Californians need him right now  America needs him right now.

But grass-roots activists have long been unhappy with McCarthys efforts to influence who wins party nominations, and skeptical of where exactly he stands  a conundrum exemplified by his relationship with Trump even before the audio about resignation emerged.

McCarthy was among Trumps earliest supporters in the 2016 presidential campaign and his most vocal and loyal defenders once he won office, leading Trump to affectionately label him my Kevin.

But McCarthy offered a dizzying set of statements after the insurrection: first saying the then-president was to blame for the violence unleashed by his supporters, then days later contradicting himself by claiming that Trumps rally speech on Jan. 6, 2021, did not incite the mob that invaded the U.S. Capitol that day.

At the Anaheim convention, McCarthy repeatedly praised Trump.

President Trump helped build the strongest economy in our nations history, McCarthy said to a packed and appreciative room, which included hundreds who had paid $125 for the dinner before his keynote address. (Some had paid an extra $200 to attend a VIP reception and snap a picture with McCarthy.)

The former president's strength had helped keep the nations enemies at bay," McCarthy continued. "We know what it takes to get the job done. We are fighting alongside him.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Natalia Demish escaped the horrors of besieged Mariupol last month.

But while she is now in relative safety in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, she was cut off from her 21-year-old son, Yuri, by the ongoing fighting when she fled.

Demish, 40, says Yuri has now been forcibly deported to Russia, and she worries that he will be forced to fight against his own country.

Hers is just one story, but it adds to Kyivs accusations that while Russia has been assaulting Ukraine from the air and the ground, it has also been forcibly deporting large numbers of the countrys civilians. If true, these accusations could constitute a war crime under international law.

Yuri Dimesh and Natalia Dimesh (Courtesy Yuri Dimesh)

Kyiv accuses Russia of blocking efforts to send humanitarian aid to Mariupol, or buses to evacuate civilians to Ukrainian-controlled territory. The city has been under siege for nearly two months, and thousands have been killed, according to local officials. Remaining residents have been left with virtually no food, water or electricity.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Thursday that more than 140,000 Mariupol residents had been evacuated through humanitarian corridors  temporary demilitarized zones  in the past month.

Demish, an accountant before the war, said she had spent 34 days hiding in a basement in Mariupol with her husband, his two daughters and his parents. After resorting to melting snow to make drinking water, they finally had had enough and took their chance to escape to the central city of Zaporizhzhia in a convoy of cars on March 29.

But Yuri, who was living with her former-husband in a neighborhood badly damaged by shelling, was cut off from her at the time, with no phone or internet connection. So Demish left without him, believing she had no other choice if she was to survive, and no way to reach her son.

Later that day, she finally heard from Yuri.

He said he and his father had walked to the city of Novoazovsk, some 25 miles east, after their building was fired on and Russian troops told them they had to head there if they wanted to stay alive, according to Demish. Novoazovsk has been under the control of Russian-backed separatists, who have been fighting Ukrainian forces in the countrys east since 2014.

After that, Demish had no communication with her son, an engineering student, for days. Then on April 4, Yuri sent her a message (seen by NBC News) via the Viber messaging app, which is widely used in Ukraine, in which he said: We are forcibly going to Russia today.

When she finally reached her son on the phone the same day, Demish said, he told her that they were put on a train and told they would be taken to Russia, but were not given the final destination.

Demish said she told him to run away and jump from the train.

But he said, Mom, all the windows are shut. Its not an option, Yuri said.

Not knowing where my son was, it was killing me, Demish, speaking in Russian, told NBC News in a phone call from the city of Dnipro, in central Ukraine, where she moved after escaping to Zaporizhia.

After going silent again for more than a week, Yuri finally called his mother on April 15 to say that after three days on the train, they made it to the village of Semyonovka in Russias Nizhegorodsky Oblast or district, some 675 miles northeast of Mariupol.

He told her that he and other evacuees were being lodged in wooden houses surrounded by a forest, and that Russian volunteers were helping them by providing food and medicine.

But he said his phone had been searched and he was questioned about his family in Ukraine, and about any friends in the Ukrainian army.

They were allowed to move around the region, Yuri told his mother, but not outside it because they had been processed as refugees. Her son has his travel papers with him, and Demish said she was desperately looking for any way to get him out of Russia, potentially through neighboring countries like Georgia or Turkey.

Demish said that the last contact she had with Yuri was on Monday, when he told her on the phone that he was doing OK, but that they had been shown propaganda videos alleging that Ukraine as a nation was an artificial concept  a line that has been touted by Russian President Vladimir Putin for years and was used as one of the pretexts for Russia invading Ukraine in February.

He said they told them that Ukraine never existed as a country, and that its part of Russia, Demish said. When he objected and said history cant be rewritten, he said two men approached him and he was questioned for two hours.

They also questioned why he wrote to his mom that he was forcibly sent to Russia, Demish said. He said he was never asked if he wanted to go to Ukraine instead, she added. He was told that he would be recruited into the army in Ukraine if he did, and he would become cannon fodder, but he was now in Russia, a great country.

A building damaged during fighting in Mariupol (Alexei Alexandrov / AP)

NBC News could not independently verify what happened with Demishs son in Russia.

Last month, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said reports that Ukrainian citizens had been forcibly taken from Mariupol to Russia were not true, though he said that the Russian military does help civilians leave the city.

Earlier this month, Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, said a fact-finding mission found evidence of forced deportation of Ukrainian civilians to Russia.

Carpenter said he could not confirm numbers or details of whats happening with these deportees in Russia, but that it was something that is going to require thorough investigation and follow-up because its just beyond the pale of not just civilized behavior, but beyond the pale of all behavior that we would consider normal.

NBC News reached out to Russias Defense Ministry about forcible deportations to Russia from Ukraine, but received no response.

As much as Demish resents her sons plight, she said she was also aware that he could have died in Mariupol had he stayed. In the city, there is no heat, electricity or water. All stores are looted. Its impossible to survive there, she said. I think people were ready to go anywhere just to be warm and have food.

Her biggest concern is that her son could be forced to fight against his own country.

I am worried that they will take our Ukrainian men, put Russian uniforms on them, get them into a bus and take them to Ukraine, she said. I am afraid there will be brainwashing and they will force them to take up arms and they will say, if you want to free up the city, go fight.

But she hopes to get Yuri out of Russia soon and see him again, and that they can all return to Mariupol one day.

I really want to come back, she said, with sadness in her voice. But only after its liberated. I dont want to live under the Russian flag.
Ukrainian officials on Friday countered claims made by Russian President Vladimir Putin that he will not order a ground offensive on the Mariupol steel plant where thousands of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers remain holed up.

Kyiv said it had received intelligence that Russia is planning to deploy soldiers from its elite military units along with personnel from its Federal Security Service  a successor intelligence agency to Russias infamous KGB  to continue its assault on the Azovstal steel plant.

Smoke rises above Azovstal steelworks, in Mariupol, Ukraine, in this still image obtained from a recent drone video posted on social media. MARIUPOL CITY COUNCIL/via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES.

UKRAINE ACCUSES RUSSIA OF LEAVING UP TO 9,000 KILLED IN MARIUPOL IN MASS GRAVES

"Its true that they might abandon the idea of a large-scale assault on Azovstal. But according to our data, they plan to deploy Russian Guards and other parts of the military apparatus, including the Federal Security Service, to continue their assault on the plant and destroy our resistance," Representative of Ukraines Central Intelligence Directorate, Vadym Skibitskyi, said according to a translation by a local news outlet.

His comments come one day after Putin said he didnt believe an attack on the steel plant was "necessary" and instead directed a blockade be put on the site to encourage Ukrainian forces to surrender.

"One does not have to climb into these catacombs and crawl there underground around these industrial objects," he said. "Block this industrial zone in such a way that even a fly could not fly through."

UKRAINE SAYS RUSSIA WON'T ALLOW EVACUATIONS FROM MARIUPOL STEEL PLANT, TRY TO FORCE SURRENDER

The Metallurgical steel plant, with its deep underground tunnels, has become a beacon for resistance in Mariupol and is believed to be holding 1,000 civilians and Ukrainian soldiers.

Moscow claimed victory over the strategically important port city, but the Pentagon continues to assess that Mariupol is still contested.

Additionally, Putin suggested that those who voluntarily surrender will be "guarantee[d] life and dignified treatment."

Despite Putins Thursday claims, Russian forces have continued to pummel the site with a bombing campaign.

"Every day they drop several bombs on Azovstal, despite false promises not to touch the defenders," Petro Andryushchenko, adviser to Mariupols mayor, told the Associated Press Friday.

"Fighting, shelling, bombing do not stop," he added.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., had tough words on Sunday for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who is in hot water after the release of new audio of him suggesting that then-President Donald Trump should resign after the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol.

"Kevin McCarthy is a liar and a traitor," Warren said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Warren continued: "This is outrageous. And that is really the illness that pervades the Republican leadership right now. They say one thing to the American public and something else in private."

"Kevin McCarthy is a Liar and a traitor." @ewarren reacts to new audio of McCarthy talking about former President Trump's role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. #CNNSOTU@CNNSotupic.twitter.com/gHnxfPoEva  CNN (@CNN) April 24, 2022

McCarthy and his office initially denied a New York Times report that he had vented about Trump after Jan. 6, when a mob of the president's supporters assaulted the Capitol in an attempt to stop then-President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College certification. Ive had it with this guy, McCarthy told a group of GOP leaders, according to the Times.

McCarthy called the report totally false and wrong, and his spokesman said the lawmaker never said hed call Trump to say he should resign. But then the Times released audio of McCarthy saying exactly that: In a Jan. 10 recording, McCarthy says he would tell Trump that the House would impeach him and "it would be my recommendation you should resign."

In a Jan. 11 recording, McCarthy said Trump acknowledged partial responsibility for the attack on Congress, which followed a Washington, D.C., rally in which the then president falsely claimed that the 2020 election was fraudulent and that his supporters should "fight like hell."

I asked him personally today, does he hold responsibility for what happened? McCarthy says on the tape. Does he feel bad about what happened? He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened and hed need to acknowledge that.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy speaks at the California Republican Party convention in Anaheim, Calif. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

McCarthy hopes to be House speaker if Republicans take the House in the November midterm elections, and he almost surely would need Trump's support to corral the GOP caucus behind him. Accordingly, he hurried to contain the damage with Trump after the recordings were released. The Associated Press reported that, in the aftermath of the Times reports, McCarthy had a positive Thursday phone call with Trump, who told the GOP leader: Im not mad at you.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday, Trump did claim it was "false" that he accepted some responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack.

He made a call. I heard the call. I didnt like the call," Trump told the Journal of the audio recordings. But Trump said it was a "compliment" that McCarthy and other GOP leaders who criticized him after Jan. 6 later said that they would still support him.

They realized they were wrong and supported me, Trump said.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on CNN. (Screenshot: Twitter/@CNNSotu)

Warren, a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, argued Sunday that McCarthy's flip-flop shows a broader trend among Republicans in Congress.

"They understand that it is wrong, what happened, an attempt to overthrow our government," said Warren, whose interview was mostly focused on arguing that her party should pass bold economic legislation before the November elections.

"Shame on Kevin McCarthy," Warren added.

The House continues to investigate the Jan. 6 attack, with a timetable that is also under pressure by the November elections that could see Republicans take Congress and quash the probe. In a Friday night court filing, the House committee investigating the attack alleged that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was warned that the Jan. 6 rally could turn violent, but pushed forward with it anyway.
HAVRONSHCHYNA, Ukraine  Driving past nondescript fields in the countryside near Kyiv, its easy to miss a small family car abandoned by the side of the road.

But the vehicle  riddled with bullet holes, strewn with baby clothes and spattered with human remains  is a microcosm of the horror that has befallen Ukraine.

Its also an example of the heroism that has allowed it to endure.

It was chaos. I couldnt feel anything. I was numb. Some people were trying to hide in my house. I was trying to pick up wounded people, said Yuriy Patsan, 42, a mechanic, in describing the incident on March 15 that ended with the car being stranded outside his house on the edge of this small village of about 1,000 residents around 30 miles west of the capital, Kyiv.

The vehicle is now one more piece of a giant puzzle for investigators gathering evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces, a charge they deny. Moscow has also repeatedly denied that it is targeting Ukrainian civilians.

Patsan said Russian troops who had been occupying Havronshchyna had agreed to allow civilians to leave in a convoy.

He said he and his wife had packed their car and were ready to join the end of the column of vehicles as it passed by.

They were trying to escape. Men, women and children. And the Russian vehicles came up behind them and started to shoot, he said.

He added that none of the vehicles were driving erratically and he had no idea why the Russians opened fire.

People were running away, and they were being shot at. I saw an old man get shot. I fled to my house. Then slowly I came back and saw the bodies, Patsan said.

He added that when he approached the Volkswagen hatchback outside his home, he could see it had a piece of white cloth attached to it to mark it as a civilian vehicle.

A child's bottle in the back of a destroyed car, left after Russian forces allegedly opened fire on the vehicle in Havronshchyna. (Mo Abbas / NBC News)

He could also see a woman bent over a toddler trying to protect it in the backseat, and an older woman and a teenager in the car, he said. They were all dead.

A male driver had lost an eye, fingers and a lot of blood and was barely alive, he said, adding that he got him out of the car and took him into his home.

As Russian patrols, guns cocked, scoured the area near his house, Patsan said he waited for opportunities to drag the bodies from the car and bury them in a shallow grave in his yard.

He made a makeshift cross, he said.Its tradition. Everybody deserves respect, he added.

Over the next two weeks Patsan said he and his wife cared for the man, Alexander, as best he could, rallying the surrounding village for help. He identified the man only by his first name out of concern for his privacy and safety.

Other villagers brought what medicines and food they had, and Patsan said he called medics over the phone for advice on how to treat his patient.

I treated him like a brother. Hugging him all the time, giving support, he said.

Alexander did not speak much about the incident, Patsan said. But he said he came to understand that the teen in the car was Alexanders son, and the mother and child were not related to him.

The older woman was not related to anyone else in the car and the toddler was too disfigured to know its gender, he added.

NBC News saw that the vehicle was still outside Patsans house on April 14, just over a month after the attack occurred. A baby bottle and baby shoes were still in the car, as well as a notebook with a shopping list for staples like milk, eggs and butter.

Police had stuck numbers next to the bullet holes on the car as part of their investigation and the bodies had been moved from the shallow grave.

Alexander had been taken to a hospital and Patsan said he was getting better.

God was maybe guiding me. It was a miracle he survived, Patsan said.

There are still faint blood stains on the carpet and on the pillow where he treated Alexander.

Patsan said he was fine but still needed time to process what had happened. No matter how much he washes or airs out his house, he still picks up the scent of gunfire and gore, he said.

I can still smell it. All the time. I smell it, he said, before picking up and stroking a kitten that was the only occupant of the ill-fated car that had emerged unscathed and which he had since adopted.

A damaged car is left by the roadside in the town of Havronshchyna. (Mo Abbas / NBC News)

The car outside his house is just one of many found in the suburbs around Kyiv after Russian forces withdrew this month.

A short drive away are what locals have dubbed car cemeteries, where piles of twisted and shot up vehicles  both civilian and military  have been collected.

Each civilian car appears to have a tragic story. Some contain school books and childrens clothes. Others walkers, medicines and bedpans. One contained a dead pet cat, another a human jawbone.

Most had white flags attached to them.
The 360 shows you diverse perspectives on the days top stories and debates.

Whats happening

Sweden and Finland, two European nations that have long valued strategic neutrality, appear to be inching closer to joining NATO in response to Russias invasion of Ukraine.

The security landscape has completely changed, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson told reporters last week at a meeting with her Finnish counterpart, Sanna Marin. Anderssons recent comments represent a significant shift in her view on the value of NATO membership. Early last month , she said that Sweden joining the alliance would further destabilize this area of Europe and increase tensions.

Anderssons change in opinion is indicative of evolving views among the citizens of both countries in reaction to the steady stream of horrifying news out of Ukraine. In a recent poll, 68% of Finns said they support joining NATO , up from just 24% last year. For the first time ever, a majority of Swedes said they also favor joining, according to a poll released this week.

Although both nations have deep cultural and economic ties with Europe, Finland and Sweden have historically declined to pursue NATO membership  even as more than a dozen countries in eastern Europe have joined the alliance since the fall of the Soviet Union. Swedens resistance is rooted in its policy of neutrality, which dates back to the early 1800s. After fighting off a Soviet invasion during World War II, Finland established a formally neutral position, largely to avoid provoking further aggression.

Formed in the aftermath of World War II, NATO is a military alliance built on the principle of collective defense  meaning that all NATO countries agree to come to the defense of any individual member that comes under attack. Russia considers NATO to be a direct threat, and Russian President Vladimir Putin said the possibility that Ukraine might join motivated his decision to launch the Russian invasion. Russias Foreign Ministry has warned of serious military and political consequences if Sweden and Finland join the alliance.

Why theres debate

Supporters say there are clear benefits to adding Sweden and Finland to NATO. They argue that the invasion serves as a startling reminder of how dangerous it can be for countries on Russias borders. If they were NATO members, the two Nordic countries would have the force of some of the worlds most powerful militaries  including the U.S.  as a bulwark against any Russian incursion.

Some defense analysts believe NATO and its members have plenty to gain by bringing in Sweden and Finland. Though both nations are relatively small, experts say their militaries are still formidable. The two countries would also provide a valuable strategic foothold along Russias northwest flank, particularly along Finlands 830-mile border with Russia. Others say expanding NATO would be yet another nonmilitary means of punishing Putin for his assault on Ukraine.

But skeptics worry about potential retaliation from Putin, particularly at a time when hes vulnerable and liable to lash out. Some also argue that increasing NATOs foothold along Russias border would create opportunities for conflict that could spiral into another world war.

There are also those who believe that NATO shouldn't exist at all. Some on the right believe that the alliance allows smaller nations to neglect their own defense capabilities, knowing that major powers will come to their rescue. Observers on the far left, on the other hand, say that anything that promotes military force over nonviolent forms of collaboration is ultimately harmful to the world.

Whats next

There are two major steps that need to be taken before Sweden and Finland could become part of NATO. First, their Parliaments would have to formally vote to join. Then, the legislatures of each of the 30 current NATO countries would have to approve their membership  a process that has taken about a year in the recent past.

Perspectives

Supporters

The war in Ukraine has made it obvious why Sweden and Finland should join

Who can blame the Finns and the Swedes for wanting to jump right in?  After seeing what's happening to Ukraine, they dont want to be the next Ukraine. And its clear that Putin does not want to challenge any of the NATO countries directly.  Kevin Baron, Defense One executive editor, to MSNBC

Russia probably isnt willing to go to war to keep Sweden and Finland out of NATO

Putin views Finland and Sweden differently than Ukraine because of their different histories. Ukraine is seen as part of an imagined Russian world by Putin. Sweden and Finland are, therefore, less comparable to Ukraine, beyond their proximity to Russia.  Thomas O Falk, Al Jazeera

Adding new NATO members is a sound, nonmilitary way to punish Russia

It would be a dramatic reversal of fortunes and would demonstrate the agility of the liberal democratic countries in applying the diplomatic element of power, well below the threshold of war, that gray-zone space in which Russia  and, for that matter, China  has been so nimble in the recent past.  Michael Miklaucic, The Hill

Both countries would bring plenty of benefits to the NATO alliance

Finland and Sweden wouldnt be alliance freeloaders. Their strategic location in the Baltic Sea could be critical in a wider conflict with Russia. Finland already punches above its weight militarily, and wealthy Sweden can afford its announced defense-spending increases. A secure Europe better capable of defending itself serves American interests.  Editorial, Wall Street Journal

Ukraine is a reminder of our responsibility to protect each other

Ukraine is a game-changer in European security. The real threat to fellow member-states leaves us all with no option but to look again at how we see our responsibilities to one another.  Editorial, Irish Times

NATO membership would have saved Ukraine

If only NATO was more popular amongst Ukrainians and properly marketed as a security guarantee against Russia, Ukraine could have been saved from eight or more years of violence and suffering. The lesson to be learned is that NATO did not enlarge far or fast enough.  Daniel Ramallo, National Interest

Skeptics

Russia might attack to keep Sweden and Finland out

Would Russia seriously consider an attack on Finland or Sweden? While it may seem unlikely, the West should not underestimate the possibility that Mr. Putin, feeling isolated, backed into a corner, and under a time constraint, may make an otherwise rash decision.  Sascha Glaeser, Washington Times

A greater NATO presence on Russias border increases the odds of catastrophic conflict

Finlandif it allows NATO bases, troops, and weaponry within its borderscould permanently heighten the hair-trigger environment that now exists between the Kremlin and Washington.  Michael Hirsh, Foreign Policy

NATOs expansion after the Cold War inspired Putins invasion of Ukraine

If there had been no decision to move NATO eastward to include Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbass would be part of Ukraine today, and there would be no war in Ukraine.  John Mearsheimer, political scientist, to New Yorker

NATO makes the world less safe

To the degree that this rudderless security pact has made war easier, more salable, and more attractive for Western leaders than diplomacy, the alliance has been a liability to peace and stability.  Chase Madar, The Nation

Greater militarism will never create a path to peace

Europe goes ahead and arms itself to the teeth to protect itself.  So therefore, [Russia says] we have to arm ourselves to the teeth to defend ourselves from the onslaught of this extraordinarily powerful force against NATO. I mean, if anybodys observing this from outer space, theyd be cracking up in laughter.  Noam Chomsky, linguist and political commentator, to Intercept

The U.S. shouldnt sign up to protect even more weak countries

We have to understand that nothing is done in a vacuum, and for Finland and Sweden to be added to NATO adds a burden to the entire alliance.  And it adds yet another level of potential risk for the United States.  Daniel Davis, foreign policy expert, to The Hill

Is there a topic youd like to see covered in The 360? Send your suggestions to the360@yahoonews.com.

Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Alexey Nikolsky/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images (2)
The Ukrainian president has praised Britains efforts in training his military amid accusations the UK blocked requests to strengthen Kyivs defences after Russias first strike eight years ago.

Volodymyr Zelensky told a press conference in Kyiv that the UK, along with the US, was supplying the biggest military aid in its struggle against Moscows invading forces.

In a phone call earlier on Saturday, he personally thanked Boris Johnson for Britain providing training on home soil, with Ukraines armed forces being taught how to use armoured vehicles that are being given to boost the war effort in eastern Europe.

But it comes as a former defence secretary accused previous Downing Street operations of being reluctant to support Kyiv in the aftermath of Russian president Vladimir Putins annexing of Crimea in 2014.

Michael Fallon told The Sunday Times that, when serving under former Conservative prime minister David Cameron, he was told to turn down requests for assistance in upgrading Ukraines defences despite the Ministry of Defence wanting to do more.

We were stymied and we were blocked in Cabinet from sending the Ukrainians the arms they needed, Mr Fallon told the newspaper.

Some in the Cabinet felt extremely strongly that we should do nothing to further provoke Russia.

I felt that was absurd. The Russians didnt need any provoking. They were already there, sending people across the border.

In the run-up to and during the current incursion, London has emerged as one of Ukraines closest allies in terms of supplying Nato-class weapons.

Former Tory defence secretary Michael Fallon said it was absurd he was told not to send arms to Ukraine when Crimea was annexed (Kirsty OConnor/PA)

Mr Zelensky expressed his gratitude in a conversation with the Prime Minister on Saturday and during a press conference in his countrys capital.

Asked during a briefing about military support from the West, he told reporters: We want more than were being given, but were satisfied.

We cannot refuse or reject anything during the war from the biggest military aid, which is coming from the United States and the United Kingdom.

There are many other friends in Europe, but Im talking about volumes of help and Im grateful for it.

Mr Zelensky also announced that he will hold talks with the US secretary of state Antony Blinken and secretary of defence Lloyd Austin in Kyiv on Sunday  a meeting taking place more than two weeks after Mr Johnson made a similar trip east.

When the Prime Minister was on a trade trip to India last week, he revealed that Ukrainian forces were in the UK as part of British efforts to support the territorial defence.

More than 20 soldiers arrived last week for training on 120 armoured vehicles, including the Mastiff, Wolfhound and Husky, that are being supplied to help resist Moscows advances.

The battle for Donbas in eastern Ukraine continues to rage but Saturday also saw fresh attacks in the south, with a missile strike in Odesa killing a three-month-old baby and another five people.

In the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said Russian forces launched an offensive on a steel plant in an apparent bid to eliminate the last stand by Kyivs defenders.

An estimated 1,000 civilians remain sheltered in the Azovstal plant alongside the remaining 2,000 Ukrainian fighters.

Mr Putin only two days ago ordered that Russian troops not be sent into the plant but instead that the facility be blocked off, in an apparent attempt to starve out the Ukrainians and force their surrender.

In footage shared online of the conditions in Azovstal, one young girl said she and her relatives havent seen neither the sky, nor the sun since they left home on February 27, with fears food supplies are running low after the two-month siege.

During Mr Johnson and Mr Zelenskys telephone conversation, No 10 said both leaders joined in condemning the attacks by Russian forces against civilian targets in Mariupol and Odesa, as well as in the west of the country in Lviv.
Passengers are boarding the flight CZ 6682 to Urumqi at the Zhaosu Tianma Airport in Zhaosu County, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, April 22, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]

With the successful landing of China Southern Airlines Flight CZ6681 at the Zhaosu Tianma Airport in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Friday, the region's first plateau airport was officially put into operation.

Situated at an altitude of over 1,700 meters above sea level, the airport is located in Zhaosu County, Kazak Autonomous Prefecture of Ili.

Built with an investment of 640 million yuan (about 98.9 million U.S. dollars), the construction of the airport began in September 2019.

Previously, passengers from the regional capital Urumqi to Zhaosu could only travel directly via land transportation. Air travelers had to fly to Yining City first before taking a bus to Zhaosu, and the entire journey would take more than four hours.

Thanks to the new airport, now it will only take an hour and a half to reach Zhaosu from Urumqi. It is expected to bring convenience for local people while injecting a strong impetus into Xinjiang's tourism sector.

"Ili is rich in tourism resources, and the opening of the new airport will revitalize these resources, making it more convenient for tourists to visit Zhaosu," said Chen Yunliang, a passenger at Diwopu International Airport in Urumqi.

Neighboring Kazakhstan, Zhaosu County is known as the home to one of China's best horse breeds.

Zhaosu Tianma Airport is constructed with the goal of meeting an annual passenger throughput of 200,000 and cargo throughput of 600 tonnes as well as a take-off and landing capacity of 2,600 flights by 2025.

To date, Xinjiang has 23 airports in operation.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. Professor of International Law and Genocide Expert Ayman Salama considers the Armenian Genocide to be an undeniable fact.

The Armenian Genocide of 1915 by the Ottoman Empire included all the five patterns and modalities of genocide that was provided and enshrined in the Second Article of the United Nations Convention on Prevention and Punishment of Genocide of 1948, Salama said in a video message to ARMENPRESS on the occasion of the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Armenian Genocide is not deniable, and shouldnt be deniable for the sake of humanity. Because if we deny such atrocities that occurred by the Ottoman Empire, we actually would support the policy of impunity and such perpetrators to repeat it again in the very near future. The allies of the Ottoman Empire, Austria and Germany, who were allies of the Turkish government at that time, they both recently acknowledged that what was going on in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire was real genocide. The Turkish government nowadays cannot evade, escape even the Istanbul trials that was established to prosecute and punish the Pashas who perpetrated and incited the genocide in 1915.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. The France-Artsakh Friendship Circle issued a statement on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, stressing that after the Azerbaijani aggression against Artsakh and the crimes committed by the Baku regime, France  a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group  must immediately abandon its ineffective neutral policy and recognize the Republic of Artsakh based on international law.

Armenians were exterminated in the Ottoman Empire by the authorities of their own state in conditions of indifference of the international community. The France-Artsakh friendship circle reaffirms its unwavering support to the citizens of Artsakh and its commitment to the necessity of recognizing the democratic state that they built over 30 years. A significant part of the territory of Artsakh is occupied as a result of the war unleashed by Azerbaijan in September of 2020.

Azerbaijan and its ally Turkey are engaged in Armenophonic, racist policy on the highest level.

The Friendship Circle believes that after the Azerbaijani aggression against Artsakh and the crimes committed by the Baku regime there, France  a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group  must immediately abandon its ineffective neutral policy and recognize the Republic of Artsakh based on international law, the friendship circle said in a statement released by the Artsakh foreign ministry.
YEREVAN, APRIL 22, ARMENPRESS. President of Artsakh Arayik Harutyunyan addressed a message on the occasion of the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, his Office said.

The message reads as follows:

Dear compatriots,

In Artsakh, as in Mother Armenia and in various parts of the world, where at least one Armenian lives, we mourn and commemorate the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide, the 1.5 million innocent Armenians who fell victim to a monstrous plan carried out by the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

It was a crime not only against the Armenian people, but also against the whole of humanity, a stigma for all those who have not yet acknowledged and condemned it, paving the way for new massacres and crimes.

Over a centennium onward, we are once again facing serious challenges, once again having to fight for national and universal values, for the protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms, for the full realization of our natural right to live freely and independently on our own soil.

Today, in front of the whole world, Azerbaijan continues to explicitly pursue an anti-Armenian and belligerent policy towards the people of Artsakh, grossly violating and trampling all the norms and principles of universally accepted and recognized international law.

The progressive mankind of the world must stand by the peaceful population of Artsakh, because we have no alternative, we are determined in our decision to live and create on the land of our ancestors, a land sanctified by the blood of thousands of sons of the Armenian people.

For the sake of the memory of our holy martyrs, for the sake of the future of our generations, Artsakh should always be Armenian, standing and invincible.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. United States Ambassador to Armenia Lynne Tracy visited the Tsitsernakaberd memorial on April 24 to pay tribute to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide.

Speaking to reporters at the memorial, the Ambassador emphasized that she visited Tsitsernakaberd today to honor the 1,5 million Armenians who were killed in the Armenian Genocide and to express support to the Armenian people.

She said that US President Joe Biden and his administration are determined to promote universal respect for human rights all over the world, and that is with the aim to "avoid seeing any repetition of the Armenian Genocide."

And we do see the statement of recognition of the Genocide as extremely powerful, we certainly hope that others will continue joining us in that recognition, she ambassador said, referring to President Bidens recognition.

And what is so important about statements, and continuing to make these statements is that we understand that what happened in 1915 is a historical fact and historical facts should be acknowledged and recognized and have power through that recognition, the ambassador added when asked what the international community should do other than adopting resolutions and making calls given that Turkey continues to deny the Armenian Genocide.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. The United States is committed to seeking and supporting a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict as a Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group and as a friend and partner of Armenia, United States Ambassador to Armenia Lynne Tracy told reporters at the Tsitsernakaberd memorial.

We are committed to seeking and supporting a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict as a Co-Chair of the Minsk Group as well as our capacity as the United States and a friend and partner of Armenia. And I would just point to the last few months, when Secretary Blinken has had multiple phone calls with leaders in the region as we have urged de-escalation of the situation around Nagorno Karabakh and have encouraged the leaders to be in contact and to seek a peaceful negotiation. And I think you remember that on March 25th we expressed our deep concern about irresponsible troop movements of Azerbaijan and of the need to avoid escalatory measures. And we encourage parties to avoid hostile and threatening language which doesnt serve the interest of peace, she said.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. On the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan released a statement addressed to the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople Sahak Mashalyan.

Erdogan once again avoided calling the genocide by its name and again misrepresented the Armenian Genocide as a painful reality that took place during the years of World War I.

Today youve gathered under the roof of the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul to commemorate the Ottoman Armenians who lost their lives in the difficult conditions of World War I. "I respectfully commemorate the deceased Ottoman Armenians once again, and convey my sincere condolences to their surviving relatives, Erdogan told the Armenian community of Istanbul in the statement.

Like in his statements of previous years, Erdogan again said that the final years of the Ottoman Empire during World War I were a very painful period for millions of Ottoman citizens.

Erdogan called for healing the wounds of the past together and strengthening human bonds and building the future together.

The Turkish president also touched upon the recent normalization process between Yerevan and Ankara, saying: "I know that the normalization process is sincerely supported by our citizens of Armenian origin, who favor close cooperation between the two neighboring countries, and I attach great importance to this."

"I expect you to make a strong contribution to the evaluation of this historical opportunity that has emerged in the name of permanent peace and stability in our region after many years.
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. United States President Joe Biden released a statement on the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

On April 24, 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thus began the Armenian genocideone of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century. Today, we remember the one and a half million Armenians who were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination, and mourn the tragic loss of so many lives.

As we reflect on the Armenian genocide, we renew our pledge to remain vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms. We recommit ourselves to speaking out and stopping atrocities that leave lasting scars on the world. And, as we mourn what was lost during the Meds Yeghern, let us redouble our efforts toward healing and building the better, more peaceful world that we wish for our children. A world where human rights are respected, where the evils of bigotry and intolerance do not mark our daily lives, and where people everywhere are free to pursue their lives in dignity and security.

This is also a moment to reflect on the strength and resiliency of the Armenian people. After enduring a genocide, the Armenian people were determined to rebuild their community and their culture, so often in new homes and new lands, including the United States. Armenian Americans are a vital part of the fabric of the United States. They make our nation stronger and more dynamic, even as they continue to carry with them the tragic knowledge of what their ancestors endured. We recognize their pain and honor their story.

Today, 107 years later, the American people continue to honor all Armenians who perished in the genocide, President Biden said in the statement published by the White House.